Lord Houghton—to me the kindest and most welcoming of hereditary friends—had a personality and a position altogether his own. His appearance was typically English; his manner as free and forthcoming as a Frenchman's. Thirty years before he had been drawn by a master-hand as Mr. Vavasour in Tancred, but no lapse of time could stale his infinite variety. He was poet, essayist, politician, public orator, country gentleman, railway-director, host, guest, ball-giver, and ball-goer, and acted each part with equal zest and assiduity. When I first knew him he was living in a house at the top of Arlington Street, from which Hogarth had copied the decoration for his "Marriage à la mode." The site is now occupied by the Ritz Hotel, and his friendly ghost still seems to haunt the Piccadilly which he loved.
"There on warm, mid-season Sundays, Fryston's bard is wont to wend,
Whom the Ridings trust and honour, Freedom's staunch and genial friend;
Known where shrewd hard-handed craftsmen cluster round the northern kilns,
He whom men style Baron Houghton, but the gods call Dicky Milnes."[27]
When first I entered Society, I caught sight of a face which instantly arrested my attention. A very small man, both short and slim, with a rosy complexion, protruding chin, and trenchant nose, the remains of reddish hair, and an extremely alert and vivacious expression. The broad Red Ribbon of a G.C.B. marked him out as in some way a distinguished person; and I discovered that he was the Lord Chief Justice of England,—Sir Alexander Cockburn, one of the most conspicuous figures in the social annals of the 'thirties and 'forties, the "Hortensius" of Endymion, whose "sunny face and voice of music" had carried him out of the ruck of London dandies to the chief seat of the British judicature, and had made him the hero of the Tichborne Trial and the Alabama Arbitration. Yet another personage of intellectual fame who was to be met in Society was Robert Browning, the least poetical-looking of poets. Trim, spruce, alert, with a cheerful manner and a flow of conversation, he might have been a Cabinet Minister, a diplomatist, or a successful financier, almost anything except what he was. "Browning," growled Tennyson, "I'll predict your end. You'll die of apoplexy, in a stiff choker, at a London dinner-party."
The streams of society and of politics have always intermingled, and, at the period of which I am writing, Lord Hartington, afterwards, as 8th Duke of Devonshire, leader of the Liberal Unionists, might still be seen lounging and sprawling in doorways and corners. Mr. Arthur Balfour, weedy and willowy, was remarked with interest as a young man of great possessions, who had written an unintelligible book but might yet do something in Parliament; while Lord Rosebery, though looking absurdly youthful, was spoken of as cherishing lofty ambitions.
Later on, I may perhaps say more about private entertainment and about those who figured in it; but now I must turn to the public sights and shows. Matthew Arnold once wrote to his mother: "I think you will be struck with the aspect of London in May; the wealth and brilliancy of it is more remarkable every year. The carriages, the riders, and the walkers in Hyde Park, on a fine evening in May or June, are alone worth coming to London to see." This description, though written some years before, was eminently true of Rotten Row and its adjacent drives when I first frequented them. Frederick Locker, a minor poet of Society, asked in some pensive stanzas on Rotten Row:
"But where is now the courtly troop
That once rode laughing by?