Hornby Mills; and other stories

Front matter

HORNBY MILLS; 3JnJ> a%r Storiis HORNBY MILLS; guitr utfwr Stories. BT HENRY KINGSLEY. AUTHOR 01' " RAVEN8H0E," " OLD MARGARETS," " GEOFFRY HAJILYU," "IHE HARVEY9," ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 1872. LONDON : BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFR1ARS. §ebkaielt BY HEIET TO BAEBAEA. CONTENTS. PA6R HORNBY MILLS GARDEN ' 1 WHY LADY HORNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED . . . 40 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MORDAUNT . . SO MALMAISON . . HOKNBY MILLS GABDEN. Horticulturus and Viator had a discussion about gardens and gardening the other day, as they went along the Great Eastern Railway, past Paul's at Cbes hunt, and Rivers' at Sawbridge worth. Viator, perhaps ill-naturedly, advanced the theory that in the matter of gardening we were going back, if not into barbarism, at least into " Chineseism ; " that one of our new ribbon gardens was, in the first instance, as ugly as it was pos sible to make any arrangement of beautiful flowers ; and, secondly, that it was never worth looking at twice.

Viator instanced my Lord this's garden, and then my Lord the other's garden, and lastly lost his temper in falling foul of the last hideous horror of coloured walks; set up for the example and admiration of mankind by VOL. I. B the Horticultural Society at South Kensington. Horti culturus, though jealous of the honour of that body, has imbibed too much of the sweetness of his own flowers to be angry with Viator. He smilingly put the question by, saying that the Horticultural Society was bound to be in the van of horticultural thought, and that brickdust walks were that van. When Viator asked him, in return, whether the Horticultural Society could not lead public taste instead of following it, he became interested in the doings of a roach-fisher on the banks of the Lea. He would not fight that point.

Viator tried him on another : on the expense of this bedding system. "Every one now," said Viator, "down to the farmers' wives, are discontented unless they have their beds brown and bare for six months, and for the other six filled with formal patterns of geraniums, calceolarias, and lobelias, the keeping of which through the winter costs money. Very little has been done for cottage gardeners — which, I take it, means people who cannot afford a gardener — by the Horticultural Society. Why don't you encourage the discovery of good hardy peren nials from temperate regions, instead of ransacking the tropics for things which, however beautiful, can only be grown by noblemen and rich tradesmen ? Why, that most excellent and admirable handbook, The Cottage Gardener's Dictionary, has got so dreadfully genteel in its notions, that I am ashamed to open it ; it makes me feel like a poverty-stricken snob.

Part I

That part of Lorraine which lies nearest to Prussia and to Luxemburg is very little known to ordinary travellers. In good years, when the Moselle is full, idle tourists go up the river as far as Alf, get out of the steamer there and then, and go on by the quiet little baths of Bertrich, across the Eifel by Bittburg, and so on to Treves. Few, however, go higher than Treves. The river, although very beautiful, is more monotonous than the Rhine, and travellers are easily tired before they get past Treves. Beyond this glorious old city, with its Roman ruins, however, the Moselle has some grand reaches ; and having passed Treves, you get to Remeck, a most beautiful place, and beyond Remeck you come to Sierck. At Sierck the Stomberg rises 1200 feet out of the river, part of the mountain being in Luxemburg or Dutch territory, and part of it MALMAISON. in France.

From this really noble hill you look into glorious Lorraine, and see the river winding away like a silver ribbon towards Thionville, which is in sight, and so on to Metz, with her arecpdvojpa Trvpya.Tu>v. I have only to shirt my eyes now, in this quiet London street, to see the wide plains stretching far away before me, bounded b}r forest, brilliant near the river-side with vineyards, and overarched everywhere by a cloudless sun. I can see the spires of the village churches, some far out upon the plain among the cornfields, some nestling among the boscage of the forest, some just peeping from among the trees in a hollow by a trout-stream — nay, I can go farther than that in my imagination, for I can hear three old familiar voices calling to me, and saying, " Confess, now, that there is no place in the whole world like our Lorraine."

I find myself answering, " No, and your Lorraine shall be as fair as ever again, my loved ones." And so I open my eyes again, and look on the dull London street, and the old voices are dumb for a time. I go back to Lorraine with more recent recollections. Once more I am in the old land. " Is the green land stained brown with flame ?" MALMAISON. 143 They will not let me go over that ridge, and look at Bazaine lying under Metz. Not a human being on this autumn afternoon is allowed fo look at him. I say that I am a swift runner, and will be back in three-quarters of an hour. The Bavarian officer says no, and the guns begin to mutter again. All around in the steaming heat the German swarm are under arms, for he is coming out once more. You may see everything and hear eveiything ; but you must not look on doomed Bazaine.

He must not know that we are here. I hold my open letter in my hand, yet I am laughed at. Mademoiselle must do without her news this time, and if Louis dies, tant pis pour lui. So I sit on a broken wall, and look at Lorraine until the ambulance is ready. And wonderfully beautiful it is, even now. South is Metz, with the great cathedral, like a ship at sea, sailing amidst the grim smoke. To the right is Champagne, a dim pearl-grey cloud ; to the left the Vosges and the hills of the Moselle. Around is a hideous and horrible ruin, such as the human mind cannot understand until it has seen it with the eye of the flesh. That heap of shattered stone behind me was once a farm-house, and in the lower part of the MALMAISON. ruins of it I detect an eye, then a head, then a very weary old woman, who pulls herself out from among the ruins, and, looking round her, asks for bread for the love of God.

I have bread, and give it to her, and ask her if she knows people who lived here — one called Courrier. She throws her bread upon the ground, and clutches me by both arms. She is the very woman we thought dead — old Sophie, the nurse of the family. Is it possible, we ask, to get this letter into Metz under ground ? It is only to MademoiseUe Marie, to tell her that he is dying at Briey. The old woman looked cautiously round and took the letter from me, after which she caught up the bread again, and began gnaw ing it like a hound. I asked how the letter was to get into Metz, and she laughed at me. I must do her the honour to say, that while I looked at that old lady, I felt very much reminded of the first French revolution, and of the good women who sat and knitted under the guillotine. But somehow or another I had a feeling that that letter would get into the hands for which it was intended in some way.

I was doing a thing which possibly I ought not to have done. If my letter could get in, MALMAISON. other information could get in with it ; and I felt that I was betraying my trust to my employers. But I could not help it. He looked so bonny on his bed when I thought he was dying, that I could not refuse him. And the siege was not veiy close then ; also the doctor said, that if I did not promise him, he would die. I promised him. What could I do ? However, the letter went. The old woman finished her bread, and I was wondering what would happen to a German officer if he fell asleep in a house of hers, when she looked round again and gave a low whistle. Instantly the ruins of the house behind us seemed to move, and a young man in a blouse came into the open air. He was a very handsome young man, and I began at once to think of St. Just, and of what might happen to a German officer if that young man caught him asleep.

The old woman embraced the young man tenderly, and, I suppose, gave him the letter, for I never saw any more of it. At this moment a Brandenburg staff-officer came riding past, and the old woman dashed out on him at once, and pulled him up. I never in my life saw anything so astouudingly clever. We had very nearly got into a heavy scrape ; VOL. I. L MALMAISON. for the young man, Sophie's son, was actually standing by us, with my letter on him, and in all human probability enough treasonable matter on him to hang us altogether. The old lady saved us all by taking the bull by the horns, and roundly abusing the staff-officer, who behaved like a thorough gentleman. Her cow, she said, had been taken by the German Landwehr, who chose to call themselves soldiers. The staff-officer said that he was very sorry, but that the requisition had been made formally through the maire.

It was the maire who had taken her cow, not he. She replied that the maire was a gentleman, and not a Prussian, and would never have taken an old woman's cow. The staff-officer asked if she could point out the man who had taken her cow without the authority of the maire. The old woman said that she could not, at her time of life, single out one thief from 750,000. As our good luck would have it, I burst out laughing here, and the good natured staff-officer joined, recognising me. He took out a thaler, and asked me to give it to the poor woman ; " for," he said, " she would never take it from me, poor old soul." Indeed he was right ; for when he was away over the MALMAISON. hill-side, I gave it to her, and she stamped it into the earth, and spat on it. Afterwards the Lorraine peasantry got to know the Germans better, and to love them more.

That was the saddest evening I had in the whole war. I took away old Sophie, and together, under the gathering gloom of the summer night, we saw the horrible ruins of a beautiful place, Malmaison, which I had known before under very different circum stances. Until I went to these wars I had never seen death, save in the faces of those dear to me. Now I have seen so many dead faces, that they are confused in my memory, and I cannot say this one lay here, or that one lay there. I remember when I was a boy crying over a house which had been burnt down ; but I had not known the house. Now, in a certain way, I knew Malmaison well, for Marie and her cousins had described it to me a hundred times. I had, in fact, seen it once ; and as a lad 1 used to think of it as an earthly paradise. We four fools went in the omnibus to Hampton Court once, when we were all children, and it was my treat.

They thought highly of Hampton Court, but they said one L MALMAISON. and all, " Mais Malmaison ! " To tell the truth, I be lieved in Malmaison just as much as I did in my boy hood, when I got the last view of it, under the guidance of old Sophie. Then I saw that I and my dear French friends, who had left France so long ago, had rather miscalculated height and space. Malmaison must have been very beautiful ; but had only been a grand farm chateau after all. I have an extreme objection to the melting mood ; I agree with Mark Tapley, that it never did any good to man or woman. But somehow, when I had shown my pass to the German sentry, and old Sophie had taken me round into the flower-garden which I knew so well by report and recollection, as well as by sight — when I saw the Malmaison of my boy's fancy a ghastly heap of hideous ruins, I, like a great fool, sat down on the edge of the dried-up fountain, and began crying like a girl.

At that moment Bazaine (to annoy me) burst into a wild hideous roar of artillery and musketry fire two miles off. I would not have cared much for that ; but I was afraid that I heard the heavier guns firing from the forts. In case of a mere sortie, I did not care ; but when the " town guns " began to go sharp and swift in MALMAISON. 149 that month, correspondents had to be in front pretty quickly. And I was to the north, with no road, whereas all the other fellows were to the east. But Bazaine got quiet, and the old woman and I buried our man. The Prussian lieutenant (a Pome ranian) said that she was a witch, and objected ; but the old Frenchwoman and I got it through. She frightened him a little by saying that she could find amber in the forest, if she chose. She says that our lad was buried in consecrated ground.

I extremely doubt it. Malmaison is so utterly shattered, that you cannot judge by an inch or two. She knew where he lay — it was in the corner of the orchard by the pond. / knew the place more by observation. The Pomeranian lieu tenant gave us hands, and we got a good grave dug in the orchard. I had seen by that time a good deal of trench-work, and so I happened to do the last honours of death for Alphonse, whom I remember as a mere child with a drum. I recollect boxing his ears for playing his drum on the day of the late Duke of Wel lington's funeral, and I am sorry for it now. I did what none of his family could do for him — I buried him with military honours. Perhaps the stay-at-home MALMAISON. people would care to know what military honours are like. You take your man by his two heels as if he was a wheelbarrow, and you drag him to the edge of the trench.

Then you get down yourself, and pull him in, laying him as decently as you can. Then you get out, and he stays there. Then you pitch the earth down on his face as if he was a dog. That night above Metz I spent with old Sophie, and I got all the truth from her. I do not assert that I did my duty by my employers — in fact, I know that I did not. My employers were very strongly German, and I in reason was strongly German also ; but I had lived so very much in France, that I was sympathetically and sentimentally most decidedly French. I can stand un utterable horrors as well as another ; I have proved it. I have looked into more dead men's faces than I could count ; I have been in more hospitals than I can well remember. At Sedan I waited at the corner of the street while 12,000 French prisoners passed, yet I was always in terror that I should see the face of Alphonse Courrier.

In all the hideous butchery I never saw it at all. The English doctor who got me to go with him and examine the dead at La Chapelle thought my MALMAISON. nerve was at fault at first. He said kindly, " You will get used to this." I said, " If I could see one face, I would care for nothing." I did not know that the man we buried at Malmaison was the man whose face I dreaded to meet at Givonne. I wish I had known ; I thought that it was a son or relation of Sophie's. In truth, the man we buried in the orchard was our own Alphonse. It is too horrible to think of now. They look so pretty, those French dead ! Long lines of scarlet and blue — you cannot tell how beautiful they look until you have seen them. I have tried hard, but I never dreamt that I should see death in this degree. And to think of my burying Alphonse, and the old witch Sophie keeping her secret !

The heaped blue Germans beyond Bazeilles were very terrible, the trenches there are terrible ; but at the last, in the mere beauty of death, France is supreme. No human mind ever conceived anything more terribly beautiful than the French dead on these fields. I would not have cared much, had it not been for Alphonse. I always liked the boy, and I knew that he loved Marie, as boys will love. I had loved her myself, in fact ; and when the dead lad had been dragged to MALMAISON. his grave in the orchard by the heels, and when old Sophie told me that the unrecognisable corpse was that of Alphonse, I took her away with me ; and in a half ruined room of the old chateau she and I talked through the whole story together. The room was the head quarters of General von Stein, who sat by the window ; while I, with old Sophie under my protection, cowered over the fire, surrounded by French peasants who had crept in for warmth* The room properly belonged to the Pomeranians, but they gave us the best places.

Young Franz Hertz (of Pomerania), who was a friend of mine, and who had been educated at King's College with me, asked me why I had got the old Frenchwoman in tow. I told him very quickly who she was ; and he went away at once, and came back with sausage and wine for her. At this moment Bazaine began, or, to be more correct, some of his outposts began, a splutter ing fire of musketry, and a few large guns were fired. It might be a sortie, or it might not ; but the German officers hurried out, and left old Sophie and me alone to talk through the story. * The writer is only describing what he has seen. MALMAISON. 153 The Courriers have always been rich, and the Can zons are richer than they. The Canzons are of an old family — a family who, however, kept a great deal of their property in Champagne through the Revolution.

The Courriers made their money while the Canzons kept it. But an alliance was made between the two families in 1828, when the gentle and pretty Alice de Canzon married Adolphe Courrier. At the same time Elise Courrier married young Hubert de Canzon. Some said that they were mere mariages de convenances, but it was not the fact. Old Courrier (into whose share of the Revolution of 1792 I decline to inquire) was a kind of tenant of old De Canzon in the Champagne wine trade. The children had grown up together, and so no one was in the least surprised at their making mutual marriages. But there was something more tender between the families than mere mercantile mat ters. The old men had a very strong feeling towards one another. The Courriers and the Canzons had helped one another through very hard times with all loyalty and good-wdl.

That traditional loyalty de scended to other generations. Elise Courrier-Canzon died ten years after she had given birth to Marie Can- MALMAISON. zon, and old Canzon dying a few years afterwards, left Marie Canzon his heiress. The families were Huguenot, and it so happened that both old Courrier (still alive at eighty) and De Canzon desired that their grandchildren should have a certain amount of English education. It therefore came about that Marie De Canzon was in England with her two cousins. Marie used to go to school at Mrs. Protheroe's, in Earl's-gardens, Brompton ; and the two cousins, Louis and Alphonse, were boarded with my father, a clergyman at Holloway, for the purpose of attending King's College. My father was glad to have two French boys in his house ; and he used to make us speak French at dinner.

My father was also of the Evangelical school, and was rather proud of having Huguenots in the house. If my father ever could have bored me, it would have been on the subject of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. I wanted to be a soldier ; but my father could not afford it, and wanted me to be a clergyman. To this I objected ; and the end of it all is that I am a journalist. When war ceases, I shall have to find a new employ ment. However, it has not ceased as yet. While there MALMAISON. is life there is hope. I will undertake to go under fire for any paper — political principles no object — for fifty pounds a month, and twenty francs a day for expenses, excluding telegrams, which are always incorrect. I suppose that I shall end by going to a farm in Ontario, just to win bread between the wars, for I never can settle down permanently any more.

I have the war fever on me ever since the Crimean campaign, when I, as a mere boy, won the applause of Europe by my letters. I have been through every campaign since that ; and I wake in the night, here in quiet England, and fancy that I hear the sound of guns. I have been wounded twice : once on the day of Balaclava, and once on the day of Agra. I suppose I shall have peace in my grave, for there seems no peace here. There was a time in my life when things were not so with me. The morning of my life at college was very peaceful. Louis and Alphonse Courrier used to go to the college together, though I was much older than either of them, and in the senior department. Louis, again, was much older than Alphonse, who was about the same age as his cousin Marie. I took to these gentle French lads, as some English boys will take to MALMAISON.

French boys in preference to any boys of their own nation. They were so gentle and pleasant, that it was impossible to help loving at least one of them, and be sides, they were the only two pupils my father had at the time, so we were always together. They knew no ill, and were content with the simplest pleasures — an excursion to Hampstead-heath, or, still better, a ramble among the shops, were pleasures enough for us. I have been very fine since then, and have dined with princes and rajahs ; but I never was so happy as I was in the very old days before this journalist business began. One Christmas my mother announced to us that we were to have a visitor, but she refused to tell us the name. On Christmas-eve a fly drove up to the door, and there stepped from it Marie Canzon, at the sight of whom her cousins gave a wild cry of joy.

She was an exquisite blonde young woman, of about fifteen years old ; very tall for her age. I have never seen any one so beautiful in my life. She is handsome still, in spite of all she has gone through. Ask any of those kindly romantic Germans who were first into Metz, whether they remember the beautiful French woman who watched by two corpses under the cathe- MALMAISON. 157 dral ; ask Bazaine if he remembers the lady who headed the women of Metz, when they came and prayed him not to surrender to the very last ; ask the Germans if they remember the lady who carried the white flag in that most lamentable sortie of women. I remember that there was deep frost and ice when she came ; and that the waters were bearing, and all the world was on the ice. It was early in the day when she came, and we were going to skate on our pet piece of water, St. James's-park.

She asked to go with us, and my mother gave leave ; and so we took her trip ping among us. Her whole soul seemed filled with delight, but delight of a very quiet kind. She thought that we boys were doing her the very highest honour in the world. She was humbly grateful to us ; and she once said to me — " You are too kind altogether, monsieur, to burden yourself with me ; but I will be very good, and do ex actly as I am told. I have never seen ice, save once on the Moselle at ThionviUe. Monsieur knows Thionville ? No ! WeU, I can assure monsieur that Thionville is a MALMAISON. very nice place, though not so nice as Metz ; but of all places in the world, I think Strasburg the finest, in re gard to shops. Stay, I am incorrect, as usual. I said that I had only seen ice once ; yet I have seen it twice.

I saw some at Namur on the Meuse. Does monsieur know Namur ?" I did not. " Ah-h-h ! but at Namur, in the shop on the other side of the way from the Hotel de l'Europe, there is the finest gingerbread in all the world. I stayed with my aunt Courrier at Lafontaine for a week, and I used to walk into Namur every day to buy that gingerbread. It was a speciality of Monsieur Leroy's. I like Sedan also ; but Bazeilles is very pleasant — you are more in the country. There are veiy pleasant places round Sedan, where all the world goes and has milk and strawberries — for example, Fond de Givonne, and be yond again, up the little valley to Givonne. Monsieur must travel and see these places." Monsieur travelled and saw them years after. Sedan was a horrible pest-house ; Bazeilles a ruin and a horror such as the world had never seen before; Fond de Givonne ruined with shells ; and the height between MALMAISON. 159 Givonne and Fond de Givonne covered with French corpses in heaps.

So we took her on to the ice, while we skated round her. I can see her now, sitting on a chair, which I hired for her, her eyes bright with pleasure, thinking herself as fine as a queen, but perfectly humble and grateful. After a time she asked us to skate away, for she was perfectly safe ; and we did so. When we came back after half an hour, we found her in animated con versation with the man who let out the chairs and skates. We told her that it was time to go home, and she came at once ; but when I offered the man the money for the .chair, he emphatically refused to take it, to my great astonishment. He looked like a common " ice blackguard ; " but he would have none of my money — "he would not take money for miss." When we were tripping home she took my arm — she was nearly as tall as myself, though I am not small — and asked me if I would do her a favour.

I tell the honest truth when I say that I was so madly in love with her, that I would have done anything. " I cannot tell you how it was ; But this I know, it came to pass," MALMAISON. as Christina Rossetti sings. I promised her that I would do everything she told me for ever. " But that is unreasonable," she said ; " but the Eng lish are bizarre. I ask you to do one thing for me, and you promise to do all things. I do not understand." " Chivalry," I said. " Oh, comme cela," she said, laughing. " Well, now then, good knight, you must take me to see the wife of that man who hired to us the chair. He is in distress, and I have money, and I want to give him some. You hear, you knight ? " I heard, and I obeyed. She had got the address neatly written down in her pocket-book, and we went the next day.

As we started together, she said to me — " You are so very kind to me, that I do not know how to thank you. For you to take me to the ice yes terday, and again to take me to these poor people ! I will try to give no trouble to you ; but you spoil me with your kindness. Will you do more for me ? " I do not remember exactly what I said, but I did not make a fool of myself. "Then," she said, "I want to slide on the ice, as I MALMAISON. 161 saw those people doing, and I want you to show me a shop where they sell chocolate." I went with her then to Fortnum and Mason's ; after which we crossed the ice together, and went down the Horseferry-road into a slum, where she found the woman she wanted in bed with a baby, and four children cowering about the floor before an empty fire place. She looked round the room with a rather ex perienced eye, as it struck me, and without saying more than " Good-morning " to the woman, took out a sovereign, and requested me to step out and order in half a ton of coals and some small wood to be sent round instantly.