“Errors like straws upon the surface flow,
He who would search for pearls must dive below.”
—Dryden.
To the Hon. G. Jollife.
“Holmhurst, August 1891.—I enjoyed my months in London at the time, yet was very glad to come away. It is a terrible waste of life. The size and lateness of dinners have killed society. Scarcely any one says anything worth hearing, and if any one does, nobody listens.
“‘Que de bonnes choses vont tous les jours mourir dans l’oreille d’un sot,’ was always a true saying of Fontenelle, but is less true now than formerly—there are so few bonnes choses.
“People love talking, but not talk. Dinners are rather display than hospitality, supplying abundance of sumptuous viands, but no esprit. I heard pleasanter conversation in one quiet luncheon at the Speaker’s from his delightful family than at a hundred parties: as a social art it is extinct. One never hears such conversationalists as gathered round my aunt Mrs. Stanley’s homely table long ago, or as, in later times, round Arthur Stanley, Mrs. Grote, Madame Mohl, the first Lady Carnarvon, Lord Houghton, Lady Margaret Beaumont. The dinners, in food sense, have never any attraction to me. L. and I dined out together at —— and I think it was an even match which of us suffered most, L. or myself: myself, because the dinner was too good; L., because it was not good enough.
“From what I hear from the East End, the scandal of Tranby Croft seems to be acting as the affaire du collier did in France in preparing the way for a revolution. But the West End goes on as if nothing had happened. I saw the Emperor (of Germany) several times, a fat young man with a bright good-humoured face, though apparently never free from the oppression of his own importance, as well as of the importance of his dress, which he changes very often in the day. And I went, one glorious afternoon, when the limes were in blossom, with several thousand other people to Hatfield to meet the Prince of Naples, whose intelligence (especially on subjects connected with Natural History) seems to have pleased everybody. He is very small, but has none of the aggressive ugliness of his father and grandfather. One day I went to luncheon with Miss Rhoda Broughton, who is seen at her very best in her little house at Richmond, most attractive in its old prints and furniture and lovely river view. Then I spent a Sunday with my cousin Theresa Earle in her pretty Surrey home, and wound up the season by meeting a large party at Cobham.”