last examination at Oxford,
most had a taste for literature, while some had achieved renown in it.
Of these, however, the first with whom I became intimate was one whose
literary connections were vicarious rather than personal. My friendship
with him originated in the fact that he was an old friend of the
Froudes, and, as soon as Chelston Cross was completed, he would pay them
protracted visits there. This was the then Lord Wentworth, who for me
was a magical being because he was Byron's grandson. Another
acquaintance who brought with him a subtle aroma of poetry was
Wentworth's remarkable brother-in-law, Wilfrid Blunt, then the
handsomest of our younger English diplomatists, a breeder of Arab
horses, and also the author of love poems which deserve beyond all
comparison more attention than they have yet received. Others again were
Robert Browning, Ruskin, Carlyle, and Swinburne. These I met either at
Oxford or in London, but to those whom I came to know through the
William Froudes at Torquay may be added Aubrey de Vere, the Catholic
poet of Ireland, Lord Houghton, Lord Lytton, the novelist, and the
second Lord Lytton, his son, known to all lovers of poetry under the
pseudonym of "Owen Meredith." As figures then prominent in the winter
society of Torquay, I may mention also a courtly cleric, the Rev. Julian
Young, a great diner out and giver of dinners to the great, a raconteur
of the first order, a very complete re-embodiment of the spirit of
Sidney Smith, and, further, an old Mr. Bevan, who, sixty years before,
when he occupied a house in Stratton Street, had flourished as an
Amphitryon and a dandy under the patronage of the Prince Regent.

Of the ladies of Torquay who, together with men like these, were
prominent in my social landscape as I to-day recollect it, it is less
easy to speak, partly because they were more numerous, and partly
because many of them impressed me in more elusive ways. I may, however,
mention a few of them who were well known as hostesses--the Dowager Lady
Brownlow, Mrs. Vivian, Lady Erskine of Cambo, Lady Louisa Finch-Hatton,
Miss Burdett-Coutts, and Susan, Lady Sherborne. All these ladies were
the occupants of spacious houses the doors of which were guarded by
skillfully powdered footmen, and which, winter after winter, were so
many social centers. Lady Sherborne, indeed, was far more than a
hostess: she was unrivaled as a singer of simple English songs--songs
which her low voice filled with