My Mother — Page 133
Miscellaneous 133 A few days later I happened to meet Lord Blanesburgh at a large banquet. He was pleased to greet me with, ‘Ah, you are the young man who enlightened our ignorance the other day in the Privy Council!’ He drew my arm under his own and took me round and intro- duced me to several of the guests. He suggested that I should go to breakfast with him one morning, then he gave a dinner for me and thus laid the foundations of a delightful friendship which was terminated only by his death in 1946, at 85 years of age. The time I spent in his company was an education and a privi- lege; I discovered that he had been most devoted to his mother and that forged another bond between us. At the time of our first meeting he was Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company. In that capacity he invited me to a Court dinner of the company which I enjoyed thoroughly. Sometime after my return home received from Lord Blanesburgh a beautiful plate, fash- ioned by the Goldsmiths’ Com pany, bearing the inscription Homage From England to a Devoted Indian Mother of a Distinguished Indian Son February 1931