Lord Granville, who chanced to be eating a cheaper dinner.
Feeling that this gastronomical indulgence might, from the official
point of view, seem inconsistent with his request for increased
allowances, he stepped across to the Lord President, explained
that it was only once in a way that he thus compensated himself for
his habitual abstinence, and was delighted by the facile and kindly
courtesy with which his official chief received the _apologia_. His
delight was abated when he subsequently found that he had been making
his confession, not to Lord Granville, but to Mr. Leveson-Gower.

Looking back from the close of life upon its beginning, Freddy
Leveson noted that as an infant he used to eat his egg "very slowly,
and with prolonged pleasure." "Did this," he used to ask, "portend
that I should grow up a philosopher or a _gourmand_? I certainly
did not become the former, and I hope not the latter." I am inclined
to think that he was both; for whoso understands the needs of the
body has mastered at least one great department of philosophy, and
he who feeds his fellow-men supremely well is in the most creditable
sense of the word a _gourmand_. Freddy Leveson's dinners were justly
famous, and, though he modestly observed that "hospitality is praised
more than it deserves," no one who enjoyed the labours of Monsieur
Beguinot ever thought that they could be overpraised. The scene of
these delights was a house in South Audley Street, which, though
actually small, was so designed as to seem like a large house in
miniature; and in 1870 the genial host acquired a delicious home
on the Surrey hills, which commands a view right across Sussex to
the South Downs. "Holm-bury" is its name, and "There's no place
like Home-bury" became the grateful watchword of a numerous and
admiring society.

People distinguished in every line of life, and conspicuous by
every social charm, found at Holm-bury a constant and delightful
hospitality. None appreciated it more thoroughly than Mr. and Mrs.
Gladstone, whose friendship was one of the chief happinesses of
Freddy Leveson's maturer life. His link with them was Harriet,
Duchess of Sutherland, who, in spite of all Whiggish prejudices
against the half-converted Tory, was one of Gladstone's most
enthusiastic disciples. In "Cliveden's proud alcove," and in that
sumptuous villa at Chiswick where Fox and Canning died, Mr. and
Mrs. Gladstone were her constant guests; and there they formed
their affe