“Yes, sir, I heard,” said the footman slowly, and disappeared to fetch the drink because Martin swore at him so. When he came back, he brought a liqueur-glass of Benedictine on an immense silver tray. The coachman took the glass and smelt it—doubtfully.
“It’s all right, Pat, it was made by the Holy Fathers.”
Thus encouraged, Pat drank it off. He made a wry face.
“Don’t you like it, Pat? It’s very good.”
“Oh, it’s good enough,” said the Jehu, “but what I’m thinking is that the man who blew that glass was mighty short of breath.”
That same evening he told us of the first election to a District Council which was ever held on his estates. The place was a hotbed of Nationalism, and Bob Martin was very anxious to have a friend of his, who was a Conservative, elected on to the Council. So he assembled all his tenants, and said to them, “I wish you’d elect this man. I’ve never asked you to do anything for me before, and I’ve made more money out of one rotten song (‘Ballahooley’) than out of the whole blessed lot of you ever since I came in for this place.”
Their Irish minds were so struck by this piece of special pleading that they returned his candidate unopposed.
Bishop Creighton was a very entertaining guest. Just because he was so great and so potent as an administrator, he could be perfectly natural when he was dining with a couple of score of authors. One could not imagine the present Bishop—whom I remember in the days when he was at Keble—he was a very plucky player at football, which he had learned at Marlborough—blurting out like his predecessor that the first thing he asked about a parson who was recommended for a living in his gift was “Is he a hustler?” Nor can one imagine him fencing with the late Father Stanton of St. Alban’s, Holborn, over the use of incense.
I wish I had not forgotten the name of that club to which he and Balfour and I forget what others of the greatest in the land, a dozen or twenty in all, mostly great politicians or prelates, belonged, who dined together at the Grand Hotel once or twice a month, and quietly enjoyed themselves like the Dilettanti. I suppose that it exists still.
Bishop Gore was delightfully human the night that we entertained him at the Authors’ Club. He said that he felt quite shy of replying to the toast of his health—that generally, when he was speaking, he was addressing an audience upon subjects on which he was entitled to speak with authority, and upon which his audience were very anxious to hear what he had to say, but that on this occasion he was going to talk about a subject which interested no one, meaning himself, and he was quite at a loss what to say.