I think it was through Lord Rosebery that we made the acquaintance of Constance, daughter of Sir Anthony de Rothschild. She was the finest type of the English Hebrew, a woman of great power and character. She was a devoted follower of Frances Power Cobbe, whom I met at her house. I spent ten days at Aston Clinton, the Rothschild country seat in Buckinghamshire. At this time Cyril Flower was paying court to Miss Rothschild, and I was aware of the struggle that shook my friend’s nature to its depths. The whole Jewish community had been outraged by the recent marriage of her sister to a Christian gentleman named Yorke and the union of her cousin, Hannah Rothschild, with Lord Rosebery. Both these ladies had been cursed in the synagogue with the dreadful Jewish curse reserved for women who marry outside the faith. My friend was too clear a thinker to fear the curse of Israel, but she dreaded the feeling that she had betrayed her dear Jews, should she marry a Christian. Cyril Flower was a superb, gold-bearded Viking of a man whose wooing was impetuous and ardent. Meeting them on their wedding journey, I asked the bridegroom if the curse had been pronounced. He told me no; his bride (who had written an admirable history of the Israelites) was so deeply beloved by her people that her defection had been passed over in silence. Mr. Flower entered political life to represent the Rothschild interests: he later became Lord Battersea.
M. Alphonse, the Rothschilds’ famous French chef, was quite a character. Poor Sir Anthony was much out of health and obliged to live on rice and gruel, but he sat at the head of his table at dinner and, like Mr. Browning, helped me to choose the cook’s best plats. I remember his pointing out a particularly fat truffle as a dish was handed me:
“Take that one, and tell me if it is not good.”
He watched me intently as I ate the truffle, then with a sigh went back to his boiled rice.
Lady Rothschild was a lovely woman with delicate pink cheeks and silver hair. Her hand was the only one I have ever touched that was as soft as my mother’s. Finding me much interested in the household arrangements of the establishment, she herself took me through the perfectly appointed lower regions of Aston Clinton. Here I saw M. Alphonse in white linen suit and cap. At the end of the long kitchen was an open fire before which stood a mighty rack with a series of slowly revolving spits. On the upper one were a row of quail, on the next pheasants, then ducks, chickens, turkeys, legs of mutton, and on the lowest spit huge roasts of beef, all slowly going round and round while M. Alphonse basted them with his long ladle.
On parting, Lady Rothschild gave me a small volume. It proved to be a series of short religious lessons she had prepared. I read it carefully and found nothing that any Christian Sunday-school teacher would not have used in her class.
I was struck by the part the leading statesmen took in London’s social life. At home men of great affairs have little time for society: in London the cabinet minister or prominent statesman who does not dine out constantly is the exception. They consider it part of the relaxation all intellectual workers must find in one direction or another. A skillful London hostess tries to secure some leading political light for her dinners and takes as much care in her choice of the company as a good chef in mixing a salad. I felt the same care in the make-up of the house parties, where the right people always seemed to be brought together. In my own Boston at this time there prevailed a primitive custom of social segregation of persons of the same age. Boys and girls consorted together, the middle-aged, the elderly, the old. In London I found no trace of this tiresome restriction; in social life as in the family life the different generations were allowed to mix. This was much to my liking. I care less for people of my own age than for any others, because I have less to learn from them. We have all been rolled like pebbles on the beach by the same world currents and taken more or less the same shape.
We found time for the opera and the theater. Richard Mansfield often sent us seats for the play, and sometimes went with us. He had already made his first hit in “Prince Karl.” Albani was the favorite prima donna and Ellen Terry the most popular actress. Irving’s productions of Shakespeare were among the notable dramatic events of the season. His acting both as Hamlet and Benedick left me cold. It seemed to me he was not great enough to play Shakespeare either in tragedy or comedy. When it came to melodrama and farce, I have never seen a better actor. His acting of the “Lyons Mail” was admirable, and his impersonation of Alfred Jingle in a curtain raiser a matchless performance. We heard Patti several times in concert; she was not singing in opera that season. On one occasion at Albert Hall we heard the people’s idol, Sims Reeves, sing, “Farewell, my trim-built Wherry.” He was a very old man, and his voice a shadow of what it had been when my mother heard him in his prime. She called my attention to the rapturous applause that greeted him, saying:
“The faithfulness of English audiences to their old favorites is proverbial; it is part of the tenacity of their natures. An English friend is a friend for life.”
She went on to contrast the devotion of the English to their old favorites with the fickleness of the French, and told of the Parisian public that had so adored Rachel neglecting her for Ristori, the Italian tragedienne.