The sham burial is alluded to by Byron, who wrote:— Have you heard what a lady in Italy did, When to spite a cross husband she buried a kid? Many were the stories of her dictatorial ways and passion for interfering with and upsetting everybody. At times, indeed, she was positively insolent. She was declared, for instance, on one occasion when a very shy young man was sitting next her at dinner, to have plunged her hand into his pocket, drawn out his handkerchief, and, with a sniff of disgust, given it to the servant behind her chair, with the words, “Take that to the wash!” In Count D’Orsay, however, Lady Holland met her match, for, seated next him at dinner during the early days of his residence in England, she kept letting her napkin slip from her lap, expecting that the awestruck young foreigner would continue to keep picking it up, as a commanding motion of the hand on each occasion directly indicated. Polite at first, he soon wearied of what he discerned to be no accident but a mere piece of impertinence, which was effectually checked by the words, “Should I not do better, Madam, to sit under the table in order to keep passing you your napkin more quickly?” Lady Holland’s passage-of-arms with the Belgian minister, M. Van de Weyer, is probably better known. With characteristic bad taste she jeered him about the Belgians, saying, “Les Belges! Qu’est ce que les Belges? I never heard of them.” “Madam,” was his grave reply, “it was some one called Julius Cæsar, a pretty clever fellow, as you may have heard, who called them by that name.” Lady Holland could not brook the slightest opposition to her wishes, and would ever attempt to overcome any obstacles which might stand in the way of her will. On one occasion, whilst at Tunbridge Wells, she heard that no stranger was ever allowed to visit Eridge Castle—which, I believe, up to my cousin’s father’s day was actually the case. Accordingly, she never rested till she obtained leave to inspect it, and when this was accorded, marched through the place in triumph with a large party, in which her maid was even included. Her behaviour, indeed, even when staying at other people’s houses, was dictatorial in the extreme. Once, when at Brocket on a self-given invitation to a party with old Lord Melbourne, she completely upset the household and installed herself exactly as if she were at home. Her room, as it happened, chanced to be on the first floor, the windows completely surrounded by the magnificent flowers of a splendid magnolia. Lady Holland, however, did not appreciate their scent, which, as she afterwards casually told Lord Melbourne, was too strong; and, without asking permission, ordered every blossom to be cut off within twenty-four hours of her arrival.