"Don't be frightened, Toby M.P.," said the full rich voice so familiar in the House of Commons; "it's our wild woodsman's way of welcoming the coming guest. What do you think of my costume? Seen it before? Ah! yes, the photographs. Carte de visite style, 10s. 6d. a dozen; Cabinet size, a guinea. I have been photographed several times as you will observe."
And, indeed, as your host leads you along the stately passages, through the storied rooms, you find his photograph everywhere. The tables are covered with them, showing your host in all attitudes and costumes. "Yes," he says, with a sigh, "I think I have marched up to the camera's mouth as often as most men of my years."
Ascending the rustic staircase which leads from the garden, William Ewart Gladstone takes you past the library into the drawing-room, in the upper parts of the leaded windows of which are inserted panels of rare old glass, cunningly obtained by melting superfluous Welsh ale bottles. He leads you to a table, as round as that at which a famous Conference was held, and points to a little ivory painting. It shows a chubby little boy some two years of age, with rather large head and broad shoulders, sitting at the knee of a young nymph approaching her fifth year. On her knee is a book, and the chubby boy, with dark hair falling low over his forehead, his great brown eyes staring frankly at you, points with his finger to a passage. When you learn that this is a portrait of your host and his sister taken in the year 1811, you naturally come to the conclusion that the young lady has, for party purposes, been misquoting some passages in her brother's speech, and that he, having produced an authorised record of his address, is triumphantly pointing to the text in controversion of her statement.
Your host, chopping grimly at the furniture as he passes along—here dexterously severing the leg of a Chippendale chair, and there hacking a piece off a Louis Quatorze couch—leads the way to an annexe he has just built for the reception of his treasured books. From the outside this excrescence on the Castle has but a poverty-stricken look. It is, to tell the truth, made of corrugated iron. But that is a cloak that cunningly covers an interior of rare beauty and rich design. Arras of cloth of gold hangs loosely on the walls, whilst here and there, on the far-reaching floor, gleams the low light of a faded Turkey carpet. Open tables, covered with broad cloths of crimson velvet, embroidered and fringed with gold, carry innumerable Blue Books. On marble tables, supported on carved and gilded frames, stand priceless vases, filled with rare flowers. In crystal flagons you detect the sheen of amber light (which may be sherry wine), whilst the ear is lulled with the sound of fountains dispensing perfumes as of Araby. In an alcove, chastely draped with violent violet velvet, the grey apes swing, and the peacocks preen, on fretted pillar and jewelled screen. Horologes, to chime the hours, and even the quarters, uprise from tables of ebony-and-mother-of-pearl. Cabinets from Ind and Venice, of filligree gold and silver, enclose complete sets of Hansard's Parliamentary Debates; whilst lamps of silver, suspended from pendant pinnacles in the fretted ceiling, shed a soft light over the varied mass of colour.
Casting himself down lightly by a cabinet worked with Dutch beads interspersed with seed-pearls, and toying with the gnarled handle of the axe, the Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone tells you the story of his life. At the outset you are a little puzzled to gather where exactly he was born. At first you think it was in Scotland. Anon some town in England claims the honour. Then Wales is incidentally mentioned, and next the tearful voice of Erin claims her son. But, as the story goes forward with long majestic stride, these difficulties fade in the glamour of the Old Man's eloquence, and when you awake and find your host has not yet got beyond the second course—the fish, as it were, of the intellectual banquet—you say you will call again.
Mention of the three courses naturally suggests dinner, and as you evidently enjoy the monopoly of the mental association, you take your leave, perhaps regretting that among his wild woodsman accessories your host does not seem to include the midday chop.
Gold-tipped cigarettes seem just now to be "the swagger thing." "Ah!" Master Tommy sighed, as he set off for school with only five shillings in his pocket, in consequence of all his dearest—and nearest—relatives being laid up with the prevailing epidemic, "Ah, how I should like to be one of those cigarettes, and then I should be tipped with gold."
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