“I always transpire so, when I speak, that I am afraid of catching cold,” he replied.
What a trouble all these oddities of our language must be to foreigners. I remember a more amusing slip from the talented wife of a very public man, who speaks the English tongue with perfect grace and charm. I had asked if her husband wore his uniform when performing annually a great historic ceremony.
“Oh no, he wears his nightdress,” she replied, meaning his dress clothes.
Apropos of the Milton Centenary the Italian Ambassador was asked to speak at the Mansion House on “Milton in connection with Dante.” He motored down to my mother’s house in Buckinghamshire, where I was staying, and together we explored Milton’s cottage, where the poet wrote Paradise Regained and corrected Paradise Lost. We spent some time looking over manuscripts and photographs, in order that he should be saturated with the subject, and the next night he went to the Mansion House full of his theme.
“I got up,” said His Excellency, “referred to Milton, then to Dante, knowing that this was only my preliminary canter to personal reminiscences to come. What were those reminiscences? I gazed at that vast audience. I pondered. I knew there was something very important I had to say. I returned to the dissimilarity of the two men’s work. I wondered what my great point was, and finally with a graceful reference to poetry, I sat down.
“Then, and not till then, did I remember I had cracked the nut, and left out a description of Milton’s home, the kernel of my speech.”
This man is a brilliant speaker in Italian and French, and quite above the average in English and German. Which of us who has made a speech has not, on sitting down, remembered the prized sentence has been forgotten?
The Marquis gave some delightful dinners in Grosvenor Square. I met Princes, Dukes, authors, artists, actors, and even Labour Members of Parliament, at his table. He was interested in all sides of life, and all the time he was in England he continued to take lessons in our language.
I first met Mr. Cecil Rhodes in December, 1894, at a dinner-party which was notable for its Africans, Dr. Jameson and H. M. Stanley being there as well. A woman’s impression of a much-talked-of man may not count for much. He sat next me. I was fairly young and maybe attractive, I suppose, so he talked to me as if I were a baby or a doll. To be candid, I took a particular dislike to Rhodes from the moment I first saw him. A tall, some might say a handsome, man, his face was round and red, and not a bit clever so far as appearances went. He looked like an overfed well-to-do farmer, who enjoyed the good things of this life. He seemed self-opinionated, arrogant, petulant, and scheming—no doubt what the world calls “a strong man.” There seemed no human or soft side to his character at all. Self, self, ambition. And self again marked every word he uttered.