priceless Sevres cup is heroic," I said.
His answer, though flippant, was pleasant: "Any man who would not smile
across the table at a lovely woman is a fool."

Mr. Gladstone always wore a flower in his button-hole, a big, loose
collar that never fitted, a floppy black necktie, and trousers that
needed a valet's attention. He was the greatest combination of
propriety and utter disregard of conventions I had ever seen.

The event next in importance to a presentation at court was a tea at
which the tea planter Sir Thomas Lipton was one of the guests. He was
not Sir Thomas then, but was very much in the limelight, having
contributed twenty-five thousand pounds to the fund collected by the
Princess of Wales to feed the poor of London in commemoration of Queen
Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

The Earl of Lathom, then the Lord Chamberlain, who looked like Santa
Claus and smiled like Andrew Carnegie, was among the guests; so were Mr.
and Mrs. Gladstone. Since the night he had talked to me across the
table I always felt that Mr. Gladstone was my best friend in England.
He had a sense of humor, so I said: "Is there anything pointed in asking
the tea king to a tea?" That amused Gladstone. He could not forgive
Lipton parting his hair in the middle.

That night I repeated my joke to Tom. Instead of smiling, he said:
"That's not the way to get on in England. It 's too Becky Sharpish."

And then came the day of the queen's salon. Victoria did not often have
audiences, the Prince of Wales or some other member of the royal family
usually holding levees and receiving presentations in her name.

Tom had warned me that there were certain clothes to be worn at a
presentation. I asked one of my American friends at the embassy, who
directed me to a hairdresser--the most important thing, it seemed, being
one's head. She told me also to wear full evening dress, with long
white gloves, and to remove the glove of the right hand.

The hairdresser asked about my jewels. Remembering what Tom had said
about "junk", I said I would wear no jewels. She was horrified, I would
have to wear some, she insisted, if only a necklace of pearls. She
tactfully suggested that if my jewels had not arrived I could rent them
from Mr. Somebody on the Strand. It was frequently done, she said, by
foreigners.

My friend at the embassy was politely surprised that Tom's wife would
think of renting real or imitation jewels. In the end I insisted upon