Tracks of a Rolling Stone | Page 7

was never
changed. How we survived the food, or rather the want of it, is a marvel.
Fortunately for me, I used to discover, when I got into bed, a thickly
buttered crust under my pillow. I believed, I never quite made sure, (for
the act was not admissible), that my good fairy was a fiery-haired lassie
(we called her 'Carrots,' though I had my doubts as to this being her
Christian name) who hailed from Norfolk. I see her now: her jolly,
round, shining face, her extensive mouth, her ample person. I recall,
with more pleasure than I then endured, the cordial hugs she
surreptitiously bestowed upon me when we met by accident in the
passages. Kind, affectionate 'Carrots'! Thy heart was as bounteous as
thy bosom. May the tenderness of both have met with their earthly
deserts; and mayest thou have shared to the full the pleasures thou wast
ever ready to impart!
There were no railways in those times. It amuses me to see people

nowadays travelling by coach, for pleasure. How many lives must have
been shortened by long winter journeys in those horrible coaches. The
inside passengers were hardly better off than the outside. The corpulent
and heavy occupied the scanty space allotted to the weak and small -
crushed them, slept on them, snored over them, and monopolised the
straw which was supposed to keep their feet warm.
A pachydermatous old lady would insist upon an open window. A
wheezy consumptive invalid would insist on a closed one. Everybody's
legs were in their own, and in every other body's, way. So that when
the distance was great and time precious, people avoided coaching, and
remained where they were.
For this reason, if a short holiday was given - less than a week say -
Norfolk was too far off; and I was not permitted to spend it at Holkham.
I generally went to Charles Fox's at Addison Road, or to Holland
House. Lord Holland was a great friend of my father's; but, if Creevey
is to be trusted - which, as a rule, my recollection of him would permit
me to doubt, though perhaps not in this instance - Lord Holland did not
go to Holkham because of my father's dislike to Lady Holland.
I speak here of my introduction to Holland House, for although Lady
Holland was then in the zenith of her ascendency, (it was she who was
the Cabinet Minister, not her too amiable husband,) although Holland
House was then the resort of all the potentates of Whig statecraft, and
Whig literature, and Whig wit, in the persons of Lord Grey, Brougham,
Jeffrey, Macaulay, Sydney Smith, and others, it was not till eight or ten
years later that I knew, when I met them there, who and what her
Ladyship's brilliant satellites were. I shall not return to Lady Holland,
so I will say a parting word of her forthwith.
The woman who corresponded with Buonaparte, and consoled the
prisoner of St. Helena with black currant jam, was no ordinary
personage. Most people, I fancy, were afraid of her. Her stature, her
voice, her beard, were obtrusive marks of her masculine attributes. It is
questionable whether her amity or her enmity was most to be dreaded.
She liked those best whom she could most easily tyrannise over. Those
in the other category might possibly keep aloof. For my part I feared
her patronage. I remember when I was about seventeen - a
self-conscious hobbledehoy - Mr. Ellice took me to one of her large
receptions. She received her guests from a sort of elevated dais. When I

came up - very shy - to make my salute, she asked me how old I was.
'Seventeen,' was the answer. 'That means next birthday,' she grunted.
'Come and give me a kiss, my dear.' I, a man! - a man whose voice was
(sometimes) as gruff as hers! - a man who was beginning to shave for a
moustache! Oh! the indignity of it!
But it was not Lady Holland, or her court, that concerned me in my
school days, it was Holland Park, or the extensive grounds about
Charles Fox's house (there were no other houses at Addison Road then),
that I loved to roam in. It was the birds'-nesting; it was the golden carp
I used to fish for on the sly with a pin; the shying at the swans, the hunt
for cockchafers, the freedom of mischief generally, and the excellent
food - which I was so much in need of - that made the holiday
delightful.
Some years later, when dining at Holland House, I happened to sit near
the hostess. It was a large dinner party. Lord Holland, in his bath-chair
(he nearly always had the gout), sat at the