Grosvenor Square, and the _entree_ into which was much envied by those who
were admitted only to the larger and more stately parties reserved for the
less favoured.

Nor were Lady Harrington's impromptu evening assemblies less celebrated
than her perpetual tea-drinkings at Harrington House. The superior quality
of this expensive beverage in which the family of Stanhope indulged there,
and the frequency with which Lady Harrington presented it to her visitors
at all hours of the day, gave rise to the saying that where you saw a
Stanhope, there you saw a tea-pot. A story current in town was that when
her son, General Lincoln Stanhope, returned home after a prolonged absence
in India, he found the family party precisely as he had left them many
years before, seated in the long gallery sipping their favourite
refreshment. On his entry, his father looked up from this absorbing
occupation, and, with a restraint indicative of the highest breeding, gave
voice to the characteristic greeting--"Hullo! Linky, my dear boy, you are
just in time for a cup of tea!"

Such a home was the very atmosphere in which to develop a fashionable man
of the period; and the eldest son of the House, Charles. Lord Petersham,
did not discredit his surroundings. Tall, handsome, and faultlessly clad,
he was one of the most celebrated dandies of his day. Decidedly affected
in his manners, he spoke with a slight lisp; and since he was said to
recall the pictures of Henri IV., he endeavoured to accentuate this
likeness by cultivating a pointed beard. He never went out till six in the
evening, and one of his hobbies indoors was the strenuous manufacture of a
particular sort of blacking which, he always maintained, once perfected,
would surpass every other. His sitting-room emphasized his eccentricity.
One side of it represented the family _penchant_, being covered with
shelves upon which were placed canisters containing the most expensive and