"Perhaps there will always be those whose control over their thirst at a ball is not quite so strong as that of others."
I have no doubt that much of what Mr. Perrott has just told you about the revels that have taken place in the hall during the last 200 or 300 years is perfectly true. There may perhaps have been more fun in the old days—that is a matter of history. I very much doubt it myself, and I have a sort of idea, and I hope and trust that at the Servants' Ball which still takes place here annually—unless there is some misfortune to prevent it—there is as much fun and revelry as has ever before taken place in this hall. The old lamp hung over your heads belonged to a former Lord Mayor of London—Sir Edward Clark—from whom I inherited some property and plate. That lamp probably hung in the Mansion House in London some two or three hundred years ago, and I have no doubt it has seen some peculiar scenes.
Servants' Ball,
January 8th, 1903.
I also have my little anxieties. I have been hoping and praying that the enemy will not come up the Bristol Channel and land somewhere near here before I have got my Territorial Army into position. At the present moment the Territorial Army in Monmouthshire consists exactly of 17 men, all of whom are officers. So that unless the enemy give us due notice that they are coming here, I am afraid that we shall have to depend principally upon the Tredegar House establishment. I am quite certain that you will all answer my call, the ladies more particularly. I don't care so much about the enemy, whenever he comes, so long as I have the ladies with me.
Servants' Ball,
Jan. 8th, 1908.
"I don't care so much about the enemy,
whenever he comes,
so long as I have the ladies with me."
I take this opportunity of thanking you, and all those in my service who have spent this year together with me, for the happy way in which we have been enabled to pass the whole year together in our mutual admiration for each other. I was going to say affection for each other, and I should like to think so. We are—I propose using a silly phrase to express our relations at Tredegar House—a brotherhood of men. We are here as a brotherhood of men, and a sisterhood of women, and I should like you to look upon me as one of yourselves. It may be, before this time next year, if things go on as they are, that I shall be calling you Comrade Perrot, and you will be calling me Comrade Morgan. Things are going very fast just now, but I think there is a right feeling throughout the country that we are going too fast. It may be that next year, instead of being summoned to the ball here you will be asked to
"Come and trip as you go
To the light fantastic veto,"