Looking back from the close of life upon its beginning, Freddy Leveson noted that as an infant he used to eat his egg “very slowly, and with prolonged pleasure.”  “Did this,” he used to ask, “portend that I should grow up a philosopher or a gourmand?  I certainly did not become the former, and I hope not the latter.”  I am inclined to think that he was both; for whoso understands the needs of the body has mastered at least one great department of philosophy, and he who feeds his fellow-men supremely well is in the most creditable sense of the word a gourmand.  Freddy Leveson’s dinners were justly famous, and, though he modestly observed that “hospitality is praised more than it deserves,” no one who enjoyed the labours of Monsieur Beguinot ever thought that they could be overpraised.  The scene of these delights was a house in South Audley Street, which, though actually small, was so designed as to seem like a large house in miniature; and in 1870 the genial host acquired a delicious home on the Surrey hills, which commands a view right across Sussex to the South Downs.  “Holm-bury” is its name, and “There’s no place like Home-bury” became the grateful watchword of a numerous and admiring society.

People distinguished in every line of life, and conspicuous by every social charm, found at Holm-bury a constant and delightful hospitality.  None appreciated it more thoroughly than Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, whose friendship was one of the chief happinesses of Freddy Leveson’s maturer life.  His link with them was Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, who, in spite of all Whiggish prejudices against the half-converted Tory, was one of Gladstone’s most enthusiastic disciples.  In “Cliveden’s proud alcove,” and in that sumptuous villa at Chiswick where Fox and Canning died, Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone were her constant guests; and there they formed their affectionate intimacy with Freddy Leveson.  Every year, and more than once a year, they stayed with him at Holmbury; and one at least of those visits was memorable.  On the 19th of July, 1873, Mr. Gladstone wrote in his diary: 

“Off at 4.25 to Holmbury, We were enjoying that beautiful spot and expecting Granville with the Bishop of Winchester,[*] when the groom arrived with the message that the Bishop had had a bad fall.  An hour and a half later Granville entered, pale and sad:  ‘It’s all over.’  In an instant the thread of that precious life was snapped, We were all in deep and silent grief.”

[Footnote *:  Samuel Wilberforce.]

And now, for the sake of those who never knew Freddy Leveson, a word of personal description must be added.  He was of middle height, with a slight stoop, which began, I fancy from the fact that he was short-sighted and was obliged to peer rather closely at objects which he wished to see.  His growing deafness, which in later years was a marked infirmity—­he had no others—­tended to intensify the stooping habit, as bringing him nearer to his companions voice.