e rest.

CHAPTER VII

Some London beauties of the "seventies"--Great ladies--The Victorian
girl--Votaries of the Gaiety Theatre--Two witty ladies--Two clever
girls and mock-Shakespeare--The family who talked Johnsonian
English--Old-fashioned tricks of pronunciation--Practical jokes--Lord
Charles Beresford and the old Club-member--The shoe-less
legislator--Travellers' palms--The tree that spouted wine--Celyon's
spicy breezes--Some reflections--Decline of public interest in
Parliament--Parliamentary giants--Gladstone, John Bright, and
Chamberlain--Gladstone's last speech--His resignation--W.H. Smith--The
Assistant Whips--Sir William Hart-Dyke--Weary hours at Westminster--A
Pseudo-Ingoldsbean Lay.

The London of 1876 boasted an extraordinary constellation of lovely
women. First and foremost came the two peerless Moncreiffe sisters,
Georgiana Lady Dudley, and Helen Lady Forbes. Lady Dudley was then a
radiant apparition, and her sister, the most perfect example of
classical beauty I have ever seen, had features as clean-cut as those
of a cameo. Lady Forbes always wore her hair simply parted in the
middle, a thing that not one woman in a thousand can afford to do, and
glorious auburn hair it was, with a natural ripple in it. I have seldom
seen a head so perfectly placed on the shoulders as that of Lady
Forbes. The Dowager Lady Ormonde and the late Lady Ripon were then
still unmarried; the first, Lady Leila Grosvenor, with the face of a
Raphael Madonna, the other, Lady Gladys Herbert, a splendid, slender,
Juno-like young goddess. The rather cruelly named "professional
beauties" had just come into prominence, the three great rivals being
Mrs. Langtry, then fresh from Jersey, Mrs. Cornwallis West, and Mrs.
Wheeler. Unlike most people, I should myself have given the prize to
the second of these ladies. I do not think that any one now could
occupy the commanding position in London which Constance Duchess of
Westminster and the Duchess of Manchester (afterwards Duchess of
Devonshire) then held. In fact, with skirts to the knee, and an
unending expanse of stocking below them, it would be difficult to
assume the dignity with which these great ladies, in their flowing
Victorian draperies, swept into a room. The stately Dutchess of
Westminster, in spite of her massive outline, had still a fine
classical head, and the Duchess of Manchester was one of the handsomest
women in Europe. London society was so much smaller then,