I Speak Here Of My Introduction To Holland House, For
Although Lady Holland Was Then In The Zenith Of Her
Ascendency, (it was she who was the Cabinet Minister, not her
too amiable husband,) although Holland House was then the
Resort of all the potentates of Whig statecraft, and Whig
literature, and Whig wit, in the persons of Lord Grey,
Brougham, Jeffrey, Macaulay, Sydney Smith, and others, it was
not till eight or ten years later that I knew, when I met
them there, who and what her Ladyship's brilliant satellites
were. I shall not return to Lady Holland, so I will say a
parting word of her forthwith.
The woman who corresponded with Buonaparte, and consoled the
prisoner of St. Helena with black currant jam, was no
ordinary personage. Most people, I fancy, were afraid of
her. Her stature, her voice, her beard, were obtrusive marks
of her masculine attributes. It is questionable whether her
amity or her enmity was most to be dreaded. She liked those
best whom she could most easily tyrannise over. Those in the
other category might possibly keep aloof. For my part I
feared her patronage. I remember when I was about seventeen
- a self-conscious hobbledehoy - Mr. Ellice took me to one of
her large receptions. She received her guests from a sort of
elevated dais. When I came up - very shy - to make my
salute, she asked me how old I was. 'Seventeen,' was the
answer. 'That means next birthday,' she grunted.
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