She pointed to the
beautiful Richmond print of Sidney Herbert, hanging above her
mantelpiece, and said to me:
"I am interested to meet you, as I hear George Pembroke, the son
of my old and dear friend, is devoted to you. Will you tell me
what he is like?"
I described Lord Pembroke, while Jowett sat in stony silence till
we left the house.
One day, a few months after this visit, I was driving in the
vicinity of Oxford with the Master and I said to him:
"You never speak of your relations to me and you never tell me
whether you were in love when you were young; I have told you so
much about myself!"
JOWETT: "Have you ever heard that I was in love with any one?"
I did not like to tell him that, since our visit to Florence
Nightingale, I had heard that he had wanted to marry her, so I
said:
"Yes, I have been told you were in love once."
JOWETT: "Only once?"
MARGOT: "Yes."
Complete silence fell upon us after this: I broke it at last by
saying:
"What was your lady-love like, dear Master?"
JOWETT: "Violent . . . very violent."
After this disconcerting description, we drove back to Balliol.
Mrs. Humphry Ward's novel "Robert Elsmere" had just been published
and was dedicated to my sister Laura and Thomas Hill Green,
Jowett's rival in Oxford. This is what the Master wrote to me
about it:
Nov. 28, 1888.
DEAR MISS TENNANT,
I have just finished examining for the Balliol Scholarships: a
great institution of which you may possibly have heard.
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