Carlton House stood, from all I can learn, at the top of the Duke of York’s steps.  Several engravings of its beautiful gardens are still to be found.  These gardens extended from the present Carlton House Terrace to Pall Mall.  Not only the Terrace, but the Carlton, Reform, Travellers’, Athenaeum, and United Service Clubs now stand on their site.  They were separated from Pall Mall by an open colonnade, and the Corinthian pillars from the front of Carlton House were re-erected in 1834 as the portico of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.

As a child I had a wild adoration for Queen Alexandra (then, of course, Princess of Wales), whom I thought the most beautiful person I had ever seen in my life, and I dare say that I was not far wrong.  When I was taken to Marlborough House, I remembered and treasured up every single word she said to me.  I was not present at the child’s tea-party at Marlborough House given by the little Princess, including his present Majesty, when some one (my loyalty absolutely refuses to let me say who) suggested that as the woven flowers on the carpet looked rather faded, it might be as well to water them.  The boys present, including the little Princes, gleefully emptied can after can of water on to the floor in their attempts to revive the carpet, to the immense improvement of the ceiling and furniture of the room underneath.

In the “sixties” Sunday was very strictly observed.  In our own Sabbatarian family, our toys and books all disappeared on Saturday night.  On Sundays we were only allowed to read Line upon Line, The Peep of Day, and The Fairchild Family.  I wonder if any one ever reads this book now.  If they haven’t, they should.  Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild were, I regret to say it, self-righteous prigs of the deepest dye, whilst Lucy, Emily, and Henry, their children, were all little prodigies of precocious piety.  It was a curious menage; Mr. Fairchild having no apparent means of livelihood, and no recreations beyond perpetually reading the Bible under a tree in the garden.  Mrs. Fairchild had the peculiar gift of being able to recite a different prayer off by heart applicable to every conceivable emergency; whilst John, their man-servant, was a real “handy-man,” for he was not only gardener, but looked after the horse and trap, cleaned out the pigsties, and waited at table.  One wonders in what sequence he performed his various duties, but perhaps the Fairchilds had not sensitive noses.  Even the possibly odoriferous John had a marvellous collection of texts at his command.  It was refreshing after all this to learn that on one occasion all three of the little Fairchilds got very drunk, which, as the eldest of them was only ten, would seem to indicate that, in spite of their aggressive piety, they had their fair dose of original sin still left in them.  I liked the book notwithstanding.  There was plenty about eating and drinking; one could always skip the prayers, and there were three or four very brightly written accounts of funerals in it.  I was present at a “Fairchild Family” dinner given some twenty years ago in London by Lady Buxton, wife of the present Governor-General of South Africa, at which every one of the guests had to enact one of the characters of the book.