loured
paper, pink and blue and snuff-brown, violet and green and grey,
paper that was stamped with patterns like a napkin, or frilled like
a lace handkerchief, or embossed with forget-me-nots like a child's
valentine. She had tricks of time-saving; always put "I" for "one,"
and "x" for "cross," a word which she, who was never cross, loved
to use. "I did not care for any of the guests; we seemed to live in
a storm of x questions and crooked answers," she would write, or "I
am afraid my last letter was rather x."

Lady Dorothy, as a letter-writer, had no superstitious reverence
for the parts of speech. Like M. Bergeret, she "se moquait de
l'orthographie comme une chose meprisable." The spelling in her
tumultuous notes threw a light upon that of very fine ladies in the
seventeenth century. She made no effort to be exact, and much of
her correspondence was made obscure by initials, which she expected
her friends to interpret by divination. From a withering
denunciation of the Government she expressly excepts Mr. John Burns
and "that much-abused Mr. Birhell, whom I like." From about 1899 to
1903, I think that Lord Wolseley was the friend who occupied most
of her thoughts. In her letters of those years the references to
him are incessant, but when he is not "the F.M." and "our C.C.,"
she rings the changes on all possible forms of his name, from
"Wollesley" to "Walsey." When she wrote to me of the pleasure she
had had in meeting "the Abbot Guaschet," it took me a moment to
recognise the author of _English Monastic Life_. She would laugh
herself at her spelling, and would rebut any one who teased her
about it by saying, "Oh! What does it matter? I don't pretend to be
a bright specimen--like you!" When she made arrangements to come to
see me at the House of Lords, which she frequently did, she always
wrote it "the Lord's House," as though it were a conventicle.

One curious observation which the recipient of hundreds of her
notes is bound to make, is the remarkable contrast between the
general tone of them and the real disposition of their writer. Lady
Dorothy Nevill in person was placid, indulgent, and calm; she never
raised her voice, or challenged an opinion, or asserted her
individuality. She played, very consistently, her part of the
amused and