k their double-barrelled
name must have been invented by Mrs. Seely-Hardwicke on the voyage.

I first made Billy's acquaintance in the Row, where a capable groom
was teaching him to ride a very small skewbald pony. This happened in
the week after our Jack was born, when I was perforce companionless:
but as soon as Violet could ride again, she too fell a victim to the
red curls and seraphic face of this urchin. And so, when Billy's
mother began, later in the season, to appear in the Row, Billy (now
promoted to a larger pony) introduced us in his own fashion and we
quickly made friends. By this time she had been "presented," and was
fairly on her feet in London: and henceforward her career resembled
not so much a conquest as the progress of a Roman Emperor. I am not
referring to the vulgar achievements of mere wealth. Wherever these
people went, to be sure, they left outposts--a Mediterranean villa,
a deer forest behind the Grampians, small Saturday-to-Monday
establishments beside the Thames and the North Sea, and furnished
abodes on short leases near Newmarket and Ascot Heaths; not to mention
nomadic trifles such as houseboats and yachts. Any one with money can
purchase these, and any one having a cook can fill them with people
of a sort. The quality of Mrs. Seely-Hardwicke's success was seen in
this, that from the first she knew none but the right people: and
though, as her circle widened, it included names of higher and yet
higher lustre, yet (if I may press a somewhat confused metaphor) its
rings were concentric and hardly distinct. She never, I believe, was
forced to drop an old acquaintance because she had found a new one.
The just estimate of our Western manners which you, my dear Prince,
formed at Balliol, will enable you to grasp the singularity of such a
triumph. Its rapidity, I must admit, perplexes me still. But in
those old days we studied Arnold Toynbee overmuch and neglected
the civilising influences of the card-table. By the time the
Seely-Hardwickes took their house near Hyde Park Corner, philanthropy
was beginning to stale and our leaders to perceive that the
rejuvenation of society must be effected (if at all) not by bestowing
money on the poor, but by losing it to the rich. Seely-Hardwicke
himself was understood to spend most of his time in the City, looking
after the interests of canned fruits and making small fortunes out of
his redundant cash.

You will readily understand that we soon came to see