If he got the chance he used to go to London for the day when he knew people were coming

When she [her mother] and Dada went away, I was left alone with Grandpapa [Lord Northwood]. He was very old, and queer and silent. He hated people, and never spoke to the people who came to the house [Knole]; in fact, if he got the chance he used to go to London for the day when he knew people were coming, and I used to be left alone to entertain them. It amused me later on, when sometimes I was had downstairs to make fourteen, to see him sitting quite mute between two wretched women who were trying to make conversation to him, or else crushing them into silence: 'You have lovely gardens here, Lord Northwood.' 'What do you know about gardens?', he would snap at them.

N. Nicolson and V. Sackville-West, Portrait of a marriage (1973), 11-12