[Footnote:  Our Ambassador in Berlin.].  He was six foot four, but his face was even more conspicuous than his height.  There was Russian blood in the Herbert family and he was the eldest brother of the beautiful Lady Ripon [Footnote:  The late wife of the present Marquis of Ripon.].  He married Lady Gertrude Talbot, daughter of the twentieth Earl of Shrewsbury and Talbot, who was nearly as fine to look at as he himself.  He told me among other things at that dinner that he had known Disraeli and had been promised some minor post in his government, but had been too ill at the time to accept it.  This developed into a discussion on politics and Peeblesshire, leading up to our county neighbours; he asked me if I knew Lord Elcho, [Footnote:  The father of the present Earl of Wemyss and March.] of whose beauty Ruskin had written, and who owned property in my county.

“Elcho,” said he, “always expected to be invited to join the government, but I said to Dizzy, ’Elcho is an impossible politician; he has never understood the meaning of party government and looks upon it as dishonest for even three people to attempt to modify their opinions sufficiently to come to an agreement, leave alone a Cabinet!  He is an egotist!’ To which Disraeli replied, ‘Worse than that!  He is an Elchoist!’”

Although Lord Pembroke’s views on all subjects were remarkably wide—­as shown by the book he published called Roots—­he was a Conservative.  We formed a deep friendship and wrote to one another till he died a few years after my marriage.  In one of his letters to me he added this postscript: 

Keep the outer borders of your heart’s sweet garden free from garish flowers and wild and careless weeds, so that when your fairy godmother turns the Prince’s footsteps your way he may not, distrusting your nature or his own powers, and only half-guessing at the treasure within, tear himself reluctantly away, and pass sadly on, without perhaps your ever knowing that he had been near.

This, I imagine, gave a correct impression of me as I appeared to some people.  “Garish flowers” and “wild and careless weeds” describe my lack of pruning; but I am glad George Pembroke put them on the “outer,” not the inner, borders of my heart.

In the tenth verse of Curzon’s poem, allusion is made to Lady Pembroke’s conversation, which though not consciously pretentious, provoked considerable merriment.  She “stumbled upwards into vacuity,” to quote my dear friend Sir Walter Raleigh.

There is no one left to-day at all like George Pembroke.  His combination of intellectual temperament, gregariousness, variety of tastes—­yachting, art, sport and literature—­his beauty of person and hospitality to foreigners made him the distinguished centre of any company.  His first present to me was Butcher and Lang’s translation of the Odyssey, in which he wrote on the fly-leaf, “To Margot, who most reminds me of Homeric days, 1884,” and his last was his wedding present, a diamond dagger, which I always wear close to my heart.