'Seventeen,' was the
answer. 'That means next birthday,' she grunted. 'Come and
give me a kiss, my dear.' I, a man! - a man whose voice was
(sometimes) as gruff as hers! - a man who was beginning to
shave for a moustache! Oh! the indignity of it!
But it was not Lady Holland, or her court, that concerned me
in my school days, it was Holland Park, or the extensive
grounds about Charles Fox's house (there were no other houses
at Addison Road then), that I loved to roam in. It was the
birds'-nesting; it was the golden carp I used to fish for on
the sly with a pin; the shying at the swans, the hunt for
cockchafers, the freedom of mischief generally, and the
excellent food - which I was so much in need of - that made
the holiday delightful.
Some years later, when dining at Holland House, I happened to
sit near the hostess. It was a large dinner party. Lord
Holland, in his bath-chair (he nearly always had the gout),
sat at the far end of the table a long way off. But my lady
kept an eye on him, for she had caught him drinking
champagne. She beckoned to the groom of the chambers, who
stood behind her; and in a gruff and angry voice shouted:
'Go to my Lord. Take away his wine, and tell him if he
drinks any more you have my orders to wheel him into the next
room.' If this was a joke it was certainly a practical one.
And yet affection was behind it. There's a tender place in
every heart.
Like all despots, she was subject to fits of cowardice -
especially, it was said, with regard to a future state, which
she professed to disbelieve in. Mr. Ellice told me that
once, in some country house, while a fearful storm was
raging, and the claps of thunder made the windows rattle,
Lady Holland was so terrified that she changed dresses with
her maid, and hid herself in the cellar. Whether the story
be a calumny or not, it is at least characteristic.
After all, it was mainly due to her that Holland House became
the focus of all that was brilliant in Europe. In the
memoirs of her father - Sydney Smith - Mrs. Austin writes:
'The world has rarely seen, and will rarely, if ever, see
again all that was to be found within the walls of Holland
House. Genius and merit, in whatever rank of life, became a
passport there; and all that was choicest and rarest in
Europe seemed attracted to that spot as their natural soil.'
Did we learn much at Temple Grove? Let others answer for
themselves. Acquaintance with the classics was the staple of
a liberal education in those times. Temple Grove was the
ATRIUM to Eton, and gerund-grinding was its RAISON D'ETRE.
