Terror, full agony of

I was alarmed by so formidable a social occasion, but less alarmed than I had been a few months earlier when I was left tête-à-tête with Mr. Gladstone. ... As I was the only male in the household, he and I were left alone together at the dinner table after the ladies retired. He made only one remark: “This is a very good port they have given me, but why have they given me it in a claret glass?” I did not know the answer and wished the earth would swallow me up. Since then I have never again felt the full agony of terror.

— Autobiography, Vol. 1 by Bertrand Russell