But such public episodes were necessarily rare, and the main stream of his life flowed rapidly, gaily, and unobtrusively through the fat pastures of high society.  Everywhere and always he enjoyed himself extremely, but his spirits and his happiness were at their highest during his long summer sojourns at those splendid country houses whose hospitality he chronicles with indefatigable verve.  ‘This house,’ he says at Raby, ’is itself by far the most magnificent and unique in several ways that I have ever seen....  As long as I have heard of anything, I have heard of being driven into the hall of this house in one’s carriage, and being set down by the fire.  You can have no idea of the magnificent perfection with which this is accomplished.’  At Knowsley ’the new dining-room is opened; it is 53 feet by 37, and such a height that it destroys the effect of all the other apartments....  There are two fireplaces; and the day we dined there, there were 36 wax candles over the table, 14 on it, and ten great lamps on tall pedestals about the room.’  At Thorp Perrow ’all the living rooms are on the ground floor, one a very handsome one about 50 feet long, with a great bow furnished with rose-coloured satin, and the whole furniture of which cost L4000.’  At Goodwood the rooms were done up in ’brightest yellow satin,’ and at Holkham the walls were covered with Genoa velvet, and there was gilding worth a fortune on ’the roofs of all the rooms and the doors.’  The fare was as sumptuous as the furniture.  Life passed amid a succession of juicy chops, gigantic sirloins, plump fowls, pheasants stuffed with pate de foie gras, gorgeous Madeiras, ancient Ports.  Wine had a double advantage:  it made you drunk; it also made you sober:  it was its own cure.  On one occasion, when Sheridan, after days of riotous living, showed signs of exhaustion, Mr. and Mrs. Creevey pressed upon him ‘five or six glasses of light French wine’ with excellent effect.  Then, at midnight, when the talk began to flag and the spirits grew a little weary, what could be more rejuvenating than to ring the bell for a broiled bone?  And one never rang in vain—­except, to be sure, at King Jog’s.  There, while the host was guzzling, the guests starved.  This was too much for Mr. Creevey, who, finding he could get nothing for breakfast, while King Jog was ’eating his own fish as comfortably as could be,’ fairly lost his temper.

My blood beginning to boil, I said:  ’Lambton, I wish you could tell me what quarter I am to apply to for some fish.’  To which he replied in the most impertinent manner:  ‘The servant, I suppose.’  I turned to Mills and said pretty loud:  ’Now, if it was not for the fuss and jaw of the thing, I would leave the room and the house this instant’; and dwelt on the damned outrage.  Mills said:  ’He hears every word you say’:  to which I said:  ‘I hope he does.’  It was a regular scene.

A few days later, however, Mr. Creevey was consoled by finding himself in a very different establishment, where ’everything is of a piece—­excellent and plentiful dinners, a fat service of plate, a fat butler, a table with a barrel of oysters and a hot pheasant, &c., wheeled into the drawing-room every night at half-past ten.’