FOOTNOTES: 

[28] June 1897.

XXIV.

FLATTERERS AND BORES.

Can a flatterer be flattered?  Does he instinctively recognize the commodity in which he deals?  And if he does so recognize it, does he enjoy or dislike the application of it to his own case?  These questions are suggested to my mind by the ungrudging tributes paid in my last chapter to Lord Beaconsfield’s pre-eminence in the art of flattery.

“Supreme of heroes, bravest, noblest, best!”

No one else ever flattered so long and so much, so boldly and so persistently, so skilfully and with such success.  And it so happened that at the very crisis of his romantic career he became the subject of an act of flattery quite as daring as any of his own performances in the same line, and one which was attended with diplomatic consequences of great pith and moment.

It fell out on this wise.  When the Congress of the Powers assembled at Berlin in the summer of 1878, our Ambassador in that city of stucco palaces was the loved and lamented Lord Odo Russell, afterwards Lord Ampthill, a born diplomatist if ever there was one, with a suavity and affectionateness of manner and a charm of voice which would have enabled him, in homely phrase, to whistle the bird off the bough.  On the evening before the formal opening of the Congress Lord Beaconsfield arrived in all his plenipotentiary glory, and was received with high honours at the British Embassy.  In the course of the evening one of his private secretaries came to Lord Odo Russell and said, “Lord Odo, we are in a frightful mess, and we can only turn to you to help us out of it.  The old chief has determined to open the proceedings of the Congress in French.  He has written out the devil’s own long speech in French and learnt it by heart, and is going to fire it off at the Congress to-morrow.  We shall be the laughing-stock of Europe.  He pronounces epicier as if it rhymed with overseer, and all his pronunciation is to match.  It is as much as our places are worth to tell him so.  Can you help us?” Lord Odo listened with amused good humour to this tale of woe, and then replied:  “It is a very delicate mission that you ask me to undertake, but then I am fond of delicate missions.  I will see what I can do.”  And so he repaired to the state bedroom, where our venerable Plenipotentiary was beginning those elaborate processes of the toilet with which he prepared for the couch.  “My dear Lord,” began Lord Odo, “a dreadful rumour has reached us.”  “Indeed!  Pray what is it?” “We have heard that you intend to open the proceedings to-morrow in French.”  “Well, Lord Odo, what of that?” “Why, of course, we all know that there is no one in Europe more competent to do so than yourself.  But then, after all, to make a French speech is a commonplace accomplishment.  There will be at least half a