He enumerated the Jewish types in England. There is (1) the sallow Jew with a beak; (2) the same without a beak; (3) the "hammy" Jew, with pink face like a cochon-à-lait. The Florentine type, with fair hair and beautiful clear face, is not seen in England.
His criticism of a certain lady led me to ask who, of people he had known, possessed the most perfect manners. He said Lord Clarendon, who had the old carefully cultivated Whig manners, yet with the faintest possible tendency to pomposity. This style became unfashionable, and was succeeded by what he called the "early Christian" or "Apostolic" manners, of which the late Lord Knutsford was a perfect exemplar. The best-mannered woman he had known was the late Lady Waterford. Domestic servants too, he said, have manners; he instanced as magnificent specimens Turner, Lady Waldegrave's groom of the chambers, and Miss Alice Rothschild's Jelf. Lady Lonsdale once spoke of the latter as "Guelph, or whatever member of the Royal Family it is that waits on Alice."
Sir Charles talked about the Wallace Collection. Sir Richard was not the natural son either of the fourth Lord Hertford, or of his father the third Lord, Thackeray's Steyne and Disraeli's Monmouth. He was brought up by the fourth Lord Hertford, under the name of Monsieur Richard, not by any means as the expectant heir; yet, excepting the settled estates, which went to the fifth Marquis, all was left to him. Part of the great art collection remained at Bagatelle, which became the property of a younger Wallace, an officer in the French army; the rest has come to the English nation through Lady Wallace, to whom her husband left the whole. Why Sir Richard assumed the name Wallace no one knows. He was French, not English, speaking English imperfectly: a kind, cheery, polished gentleman.
Apropos of the Education Bill: old Lady Wilde from her window in Tite Street heard a woman bewailing herself in the street—her son had been "took away," to gaol that is. "He was a good boy till the Eddication came along;" then, kneeling down on the pavement and joining her hands, she prayed solemnly "God damn Eddication."
Sir Charles contrasted the idiosyncrasies of some politicians: Grey reserved, Balfour telling everything to everybody; Arnold-Forster closely "buttoned up," Gorst dangerously frank. On Gorst he enlarged: a nominal Tory, in fact a Radical, ever battering his own side for the mere fun of the operation; old in years, young in activity of brain and body; a poor man all his life.
He said that the two incomparable sights which this country could show to a foreigner were (1) Henley in regatta week; (2) the Park on a fine summer day: everyone out riding, and the Life Guards' band going down to a Drawing-room.
I asked if he had heard a certain London preacher who was drawing large audiences. He said yes, and that he was well worth hearing. "He is High Church and anti-ritualist, Socialist and aristocrat, orthodox while holding every heresy extant, not cultured or literary, slovenly and almost coarse; yet grasping his listeners by the feeling impressed on each that the preacher knows and is describing his (the hearer's) experiences, troubles, hopes, life-history."
I questioned him about Leonard Montefiore, a memoir of whom had caught my eye in one of the bookcases. He was a man of brilliant promise, unpopular at Balliol, giving himself intellectual airs; went unwashed, with greenish complexion and generally repulsive appearance; would have been prominent had he lived; was much petted by Ruskin.
He said that, if London were destroyed to-morrow, in ten years' time its site would be covered with a forest of maple, sycamore, robinia, showing an undergrowth of Persian willow-herb.
He told of a man whom his groom pronounced to be "the footiest gent on a 'oss and the 'ossiest gent on foot as he ever see."