“. . . We all dined at Knowsley last night. The new dining-room is opened: it is 53 feet by 37, and such a height that it destroys the effect of all the other apartments. . . . You enter it from a passage by two great Gothic church-like doors the whole height of the room. This entrance is in itself fatal to the effect. Ly. Derby (like herself), when I objected to the immensity of the doors, said: ‘You’ve heard Genl. Grosvenor’s remark upon them have you not? He asked in his grave, pompous manner—“Pray are those great doors to be opened for every pat of butter that comes into the room?’” At the opposite end of the room is an immense Gothic window, and the rest of the light is given by a sky-light mountains high. There are two fireplaces; and the day we dined there, there were 36 wax candles over the table, 14 on it, and ten great lamps on tall pedestals about the room; and yet those at the bottom of the table said it was quite petrifying in that neighbourhood, and the report here is that they have since been obliged to abandon it entirely from the cold. . . . My lord and my lady were all kindness to me, but only think of their neither knowing nor caring about Spain or France, nor whether war or peace between these two nations was at all in agitation!
“. . . I must say I never saw man or woman live more happily with nine grown up children. It is my lord [Derby] who is the great moving principle. . . What a contrast to that poor victim of temper who left us last week! [Mr. Lambton].”
