After their marriage the Hollands remained in England until 1802, when they were compelled by the unsatisfactory state of their son Charles’s health to winter abroad. It was during these five years that Lady Holland laid the groundwork of those distinguished gatherings for which Holland House was, in after years, so justly famed. We have already seen that the subsequent glories of their _salon_ were as much due to Lord Holland as to his wife; but in the early days of their marriage her personality, her beauty, and the brilliancy of her conversational powers undoubtedly attracted many of the men of culture and learning by whom they were surrounded. Feminine society was almost wanting in that circle. She received much kindness from members of Lord Holland’s family, but with this exception and that of a few of her former friends, the Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Bessborough, and others, she was nowhere received in society. To a woman of her ambitions this treatment cannot but have been very galling, though it was only what she had to expect; and perhaps to this fact may be traced some part of that bitterness of manner with which her name is so generally associated. She possessed to the full the gift of drawing out her guests. Conversation never flagged at her table, and however diverse were the sentiments of those who met under her roof, they felt that they were there able to fraternise on neutral ground. Especially as she grew older her desire to rule grew stronger, and her opinion on any subject was not to be lightly contradicted. ‘Elle est toute assertion, mais quand on demande la preuve, c’est là son secret,’ said Talleyrand; and it was characteristic of the means she employed to state a fact or clinch an argument. Her methods of government were essentially tyrannical. Macaulay thus describes his first visit to Holland House: ‘The centurion did not keep his soldiers in better order than she kept her guests. It is to one, “Go,” and he goeth; and to another, “Do this,” and it is done’; and numerous are the records left by her contemporaries of the insults and abuse from which the _habitués_ were never immune. Yet within that cold exterior, with all her arrogance of demeanour and harshness of speech, beat as warm a heart as ever beat in woman’s breast. To her dependents she was kindness itself, her old friends were never forgotten, and many a struggling writer had reason to bless the assistance she bestowed on his efforts unasked.