Whenever I was absent from England I always received from Kinglake a weekly letter. I remember his once complaining that writing to a lady through the poste restante was like trying to kiss a nun through a double grating. Sometimes he would imitate the "little language" of the great satirist Swift, calling himself "poor dear me," and referring to me as "my dear miss." Thereby hangs a story.
On one occasion at dinner Hayward told a characteristic anecdote which, although it seemed to amuse the other ladies present, caused me considerable embarrassment. Kinglake afterwards said to me: "I thought you were a hardened married woman; I shall henceforth call you 'miss.'"
He was a very sweet, lovable man, old in years but a youth in heart. His letters were full of gaiety and persiflage.
Once he wrote to me:
"Hayward can pardon you having an ambassador or two at your feet, but to find the way to your heart, obstructed by a crowd of astronomers, Russ-expansionists, metaphysicians, theologians, translators, historians, poets—this is more than I can endure."
He was never tired of rallying me about my callers and friends, insisting that I was a grande dame to whom all the really great in the land came to make obeisance. Once when staying at Sidmouth he wrote:
"Mrs. Grundy has a small house there, but she does not know me by sight. If Madame Novikoff were to come, the astonished little town, dazzled first by her, would find itself invaded by theologians, bishops, ambassadors of deceased emperors, and an ex-Prime Minister."
When he gave me his photograph, and I gave him mine, he referred to the transaction as "an exchange between the personified months of May and November."
On one occasion The Times inserted, to Kinglake's great indignation, a statement that I had been obliged to leave England. Shortly afterwards Chinery, the editor, happened to seat himself at the same table with Kinglake at the Athenæum Club. Kinglake immediately rose and moved to another part of the room.
"So unlike me," was his comment; "but somehow a savagery as of youth came over me in my ancient days; it was like being twenty years old again."