[[5]] "A woman speaking in public is like a dog walking on its hind legs: it is not well done, but you are surprised to find it done at all."
[[6]] My native county remained consistently and uninterruptedly Tory for fifty years—from 1868, when it returned Lord Garlics, until 1918, when its separate representation was taken from it by the new Redistribution Act.
[[7]] Sir Charles had sat in Parliament continuously, except for a few weeks, since 1868, when he was first elected for Buteshire. It was only this very slight break which prevented him from being at one time the Father of the House of Commons.
[[8]] I heard an odd story to the effect that at the Anglican Church at Monte Carlo no one had ever heard any hymn before No. 37 announced to be sung; the reason being that the mention of any one from 1 to 36 would instantly have sent a quota of the congregation racing down to stake their money on that number! It was, and is, a current superstition that a number suggested by something as remote as possible from gambling is likely to prove a lucky one.
[[9]] Due, I think, largely to the fact that though the greater part of the church is ninth and tenth century work, it has the air of being very much older, and seems to recall the days of St. Ambrose himself.
[[10]] "Kelburn" was, I believe, the old spelling. About the same time the Duke of Athole dropped his final e also; and the name-board at the well-known station, at his castle gates, displayed, as I observed on my next journey to the Highlands, the legend "Blair Atholl," instead of "Blair Athole" as formerly.
[[11]] Augustine Birrell, the distinguished essayist, whose literary method, easy, witty, and urbane, has evoked the word "birrelling." He succeeded Mr. Bryce a little later as Irish Secretary, and retained that office (in which he was no more successful than most of his predecessors) under Mr. Asquith.
[[12]] Née Legge: one of a crowd of sisters (Ladies Louisa, Octavia, Wilhelmina, Barbara, Charlotte, and I know not how many more) with whom I made friends as a small boy when staying with my parents at Aix-la-Chapelle; and we saw much of them afterwards. We children used to call them the "Lady-legs." Their brother Augustus, who was also a friend of my childhood, became Bishop of Lichfield in 1891.
[[13]] Built in James II.'s reign (the original castle was of Henry VII.'s), when the accession of a Catholic King enabled Catholics, British and Irish, to emerge for a short time from the Catacombs.
[[14]] Lord Gormanston, like Lord Talbot de Malahide and a few others, represented the Anglo-Irish landowners of the time of Henry VII., "Lord of Ireland." My friend Lord Kenmare was typical of the enriched Elizabethan settlers in the country, while Sir Henry Bellingham was one of the seventeenth-century group of immigrants popularly known as "Cromwell's Drummers." Three out of the four mentioned were Catholics.