If the weather was wet, Lever did not venture into the city. One of his favourite pastimes was to ride about the grounds with his children, encouraging them to gallop, or to jump over trunks of fallen trees, giving a wild “hurroo” whenever they took a jump together.
Lever’s hospitality, generous and open-hearted as it was, had none of the wildness with which it was the habit to credit it in these days. Mr Pearce says that his manner was to make the house and everything in it seem to belong to his guests, but his residence in Brussels had made him “quite foreign in his dinners and his wines”; and much as he had written about whisky, it was a beverage not to be found in Templeogue House. The children dined at two o’clock, and Lever and his wife made this their luncheon. He usually slept for an hour after this meal, and then he would wake up, good-humoured and brisk, and ready for a bout of work.
“Though he was full of energy in anything he took up,” says Mr Pearce, “he was sometimes very indolently inclined. Often and often I used to try to tempt him to dictate. Sometimes I succeeded, and at other times he would vote it a bore.... I have known him to be so dissatisfied with his morning’s or evening’s work that he destroyed it. At other times his flashing and brilliant thoughts carried him on for a great length of time, pacing the room excitedly, while his delivery of words was so rapid that it was impossible to keep pace with them.... But he never allowed too slow absorption on paper of his thick-coming fancies, rapidly dictated, to elicit an exclamation of impatience. He was always genial, gentle, good-humoured; and at times as playful as a child.”
Life at Templeogue during the days of Mr Pearce’s sojourn was singularly peaceful. The only “outbreaks” were occasional dinner-parties,--generally assemblages of brilliant men; and when the more staid amongst the guests had left for the city, it was Lever’s custom to wind up the night with whist. The host was always overflowing with good stories: frequently his guests forgot that time was running away, and were startled by observing the daylight peeping in through the chinks of the window-shutters. Mr Pearce relates one of these card-table anecdotes.