The story of her heroic devotion on a memorable occasion is so old that it may be almost new. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer and was to make a great speech. Mrs. Disraeli drove with him to the House, where she was to leave him. In shutting the carriage the footman jammed her hand in the door; the agony was excruciating, but she sat like grim death and uttered never a word lest she should distract him at a moment when he needed all his wits; when he left the carriage she fell back in a dead faint! All her thoughts, all her heart, were centred in her husband and his fame; he knew it, and was deeply grateful. She was older than he was, but had been pretty, and as the widow of his colleague in the representation of Maidstone she brought him a comfortable little private gentleman’s fortune; but the expenses of public life were great, and I doubt whether, even in spite of the legacy which he received from Mrs. Brydges Williams, he was ever financially quite at his ease. Of art for the sake of the beauty that is in it I do not think that he had any very great appreciation—sculpture galleries, the glories of Holbein, Raphael, Van Dyck, Sir Joshua, Gainsborough and the great masters seemed to appeal to him chiefly as the fitting appanage of powerful nobles and stately palaces. Just as Kant saw in pictures no more than the vanity of the man who hung them up, so to Disraeli they were sacred rather as representing pedigree and tradition than as the inspiration of genius in the artist and a source of æsthetic pleasure to the possessor. On music I have heard him descant with but slight discrimination; but success always appealed to him, and so he would be moved by the fame of a great musician, or a great painter, whose art might perhaps fail to stir his pulses. If he was as callous in these matters as I imagine him to have been, it is curious that the only time when I saw him show any excitement—for he was past master in the art of concealing what he felt—should have been about a matter connected with art. Sir Francis Grant died in 1878, and there was to be an election to the honour of President of the Royal Academy. On the evening of the election my wife and I dined at a very small party at Kensington Palace. I sat next to Lord Beaconsfield. Before dinner was announced he asked me whether I had heard anything as to the chances of the election. I told him that I knew that Horsley was a rival candidate, but that he could not have much prospect of beating Leighton. “Surely they will never be so foolish as to elect anybody else. He is the very man for the place.” More than once during dinner he returned eagerly to the subject, in which he took no pains to hide his interest. “Ah! well!” I remember his saying at last, looking at the clock, “it’s all over by now.”