Note 51 — Chapter XXVI · PROTECTIONIST PARTY AT BURGHLEY[51].

My Aunt’s visits to Burghley extended over many years. Lord and Lady Exeter were extremely hospitable, and continued their hospitality until his death in January 1867. As an Oxford undergraduate, I was more than once invited to one of the younger parties, and the stately but courteous manners of the house impressed my mind indelibly. It was one of the last great houses in which ceremonial at breakfast was maintained. We were always expected to appear in frock-coats and faultless garb for the morning meal, to which we went in pairs as strictly arranged as for dinner. Smoking was absolutely taboo, and I was never sure whether the action of a younger son of the house in luring a few adventurous spirits after midnight to the depths of the servants’ hall was quite approved by his sire. We used to don our shooting things after having formally conducted the ladies from breakfast, and we were taken to the rendez-vous on ponies with impossible mouths. I was always a bad rider, and was invariably run away with, but generally arrived at the meet somehow. But I well remember how a gallant guardsman, owner of a historic name, was taken by his incontrollable steed right through Stamford town, and with difficulty parried, on a not very triumphant return, a charge of furious riding. Our mishaps were the source of no little kindly chaff from the Lord Burghley of those days; but he, like his father and mother, seemed to have no other object whatever than to make the hospitality of the grand old place a source of unalloyed pleasure and enjoyment to the guests.