Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/40

 xxxiv valued friends throughout his lifetime, and they had been up at Oxford together, was William Bromley Davenport. an English sportsman of the best type, and as clever a letter writer as the Victorian Age has produced, though not strikingly successful as a public speaker.

Scarce a year passed without Dasent's visiting him at his Cheshire home, and the last country visit he ever paid was to his widow at Capesthorne.

Intimate, too, with Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (after whom his youngest son was christened), he was frequently at the Deanery, Westminster, and, like Stanley himself, took the greatest interest in all that concerned the history and archæology of the Abbey, which he had known and loved from boyhood. He was present with the Dean when some of the Royal tombs were opened with a view to the more complete identification of their contents.

At Lord Granville's, both in town and at Walmer Castle, he increased his already extensive knowledge of the political world, and he was a welcome guest at Highclere, at Raby, at Althorp, and at Chatsworth.

He enjoyed the close friendship of Sir Thomas Erskine May (Lord Farnborough), of Matthew Arnold, and the late Sir Charles Bowen—all, like himself, habitués of the

was exceedingly wroth and wrote to complain. To cool the inflamed mind of the correspondent there appeared next morning an editorial excuse. It stated that after a careful study of the writer's caligraphy, we came to the conclusion that a difficulty existed as to deciphering the first part of the signature, but there was no mistake as to the latter part.'