ill-health could
be pleaded, fiction and light reading were banished from the morning hours.
She believed in strict adherence to such self-imposed sumptuary
regulations, whether they applied to the body or to the pleasures of the
mind.

In the course of her long life she became personally acquainted with nearly
all the principal writers of the Victorian era, and some of them she knew
well.

Among the earliest friends of Lord and Lady John Russell were Sydney Smith,
Thomas Moore, and Macaulay. There is a note in verse written by Lady John
to Samuel Rogers, which will serve at least to suggest how readily her
fancy and good spirits might run into rhyme on the occasion of some family
rejoicing or for a children's play.

_To Mr. Rogers, who was expected to breakfast and forgot to
come_

CHESHAM PLACE, 1843

When a poet a lady offends
Is it prose her forgiveness obtains?
And from Rogers can less make amends
Than the humblest and sweetest of strains?

In glad expectation our board
With roses and lilies we graced;
But alas! the bard kept not his word,
He came not for whom they were placed.

Sad and silent our toast we bespread,
At the empty chair looked we and sighed;
All insipid tea, butter, and bread,
For the salt of his wit was denied.

Now in wrath we acknowledge how well
He the "Pleasures of Memory" who drew,
For mankind from his magical shell
Gives the "Pains of Forgetfulness" too.

Rogers wrote in answer:--

CARA, CARISSIMA, CRUDELISSIMA,--If such is to be the reward for my
transgressions, what crimes shall I not commit before I die? I
shall shoot Victoria to-day, and Louis Philippe to-morrow.

But to be serious, I am at a loss how to thank you as I ought. How
I lament that I have hung my harp upon the willow!

Yours ever,

S.R.

In later years Thackeray and Charles Dickens were welcome guests, and the
cordial friendship between Lord and Lady John and Dickens lasted till his
death in 1870. Dickens said in a speech at Liverpool in 1869 that "there
was no man in England whom he respected more in his public capacity, loved
more in his private capacity, or from whom he had received more remarkable
proofs of his honour and love of literature than Lord John Russell."

Among poets, Tennyson and Browning were true friends; Longfellow also
visited Pembro