Judging by their portraits by Lawrence, which hung round our
dining-room, my great-grandfather, old Lord Abercorn's sons and
daughters must have been of singular and quite unusual personal
beauty. Not one of the five attained the age of twenty-nine, all
of them succumbing early to consumption. Lord Aberdeen had a most
unfortunate skin and complexion, and in addition he was deeply
pitted with small-pox. As a result his face looked exactly like a
slice of brown bread, and "Old Brown Bread" he was always called
by my elder brothers and sisters, who had but little love for him,
for he disliked young people, and always made the most
disagreeable remarks he could think of to them. I remember once
being taken to see him at Argyll House, Regent Street, on the site
of which the "Palladium" now stands. I recollect perfectly the
ugly, gloomy house, and its uglier and gloomier garden, but I have
no remembrance of "Old Brown Bread" himself, or of what he said to
me, which, considering his notorious dislike to children, is
perhaps quite as well.
Of a very different type was another constant and always welcome
visitor to our house, Sir Edwin Landseer, the painter.
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