become, and, shortly before the hour fixed for the opening ceremony, a
good deal of confusion still reigned upon the dais set apart for the
official notabilities. I was amused to see Lord Granville, who was, if I
remember aright, chairman of the Royal Commissioners, broom in hand,
vigorously sweeping the carpet in front of the State chairs only a few
moments before he had to rush off to receive the Duke of Cambridge. My
most vivid recollection of the opening ceremony is the singing of
Tennyson's fine ode, composed for the occasion. I can still recall the
cadence of the first lines as they fell upon my ears.

A visit to the House of Commons, where I remember hearing speeches from
Lord Palmerston and Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and where I gazed with
longing eyes upon the occupants of the reporters' gallery, fills up my
memories of this first sight of London. I might, indeed, have included in
them some reference to Sothern, the actor, who was then at the height of
his glory in the famous part of Lord Dundreary. But it was at Newcastle,
not in London, that I actually made Sothern's acquaintance. No actor ever
made a single character so famous as this part of Dundreary was made by
Sothern. When he came to Newcastle on his first provincial tour I met
him, and spent some pleasant evenings with him after the play. He was a
man of refined speech and good social gifts. His besetting weakness, as I
learned even then, was that addiction to practical jokes which, on more
than one occasion in his subsequent career, involved him in unpleasant
situations. One of his favourite tricks was to select some portly and
self-important gentleman whom he saw passing along Piccadilly or Oxford
Street, and, rushing up to him, to claim him as his dearly loved but
long-lost uncle. The more strenuously the victim denied the relationship,
the more eloquently pathetic and indignant became Sothern. A crowd always
collected quickly, and more than once the police were summoned to relieve
the putative uncle from the presence of his unwelcome nephew.