I asked her what bird she thought I meant.  She said, ’A nightingale.’  This made me so angry that I nearly flung her to the ground:  ‘No, fool! ...  Rook!’ said I.”

I got up, feeling rather sorry for the young lady, but was so afraid he was going to stop reading that I quickly opened The Princess and put it into his hands, and he went on.

I still possess the little Maud, bound in its blue paper cover, out of which he read to us, with my name written in it by Tennyson.

The morning after my arrival I was invited by our host to go for a walk with him, which flattered me very much; but after walking at a great pace over rough ground for two hours I regretted my vanity.  Except my brother Glenconner I never met such an easy mover.  The most characteristic feature left on my mind of that walk was Tennyson’s appreciation of other poets.

Writing of poets, I come to George Wyndham. [Footnote:  The late Right Hon. George Wyndham.] It would be superfluous to add anything to what has already been published of him, but he was among the best-looking and most lovable of my circle.

He was a young man of nature endowed with even greater beauty than his sister, Lady Glenconner, but with less of her literary talent.  Although his name will always be associated with the Irish Land Act, he was more interested in literature than politics, and, with a little self-discipline, might have been eminent in both.

Mr. Harry Cust is the last of the Souls that I intend writing about and was in some ways the rarest end the most brilliant of them all.  Some one who knew him well wrote truly of him after he died: 

“He tossed off the cup of life without fear of it containing any poison, but like many wilful men he was deficient in will-power.”

The first time I ever saw Harry Cust was in Grosvenor Square, where he had come to see my sister Laura.  A few weeks later I found her making a sachet, which was an unusual occupation for her, and she told me it was for “Mr. Cust,” who was going to Australia for his health.

He remained abroad for over a year and, on the night of the Jubilee, 1887, he walked into our house where we were having supper.  He had just returned from Australia, and was terribly upset to hear that Laura was dead.

Harry Cust had an untiring enthusiasm for life.  At Eton he had been captain of the school and he was a scholar of Trinity.  He had as fine a memory as Professor Churton Collins or my husband and an unplumbed sea of knowledge, quoting with equal ease both poetry and prose.  He edited the Pall Mall Gazette brilliantly for several years.  With his youth, brains and looks, he might have done anything in life; but he was fatally self-indulgent and success with my sex damaged his public career.  He was a fastidious critic and a faithful friend, fearless, reckless and unforgettable.

He wrote one poem, which appeared anonymously in the Oxford Book of English Verse: