I recall, with more pleasure than I then endured,
the cordial hugs she surreptitiously bestowed upon me when we
met by accident in the passages. Kind, affectionate
'Carrots'! Thy heart was as bounteous as thy bosom. May the
tenderness of both have met with their earthly deserts; and
mayest thou have shared to the full the pleasures thou wast
ever ready to impart!
There were no railways in those times. It amuses me to see
people nowadays travelling by coach, for pleasure. How many
lives must have been shortened by long winter journeys in
those horrible coaches. The inside passengers were hardly
better off than the outside. The corpulent and heavy
occupied the scanty space allotted to the weak and small -
crushed them, slept on them, snored over them, and
monopolised the straw which was supposed to keep their feet
warm.
A pachydermatous old lady would insist upon an open window.
A wheezy consumptive invalid would insist on a closed one.
Everybody's legs were in their own, and in every other
body's, way. So that when the distance was great and time
precious, people avoided coaching, and remained where they
were.
For this reason, if a short holiday was given - less than a
week say - Norfolk was too far off; and I was not permitted
to spend it at Holkham. I generally went to Charles Fox's at
Addison Road, or to Holland House. Lord Holland was a great
friend of my father's; but, if Creevey is to be trusted -
which, as a rule, my recollection of him would permit me to
doubt, though perhaps not in this instance - Lord Holland did
not go to Holkham because of my father's dislike to Lady
Holland.
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.
