Читать книгу Set Down in Malice: A Book of Reminiscences онлайн

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“Do you want to know what all you people were like fifty years ago?—well, read Punch for, say, the year 1870.”

But though my friends tell me that I am brutal, and I know I am ill-mannered, I could not find it in my heart to speak those words.

. . . . . . . .

The amiable but rather weak MrP.W. Wilson, who used to do “Lobby” work for The Daily News, having ssss1 declined a whisky, entered into conversation with me at the hotel at Criccieth. He told me that till that morning he had been staying with MrLloyd George, but that, MrMasterman, Sir Rufus Isaacs and other people of importance having turned up, he himself had had to seek refuge in the hotel.

The occasion of the assembly of these wits was the opening of an institute at Llanystumdwy, the little village near Criccieth, where the Prime Minister spent his childhood days. MrLloyd George had given the institute to the inhabitants of the village and was himself to open it publicly the following day.

MrWilson’s amiability and his self-satisfaction at enjoying the friendship of MrLloyd George rather put me out, and I felt a strong desire to disturb his sleek smoothness.