"The madness and the melody, the singing youth that went there, The shining, unforgettable, imperial days we spent there."
But here and there, swimming rare in the vast whirlpool of Society, one used to encounter remarkable faces. Most remarkable was the face of Lord Beaconsfield,--past seventy, though nobody knows how much; with his black-dyed hair in painful contrast to the corpse-like pallor of his face; with his Blue Ribbon and diamond Star; and the piercing eyes which still bespoke his unconquerable vitality.
Sometimes Mr. Gladstone was to be seen, with his white tie working round toward the back of his neck, and a rose in his button-hole, looking like a rather unwilling captive in the hands of Mrs. Gladstone, who moved through the social crush with that queenlike dignity of bearing which had distinguished her ever since the days when she and her sister, Lady Lyttelton, were "the beautiful Miss Glynnes." Robert Lowe, not yet Lord Sherbrooke, was a celebrity who might often be seen in Society,--a noteworthy figure with his ruddy face, snow-white hair, and purblind gaze. The first Lord Lytton--Bulwer-Lytton, the novelist--was dead before I came to London; but his brilliant son, "Owen Meredith," in the intervals of official employment abroad, was an interesting figure in Society; curled and oiled and decorated, with a countenance of Semitic type.
Lord Houghton--to me the kindest and most welcoming of hereditary friends--had a personality and a position altogether his own. His appearance was typically English; his manner as free and forthcoming as a Frenchman's. Thirty years before he had been drawn by a master-hand as Mr. Vavasour in _Tancred_, but no lapse of time could stale his infinite variety. He was poet, essayist, politician, public orator, country gentleman, railway-director, host, guest, ball-giver, and ball-goer, and acted each part with equal zest and assiduity. When I first knew him he was living in a house at the top of Arlington Street, from which Hogarth had copied the decoration for his "Marriage à la mode." The site is now occupied by the Ritz Hotel, and his friendly ghost still seems to haunt the Piccadilly which he loved.
"There on warm, mid-season Sundays, Fryston's bard is wont to wend, Whom the Ridings trust and honour, Freedom's staunch and genial friend; Known where shrewd hard-handed craftsmen cluster round the northern kilns, He whom men style Baron Houghton, but the gods call Dicky Milnes."[27]