I can recall no period in a long lifetime so entirely destitute of recreation as the years I spent in the House of Commons. The business in which I was determined, if possible, to succeed swallowed up my whole life. I breakfasted on Blue Books and lunched on Irish correspondence, and I never had leisure to go to a theatre or exhibition, and if I dined out once or twice a week it was apt to be with men immersed in the same pursuit, where nothing was changed but the venue. When a bore of vigorous lungs was on his legs, I sometimes escaped to Westminster Abbey for an hour, or if a debate arose in which I took no interest I made for the National Gallery, but these were rare chances. One pleasure only I allowed nothing to interfere with. I spent a couple of hours every Sunday with Thomas Carlyle in Hyde Park, or Battersea Park, with an occasional detour to John Forster's at Palace Gate. But the society of men of letters of my own age, which I would have preferred to a banquet at Buckingham Palace, I had to abandon. Edward Whitty, a man of genius and a sympathetic friend often made the occasion for me, but his notes of that date announce constant disappointment:—
"I had up a lot of people to meet you on Sunday evening Mahony (Father Prout), Pigott (Leader), Hannay, Peyrat (of La Presse) and others, and was sorry that you could not come the day was sunny at Hampstead and the claret and cigarettes were encheering. …
"For a variety of reasons I am anxious to see you at the earliest possible moment, and beg of you to name time and place. …
"Jas. Hannay, B. C. Aspinall and his charming wife, and two or three others expected to meet you here last evening. I know you wanted to see more of Aspinall, but that will be scarcely possible, for he is going to Australia. Why a man of his fine powers, and who was born to flutter between Brompton and the Boulevard des Italiens, should betake himself to the new and dismal land I cannot conjecture."
The long days in Committee, the long nights in the House, constant anxiety and disappointment prostrated a constitution never robust, and I was advised that a considerable holiday was the only alternative to a catastrophe. There
