To go back to the year 1870. There was a great performance of the _Barbiere_ with Mario as Almaviva. I happened to be in the stage-box; Mario saw me, gave me a little friendly sign of greeting and welcome home. To my surprise who should come into the box between the acts but the Prince of Wales. He began talking in his old friendly way, very anxious to hear all about the Duke of Edinburgh’s reception in Japan, and bade me to dinner, _en petit comité_, on the following Sunday. It was a delightful little party of about ten people in the small upstairs dining-room—quite without ceremony. The season of 1870 was brilliant. London was at its gayest. But London might dine, flock to the play or the opera, and dance to the strains of Strauss’s famous waltz, “An der schönen blauen Donau,” then a novelty; but trouble was brewing, the dogs of war were straining at their leashes, though men knew it not; and at the very moment when there was the most need for his services the pilot was torn from the helm—Lord Clarendon died. CHAPTER XXVIII LORD CLARENDON AND LORD GRANVILLE The generation of the Villiers family to which Lord Clarendon belonged were people singularly gifted with charm and ability. I did not know the Bishop, nor did I know Mr. Edward Villiers, but Lady Theresa Lewis was a most attractive personality. She must have been very pretty in her youth, and when I knew her as the mother of grown-up children she was a most fascinating hostess, clever, agreeable, accomplished, doing the honours of Kent House with all the grace of a finished _grande dame_. Mr. Charles Villiers was first returned for Wolverhampton in January, 1835. He retained the seat for sixty-four years and died in January, 1898, aged ninety-six. The last time that he voted in the House of Commons was in 1894 against Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill. I had the honour of giving him my arm to walk through the lobbies. He was bent, infirm, and very tottery, but his mind was as full of fire as ever, and his wit nimble and good to listen to. That was the last time that I saw him and had speech of him. Charles Villiers was universally admitted to be the best of good company; he was a wonderful talker and he was ever ready in repartee, his ripostes being the perfection of fencing; but his sallies were sometimes, like those of Bernal Osborne, a little apt to be biting. He had not the sparkling, happy nature of his great brother, Lord Clarendon, whose ringing laugh would put a whole roomful of guests in a good humour. I do not think that I ever came across a man who, in spite of the gout, seemed so instinct with the joy of life as Lord Clarendon. In his youth he was accused of being rather boisterous, and Lord Granville once told me that his mother, old Lady Granville, the witty Ambassadress at Paris, said of him rather slily: “Yes, George Villiers, with a slight headache, is the most agreeable young man in London.”