that was ever done to me in my life. In England it is bad form to speak
across the table. One speaks to one's neighbor on the right or to one's
neighbor on the left; but the line across the table is foreign soil and
must not be shouted across.

That night my husband said: "I forgot to tell you. They never talk
across the table in England." I chided him, and with some cause. I had
soon discovered that in England, as in America, it was not enough to be
"my own natural self." But I came to love Mr. Gladstone. Long after
that I told him the story of Mrs. Grant, who, when an awkward young man
had broken one of her priceless Sevres after-dinner coffee cups, dropped
hers on the floor to meet him on the same level. "Any woman who, to put
any one at ease, will break a priceless Sevres cup is heroic," I said.
His answer, though flippant, was pleasant: "Any man who would not smile
across the table at a lovely woman is a fool."

Mr. Gladstone always wore a flower in his button-hole, a big, loose
collar that never fitted, a floppy black necktie, and trousers that
needed a valet's attention. He was the greatest combination of
propriety and utter disregard of conventions I had ever seen.

The event next in importance to a presentation at court was a tea at
which the tea planter Sir Thomas Lipton was one of the guests. He was
not Sir Thomas then, but was very much in the limelight, having
contributed twenty-five thousand pounds to the fund collected by the
Princess of Wales to feed the poor of London in commemoration of Queen
Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

The Earl of Lathom, then the Lord Chamberlain, who looked like Santa
Claus and smiled like Andrew Carnegie, was among the guests; so were Mr.