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neighbour. It was a true expression, too, of the inward man. One had always the sense that here was a man of very real weight-and that was true metaphorically and physically. That is not the sense, however, in which I speak of the idea of weightiness that he gave. I mean that you felt when with him that he was 'solid,' one who knew what he meant and would express himself forcibly if he wished. You could not mistake his meaning. He carried his bulk remarkably well, having, as is said, a fine presence. You might feel that he over-weighed you a little, but he never seemed to be over-weighted. He bore his bulk well. Another difficult thing that he carried like a conqueror was his eyeglass. A walk down Bond Street to-day will give you striking examples of how difficult it is for a monocle, as it has become the custom to call it, not to look as if it had a foolish piece of humanity behind it. Mr Chaplin never allowed his glass to convey that impression, though he did not affect the rather theatrical black ribbon which gave emphasis to the eye-glass of that other famous Squire Bancroft.

Another thing that Mr Chaplin, in spite of his weight, would never allow to trouble him was his stomach. With that organ, which has so great a mastery over many of us, he stood no nonsense whatever.

'To the end of his life,' says Lady Londonderry, 'Mr Chaplin took an honest delight in the pleasures of the table. Nature had endowed him with a noble appetite, and he saw no reason why he should stint it. He was a lover both of quantity and of quality: a connoisseur, but also a hungry and healthy mortal. Once, in or about the year 1905' (so that he was not so very young then) 'at a dinner given by a Conservative statesman, a young man observed that the vintage port, which he himself was unable to touch, was being heavily punished by his neighbour, Mr Chaplin, and he pointed out the contrast. "Ah," said Mr Chaplin, "all my life I have lived according to a very simple plan. It is always to have what I like, when I like it, and as much of it as I like." This simple plan, faithfully followed, brought with it, no doubt, its penalties, but they were manfully faced. On one occasion, in the later years of his life, a friend found him with his foot on a stool, suffering from a severe attack of gout. "This pain," he said, "is simply Hell, but I rejoice to

think that in my youth I earned every twinge of it many times over." Once he was in bed in Stafford House after a bad fall. His servant, by mistake, gave him a very strong liniment, which he drank. Consternation ensued, and the doctor was summoned; but Mr Chaplin, dreading some interference with his food supplies, sent for two chops and a bottle of champagne, which he disposed of before the doctor arrived.'

He was only sixty-four then. Six years later, at seventy, his appetite seems to have improved. Again he was suffering from an accident, again from a fall out hunting: Two ribs were broken and one had penetrated the lung. Pneumonia ensued; the patient grew worse, and his personal friend, Sir Alfred Fripp, one of the great surgeons of the day, volunteered to go down and advise what should be done. Mr Chaplin, however, considered himself better and thought that he was not having sufficient nourishment. He said he must see his cook himself-and he did. The cook, wishing to please him, said that he had been sent a goose and that there was also a hare and a snipe. Mr Chaplin said that he would have them all. At that moment Sir Alfred Fripp arrived. Lady Castlereagh was already there, having motored over on hearing of Mr Chaplin's condition. The nurse had asked her not to go in, as she was not expected until later in the day, and she did not wish to arouse Mr Chaplin's suspicions.

""What are we to do?" said Lady Castlereagh. "My father has ordered a goose and a hare and a snipe and refuses to listen to the nurse and his condition is very grave." Sir Alfred, who had been looking at the chart, agreed and passed into Mr Chaplin's room. He was greeted most cheerily and bidden to stay to lunch and told what the menu was. When he came back to Lady Castlereagh he said, "Leave your father alone. He can't be treated like an ordinary mortal, and, if I may say so, he has a royal courage and a royal stomach. It is a case of kill or cure." At that moment Mr Chaplin called through the door for Sir Alfred, who returned to the sick-room, and reappeared shortly choking with laughter. "Your father," he said, "sent for me to say that if I would prefer his not eating all these things, he would give up the snipe!"'

He lived greatly, and probably he had to take in

large imports to balance the liberality of his efforts. He was conscientious about his duties in Parliament. Most men, when such duties threatened interference with a day's hunting, would have sacrificed one or the otherthe pleasure with a sigh or the duty with a pang. Not so Mr Chaplin. He snatched the best of both those opposite worlds. Like his gastronomic plan of life, the method was simplicity itself:

'After a late sitting of the House of Commons, he would engage a special train from King's Cross to take him down to a particular spot in the Burton country. By his direction the train would draw up in a cutting remote from any roadside station. From the train would then emerge a young gentleman in red coat and leathers. Up the bank he clambered, where his hack and groom were waiting for him on the top; and away he galloped to the meet of his hounds.'

In those days, as Lady Londonderry reminds us, men were not afraid of hacking long distances to the meets. 'Lord Henry Bentinck, when he hunted the Burton country from Welbeck six days a week, used to ride the thirty miles out and the thirty miles home, having three hacks each way.' If Lord Henry Bentinck could do this, it was probable that Mr Chaplin would do the same or something like it. For Lord Henry was his Mentor in youth, and even in his years of mature discretion Mr Chaplin did not forget that Mentor's example and precepts.

'In all matters pertaining to sport, and indeed in most others,' says his daughter, 'the young Chaplins had a perfect counsellor and friend in their neighbour, Lord Henry Bentinck. He was at the time Master of the Burton Hunt and Mr Charles Chaplin was his principal supporter-subscribing twelve hundred pounds a year. Lord Henry taught the children everything that they had to learn about horses and hounds, and they were proud indeed when he told them that the hounds which had been "walked" by them were among his best. He was a kind of fairy godfather to them all in his own strange way; Harry in especial owed him much, and in spite of the difference in age there was a close and lasting friendship between them.'

Late in his life we find Mr Chaplin writing, 'It was from Lord Henry that I learned everything I ever knew

about horses, hounds, deer-stalking, deer forests, and sport of all kinds and a great deal about politics too.'

There was never the slightest doubt about what Mr Chaplin stood for in politics. Probably no man ever was in less doubt about his opinions and duties. His mind had none of the subtlety which suggests doubts and difficulties. He saw his aims clearly, and rode at them as straight as he would try to ride across a country. He must have been several years short of fifty when Lady Londonderry writes of him: 'The champion, as he already felt himself to be, of the agricultural interests of England, his hands were full in urging in Parliament the claims of English land on a preoccupied Government.' In a more considered and later judgment she tells us :

As a devout follower and admirer of Disraeli, a long line of Conservative leaders came to look on him as their most constant support. In every great issue that marked the passage of the latter half of the nineteenth century and in the war agony of the second decade of the twentieth, he bore his part. Of no outstanding brilliance, he owed his power to his sincerity of purpose. His winning personality made him friends even among his political enemies, and his kindness of heart gained him affection not only from his constituents, but from a wide circle of the British public who saw in him a statesman of single aims, and a human being whom they could understand and admire. Nor should it be forgotten that he had in his own way remarkable oratorical gifts. It was not only an agricultural meeting that listened to him with attention. He had the "grand manner" in speaking, and an air of well-bred sincerity which was extraordinary to audiences who had never met quite the like before. His daughter well remembers meetings when he was received with condescension, and listened to in a spell-bound silence which ended in a thunderous ovation.'

That is very well said, and it is true. One does not need to accept it with any discount because it is written with a daughter's partiality. A cloud of independent witnesses endorse it. Most emphatically he did express the 'grand manner.' It is not a daughter, but Lord Willoughby de Broke who writes of him:

'His stature and good looks invested him with all the insignia that constitute a great personality, a personality

that, in the language of the theatre, "gets over the footlights." . ... He was one of the last, if not the last, of the fox-hunting country gentlemen who also wielded political influence, such as Lord George and Lord Henry Bentinck and the fifth Lord Spencer. His appearance is too well known to need any detailed description. It has been said that no one was half so clever as Lord Thurlow looked. May we say that no one was half such a country gentleman as Henry Chaplin looked? He possessed a strongly marked individuality, easily recognisable, familiar to the public. Every one knows him by sight.'

Mrs Peel's hundred years make a frame into which we may fit-rather loosely-this gracious and ample figure of the Squire of Blankney. Her century begins in 1820, twenty-one years before his birth: it terminates three years before his death in 1923. He fills the frame as nearly as a man's span of life well may, and his noonday is almost the centre of Mrs Peel's picture. That being so, it is curious how little her very entertaining book touches the subjects which would have interested him, who was as typical a figure of the time as could be found. The whole of the sporting life of the century, a century which saw the rise of a keen interest in many sports which were entirely disregarded at its commencement—all this is left unnoticed by Mrs Peel. Perhaps she was right to impose on herself limitations. The century had more facets than any one book could display.

It is an entertaining compilation. One does it no injustice so to speak of it, for it is mainly as a collection of what are conveniently called 'ana' that its author intends it. And the intention is fulfilled. In addition to the 'ana' of the text, there is a collection of illustrations showing the changing fashions, which in itself makes the book worth while. It is as informing as if she had gone to 'Punch,' our greatest national gallery of social changes, had taken of its best-this is not an accusation of theft or plagiarism—and transferred the figures to her book. We go from Dundreary with his whiskers and his crinolined ladies to the slender types of to-day. It is to be regretted that the opportunity was not taken to show us, on one and the same page, contrasted, a girl of the weasel-like slimness of

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