LORD BEACONSFIELD AND THE PRIMROSE. [To THE EDITOR OF THE
" SPECTATOR?'] Si,-As my health, now (D.V.) nearly re-established, caused my absence from London, I have only just seen your article and subsequent correspondence on the Primrose League. I believe your correspondent in last week's Spectator is correct, and I am pretty sure that " Endymion," and, indeed, all Mr. Disraeli's novels, may be searched in vain for such a sentiment expressed by any of his heroes as, "The primrose is my favourite flower." As Mr. Skeat has said, it was the time of primroses when Lord Beaconsfield was buried.
I well recollect, having been present at the funeral, the masses of these flowers placed on the coffin and near the tomb of the great founder of Democratic Toryism, whose spirit Lord Randolph Churchill has in every respect so faithfully reproduced. What, as I have heard, Lord Beaconsfield once did say about these flowers, was in reply to a friend who had asked him whether the birds of Juno on the Hughenden lawn did not interfere with his sylvan flowers. "It may" (the story goes) "be so, but I think I prefer the peacock to the flower." If this observation is true, it is suggestive of some traits in the character of its author. If, as very likely it may be, it is apocryphal, I trust I shall be forgiven by the Knights and Dames of the League for having in your columns violated the sanctity of the Primrose tradition.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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