Many of his opinions, however, like Dr. Johnson's, were evoked by the spirit of contradiction, and it was chiefly with English people that I heard him talk about the French.
In the holidays in England reading aloud was one of his chief pleasures. He read much poetry to us at one time, but later I think he had to give this up as it tired him. At Arundel he wrote his letters in the dressing-room opening out of his bedroom. We used to sit there waiting for him before the appointed time, making drawings in red ink, of which there was always a large supply, when he would make a mock solemn entrance, as of a stiff professor. We were allowed to scribble during the reading, but, woe betide us! if we showed any inattention. He read 'Marmion,' Southey's 'Thalaba,' and, I think, 'The Curse of Kehama,' also much of Byron, the 'Siege of Corinth,' with especial enjoyment. He knew many pages of Byron by heart, and we used to get him to repeat any amount while out walking. 'Rejected Addresses,' 'Bombastes Furioso,' 'The Rape of the Lock' were also among the many things he liked to recite. I wish I could remember half the things he read or repeated to us. I am sure there was no Tennyson, and certainly no Browning. He used to jeer at the obscurity of both the Brownings, and to mutter such phrases as the 'thundering white silence' of Mrs. Browning with intense scorn. I think he may have met the Brownings when he was in Rome. He saw a good deal of Fanny and Adelaide Kemble at that time. He liked Adelaide much the best of the two, and used to quote with delight a saying of hers as to the Brownings. When she was told of the birth of their son she exclaimed: 'There are now then not one incomprehensible, or two incomprehensibles, but three incomprehensibles!'
He was always amused at the Kemble grand manner. He used to imitate the dramatic utterance with which Fanny Kemble frightened a young waiter who had brought her some beer. 'I asked for water, boy; you bring me beer!'
At that same time he knew Sir Frederick Leighton, and they once had a pillow fight! Who could imagine that pillow fight who only knew him as Ambassador in Paris? He always spoke as if he had enjoyed life in Rome; he was devoted to the theatre, and he had much congenial society. He used to say, too, that Pius IX. was the most agreeable sovereign with whom he ever had diplomatic relations.
Lord Lyons's literary tastes were not those of the present generation. He declared that he only liked verse that rhymed and music with a tune. He loved the sonorous sound of Byron as he loved the solemn cadence of Latin verse. All the time the love of absurdity was never far off. He would suddenly imitate the action of a schoolboy repeating Latin verse, first with his arms and then with his feet! A stout, very dignified elderly man, in some path in the garden, punctuating the verse with the action of his feet, is sufficiently surprising. Occasionally he would have the oddest freaks of this kind, and I remember an afternoon when he took a whim of pretending to be imbecile; he made the most extraordinary faces, and not a word of sense could be got from him.
Once in a steamer on the lake of Lucerne he insisted on his nieces joining him in impersonating a typical family of English tourists out for their holiday. He was the paterfamilias, one niece was his wife, another the German governess, a third his child. In the middle of the performance he found that he was being regarded with surprise and curiosity by some English society friends whose acquaintance with him had hitherto been exclusively in the character of a very dignified ambassador.
My aunt, Mary Howard, used to read aloud to him by the hour, and we all enjoyed these times immensely. It would be difficult to say how often we had 'Pickwick,' 'Cranford,' 'Rasselas,' 'The Rose and the Ring,' and 'Mrs. Boss's Niece.' I have never met anybody outside that circle who ever even heard of 'Mrs. Boss's Niece;' it is a serious loss. To quote at all appropriately from any of his favourites was to be exceedingly in his good books for the rest of the day. Like the late Lord Salisbury he delighted in Miss Yonge; he could not have too many pairs of twins, or too large a family circle to read about. He loved the analysis of domestic life, and would have been ready to canonise any really and genuinely unselfish character. Detective stories were a great joy. 'The House on the Marsh,' and 'Called Back,' were among the most successful. He used to prolong discussion as to the solution of the mystery, and would even knock at our doors very late at night if he thought he had identified the murderer, and mutter in dramatic undertones, 'So-an-so was the man who did it.' But the detective story was never read before dinner, and to look into the book meanwhile was a crime. Anybody who peeped to see the end of a novel 'deserved to be dragged to death by wild horses.' And there must be no skipping. Only descriptions of scenery—to which he had the strongest objection—might be left out.
The annual holiday was, for the most part, spent with the Duchess of Norfolk at Arundel, and later at Heron's Ghyll. Sometimes he went to Germany to take the waters, in company with his eldest sister, Baroness Wurtzburg. When in England he always paid a certain number of country house visits. These generally included Knowsley and Woburn. The visits that were paid every year, I think without exception, were those to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and to an old schoolfellow—Major Trower, who had been with him at Winchester. Major Trower was one of four old Wykehamists who remained close friends. The other two had died some time before. I think the visit to Raby was annual. He specially enjoyed the society of the Duchess of Cleveland and of Lady Mary Hope. He was at Raby in the September before he died, and I believe that was the last visit he ever paid. The famous visitors' book there always amused him, and he was fond of quoting from it. One of his own contributions I remember was written with mock modesty. He took from Lockhart's Spanish ballads the lines:—
''Twere better to be silent before such a crowd of folk,
Than utter words as meaningless as he did when he spoke.'