emerged from my chrysalis stage, Dundreary whiskers had ceased to be
the fashion; added to which unkind Nature had given me a hairless face.

My uncle, old Lord Claud Hamilton, known in our family as "The
Dowager," adhered, to the day of his death, to the William IV. style of
dress. He wore an old-fashioned black-satin stock right up to his chin,
with white "gills" above, and was invariably seen in a blue coat with
brass buttons, and a buff waistcoat. My uncle was one of the handsomest
men in England, and had sat for nearly forty years in Parliament. He
had one curious faculty. He could talk fluently and well on almost any
topic at indefinite length, a very useful gift in the House of Commons
of those days. On one occasion when it was necessary "to talk a Bill
out," he got up without any preparation whatever, and addressed the
House in flowing periods for four hours and twenty minutes. His speech
held the record for length for many years, but it was completely
eclipsed in the early "eighties" by the late Mr. Biggar, who spoke (if
my memory serves me right) for nearly six hours on one occasion.
Biggar, however, merely read interminable extracts from Blue Books,
whereas my uncle indulged in four hours of genuine rhetorical
declamation. My uncle derived his nickname from the fact that in our
family the second son is invariably christened Claud, so I had already
a brother of that name. There happen to be three Lord Claud Hamiltons
living now, of three successive generations.

I shall never forget my bitter disappointment the first time I was
taken, at a very early age, to see Queen Victoria. I had pictured to
myself a dazzling apparition arrayed in sumptuous robes, seated on a
golden throne; a glittering crown on her head, a sceptre in one hand,
an orb grasped in the other. I had fancied Her Majesty seated thus,
motionless during the greater part of the twenty-four hours, simply
"reigning." I could have cried with disappointment when a middle-aged
lady, simply dressed in widow's "weeds" and wearing a widow's cap, rose
from an ordinary arm-chair to receive us. I duly made my bow, but
having a sort of idea that it had to be indefinitely repeated, went on
nodding like a porcelain Chinese mandarin, until ordered to stop.

Between ourselves, I behaved far better than a brother of mine once did
under similar circumstances. Many years before I was born, my father
lent his Scotch house to Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort for