Such, at least, is the story as I have always heard it.

At the Sweeps’ Carnival, there was always a grown-up man figuring as “Jack-in-the-green.”  Encased in an immense frame of wicker-work covered with laurels and artificial flowers, from the midst of which his face and arms protruded with a comical effect, “Jack-in-the-green” capered slowly about in the midst of the street, surrounded by some twenty little climbing-boys, who danced joyously round him with black faces, their soot-stained clothes decorated with tags of bright ribbon, and making a deafening clamour with their dustpans and brushes as they sang some popular ditty.  They then collected money from the passers-by, making usually quite a good haul.  There were dozens of these “Jacks-in-the-green” to be seen then on Mayday in the London streets, each one with his attendant band of little black familiars.  I summoned up enough courage once to ask a small inky-black urchin whether he had disobeyed his nurse very often in order to be condemned to sweep chimneys.  He gaped at me uncomprehendingly, with a grin; but being a cheerful little soul, assured me that, on the whole, he rather enjoyed climbing up chimneys.

It was my father and mother’s custom in London to receive any of their friends at luncheon without a formal invitation, and a constant procession of people availed themselves of this privilege.  At six years of age I was promoted to lunch in the dining-room with my parents, and I always kept my ears open.  I had then one brother in the House of Commons, and we being a politically inclined family, most of the notabilities of the Tory party put in occasional appearances at Chesterfield House at luncheon-time.  There was Mr. Disraeli, for whom my father had an immense admiration, although he had not yet occupied the post of Prime Minister.  Mr. Disraeli’s curiously impassive face, with its entire absence of colouring, rather frightened me.  It looked like a mask.  He had, too, a most singular voice, with a very impressive style of utterance.  After 1868, by which time my three elder brothers were all in the House of Commons, and Disraeli himself was Prime Minister, he was a more frequent visitor at our house.

In 1865 my uncle, Lord John Russell, my mother’s brother, was Prime Minister.  My uncle, who had been born as far back as 1792, was a very tiny man, who always wore one of the old-fashioned, high black-satin stocks right up to his chin.  I liked him, for he was always full of fun and small jokes, but in that rigorously Tory household he was looked on with scant favour.  It was his second term of office as Prime Minister, for he had been First Lord of the Treasury from 1846 to 1852; he had also sat in the House of Commons for forty-seven years.  My father was rather inclined to ridicule his brother-in-law’s small stature, and absolutely detested his political opinions, declaring that he united all the ineradicable faults of the Whigs in his diminutive person.