e beauty of bridegroom and bride. They took a
house in Queen Square, Westminster, (No 8, with a statue of Queen Anne at
one corner), and the talent, beauty, and originality, joined with a
complete absence of affectation of Lady Duff Gordon, soon attracted a
remarkable circle of friends. Lord Lansdowne, Lord Monteagle, Mrs.
Norton, Thackeray, Dickens, Elliot Warburton, Tennyson, Tom Taylor,
Kinglake, Henry Taylor, and many more, were habitues, and every foreigner
of distinction sought an introduction to the Duff Gordons. I remember as
a little child seeing Leopold Ranke walking up and down the drawing-room,
and talking vehemently in an _olla-podrida_ of English, French, German,
Italian, and Spanish, with now and then a Latin quotation in between; I
thought he was a madman. When M. Guizot escaped from France on the
outbreak of the Revolution, his first welcome and dinner was in Queen
Square.

The first child was born in 1842, and soon afterwards Lady Duff Gordon
began her translation of 'The Amber Witch'; the 'French in Algiers' by
Lamping, and Feuerbach's 'Remarkable Criminal Trials,' followed in quick
succession; and together my father and mother translated Ranke's 'Memoirs
of the House of Brandenburg' and 'Sketches of German Life.' A remarkable
novel by Leon de Wailly, 'Stella and Vanessa,' had remained absolutely
unnoticed in France until my mother's English version appeared, when it
suddenly had a great success which he always declared he owed entirely to
Lady Duff Gordon.

In a letter written to Mrs. Austin from Lord Lansdowne's beautiful villa
at Richmond, which he lent to the Duff Gordons after a severe illness of
my father's, my mother mentions Hassan el Bakkeet (a black boy): 'He is
an inch taller for our grandeur; _peu s'en faut_, he thinks me a great
lady and himself a great butler.' Hassan was a personage in the
establishment. One night, on returning from a theatrical party at
Dickens', my mother found the little boy crouching on the doorstep. His
master had turned him out of doors because he was threatened with
blindness, and having come now and then with messages to Queen Square, he
found his way, as he explained, 'to die on the threshold of the beautiful
pale lady.' His eyes were cured, and he became my mother's devoted slave
and my playmate, to the horror of Mr. Hilliard, the American author. I
perfectly recollect how angry I was when he asked how Lady Duff Gordon
could let a negro touch her ch