I met my husband for the first time in 1891, at a dinner given by Peter Flower’s brother Cyril. [Footnote:  The late Lord Battersea.] I had never heard of him in my life, which gives some indication of how I was wasting my time on two worlds:  I do not mean this and the next, but the sporting and dramatic, Melton in the winter and the Lyceum in the summer.  My Coquelin coachings and my dancing-lessons had led me to rehearsals both of the ballet and the drama; and for a short time I was at the feet of Ellen Terry and Irving.  I say “short” advisedly, for then as now I found Bohemian society duller than any English watering-place.  Every one has a different conception of Hell and few of us connect it with flames; but stage suppers are my idea of Hell and, with the exception of Irving and Coquelin, Ellen Terry and Sarah Bernhardt, I have never met the hero or heroine off the stage that was not ultimately dull.

The dinner where I was introduced to Henry was in the House of Commons and I sat next to him.  I was tremendously impressed by his conversation and his clean Cromwellian face.  He was different from the others and, although abominably dressed, had so much personality that I made up my mind at once that here was a man who could help me and would understand everything.  It never crossed my brain that he was married, nor would that have mattered; I had always been more anxious that Peter Flower should marry than myself, because he was thirteen years older than I was, but matrimony was not the austere purpose of either of our lives.

After dinner we all walked on the Terrace and I was flattered to find my new friend by my side.  Lord Battersea chaffed me in his noisy, flamboyant manner, trying to separate us; but with tact and determination this frontal attack was resisted and my new friend and I retired to the darkest part of the Terrace, where, leaning over the parapet, we gazed into the river and talked far into the night.

Our host and his party—­thinking that I had gone home and that Mr. Asquith had returned to the House when the division bell rang—­had disappeared; and when we finished our conversation the Terrace was deserted and the sky light.

We met a few days later dining with Sir Algernon West—­a very dear and early friend of mine—­and after this we saw each other constantly.  I found out from something he said to me that he was married and lived at Hampstead and that his days were divided between 1 Paper Buildings and the House of Commons.  He told me that he had always been a shy man and in some ways this is true of him even now; but I am glad that I did not observe it at the time, as shy people disconcerted me:  I liked modesty, I pitied timidity, but I was embarrassed by shyness.

I cannot truly say, however, that the word shy described my husband at any time:  he was a little gauche in movement and blushed when he was praised, but I have never seen him nervous with any one or embarrassed by any social dilemma.  His unerring instinct into all sorts of people and affairs—­quite apart from his intellectual temperament and learning—­and his incredible lack of vanity struck me at once.  The art of making every man better pleased with himself he had in a high degree; and he retains to this day an incurable modesty.