f
ready humor. I remember on another occasion hearing him exercise his
singular gift in a manner that seemed to me as unjustifiable as it was
disagreeable. I met him at dinner at Sir John McDonald's, then
adjutant-general, a very kind and excellent friend of mine. Mrs. Norton
and Lord C----, who were among the guests, both came late, and after we
had gone into the dining-room, where they were received with a discreet
quantity of mild chaff, Mrs. Norton being much too formidable an
adversary to be challenged lightly. After dinner, however, when the men
came up into the drawing-room, Theodore Hook was requested to
extemporize, and having sung one song, was about to leave the piano in
the midst of the general entreaty that he would not do so, when Mrs.
Norton, seating herself close to the instrument so that he could not
leave it, said, in her most peculiar, deep, soft, contralto voice, which
was like her beautiful dark face set to music, "I am going to sit down
here, and you shall not come away, for I will keep you in like an iron
crow." There was nothing about her manner or look that could suggest any
thing but a flattering desire to enjoy Hook's remarkable talent in some
further specimen of his power of extemporizing, and therefore I suppose
there must have been some previous ill-will or heart-burning on his part
toward her--she was reckless enough in her use of her wonderful wit and
power of saying the most intolerable stinging things, to have left a
smart on some occasion in Hook's memory, for which he certainly did his
best to pay her then. Every verse of the song he now sang ended with his
turning with a bow to her, and the words, "my charming iron crow;" but
it was from beginning to end a covert satire of her and her social
triumphs; even the late arrival at dinner and its supposed causes were
duly brought in, still with the same mock-respectful inclination to his
"charming iron crow." Everybody was glad when the song was over, and
applauded it quite as much from a sense of relief as from admiration of
its extraordinary cleverness; and Mrs. Norton smilingly thanked Hook,
and this time made way for him to leave the piano.

We lived near each other at this time, we in James Street, Buckingham
Gate, and the Nortons at Storey's Gate, at the opposite end of the
Birdcage Walk. We both of us frequented the same place of worship--a
tiny chapel wedged in among the buildings at the back of Downing Street,
the entrance to whic