And
if you had asked any of those upper servants how such and such a Prince
of Battenberg was related to, let us say, Mr. Cunninghame Graham or
the Duke of Argyle, you would have been told upon the nail. As a boy, I
heard a great deal of that sort of thing, and if to this day I am
still a little vague about courtesy titles and the exact application of
honorifics, it is, I can assure you, because I hardened my heart, and
not from any lack of adequate opportunity of mastering these succulent
particulars.
Dominating all these memories is the figure of my mother--my mother who
did not love me because I grew liker my father every day--and who knew
with inflexible decision her place and the place of every one in the
world--except the place that concealed my father--and in some details
mine. Subtle points were put to her. I can see and hear her saying
now, "No, Miss Fison, peers of England go in before peers of the United
Kingdom, and he is merely a peer of the United Kingdom." She had much
exercise in placing people's servants about her tea-table, where the
etiquette was very strict.
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