It was the custom then for the Lord-Lieutenant to live for three
months of the winter at the Castle, where a ceaseless round of
entertainments went on. The Castle was in the heart of Dublin, and
only boasted a dull little smoke-blackened garden in the place of
the charming grounds of the Lodge, still there was plenty going on
there. A band played daily in the Castle Yard for an hour, there
was the daily guard-mounting, and the air was thick with bugle
calls and rattling kettle-drums.
At "Drawing Rooms" it was still the habit for all ladies to be
kissed by the Lord-Lieutenant on being presented to him, and every
lady had to be re-presented to every fresh Viceroy. This imposed
an absolute orgy of compulsory osculation on the unfortunate Lord-
Lieutenant, for if many of the ladies were fresh, young and
pretty, the larger proportion of them were very distinctly the
reverse.
There is a very fine white-and-gold throne-room in Dublin,
decorated in the heavy but effective style of George IV., and it
certainly compares very favourably with the one at Buckingham
Palace.
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