The autumn of 1860 saw us on our way back to Europe, and the winter of 1860-61 was spent at Pau. In those days the railway only went as far as Dax, and the rest of the journey had to be done by “diligence.” I have a hazy recollection of the discomforts of that journey, for our little party consisted of nine children and two governesses, and I suppose a nurse or two. Anyhow, we must have taken up a good deal of the interior of that somewhat archaic vehicle, and we children remembered afterwards with delight the remark addressed to our most respectable middle-aged spinster governess, who was in charge of this caravan, by a sympathetic Frenchman: “Mon Dieu, Madame, êtes vous donc la grand’mère de tous ces enfants?”
During our stay at Pau my grandfather died, and my parents settled down at Castle Hill, with 17 Bruton Street as their London house.
Naturally the next few years, which were passed while still in the hands of governesses and nurses, were absolutely colourless, but I can still remember some of the house parties at Castle Hill. My father, like all the Whigs of the early ’sixties, was greatly interested in the Italian movement. Various Italian celebrities used to undertake the long journey down to Devonshire, I suppose to make the acquaintance of a specimen of an English country house and to see a week of English country life. It was our great amusement as children, just before being packed off to bed, to lean over the gallery which surrounded the hall when the guests were assembling before dinner, and watch them processing into the dining-room, and I can well remember our childish delight and wonder at the behaviour of the Italians, who invariably went in to dinner, as was the custom in those days on the Continent, with their gibus hats under their arms.
For the next few years Castle Hill and Bruton Street were my alternate homes in their respective seasons, and one of the impressive ceremonies I remember was being allowed to see our parents dressed up for Court, and, greatest joy of all, to see them driven away in a coach with a footman behind, and one of my dearest friends, the coachman, in a wig and state livery, enthroned on his hammer-clothed box. How smart were the carriages in London in those days, and how paltry do the most expensive Rolls-Royce cars appear in comparison! Even on ordinary occasions the whole of London Society, which in those days was small and select, used to take their afternoon drives in barouches. In our turn, we children used to drive in the sacred vehicle with our mother. It was very magnificent. To drive in a barouche in London in the height of the Season was rather a solemn affair and not particularly amusing, and the only redeeming feature I remember was that at the end of the outing the carriage used to pull up under the trees in Berkeley Square, and, delight of delights! strawberry ices used to be brought to us from Gunter’s to consume in the carriage, and that admirable institution, I am glad to see, still keeps its hospitable doors open. It was one of the sights of the London Season to see the carriages pulled up in the shade of the trees, full of children consuming strawberry ices. I insist on strawberry ices, for, as far as I can remember, no child ever dreamt of asking for any other.
The expression “dearest friend” as regards the coachman was certainly no mere figure of speech. The two men a boy loves best in the world are the two who teach him how to ride and how to shoot. My friend of the hammer-clothed box did the former, the tuition of the latter fell to the lot of the butler. The butler’s business is generally supposed to lie in another direction, but in our particular case he was undoubtedly the right person, as, apart from his other dignities, he had the high honour of being own brother to the head gamekeeper.
The early years slipped away in the happy childhood that is always ensured by being one of a large family of children treading close on one another’s heels. For, by the time I went to school in 1865, there were exactly a dozen of us,—no very unusual number in those days of large families. Our nearest neighbour and kinsman, the Lord Portsmouth of that day, was the happy father of nine, and to go back another generation or two, I was always led to believe that my step-grandmother, to whose Wellington boots I have already alluded, was one of a family of over twenty.
In the summer of 1865 my eldest brother—my senior by a little over a year—and I were sent to school at Brighton. The owner and manager of this establishment was an old lady, Mrs. Walker by name, and, as was inevitable in those days, the school came to be known by the name of Hookey’s. This school, one way and another, earned an excellent reputation, and I suppose was quite as good as any other preparatory school for Eton and Harrow, to one of which schools nearly all the boys went eventually. Certainly the boys of my time achieved, as a lot, very considerable success in after life. Out of about sixty boys, who must have passed through there during my time, I can remember three Lytteltons, known to us as Bob, Edward and Alfred: the eldest of the three is now a well-known solicitor, the second was Headmaster of Haileybury and Eton, and the youngest was one of the most brilliant men of his time, not only as a born athlete, but in the House of Commons, and in the Cabinet as Colonial Secretary. I also recollect two Northcotes, one being the late Lord Northcote, a most successful Colonial Governor-General; the late Sir Michael Herbert, whose much-to-be-regretted early death had not prevented him from rising to the rank of Ambassador at an unusually early age; Colonel à Court Repington, the well-known writer on military subjects; my own younger brother, John, now a distinguished man of letters; my cousin, the late Lord Portsmouth, and his next two brothers,—the late peer was at one time Under-Secretary of State for War; the present Lord Strathmore and his brothers; and a good sprinkling of boys who subsequently became soldiers, many of whom,—including my brother, Lionel, who was killed in South Africa,—have met a bullet in the wars, great and small, of the last forty-five years.
Poor old Hookey! She was a good old woman and a terrific snob. It speaks well for the sense of humour of the school when I can aver that its best mimic always had his greatest success when he gave his imitation of the old lady showing parents of possible prospective pupils over the school. She invariably used to produce, apparently out of her sleeve and quite by accident, all the eldest sons, the regular formula being: “That boy is Lord Blank, Earl Dash’s son. Come here, Blank, my dear; I am so glad to learn from your tutor that you are first in your class this week.” If there happened to be a slump in eldest sons, even a wretched “honourable” would be produced as a makeshift; but as we were well supplied with Viscounts this very seldom happened.
My holidays were passed entirely at Castle Hill, and hunting became the great joy of the summer and winter holidays, for, in addition to the fox-hunting provided by our kinsman and neighbour, Lord Portsmouth, the Devon and Somerset Staghounds used to begin their season in mid-August, and it was in August 1866 that I was formally entered to the sport of stag-hunting, having been in at the death of a hunted stag after a terrifically long run. My eldest brother and I were both baptised at the same time, having both managed to get to the end on our Exmoor ponies. The ceremony of blooding was performed by the Rev. John Russell, the well-known sporting parson, generally known as Jack Russell, who, in those days, was vicar of a neighbouring parish and esteemed to be the greatest authority on hunting, whether of the stag, the fox, the otter, or the hare, that lived in the West Country. We got home somewhere about ten o’clock that night and fought ferociously to prevent the blood being washed off our faces before being packed off to bed.