salamander-conscience

Updated: June 4, 2025

Lord Hartington's conscience was of a piece with the rest of him. It was not, like Mr. Gladstone's, a salamander-conscience an intangible, dangerous creature, that loved to live in the fire; nor was it, like Gordon's, a restless conscience; nor, like Sir Evelyn Baring's, a diplomatic conscience; it was a commonplace affair. Lord Hartington himself would have been disgusted by any mention of it.

Lytton Strachey - Eminent Victorians