At Henry Greville’s house in Queen Street, where his small and select reunions had all the characteristics of a French salon, all the best musicians of the day lent their talents to make the evening attractive in the highest degree; while it was a standing jest among the female friends of our dear host, that their newest toilettes and brightest diamonds were to be worn in his honour.

CHAPTER XXV
ROCKINGHAM CASTLE—CHARLES DICKENS.

The autumn of 1850 marks, indeed, a memorable era in my heart’s calendar, for it was then I spoke for the first time with Charles Dickens. He had been my familiar friend, as a writer, for years—since his publication of “Sketches by Boz”—but the day that my conquest was complete was while on a visit to Burghley. My brother Cavendish had secured an odd number of “Pickwick,” and coming up to my favourite little room (“Queen Elizabeth’s China Closet”), he told me he had a treat in store for me, and then and there read aloud to my enraptured ears a scene where the runaway couple were tracked through the medium of “Sam Weller,” who, in his capacity of “Boots” at the hotel, had blacked Mr Jingle’s Wellingtons and Miss Wardle’s shoes in No. 17. How we laughed! How many interruptions were caused by our frequent shouts! Suffice it to say that from that day forward no page of our beloved author was left unread by either brother or sister, though the time was far distant ere he became the fast friend of both.

Mrs Watson,[[50]] one of my dear, though not very near, cousins, had married the possessor of the grand old castle of Rockingham, situated on one of the few eminences which are to be found in Northamptonshire, the Midlandest of England’s counties. That stately old building had originally been a Royal hunting-lodge, and a surrounding domain, still diversified and picturesque in the extreme, had once been forest-land. Some portion of the house itself was of very early date, and the grand entrance, or gate-house, consisting of two massive circular towers, dated as far back as the reign of Stephen.

[50]. Lavinia, daughter of Lord George Quin by Lady Georgiana Spencer; married Hon. Richard Watson, fourth son of second Lord Sondes.

The interior of Rockingham, the large entrance hall, the gallery and the dining-room, in particular, were especially remarkable for their old-world appearance. In the first of these apartments I loved to read the inscription on the beams of the ceiling—

“Thys House shall be preserved and never shall decaye

While Almighty God is honoured and served daye by daye”—

while the dining-room, with its oak-panelled walls, decorated with innumerable shields of relations and neighbours, blazoned in proper heraldic colours, has a lasting claim on my memory as the scene of our dramatic performances.