It was delightful to hear him and my mother talk together, and their disputes, though frequent, seemed generally extremely amicable, and as diverting to themselves as to us.  On one occasion he ended their discussion (as to whether some lady of their acquaintance had or had not gone somewhere) by a vehement declaration which passed into a proverb in our house:  “Yes, yes, she did; for a woman will go anywhere, at any time, with anybody, to see any thing—­especially in a gig.”  Those were days in which a gig was a vehicle the existence of which was not only recognized in civilized society, but supposed to confer a diploma of “gentility” upon its possessor.

Horace Twiss was one of the readiest and most amusing talkers in the world, and when he began to make his way in London society, which he eventually did very successfully, ill-natured persons considered his first step in the right direction to have been a repartee made in the crush-room of the opera, while standing close to Lady L——­, who was waiting for her carriage.  A man he was with saying, “Look at that fat Lady L——­; isn’t she like a great white cabbage?” “Yes,” answered Horace, in a discreetly loud tone, “she is like one—­all heart, I believe.”  The white-heart cabbage turned affably to the rising barrister, begged him to see her to her carriage, and gave him the entree of H——­ House.  Lord Clarendon subsequently put him in Parliament for his borough of Wootton-Basset, and for a short time he formed part of the ministry, holding one of the under-secretaryships.  He was clever, amiable, and good-tempered, and had every qualification for success in society.

He had married a Miss Searle, one of his mother’s pupils at the fashionable Bath boarding-school, the living image of Scott’s Fenella, the smallest woman that I have ever seen, with fairy feet and tiny hands, the extraordinary power of which was like that of a steel talon.  On one occasion, when Horace Twiss happened to mention that his bright little spark of a wife sat working in his library by him, while he was engaged with his law or business papers, my mother suggested that her conversation must disturb him.  “Oh, she doesn’t talk,” said he, “but I like to hear the scissors fall,” a pretty conjugal reply, that left a pleasant image in my mind.  His only child by her, a daughter, married first Mr. Bacon, then editor of the Times, and, after his death, John Delane, who succeeded him in that office and still holds it; so that her father said “she took the Times and Supplement.”

About this time I began to be aware of the ominous distresses and disturbances connected with the affairs of the theater, that were to continue and increase until the miserable subject became literally the sauce to our daily bread; embittering my father’s life with incessant care and harassing vexation; and of the haunting apprehension of that ruin which threatened us for years, and which his most strenuous efforts only delayed, without averting it.