Lord Henry Lennox was First Commissioner of Works when I was appointed Secretary. He was not at all in a frame of mind to be in love with the business of the department. In fact he was a disappointed man, deeply hurt at not being in the Cabinet and not a little angry at seeing a rival, Mr. Ward Hunt, made First Lord of the Admiralty, an office to which he conceived himself to have a just claim. This put an end to the old affectionate friendship which Mr. Buckle has recorded as existing between him and the Chief. He never forgave the indignity which he considered had been put upon him. As he once said of himself, he had inherited something of the character of his French ancestress, Louise de Kéroualle. Mr. Disraeli was a much abused man, but I doubt whether in all England he was spoken of with such venomous acerbity as he was by Lord Henry; and although after he had left the Ministry, and when Lord Beaconsfield returned from Berlin in 1878, he took upon himself more or less to organize the reception at Charing Cross, that was done for peculiar and personal reasons; the poison never ceased to rankle. Lord Henry took very little interest in the business of the office, and it was not an easy matter to get him even to pay attention to the Estimates which it was his duty to defend in the House of Commons. On one occasion, after vain endeavours on my part to coach him up in the details of the various votes, he gathered up his papers at the last moment, and saying: “Impudence befriend me!” put on his hat and hurried away. Impudence did befriend him, for when the vote for the Royal Parks came on some member who “wanted to know,” asked “What is the Longford River?” (as a matter of fact the Longford River is an aqueduct made in Charles the First’s time for the supply of water to Hampton Court Palace; for some mysterious reason best known to themselves the Treasury included the estimate for its maintenance in the Parks vote). Lord Henry, who had not the remotest idea of what the Longford River was, looked sternly with an air of rebuke at the too inquisitive member, and answered, “The Longford River, sir, is one of the Royal Parks.” I, sitting under the Gallery, was in an agony, but the House did not so much as smile. Had the Longford River been included in the vote for Royal Palaces—which is where it ought to have been—he probably would have told the House that it was one of the Royal Palaces.