THE DAYS BEFORE YESTERDAY.*
Loan FREDERIC Iltraturox's second volume of reminiscences is as good as the first. He has seen much of the world, he writes well, and he has a kindly humour. No one could take offence at anything in his lively and amusing book. As a child of six he was allowed to lunch with his parents, the late Duke and Duchess of Abercorn, who were then, about 1865, living at Chesterfield House, Mayfair. The Duke was a strong Conser- vative, and Disraeli was a frequent visitor. His " curiously impassive face, with its entire absence of colouring, rather frightened " the small boy. But the Duchess was the sister of Lord John Russell—or, to speak accurately, Lord Russell, as he received his peerage in 1861—who had become head of the Whig Ministry on the death of Lord Palmerston. He was "a very tiny man who always wore one of the old-fashioned high black satin stocks up to his chin." "I liked him," says the author, "for ho was always full of fun and small jokes, but in that rigorously Tory household he was looked on with scant favour." Another relative who frequented the house was Lord Aberdeen, who bears the odium of the Crimean War: — " Lord Aberdeen had a most unfortunate skin and complexion, end in addition he was deeply pitted with small-pox. As a result his face looked exactly like a slice of brown bread, and Old Brown Bread ' he was always called by my older brothers and sisters, who had but little love for him, for he disliked your people and always made the most disagreeable remarks he could think of to them."
The small boy was thus initiated into the higher circles of politics. His mother—whose thirteenth child he was—had seen George the Third driving through London. She had been at Carlton House, which was demolished In 1826, and remembered how her small brother, at a children's party, went up to the King and remarked, with the terrible candour of youth, " I knew that your Majesty wears a wig, but I've been told not to say anything about it, so I promise not to tell anyone." As a girl of twelve, she had danced before George the Fourth at the Pavilion at Brighton. In after life she was the intimate friend of Queen Victoria. The author at the age of seven was taken to Paris and them met the aged General de Flahault, who had been Napoleon's aide-de-camp and the friend of his step.daughter Queen Hortense (Beauharnais). It is odd that a man now living should have heard from a survivor of the Grand Army an account of the burning of Moscow and of the terrible retreat in the winter of 1812.
The Conservative Ministry of 1866 appointed the Duke of Abercom Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. so that the author as a boy of nine spent his holidays at the Viceregal Lodge and thoroughly enjoyed the excitement of a threatened attack by the Fenians. He remembers acting as a page at the Viceroy's Drawing-room. In those days the Viceroy was expected to kiss every lady who was presented. At the end of the long ceremony the author noticed that his father was prematurely aged, for "the powder from eight hundred cheeks and necks had turned
• The Data before Y Menial?. By Lord Frederic Ineollton. London Hodder sad Rol:Mon. ilfe. ed. net.] his moustache and beard white." Lord Frederic Hamilton was with his family in the Irish mail train which met with disaster near Abergele in 1868—an accident that is still remembered in North Wales. 'When he went to his preparatory school—Mr. Chittenden's at Hoddesdon—the author was fitted out by an old governess in the style of her youth, with a velvet tunic and a velvet cap instead of Etons and a silk hat, and had to face the jeers of the whole school. He says that the head-master was always talking of a model boy who had been at the school some twelve years earlier and who was sure to have a brilliant future ; Mr. Chittenden was a shrewd judge, for his paragon was Mr. Balfour. Parents should note the author's remarks on tho Spartan regimen at this school, where the boys bad meat only once a day and had no fires except in the schoolroom and yet, so far as his memory serves, were all in perfect health. Children of his generation, in all classes, expected and received less consideration than the children of the present day and were apparently none the worse. From Hoddesdon the author went on to Harrow. He recalls an exciting moment at a luncheon in the Quirinal, when Queen Margherita, whose brother, the Duke of Aorta, had been his schoolfellow, innocently remarked, " I am told that Harrow is the best school in England." The British Ambassador and several other English guests were old Etonians and "contravened her Majesty's obviously true statement with great heat, quite oblivious of the fact that it is opposed to all etiquette to contradict a crowned head." The Italians present, on discovering that their guests were merely debating the merits of two schools, were " more than ever confirmed in their opinion that all English people were hopelessly mad." From Harrow the author went abroad to learn French and German before entering the diplomatic service. His account of his year with a French legal family at Nyons in Dauphine is charming. It is a pity that English boys are not more frequently sent to French provincial homes, where the French character is seen at its best. Lord Frederic Hamilton used to go on circuit with the local judges and he once spent a few days " retreat " in the Trappist monastery at Aiguebelle—a curious and interesting experience. Alter leaving Nyons he went to Brunswick, about 1875, when the smaller German towns still had the homely ways of Goethe's time and found their pleasure in music and the drama. Even then, unfortunately, the schoolmasters were preaching the credo Pan-Germanism which has brought Germany to ruin, but they had not yet dominated Germau society.
The author touches on his early diplomatic experiences at Petrograd and elsewhere and describes in some detail his life at Ottawa and Calcutta with his brother-in-law Lord Lanadowne, who was successively Governor-General of the Dominion and Viceroy of India. Ho declares that he was the first man to introduce ski into Canada, in January, 1887. The best story in the book relates to the Near East:- " In a certain Balkan State which I will refrain from naming, the inhabitants are also confirmed souvenir-bunters. At a, dinner-party at the British Legation in this nameless State, one of the Diplomatic ladies was wearing a very fine necklace of pearls and enamel. A native of the State admired this necklace immensely, and begged for permission to examine it closer. The Diplomat's wife very unwisely unfastened her pearl neck- lace, and it was passed round from hand to hand, amidst loud expressions of admiration at its beautiful workmanship. At the end of dinner the Diplomatic lady requested that her necklace might be returned to her, but it was not forthcoming ; no ono knew anything about it. The British Minister, who thought that be understood the people of the country, rose to the occasion. Getting up from his chair, ho said with a smile, We have just witnessed a very clever and very amusing piece of legerdemain. Now wo are going to see another little piece of conjuring.' The Minister walked quietly to both doom of the room, locked them, and put the keys in his pocket. Ho then placed a small silver bowl from the sideboard in the centre of the dinner-table, and continued : I am now going to switch off all the lights, and to count ten slowly. When I have reached ten, I shall turn on the lights again, and hey presto I Madame de —'s necklace will be found lying in that silver bowl ! ' The room became plunged in darkness, and the Minister counted slowly up to ten. This electric light blazed out again, there was no necklace, but the silver bowl lied vanished I "
The author remarks with surprise on the many changes in travel and in social habits that he has seen in the course of little more than sixty years. His confident assertion that " it is to the cigarette that the temperate habits of the twentieth century are due " is possibly true of one class but not of all. He may bo right in saying that "nicotine knocked port and claret out in the second round," but cigarette-smoking has not checked the drinking of spirits.
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