HARRINGTON HOUSE AND LORD PETERSHAM
[Sidenote:  Captain Gronow]

When our army returned to England in 1814 my young friend, Augustus Stanhope, took me one afternoon to Harrington House, in Stable-yard, St. James’s, where I was introduced to Lord and Lady Harrington, and all the Stanhopes.  On entering a long gallery, I found the whole family engaged in their sempiternal occupation of tea-drinking.  Neither in Nankin, Pekin, nor Canton was the teapot more assiduously and constantly replenished than at this hospitable mansion.  I was made free of the corporation, if I may use the phrase, by a cup being handed to me; and I must say that I never tasted any tea so good before or since.

As an example of the undeviating tea-table habits of the house of Harrington, General Lincoln Stanhope once told me that, after an absence of several years in India, he made his reappearance at Harrington House, and found the family, as he had left them on his departure, drinking tea in the long gallery.  On his presenting himself, his father’s only observation and speech of welcome to him was, “Hallo, Linky, my dear boy! delighted to see you.  Have a cup of tea?”

LORD ALVANLEY
[Sidenote:  Captain Gronow]

From the time of good Queen Bess, when the English language first began to assume somewhat of its present form, idiom, and mode of expression, to the day of our most gracious sovereign Queen Victoria, every age has had its punsters, humorists, and eloquent conversationalists; but I much doubt whether the year 1789 did not produce the greatest wit of modern times, in the person of William Lord Alvanley.

After receiving a very excellent and careful education, Alvanley entered the Coldstream Guards at an early age, and served with distinction at Copenhagen and in the Peninsula; but, being in possession of a large fortune, he left the Army, gave himself up entirely to the pursuit of pleasure, and became one of the principal dandies of the day.  With the brilliant talents which he possessed, he might have attained to the highest eminence in any line of life he had embraced.

Not only was Alvanley considered the wittiest man of his day in England, but, during his residence in France, and tours through Russia and other countries, he was universally admitted to possess, not only great wit and humour, but l’esprit francais in its highest perfection; and no greater compliment could be paid him by foreigners than this.  He was one of the rare examples (particularly rare in the days of the dandies, who were generally sour and spiteful) of a man combining brilliant wit and repartee with the most perfect good-nature.  His manner, above all, was irresistible; and the slight lisp, which might have been considered as a blemish, only added piquancy and zest to his sayings.