interesting supplement to those
which exist already. I never, in the course of these walks, experienced
a dull moment.

The only great entertainment at which I ever encountered him was a
dinner party of his own given at Apseley House. During one of such
visits which I paid him at Strathfieldsaye he told me that very soon he
would have to give a party in London in honor of the King of the
Belgians. The party was to be a large dinner, and he asked me to be one
of the company. The time arrived. The King of the Belgians for some
reason failed to come, but everything had been arranged in an
appropriate manner for his reception. As a spectacle the table was
noteworthy. It was covered with gold plate--a historic monument to the
great hero of Waterloo--which consisted of figures of soldiers, horses,
palm trees, camels, artillery, and other military objects symbolical of
his various campaigns; and gold plate at intervals all round the table
was supplemented by triumphal wreaths. The duke told me afterward that
all these decorations were due to his own forgetfulness. He had for
years been accustomed to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of
Waterloo by a banquet to certain officers who had been present at it,
and who still survived; but the number of these had already been so
reduced that he had determined to discontinue the celebration. In
fixing, however, a day for the dinner now in question, he had entirely
forgotten that the date ultimately chosen was none other than the day of
the great battle. His servants had concluded that, in honor of Belgian
royalty, he was giving one more repetition of the Waterloo banquets of
the past. Everything had been arranged accordingly; and I was thus
present at a function which will never take place again.

But it was not at such functions that his real character displayed
itself. This only came out in intercourse of a much more private kind,
as would happen at Strathfieldsaye when he entertained parties of not
more than ten people. When I was present on such occasions I was usually
the youngest--by far the youngest--member of the company. Of the rest I
may mention as examples Lady Dorothy Nevill, Alfred Montgomery, Sir
Hastings Doyle, Lord Calthorpe, Sir St. George Foley, Lady Chesterfield,
and Mr. Newtons, the courtly police magistrate, called by his friends
"The Beak." And here--to repeat in substance the observation which I
have made already--what always struck me was the far greater