“The Lord Chancellor received him with fury. ‘So that damned scoundrel the Bishop of London has given you an introduction: as it is he who has introduced you, you will certainly not get the living.’—‘Well, so the Bishop said, my lord,’ replied the clergyman. ‘Did the Bishop say so?’ thundered Lord Thurlow: ‘then he’s a damned liar, and I’ll prove him so: you shall have the living,’ and the man got it.
“At Arundel the guests were astonished by the butler coming in one day abruptly and saying to the Duke, ‘May it please your Grace, Lord Thurlow has laid an egg.’ It was one of the owls which existed at Arundel till the time of the present owner. Lord Thurlow’s daughter, going round their cages in the wall, had stopped opposite one of them, and, looking at the blinking bird, said, ‘Why, he’s just like papa.’ The bird was ever after called Lord Thurlow.”
“July 16.—At Mrs. Ralph Dutton’s I took Mrs. Procter in to dinner—Barry Cornwall’s widow, always full of interest and excellence, and of many unknown kindnesses. She talked of her early days, of the charm of Monckton Milnes when young—his brightness and vigour: of the decadence of society now, when at least a thousand persons were invited to Grosvenor House whom our grandmothers would not consent to be in the same room with; but that society now required high seasoning, and royalty the strongest pepper of all: that in former days no guest would have continued in a house where he was received on entering by a wet sponge from ——: that the abbreviation of P. B.’s in use for ‘professional beauties’ was a sign of the depth to which we have fallen.
“Mrs. Stewart told me a characteristic story of Mrs. Procter’s wit. ‘The Lionel Tennysons—dear good excellent people—asked that woman Sarah Bernhardt, the actress, to luncheon, asked her to go all the way to them in Kensington, and invited some good, quiet, simple folk to meet her, just trusting in his prestige as the laureate’s son. I need hardly say that, though they waited luncheon for Sarah Bernhardt till four o’clock, she never came. She knew the company she was to meet, and she did not think it worth while. They told Mrs. Procter of it. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘if people will invite monkeys, they must provide them with nuts.’
“‘Dear Mrs. Procter is so satirical,’ says Mrs. Stewart, ‘that when I go to her and find other people in the room, I always stay till the last, that she may have no one to discuss me with.’
“When Mrs. Procter dies, her last daughter will probably go into a convent. She has had three daughters; two have become Roman Catholics, and one is already in a convent. ‘I have another daughter, but you will never see her,’ is the only way in which the mother alludes to this.”
“July 17.—Sat by Matthew Arnold at breakfast. Speaking of the odd effect misspelt words often produced, he quoted a begging letter he had just received from a lady who said she had a decided claim upon charity, being ‘the sole support of an aged Ant’ (sic).
