. It was seldom that Mrs. Gladstone failed to
drag Mr. Gladstone to some country house "from Saturday to Monday."

As I re-read what I have written in this chapter, I seem to have lived
from 1876 to 1880 in the constant enjoyment of one kind or another of
Hospitality. It is true; and for the kindness of the friends who then
did so much to make my life agreeable, I am as grateful as I was when I
received it. My social life in London seems to me, as I look back, "a
crystal river of unreproved enjoyment"; and some of those who shared it
with me are still among my closest friends.

One word more, and I have done with Hospitality. I brought with me from
Oxford a simple lad who had been a College servant. In those more
courteous days a young man made it a rule to leave his card at every
house where he had been entertained; so I made a list of addresses, gave
it to my servant with a nicely-calculated batch of cards, and told him
to leave them all before dinner. When I came in to dress, this dialogue
ensued: "Have you left all those cards?" "Yes, sir." "You left two at
each of the houses on your list?" "Oh no, sir. I left one at each house,
and all the rest at the Duke of Leinster's." Surely Mrs. Humphry Ward or
Mr. H. G. Wells might make something of this bewildering effect produced
by exalted rank on the untutored mind.

FOOTNOTE:

[28] The second Lord Lytton.

IX

ELECTIONEERING

"Candidates are creatures not very susceptible of affronts, and
would rather, I suppose, climb in at a window than be absolutely
excluded. Mr. Grenville, advancing towards me, shook me by the hand
with a degree of cordiality that was extremely seducing.... He is
very young, genteel, and handsome, and the town seems to be much at
his service."
_W. Cowper_, 1784.

Gladstone's first administration, which had begun so gloriously in 1868,
ended rather ignominiously at the General Election of 1874. Matthew
Arnold wrote to his friend, Lady de Rothschild, "What a beating it is!
You know that Liberalism did not seem to me quite the beautiful and
admirable thing it does to the Liberal party in general, and I am not
sorry that a new stage in its growth should commence, and that the party
should be driven to examine itself, and to see how much real stuff it
has in its mind, and how much claptrap."

That wholesome discipline of self-examination was greatly assist