It was only the other day that I was once more at Hinchingbrooke, the lovely old place where many years ago I used to go and stay with a most delightful friend of mine—the mother of the present Lord Sandwich. Besides being a charming conversationalist, she had a most unusually lovely voice—indeed the famous Costa used to say that he had hardly ever heard a finer. The house is a wonderful old place, filled with magnificent pictures, whilst there is a quantity of marvellous old letters and manuscripts in the library. I remember going there to meet the present Duchess of Devonshire just about the time that she made her first appearance in England. She was then in the full radiance of youth and beauty, creating a sensation wherever she went.

Another country place of which I have many pleasant memories is Goodwood House. Especially well do I remember the elaborate and splendid festivities which took place at the coming of age of the present Duke of Richmond, on which occasion the old English custom of roasting an entire ox was observed. The rejoicings lasted an entire week.

OLD COLONEL NELTHORPE

It was no uncommon thing before the days of easy railway travelling for a friend of the family to reside almost permanently in a country house. I remember such a one at my father’s house in Norfolk—Colonel Nelthorpe by name—an old bachelor who might well have stepped out of one of Fielding’s novels. This old colonel had a room known as Colonel Nelthorpe’s room, and a stall for his horse in the stables, both of which were always kept vacant and ready in view of his arrival during such brief periods as he might choose not to reside at Wolterton. His servant, whom he addressed in tones such as we might fancy Squire Western would have employed, he called “Wulliam,” and to “Wulliam” went the whole of Colonel Nelthorpe’s not inconsiderable fortune, a bequest which somewhat staggered my poor mother, who, though as a rule a most unworldly woman, had in this instance conceived an idea that the old colonel would be sure to leave his fortune to her two little girls (my sister and myself), for whom she declared he had always shown a distinct partiality. When we were alone with this old veteran in the country all the tit-bits were for him; but her attentions were lavished in vain, for, as I have said, nothing came to us, and all went to “Wulliam.”

My father’s friendship with Colonel Nelthorpe (one of the ugliest men, by the way, I ever remember) had been in a great measure caused by their being jointly associated for a very long time in the command of the West Norfolk Regiment of Militia, now the 4th Battalion Norfolk Regiment.

My father commanded this battalion for years, whilst Colonel Nelthorpe was its lieutenant-colonel right up to his death, at a great age, in 1854, having served in that capacity for about forty years. In 1815 he had commanded a detachment of the regiment which had been sent to Ireland, and the year before he died, at the age of eighty-two, he took part in the annual training, on which occasion, the Peace Society having circulated much anti-military literature, the militiamen were openly reproached, hooted, and ridiculed in the streets of Norwich. It was to this battalion of militia that Captain Borrow, the father of the celebrated author of Lavengro, acted as adjutant for forty-two years, whilst one of George Borrow’s brothers, who died in Mexico, also served in it as a lieutenant.

Colonel Nelthorpe belonged to another age, and my father also had a wide experience of a world the ways of which are now almost totally forgotten. As a very young man, in the first years of the nineteenth century, he had met Casanova at Vienna, where he had a prolonged interview with him—an interview which impressed him unfavourably and gave him but an unpleasant opinion of that prince of adventurers, whom he declared to be testy and disagreeable. In justice to Casanova, however, it must be added that my father would fly into a rage upon the slightest opportunity, and in addition nurtured a supreme contempt for all foreigners. The meeting, therefore, between the diminutive and irritable English peer and the gigantic Venetian (who, in his last years, as is well known, was in the habit of constantly getting into tempers on account of imaginary insults) could hardly have been expected to pass off in perfect peace.

The sight of a foreigner, indeed, as a rule sent my father into a rage, for he seemed almost to resent the presence on earth of any other nationality except the British. Notwithstanding this, however, he for some years had a Russian valet—an importation from St. Petersburg, where he had been chargé d’affaires three years before the battle of Waterloo. This valet, of colossal height and formidable appearance, was by nature the mildest of men, as was shown by the sweet and almost caressing smile which he would oppose to the storms of abuse which were wont to rage around him when anything had gone wrong. Never, perhaps, were his looks sweeter than when, as a finale to a tirade of unusual vehemence, my father would say, “Let it happen again, and as sure as I stand here I will throw you out of the window.”

THE “DOUBLE DOW”

My father was well known as a character in that part of Norfolk in which he lived, and his friend, old Lady Suffield, known as the “Double Dow,” who resided not far away, was another. This old lady had most aristocratic ideas,—quite those of another age, indeed, for she simply could not bear to think of people of inferior birth being allowed to break down the social barriers, which, according to her, should rigidly fence in the aristocracy, and more especially the person of herself.