My father very rarely touched
wine, and I believe that it was the fact that he, then an Oxford
undergraduate, was the only sober young man amongst the rowdy
troop of roysterers that first drew my mother to him, though he
had already proposed marriage to her at a children's party given
by the Prince Regent at Carlton House, when they were respectively
seven and six years old. My father had succeeded to the title at
the age of six, and they were married as soon as he came of age.
They lived to celebrate their golden wedding, which two of my
sisters, the late Duchess of Buccleuch and Lady Lansdowne, were
also fortunate enough to do, and I can say with perfect truth that
in all three instances my mother and her daughters celebrated
fifty years of perfect happiness, unclouded save for the gaps
which death had made amongst their children.
Students of Pepys' Diary must have gasped with amazement at
learning of the prodigious quantities of food considered necessary
in the seventeenth century for a dinner of a dozen people. Samuel
Pepys gives us several accounts of his entertainments, varying,
with a nice sense of discrimination, the epithet with which he
labels his dinners.
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