L’Estrange loved to dine at the Cock tavern with a party of men from the inn, and to invite them to his chambers to take coffee afterwards.  And when they had retired, and only one remained, he would say, “What a nice fellow so-and-so is; you do meet a nice lot of fellows in the Temple, don’t you?” It seemed almost sufficient that a man should belong to the Temple for L’Estrange to find him admirable.  The dinners in hall were especially delightful.  Between the courses he looked in admiration on the portraits and old oak carvings, and the armorial bearings, and would tell how one bencher had been debarred from election as treasurer because he had, on three occasions, attended dinner without partaking of any food.  Such an insult to the kitchen could not be forgiven.  L’Estrange was full of such stories, and he relished their historical flavour as a gourmet an unusually successful piece of cooking.  He regarded the Temple and its associations with love.

When he had friends to dinner in his rooms the dinner was always brought from the hall; he ordered it himself in the large spacious kitchen, which he duly admired, and prying about amid the various meats, he chose with care, and when told that what he desired could not be obtained that day, he continued his search notwithstanding.  He related that on one occasion he discovered a greengage pie, after many assurances that there was no such thing in the kitchen.  If he was with a friend he laid his hand on his shoulder, and pointing out an inscription, he said, “Now one thing I notice about the Temple is that never is an occasion missed of putting up an inscription; and note the legal character of the inscriptions, how carefully it is explained, that, for instance, the cloisters, although they are for the use of the Inner as well as the Middle Temple, yet it was the Middle Temple that paid to have them put up, and therefore owns the property.”  L’Estrange always spoke of the gardens as “our gardens,” of the church as “our church.”  He was an authority on all that related to the Temple, and he delighted in a friend in whom he might confide; and to walk about the courts with Hall or Sands, stopping now and then to note some curious piece of sculpture or date, and forthwith to relate an anecdote that brought back some of the fragrance and colour of old time, and to tell how he intended to work such curious facts into the book he was writing on the Temple, was the essence and the soul of this dreamy man’s little life.

Saturday night is the night of dalliance in the Temple, and not unfrequently on Sunday morning, leaving a lady love, L’Estrange would go to church—­top hat, umbrella, and prayer-book—­and having a sense of humour, he was amused by the incongruity.

“I have left the accursed thing behind me,” he once said to Mr. Collier, and by such facetiousness had seriously annoyed the immense and most staid Mr. Collier.