He would come down to Lady Grove on Friday night in a crowded motor-car
that almost dripped architects. He didn't, however, confine himself to
architects; every one was liable to an invitation to week-end and view
Crest Hill, and many an eager promoter, unaware of how Napoleonically
and completely my uncle had departmentalised his mind, tried to creep up
to him by way of tiles and ventilators and new electric fittings. Always
on Sunday mornings, unless the weather was vile, he would, so soon as
breakfast and his secretaries were disposed of, visit the site with a
considerable retinue, and alter and develop plans, making modifications,
Zzzz-ing, giving immense new orders verbally--an unsatisfactory way, as
Westminster and the contractors ultimately found.
There he stands in my memory, the symbol of this age for me, the man of
luck and advertisement, the current master of the world. There he
stands upon the great outward sweep of the terrace before the huge
main entrance, a little figure, ridiculously disproportionate to that
forty-foot arch, with the granite ball behind him--the astronomical
ball, brass coopered, that represented the world, with a little
adjustable tube of lenses on a gun-metal arm that focussed the sun
upon just that point of the earth on which it chanced to be shining
vertically.
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