The Story of My Life, volumes 4-6 (part 4 of 6)

The Story of My Life, volumes 4-6 (part 4 of 6)

“A few years ago, Mr. Hussey mentioned the tradition that Darrell had attended his own funeral to the old sexton, and asked if he could throw any light upon it. He said, ‘Yes, forty years ago, when your uncle was buried, the coffin next to which he was placed was that of Mr. Darrell, which was falling to pieces, and so I looked into it, and was surprised to see no remains whatever of a body, but only fragments of stone.’

“On the first day of my visit an old Lady Smith Mariott dined, bringing with her a magic crystal ball, in which she was very anxious that we should ‘see something,’ and was greatly disappointed when we did not. The ball was given to her by the old Lord Stanhope,[374] a firm believer, and many strange things had been seen in it--figures, and sometimes figures in armour. Mr. Hussey heard of a curious sixteenth-century MS. on magic balls in the British Museum, and went to look at it, and it was strange to find it say that ‘men in armour frequently appeared, especially on Sundays.’

“In the evening the conversation turned on witchcraft, and on Mr. Maitland, author of the ‘Church in the Catacombs,’ chaplain of Archbishop Howley, who undertook to prove the absurdity of belief in witchcraft, but, on examination, found such incontrovertible evidence of its reality, that he abandoned the subject. Talk of strange relics led to mention of the heart of a French king preserved at Nuneham in a silver casket. Dr. Buckland, whilst looking at it, exclaimed, ‘I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before,’ and, before any one could hinder him, he had gobbled it up, and the precious relic was lost for ever. Dr. Buckland used to say that he had eaten his way straight through the whole animal creation, and that the worst thing was a mole--that was utterly horrible.[375]

“Speaking of Lady Waterford, led Mr. Hussey to recall some of the wild escapades which he remembered in Lord Waterford’s youth. At one time, when he was living in Dublin with his uncle the Primate, coming home late at night, he had a great quarrel with his carman about the fare, and left the man swearing outside the door. Coming into the hall, he found his uncle’s gown and trencher lying on the side-table, and putting them hastily on, and going out with a stick and gruff voice, said, ‘What do you mean by coming here and trying to cheat my nephew? I’ll teach you not to do such things for the future,’ and he thrashed him soundly. The man went away, saying that he had been thrashed by the Archbishop of Armagh in person.”

* * * * *

“London, June 22.--Tea with Mrs. Duncan Stewart, who, talking of her youth, recounted how Washington Irving had taken her eleven nights consecutively to see Talma act, and of the acting of Madame Rachel; how, in the ‘Cinna’ of Corneille, she sat quietly in a chair whilst all the people were raging round her, and of the wonderful power with which she hissed out--

‘Je recevrois de lui la place de Livie, Comme un moyen plus sur d’attenter à sa vie.’

“Mr. and Mrs. Kendal were there, a pleasant handsome pair; and Madame Modjeska came in, and taking a live chameleon, which was clinging to the breast of Miss Thompson, her pet, posed with it perched on her finger, though it looked the very incarnation of devildom.”

* * * * *

“June 23.--Drew with Windsor and the Husseys at Ham House. Lady Huntingtower had said to us the other day, ‘You have heard about the poor Duke of Richmond?’ We thought it was the live Duke, and inquired anxiously after him, but she said, ‘No, it is the portrait at Ham: we can see nothing but the Duke’s legs now.’ And thus at Ham we saw it--the utter ruin of a glorious Vandyke. They had sent for a common upholsterer from Richmond to varnish it, and he had covered it with something which had annihilated it altogether.

“An American being urged to go to see the Park at mid-day as a typical London scene, returned saying, ‘I was disappointed, the attendance was so slim.’”

* * * * *

“July 5, 1882.--Dined with Miss Courtenay. Kinglake of the Crimea sat close to me--old now and very feeble, but apparently greatly beloved by those who know him well. Mr. Burton was on the other side, receiving congratulations on his purchases at the Hamilton sale. We had all been reading and generally enchanted with Mrs. Kemble’s ‘Later Reminiscences,’ and Mr. Reeve of the Edinburgh Review was delighted to have much to say of his personal remembrance of her, much that certainly was not favourable. She says little of the separation from her husband (Mr. Butler) in her book, but Mr. Reeve remembered her intensely overbearing manner to him. Once when he was travelling with them in Belgium, Mr. Butler, with great difficulty, procured a very beautiful bouquet for her for the evening. He gave it to her. ‘I have been all over the town, my dear, to get this bouquet for you,’ he said. She sniffed at it, said contemptuously, ‘There are no gardenias in this bouquet,’ and threw it to the back of the fire.

“‘One day,’ said Mr. Reeve, ‘I was talking to Mr. Butler at a party, when she came up with “Pearce, I want to go.”--“In a minute, my dear.” In another moment she came again with “Pearce, I want to go directly.”--“Very well, my dear,” and he prepared to order the carriage. I said, “It is cruel of you to take him away just now; we were having a very deep conversation,” and I shall never forget the contemptuous tone in which she said, “Deep, with--Pearce!”

“‘Mrs. Kemble always disliked those who were afraid of her, but she hated those who were not.

“‘She loved scenic effect, and so did her sister Adelaide, who was her superior in many ways. When their father took his leave of the stage, all the audience wept; but Fanny and Adelaide, who had the stage-box, leant forward as much as possible over the side and wept copiously with their pocket-handkerchiefs.

“‘No one could do the Semiramide now, but Adelaide was sublime in it. She was very grand in the Norma, but in the Semiramide no one ever came up to her. Passion she understood, but in softer and quieter parts she was a failure.’”

* * * * *

“July 10.--Luncheon in Sir Francis Seymour’s apartments at Kensington Palace to meet Don Carlos. He is an immense man, almost gigantic, and very handsome, and had a magnificent boar-hound with him--a very prince amongst dogs. He asked if I spoke Spanish. I said that I had spoken it in Spain, but was afraid of venturing upon it in London. So then he proposed Italian, in which it was easy to get on with him.”

* * * * *

“Chevening, July 15.--Yesterday I came here to a house where I have much memory of past kindness, and where I find the young Lord and Lady Stanhope eminently desirous of carrying it on. Lochiel and his Lady Margaret are here; she a daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch, and most unusually natural and pleasant.”

* * * * *

“July 16.--After luncheon, we had a pleasant walk to Knockholt Beeches--Lady Northcote, the two Stanhope brothers, Mr. Banks Stanhope, Lady Margaret, and I. Afterwards, sitting on the stone platform in front of the house, Sir Stafford Northcote told us--

“‘The great A. B. was tremendously jostled the other day in going down to the House. A. B. didn’t like it. “Do you know who I am?” he said; “I am a Member of Parliament and I am Mr. A. B.”--“I don’t know about that,” said one of the roughs, “but I know that you’re a damned fool.”--“You’re drunk,” said A. B.; “you don’t know what you’re saying.”--“Well, perhaps I am rather drunk to-night,” said the man, “but I shall be sober to-morrow morning; but you’re a damned fool to-night, and you’ll be a damned fool to-morrow morning.”’

* * * * *

“July 18.--Dined with Lady Ossington, the most charming, kindest, and richest of old ladies, to meet the Duchess of Sermoneta. Lady Enfield was there, with white hair turned back high on her head, like a Sir Joshua in real life. Mr. Newton was very amusing with his riddles:--

‘My first Gladstone loves, My second Gladstone hates: My whole, pronounced slow, is what Gladstone wishes: My whole, pronounced quick, is where Gladstone ought to be.’ Answer, Reformatory.

“On the Greeks sending marble for a bust of Gladstone, he related the lines:--

‘When Woolner’s hand, in classic mood, carving the Premier’s pate is, Hellas, to show her gratitude, sends him the marble gratis. Oh, could this nation, but in stone, repay the gift genteelly, This country would send back her own Glad-stone to Hell-as freely.’”

In the beginning of September, my friend Harry Lee came to Holmhurst as usual for his autumn holidays, and, with the wish of giving him change and pleasure, I took him with me for a fortnight to Holland. We saw the whole of that little country, and enjoyed several of the places very much, especially the so-thoroughly Dutch Dort; quiet Alkmaar, with its charming old weigh-house; and Zwolle, with its fine old gateway. But the tour is not one which leaves much interest behind it. There is such a disadvantage in not being able to understand what people say, and all the Dutch we had anything to do with were so unaccommodating, so excessively grasping and avaricious. Besides, all my luggage, registered through to Brussels, disappeared and could not be traced, so that I had the odd experience of traversing a whole country with nothing more than a comb and a tooth-brush. Two months afterwards the luggage arrived quite safe at Holmhurst, covered with labels, quite intact, having made a long tour by itself quite in a different direction from the one we took, and without any explanation or any expense.[378]

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Babworth Hall, Notts, Oct. 7, 1882.--I have been spending four pleasant days with kind Mrs. Bridgeman Simpson, to meet old Lady Westminster,[380] who is the most winning, courteous, and charming of old ladies, finding something pleasant to say to every one, putting every one at their ease, and possessing that real dignity of simplicity which is so indescribably charming. On Wednesday I went with her to Clumber, where we saw the new and very ugly hall, with Italian artists putting down a mosaic pavement.

“Yesterday we went by appointment to Welbeck, arriving by the darksome tunnel, more than two miles long, upon which the late Duke spent £60,000, and £60,000 more apiece upon banking up (and spoiling) his sheet of water with brick walls and building a gigantic riding-school. The house itself stands well, considering the ugliness of the park, and is rather handsome. We were shown through a long suite of rooms containing a good many treasures, the most interesting being a glorious old chest of metal, in which the Bentincks, who came over with William III., brought over their jewels. In the last room we found Lady Bolsover, the Duke’s stepmother.

“The house, vast as it is, has no staircase worth speaking of. The late Duke lived almost entirely in a small suite of rooms in the old part of the house. He inherited the peculiarity of his mother, who would see no one, and he always hid himself. If he gave permission to any one to visit Welbeck, he always added, ‘But Mr. So-and-so will be good enough not to see me’ (if they chanced to meet). He drove out, but in a black coach like a hearse, drawn by four black horses, and with all the blinds down; and he walked out, but at night, with a woman, who was never to speak to him, and always to walk exactly forty yards in front, carrying a lanthorn. When he went to London, it was in a closed brougham, which was put on a railway truck, and which deposited him at his own house at Cavendish Square, his servants all being ordered out of the way: no one ever saw him go or arrive. When he needed a doctor, the doctor only came to the door, and asked questions through it of the valet, who was allowed to feel his pulse.

“The Duke’s mania for a hidden life made him build immense suites of rooms underground, only approachable by a common flight of steps leading to a long tunnel, down which the dinner is conveyed from the far-distant kitchen on a tramway. From a great library one enters a billiard-room capable of holding half-a-dozen billiard-tables. A third large room leads to an enormous ball-room, which can contain 2000 people. The approach to this from above is by means of a gigantic hydraulic drop, in which a carriage can be placed, or twenty persons can be accommodated--the guests being thus let down to the ball-room itself. A staircase through the ceiling of one of the rooms, which is drawn up by a windlass, leads hence to the old riding-school, which is lighted by 1000 jets of gas. Hence a tunnel, 200 yards long, leads to a quadrangular piece of ground, unbuilt upon, but excavated in preparation for a large range of bachelor’s rooms, smoking rooms, and nurseries, to cover four acres of ground. Another tunnel, three-quarters of a mile long, leads thence to the stables, cow-houses, and dairies, like a large village. At the Duke’s death there were ninety-four horses in the stables, only trained for exercise or feeding. Beyond the stables is a large riding-school, in which there are 8000 jets of gas, an exercising ground under glass, with a gallop on straw and sawdust for a quarter of a mile. Close by is an enormous garden, of which six acres are used for strawberry beds, every alternate row being glazed for forcing the plants. Alongside of this is a glazed wall a quarter of a mile long. The garden is about thirty acres in extent, and requires fifty-three men. In the late Duke’s time there were forty-five grooms and helpers in the stables. The cow-houses are palaces, with a covered strawyard attached, and are surrounded by hydraulic screens, which are let down or raised according to the wind. There were eighty keepers and underkeepers.

“All is vast, splendid, and utterly comfortless: one could imagine no more awful and ghastly fate than waking up one day and finding oneself Duke of Portland and master of Welbeck.

“Coming home through the tunnel, Mr. Watson told me the curious story of the Misses Offley of Norton Hall. These ladies (descended from King Offa) saw in a vision their only brother, who was with a tutor in Edinburgh, upon the ridge of the house. Dreadfully alarmed, and perfectly certain of what they had seen, they went to a neighbour, a Mr. Shore, and told him they were sure that their brother was dead. Utterly failing to reassure them, in order to comfort them, Mr. Shore undertook to ride to Edinburgh (it was before the time of railways), and find out the truth. As he was crossing the boundary of Yorkshire, he met the funeral of the young man, who was being brought back to be buried at his own home. However, he went on to Edinburgh to see the tutor, and then discovered that, in his illness, young Offley had been persuaded to make a will entirely in favour of the tutor and his wife. Mr. Shore at once said that he would give the tutor £20,000 if he would give up all his claims under this will, but the tutor refused. The next day Mr. Shore went back and offered £10,000, and it was taken. The property was then worth £10,000 a year, but is now worth £20,000 a year.

“Staying here with Lady Westminster is her friend Mrs. Hallyburton (née Owen, and first married to a Mr. Williams), who is the widow of Judge Hallyburton--‘Sam Slick.’”

* * * * *

Alas! whilst I was enjoying this Babworth visit, the greatest sorrow which still remained possible for me was preparing, and a few days later it fell. It would be difficult for any one who had not shared our life to understand how much my dearest old nurse, Mary Lea, was to me, or the many causes which, with each succeeding year, had drawn closer and closer the tender tie, as of mother and son, which existed between us. And since 1870 she had been more than ever dear to me--the one precious link with our past which no other knew: the only person to whom I could talk on all subjects with entire certainty of understanding and sympathy. Each year, too, had made her more beautiful in her old age, and there were none who visited Holmhurst and failed to carry away an attractive remembrance of the lovely old woman, with her pretty old-fashioned dress and snowy cap, set in the homely surroundings of her sitting-room, full of pictures and curiosities, or in the poultry-yard, which was her pride and joy, brimming over with quaint proverbs, wise sayings, and interesting memories.

My dear Lea had not forgotten any of the places she had seen, or any of the varied circumstances of her life; and these scenes and events formed a mental picture-gallery in the circle of her inner consciousness, where she could amuse herself for ever. Life was never monotonous to her; there was so much that was beautiful, so much that was good, so much that was even grand to recollect; and then the surroundings of the present were full of simple pleasures; her room furnished with treasured memorials of the long-ago; her farmyard, with its manifold life, recalling her girlhood in a Shropshire farmhouse; her many kindly thoughts and deeds towards her neighbours at the hospice or in the village, one or other of whom loved to come in and chat for an hour daily with the beautiful old woman who had so much of mild wisdom in her discourse; her many visitors of the higher class to see the house, in whose coming she recognised and welcomed a kind of homage to her beloved mistress, and to whom consequently she would often pour out the most precious of her recollections; the garden and fields, which brought fresh interest with each succeeding season; but most especially her master, her nursling, the child of her heart, whose every employment, or friendship, or amusement, or duty, or work, or honour, was more to her than anything else in the world.

In this year especially I had been much with her, and the elder and younger relation seemed almost obliterated in the intimacy of our friendship and communion. Daily I used to take a little walk with my sweet old nurse upon my arm, and the upper path leading to the little pool above the field will always be connected with her, walking thus, and recalling a thousand memories out of the rich past, which was common to us, and to us alone. Here I walked with her the day before I went to Babworth, and am thankful that I did not give up doing so because a young man was staying with me. She seemed even more calmly happy than usual that day. Autumn tints and tones were pervading everything, but when I spoke of our seeing the plants again in their full beauty in spring, she said sweetly, “Those who live till the spring will see them, dear sir.” There are some lines of Lewis Morris which recall what my dear nurse was at this time:--

“There is a sweetness in autumnal days, Which many a lip doth praise: When the earth, tired a little and grown mute Of song, and having borne its fruit, Rests for a little space ere winter come.

* * * * *

And even as the hair grows grey And the eyes dim, And the lithe form which toiled the live-long day, The stalwart limb, Begins to stiffen and grow slow, A higher joy they know: To spend the season of the waning year, Ere comes the deadly chill,

* * * * *

In a pervading peace.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Oct. 11, 1882.--Yesterday two terrible telegrams met me when I went to my breakfast at the Athenæum, telling me that my dearest Lea was dangerously ill, and bidding me return at once. In half-an-hour I was in the train, Ronald Gower travelling with me to Hastings, and an agonising journey it was. I found the carriage at St. Leonards, having been waiting five hours, with a perfectly hopeless account.

“Yet I found my dearest old nurse better than I had hoped, able to be glad to see me, even, though very suffering, to tell me little things which had occurred during my week’s absence. But at night she grew much worse, and hour after hour I had the anguish of watching, with Harriet and Mrs. Peters, over terrible suffering, which we were unable to alleviate. God sends one no discipline so terrible as this. Happy indeed are those who have only to suffer themselves, not to witness the suffering of their dear ones.

“To-day she is weaker. Yesterday she spoke of ‘when I am better.’ To-day she speaks of ‘when I am gone.’

“I sit all day in her room, watching the beloved beautiful old face, fanning her, repeating words of encouragement and comfort to her; and she always has a smile for me.

“Outside the window the beautiful laburnum tree which she loves is shaking off its leaves and preparing for winter, and oh! when its golden blossoms come again, this dearest friend of my whole life will be away!”

* * * * *

“Thursday, Oct. 12.--Last night she slept quietly, and her two nurses by her. I went in and out continually, and she scarcely moved. In the morning she was better, and able to sit in the arm-chair near her bed. It was the day on which we always used to try to leave for Rome, and she spoke of it, and this drew her into many pleasant recollections, such as the dear Mother had on her last day here; of the anemones in the Villa Doria at Rome, and the especial corners in which the best were to be found; of the daisies in the Parco S. Gregorio, and of many happy hours spent in other favourite places. She also asked after all the different members of the family, and sent messages to some of them. In the afternoon she was so well that, by her wish, I went down to Hastings to see Ronald Gower, and when I came back, she liked to hear about it.

“But to-night (9 P.M.) she is weaker and the pain and wheezing have increased. I have just read to her, as usual, a litany for the night-watches and several other prayers. She said the ‘Amen’ to each most fervently, and repeated the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ after me. Afterwards I spoke of the comfort prayers and hymns were to the Mother in her illness: ‘Yes, her’s were prayers,’ she said.

“Then she said, ‘I did not think I should be taken away from you so soon as this.’ I said, ‘Perhaps, dear Pettie, it may still be God’s will that you may be raised up to us again, and this is what we must wish and try for.’--‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘and I do try for it--too much perhaps, more than is right perhaps; and yet I am quite resigned either to go or stay: the Lord’s will, that is the best.’

“Then she said, ‘Open that top drawer and take out a box. There are some things in it I wish you to have, things connected with your family which you will value, and my large silver brooch; I wish you to keep that. And I would like you to keep the little bits of chaney that were my mother’s--the lions, and the little cups and saucers that are in your Mother’s room; she liked to see them, and you will: I do not wish them ever to leave this house.’

“‘Dearest Pettie,’ I said, ‘if it should be God’s will that you should not be given back to us, would you wish to be laid by Mother at Hurstmonceaux, or should you be taken to your own mother’s grave at Cheswardine? Whatever you wish shall be done.’ ‘If you please,’ she murmured, ‘Hurstmonceaux would be best. I have been always with you. All my own are passed away. You are more to me than any one else. I should wish to be laid near your dear Mother, and then you would be laid there too.’--‘Yes, dear, we should all be together,’ I said.

“Then she said, ‘You have been everything to me all your life: quite like my own child: all that a child of my own could have been.’

“She always smiles sweetly to see me near her; but she is weaker, and everything is difficult. As Aurora Leigh says--

‘The poor lip Just motions for a smile, and lets it go.’”

* * * * *

“Oct. 14.--Two terrible nights have we passed in trying to alleviate my dearest Lea’s great sufferings, but last night especially it was anguish to hear her moans and to be able to do so little: but I flit in and out, and whether it is day or night, am seldom many minutes away from her, and I think that is a comfort.”

* * * * *

“Oct. 15.--Last night was better, but all to-day she has been terribly ill. It is such a struggle to breathe through her worn-out frame. I sit constantly by her side, and chafe her hands and bathe her forehead, and can be quite cheerful for her sake; and she smiles to see me always there whenever she wakes. ‘Oh, how good you are to me,’ she said to-day. ‘I cannot be good enough to you, my own dearest Pettie, to you who have always been so very good to me.’

“But I feel, though no one tells me so, that I am sitting in the shadow of Death.”

* * * * *

“Monday, Oct. 16.--The doctor says she is sinking. She suffers less to-day, but is overwhelmed by the pressure on the lungs. I sit there--feed her--watch her, and smile.... I can do it for her sake. There will be time enough for grief when she cannot be grieved by it.

“She is all thankfulness,--only afraid of wearing us all out. ‘Thank Thee, O Lord, for my good victuals,’ she said, after taking her glassful of milk.

“Last night, waking from her sleep, she said, ‘Oh, I thought I was away and so very happy, and now I am come back to all this.’”

* * * * *

“Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 17.--She is still here--still suffering. Oh, my poor darling! what anguish it is to see her, and how thankful I shall be to God now when He will set her free. One can bear to part with one’s beloved ones, but their suffering tears one to pieces. How truly Heine says, ‘Der Tod ist nichts; aber das Sterben ist eine schändliche Erfindung.’”

* * * * *

“Wednesday, Oct. 19.--Yesterday morning there was agonising pain for three hours and then a respite. At 12 A.M. Hubert Beaumont walked in, having come off at once on hearing a hopeless account. He was much broken down at seeing his old friend so ill, but full of kindness and help for me and all of us.... All afternoon she was worse. Two doctors came.... At night she was terribly worse. Oh, it was so hard to see her suffer,--so very, very hard. Soon after midnight I gave dose after dose of laudanum, and when she was still, lay down--sank down, utterly worn-out. At 3 A.M. I heard Harriet’s voice, ‘Aunt is gone.’ All was still then--the agony lived through, the fight fought. As I rushed into the room, the colour was fading out of my darling Pettie’s cheeks, but her face and hands were still warm. A wonderful look of rest was stealing over the beloved features. I knelt down and said the bidding prayer. Truly we ‘gave thanks’ that our dearest one was at rest. Yet I felt--oh, so stunned, so helpless! Dear Hubert was a great comfort.

“All day we have sobbed at intervals. Many touching notes have come in; but I have felt dead in body and mind.”

* * * * *

“Oct. 20.--My dearest Lea is laid in her coffin. It has been a day of bitter anguish. All have tried to console, but

‘Console if you will, I can bear it, ’Tis a well-meant alms of breath: But not all the preaching since Adam Can make Death other than Death.’”[381]

* * * * *

“Oct. 21.--Hubert has been summoned away by his parents,--very miserable to go, poor boy. There has been a terrible storm all day, which has seemed more congenial than the lovely sunshine yesterday.

“In the evening Mrs. Peters had put lights in the room, and I went to look at my dearest Pettie in her coffin. The ‘afterglow’ had come on. All her old beauty had come back to her. There was not a wrinkle on her lovely dignified old face. Her snow-white hair just showed at the edge of her pretty little crimped cap: all was peace and repose. It comforted me to see her, and we surrounded her coffin with large branches of Michaelmas daisies, enlivened by sprays of fuchsia, and the autumn lilies which she loved.”

* * * * *

“Oct. 23.--In the morning I went into her room to see my dearest Pettie for the last time. Lady Darnley had sent a box of lovely flowers, and I laid them round her. The marvellous beauty of her countenance continued: it was the most sublime majesty of Death:--

‘That perfect presence of His face, Which we, for want of words, call Death.’[382]

“John[383] came in to see her too, but can think of nothing but his own future. That does not seem to occur to me--not yet: I can think of nothing but her wealthy past, so rich, so overflowing in deeds of love, in endearing ways which drew all hearts to her, in noble, simple trust and faith, in heart-whole devotion and self-abnegation for the Mother and me.

“At eleven I set off alone, in a little carriage, by the familiar lanes. It was the loveliest of autumnal days, and all was in its richest, most touching beauty: the Ashburnham woods; the long Boreham hill, with the group of weird pine-trees called ‘The Crooked Aunts;’ Sybil Filiol’s paved walk winding by the roadside; Windmill Hill; Lime Cross; Lime; Flower’s Green and the Mother’s little school; Hurstmonceaux Place; and then the ascent to the church through the deep hollow way overhung by old oaks.

“Soon after 2 P.M. the little procession appeared over the brow of the hill, the bearers, in white smock-frocks, walking by the carriages. The coffin was laden with flowers, wreaths sent by different friends, and a long garland of Michaelmas daisies and laurustinus falling over the side. I followed the coffin alone first, then all the servants from Holmhurst and many poor women from Lime Cross.

“The first part of the service was in the chancel amidst all the old family monuments. The grave was by my Mother’s side, in the same little garden enclosure. It was strange to feel that the next funeral there must be my own, and to look down upon her coffin on which my own will rest some day.

“After the others were gone I walked in the old deer-park. I felt as if I was a spirit haunting the place. All was peace and loveliness, but how great the change from the time when I was there so constantly! ‘On dépose fleur à fleur la couronne de la vie.’[384] All the familiar figures of my childhood are swept away--all the uncles and aunts, brothers and sister; all the old neighbours; nearly all the old friends; the dear Mother; Marcus Hare; Arthur and Mary Stanley; and now my own dear Lea: all the old homes too are broken up, pulled down, or deserted; only I and the ruins of the castle seem left.

‘So live I in spirit, Lonely, my hidden life, by none to be known of, Never a sound nor cloud-picture but brings to my fancy Matter for thought without end and keen-edged emotion.’”[385]

* * * * *

“Holmhurst, Nov. 14.--The winds are howling round and I sit alone in my home. The silence is sometimes awful, for I never hear the human voice now, for my only attendant, the faithful Anne, who waits upon me, is stone-deaf, so that all communication with her is in writing.

“It may seem odd, but my dear Lea’s removal really makes a greater blank in my life than even the Mother left behind. My Mother had so long taken the child’s place to be loved and taken care of: Lea, to her last hour, took as much care of me as in the first year of my life. I have the piteous feeling that there is none now to whom I signify: it can really ‘matter’ to no one whether I live or die. My friends are very kind, and would be sorry to lose me, but in this rapid world-current a few days would see them well out of their grief. And my dearest Lea, who cared--who would have cared while life lasted, rests now under a white marble cross like my Mother’s, inscribed--

MARY LEA GIDMAN, June 2, 1800: Oct. 19, 1882. Through fifty-four years Devoted, honoured, and beloved In the Hare family.”

XXIII

IN THE FURROWS OF LIFE

“Days--when gone-- Gone! they ne’er go; when past they haunt us still.” --EDWARD YOUNG.

“What used to be joy is joy no longer: but what is pain is easier because they have not to bear it.”--GEORGE ELIOT.

“To live for the shorter or longer remainder of my days with the simple bravery, veracity, and piety of her that is gone, that would be a right learning from her death, and a right honouring of her memory.”--CARLYLE.

“Dieu donne la robe selon le froid.”--PASCAL.

JOURNAL.

“Dec. 1882.--With what a numbed feeling of desolate sadness do I look back upon the last chapter. My home existence is so intensely changed by the blank which the dear old friend of my whole life has left. It was long before I could bear to go into her changed rooms, and I still wake nightly with the sad inward outcry, ‘Can it be--can it be? Is every one gone who shared our home life? Is there no one left who is associated with all our wealthy past?’ ‘Entbehren sollst du--sollst entbehren.’ And when my friends urge me to marry, I feel the utter desolateness of attempting to make new ties with any one who knows nothing and cares nothing of those with whom all my earlier life was bound up. I have happily still a great power of enjoyment when anything pleasant comes to me, but oh! how seldom it happens. Griefs and worries--griefs and worries come round with wheel-like recurrence. I often think of Aubrey de Vere’s lines:--

‘When I was young, I said to Sorrow, “Come, and I will play with thee.” He is near me now all day; And at night returns to say, “I will come again to-morrow, I will come and stay with thee.”

“Archbishop Tait, long a kind friend, is dead. I hear that at his funeral, in the beautiful churchyard at Addington, a little robin perched on an adjoining tombstone and poured forth a flood of song, apparently unconscious of all present. ‘How our father would have liked to have seen it,’ said one of the daughters.”

* * * * *

“Jan. 12, 1883.--Tea with Dowager Lady Donoughmore,[386] who was very pleasant. She described walking in Ireland with a stingy old gentleman. A beggar came up to them, and he said, ‘I have not got a penny to give you.’ The beggar retorted, ‘You’ve got an awful ugly face: I hope you may die soon, but I pity the worms that will have to eat you.’

“Lady Donoughmore, however, said that she had boundless experience of the natural poetry in the Irish peasantry. On receiving a shilling, an old woman said to her, ‘May ivery hair of yer honour’s head become a torch to guide yer sowle to heaven.’”

* * * * *

“June 19.--Dined with Lady Airlie, only meeting Mrs. Duncan Stewart and Lady De Clifford. Mrs. Stewart talked much of Mr. Carlyle.

“‘Mr. Hannay knew Carlyle very well, and often went to see him, but it was in his poorer days. One day when Mr. Hannay went to the house, he saw two gold sovereigns lying exposed in a little vase on the chimney-piece. He asked Carlyle what they were for. Carlyle looked--for him--embarrassed, but gave no definite answer. “Well, now, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Hannay, “neither you nor I are quite in a position to play ducks and drakes with sovereigns: what are these for?”--“Well,” said Carlyle, “the fact is, Leigh Hunt likes better to find them there than that I should give them to him.”

“‘I was sitting once by Mr. Bourton,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘and he was talking of Leigh Hunt. He said, “He is the only person, I believe, who, if he saw something yellow in the distance, and was told it was a buttercup, would be disappointed if he found it was only a guinea.”’

“Lady Airlie said she had known Leigh Hunt very well when she was a child. He had taken her into the garden, and talked to her, and asked her what she thought heaven would be like, and then he said, ‘I will tell you what I think it will be like: I think it will be like a most beautiful arbour all hung with creepers and flowers, and that one will be able to sit in it all day, and read a most interesting novel.’

“Of her early acquaintance with Washington Irving, Mrs. Stewart said, ‘It was at Havre. My guardian was consul there. People used to say, “Where is Harriet gone?” and he answered, “Oh, she is down at the end of the terrace, busy making Washington Irving believe he is God Almighty, and he is busy believing it.”’

“Mrs. Stewart told of Miss Ruth Paget, one of many sisters, who went down at night to the kitchen to let out her little dog for a minute, and found her brother Marco, who was a midshipman in the Mediterranean, sitting on the kitchen-table, swinging his legs, but pouring with wet. She said, ‘Good heavens, Marco, how did you come here?’ He looked at her, and only said, ‘Do not tell any one you have seen me.” She looked round for an instant to see if any one was coming, and when she turned, he was gone.

“Ghastly pale, she went upstairs. Her sisters said, ‘You look as if you had seen a ghost,’ and they tried to insist on her telling them what had happened to her. She put them off by complaining of headache and faintness; but she was terribly anxious.

“Three months afterwards she heard her brother was coming home, then that he had arrived at Portsmouth, then he came. The first time she was alone with him she said, ‘I must tell you something,’ and she told him how he had appeared to her, and then she said, ‘I wrote it down at the time, and here is the paper, with the date and the hour.’

“He looked shocked at first, and then said, that at that very moment, being absent from his ship without leave, his boat had been upset, and he had been as nearly drowned as possible--in fact, when he was taken out of the water, life was supposed to be extinct. His first fear on recovering was that his absence without leave would be detected by his accident and become his ruin, and his first words were, ‘Do not tell any one you have seen me.’”

* * * * *

“June 21.--At Madame du Quaire’s I met Oscar Wilde and Mrs. Stewart. He talked in a way intended to be very startling, but she startled him by saying quietly, ‘You poor dear foolish boy! how can you talk such nonsense?’ Mrs. M. L. had recently met this ‘type of an aesthetic age’ at a country house, and described his going out shooting in a black velvet dress with salmon-coloured stockings, and falling down when the gun went off, yet captivating all the ladies by his pleasant talk. One day he came down looking very pale. ‘I am afraid you are ill, Mr. Wilde,’ said one of the party. ‘No, not ill, only tired,’ he answered. ‘The fact is, I picked a primrose in the wood yesterday, and it was so ill, I have been sitting up with it all night.’ Oscar Wilde’s oddities would attract notice anywhere, but of course they do so ten times more in the plein midi of London society, where the smallest faults of manner, most of all of assumption, are detected and exposed at once.”

* * * * *

“July 2, 1883.--I have just heard again the ghost story so often told by Mrs. Thompson Hankey:

“Two beautiful but penniless sisters were taken out in London by an aunt. A young gentleman from the north, of very good family and fortune, fell in love with one of them, and proposed to her, but she was with difficulty persuaded to accept him, and afterwards could never be induced to fix a date for their marriage. The young man, who was very much in love, urged and urged, but, on one excuse or another, he was always put off. Whilst things were in this unsettled state, the young lady was invited to a ball. Her lover implored her not to go to it, and when she insisted, he made her promise not to dance any round dances, saying that if she did, he should believe she had ceased to care for him.

“The young lady went to the ball, and, as usual, all the young men gathered round her, trying to persuade her to dance. She refused any but square dances. At last, however, as a delightful valse was being played, and she was standing looking longingly on, she suddenly felt herself seized round the waist, and hurried into the dance. Not till she reached the end of the room, very angry, did she succeed in seeing with whom she had been forced to dance: it was with her own betrothed. Furious, she said she should never forgive him. But, as she spoke, he disappeared. She begged several young men to look for him, but he could not be found anywhere, and, to her astonishment, every one denied altogether having seen him. On reaching home, she found a telegram telling her of his death, and when the hours were compared, he was found to have died at the very moment when he had seized her for the dance.

“Mrs Thompson Hankey knew all the persons concerned.

“Catherine Vaughan has just been taken to see an old woman in Scotland, whose daughter was married last year. She asked if she was getting on well. ‘Aye, she’s gettin’ on varra weel, varra weel indeed. She’s got a pig, and she’s got a cock, and she’s got a son: it’s true that she hates her mon, but one must aye have ae thing.’”

“Charlotte Leycester is to be left in possession of my little Holmhurst whilst I am away, and has such complete enjoyment of it, that I shall have no sense of wasting my home by a long absence, as would otherwise be the case.”

During the summer of 1883, I left England to join my oft-times travelling companions, the Miss Hollands, for a tour in Russia. I did not greatly enjoy this tour, partly because I felt so terribly knowing almost nothing of the language of the country, not being able to read even the names of the streets. I also suffered from not having had time to teach myself anything of the country before I went there: for, after I came home, and tried to instruct my mind by every book I could get hold of about Russia, I found my travels had been much more interesting than, from the very intensity of my ignorance, I believed them to be at the time.

At Kieff I left my companions, and found my way home alone by Warsaw and by Cracow, with its curious monuments and odious Jew population. After the great discomforts of Russia, a very few days in Germany seemed very charming, and I was especially glad to see beautiful old Breslau, and afterwards Wilhelmshohe near Cassel, in a perfect conflagration of splendid autumnal tints, truly realising Hood’s lines--

“How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fled.”

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“St. Petersburg, August 22, 1883.--A rest in the interesting group of North-German cities, Dantzic, Marienburg, Königsberg, prepared us for the thirty-six hours’ journey through monotonous fir-woods and cornfields, unvaried through 1000 miles, till two great purple domes rose on the horizon--St. Alexander Newski and the Cathedral of St. Isaac.

“It was difficult to believe we were in Europe on emerging from the station and seeing the endless droskies--sledges on wheels--drawn up, with their extraordinary-looking drivers, in long blue dressing-gowns (wadded like feather-beds, so as to make the wearer look like a huge pillow), with a girdle, and low cap. Then the gigantic streets, each about as broad as St. James’s Square, and the huge squares, in which the palaces, however vast, are so disproportioned to the immensity of space, that their architectural features are lost. Then the utter desolation, one carriage and two or three foot-passengers in the apparently boundless vistas. Altogether, St. Petersburg is quite the ugliest place I ever saw, even the Neva, huge as it is, so black and grim, and the smoke of the steamers giving the worst aspects of London. But yesterday evening we had a delightful drive of four hours on the islands in the Neva, which answer here to the Park, and are exquisitely varied--lovely winding alleys, bosquets of flowering trees, green meadows, little lakes, rushing brooks, every variety of cottage and villa and garden and bridge, at least twenty miles of them. Coming back, we stopped at the fortress-church to see the royal tombs--stately marble sarcophagi in groups; first Peter the Great and his family, then two groups of intermediate sovereigns, then the present family, surrounded (inside the church) by a grove of palms and laden with flowers. Close by is Peter the Great’s cottage, and the tiny early church in which he worshipped, and, at the former, the famous ‘icon’ which he carried in his wars, before which crowds of people were incessantly prostrating and kissing the pavement.”

* * * * *

“Sept. 4.--We returned last night from Finland, of which I am glad to have visited a specimen, though there is not much to see, except gloomy little lakes, flat country, hundreds of miles of monotonous forests of young firs and birch, and little wooden villages. All is very much like an inferior Sweden, and the people understand Swedish, and have the Swedish characteristics of honesty and civility, which, at so short a distance off, make them an extraordinary contrast to the Russians. Our journey was amusingly varied by endless changes of rail, steamer, walk, char-a-banc, as the country allowed. At Imatra, our destination, a lake tumbles into a river by curious rapids.”

* * * * *

“Moscow, Sept. 9.--We left St. Petersburg on Monday, and went to Novgorod the Great, one of the oldest cities in Russia, once enormous, but now dwindled to a large village, with a decaying kremlin and a wonderful cathedral like a mosque, a blaze of beautiful ancient colour within, quite splendid in its gold and silver decorations, and the shrines of sixteen famous saints (the Greek saints are most puzzling) who are buried there, and whose mummified hands, left outside their cerecloths, are exposed to the kisses of the faithful. A journey of nineteen hours’ rail brought us here on Thursday morning. The first impression of Moscow is disappointing--commonplace omnibuses at the station, ugly vulgar streets like the back-streets of Brighton, and, as the town is above twenty miles round and nine miles across, they seem endless. But you enter the Chinese town, in which we are now living, by gates in the strangest walls imaginable, and the street has all the crowd and clamour of Naples. Another series of very tall battlemented red walls and lofty gates announces the Kremlin. This is more striking than I expected--the three mosque-like cathedrals (there are five cathedrals and three hundred churches in Moscow), and the splendid view from the high terrace in front of them, which recalls that from the Pincio at Rome, only the Moskva is a very broad river, and every church has the strangest of towers--like bulbs, pine-apples, melons, fir-cones, gilt or blue or brightest green, covered with network, with stars, discs, moons, hung with chains like veils, every device that the wildest dream or maddest imagination can invent, and yet in this clear atmosphere of intense burning heat and with the arid low hills or burnt plains which surround the town, it all looks right. Inside, the cathedrals put all the churches in Italy and Spain to shame by their splendour, but one is sorry not to know more of their history. I can speak enough Russian now to get on humbly; but the alphabet beats me still: it is not only that there are so many letters, but that the old familiar forms of written letters mean something new.”

* * * * *

“Kieff, ‘The Holy City,’ Sept. 21.--We made excursions from Moscow to all the great monasteries. There are few other sights of importance, but these, in Russia, are quite unique--immense spaces surrounded by walls, towers, and gates, which have stood many a siege, and which are like the towns in old woodcuts, and contain gardens, cemeteries, cathedrals, usually six churches with gilt domes and minarets, besides accommodation for 600 or 800 monks and nuns, who have their wells, gardens, farms, &c. One of those which I thought most attractive was Novo Devichi, rising from an arid sandy plain close to the town, but full of lovely flowers, which a kind old prioress came and gave us handfuls of. Then we went to the New Jerusalem, where the famous Nikon lived and is buried--many hours jolting along a no-road through the forests in a rough tarantass, but a beautiful place when you get there. Nikon chose it because he thought it so like the real Jerusalem, and changed the name of its river to Jordan, and made a Kedron. It was a quiet countrified spot, and the only one I have seen which the Mother and Lea would have enjoyed in the old days, and there was a primitive inn with kindly, gentle people. We also went to the famous Troitsa, the home and grave of Philaret. In all these excursions, as everywhere else, we found the ‘difficulties’ of Russian travel entire imagination: nothing can be easier.

“Nevertheless, the journey to Kieff by a slow train was terrible, lasting two days and a night, and awfully hot--across a hideous brown steppe the whole way, with scarcely a tree to vary it. (There are forests till Moscow, only steppes afterwards.) I was ill and wretched enough before this interesting place rose on its low hills above the Dnieper.

“To-day, however, has quite satisfied me that it was worth while to come. It is a most unique and beautiful place, the vast town, or rather three great towns, so embosomed in trees and gardens, that the houses are almost lost. But the greatest charm lies in the constant view over the glorious Dnieper, and the immense aërial plain beyond, with its delicate pink lights and blue shadows. Then Kieff is the Mecca of Russia, full of tombs of saints and holy images, and, though this is no special season, the thousands and thousands of pilgrims are most extraordinary--in sheep-skins and goat-skins, in fur caps, high-peaked head-dresses and turbans; in azure blue, bright pink, or pale primrose colour. I never could have believed without seeing it the reverence of the Russian religion, and it has seemed the same everywhere and in all classes. The bowing and curvetting and crossing before the icons is most extraordinary, and still more so the three prostrations which all make on approaching any holy place, bending down and kissing the dust in a way worthy of an acrobat, though treated as a matter of course by the devotees themselves. But the intense expression of devotion borne by these pilgrims (who have often walked from Archangel!) is such as I have never seen on other faces, and some of the old men and women especially would make the grandest studies for pictures of saintly apostles and matrons. To see a smart young officer unhesitatingly prostrate himself and kiss the ground on sight of an icon (in the mud of this morning even), in the presence of equally smart companions, has something deeply touching in it, and one wonders if any young guardsman in England would do the same if and because he thought it right.”

* * * * *

“In the Warsaw train, Sept. 25.--In this smoothly gliding train, which takes one in fifty-four weary hours across the steppes, it is as easy to write as in the study at home. I should be most comfortable if it were not that my companion (in the compartment for two) is the most odious type of American I ever came across. ‘I guess you will not want to have the windows of this carriage opened till you get to Warsaw, because I will not submit to it: I am in my right, and I will not submit to it.’

“We were arrested again yesterday at Kieff, though then only by priests--veiled priests--for daring to sketch the outside of one of their sacred chapels; but after being hurried about from place to place for an hour, and shut up in a courtyard, with a wooden bench to sit upon, for another, we were regaled with a pile of beautiful grapes and apples, and sent about our business. This constant worrying when drawing has really made Russia very tiresome; but for those who do not want to draw, I do not see what difficulties travelling in the country can present, and Russians are always civil, even when arresting you.”

* * * * *

“Warsaw, Sept. 27.--We arrived at the junction station of Brest more than two hours late, for on some of the Russian lines no hours are obligatory, and you are quite at the mercy of conductors and their whims for spending ten, thirty, or even forty minutes in gossiping at side stations. So the Warsaw train had left Brest, and we had five hours to wait for another. Ill and wretched, I left the horrible room where a crowd of people were smoking, spitting, and smelling, and made my way to a sort of deserted public garden, where cows were browsing on the lilacs. Here, from mere want of something to do, I began to sketch some cottages and bushes, when I was suddenly seized by two soldiers and carried off to the guard-house. Here a very furious bombastical old major cross-examined me, and went into a passion over each sketch in my book, with volleys of questions about each, and then he sent me with a military escort to the station to fetch my passport. It was right, of course, and at last, after several hours, I was dismissed with ‘Maintenant c’est fini;’ but after a quadruple walk of two miles each way, and over such a pavement as only Russia can supply.

“I never was at Warsaw before, and should not care to stay. The Vistula divides the town, which is full of palaces and gardens, but has older quarters full of Jews, which are like the old streets of Paris. This afternoon I drove to the old Sobieski palace of Villanov. Two horses were necessary, for just outside this capital city the roads are like the roughest of ploughed fields.”

* * * * *

I spent the autumn of 1883 very quietly at Holmhurst, but paid some visits in the winter.

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Palace, Lichfield, Jan. 1, 1884.--After a pleasant Christmas at Kinmel, I came here yesterday to dear Augusta Maclagan. The immense quantity of work she does suits her, though it seems too much to those who do not know her. Town, Diocese, Chapter, and the society of the neighbourhood all work the willing horse alike. I cannot sufficiently admire the marvellous versatility of the Bishop, or his wonderful power of conversation, recalling that of Dean Alford in its simplicity and vivacity. He has led the most varied of lives, and has much of interest to tell of each part of it. He was for three years a soldier. When he was born, the whole house was disturbed by the most fearful row, and when they inquired what it was, the servant said, ‘Eh, it’s just Sandie and Nellie fighting over the bit bairnie.’ Sandie, who had been military servant to the father, an army doctor, said it must be brought up as a soldier. Nellie said, ‘Nay, it’s the seventh bairn, and if it’s a soldier, it must be the Lord’s soldier: the bairn must aye be a minister;’ and he was both. The Bishop is still passionately fond of riding and driving, and as soon as he gets out of Lichfield, mounts the box of his carriage and drives his own horses, ‘Pride’ and ‘Prejudice.’ He says people may consider it a terrible thing for a Bishop to be drawn hither and thither by these passions, but then it is assuredly a fine thing to have them well under control.

“The Lonsdales dined last night, and afterwards we sat up for a touching little midnight service in the palace chapel, in which the Bishop preached, but very briefly, saying just what I have so often felt, that it is not the expected, but the unexpected events which come with the New Year--that God’s hand is full of ‘surprises.’

“Augusta has written so admirable, so intensely interesting a Memoir of her dear mother, that I cannot say how delightful I find it, or how beautifully it portrays that lovely and lovable life from life to death. It is only in MS., though one of the best biographies I ever read--‘the history of a life, not a stuffed animal.’

“The cathedral is most uniform in its beauty, even the modern monuments so fine. Of the older ones, the most interesting is that of Bishop Hackett, who was appointed by Charles II. after the destruction caused by the Puritans. He found the church a ruin, and it is touching to hear how he called his choir and the one remaining canon into the only bit which had still a roof, and prayed that he might have life and energy to restore it. Going back to his palace, he harnessed his coach-horses to the first cart that drew materials for the cathedral, and, though his income was so small, he spent £8000 upon it.

“The statue of our Lord over the west front was put up by the present Bishop in the place of a statue of Charles II., which was due to a Mrs. Wilson. She was of an old Lichfield family, and married far beneath her, a mere mason; but she said to him, ‘Now you are a clever man: you know how to carve; make a good statue of his Majesty for the cathedral, and it will be heard of at court, and you will be knighted, and I shall die “my lady.”’ And all this actually happened. When the statue of Charles was being taken down, the present Dean gave a groan of ‘Poor King Charles!’--‘Why do you call him poor King Charles?’ said the Bishop. ‘Because he is being dethroned by a restoration.’

“Bishop Selwyn always desired that he might not be buried in the cathedral, so a little mortuary chapel on the outside was restored for him, and you look from the church through arches upon his beautiful sleeping figure by Adams. When the Maori chiefs were in England, they came down especially to see it, and gazed upon it with their eyes streaming with tears. ‘They have laid him on a New Zealand mat, as a chieftain should lie,’ they said.”

* * * * *

“Fawsley, Jan. 8, 1884.--I came here from Lichfield to find a very large party in this large and most comfortable house, with a hall of Henry VII.’s time. Sir Rainald Knightley, its owner, is a splendid type of an English gentleman, very conservative, very courteous, very clever, and devoted to country sports and interests, which alternate with the politics in which his more serious moments are spent. The only blemish on his perfectly happy married life with Miss Bowater, who enters into all his pursuits, whether duties or pleasures, politics, country business, hunting, &c., is that they have no children. He is surrounded by cousins--Charleses and Valentines--repeating in actual life the many Charleses and Valentines to whom there are monuments in the fine old church near the house. In the autumn, rheumatism takes him to Homburg, but he refuses to learn German, ‘the grinding gibberish of the garrulous Goth.’

“The parish has a population of fifty-eight, and there is only service once on Sundays, performed by the cousin who is in orders. It is alternately in the morning and afternoon, the difference being that the morning service begins at noon, and the afternoon service at a quarter past.

“Mrs. Charles Knightley drove me to Canons Ashby, the beautiful and romantic old place of the eccentric and impoverished Sir H. Dryden. I thought it looked like the background of a novel, and afterwards found that it was the background of--‘Sir Charles Grandison’!

“Lady Knightley took me to Shackborough--a pretty place. When Charles I. was going to the battle of Edgehill he met its proprietor of that day merrily hunting. He had never heard that there was a civil war going on, such was the paucity of political news! But he turned about and went with the king into the fight and was wounded there.

“At the beginning of this century, the daughter of the house became engaged to be married to an officer quartered at Weedon--a mésalliance which was greatly disapproved by her family. At last she was induced to break it off. But the officer persuaded her to grant him one last interview at the summer-house on the hill that he might give her back her letters. He gave her the letters with one hand, and with the other he shot her dead, and then shot himself.

“At Marston St. Lawrence, near this, is an old house, beautiful and moated. Here a Mrs. Blencowe was one day being dressed by her maid before the toilet-table. Suddenly she said, ‘Did you see anything’--‘Yes,’ said the maid. A hand had come out from behind the curtain. They had both seen it, and both screamed violently. Help came, and the room was searched, but no one was there.”

* * * * *

“Ickwellbury, Jan. 27.--A man here, being asked by Mrs. Harvey how he liked going to church, said, ‘Well, I like it very much: I goes to church, and I sits down, and I thinks o’ nowt.’”

* * * * *

“London, Feb. 23.--My dear Mrs. Duncan Stewart is dead. She never rallied from the sudden death of her son-in-law Mr. Rogerson. But she was able to see several people, to whom she spoke with that all-majestic charity which was the mainspring and keynote of her life. Her last words were ‘Higher, higher!’ and we may believe that she has passed into those higher regions where her thirst after life, not repose, meets its full fruition. I went to see her in the solemn peace of the newly dead, and last Thursday I saw her laid in a grave of flowers at Kensal Green, many faithful hearts mourning, many sad eyes weeping beside her coffin.[394]

“There were few equal to her. Mrs. Procter is most so. I met her the other day, and some one made her a pretty speech. She said, ‘When I was very young, Sydney Smith said to me, “My dear, do you like flattery?”--“Very much indeed,” I answered, “but I do not like it put on with a trowel.” What I really do like is--in the words of Sterne--a few delicate attentions, not so vague as to be bewildering, and not so pointed as to be embarrassing.’”

* * * * *

“Firle, Lewes, April 18, 1884.--I came here to find a party of twenty in the house, including Sir Rainald and Lady Knightley. It is a large house, like a French château, close under the downs, but as my kind but singular little host, Lord Gage, likes every window open in these bitter winds, the cold is ferocious. On Wednesday I got Lady Knightley to walk with me (the inhabitants of this place had never heard of it!) 2½ miles across the marshes to Laughton Place, the ancient and original residence of the Pelhams--a moated grange, having an old red brick tower with terra-cotta ornaments, and many other curious remains, looking--stranded in the desolate fen, and with an abundance of animal life--like an old Dutch picture.

“Yesterday I walked with Sir Rainald to Glynde. It is a curious old house, approached through a gateway and stableyard and by clipped yew hedges, having a pleasant view over upland country and high gardens. A fine black oak staircase leads to a noble gallery-room, with deep alcoves, so pleasantly furnished with fine pictures, &c., that, though suitable to an enormous party, a single individual would never feel solitary in it. Miss Brand did the honours of the many good portraits very pleasantly, and, before we left, Lady Hampden came in from walking, and I was very glad to see her in her country home, having so often been in her house in the palace at Westminster.”

* * * * *

Ill-health in June made a happy excuse for my spending a delightful month abroad. I saw first the group of towns around Laon, charming old-fashioned Noyon, beautiful Soissons, and Coucy with its grand castle. Then Alick Pitt met me at Thun, and we spent a delightful time, joining the Husseys of Scotney Castle at Mürren and Rosenlaui, sketching and flower-picking, and reawakening every slumbering sense of the delights of Switzerland.

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Pension Baumgarten, Thun, June 25, 1884.--You will be wishing to hear from this well-remembered place, where the mountains are quite as rugged and purple, the lake as limpid and still, the river as green and rushing, and the old town and castle as picturesque, as any youthful recollection could paint them. This pension, too, is perfectly delightful, with its coloured awnings over the wide terrace, its tubs of pomegranates and oleanders, its garden of roses, and its meadows behind, with the wooden châlets and the women making hay, and the delightful pathlets through the dark woods on the mountain-side.

“I had a calm crossing on Friday, and reached Laon by seven. On Saturday morning I saw the stately cathedral at St. Quentin, and spent the afternoon at Noyon, which has an exquisite cathedral, Calvin’s curious old house, and a most attractive little inn. Sunday I was at Coucy, where there is the finest ruined château in existence after Heidelberg, beautifully situated amongst wooded hills, in scenery so pretty, you would take it for the Vosges, not Picardy. Monday morning I spent at Soissons, with two fine cathedrals, one in ruins, and an interesting town, and then came on by night to Berne.

* * * * *

* * * * *

“The last night I was in London I dined with the Reptons to meet the Kildares--Lady Kildare quite the most beautiful creature I ever saw.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Oct. 10.--Since I returned from Switzerland, my home life has been quite happy and uneventful. Only ten days ago I had a telegram from ‘my Prince’ (of Sweden and Norway), asking me to come and spend Sunday afternoon and evening with him at Eastbourne, as he was only there for two days. He met me most cordially and affectionately, making me feel as if the seeming neglect of several years was only ‘royalty’s way,’ and pleasantly taking up all the dropped threads of life. We were several hours together, and while we were talking a sweet-faced young lady looked in. ‘I must come in: you are such a friend of the Prince: I have heard of you, too, all my life. I am so very glad to see you at last,’--and I felt at once that the Crown-Princess was a friend.

“She wanted to know what I thought of the Prince--the Prince wanted to know what I thought of her: I was glad to be able to answer both most satisfactorily.

* * * * *

“I saw her again at dinner, and she talked most delightfully, and was full of animation and interest. I came away with a happy feeling that my affectionate occupation of many months for the Prince had, after all, not been thrown away.”

* * * * *

“Highcliffe, Oct. 26, 1884.--Lady Waterford says that the father of that Thérèse Longworth who called herself Lady Avonmore was a young clerk at Bordeaux at the time of the Noyades. Two beautiful young girls were tied together, and were going to be drowned. Suddenly a poissarde, seized with compassion from their looks, jumped upon a barrel and shouted, ‘Are there no young men here who will save the lives of these two beautiful girls by marrying them?’ Longworth and another young fellow were looking out of a window at the time and heard it, and said to one another, ‘Shall we do it?’ It was rather a gulp, for they were both very young at the time; but they went down and said they would, and they were both married there and then, by joining hands after the fashion of the Commune. The daughter of one of those marriages was Thérèse Longworth.”

* * * * *

Early in October I paid a visit to my distant cousins, Mrs. Quin and her brother, Edmund Boyle, who were staying at Ramsgate. The health of Sir Moses Montefiore, at the great age of one hundred, was then a great topic of the place. Mrs. Quin said something to him about another year at his age being only a waiting time, when he answered sharply, “What do you mean by feeling old? I only feel forty.” He said no one had ever mentioned the name of Christ to him except one person, and that was Cardinal Antonelli!

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Ruxley Lodge, Oct. 30.--I am enjoying a pleasant visit to Lady Foley and her sons; only Lady Jane Repton here besides. It is a charming house, full of books and pictures, in a beautiful country, with fine views of Windsor and Claremont. Once there was an old priory here, but only the fishponds are left. We went to-day to see the tomb of Pamela, mother of my Uncle Fitzgerald, at Thames Ditton. It was brought there from Montmartre, where it was broken by a bomb in 1870. It is inscribed, ‘Pamela, Ladye Edward Fitzgerald, par son ami dévoué, L. L.;’ and no one now knows who L. L. was. Close by are the graves of her daughter, Lady Campbell, and several of her grand-daughters.

“The Foleys are said to descend from ‘Foley the Fiddler,’ a mechanic who determined to make his fortune by finding out the secret of making nails by machinery in Sweden. Up to that time the secret had been successfully kept: the ironfounders had shut every one out, and let no one see their process. But Foley the Fiddler, pretending to be half-witted, went and played in the neighbourhood of the manufactory. The Swedish workmen danced to his music, and eventually were so delighted with him that they could not resist taking him to play inside the factory. When he had been there some time, he fancied he had seen all he wanted, and went home. He set up ironworks on the plan of what he had seen, but when he came to completing them, found that, after all, he did not understand the process perfectly. He went back, and the Swedish workmen were quite delighted to find him again fiddling outside the factory--‘a daft fiddler’--and they brought him in, and he learnt all he wanted, and went home and made a great fortune.”

* * * * *

“Goldings, Herts, Nov. 20.--Isabel Smith says that a lady in Wales, a friend of Miss Frances Wynne, looked up suddenly one day after reading the obituary in the Times, and exclaimed, ‘Now, at last, my lips are unsealed.’ Then she told this:--

“One day she had been alone at her country-house in Wales, with her son and a friend of his. She had received all the money for her rents that day--a very large sum--and put it away in a strong box. Being asked, she said she did not mind the least having it in her room, and should sleep with the key under her pillow.

“When she had been in bed some time, she was aware that her door opened, and that a man in a cloak came into her room with a candle. He passed the candle before her face, but she lay with closed eyes, perfectly motionless. Then he felt for the key; he felt for a long time, but somehow he failed to find it. At last he went away.

“As soon as the door closed, she sprang out of bed, intending to go to her son’s room to warn him that a robber was in the house. But his room was a long way off, and she thought it would be better to go instead to the friend, whose room was nearer.

“As she opened the door suddenly, she saw a figure muffled up in a long cloak put down the candle. It was the same figure who had come into her room. She looked at him fixedly. ‘To-morrow at 9 A.M.,’ she said, ‘the dogcart will come to the door which was to have taken my strong box to the bank: you will go in that dogcart, and you will never enter my door again. If you never attempt to do this, I will never say a word on what has happened as long as you live.’ And she never did, even to her son.”

* * * * *

“Nov. 21.--We have spent the day at Knebworth, an interesting place, though full of shams--a sham old house, with a sham lake, sham heraldic monsters, sham ancient portraits, &c. Lord Lytton, with his velvet collar and gold chains, recalled his father, who is represented on the walls, with his boots pointed like a needle, in a picture by Maclise. The ‘old’ rooms are chiefly modern in reality, but there is one really ancient bedroom--a room in which Queen Elizabeth once slept. Lady Lytton, beautiful, charming, and courteous, looked like a queen in the large saloons and galleries. We found Lady Marian Alford, Lady Colley--the pretty widow of Sir George--and Lady Paget, with her nice son Victor, amongst the guests.

“I wish one did not know that the real name of the Lyttons is Wiggett. William Wiggett took the name of Bulwer on his marriage with Sarah Bulwer in 1756, and his youngest son (the novelist) took the name of Lytton on succeeding to his mother’s property of Knebworth, she being one Elizabeth Warburton, whose very slight connection with the real Lytton family consisted in the fact that her grandfather, John Robinson was cousin (maternally) to Lytton Strode, who was great-nephew of a Sir William Lytton, who died childless in 1704.

“I have had the small trial of another ‘call’ of £300 on those unfortunate Electric Lights in which St. George Lane Fox involved me. I had saved up the money, so it was there, but it was provoking to have to pay what is almost certain to be lost, yet to be obliged to do so, as the only chance of seeing again any part of the £7000 which had gone before it. However, I am never more than very temporarily troubled by such things--there is no use. All I have ever made by my writings in fourteen very hard-worked years is gone now through St. G. Lane Fox--there is nothing else left to lose.”

* * * * *

“Thoresby Park, Dec. 12.--This has been a most delightful visit at one of the great houses I like the best. Its inmates are always so perfectly brimming with kindness, goodness, and simplicity, and every surrounding is so really handsome, even magnificent, without the slightest ostentation. I arrived with Lord and Lady Leitrim--he quite charming, so merry, pleasant, and natural, and she one of the delightful sisters of charming Lady Powerscourt. It has been a great pleasure to find the Boynes here, and Lady Newark, who is an absolute sunbeam in her husband’s home--perfect in her relation to every member of his family. I have been again to Welbeck and Clumber, only remarking fresh at the former a fine Sir Joshua of a Mr. Cleaver, an old man in the neighbourhood, dressed in grey, and the melancholy interesting portrait of Napoleon by Delaroche, given by the Duc de Coigny.

“A Mrs. Francklin (sister of Lord St. Vincent), staying here, says that a young man, going to stay with Millais, saw distinctly a hand and arm come out of the fireplace in his room, and do it repeatedly. At last he told Millais, who said it had often happened before, and they had the hearthstone taken up, and found the bodies of a woman and child.”

* * * * *

“Babworth, Dec. 14.--Mrs. Drummond Baring has been most agreeable in her talk of the society at Paris under the Empire, the soirées intimes, at which all etiquette was laid aside, and Prosper Merimée, Théophile Gautier, &c., were seen at their best. No one knew so much about the Empress as Merimée. He had known her well as a girl, and all the letters about the marriage had passed through his hands. Nothing could be more naïve than the Empress in her early married days. She would go shopping. She clapped her hands with delight at the opera-bouffe, and the Emperor took them and held them, to the great delight of the people, who applauded vehemently.

“In the last days at the Tuileries, all the court ladies were only occupied in packing up their own things; all deserted their mistress except Madame le Breton. She and the Empress stayed to the last. The Empress asked General Tronchin how long the palace could hold out. He said, ‘Certainly three days.’ It did not hold out three hours. They fled as the people entered, fled precipitately by the long galleries of the Louvre, once in agony finding a door locked and having to look for the key. The Empress had no bonnet. Madame le Breton, with a bit of lace, made something for her head. They reached the street and hailed a cab. ‘Eh! ma petite mère,’ said the driver, ‘il parait que nous nous sauvons: où est le papa donc?’ But he took them and did not recognise them. They went in the cab to the Boulevard Haussmann. Then they found that they had no money to pay it, and Madame le Breton took off one of her rings. ‘We have forgotten our money,’ she said, ‘but you see how suffering my friend is. I must take her on to the dentist, but I will leave this with you; give me your address and I will redeem it.’ And he let them go.

“They took a second cab to the house of Evans, the American dentist, and there found he was gone to his villa at Passy. They followed him there, but when they reached the villa, the servant said he was out, and positively refused to let them in. But Madame le Breton insisted--her friend was so terribly ill: Mr. Evans knew her very well: she was quite certain that he would see her: and at length she almost forced her way in, and, moreover, made the servant pay the cab. At last Mr. Evans came in. He had been to Paris, in terrible anxiety as to the fate of the Empress, knowing that the mob had broken into the Tuileries.

“Mrs. Baring said that when Plonplon, commonly called ‘Fatalité,’ was ill, the people said he was ‘Fat alité.’”

* * * * *

“Hickledon, Dec. 17.--No words can say how glad I am to be here with the dearest friend of my young life--dearer still, if possible, with all his six children around him, who are learning also to be fond of me. We walk and talk, and are perfectly happy together in everything.

“We have been to visit Barnborough Church. A man met a wild-cat in Bella Wood, some distance off. He and the cat fought all the way along the hillside, and they both fell down dead in this church porch.

“Yesterday we went to Sprotborough to visit old Miss Copley. It is a very pretty place, a handsome house on a terrace upon a wooded bank above the river. Sir Joseph Copley and his wife Lady Charlotte (Pelham) quarrelled early in their married life. He overheard her at Naples, through a thin wall of a room, telling a friend that he was mad, and he never forgave it. They were separated for some years, then they lived together again, but there was no cordiality. They were really Moyles. A Moyle married a Copley heiress, and the Copleys long ago had married the heiress of the Fitzwilliams, for Sprotborough was the old Fitzwilliam place, and many of the family are buried there in the church. The Copleys divided into two branches, of Sprotborough and Wadsworth, and it is a pretty story that when the Copley of Sprotborough had nothing but daughters, he left the estate to the Copley of Wadsworth, and then, when the Copley of Wadsworth had nothing but daughters, he left it back to the representative of the other branch. Not far from Sprotborough, Conisborough stands beautifully on the top of a wooded hill: in ‘Ivanhoe’ its castle is the place where Athelstan lies in state when supposed to be dead.

“The Bishop of Winchester told Charlie Wood that his predecessor, Bishop Wilberforce, had always very much wished to see a portrait at Wotton (the Evelyns’ place) of Mrs. Godolphin, whose life he had written whilst he was at Alverstoke. This wish he had often expressed; but Mr. Evelyn had not liked the Bishop, and he had never been invited.

“On the day on which the Bishop set off with Lord Granville to ride to ‘Freddie Leveson’s,’ Mr. Evelyn, his brother, and a doctor were sitting late in the dining-room at Wotton, when the brother exclaimed, ‘Why, there is the Bishop of Winchester looking in at the window.’ They all three then saw him distinctly. Then he seemed to go away towards some shrubs, and they thought he must have gone round to the door, and expected him to be announced. But he never came, and an hour after a servant brought in the news that he had been killed only two miles off.

“Mrs. George Portal of Burgclere told Charlie Wood that when Allan Herbert was so ill at Highclere--ill to death, it was supposed--the nurse, who was sitting up, saw an old lady come into the room when he was at the worst, gaze at him from the foot of the bed, and nod her head repeatedly. When he was better, and after he could be left, the housekeeper, wishing to give the nurse a little distraction, showed her through the rooms, and, in Lord Carnarvon’s sitting-room, the nurse suddenly pointed at the portrait over the chimney-piece and said, ‘That is the lady who came into the sick-room.’ The portrait was that of old Lady Carnarvon, Allan Herbert’s mother, and the servants well recollected her peculiar way of nodding her head repeatedly.

“Mrs. George Portal was niece of Lady Anne Townshend, who was also aunt of that young Lord George Osborne who was killed at Oxford when wrestling with Lord Downshire in 1831. On the day of his death, she saw him pass through the room; she called to him, and he did not answer; she rang the bell for the servant, who declared he had never entered the house, and then she wrote the fact of having seen him to her husband, who was absent. Next morning came a messenger to tell Lady Anne of the death of her nephew, with whom she had been very intimate, and to beg her to break it to her sister--his mother, the Duchess of Leeds. Years after, when Mrs. George Portal was sorting her aunt’s letters after her death, she found amongst them the very letter to her husband in which she told what she had seen.”

* * * * *

“Mount St. John, Dec. 20.--To-day was Lord Halifax’s birthday. The hounds met at Hickledon, wishing to do him honour, but it was almost too much for him. With me, I think it has been a pleasure to him to go back into old days, old memories, old sketch-books, &c. I cannot say how much I enjoyed my visit to the kind old man, as well as to my own dear Charlie--better, dearer, more charming than ever, and more in favour, one feels sure, with God as well as with man.

“Yet Charlie does not wish to die: his life here is so perfectly happy and useful, but he says that it must be ‘very unpleasant to God to feel that His children never wish to come home: he is sure he should feel it so with his children.’ He says he is quite certain what the pains of Purgatory will be--‘they will be the realising for the first time the love of God, and not being able to do anything for Him: this life is our only chance.’ He says he is ‘sure that the next life will be in a more beautiful world, like this, only glorified, and so much, oh! so much better in everything. “Such cats!” my Uncle Courtenay says, “such cats!”’

“Young Charlie came home yesterday, a most delightful boy, only less engaging perhaps than little Francis.[398] To me, these children of my dear brother-like friend are what no other children can ever be.

“This Mount St. John (where I am now visiting Mrs. J. Dundas, Charlie Wood’s sister) is a beautiful place, very high up in hills which are now snowy. There is a long chain of them, ending in Rolleston Scaur, where it is said that, in the earliest times of Christianity, the followers of the Druids met the first missionaries in a public discussion. The devil was disguised in the ranks of the former, who, for a long time, had the best of it; but, when Christian truth began to prevail, he was so disgusted that he flew away to the neighbouring isolated height of Hode’s Point, and a stone which stuck to his red-hot foot was deposited on its summit--a tangible proof of the story, as it is of a wholly different geological formation from its surroundings. The view from these hills is intensely beautiful, comprising York Minster in the hazy plain, and the many places which take their name from the god Thor--Thirkleby, Thirsk, &c.”

* * * * *

“Dec. 24.--Yesterday we spent at Newburgh, cordially received, and shown all over the house by Lady Julia Wombwell--a most simple, pleasant, winning person. There is the look of an old Dutch house externally, in the clock-tower, clipped yews, and formal water. Inside, the house is very uncomfortable and cold, and has no good staircase. Mary, Lady Falconberg, Cromwell’s daughter, is said to have rescued her father’s body from Westminster at the Restoration, and to have buried it here at the top of the stairs leading to the maids’ rooms. The family, however, prudently refuse to open ‘the tomb’ and see if there is anything inside. Two portraits are shown as those of Mary, Lady Falconberg, and there really is an old silver pen which belonged to her father. There is a beautiful Vandyke of a Bellasye in a red coat, and a good Romney of a lady. The church has an octagonal tower and some tombs of Falconbergs. At the end of the village is the house of Sterne, who was curate there, with an inscription.”

* * * * *

“Whitburn, Dec. 28.--Lizzie Williamson[399] says she wonders very much that, when our Saviour was on earth, no one thought of asking Him if people ill of hopeless and agonising complaints, idiots, cretins, &c., might not be put out of the way--‘the Bible would have been so much more useful if it had only given us a little information on these points.’

“I stayed a few hours in Durham as I passed through, and found what is so picturesque in summer unbearably black and dismal in winter. The present Dean (Lake), who has so spoilt the cathedral, is most unpopular. One day he had taken upon himself to lecture Mr. Greenwell, one of the minor canons, for doing his part in the service in thick laced boots. Greenwell was furious. Rushing out of the cathedral, he met Archdeacon Bland, the most polite and deliberate of men, and exclaimed, ‘I’ve been having the most odious time with the Dean, and I really think he must have got the devil in him.’--‘No, Mr. Greenwell, no, no, not that,’ said Archdeacon Bland in his quiet way; ‘he is only possessed by three imps: he is imperious, he is impetuous, and he is impertinent.’

“People are full of ‘The Unclassed,’ a powerful novel, though, as a very pretty young lady said to me the other day, ‘not at all the sort of book one would give to one’s mother to read!’

“Coming through Roker, I heard a woman say, ‘Wal, geese is geese, and ye canna mak um nought else.’ But some one else had this to report as a specimen Northumbrian sentence: ‘I left the door on the sneck, and, as I was ganging doun the sandy chare (lane), I met twa bairnies huggin a can o’ bumblekites, and a good few tykes were havin a reglar hubbledeshoo o’ a midden.’”

* * * * *

“Brancepeth Castle, Jan. 3, 1885.--Mr. Wharton dined. He said, ‘When I was at the little inn at Ayscliffe, I met a Mr. Bond, who told me a story about my friend Johnnie Greenwood of Swancliffe. Johnnie had to ride one night through a wood a mile long to the place he was going to. At the entrance of the wood a large black dog joined him, and pattered along by his side. He could not make out where it came from, but it never left him, and when the wood grew so dark that he could not see it, he still heard it pattering beside him. When he emerged from the wood, the dog had disappeared, and he could not tell where it had gone to. Well, Johnnie paid his visit, and set out to return the same way. At the entrance of the wood, the dog joined him, and pattered along beside him as before; but it never touched him, and he never spoke to it, and again, as he emerged from the wood, it ceased to be there.

“‘Years after, two condemned prisoners in York gaol told the chaplain that they had intended to rob and murder Johnnie that night in the wood, but that he had a large dog with him, and when they saw that, they felt that Johnnie and the dog together would be too much for them.’

“‘Now that is what I call a useful ghostly apparition,’ said Mr. Wharton.”

* * * * *

“London, Feb. 22, 1885.--At dinner at Miss Bromley’s I met the Misses Bryant, who live in 17 Somerset Street. On the ground-floor of the house is a large room said to be haunted, and in which such terrible noises are heard as prevent any one sleeping there. A man with a grey beard once committed suicide in that room. The other day some children, nephews and nieces of the Misses Bryant, came to spend the afternoon with them, and, to amuse them, one of the ladies got them to help her in arranging her garden upon the leads. While they were at work, the little boy looked over the parapet into the court below, and said, ‘Who is that old man with the grey beard who keeps looking at me out of that window? Oh! he is gone now, but he has put out his head and looked up at me several times.’ The window was that of ‘Greybeard’s room.’ Miss Bryant immediately ran down and asked the servants if any one with a grey beard had come into the house, but no one had entered the house at all, and ‘Greybeard’s room’ was locked up.”

* * * * *

“March 7.--Two days ago I dined with Lady Sarah Lindsay to meet Colonel Hugh Lindsay and Lady Jane. Colonel Lindsay was full of spiritualism and the wonderful discoveries this generation seems on the verge of. He had himself seen a large table, which had been first set in motion, after the hands which touched it were taken away, float up to the ceiling, remain there for some time over their heads, and then float down again. ‘The conjurors Maskelyne and Cook could not have done this; they might have raised the table (by wires), but it would not have floated.’

“Colonel Lindsay spoke much of the wonderful Providence which keeps down voracious animals. He said that the aphis (of the rose, &c.) reproduced itself in such intense multitudes, that, if not kept down by weather and other insects, it would, in ten days, have assumed proportions equal in volume to many thousand times the inhabitants of the earth, the whole air would be darkened, and every living thing upon earth would be utterly consumed by them!

“Lady Sarah told of her grandmother, old Lady Hardwicke,[400] with whom a young lady came to stay. They dined at three o’clock, but when the girl came down, she was dreadfully agitated, and looked as if she had seen a ghost. When Lady Hardwicke pressed her as to the reason, she, after a time, confessed that it was because there was a spirit in her room. It came to her lamenting its hard fate whilst she was dressing, and she was sure there had been a murder in that room. Lady Hardwicke said, ‘Well, my dear, to-morrow you must let me come and stay with you when you are dressing,’ and she did. Soon the girl said, ‘There--there it is!’ and Lady Hardwicke really did hear something. ‘Oh, listen!’ cried the girl. ‘Once I was hap-hap-hap-y, but now I am me-e-e-serable!’ a voice seemed to wail: it was the old kitchen jack!”

* * * * *

“March 19.--Edward Malet was married to Lady Ermyntrude Russell in Westminster Abbey at 4 P.M. Seldom was there a greater crowd in the streets near Westminster. I met Lady Jane Repton in the crush, and we made our way in together through the Deanery. The glorious building was crowded from end to end, and the music most beautiful. Perhaps the greatest of smaller features was Lady Ermyntrude’s dress, which the papers describe as ‘more pearly than pearl, and more snowy than snow.’”

* * * * *

“March 28.--Dining at Mrs. Quin’s, I met Mrs. Ward, who was very amusing.

“She described the airs of Frances-Anne, Lady Londonderry.[401] One day she was extremely irritated with her page, and sent him to Lord Londonderry with a note, in which she had written in pencil, ‘Flog this fellow well for me: he has been quite unendurable.’ But the page read the note on the way, and meeting one of the great magnificent flunkeys, six feet high, said, ‘Just oblige me by taking this note in to my lord: I am forced to do something else.’ The flunkey brought out the answer, and met the page, who took it in to his lady. She was rather surprised, for it was--‘I’m afraid.’ Mrs. Ward was in the house when this happened.

“Mrs. Ward recollected, in her own childhood, when she was not three years old, sitting on the floor in her mother’s sitting-room cutting up a newspaper with a pair of blunt scissors. A lady came in to see her mother, and brought with her two very fat children, with great round staring eyes. The children were told to sit down by her on the floor, and she was bidden to amuse them. It was impossible: they only stared in hopeless irresponsiveness. Soon her mother began to talk as loudly as she could. It was to drown the voice of her own little girl, whom she heard repeating aloud a verse of the psalm she had been learning that morning, ‘Eyes have they, but they see not: ears have they, but they hear not: neither speak they with their lips.’

“In the afternoon I went with a crowd to see Herkomer’s portrait of my friend Katharine Grant--a magnificent tour de force, white upon white.”

On the 1st of May 1885 I set off on the first of a series of excursions in France for literary purposes, oftentimes of dismal solitude, and always of weary hard work, though full of interest of their own. I found then, as I have always done, how different seeing a thing with intention is to ordinary sight-seeing. A dentist at Rome once said to me, “Mr. Hare, you do not brush your teeth.”--“Yes, indeed I do,” I answered, “every night and morning.”--“Ah! yes; you brush them from habit, but not from motive;” and I discovered the result from my many past tours in France had been just the same. As usual, I found that the ordinary English travellers, who are always occupied in playing at “follow my leader” all the time they are abroad, had missed the best part of France, and that the churches and abbeys of the Correze and Creuse--almost unknown hitherto--are absolutely glorious; and some places in that part of France--Rocamadour, for instance--worthy of being compared with the very finest scenes in Italy. I described much of this tour in a series of papers in the Art Journal, as well as in my books on France. In the central provinces the accommodation was very good in its way, and the food always excellent, but in some of the places in the Eastern Pyrenees the dirt was scarcely endurable. The excellent hotel at Montpelier came as a real respite. Whilst there, I made some acquaintance with a banker of the place, who had a poetic Ruskin-like way of describing the wildness of the Cevennes, the grey rocks, desolate scenery, long lines of russet landscape. This so took hold of me, that I went to Lodêve and engaged a carriage for several days to explore the Cevennes thoroughly. It was wild enough certainly and rather curious, but an unbroken monotone; every view, every rocky foreground, even each dreary ruinous village, repeated the last, and after eight or nine hours I was utterly wearied of it; thus it was an intense relief when my driver came in the evening, with no end of apologies, and said he had received a telegram, bidding him return at once to Lodêve; and I was free to jump into the first diligence and reach the nearest station. Railway then took me to Mende, an exceedingly beautiful place, and afterwards to Rodez. Hence I went south again by S. Antonin and Bruniquel, whence beautiful recollections of the spring verdure and clear river come back to me. I made a little tour afterwards to Luchon and other places in the Pyrenees which I had not seen before, and returned straight home from Bordeaux. During this two months’ tour I do not think I ever once saw an English person, even in the railway, and I made no acquaintances.

I found Lourdes entirely changed since I was there last by its enormous religious pilgrimages, and no doubt, whether from the healing waters or the power of faith, many wonderful cures had taken place. It was strange, on nearing the miraculous fountain, to read the inscription, “Ici les malades vont au pas,” &c. A story was told of an officer who had a wooden leg and came to the fountain. When he put in his legs (he put them both in, the wooden leg and the other), as he did so he uttered a little prayer--“Faites, Seigneur, O faites que mes jambes soient pareilles.” When he drew them out, they were both wooden legs!

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Châteauroux, May 6, 1885.--What weather! bitter north-east winds and torrents of rain ever since I landed in France.... I spent Sunday at Etampes, a little narrow town, one street wide and three miles long, with four churches of the utmost architectural importance.... Leaving Orleans, my ‘Untrodden France’ began, and very pleasantly, at pretty Vierzon on the rushing river Cher. There are rather oppressive moments of solitude, but in this awful weather I am especially glad not to have any grumblers against disagreeables which cannot be helped.”

* * * * *

“Argenton, May 8.--Yesterday I was called at five for an excursion of forty miles up the valley of the Creuse, but it rained in such torrents it was impossible. At eight it cleared a little, and I set off, and did it all, returning at eight, but it rained in a deluge more than half the time. There were, however, beautiful moments of sun-gleam, and the scenery very lovely. At Le Crozant, the great rendezvous of French artists, where a most charming old woman keeps a very primitive inn, it is even magnificent, finer than anything on Rhine or Moselle--stupendous rocks and a grand castle. Gargilesse, the place where Mme. George Sand lived so oddly, and wrote ‘Promenades autour de mon Village,’ is also a very curious and charming place, the village clustering around a romanesque church in the enceinte of a great ruined castle above the river.”

* * * * *

“Brive, May 15.--I feel like a child eating through a cake, feeling it a duty not to leave anything remarkable unseen in this part of France, so little known to the English. How unfairly those judge this country who measure France by what they see from the well-known railways to Strasbourg or Marseilles. Nothing can be more beautiful than these hills and valleys of the Creuse and Correze, nothing more rich than the forest-clad country, besides the interest of endless castles and later châteaux, of old towns where the greater proportion of the houses date from the thirteenth century, and of perfectly honest, primitive, and unspoilt people.

“I came to Limoges last Friday, and remained there five days, that is to say, was scarcely there at all, but returned to a good hotel there at night. I saw the great castle of Chalusset; the romanesque Abbey of Solignac; S. Junien, a most grand church; Le Dorat, almost as fine; Montmorillon, full of curiosities; and Chalus, where Richard Cœur de Lion was killed, and where, under the old castle he was besieging, the stone called Rocher de Malmont still rises in the water-meadows, upon which he was standing when the fatal arrow struck him.

“Then I came here, and am staying here in the same way, breakfasting daily at seven, off at half-past seven, and only returning to go to bed. All yesterday I was at the wonderful sanctuary of Rocamadour--the La Salette of these parts--a most curious place, beautiful exceedingly; indeed, though it sounds a very grand comparison, rather like--Tivoli! But it poured all day, with a bitter wind, and this has been the case every day, only this afternoon there have been lovely lights at the falls of Gimel in the exquisite mountain forests. I am so glad I have no companions: they would never have endured the discomfort. No words can say how tired I am every day, nor how wet, nor how dirty; but I shall be glad afterwards to have done it all.”

* * * * *

“Sarlat in the Dordogne, May 21.--We are still in swelching torrents ... but this is a pleasant little hotel in an old cathedral town, with marvellous streets of houses of fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The weather makes no end of hindrances and discomforts, yet in this tour, as in all others, I have found that expected misfortunes never happen: there are plenty of others, but what one looks for never comes, and I have gone on steadily, missing nothing of the plan marked out, only sometimes delayed. The people are beyond measure pleasant and kind, and the cheapness of everything is a perpetual amazement.”

* * * * *

“Carcassonne, May 28.--On Friday 23rd it poured in torrents, but I could not give in, so went by the earliest train as far into the hills as it penetrated, and then by omnibus to Souillac, one of the grand and glorious abbey churches, now parochial, which are so common in that part of France and nowhere else--full of colour and solemnity, though rugged to a degree, and into which you descend by long flights of steps.

“It poured in returning too, but I stopped at a wayside station, and a long walk through chalky mud and a ferry over the Dordogne took me to Fénelon, which is a noble old château splendidly placed on a peninsula looking down upon the meeting of many valleys and streams. It has always been kept up; its terraces were in luxuriant beauty of flowers, and the owner, Comte de Morville, was excessively civil in showing everything. I drew under an umbrella in torrents.

“Saturday I was up at five, and off by rail and road to Cadouin, another of those grand abbey churches, of the same character as the rest, but with the addition of a splendid gothic cloister. I arrived at nine, perished with wet and cold, but was resuscitated by the kind woman at the little inn, who made a hot fire on the great dogs of her hearth, and soon had hot coffee ready. It was, however, a long day, and I did not arrive till near midnight at Montpazier. This curious Bastide was built by Edward III. of England, and has never been touched since his time, and, whilst all is so changed in England, it was interesting to find in this remote French hill-country a town the same as when the Black Prince lived there, with old walls and gates, gothic house-windows, rectangular streets, and in the centre of all the market, surrounded by arcades like those at Padua, only here the arcades are so wide that you can drive in them. It was a quaint, charming place, and I stayed till Monday, spending Sunday in the magnificent old Château de Biron.

“Then, by Cahors, with its wonderful old bridge over the Lot, I came to Montpezat, a very simple place and primitive inn--wild open down, old church, arcaded streets, flowers, goats, and old women in white-winged caps. Late that night I reached Moissac, a place where there is a wonderful church and cloister, which has been extolled as one of the archaeological marvels of the world, but its describers have evidently never seen St. Junien, Le Dorat, Souillac, Cadouin.”

* * * * *

“Narbonne, June 4.--The wet weather has changed to intense heat. Saturday was an interesting day at Alet, a ruined cathedral, and pretty desolate place on the edge of the Eastern Pyrenees, with a very admirable old curé, with whom I made great friends. That afternoon brought me to Perpignan, an almost Spanish town on the frontier--filthily dirty, but I was obliged to stay there to see Prades, the fine lonely monastery of S. Michel de Cuxa, Amélie les Bains, and Arles-sur-Tech. The great excursion to the latter place was indeed a penance--ten hours in a jolting diligence, five each way, with burning sun and stifling dust, and four passengers forced into each place meant for three, so that any movement was impossible, and as the diligence started at five, one was breakfastless. However, all miseries have an end, and Aries had to be visited, for St. Abdon and St. Sennen are buried there; but oh! how glad I was I had no companion to suffer too! On the way here I saw Elne, most Spanish and picturesque, with perhaps the most beautiful cloister in the world. Yesterday too was an interesting day, spent entirely at the great convent of Fontefroide, in the mountains nine miles from hence, spared at the late suppression of monasteries on account of the beneficent and useful lives of its monks--of whom there are still more than fifty--the benefactors of the whole of this part of the country, not only in teaching and preaching, but by taking the lead in all industrial and agricultural work. They receive all strangers, and gave me an excellent luncheon, though, being Wednesday, they had only boiled beans for themselves. The mountains all round the monastery were ablaze with cistus--white, pink, and rose-coloured, with yellow salvia and honeysuckle in masses.”

* * * * *

“Lodéve, June 8.--From Montpelier I went to Aigues-Mortes, the old sea-town where St. Louis embarked for the Crusades, little altered since his time, unless, indeed, the mosquitoes are worse, for they are terrible.”

* * * * *

“Lexos, Aveyron, June 15.--From Rodez and its great cathedral, and Mareillac in the heart of the vine country, I had an excursion of transcendent beauty through the most exquisite mountain valleys and chestnut forests, by rocks and waterfalls, to Conques. I was taken there by a single line in Fergusson’s ‘Architecture’ comparing it with Souillac, which I had already seen, but found perhaps the most beautiful spot in France, and, in that desolation, a glorious romanesque abbey church, grand as a cathedral of the first rank, in which, owing to its lonely position, all the curious mediaeval treasures remain unspoilt. Here, and indeed everywhere, I found the greatest kindness from the charming well-to-do peasantry. Every one seems well off: every one full of courtesy and goodness; and though all the men in blouses expect to be treated as equals, they are indescribably pleasant.

“Anything so cheap as ‘Untravelled France’ it is impossible to imagine. Even at Mende, where it is quite a good hotel, prices were: room--very good, 1 fr., dinner 2 fr., breakfast 50 c., service 50 c., bougie never anything, and these are the usual prices.

“Nothing can describe what the delicious, sweetness of the acacias has been, so abundant in all these town-villages, and now it is giving way to that of the limes.

“This is a wooden inn of the humblest kind, close in the shadow of a great junction station, at which I am for convenience, but the pleasantness of the people gives it a charm. This solitary existence is a placid, peculiar halt in life.”

* * * * *

I was the greater part of July in London.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“July 25, 1885.--Mrs. Rogerson, working in the east end of London, met with a family of poor children--very hopelessly poor children--whom she knew, with a dog. She stopped and told them that, as they could not keep themselves, she wondered they could keep a dog. The eldest boy answered rather savagely, ‘Father bought it: father gave sixpence for the dog, and right well he did too, for the rats wos so many, they wos, they used to eat our toes at night, and the dog keeps them all off.’

“The Maharajah of Johore asked me to his ball. When he goes out to luncheon or dinner he sends on his own cook to prepare for him, taking with him, to kill on the spot, the chicken which his master is to eat. When the cook kills it he says a sort of little prayer--‘Dear little brother, forgive me for the pain I am going to inflict upon you: it will only be momentary, and it really cannot be helped.’”

* * * * *

“Campsea Ashe, Suffolk, August 22.--On the way here I saw Ipswich, its great feature being ‘the Ancient House,’ adorned outside with representations of the Seasons. Close to St. Peter’s Church is Wolsey’s Gate, covered with ivy, which led to his college. This place, which the William Lowthers have bought, in the flat corn-lands of Suffolk, has a fine old garden, with clipped yew hedges and long tanks like Wrest. It has been a most pleasant visit. I heard some one say once, ‘Mrs. Lowther is a most extraordinary woman: she never will let the grass grow under any one of her children’s feet even for a single instant;’ but it has made them all very agreeable, from the immense variety of occupations in which they are interested, and in which, consequently, they interest others. James Lowther, who is at home now, is certainly one of the pleasantest and best-informed young men of the day. He has just been very amusing about answers in Board Schools, telling, amongst others, of a child who was asked ‘If King Alfred had been alive now, what part would he have taken in politics?’ and replied, ‘If King Alfred had been alive now, he would have been far too old to have taken part in politics at all!’

“We had a pleasant picnic at Framlingham, a noble ruined castle, which, for Suffolk, stands almost on a height, and went to Sanbourn, the luxurious home of the rich family of Heywood, and to Glemham, where Lady North, mother of Lord Guildford, lives in a fine old house, which contains much good old furniture and china.

“We spent a long interesting day at the noble old moated house of Helmingham, where Lady Tollemache apologised amusingly for only having nine of her sons at home to assist her in doing the honours! It is a delightful place, with beautiful old gardens, and its inhabitants are delightful too. Lord Tollemache especially brims with goodness to all around him. He was very amusing in urging Miss Lowther, when she had as many sons as he has (!), to make their home pleasanter to them than any other place in the world, so that they should always prefer it to everything else. He showed us all his relics, especially his Anglo-Saxon MS. of the time of Alfred the Great, and several beautiful Bibles of the time of Edward I. There is a pretty picture of Mary Tudor as a child. Queen Elizabeth was at Helmingham, and stood godmother to a baby there, who lived to become Sir Lionel Tollemache: that baby is represented, with its three little sisters, in a curious picture in the hall.

“In the church is the tomb of Colonel Thomas Tollemache, who was distinguished in the wars of Queen Anne’s time. The Duke of Marlborough ordered him to attack Brest. There were reasons which made him very doubtful of success, and he represented to the Duke that the only chance of it lay in a surprise: still the Duke ordered him to attempt it. Brest was found thoroughly prepared, the hoped-for surprise was an utter failure, and Tollemache fell in the attack. The French Government had been forewarned, and it was afterwards found that it had been forewarned by Marlborough! When the Duc d’Aumale came to Helmingham, he said that the thing he was most anxious to see was the monument of this unfortunate officer, and that he had himself read, in the archives at Brest, the letter of the Duke of Marlborough warning the garrison of the coming attack.

“The last owner of Campsea Ashe, Mr. Shepherd, was the grandson of a gardener. The Mr. Shepherd who then owned Campsea adopted a nephew, a young Frere, grandfather of the well-known Sir Bartle. The nephew invited his friends to Campsea, and, after the fashion of the time, they sat up drinking. Very late, young Frere rang the bell and ordered another bottle of port. The butler, very cross, went up to his master’s room and woke him, saying that Mr. Frere wanted some more port and that he must have the key of the cellar. Old Mr. Shepherd, furious, gave the key, but next morning sent for a lawyer and disinherited his nephew, and, no one else being handy, and having a gardener he liked who bore his own name of Shepherd, he left him his fortune.”

* * * * *

“Holmhurst, August 23.--In returning from Campsea Ashe I spent some hours at Colchester, and saw its two abbeys and its castle--rather curious than beautiful.”

* * * * *

“Drayton House, Northamptonshire, Sept. 20.--I have been spending several days in this most pleasant old house, which is full of charm and interest--many-towered, with an entrance court, a deserted Georgian chapel, a grand hall full of fine pictures, a vaulted room dating from Edward III., cellars probably from Henry III., admirable buildings of Elizabeth and James I.

“The place belonged to the Greenes, who, with the Earl of Wiltshire, who married a daughter of the house, have grand tombs in the church. Then it passed to the Mordaunts, and was left by Lady Mary Mordaunt, the divorced wife of the Duke of Norfolk, to her second husband, Sir John Germaine, whose second wife, Lady Betty, left it to Lord George Sackville, from whom it descended to its present owner, sweet engaging Mrs. Sackville, who inherited it from her uncle, the last Duke of Dorset, and who has all the perfect simplicity of the truest high-breeding.

“The gardens are full of terraces, staircases, fountains, pleached walks, avenues, and leaden statues--beautiful exceedingly. There is a gallery of Mordaunt portraits in the house; in the old library at the top are no end of treasures, and out of it opens the Duchess of Norfolk’s boudoir, with old Japanese ornaments. Through a plank missing in the floor of an upper gallery you can look into quite a large room which no one has ever entered. Its windows are darkened by the overgrowth of the creepers outside, and the only object in it is a large box like a portmanteau. The Sackvilles have always lived here, yet not one of them has had the curiosity to descend into that room or to look into that portmanteau!

“I have been taken to see the curious old house of Lyveden--never finished--one of the three strange semi-religious erections of the Tresham of the Gunpowder Plot. This is supposed to be in honour of the Virgin, and is covered with the oddest devices, such as ‘the Seven Eyes of God,’ the money-bag of Judas, with the thirty pieces of silver round it, &c. The second of Tresham’s buildings is Rothwell townhall; the third a lodge at Rushton in honour of the Trinity, in which everything, down to the minutest ornament, is three-cornered.

“Then we have been to Boughton, the Duke of Buccleuch’s great desolate house, which contains two cartoons attributed, without any cause, to Raffaelle. The house was built by the Duke of Montagu, who was ambassador to Louis XIV., and the king lent him a French architect and gardener. He made it as like a French château as possible. Then he told his friends that he must plant an avenue to drive to London by, and when they remonstrated that an immense part of the way to London did not belong to him, he said, ‘Well, at any rate I will have an avenue of the same length,’ and he planted seventy-two miles of it in his park. These trees, hemming in the view in all directions, make the place indescribably dull. Just outside the park is the pretty village of Geddington, with a fine old church and bridge, and a beautiful Eleanor cross with slender detached columns. We went on thence to tea at Warkton with Mrs. Bridges, wife of the clergyman, a real patrician Venetian beauty, who has set all Northamptonshire quarrelling as to whether the glorious colour of her hair can be real; but it is. Half of the church her husband serves is a mausoleum of the Dukes of Buccleuch, who have four large and magnificent monuments in it.

“The old Duchess of Buccleuch, a homely-looking person, was very fond of joining people who came to see the place and talking to them. One day she walked by a visitor and said, ‘You know, all this belongs to the Duke of Buccleuch.’--‘And pray, whom did he marry?’--‘ME!’”

* * * * *

“Cromer, Sept. 22.--I came yesterday to stay with the Lockers, who have lately taken the additional name of Lampson, with a fortune from her father, Sir Curtis Lampson. They are exceedingly happy together. ‘My winsome marrow,’ Mr. Locker has just said to his wife, ‘you know I never can go anywhere without you.’ In the evening, Mr. Locker was very pleasant in describing Rogers and his stories. Apropos of the dictum that the postscript of a well-told story is often its best feature, he told of Rogers describing a duel between a Frenchman and an Englishman, which was to be fought in the dark. The Englishman was a very humane man, and when it came to his turn to fire, fired up the chimney, that he might do his adversary no harm, but brought down the Frenchman, who had taken refuge there. ‘But when I tell that story in Paris,’ added Rogers, ‘it is the Englishman who is up the chimney.’

“He told of a Mr. Egerton who was with his regiment in Canada. Coming into the messroom one morning, he seemed much depressed, and being asked the reason, said he was troubled by an oddly vivid dream, in which he had seen his own coffin on the deck of a vessel, and in the dream had been even able to read the plate upon the coffin, which bore his name and the date June 16. He was so full of it, that the Colonel, to humour him, wrote down the circumstances and the date. This was in April. Afterwards he went to Upper Canada, where he was killed by Indians on the 16th of June, and his coffin was brought down the river as he had seen it. Mr. Locker told this story to Lord Algernon St. Maur, who said, ‘I can corroborate that story, for I was in the messroom when what you describe occurred.’

“Mr. Locker described Dickens’s way of telling stories. He heard him tell that of Lincoln’s dream, and of his describing the oppressive feeling he had, how he was ‘drifting, drifting, drifting,’ and how at that moment the members of council came in and he said, ‘Now we must go to business.’ It was on leaving that council that he was shot, so no one heard the end of that dream, or whether there would seem to be any forewarning in it.

“We have been to-day to Felbrigge, the fine old house of the Windhams, sold to a Norwich tradesman named Catton, whose daughters have adopted the older family as if it were their own, and are quite worthy of the old pictures, MSS., &c., all left in the house, nothing having been taken away when the place was given up. ‘Mr. Windham comes every night to look after his favourite books in the library,’ said Miss Catton; ‘he often comes, and he goes straight to the shelves where they are: we hear him moving the tables and chairs about: we never disturb him though, for we intend to be ghosts ourselves some day, and to come about the old place just as he does.’ In the hall there is a grand bust of the statesman by Nollekens. Formerly it was on his monument in the church, but after some years the family put a copy there, and moved the original into the house. The church, however, still retains the most glorious brasses. One is that of a lady in waiting who came over with Anne of Bohemia, and whose daughter was herself invited to share the throne. But the man she really married was one of the early owners of Felbrigge.”

* * * * *

“Sept. 24.--We have been with the Dick Gurneys in their fleet waggonette to Blickling, quite glorious, so perfect in colour, with an exquisite entrance, and a splendid herbaceous garden. In the church is the tomb which Lady Lothian has erected to her husband,[410] a most grand one, with the head of the reclining statue turned to one side, and the long beard drifted over the pillow.

“The innumerable Gurneys, Buxtons, and Hoares who populate Cromer come in and out of this house, as of each other’s, whenever they like, without ringing the bell.

“Last night Mrs. R. Hoare dined here. She says the people here always address their superiors in the third person, as in French. They always say ‘I’m very much fatagued,’ for bothered. ‘Well, Mrs. Smith, are you going to take the blue dress or the brown?’ she said when keeping a charity shop. ‘Why, ma’am, I’ve not fairly averdupoised,’ replied the woman; and it is a common expression for balancing.

“There are many remnants here in Cromer from Danish occupation. The ghosts, as in Denmark, are always without heads. There is great faith in the story of ‘Old Strop,’ a Danish dog who was washed ashore with the bodies of two Danish sailors, one of whom was buried at Overstrand and the other at Cromer. Every night the dog, headless, is believed to run from one grave to the other, and fishermen will always go round by the shore at night rather than by the shorter lane, which the dog is supposed to take.”

* * * * *

“Sept. 25.--Mrs. Ritchie (Miss Thackeray) is here, most charming and interesting, as I have always thought her. She describes Tennyson and Mrs. Kemble as the noblest man and woman she knows.

“Mrs. Kemble found, when in England, that her husband was going to take advantage of an American law which allowed him to obtain a divorce if she was away from him two years. For her children’s sake it was imperative that she should prevent this. She hurried back, and just arrived in time by two or three days. Afterwards she herself quietly obtained a divorce in some way which gave her the charge of her children.... One of her daughters is Mrs. Leigh, whose husband, the Vicar of St. Mary, Bryanston Square, she is always trying to persuade to go out to the family plantations in Georgia. The other, Sarah, is the wife of a merchant in New York, and a replica--a much feebler replica--of her mother.

“Now, Mrs. Kemble is generally to be found knitting by her fireside. One day Mrs. Ritchie took her little girl to see her. ‘Here I am,’ Mrs. Kemble said to the child, ‘an old woman who never allows another person to put in a word when she is talking; and now, what do you think of me?’ The little girl, who was shy, did not know what to say, and looked as if she was going to cry. Mrs. Ritchie, to fill up the gap, said, ‘Oh, she thinks, Mrs. Kemble, that no one could possibly wish to put in a word when they could listen to you.’ ‘Ma fille, ne dites pas des choses comme ça,’ cried Mrs. Kemble furiously; and then, more quietly, ‘You should not say such things before the child: it is not right to teach her to be artificial.’

“‘Right is right,’ she said one day, ‘and wrong is wrong, but God forbid that I should judge of another whether he is right or wrong.’

“‘One day,’ said Mrs. Ritchie, ‘I found Mrs. Kemble sitting by her fireside looking rather disconsolate, and asked her what she was doing. “Oh, I’m knocking my head against the wall, my dear; that man who was here was so dreadfully stupid, I’m obliged to knock it out of me.”’

“Mrs. Kemble was at an inn in Switzerland with a lady with whom she never made acquaintance. They were both reading ‘Middlemarch,’ and came down with their books into the public room, and were engrossed in them. But one day the lady was so enchanted with a passage in her volume that she burst out with, ‘Well, this woman is one of the noblest of authors: whatever the peculiarities of her views on life may be, I will never believe that the woman who can write thus can be other than one with the very noblest aims.’ Then Mrs. Kemble turned upon her furiously with, ‘Who are you that you should presume to dare to judge such a woman as George Eliot? how can you dare to judge her?’ and the lady jumped up, and, instead of being angry, embraced Mrs. Kemble upon the spot.

“For her own sharp sayings, Mrs. Kemble is repaid by her grandchildren. She wrote to one of her grandsons that she did not care for Wagner’s music, she could not understand what he meant by it. He answered, that a fly crawling up the wall of Cologne Cathedral might as well presume to judge of its architectural glories as she of Wagner! She did not seem to know whether to be angry or pleased at this.

“Dear Lady Marian Alford used to tell of her first meeting Mrs. Kemble at a garden-party. She had scarcely sat down by her when Mrs. Kemble said slowly, with her peculiar intonation and inflection upon each syllable--‘I do per-ceive a ... stink!’

“Being asked if she would employ Pakenham or M’Crackem as agent for sending her goods from Italy to England, Mrs. Kemble said, ‘Why, rather Pack’em than Crack’em, to be sure.’”

* * * * *

“Sept. 30.--A charming visit to the Delawarrs at Buckhurst. I had no idea there was such a beautiful place in Sussex, such moss-grown oaks and beeches; such deep ferny and heathy glens; such still pools, in which all the autumnal tints are reflected; such winding forest-paths, up and down and in and out of which Lady Delawarr has driven me with her two ponies tandem; an infantine Medway, nearly to the source of which the eldest boy, Cantilupe, rowed me through channels so narrow that one could touch the great water-plants on either side. Then the house has many delightful books and pictures, including two Sir Joshuas; and there are two other old houses, semi-deserted, but with grand castellated gateways, infinitely picturesque; and there is a monumental chapel, where a marble Duke and Duchess of Dorset kneel eternally by the tomb of the many children who died before them.

“The ‘company’ has been varied and amusing--Miss (Doll) Farquharson of Invercauld, a perfect Niagara of amusing Scottish anecdote; Mr. Broadley, of terrible review reputation; and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth, who has propounded many quaint riddles of his own invention.

“Miss Farquharson described a minister at Invercauld, who, wishing to flatter the family, stated in his sermon that the Farquharson tartan was one of the oldest dresses in the world, as it was evident that Joseph’s coat of many colours was made of it, ‘thereby giving mortal offence to the Duffs, who sat in the opposite pew.’

“When the minister was changed, Miss Farquharson asked an old woman if she liked the new one as well as the old. ‘Eh, I like him weel eneuch, but he’s na sae frolicsome in the pulpit.’

“I made great friends with all the family at Buckhurst, down to the little Margaret of three, who peoples all the forest with imaginary bears and elephants, and talks to them, and of her adventures with them, exactly as if they were realities. We picnicked on an island in the lake, dreadfully damp, but it was very merry and pleasant.”

* * * * *

“Burwarton, Shropshire, Oct. 23.--This is a beautiful place of Lord Boyne’s, high in the Clee hills, with glorious views of the Welsh and Malvern ranges, beyond exquisite wooded scenery. The house is modern, but has good pictures, several representing members of the Medmenham brotherhood, and one a Lady Paisley, an ancestress, who declared that she did not wish to go to heaven if poor people went there. Many pleasant people are here, especially a Mr. Bankes, who is very amusing about the primitive ways of the Isle of Purbeck. At one time the people of Corfe had been very good for some time, so that the lock-up had not been used, and the Mayor, one Robert Taylor, had filled it with his potatoes after they were dug up. But at last there was a man who was very naughty indeed, and he had to be put in the lock-up, though there was scarcely room for him even to stand in it, it was so full of the Mayor’s potatoes. Late that night, some people going past stumbled over a great heap lying in the middle of the road--quite a huge heap. It was the Mayor’s potatoes, which the prisoner had amused himself by throwing through the bars of the window: so then the Mayor was obliged to compromise matters, and to let his victim out on condition of his picking up all the potatoes and putting them back again.

“This Mayor, Robert Taylor, used to say, ‘I shall have to adjudicate upon such and such a case to-morrow.’ He kept a shop where he sold hats. One day he saw a neighbour walking by with a very smart shiny hat, and called out, ‘Thomas, good-day, Thomas; you’ve got a new hat, may I ask where you got it, Thomas?’--‘Well, I bought it at Wareham, Mr. Taylor.’--‘Oh, you bought it at Wareham, did you? Very good, Thomas.’ Some days afterwards Thomas was set upon by a man in a lonely road and very badly beaten, really very much hurt. He went to the Mayor and said, ‘Really, Mr. Taylor, I think I must take out a summons.’--‘A summons! must you, Thomas? Well, you may just go and take it out where you bought your hat.’

“The ignorance of the people in Purbeck is intense. A clergyman preached about Zachaeus climbing into the fig-tree, &c. An old widow woman, who had stayed at home, asked her son if he could tell her what the sermon was about. ‘Yes, that he could,’ he said, ‘for it was all about Jack Key (a bad character in the village), who had been up to summut, and was to have to give half of all his goods to the poor.’

“Here, at Burwarton, witchcraft is generally believed in. A tenant said the other day that his pig was bewitched by an old woman, and that it would certainly die, unless he could have her blood; by which he meant nothing murderous--a prick of a pin would do. Many of the neighbouring clergy are bad. At a small hill-parish near this an old woman asked the clergyman what he did for his rheumatism. ‘Well, I swear like hell,’ he said.”

* * * * *

“Oakley Park, Oct. 17.--A lovely place, with glorious old oaks mentioned in Domesday Book. Ludlow is only 2½les off. Its castle, which stands grandly opposite the entrance to the drive, is associated with Prince Arthur, ‘Comus’ was acted there, and it was thence that the Princes were taken to the Tower. It was also from Ludlow that the pilgrims came who were met in the Holy Land by St. John when he gave them the ring to take back to Edward the Confessor, and this story is represented on the windows of the grand old church. Stokesay, which we have been to sketch, is inimitably picturesque. Nothing can be kinder than my present hostess, Lady Mary Clive, so considerate of all that can interest or amuse one,[412] even whilst talking incessantly of her two hobbies--Conservatism and Church matters. In the latter she is just now in her glory, as the house is full of clergy for the Church Congress at Ludlow, where all the ecclesiastics in the county are delighting, like dogs, to bark and bite. There is table-d’hôte for them here at every meal, and the house is like a clerical hotel.”

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Nov. 22, 1885.--Mother’s birthday! on which for so many years we have been through the Catacombs (lighted up this one day of the year) to visit the grave of S. Cecilia. My pleasant holiday and happy visits are already becoming dreamlike, and it is as if my last time alone here going on still, as I sit in my hill-set solitude. The wind whistles in the fir-trees; a cow lows in the meadow for a lost calf; Rollo snorts with fat, but is always ready to play with Selma the cat, though greatly annoyed at her having given birth to a numerous progeny in his bed; new pigstyes are built, and a Lawsoniana hedge is planted round the little garden up the steps. ‘The Holmhurst muffin-bell,’ as St. Leonards calls it, already rung for a tea-party next Tuesday; and ‘the boys’ (now Heddie Williamson and Freddie Russell) are due for their half-holiday on Wednesday; George Jolliffe is coming to stay on the 4th; and for myself, there is constant work to be done on ‘Paris,’ where, as I labour down the highways, a thousand by-ways of interest and instruction are ever opening up.

“I have, however, a little disappointment in Smith and Elder’s account, nearly £300 to the bad again this year, and no gain whatever: so much for the supposed riches of ‘a very successful author.’

“Just now also I am being most tremendously bored with the visit of young ----, and am wondering if he will profit by one of George Washington’s admirable ‘Rules of Civility,’ which I am going to read aloud to him. ‘In the presence of others, sing not to yourself with a humming voice, nor drum with your fingers or feet.’”

* * * * *

“Powderham Castle, Nov. 14.--I have been spending a week with Charlie Halifax in this beautiful place, which recalls the Little Gidding of ‘John Inglesant’ in its intense, its real saintliness--in the constant chapel services with wonderful singing of the servants, in the commemorative hymns for such saints as Martin and Bricius, in the spirit of harmony and universal love, which rules everything. Lord Devon[413] is absolutely seraphic. Charlie says he knows only two perfect forms of happiness, reciting the Holy Office or attending the Board of Guardians. ‘I know one thing troubles you in respect of heaven,’ says Charlie, ‘it is, that there are no boards of guardians there; but, dearest Lord Devon, if they are quite essential to your happiness, I am sure that a board will be created in some planet, with celestial paupers for you to relieve.’

“When with the Halifaxes, I always become brimful of good intentions. But then something comes back to me that I once heard a Countess Zitchi say, ‘Moi, je suis tout-à-fait comme Jésus Christ, seulement il me manque--la conduite!’

“We have had a delightful twenty-seven miles’ excursion to the very curious old desolate house of Fulford and a picnic in its deserted deer-park. Another day, Charlie, his uncle Francis Grey, and I, went to Berry Head, a wild rock-girt promontory, with ruined walls of an old fortress, looking on the bay crowded with Brixham trawlers.”

* * * * *

The latter months of 1885 found me quietly at home, exceedingly busy over my work on France. As at all other times, except in fine summer weather, I was chiefly alone, save when on Sundays some of my young men friends--“the boys”--were generally at Holmhurst for two nights, being usually those whose whole life is spent in bearing--

“The work-day burden of dull life, About the footsore flags of a weary world;”[414]

for I have always felt how much, in similar circumstances, I should have cared myself to have a friend and a homelike little refuge to go to. Besides, “although in a very humble and apparently confined sphere of action, who can tell the effect which our influence or that of our conduct may have upon others, and its reaction throughout future ages?”[415]

In latter years I have had better “material” in this respect; but it must be allowed that, except in very rare cases, those I tried to be useful to in former days turned out very ill. Here are just a few instances:--

* * * * *

No. 1 was a gentleman once in a good position, who had fallen into extreme poverty. I gave up being in London, I gave up going abroad, I always went in an omnibus instead of a cab, always travelled second class instead of first, to have £50 a year to give to No. 1. But when I found that my poor gentleman always took a hansom even to cross Eaton Square, I drew in my purse-strings.

No. 2 seemed very different. Rudely nurtured, he minded no difficulties, and was willing to live hardly. He only cared for work, and his work was science. He threw his whole life into it, and seemed on the eve of great discoveries--in fact, he made them. But he had no one to help him to buy the patents that were necessary, and I spent £800 for this, and altogether many thousand pounds in his behalf. He was to have repaid this sum if he became successful in life, but he made a very large fortune, and “forgot to pay it.” Then, having lost his fortune again, his originality and cleverness took another direction: he suddenly turned Buddhist, cared for nothing but the divine essence, and went off to India to join a brotherhood in which, after years of prayer and fasting, he might hope to obtain the distinction of “a little yellow garment.” He wrote then that his religion itself would prevent his ever again forgetting that he owed me four thousand pounds with interest. Yet, after his return, he repudiated his debt altogether, and denied that he had even the slightest obligation to me. All I had spent was thrown away! No. 2 was an utter collapse.

No. 3 wanted to be married. He had led a wild life, and his marriage would “be the saving of him;” with his marriage a new page of his life would be turned over; but to enable the marriage to be, a loan of money was necessary. I sent the money, but the marriage never took place, and the loan was never returned. No. 3 vanished into chaos.

No. 4 was very engaging and I became very fond of him. He was perpetually at my home, where I always treated him as a younger brother, giving him money when I was away for whatever he wanted. When he wished to give a party to his friends in London, the food, the wine, the flowers, came from Holmhurst. He had to work hard in a public office, so every year I gave him money for the change of a Continental tour, and on one occasion, when he had no other companion, I took him myself, and showed him the whole of a foreign country. This went on for nine years. Then a circumstance occurred which made me feel that he, in his turn, might, not even for one day, but for one hour, be useful to me. Under these circumstances I asked a favour of him. “No,” it was refused at once, “it might not be to his advantage: it might even possibly be rather inconvenient.” No. 4 collapsed.

No. 5 was a very young and ingenuous boy. I met him first when he was at Oxford, when his family--country gentlefolk--were trying to compel him to take Orders. He confided to me his misery about it, and his utter unfitness. I backed him up in resisting. From that time I saw a great deal of him. He was very affectionate to me, and I grew very fond of him. His family, irritated at his opposition to taking Orders, refused to go on spending money upon his education. I continued it, or thought I did, by letter, sending him daily questions to answer by post, and receiving précis of History from him and correcting them. He was also very frequently at Holmhurst for a long time together, and had more of a real home there than with his own parents. Once, without my knowledge or that of his family, he went to London, and got into terribly bad companionship and disgracefully bad habits. He was plundered of all he possessed, and had to pawn his watch to get away. To prevent the discovery of this, which would have hopelessly estranged him from his family, I redeemed his valuables for a considerable sum. He then seemed penitent, promised amendment, and took refuge at Holmhurst again. About a year after I found him on the eve of wilfully making an acquaintance which was sure to cause his ruin. I pointed out to him the misery he was bringing upon himself, and he promised to give it up. Then I found that all the while he was promising to do nothing of the kind, he had been constantly writing to the person in question, with whom he had no previous acquaintance, making assignations for meetings, &c. From that time he got into one miserable scrape after another. He sank and sank. Whenever he has made a promise, he has always broken his word; nothing he says can be believed; his every act must be mistrusted.... Now, he has taken Holy Orders! This is the end of No. 5.

No. 6 was very dear to me. I had known him intimately from his earliest childhood. Exceedingly unprepossessing in appearance, he gave the most brilliant promise of a distinguished career. To me he showed the most unbounded affection and confidence, but he never told the truth. This led to a series of miserable deceptions which caused his expulsion from school and brought about his failure everywhere. Dreaded, mistrusted, he became alienated from his family, almost from his fellow-men. No opportunity of extravagant folly occurred but was greedily seized upon, to be followed by fresh falsehood. His whole life has been a sorrow to those who know him, and who think mournfully of its beautiful “might have been.”

I met No. 7 when he was eighteen. Of very lowly origin but gentle instincts, he had been turned adrift at seventeen upon London to earn his own living, and he seemed at first to be earning it bravely and honestly. He was clever and was anxious to improve himself, and he spent all his evenings in reading, and succeeded in teaching himself French. By his own unaided efforts he had really given himself an education. At first I used only to lend him books and do what I could to help his reading. Then I frequently invited him to Holmhurst, and paid for his coming there. He had a bad illness in London, when I went constantly to him in his miserable garret, and supplied all his little comforts. About a year after I first knew him, he yielded to a great temptation in misappropriating a large sum of money belonging to the firm he was serving, and spending it in a very disgraceful manner. It seemed as if he really did this under a diabolic influence, and as if he really believed that he should be able to replace the money before the theft was discovered. But the time drew very near when his accounts would be examined, and there was no chance--there never had been--that they would be found correct. Then the full agony of his position came upon him, and he confessed the whole to me and implored me to save him. The day before the examination of accounts I replaced the stolen money, and the defalcation was never discovered.

From this time he seemed to go on well, and I became much attached to him. Five times a year I paid his expenses to Holmhurst, to give him country air, treating him like my own son when he was with me. Then came a time when, after several years, he fell into feeble health, and had to leave his situation. I was then not perfectly satisfied with the way in which he was going on, and did not think him as frank and candid as he had been, but I took him home with me for a month to recruit. At Holmhurst he had every kindness and indulgence, and was received not only as an equal, but almost as a child of the house. At the end of a month, he told me that he had heard of some very suitable employment in London, and hoped that I would not object to his going to town to see about it. I said, “Certainly not; but what is the employment?” To my surprise, he said that he could not tell me then, but I should know later. I was more surprised because, when he left, he was so unusually affectionate--“I am very glad you are so fond of me, but I cannot imagine why you should show it especially to-day, as you are coming back in a few hours.” He never came back. It was many days before he wrote. Then I had a formal letter saying that, when he went up to London, he had been received into the Church of Rome at Brompton Oratory, and enclosing a list of his possessions left at Holmhurst, and directions for sending them. Since then he has sunk lower and lower. I have often heard of him, and always a worse account. He is utterly lost to me. That is the end of No. 7.

No. 8 was excessively good-looking, had pleasant manners, and was especially winning to ladies. I had known his family long ago, and his home, a very quiet rectory in a desolate fen district. When he was at Oxford, I found him, like No. 5, very unhappy at being expected to take Orders, for which he honestly felt himself unfitted, and I persuaded him to tell his father that it was impossible. Then, as he was penniless and had no prospects, it was necessary that a profession should be found for him, and I obtained a nomination for him for the Foreign Office from Lord Granville. He came to London to work for this, and he worked well. Feeling that it would be most undesirable for him to go on in London, especially to enter the Foreign Office, knowing no one in society, I took him out with me every day to parties, and introduced him everywhere, claiming all kindness for him as my intimate friend. His good looks and pleasing manners made him very welcome. But he fell in love with an Earl’s daughter. Strange to say, his suit was not rejected, though a probation of two years was required, during which he must begin to make an income. With this view, he abandoned all thought of the Foreign Office and took to the Stock Exchange. A week before the end of the two years’ probation, the lady, of her own accord, threw him over, but, as far as love went, her place was soon supplied. By this time, too, the young man had acquired l’habitude de société, had begun to despise his humble relations, to cut his old friends, and a shake of the Prince of Wales’s hand finally turned his head. He scarcely speaks to me now when we meet. He openly says that, as he has gained all he can from me, he naturally prefers “those who can be more useful” to him.

No. 9, poor fellow, was long a great anxiety to me. He was of good family. He fell often--fell into the most frightful vice and shame. He repented bitterly, and then fell again worse than before. But in one of his best and truest times of repentance, God saw that he was positively unable to cope with temptation, and he died--died most mercifully, full of faith, hope, and gratitude. This was the end of No. 9. Thinking of him has often brought to my mind Rossetti’s lines--

“Look in my face: my name is Might-have-been, I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell.”

And yet--

“La bontà infinita ha sì gran braccia, Che prende ciò che si rivolve a lei.”[416]

As I retrace here, on paper, the story of my failures, a sentence of Balzac comes into my mind: “Il vous arrivera souvent d’être utile aux autres, de leur rendre service, et vous en serez pen récompensé”; mais n’imitez pas ceux qui se plaignent des hommes et se vantent de ne trouver que des ingrats. N’est-ce pas se mettre sur un piédestal? puis n’est-il pas un peu niais d’avouer son peu de connaissance du monde?”[417]

And then Bunyan said in his last sermon (1692):--“Dost thou see a soul that has had the image of God in him? Love him: love him: say, This man must go to heaven some day. Do good to one another, and if any wrong you, pray to God to right you, and love the brotherhood.”

And there is a line of Tasso which comes back to me in all times of disappointment--

“Brama assai--poco spera--nulla chiede.”

END OF VOL. V.

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO

Edinburgh and London

ERRATUM

Page 405, for “Shackborough” read “Shuckborough.”

“Story of my Life.”--End of Vol. V.

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

VOL. VI

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

BY

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE

AUTHOR OF “MEMORIALS OF A QUIET LIFE,” “THE STORY OF TWO NOBLE LIVES,” ETC. ETC.

VOLUME VI

LONDON

GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD

1900

[All rights reserved]

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.

At the Ballantyne Press

CONTENTS

PAGE

BEYOND THE TOP OF THE HILL 1

IN PLEASURE AND PAIN 118

AT HOME AND ABROAD 192

SOCIAL REMINISCENCES 252

A KNOCKING AT THE DOOR 295

WRITING THE GURNEY MEMOIRS 337

IN MANY PLACES 393

FAREWELL 526

INDEX 539

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. VI

CHARLOTTE LEYCESTER. (Photogravure) Frontispiece

PAGE

THE DEANERY, BATTLE 5

L’ARICCIA 10

GALLERIA DI SOTTO, ALBANO 11

LAKE OF BOLSENA 12

S. DOMENICO, SIENA 13

MONTE OLIVETO 14

SENS 15

THE PARACLETE 16

THE PORCH, HOLMHURST 27

RIEZ 36

GRIGNAN 37

CLOISTER OF CAVAILLON 38

MONTMAJOUR 40

LES BAUX 41

LES S. MARIES DE LA CAMARGUE 42

LA SALETTE 43

DOMREMY, VILLAGE STREET 45

HOUSE OF JEANNE DARC 46

EMBRUN 47

CHÂTEAU DE VIZILLE 49

QUAYS OF GRENOBLE 51

SCOTNEY CASTLE 55

AT WESTMINSTER 64

THE GARDEN, HOLMHURST 98

THE MANOR WALK, HOLMHURST 110

ROSNY 113

ALNWICK CASTLE 137

HOLMHURST FROM THE SHRUBBERY 140

S. FLOUR, FROM THE SOUTH 147

CHÂTEAU DU ROI, S. EMILION 148

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE, 1888. (Photogravure) To face 150

S. NECTAIRE 151

GATE OF LA GUERANDE 153

PONT S. LOUIS, MENTONE 165

IN S. FRANCESCO NEL DESERTO 169

THE ROCKY VALLEY, HOLMHURST 171

FROM THE WALKS, HOLMHURST 174

ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT 176

CEMETERY OF PERA, CONSTANTINOPLE 195

THE BATHS, BROUSSA 213

OBER-AMMERGAU 218

TOMB OF LADY WATERFORD, FORD 251

THE OAK WALK, HOLMHURST 254

THE VENETIAN WELL, HOLMHURST 255

BISHOP’S BRIDGE, NORWICH 260

SASSO 265

AT BORDIGHERA 266

AT REBEKAH’S WELL, NEAR S. REMO 267

AT S. REMO 268

GLEN AT S. REMO 269

CLAUDIAN AQUEDUCT 274

REMAINS OF TEMPLE OF JUPITER LATIARIS, MONTE CAVI 281

VENETIAN POZZO 292

BROADHURST 322

GROOMBRIDGE PLACE 323

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE (Photogravure) To face 336

EARLHAM HALL 338

MONT S. MICHEL 344

S. JEAN DU DOIGT 345

AT CARNAC 346

LES ROCHERS 347

QUEEN ANNE AT HOLMHURST 349

BELLA’S LOGHOUSE, ALDERLEY MERE 352

STOKESAY 382

PITCHFORD 383

IN THE WALKS, HOLMHURST 395

THE TERRACE DOOR, HOLMHURST 426

THE NAYLOR LANDING, HOLMHURST 430

THE ARSON STEPS, HOLMHURST 450

IN THE WALPOLE CORRIDOR, HOLMHURST 469

WARBLETON PRIORY, ON APPROACHING 471

WARBLETON PRIORY, SEEN FROM BEHIND 472

PORCH OF HOSPICE, HOLMHURST 477

THE AVE-VALE STEPS, HOLMHURST 481

IN THE CHURCHYARD, HURSTMONCEAUX 489

THE AVE-VALE GATE, HOLMHURST 492

IN THE UPPER CORRIDOR, HOLMHURST 503

THE PORCH, HOLMHURST 511

XXIV

BEYOND THE TOP OF THE HILL

“Un jour tout sera bien, voilà notre espérance! Tout est bien aujourd’hui, voilà l’illusion.

* * * * *

Que tout soit mal ou bien, faisons que tout soit mieux.” --ROUSSEAU.

“Il faut travailler en ce monde, il faut souffrir el combattre. On aura bien le temps de se reposer toute l’érnité.

“Si nous comprenions bien notre bonheur, nous pourrions presque dire que nous sommes plus heureux que les saints dans le ciel. Ils vivent des leurs rentes; ils ne peuvent rien gagner; tandis que nous, nous pouvons à chaque instant augmenter notre trésor.”--LE CURÉ D’ARS.

“La debolezza umana piange, sorride l’imortale speranza.”--Epitaph at Pisa.

There is an old print at Holmhurst which represents life in its successive stages as the ascent and descent of a hill. At fifty the top of the hill is reached and the descent begins. I have passed the top, and every year must bring less power of work and action, though I scarcely feel older now than I did at five-and-twenty. But certain marks in the forehead show that age has left his card upon one; we do not know when he called, but the visit has been paid. Well, it is the more necessary to do all we can whilst power lasts, never talking, but acting, and recollecting that a duty once divined binds one from that moment; while as for the abuse, public and private, received for anything attempted out of the ordinary groove, we ought ever to follow the simple advice of Sœur Rosalie, “Faites le bien, et laissez dire.”

Certainly the longer one lives one feels how, of all shams, the religious sham is the worst--the man who talks “goody” without any heart to sympathise with sorrow or shame, and who thus can never help those who struggle sadly against vice and meanness, whilst tremulously aiming at a nobler life. The same, in a wider sense, is true of almost all sermons one hears--

“Two lips wagging, and never a wise word.”[418]

So few clergymen feel what they say, that it only does harm. It was a saying of Pope Pius II., “Bad physicians kill the body, unskilful priests the soul.”

It ought not to be, but it certainly is true that the Church and Religion are two; and, apropos of sermons and religious discussions, another saying of Pope Pius often comes back to me, “The nature of God can be better grasped by believing than disputing.” “Let us not be the slaves of any human authority, but clear our way through all creeds and confessions to Thine own original revelation.” With Thomas Chalmers, can I not feel this?

I have endless compensations for a lonely life in my pretty little home, my sufficient means, my multitudes of friends. Besides, it is as Madame d’Houdetot wrote to Madame Necker, “Vous savez que le seul être malheureux est celui qui ne peut ni aimer, ni agir, ni mourir, et je suis bien loin de cette situation.” I often feel, however, that this book would give a very false idea of my life. I recount my many visits and what I hear there because it is amusing, and I leave unnoticed the months and months when nothing happens, and in which I am probably employed in quiet work at Holmhurst. With every one naturally it must be true that

“The life of man is made of many lives, His heart and mind of many minds and hearts.”[419]

This, however, is enough of sentimentalising. I will return to facts.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Jan. 9, 1886.--I am just come back from a very pleasant visit at Battle Abbey, where I met the Powerscourts, Lord and Lady George Campbell (she lovely and like a beautiful Gainsborough), Lord Hardinge and a very nice daughter, Lord Wolmer and Lady Maude, Sir Prescott Hewitt, a young Ryder, and Lady Dorothy Nevill. The latter was most amusing, and well understands the famous principle--‘Glissez, mortels, n’appuyez pas.’ She and the Duchess of Cleveland, who was in very good vein, were quite charming together.”

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Holmhurst, Feb. 20, 1886.--Do you know that, except for ten days, I have been at home just three months to-day, and nearly all the time quite alone. I cannot say how much I have enjoyed the quietude of study and communing with great and wise people through many books. There is certainly the greatest pleasure in thus acquiring new thoughts, and, in a small way, fresh knowledge: indeed, I always feel that to give myself up to overwork is quite as great a temptation to me as over-idleness to some people.

“Each different literary work I have had has seemed to me, at the time, more interesting and engrossing. The little accidental discoveries are so amusing. Amongst those of this week, who do you think invented a wheel-barrow?--Blaise Pascal.

“My diversion has been reading masses of old family letters, unearthed by Lady Hartopp. They are very curious, and a complete portrait of the family at the beginning of the century. My grandfather, Mr. Hare Naylor, must have been quite odious--so imperious and arrogant: Lady Jones, the incarnation of a rod in pickle, but with very fine qualities: great-uncle Robert, the rector, more of a rowdy farmer than anything else. Penelope Shipley (Mrs. Warren), a very fine unselfish creature: Dean Shipley, selfish and dictatorial: Francis Hare, a self-indulgent dandy: Julius, a miracle of boyish learning, talking like a Solon: Augustus (it must be allowed), very priggish, but very amiable: Marcus, indulged in everything by his aunts: the second Mrs. Hare Naylor, foolish and querulous, but by no means an unjust stepmother. The religious letters of consolation which the whole party write to one another when little Anna dies are so stilted as to be truly comic. What is touching is that over the harsh letters of her fierce elder sister, the beloved memory of the first Mrs. Hare Naylor ever broods as a softening influence: however much trouble the Hare brothers give her, no pains or expense are too great for them, because ‘they were hers.’”

* * * * *

On the 9th of February I went up to London for Miss Jolliffe’s wedding, and came in for--a revolution! On returning from the City, I found Trafalgar Square one mass of people, and many orators addressing them, but expected nothing more. Soon, however, a Socialist leader named Burns suggested a reign of terror and offered himself as captain. Thousands of men--well fed, well dressed, but still the scum of London--rushed down Pall-Mall, breaking windows as they went--a very carnival of outlawry. Their passions grew with their progress, and in St. James Street they wrecked the University Club, which had expelled Hyndman, one of their leaders, from its society. They seized certain carriages, turning out the ladies they contained, and stripped a footman of his livery. They pulled Lady Claude Hamilton out of her carriage and boxed her ears, but when, after this, she denounced them as dogs who ought to be flogged as curs, they applauded her courage, and let her go on. Breaking windows and wrecking many shops in Piccadilly, they entered the Park at Hyde Park Corner and left it at Stanhope Gate. Then they rushed on through South Audley Street, which they left much like Paris after the excesses of the Commune. How truly Milton said--

“License they mean when they cry Liberty.”

I went the next day to see Lady Foley, whose house in Grosvenor Square had been on their line of route. It had not only no pane of glass unbroken, but not even fragments of glass left, and stones heaped in the library enough to mend a good piece of road with. Lord Percy’s house, next door, was so ruined that they went away next day.

For the two following days London had indeed a miserable aspect--windows all broken, streets littered with fragments, shops shut, streets paraded constantly by bands of entirely victorious and triumphant ruffians, and shop-keepers, in some cases, guarding their property with revolvers.

The call for a fresh edition of my “Walks in Rome” made me suddenly determine to go to Italy at the end of February. At Florence I was the constant guest of the ever-kind Duchess Dowager of Sermoneta, with whom I made delightful excursions in the hills.

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Hotel Paoli, Florence, March 7, 1886.--France was covered with snow from end to end, yet next day we were speeding through lemon-groves laden with fruit, and carpeted with a blaze of iris and scarlet geranium in full flower. Here, after reading about the snowstorms in England, I am glad in the gardens of Arcetri to sit to draw in the shade of the cypresses, and all the hills are pink with almond-blossom. I spent one evening with the Duchess at Palazzo Torrigiani, alone with the family there, which is the most perfect type of a grand old Italian household, consisting of between eighty and ninety persons. The kind and charming old Marchesa Elisabetta has four sons, who have all married as soon as they came of age, yet none have gone farther than to an apartment of their own under the maternal roof, and eighteen children and grandchildren dine with her daily, besides other guests. The four daughters-in-law all live in the utmost harmony; the Marchesa Giulia, wife of the eldest son Pietro, and the Marchesa Margherita, who was a Malespina (which in Italy means great things), quietly giving precedence to the Marchesa Cristina, who is a princess (Scilla) by birth. All sat with work round a table, visitors dropped in, and it was most easy and pleasant.

“Another day, the Duchess, Miss Phillimore, and I went out by the steam-tram to spend a day at the Marchese della Stufa’s[421] old castle of Castagnolo. We had an amusing luncheon of Italian dishes, guitar music and singing, a walk to pick violets, with which the hedges are full, a visit to the green-houses and aviaries of rare birds, and we were taken back to the tram-line, where the station is built of sunflower-stalks, which are like bamboo in their qualities.”

* * * * *

I reached Rome on the 10th of March, warmly welcomed by a large circle of friends. In the hotel were Mrs. Tilt and Letitia Hibbert, very familiar to me in early days at Birtles, and with them and their very charming sister-in-law, Mrs. Frank Hibbert (née Cholmondeley), I made delightful excursions to familiar places--Tivoli, Frascati, Albano. Sir John Lumley was now reigning at the Embassy and making it delightful to his countrymen.

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Hotel d’Italie, Rome, March 17, 1886.--What lovely June weather this is, so very hot, so unspeakably beautiful.... I find an immense deal to do in correcting and writing, chiefly, however, in taking away from my ‘Walks in Rome,’ so very much is destroyed; indeed, Lanciani, the archaeologist in power, says, ‘If they go on like this for twenty years, there will be nothing left of older Rome but St Peter’s and the Coliseum--if those.’”

* * * * *

“March 21.--What expeditions we have had! On Monday we walked through the glen at Ariccia and round the glorious old woods of the Parco Chigi, full of cyclamen, cytisus, blue squills, green iris, and masses of dark violets. Then, whilst the others went on to the convent of Palazzuola, I sat to draw above the still lake, and, when they came back, we went to the grand pine-groves of the Villa Barberini, to Castel Gandolfo, and through the ilex galleries in time for the evening train.... I have dined out every day, just as in London.”

* * * * *

“March 31.--I wish I could transport you suddenly into the glorious radiance of this cloudless sunshine and deepest of blue skies. To me Rome has never seemed so delightful in climate as after three months of fog and sleet at Holmhurst.... Amid all the changes elsewhere, I can always turn with comfort to the Palatine, and have spent many happy mornings there amongst the gigantic ruins, and the groves of laurustinus and lentisc, and the huge fenochii, meditating on my past and its past.”

On April 22 I went to Perugia, finding in Brufani’s excellent hotel Mrs. Robert Drummond and her daughter, and two charming Americans, Miss Isabel and Miss Lorraine Wood, domesticated at Dresden. For the next fortnight we toured about together. As to some of the most restful and happiest days of my later years, I look back to the extreme comfort of Perugia, and the perfect view from the windows of my room, unspeakably glorious at all hours, but most of all when the rising sun was lighting up the tops of the distant mountains, whilst all the detail of the intermediate plain was lost in soft white haze. Equally delightful was the old-fashioned inn at Orvieto, and the drives into the hills and to Bagnorea and the Lago di Bolsena, returning in the carriage laden with branches of honeysuckle and masses of anemones, violets, cyclamen, and other spring flowers. From Siena, too, we made again the interesting excursions to Monte Oliveto and S. Gimignano.

Crossing the St. Gothard to Basle, I turned aside to visit the whole of the Jura country, greatly overrated, I thought, by former travellers. Burgundy was much more interesting, with its fine churches and its noble inhabited châteaux of Ancy le Franc and Tanlay. As I was dining in the tiny primitive inn at the latter, the tradesmen who held the minute shops in the village were disputing as to the superiority of their different trades. The carpenter certainly won the day by winding up with, “Et la Vierge s’est mariée avec un charpentier: elle était bien libre de son choix, et elle a choisi--un charpentier!” Nearly the whole of June I stayed in Paris, working at the archaeological details of the town for my book, and seeing no one.

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Montbard, May 23, 1886.--I wonder if my date conveys anything to you? I had determined to evade this place if it were possible, yet here I am for two days at the place so connected with the agonising anxiety of our last journey, where Mother in her illness was laid flat upon the railway platform, to find, when the train was gone, that the little hotel was closed, and where she was carried through the lanes to an old farmhouse. There the people were most kind to us, and she almost enjoyed it, and dear Lea was very happy, and of its inmates both were often so anxious to hear during the after-summer of the German invasion. The old host and hostess are dead now, and the two boys, whom I saw when I went to luncheon with Mme. de Montgolfier, are married, and have twelve children between them!”

* * * * *

“Sens, May 28.--The weather has changed to bitter wind, but it has seemed appropriate to the wild country of Avallon and Vezelay. Auxerre is very interesting and beautiful, especially the great abbey of S. Germain and the marvellously simple and pure cathedral. Old affection for Thomas à Becket took me thence, through the sweet acacia forests, to Pontigny, since which I have been very comfortable for two nights at a charming inn close under the shadow of this old archiepiscopal cathedral.”

* * * * *

“Hotel Noël Peter, Paris, June 6.--I am very glad to have accomplished a long-wished-for visit to the historic sites of Clairvaux and the Paraclete, though there is nothing whatever to see in either of them! How I have worked since I have been here! My book is written, but I have to go through every part of it on the spot. I breakfast at seven and work till eleven, then luncheon and work again till four o’clock, when I come in dead-tired, only to go out again to have food at a restaurant, and to bed at eight.”

* * * * *

“June 16.--Two desperately hard days at Versailles and two at the Louvre, looking over and collating. Certainly no place of residence need be cheaper than Paris. Life seems to cost nothing at all, a week here being equivalent to a day in London, or even at Rome. It is an oddly lonely life, as, except for ten minutes, I have seen no one to speak to since May 11: however, there would certainly have been no time for it.”

* * * * *

In July I was in London, and then at Buckhurst, in glorious summer weather, to meet Lord and Lady Lathom.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“August 13, 1886.--Two days ago Lady Ossington took me to Lady Evelyn Campbell’s wedding with James Baillie Hamilton in Henry VII.’s Chapel. They have married on his vocation, which played all the time of the ceremony, and on which their future depends for the bread and butter of life, at present supplied to them by America for looking after it. They have also a camp, in which they propose to train boys for hardships in the colonies, and the sweet little bride began her own hardships by having to walk two miles to this, through the wet grass and fern of a desolate moor, carrying in a basket the cold chicken and bread which her sisters had put up for her supper.

“I have been reminded how James Baillie Hamilton was at Harrow at Hayward’s house, which in my time used to be Harris’s, and to have then the reputation of being haunted. He told Catherine Vaughan that one night whilst he was there, Albert Grey, also a senior boy in the house, rushed into his room wild with horror, and said that when he was in bed he had seen by the moonlight a most terrible figure come in, a kind of nondescript, and that as it approached a chill as of death came over him. Eventually it had seemed to go into a corner of the room and disappear there. Something was arranged for Albert Grey for that night, and the friends never told at Harrow what had occurred. Years afterwards, at his camp, Baillie Hamilton met a boy called Anderson, who had been in Hayward’s house. He told how he and another boy slept in the same room. One night he heard his companion in an agonised tone say, ‘Oh, do light the candle: there is something most dreadful in the room.’ He lighted it, and found his friend sitting on the edge of his bed, trembling from head to foot. He said that the door had opened, and a horrible nondescript figure had come in, when the most terrible chill, as of death, had come over him. After a time, all seeming as usual, the boys put out the light. They had hardly done so, when Anderson himself saw the figure--the appalling figure, come towards him, and the same deathly icy chill seized him. They lighted the candle again, when the apparition vanished.

“One of the curates at Llandaff was going to the place where Miss Hayward, sister of the Harrow Master, lived, and Catherine asked him to inquire if she remembered the circumstance. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is exactly what happened; and that room is never used now.’

“On the evening of the wedding-day I went to Chichester, where the Bishop’s palace, venerable and grey, but buried in myrtles and coronillas, and radiant with brilliant flowers, lies close under the shadow of the beautiful cathedral spire. The Bishop (Durnford), at eighty-seven, is the very type of a christian scholar, perfectly charming in conversation, equally at home in classical and in French, English, and Italian reminiscence and quotation, and touchingly filled with a generous and kindly spirit to all he meets with. Circling around him were various relations, a brother-in-law--a pleasant old clergyman Mr. Keate, nieces, two sons, Dick and Walter, the latter the pleasantest and frankest of young Eton masters, and the daughter, Miss Durnford, who is mistress of the house, and whose active energy makes all right wherever she goes, and very cheerily right too. The profuse family use of adjectives and verbs, which they unearth for themselves, was very entertaining. ‘We seem to be going to have a regular Belshazzar,’ said Walter Durnford when something more than usual appeared for luncheon.

“There is much to interest in the palace, which has a charming early English chapel and a grand old kitchen. The cathedral retains the human interest of its old pavement and a few tombs, sadly mutilated or tinkered up: one of a Lady Arundel is very fine. There are curious paintings of Cadwallador and of Henry VIII. giving charters on one of the walls, by a painter of Henry VIII.’s time, who also decorated the ceiling of the very fine old dining-room in the palace. Round the town, much of the old wall remains, making a pleasant walk; but the most curious building is St. Mary’s Hospital, like a church, with a great single nave divided at the sides by chapels, which form the little two-roomed houses of ten old women, presented by the Bishop and custos, who live there rent-free in great comfort, with firing, and twelve shillings a week for their maintenance. At the end is the chapel, only separated from the rest by an old oak screen.

“With the Bishop and his party I went to Midhurst, a most attractive old town in lovely country, and we walked through an ancient wood above the Rother to the grand ruins of Cowdray, full of recollections of the Poyntz family, who, as its possessors, came in bitterly for the curse of sacrilege. When Mr. Poyntz went out in a boat at Bognor with his two sons, and the boat upset whilst Mrs. Poyntz was watching it from the hotel-window, the boys clung to the tail of their father’s coat as he held the side of the boat in the waves, and he--who could not swim--had the agony of feeling one after the other leave go and sink, without being able to help them. He himself was eventually saved by the boatmen. In the church of Easebourne, which stands in the park, near the fine old building called the Priory, is a touching tomb by Chantrey, erected to this Mr. and Mrs. Poyntz by their three daughters--Ladies Clinton, Exeter, and Spencer. As they were co-heiresses, Cowdray was obliged to be sold, and was bought by the Egmonts.”

* * * * *

“Highcliffe, August 25.--I arrived here for my usual happy summer week with Tina, Lady Waterford, who has been a curious contrast to the lady of the place, but in herself very pleasant. She described how Cromwell, determined to take ‘the golden vale of Tipperary,’ said he would take it ‘by Hook or by Crook’--the two villages on either side the river--and thence the proverb.

“There has been a bee-show on the lawn here, Mr. Bellairs and young Evan Maberly going amongst the bees, taking them up, and treating them just as they pleased; but it looked horrible when their hats were covered with a crawling mass, and bees were hanging to nose and ears.

“Lady Jane Ellice says that at Harewood there is one of the most splendid collections of china--quantities of it. Formerly it all used to be kept in the gallery in which the family live, on bureaux, tables, &c. One evening it was all left in its usual place, and the next morning the whole collection--everything--quite unbroken, was found on the ground. There was never the least explanation. The china has ever since been kept in cases.”

* * * * *

“Lychett Heath, Poole, August 30.--My visit at Highcliffe was a very happy one. ‘We have not had a single quarrel, scarcely even a dispute,’ said Lady Waterford when I came away.

“This is the beautiful house of the Eustace Cecils. The modern house is exquisitely placed amongst sandy, heathery hills, with a lovely view, across a rich wooded foreground, of the various reaches and windings of Poole harbour. I have had much pleasant talk with Lord Eustace, and like him immensely. We had a delightful excursion to-day, taking the train to Wool, and then driving in a car to Lulworth Cove, and walking up the fine wild hills, with noble sea-views, behind it. Then we went on to Lulworth Castle, stern and stately, quadrangular with round towers at the corners, standing on a terraced base, with beautiful park and woods around. We saw the pictures, a few good family portraits of the Welds, and Charles X.’s room which he inhabited when in exile.

“Thomas Weld of Lulworth, who took orders after the death of his wife, became a bishop, and finally (1830) a cardinal. As a layman he had been perfectly devoted to hunting, and, on establishing himself at Rome, the first thing he did was to procure a very nice horse and hunt vigorously. The Pope (Pius VIII.) sent for him and said, ‘Cardinals must not hunt.’ So, for his health’s sake, Cardinal Weld took to a vehement course of walking; but the Pope sent for him again and said, ‘Cardinals must not walk’--adding, ‘If it is necessary for your health that you should walk, there is a place outside the walls where cardinals do walk up and down; you can go there.’ But Cardinal Weld died of it.

“We had tea with the Bond family and the Misses Weld of Lulworth at Binden Abbey, a Cistercian ruin, of which little remains beyond foundations near some very curious fish-ponds.”

* * * * *

“August 31.--I should find it difficult to say how perfectly congenial I find Lord Eustace, or how much I could look upon him as a friend. In many ways he is like Charlie (Halifax), but is no ceremony-lover. No, he says he always admires Gallio--‘such an excellent straightforward man,’--and even agrees with him on the special occasion on which we hear of him.”

* * * * *

“Hardwick Hall, Suffolk, Sept. 17.--I have been spending several happy days with the Lowthers at Campsea Ashe, pleasant in every way, with much agreeable conversation. One day, when it turned on the origin of words, Mr. Lowther described how the expression of ‘never set the Thames on fire’ originated in the reproach to an unenthusiastic cook, who would never set her tamise on fire.

“We went to Aldeburgh, sailing in a yacht down an estuary to a point where the sea has eaten up what was once the site of a considerable town, of which only the picturesque ‘Moot Hall’ remains, stranded on the beach. It was a still, hot, glowing day, with a sea like that of the Ancient Mariner.

“Yesterday we went to an old house, Parham Hall, which is a poem in itself. In this flat country it stands in a wide moat, in a desolate grassy hollow, surrounded by old trees, the richly sculptured oriels and gables, grey, battered, and moss-grown, rising straight from the waters.”

* * * * *

“Holmhurst, Sept. 26.--From Campsea Ashe I went to visit Gery Cullum, a friend I have long known, but never till lately been intimate with. One of his nieces met me at the station at Bury St. Edmunds, and brought me in a dogcart through that quaint town, past abbey gateways and the church where Mary, sister of Henry VIII., is buried, to the fine old house of Hardwick, which stands beyond a park well wooded with cedars and indigenous box, and which, with its bright flowers and sculptured terraces, well deserves the name of Allegro, as contrasted with Penseroso, the old neighbouring house of Rushbrooke.

“There is a great charm about the interior--not fine, but very large and most thoroughly comfortable--a small low hall with good portraits of James I. and Elizabeth as a child, &c.; a dining-room with family portraits; a library with curious MSS. The gardens are gorgeous in colour, and there are delightful walks beyond, with pines of all descriptions.

“The first day, knowing my love of being taken about, Gery arranged an excursion to Hengrave, a very fine old house, with an exceedingly rich front and stately garden, belonging to Lady Gage,[429] and close beside it a church filled with curious tombs.

“On Sunday we went to service at Hawsteads, where the church has fine old monuments of Drurys and Cullums, and we sat in a high James I. pew to listen to a ranting Irish preacher, who lost himself completely in the mazes of his own nonsense, and finally made us laugh by the emphasis with which he announced, ‘As it is written, my brethren, in the Duke of Bookeronomy,’ &c.

“On Monday we picnicked in the park of Penseroso, the old house of Rushbrooke, standing in a wide moat, into which a former mistress of the place, an unfaithful wife, was thrown by her husband, and upon which she is said to float nightly. Her picture hangs above the magnificent staircase, and the window whence she was thrown is pointed out at the end of a suite of desolate unfurnished rooms. The house belonged to Lord Jermyn, and, whatever his relation to Henrietta Maria may have been, two magnificent cabinets of hers are here, which Lord Bristol, to his despair, inadvertently sold, with the house, to its present possessors. Here also the church has fine tombs.

“Apropos of the dispersion of family relics, Gery told me how young Mrs. Le Strange of Hunstanton had inadvertently given away an old Persian carpet, an absolute rag, to an old woman in the village, regarding it as useless lumber. The next night she saw the most awful apparition, whom she recognised from a portrait as her husband’s grandmother, old Mrs. Styleman, looking most ferocious and diabolical. Soon an old neighbour called and said, ‘How could you venture to give away the famous carpet: you will have old Mrs. Styleman coming from the grave to remonstrate about it;’ and then it was explained that Mrs. Styleman, who had been a great heiress, and had possessed a number of beautiful things, had lived to see almost all of them dispersed and sold, owing to the extravagance of the family into which she married. At last only the carpet remained--at that time a thing of some value, and in her old age she said, ‘Now if ever you sell that, I swear before God that I will haunt you till it is replaced.’ Mrs. Le Strange bought back the carpet and laid it down in its former place, and old Mrs. Styleman has never appeared since.

“From Hardwick I went to Mrs. Robert Drummond in the lovely little black and white Upton Court of the fourteenth century, which she is renting near Eton. Over the entrance is the little figure of a monk, and in the wide porch rude old oak settees. It was a sanatorium of Merton Abbey, and the quaint old fish-tanks of the monks remain.

“We went to Ockwells, the desolate and decaying old house of the Norris’s, and finding the door off its hinges, entered, and went in and out of the deserted rooms, in one of which a coat of mail was hanging up.[430]

“And now I am at home again, furiously busy, alone, but never finding the day half long enough for all I have to do. ‘Rien ne vous serait plus laborieux qu’une grande oisiveté, si vous aviez le malheur d’y tomber. Dégouté premièrement des affaires, puis des plaisirs, vous seriez enfin dégouté de l’oisiveté elle-même.’ These are words of Louis XIV., admirable and worth thinking of.”

* * * * *

“Ickwellbury Oct. 14.--A visit to Mrs. Harvey. Parts of the house are said to date from Henry II. The Ickwell is the oak-well, a pretty bubbling spring in the garden.”

* * * * *

“Nov. 18.--An agreeable party at Worth (Mrs. Montefiore’s), the most luxurious of modern houses, where a bit of the Law in a little bottle is screwed upon the door of every bedroom. Mr. Algernon Tumour, who is here, stated, and considered he proved, that the average life of a five-pound note is only a single day.”

* * * * *

“London, Nov. 27.--Charlie Halifax says that a tenant of Carlo Milnes Gaskell (of Thornes) was found dead--murdered evidently--in one of his woods. A very bad character in the neighbourhood, who was known to hate the dead man, and who had been seen near the wood at the time of his death, was arrested and tried for the murder. All the evidence was against him, but he got off because, instead of measuring the footprints near the body and then the boots of the accused, the boots had been taken to the spot and fitted into the footprints, which allowed of its being said that they had been manufactured by pressing the boots into the soft earth. The man was always afterwards suspected of the murder, but he got work in a factory. If the subject was spoken of, he became very violent, and prayed that the devil might take him if he was guilty. One day, after he had been declaiming thus, he was caught by the mill machinery and torn to pieces. The iron claw which had caught him and pulled him in is that always known as ‘the Devil.’”

* * * * *

“London, Dec. 6.--Luncheon with Miss Seymour to meet Madame du Quaire,[431] who talked of the Praslin murder. She was with the old Duchesse de Grammont soon after, and Madame Alfred de Grammont was there. They began to discuss the division of money apportioned to different members of a family according to the French system, and they spoke of a member of the Praslin family whom they thought stingy. One of them added up her different expenses, ending with--‘et puis les dix-mille francs pour l’Angleterre.’ At this Madame Alfred, who is très-bête, suddenly broke in with,’ Avez vous été au Bois de Boulogne ce matin?’ ‘It was then,’ said Madame du Quaire, ‘that I first learnt that the Duc de Praslin was alive, and that they knew it.” The next day the Duc de Grammont came to call upon me, and I told him of the conversation, adding--“I know now that the Duke is alive.” He neither allowed it nor denied it. A few days after, however, the Duke came again and said, “J’ai une petite faveur à vous demander.” It was that I would never repeat to his mother what I had said to him: it might upset her. Of course I promised, but then I knew the Duke was alive.’

“‘The Duke did not wish to marry Mademoiselle de Luzy: that is an invention. He only murdered the Duchess because she was such a bore. He certainly did not wish to marry any one else.’

“Miss Seymour[432] said that the Queen of the Belgians, speaking of the Praslin murder to Mrs. Augustus Craven, said, ‘How dreadful to find one was being murdered by one’s husband: one could not even cry out.’

“Madame du Quaire was reminded of her friend Madame Solkoff, whose hair was quite snow-white whilst she was still quite young. ‘She was a Miss Childe, you know, a daughter of that Mrs. Childe who had a salon--un salon très répandu--at Paris. She eloped with a Polish Count, to whom her family objected most intensely, and she was disinherited. Very soon after her marriage it became known that it had turned out very ill, and that the young Countess was very unhappy. Eventually it became impossible for her to remain with her husband, and she went to live at Cracow with her mother-in-law, who had a very fine old palace there, and was very kind to her. She had a large apartment of her own in her mother-in-law’s house, her bedroom being approached through her sitting-room. She was still only twenty-two, when she was found one morning insensible on the floor of her sitting-room in her night-dress, and with the floor all around her saturated with blood from a terrible wound in her head. Her cabinets and jewel-cases were all broken open and rifled. The interrogatoire came, and she was examined. She said that in the night she heard a noise in her sitting-room, and going to see what it was, had found a man breaking open her drawers; that she had received a blow, and knew no more. It was in vain that she was questioned as to whom she had seen; she affirmed that she could not possibly tell who it was. But her hair was turned snow-white from that night. It was not till she knew he was dead that she allowed it was her husband she had seen.’

“Speaking of reading novels when young, Madame du Quaire said that she remembered at eleven years old reading ‘La Princesse de Babylone,’ and being found convulsed with laughter at the description of a dinner-party given by the Witch of Endor. She was described as having the guardianship of Nebuchadnezzar, who was browsing near her, and that at her party, ‘par délicatesse pour lui,’ she would allow nothing to appear which--in his unfortunate position--could wound his feelings--no beef, &c., &c.

“Madame du Quaire talked of the prevailing passion for Buddhism, and said, ‘I am not even going to attempt to believe in it, for it is not necessary to salvation: there is such a tremendous quantity that I am obliged to swallow, that I cannot possibly undertake anything--“che non e d’obligo” as the Italian priests say.’

“Madame du Quaire had met Lady Colin Campbell at dinner and sat opposite to her, but she did not know her. She could not help being attracted by the necklace she wore, it was so very extraordinary. After a time it seemed to be moving by itself. She fancied at first that this must be a delusion, but, putting up her glasses, she certainly saw the necklace writhing round Lady Colin’s throat. Seeing her astonished look, Lady Colin said, ‘Oh, I see you are looking at my snake: I always wear a live snake round my throat in hot weather: it keeps one’s neck so cool;’ and it really was a live snake.”

* * * * *

“Dec. 8.--Sat by Sir George Dasent at breakfast. A Mr. Frere passed through the room. ‘He comes from Roffham,’ said Sir G., ‘one of those places of which the name has such a rough East Anglian sound, and he is member of the family which possessed the Paston Letters without knowing it. There were six volumes of letters. Two of them were sent up, by request, for Queen Charlotte to look at, and they were lost. She was very accurate herself, that old woman, especially about things that were lent to her, and there is no doubt that she had given them to one of her ladies to return: anyhow they were lost. Afterwards, however, duplicate copies of many of the lost letters were found to be still in the possession of the family, and their existence quite disproved an assertion that the letters had been forgeries.

“‘They were wonderful people, those old Pastons. They used to thrash their daughters like anything if they did not behave themselves, and then, when they had flogged them well, they would say, “And now they must have silk dresses, rich, red, and beautiful!”’

* * * * *

“Dec. 9.--Dined with M. B., who told me of Lady Vane[433] being quite worn-out by the ghastly noises at their place in Cumberland: it was as if some one were always trying to climb up a disused chimney in the wall, and then falling violently down again. But lately, when Sir Henry Vane was away, she had the wall opened. Inside she found a wide and very lofty closet, narrowing into a funnel as it reached the roof, where it opened by a very small hole to the sky. In it were human bones, a broken water-bottle, and the cover of an old Bible, which bore a date. Lady Vane had the bones gathered up and put into a box, which was left in a corner of Sir Henry Vane’s room till his return.

“When Sir Henry Vane came home, he was exhausted by a long journey and went at once to rest. Lady Vane did not intend to tell him of her discovery till the next day. But suddenly, late in the afternoon, she heard a tremendous noise in her husband’s room. She rushed in, and found Sir Henry in a state of the greatest agitation. He said, ‘I have seen the most frightful apparition--a woman in that corner,’ pointing to where the box of bones had been deposited.

“From old family archives they found that, some years before, exactly at the date upon the Bible cover, a woman had been walled up in the house. She had made desperate efforts to escape up the funnel of the disused chimney, and had always fallen down again. Sir Henry and Lady Vane themselves buried the bones in the churchyard, and the house has been at peace ever since.”

* * * * *

“Thorncombe, Dec. 13.--Miss Montgomery is here, a lady of the most impassive countenance, though she is the authoress of ‘Misunderstood.’”

* * * * *

“Warwick Castle, Jan. 30, 1887.--A delightful visit to this beautiful place. I came off suddenly on a telegram from Lady Warwick,[434] and found several pleasant people, besides the family. More than ever have I been charmed by Lady Warwick, who has the rarest of all attractions--absolute simplicity, and ‘rien n’est difficile comme le simple,’ as Madame de Maintenon used to say. Then most glorious in position is the castle, with the river close underneath, so that the family feed the swans daily from the aërial balcony outside the breakfast-room window. Pilgrim-visitors constantly pour through the rooms with the pictures, of which the finest are a grand Morone, and a Raffaelle finished by Ghirlandajo. The visitors are conducted through the rooms by the housekeeper, who is a great character in her way. When the Prince of Wales was here, she showed him a relic which ‘belonged to King James III.’--‘Ah! the old Pretender,’ said the Prince. ‘We do not think so, your Royal Highness,’ she replied very stiffly. The pictures at Warwick are a real enjoyment, not only important and valuable, which is generally thought enough, but each individually lovely and suggestive. And the happy family life is perfection--such a sharing of interests, the hunting sons not entirely engrossed by it, and no single member of the family talking scandal or looking for motes in their neighbours’ eyes. The old town is charming, with the Leicester hospital, and the great church, chiefly renaissance, but with a fine gothic choir. One evening there was a dance, and after it Mrs. Bob Lyttelton (Miss Santley), who lives in the town, sang most gloriously.

“We have driven to see the exceedingly curious old house of Badeley Clinton, of which my distant cousin, Mr. Dering, has married the widowed owner. It is a most singular and poetical place, and there are many curious stories about it. Handsome, refined, and naturally, not affectedly, poetical and picturesque, Edward Dering is wonderfully suited to the place, and its very solitariness facilitates his leading a life there of almost mediaeval saintliness.”[435]

* * * * *

On the 26th of February 1887 I left England again for my French work, and spent a month in Paris at a primitive and economical inn in the Rue d’Amboise. Living here, I spent my days entirely amongst the historic quarters, seeing nothing of the Boulevards or Rue de Rivoli, but making great progress with a work--my “Paris”--which had no interruptions, and in which I became increasingly interested as I knew more of my subject. On the fine days of early March many excursions were very pleasant, involving long walks to the Abbaye du Val, Nogent les Vierges, &c. Unfortunately the weather changed before I set out on a tour through the Bourbonnais; and in Provence, where many long excursions were necessary, the mistral was quite terrific. Mounting into the wild fastnesses of the Maritime Alps above S. Maximin, to visit the cave in which the Magdalen is believed to have died, I caught a terrible chill, from which I was afterwards very ill at Manosque. But the kindly though rough proprietors of the inn--M. and Mme. Pascal--persuaded me to try the remedy of taking no nourishment whatever except hot tea, and letting nature lie absolutely at rest for forty-eight hours, and, as often since, I found this quite answer, though during that time I drove in an open carriage for eight hours to visit the Roman remains at Riez.

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Avignon, April 3, 1887.--It has been a suffering week, owing to the biting, rending, lacerating mistral, which has seemed perpetually to tear one’s vitals inside out, and to frizzle them afterwards. Thursday I went by rail to Montelimar, and then in a carriage with a horse which either galloped furiously or would not go at all, over the sixteen miles of mountain-road to Grignan, where Madame de Sévigné lived so much with her daughter, and where she died. It is a really grand and striking place--the immense château rising on a solitary rock, backed by a lovely mountain distance, and the town at its foot surrounded by cork forests. All was ruined at the Revolution, but the shell of the rich palace-castle remains--‘un château vraiment royal,’ as Madame de Sévigné calls it. In a solitary spot near is the cave, with old ilex-trees, where she used to sit, and, even with blinding dust and wind, the colouring was most beautiful.

“On Saturday, I had to spend five hours at Cavaillon, and wondered how to dispose of myself. But, on reaching the cathedral, the whole population was pouring in to take part in the funeral of a famous doctor who had been a great benefactor of the place. Every one there was presented by the family with a huge wax-candle, as long as a walking-stick, and asked to ‘assist.’ I had one, and walked and stood with my burning candle for two hours! It was a striking sight, thousands taking part, and the old bishop pronouncing the elegy of the deceased, whom he described as quite a saint. But oh! how it poured, and blew, and swelched, and how deep was the white mortar-mud of Provence!”

* * * * *

“Arles, April 13.--The visit to this place--perhaps more than any other connected with happy days of our long-ago travels, and which I have always avoided hitherto since I have been alone--has unexpectedly proved a great pleasure. And I am glad, now I have seen so much, that I still think Arles by far the most interesting place in the south of France, and the excursion to Montmajour and Les Baux, which I made again on Saturday, quite incomparable--the former, as far as I have seen the world, one of its most beautiful ruins, the latter so glorious as to scenery. Yesterday there was what the French call a bull-fight in the amphitheatre, but there is nothing terrible: no horses, only men enticing bulls with handkerchiefs, and when they run at them, vaulting like chamois over the barriers; while the arcades of Roman masonry are filled with vast multitudes, chiefly ‘belles Arlesiennes’ in their picturesque costume--a very fine sight.”

* * * * *

“Aix in Provence, April 15.--All Provence, as you perhaps know, is full of the same very early Church legend, that a number of the earliest Christians, escaping from Jerusalem after the Ascension, landed here on the coast and became the earliest missionaries of Gaul. Of these, Mary Salome and Mary Cleopas are supposed to have stayed at Les Saintes Maries in the Camargue, Lazarus to have gone to preach at Marseilles, Restitutus at S. Restitut, Maximin at S. Maximin; but Mary Magdalen went farther, spent years of penitence, and died in a cave at the top of the mountains, which is certainly one of the most curious places of pilgrimage in Europe. So it was to La Sainte Baume that I went yesterday, starting at 6 A.M. by rail to S. Maximin, and there engaging a carriage to Nant, where the road comes to an end. Thence it is an ascent of an hour and a half through the steep lonely rocky forest, covered with blue hepaticas, over stones, rocks, and quagmires. Near the top it began to hail and rain furiously, and the cold was most intense, snow still lying in great masses; but the cave is very curious, and the view magnificent over the lower mountains, beyond the masses of Alpine forest. How it poured! I sheltered at the worst times under some rocks, and got safely down to the sunlit valley about five, then had to wait at S. Maximin till nine o’clock for a train, and did not get back here till nearly one.”

* * * * *

“Grenoble, April 22.--On Wednesday evening, after returning from Briançon to Gap, I engaged a carriage thence to Corps, at the foot of the mountain of La Salette. It was supposed to be three hours’ drive, but took five and a half hours, and we did not arrive till nine o’clock, having spent the last two hours in pitch darkness, with a single lanthorn, driving along the edge of the most terrific precipices, with a driver who had never been there before! Still we arrived at last at the very miserable inn. On Thursday morning I set off early on foot to La Salette, three hours of weary steep ascent of the mountains, rather fine in their snowy solitudes, but affording just a slight panic to a solitary traveller owing to the bears which still prowl about there. In the latter part of the way the snow was above my waist, but a little gulley (turned into a watercourse from the meltings) was cut through it. When at length I reached the convent, I was received with great astonishment, as no one had visited those solitudes since April 6. All around, and up to the first floor of the building, was deep massy snow, not a rock to be seen. I was comfortably fed, however, and saw the strange place to which 15,000 pilgrims come annually. You know the story, how two children declared that the Virgin had appeared to them, and told them that the bad language of the neighbouring villages was so shocking that she could no longer restrain the avenging hand of her Son unless a church was built. You will remember how Madame de Trafford never varied in her account, that she was herself botanising in those mountains in one of her eccentric expeditions, and came suddenly out of a fog upon two children, to whom she spoke of the shocking language she had heard, saying it was sure to be punished, and why was there no church? &c.: then the fog became very thick again, and when it cleared, the children were gone.”

* * * * *

“Cambrai, April 30.--How I thought of you to-day when I was by the tomb of Fénelon, which has a striking statue. But how ugly, how treeless, how black with coal-dust is all this north-east of France. I always imagined the Ardennes were pretty, but the beauty is only in the Belgian part. Nothing can be more frightful than Sedan, Charleville, Mezières, Valenciennes, and this place is also hideous; though perhaps all has looked worse than usual under a black sky and incessant rain.

“On Thursday I saw Domremy, which is well worth a visit, and can be little altered from the time of Jeanne Darc. Seen across the flat meadows, backed by a low range of hills like Hawkestone, and with a winding stream (the infant Meuse) like the Terne, it is really a little like Stoke. The mere hamlet ends in the little church, hung all over inside, and very prettily, with wreaths and banners, sent from all quarters in honour of Jeanne; and close by is her quaint old cottage, carefully preserved, with some of its old beams, an ancient armoire, &c., and its original garden. It is now in the hands of Sisters of Charity, who manage an orphanage joining her garden and established to her memory.

“It is really a great reward for many misères de voyage that I have now seen almost everything in Eastern France, and may soon think of publishing that part of my work.”

During the latter part of this French tour I had an unpleasant adventure, which excited more attention than I ever anticipated at the time. On April 19 I had gone from Gap to visit Embrun, a curious little town in the Alpes Dauphinoises. I had not long left the station before I was aware that I was watched and followed wherever I went. However, at last I contrived to dodge my pursuer, and made, from behind a wall, the sketch of the cathedral which I wanted, and then had dinner at the hotel. When I was returning to the station, separated by a desolate plain from the town, I saw, by the faint waning light, the same figure following wherever I went. It was dark when the train by which I was to leave was to start. I had taken my place, and the train was already in motion, when it was stopped, and an official accompanied by a gendarme entered the carriage and demanded what I had been doing at Embrun. “Visiting the cathedral.” “Why should I visit the cathedral?” and so on, through a long series of questions of the same kind. My passport was demanded, and, though not usually considered necessary for English travellers, I happened to have one. It was, however, refused as an identification, not being dated in the present year. Fortunately, I recollected having in my pocket-book an order from the Préfet de la Seine authorising me to draw in all the palaces in Paris and elsewhere in France, and this was considered sufficient. The train was allowed to move on just as a crowd was collecting.

At Briançon (where I spent the following day), I carefully abstained from drawing, as it was a fortified town. But on April 23 I left the station at Vizille to visit the old château of the famous Lesdiguières, two miles distant. I had seen the château, and began to occupy the quarter of an hour which remained before the omnibus started for the station by sketching it from the village street, when I was pounced upon by a gendarme. “Who has authorised you to sketch the château of Vizille?”--“No one.”--“If you can draw this, you may also have drawn other places. You will go with me to the gendarmerie;” and I was marched through the long street of Vizille, followed by a crowd, and with the hand of the gendarme occasionally grasping me by the shoulder. At the gendarmerie a superior officer appeared, and, with the most extreme insolence of manner, demanded what I had been doing in France, &c. “What had I drawn?”--“Churches and mountains.”--“Ah! mountains! then it has been very easy for you to make a little mark in the drawing, known only to yourself, meaning here is a fortress, and there a fortress.”--“But I am an Englishman.”--“Oh, you are, are you? Then I am all the more glad that we have taken you, for we shall probably soon be at war with England, and then you will make your sketches useful to your Government; so you will consider yourself under arrest.” The letter of the Préfet de la Seine was treated as worthless because it had no seal. The passport was rejected altogether with contempt. After this, all further protestations and remonstrances were answered by an insolent shout of--“Taisez vous donc, vous êtes en état d’arrestation.”

Then the first gendarme was sent with me to the station, where my portmanteaux were opened and ransacked, the contents being tossed out upon the platform. Two suspicious articles were found. First, a slight sketch of the gorge at Sisteron (not the fort; the fort is on the other side of the rock), and, far worse, three volumes of the Guide Joanne for France. “What did I want with guidebooks?”--“To study the country.”--“Ah! that is just what I thought;” and all the officials of the station were called in to witness the discovery. The gendarme then declared that I must return with him and be locked up at Vizille, but a train coming up at that moment, I made a dash into it, and probably thinking a public scrimmage impolitic, the gendarme allowed the station-master to fasten my boxes and bring me a ticket. The gendarme then took his place opposite to me in a first-class carriage.

At 5 P.M. the train arrived at Grenoble. At the station the gendarme of Vizille summoned a gendarme of the town, and I was conducted as a prisoner by the two to the Hotel Monnet. The gendarme of Vizille then left me in care of the other, shut up in a room of the hotel, where the gendarme of Grenoble sat silent opposite to me till 6.30. I thought that then the other gendarme would come back from the Préfecture with an order that I was to be freed from further annoyance. Not a bit of it! He came back with an order that all my possessions were to be carefully ransacked, and all the contents of my boxes were turned out upon the floor. All suspected articles--all my sketches, manuscripts, letters, and all the volumes of the Guide Joanne were then put into my smallest portmanteau, which one of the gendarmes carried, and I was marched between the two to the old palace of the Dauphins, where the courts are. Here two clerks (or secretaries of the Préfecture) subjected me to a long examination--who I was, what was my employment, where I had been, &c. The English letters found in my blotting-book (ordinary family letters) were translated into French by a clerk who understood English. All my drawings (chiefly of church architecture) were examined in detail, and their objects inquired into. The terrible Guides Joanne were passed in review and, after an hour, I was told I was free, but without a single word of apology or regret. Indeed, I should not have got away then if at last one of the clerks had not said in his insolent manner, “Est que vous êtes donc un tel, qu’il n’y a une seule personne dans toute cette partie de la France qui peut répondre de vous?” And goaded to desperation I answered, “Well, yes, there is one person, it is a lady; she is only a few miles from here now (at Aix les Bains): it is the Queen of England.” On parting, the gendarme of Vizille was told in my presence that he had only done his duty in arresting me for having ventured to draw the Château of Lesdiguières; and he left, carrying off in his pocket (by accident no doubt) a sealed packet which he had taken from my dressing-case, saying, “Nous allons ouvrir ça devant ces messieurs, ça doit être des instruments pour tirer des plans.” I called the next day upon my examiners to ask them to obtain restitution of the packet, but they declined to take any trouble. One of their comrades, looking up from his writing, said insolently, “Puisque vous avez été arrêté hier, est-ce qu’on ne vous a encore condamné?”

I wrote this story in the train, and posted it at one of the stations to the editor of the Times, who inserted it in the paper, so that when I reached home I found England ringing with it, and a question asked in the House about it. I also complained to the Foreign Office, and Lord Salisbury sent me afterwards the French answer to the inquiries made. They allowed the facts of the examination, but denied that I had ever been arrested, though the leading feature through the whole had been that whenever I attempted to speak I had been silenced by a shout of “Taisez-vous donc; rappelez-vous donc que vous êtes en arrestation.” The sealed packet was never restored.

I returned home on May 3, and at the beginning of June was at Scotney Castle.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Scotney, June 1, 1887.--We have been for the day at Glassenbury, the old moated house of Mr. Atkin Roberts, in a wooded hollow of the hills, surrounded by fine old trees, but of damp and dismal aspect. There is a lime avenue there, haunted by a lady--once Miss Roberts--who is always looking for her husband, for as she was riding away with him down the avenue on their wedding-day, he was thrown from his horse and killed on the spot. She never afterwards left the paternal home, where there are pictures of her, unmarried and as a widow. Some hundred years ago the last Roberts of Glassenbury had only daughters, and of these the last married the then Duke of St. Albans. The Duke was a gambler and a spendthrift, and sold all her fine things--her diamonds, her plate, her china; but she was determined that he should not make away the place, and that she would leave it to those who would take care of it; the question was--to whom?

“One day she had sent for a painter to come to Glassenbury to paint a coat of arms on her carriage, and, when she showed him the arms, he said, ‘Why, your Grace, those are the very arms I was employed to paint at a place in Ireland, to which I went quite by accident, having been shipwrecked on the coast close by.’ The Duchess inquired, and found that the people in Ireland, for whom he had painted the arms, were very distant relations, and she settled the property upon the Irish Colonel Roberts, who left it to the present owner, his nephew, formerly Atkin.

“Sir Arthur Birch, who has some high appointment at the Bank of England, has lately been at Scotney, full of a very singular circumstance. He had two clerks, an elderly Mr. Sperati and a Mr. Lutwich, and they were very intimate friends. One Whit-Monday evening, as he was sitting with his wife by the fire in his house in Burlington Gardens, Mr. Lutwich, with a very scared look, bade her mark the exact time, ‘for,’ said he, ‘I have just seen Sperati; he has just appeared in this room, as distinctly as I ever saw him in my life. He wore a very old coat of his, which I know quite well, and had a very peculiar silver-knobbed stick in his hand; I am certain he is dead, and I must go to his house and see.’

“But the wife urged him so much not to go then, and to wait till the next morning, that he assented.

“As he was on his way in the morning to Sperati’s house, he met Sperati’s brother, who said, ‘I was on my way to tell you sad news; my brother died last night at nine o’clock, very suddenly, of heart-disease.’ It was exactly the hour at which Mr. Lutwich had seen him.

“Mr. Lutwich went on to the house, and saw the butler, whom he knew well. He said, ‘I have an especial reason for asking about an old coat which I remember well, and which your master use to have--has he worn it lately?’--‘Well, it is strange you should ask about it, sir, because, though he has not worn it for some time, he had it on last night.’--‘And do you remember what stick he had in his hand?’--‘Yes, perfectly, sir, it is in the hall now,’ and it was the very stick with which he had appeared.

“Mrs. Papillon had been telling the Husseys of a very famous female mesmerist living in Park Street. Late one night this person had a visitor who urged her very much to consent to go at once to a mysterious patient, to whom she could only travel blindfolded. She hesitated for some time, but finally, being very much urged, she assented. A well-appointed carriage was at the door, in which she was driven to the railway. In the train she was blindfolded. Several hours were passed in travelling by train. Then she was taken out to a carriage and driven for some distance. On arriving at a house, she was led up a staircase and into a large room. As her bandage was removed, she saw two ladies in black just leaving the room. A gentleman was lying in bed, very dangerously ill of typhoid fever. She mesmerised him and he fell asleep. When he awoke, a great change for the better was perceptible. He said, ‘I feel better; I could drink a glass of beer.’ She said, ‘Give him the beer.’ He drank it, and fell into a restful, natural sleep.

“Then the lady was blindfolded again and conveyed back in the same way in which she came. When she reached her own house in Park Street, a cheque for a very large amount was left in her hands. The next day she read in the paper that the Prince of Wales--then most dangerously ill at Sandringham--had rallied, and fallen into a deep natural sleep from the moment of drinking a glass of beer.

“Mr. Hussey told me that an old Mr. and Mrs. Close of Nottingham were very rich and great misers, and they both made wills leaving all they possessed each to the other. However, as they died within a few hours of each other, that made very little difference to anybody.

“When the heirs-at-law arrived at Nottingham--young people full of spirits--they were greatly excited and brimming with curiosity. It was known that there were splendid diamonds, and that vast wealth of every kind existed, but at first nothing seemed to be forthcoming. Cupboards and drawers were ransacked in vain. Nothing particular was found.

“At last, in a room at the top of the house a great trunk was discovered. ‘Here,’ they said, ‘it all is; we shall find all the treasures now.’ But when the trunk was opened, the upper part was found to be full of nothing but scraps of human hair, as if for years the off-scourings of all the old hair-brushes had been collected; then below that was a layer of very dirty old curl-papers; and the bottom of the box was full of still more dirty old corsets of ladies’ dresses, and--the box was alive! When young Mrs. Close had dived into the box, she exclaimed, ‘What disgusting old creatures our relations must have been! This horrible mess might infest the whole house; we must have it burnt at once.’ So she had some men up, and the trunk carried down into the courtyard of the house, and a huge bonfire made there, and the trunk upset into it.

“As it was burning, she stood by, and heedlessly, with her stick, pulled one of the curl-papers towards her, and poked it open at her feet. It was a £50 note! In an agony, she scrimmaged at the fire, and raked out all she possibly could, but it was too late; most of the notes were burnt; she only saved about £800.

“Naturally her husband was furious, and of course he was very unjust. ‘Any one but you would have examined the box carefully; there never was such an idiot of a woman,’ &c. And every time he saw the burnt heap in the courtyard, he burst forth afresh. So she sent for the dustman round the corner, and had all the ashes carefully cleared away.

“Still nothing had been found of the diamonds. They had certainly existed; there were always the diamonds to fall back upon. But though they searched everywhere, nothing could be found of them. At last they asked the only old lady with whom Mrs. Close had visited if she knew of any one who could help them. ‘Yes, certainly,’ she said; ‘there’s old Betty Thompson at the almshouses, she was always in and out of the house as charwoman; she knew more of Mrs. Close and her ways than any one else.’ So away they went to the almshouses, and asked Betty Thompson. ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘she knew very well that there were diamonds, very fine diamonds indeed, but small good they ever did to old Mrs. Close, for she always kept them sewn up and hidden away in her old stays.’

“The stays had all perished in the fire; the diamonds would not have burnt, but then the very ashes had been thrown away; there was no trace left of them. The bank-notes were all very old--the few that were saved--but they were quite good; but there was very little else left of the great inheritance.”

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“Jermyn Street, June 16, 1887.--London is in gala costume, the streets flooded with flowers, and the West End thoroughfares lined by stands, with seats covered with red and gay awnings. I am perpetually thinking of what Arthur Stanley’s ecstasy would have been on looking forward to having so many kings and queens, besides no end of other royalty, in the Abbey at once. On Saturday I was at Osterley, where the gardens were quite lovely and delicious in the heat, and yesterday there was a pleasant party at Lord Beauchamp’s, with little comedies to amuse Princess Mary, who was exceedingly gracious and kind to me.

“Alas! we are expecting the news of Theodore Walrond’s death--a man apparently as healthy in body as in mind till his last illness set in, and quite universally beloved.”

* * * * *

“June 17.--Yesterday I had luncheon with Miss Geary at her very pretty house in Grosvenor Street, and met Lady Elgin and a charming, fresh, sensible Miss Boscawen. I dined at Lady Manners’, where I made rather friends with Lord Apsley: afterwards there was a large brilliant party at Mrs. Portman’s.

“To-day my two young American friends, Sands and Martin, gave a most pleasant luncheon. I sat by Lady Middleton, who talked charmingly and gratefully of the happiness of married life--the pleasure to a woman of entire self-renunciation: then of her own life, which she would not exchange for any in the world, though she has had to give up all her own inclinations, and to throw herself absolutely and entirely into the interests of hunting. She said she never allowed an ill word on the field, and if she heard one, rode even for miles till she caught up the culprit to say so.”

* * * * *

“June 19.--Lady Dorothy Nevill has been most funny about a burglary at Lady Orford’s. While the family were away, a man came to the door, who said he was sent to measure the dining-room chimney-piece, and asked the old woman who was taking care of the place to go up to the top of the house to get him a piece of tape for the purpose. When she came down, the man was gone, and so were two of the best pictures. ‘I could swear to the pictures anywhere,’ said the old woman afterwards, ‘for they were of members of the Orford family.’ ‘They were the Virgin Mary and St. Sebastian,’ added Lady Dorothy, ‘and I leave you to imagine how far they were ever likely to have been members of the Orford family!’

“At breakfast I sat by Sir George Dasent. I spoke of his wonderful memory. He said, ‘When I was a boy, my father saw me writing--writing with a pen was never a strong point with me--but still I was busy at it, and he asked me what I was doing. I said, “Writing down what I’ve read.”--“Don’t write it down, my boy,” he said; “carry it all in your head; it is much better,” and I have always done so.’

“He spoke of the folly of interfering in any street rows. ‘It had been a wet day, and you know when the pavement is wet--why I cannot tell--you can see much farther than at other times, and down the whole length of Eaton Place I saw a man knock a woman down; she got up, and he knocked her down again. He knocked her down several times running. At last I got up to him and said, “You villain, to knock a woman down like that; how can you dare to do it?”--“Now you just go along with you,” said the woman; “he only gave me what I deserved.”--“Oh, if you like being knocked down, it’s another matter,” I said.’

“‘One day in the street,’ he related, ‘I passed a party of Germans abusing each other with most outrageous language, and I said, “Remember there are police here as well as in Germany.” When I got near St Peter’s Church, I was aware that one of the Germans was following me, and he came up and said, “I am come to demand satisfaction.”--“Very well, you shall have satisfaction,” I said, and I beckoned a policeman from the other side of the street, who came across saying, “What can I do for you, sir?” for all the police know me. So I said, “You will just take this man up, and I will go with you and appear against him.” So we went on our way, the policeman, the German, and I. When we had gone some way, the policeman said, “It’s giving you a great deal of trouble, sir, isn’t it, to go to the police-station; couldn’t we manage it here?’ So I said, “Yes, perhaps we may as well try him here. If he kneels down in the gutter in the mud and prays for forgiveness, we will let him off.” So I said in German, “He (the policeman) says that if you kneel down in the gutter and beg for forgiveness, he will let you off.”--“May not I kneel on the pavement?” he said. “No, that will not do; you must kneel in the mud, with your hands up so. “So down in the mud he went and said, “I am very sorry for vat I have done,” and we let him go.’

“Chief-Justice Morris said he was sitting on the bench in Ireland, and after a case had been tried, he said to the jurymen, ‘Now, to consider this matter, you will retire to your accustomed place,’ and two-thirds of them went into the dock.

“Another time he said to a culprit, ‘I can produce five witnesses who saw you steal that cow.”--‘Yes,’ said the prisoner, ‘but I can produce five hundred who did not.’

“Sir George Dasent said he should not go to the Abbey on the Jubilee Day. His legs were so infirm now, that a touch would upset him, and, when once down, he could not get up again. He had once been knocked down by a newspaper--‘retributive, you might say.’”[449]

* * * * *

“June 20.--The streets are all hung with scarlet and blue draperies, and Waterloo Place is embowered in a succession of triumphal arches. The crowds are tremendous. The foot-passengers have already expelled the carriages from the principal thoroughfares, and two million more people are expected to arrive to-day.

“I dined last night with Charlie Halifax, meeting Lady Morton, the Arundel Mildmays, and Sir Hickman Bacon--a pale frail youth, so High-Church that he could not take part in any Jubilee gaieties whilst ---- (one of their especial clergy) was imprisoned. Charlie was very funny in his tantrums against the bishops. ‘I hate them all except Lincoln, and--as cowards--I despise them.’ He said he would not go to the service in the Abbey, because he considers it desecrated by having seats erected over the altar!”

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“June 21, 1887.--Nothing can have been more sublimely pathetic than the whole ceremony (of the Jubilee)--more inexpressibly touching and elevating. The Abbey, too, did not look spoilt: all the tiers of seats, all the galleries disappeared utterly: nothing was visible between the time-worn pillars and under the grey arches but the masses of people they contained.

“I went at 8 A.M. It was not a moment too soon. Cabs charged two pounds to the Abbey, but I walked very comfortably. The tickets had little maps of the Abbey, with the entrance for the bearer marked on each. Mine was by a door on the north-east behind St. Margaret’s, and there I waited, with a small crowd, till nine struck, and some iron gates were opened by the police, when we ran down an awned passage to where a staircase of rough timber led up by the great Norris tomb to our places.

“Mine was simply perfect, a splendid place, from whence--

‘To see the lords of human kind go by,’

as Goldsmith says. I would not have changed it with any other in the building. In the theatre it would have been the royal box--a little red gallery to hold four, over the tomb of Aylmer de Valence; in front of the gallery on the left of the sanctuary; close above the princesses of Austria, Spain, and Portugal; opposite the kings; with a view of the peers and peeresses in the right transept, and so near the Queen that one could see every play of her expression. My companions were a doctor of music in his red gown and two females of the middle class, who were very good-natured in lending me their glasses.

“The time of waiting did not seem long: all was so full of interest.

“The Abbey blazed with colour--crimson uniforms, smart ladies, ushers stiff with gold embroidery, yeomen of the guard in plumed helmets. Only, for another coronation, I would clothe the supporting pillars of the galleries with red cloth. The grey wooden supports looked cold, and their angular outlines drew attention to them amongst the rounded forms of the pillars, whereas the red seats and galleries disappeared altogether, or only served as admirable setting and background to the picture. The grand old tombs--Aylmer de Valence, Edmond Crouchback, Anne of Cleves--stood detached from the red, and in front of the altar the mosaic pavement of Henry III. was left exposed--not covered, like the rest of the floor, by red carpeting. Near the altar were two benches on each side--‘tabourets’--for queens and princesses in front, kings and princes behind. Farther back stood, on a daïs, the coronation chair, facing the altar, covered and hidden by red, and with the royal robe of state hanging over it and trailing down from the daïs on the side towards us: before it was a fald-stool and kneeling cushion.

“Every moment the vast edifice became more filled with colour, but the peers and peeresses arrived very gradually. Lady Exeter, beautiful still, sat long alone in the marchionesses’ seats, Lord and Lady Cross in the ministerial benches, and two or three duchesses in that appointed for them. Then the Argylls came in, he gorgeous in the uniform of--MacCallum More. Behind I recognised the Spencers, Powerscourts, Stanhopes, Charlie Halifax, and Lord Londonderry with the white ribbon of the Order of St. Patrick. The Lord Chancellor, preceded by mace and bag, now came in and took his place in the centre of the front row, with Lord and Lady Salisbury and the Duchess of Marlborough on his right hand. A figure which attracted more attention than any other was that of Maria, Lady Aylesbury, except her three Cambridge cousins and her two pages, the sole survivor of all those represented in the great picture of the Queen’s coronation.

“At 11.15 a burst of music announced the first procession, and Princess Frederica and the Tecks were conducted to the stalls, with two of the Edinburgh children, and three gorgeous Eastern princes[451] to the places immediately below us. Then the Queen of Hawaii, in a black dress covered with green embroidery, and with the famous yellow feathers only allowed to Sandwich Island royalty, was seated just opposite to us, with her princess-sister[452] (the heiress of the throne) in black velvet covered with orders, and with a great white ostrich fan:--not together, however, as every one was to sit according to rank, and an intermediate place after queens had to be reserved for the Duchess of Mecklenbourg-Strelitz.

“A long tension of waiting followed, but at twelve a rising of the white-robed choristers in their south-western gallery announced the second procession, and a flood of royalty poured in beneath us. Opposite sat the kings of Greece, Denmark (his father), the very handsome king of the Belgians, whose beard is beginning to turn grey, the king of Saxony, the Crown Princes of Austria, Portugal, Würtemburg, and Sweden, the Duc d’Aosta, and Prince George of Greece--a charming boy in a naval uniform. Beneath us were the Crown Princess of Portugal, Doña Eulalia of Spain, the hereditary Duchess of Mecklenbourg, and Princess Philip of Saxe-Coburg. One of these royal ladies--Doña Eulalia, I think--had a white lace mantilla instead of a bonnet, with very pretty effect. But really one of the finest features of the whole was the coming in of the Queen of the Belgians--so simple, royal, imperial--saluting everybody in comprehensive though slight inclination, infinitely graceful and regal in every attitude.

“At last a blaze of trumpets announced the Queen’s procession. It was headed by canons, the Bishop of London, the two Archbishops in most gorgeous copes, and the Dean of Westminster in a heavy old embroidered cope to his feet, which made him look like a figure risen from one of the old altar-tombs. Then--alone--serene--pale (not red)--beautifully dressed in something between a cap and bonnet of white lace and diamonds, but most becoming to her--perfectly self-possessed, full of the most gracious sweetness, lovely and lovable--the Queen! All the princesses in the choir, with the Queen of the Belgians at their head, curtseyed low as she took her place upon the throne, from which the long robe of state trailed so that it looked part of her dress.

“When she was seated in lonely splendour, the princes poured in upon her right, and the princesses on her left, and took their places on gilt chairs on either side--a little behind. The bevy of granddaughters, in white and pale blue, was very pretty--so many, all curtseying as they passed the Queen, and she smiling most sweetly and engagingly upon them with the most loving and motherly of looks.

“Then came the burst of the ‘Te Deum.’ The silver trumpets at St. Peter’s seemed as nothing to the trumpet-shout which gave effect to the exultant sentences, pealing triumphantly through the arches, and contrasting with the single voices of solitary choristers thrilling alone at intervals--voices far, far away, like the tenderest echo. The Queen did not shed a tear, and held a book all the time, but once sat down as if it was too much for her, and often looked round at the Crown Princess--who stood nearest, very sweet and sympathetic--with a look of ‘What this is to us!’ Princess Beatrice and the Grand Duchess Sergius cried the whole time.

“A striking figure throughout the entire service was the Crown Prince of Germany, especially when kneeling erect like a knight, in jackboots, but with folded hands and a simplicity of unwavering devotion.

“Very solemnly, audibly everywhere, the Archbishop of Canterbury read the prayers--the thanksgiving for all the mercies of the reign, the petition for eternal life. There was another psalm, sung most gloriously, then an anthem with a burst of trumpets in the ‘To be king for the Lord thy God.’ Lastly, the benediction, in which the Queen bent low, lower, lower, as the ‘Amen,’ sung over and over again, died away in vanishing cadences.

“When it was quite silent, in a great hush, she rose up, and a beautiful ray of sunshine shot through the stained windows and laid itself at her feet, and then passed on and gilded the head of the Prince of Wales.

“She beckoned to him afterwards, and he came and kissed her hand, but she kissed him twice most affectionately. Then came the Crown Prince and the Grand Duke of Hesse, who kissed her hands, and then the Duke of Connaught. When the Queen saw him, maternal feelings overcame those of royalty, and she embraced him fervently, and then, evidently fearing that the last two princes might be hurt, she called them back, and kissed them too, and so all the princes, who came in order. She was especially cordial to Prince Albert Victor, and heartily kissed Lord Lorne, who had bent down, as if he did not expect it.

“Meantime the Crown Princess stood by the step of the throne on the other side, and I think the most touching part of the whole was when she bent low to kiss her mother’s hand and was folded in a close embrace, and so all the daughters and the grand-daughters--such a galaxy of graceful girls--bent to kiss the hand, and were kissed in turn.

“Then the Queen went away, bowing all down the choir, and the flood of her youthful descendants ebbed after her.

“I felt I scarcely cared to see the procession afterwards, but it was very fine. How a past age is repeating itself! One sees this in comparing the newspaper accounts of the procession yesterday with the contemporary tracts about the entry of Queen Elizabeth, telling how ‘in all her passage she did show her most gracious love towards the people in general,’ and how the citizens, when they saw her, ‘took such comfort, that with tears they expressed the same.’ I am one of the 400 asked to meet the 100 royalties at the Foreign Office, but cannot manage arranging levée dress properly in time.”

* * * * *

“June 23, 1887.--This is a postscript to my last.

“Nothing could exceed the orderliness, good-nature, and merriment of the immense crowd at the illuminations on the evening of the Jubilee day. I took Letitia Hibbert and her friend Miss Robertson to see the best from Hyde Park, and then along the Green Park, where movement was quite easy, and the effect of the houses bathed in a halo of coloured light very beautiful through the dark massy foliage.

“Yesterday I went at 3 P.M. to Hyde Park. A dense mass of people walled in the vast enclosed space, but all in the utmost good-humour, though many came forward with--‘Oh, do give me your ticket: oh, do now, just for once.’ Inside the outer barrier was a second, within which people walked, and whence they saw. I was indignant at first at not being admitted farther, but when I saw the Archbishop of Canterbury refused, was quite contented to share the fate of the first subject in the realm. However, eventually we were both passed into the immense space where the children were playing, not apparently the least over-done by the hot sun, or tired from having been on the move since 10 A.M., and having been provided, on arriving, with nothing but a bag containing a meat-pie, a bun (they say the buns would have reached from London to Brentford in a direct line), and an orange, with instructions to put the bag in their pockets when done with! Each of the 30,000 children also had a ‘Jubilee mug’ of Doulton ware. Every now and then volleys of tiny coloured balloons were sent up, like flights of bright birds floating away into the soft blue, and, as the royalties arrived, a great yellow balloon, with several people in its car, bore a huge ‘Victoria’ skywards.

“I found my cousin Lady Normanton lost, and stayed with her and a very pleasant ex-governess of Princess May, most indignant at her adored pupil having received no Order out of the numbers distributed. Between half-past four and five life-guards heralded a long procession of carriages, with the Indian princes, the foreign queens and kings, and our own royal family in force. A number of Eastern chieftains were riding six abreast, and very like Bluebeard one or two of them looked. Finally came the Queen, smiling, good and gracious beyond words, and with a wonderful reception everywhere. ‘I have made Socialist speeches for years,’ said one man, ‘and the last two days have shown me how useless they have been, and always must be in this country.’

“As the Queen passed up the green drive by which we were standing, all the 30,000 children sang ‘God save the Queen,’ and a thanksgiving hymn, which I think must have been, not for their tea (for they never had any), but for hers, which I hope she enjoyed out of the great fourgons we saw arriving, and must much have needed. All the royal ladies’-maids and other servants also passed by in carriages on their way to the station, by the Queen’s wish, that they should share in the sight.

“Having escorted Lady Normanton to the safe solitudes of Wilton Place, I rushed off to Windsor, arriving at nine. Certainly the grandeur of the London illuminations paled before the intense picturesqueness of those in the old royal city. I had no time to go to Eton, where the Queen had entered--like Queen Elizabeth--under an arch on the battlements of which Eton boys were lustily trumpeting. But the bridge, brilliant in electric light, also ended in an arch, kept dark itself, beyond which every house in the steep, sharply-winding street was seen adorned with its own varied devices of coloured light, from basement to attics, whilst the walls were hung with scarlet draperies, and brilliant banners of scarlet and gold waved across the roadway.

“I stayed on the bridge to see the thousand Eton boys cross, marching in detachments, with white and blue uniforms alternately, carrying their (then unlighted) torches, and then went after them to the castle, where I was one of the few admitted, and pushed on at once to the inner court under the Queen’s apartments.

“Most unspeakably weird, picturesque, inspiring, beautiful, and glorious was the sight, when, with a burst of drums and trumpets, the wonderful procession emerged under the old gate of Edward III., headed by a detachment of the Blues, then the boys, six abreast, carrying lighted torches, till hundreds upon hundreds had filed in, singing splendidly ‘God save the Queen.’ All the bigger boys formed into figures of blazing light in the great court, weaving designs of light in their march--‘Welcome,’ ‘Victoria,’ &c., in radiant blaze of moving living illumination; whilst the little boys, each carrying a coloured Chinese lantern on a wand, ascended in winding chains of light the staircases on the steep hill of the Round Tower opposite the Queen’s window, till the slope was covered with brilliancy and colour. The little boys sang very sweetly in the still night their song of welcome, and then all the mass of the boys below, raising their flaming torches high into the air, shouted with their whole hearts and lungs, ‘Rule Britannia!’

“It was an unspeakably transporting scene, and I am sure that the beloved figure in the white cap seated in the wide-open central window felt it so, and was most deeply moved by the sight and sound of so much loyal and youthful chivalry.

“Then, in a great hush, she almost astonished them by leaving her place and suddenly reappearing in the open air in the courtyard amongst them, and making them a queenly and tender little speech in her clear beautiful voice--‘I do thank you so very very much,’ &c.

“You may imagine the hurrahs which followed, the frantic emotion and applause whilst she called up and spoke to Lord Ampthill and one or two other boys whose parents had been especial friends.

“And then, in figures of light from their torches, as she reappeared at the window, the vast assembly formed the word ‘Good-night.’ Nothing could possibly have been more picturesquely pretty.

“Immediately afterwards the whole of the great central tower was flooded with red light, which seemed to turn it into blood, and I went with J. Dundas to the North Terrace, whence we looked down upon the fireworks--fire-fountains, comets, cascades of golden, sapphire, and amethyst rain.

“It was 2 A.M. when I got back to London, but well worth the fatigue.”

* * * * *

LONDON JOURNAL.

“June 23, 1887.--Sat at breakfast by Sir George Dasent. ‘Did you ever know,’ he said, ‘the late old Bengal tiger at Asbburnham?[453] He asked me down there, and when I went he said, “You are here, sir, under false pretences. I have discovered that you are a member, sir, of that most disreputable society called the ‘Historic MSS. Commission:’ they are a society of ruffians, sir.”--“Surely, Lord Ashburnham, a great many eminent persons are members of that society,--Lord Salisbury, for instance, surely he is not a ruffian.”--“Yes, sir, he is a ruffian when he is acting for that society: and you, sir, you are a ruffian too--you tamper with title-deeds, sir,” and it was quite in vain to assure him that our society had no interest whatever in title-deeds of the last hundred years.

“‘I told Lady Ashburnham what he said, and she answered, “You must not mind: he is the most kind-hearted of men, but he has--his savage moments!”

“‘Afterwards he was very kind to me, and showed me all his treasures, especially his glorious Anglo-Saxon MSS.

“‘When I was at Hornby, I went up with the present Duchess of Leeds into a tower into which a former Duchess had carried a quantity of books, because, she said, “there were enough downstairs.” They had been taken up at haphazard, and some of them were of extraordinary value: there were wonderful editions of Aretino there, excessively improper, but nobody could read them. The tower had been open to the bats and owls, and when we took out the books, many of them were matted together in one solid mass: they bore the name of Hewit Osborne, the apprentice who jumped from London Bridge to save the life of his master’s daughter, and, afterwards marrying her, founded the family; he was a great Italian scholar.’”

* * * * *

“July 1.--Sir G. Dasent says that the late Queen of Sweden said to him that she could not imagine how it was that her eldest son had done all he could to alienate the affections of his people, and was adored, and the second all he could to conciliate them, and was detested. The eldest (the late King) was a Hercules. ‘His Majesty will rise at 3 A.M. to-morrow and will ride thirty miles (to Gripsholm), and wishes you to accompany him,’ was a frequent announcement to guests and courtiers; and when they reached Gripsholm, all was prepared for a great elk-hunt, and when that was finished, and they were gasping for rest, came the announcement, ‘His Majesty will rise at 2 A.M. to-morrow, and will ride forty miles,’ &c.

“Luncheon with Lady Stradbroke, who told me that as she was walking up Grosvenor Crescent during the illuminations, a group of country people were inspecting the devices. ‘Ah!’ she heard one of them explain, ‘V. R.--that’s for very respectable.’”

* * * * *

“July 3.--Yesterday was very hot--a hotter scirocco, said Roman Mr. Story, than any he had felt in Italy. There was a great volunteer review, which brought the usual picturesque procession of the Queen, with her glittering life-guards, through the Park.

“On Friday I went with Florentia Hughes to a great garden-party of the Baroness Coutts at Holly Lodge--a most lovely place, with steep hilly gardens and splendid herbaceous flowers.”

* * * * *

“July 6.--Yesterday I went with the Indian princes by special train to Woburn. Everything was arranged en grand seigneur--nothing to be paid anywhere--a train with saloon carriages, in which we floated into Bedfordshire without stopping, and thirty-two carriages, beautifully equipped, sent to meet us at the station. In one of these I drove through the lanes lined with dog-roses with Lord Normanby and Miss Grosvenor. ‘I am always mistaken for Princess Mary, so must keep up her character,’ said the latter, and bowed incessantly, right and left, to the village crowds, who were quite delighted with her. We had a long wait before luncheon, Europe and Asia separated by a great gulf which no one seemed able to bridge over. Lady Tavistock did her best, but the party hung fire, and, though a magnificent banquet, with all the gold plate displayed, took part of the time, there was not much to animate us, and we lounged on the lawn, tried to be agreeable and were not, and admired the beautiful Indians, with their gorgeous dresses and languid eyes, till another chain of carriages took us back through the Ampthill woods to another station.”

* * * * *

“July 7.--Miss Holford was married this afternoon to Mr. Benson at St. George’s before an immense crowd. There was a great breakfast afterwards--though so late--at Dorchester House, where all London flocked through the rooms to admire the presents, which were indescribably splendid. The scene on the beautiful white marble staircase was charming, especially when the bride went away, her father and mother leading her down on either side, and all the tiny bridesmaids and pages--nieces and nephews between six and seven--gambolling in front, with huge baskets of dark red roses. Above, under the circular arches, between the pillars of coloured marbles, and against a golden wall background, the overhanging galleries were filled with all the most beautiful women in London leaning over the balustrades.

“Dined at the Speaker’s--lovely lights sparkling along the shore, and the splash of the river and distant hum only making one feel more the silence of night. We sat out upon the haunted terrace afterwards--such stars, and a moon rising behind the towers of Lambeth.”

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“June 30.--On Saturday I went to Osterley, meeting beautiful Lady Katherine Vane[454] with her brother and sister at the Victoria Station, and going down with them. Troops of people emerged from the train close to the gate in the park wall, and we all flocked together along the gravel walks through the hot meadows to the house, where the shade was very refreshing. Lady Jersey was receiving under the portico, and groups of Indian princes with their interpreters were busy over strawberries and cream in the corners of the great stone hall. I went, with several people who had an equally tender remembrance of the kind old Duchess of Cleveland, who lived there so long, to visit the little library where she always sat in winter--quite deserted now, and all the books sold--and then joined the many groups of people on the lawns and the green glade which ends in a porticoed summer-house like a Claude-Lorraine picture. Others went in a boat upon the lake. The Jerseys pressed me to stay to dinner with Lord and Lady Muncaster; so Lady M. and I both got a volume of a very dull novel, over which we had a pleasant rest when all the crowd were gone. Never were such airy people as the Jerseys, a line of six windows open on one side and two doors on the other all dinner-time. Lady Hilda Brodrick and one of Lady Jersey’s brothers were my neighbours, and very pleasant.

“On Sunday I had luncheon at Lord Breadalbane’s, to have a quiet sight of my Prince. It is a wonderful house--deeply coved ceilings with frescoes like those in an old Venetian palace, and wide spaces round the outside planted with groves of plane-trees. The Breadalbanes have thought it worth while to make a new dining-room (though sacrificing two old ceilings), as they have taken all the rest of the lease, after which the house reverts (it is Harcourt House) to the Harcourts of Nuneham. The Duchess of Roxburgh, an Indian prince, and several other ladies dropped in, so there were three tables for luncheon. In the middle, Lady Breadalbane[455] got up and went round to each table, almost to each guest, to see that they had all they could possibly want, and to say the pleasantest things to them in the prettiest way: she certainly is a queen of hostesses. Afterwards my Prince came to me, and we walked up and down upon the terrace. He was most affectionate, as he always is when we meet, and talked of all people and things as if we had never parted, but reproached me much with never coming to him in Norway, urging very much that I should write at any time, or even telegraph that I was coming for any length of stay. Some day, when I am free from my French work, I will go. He evidently wished that I should say something to Lady Breadalbane of the great difference her excessive kindness had made during all this visit to England, so I was very glad to do so. ‘We have done our best,’ she said, ‘and I am very glad it has gone off so well; but it has not been my doing, but all owing to those who have helped me.’ The Indian had brought a suit of flannels with him in a carpet-bag, and changed into them, and when my Prince went to get ready to play at tennis with him, I came away.

“On Monday (27th) we had our large drawing-party down the river. Meeting at Westminster Bridge, we all took tickets to ‘Cherry-Tree Yard’ at Rotherhithe. Just as we were going to embark, the ticket-man very good-naturedly emerged, and coming to me said, ‘I do not know if you are aware, sir, that you are taking all these ladies into a most rough and dangerous part of London.’ I said we were only going to draw at the wharf, when he was satisfied. But when we arrived, they would not let us stay on the wharf. A man said, ‘I know of a most respectable public-house where you can go: all the artists draw from thence.’ And there we all sat, in great shade and comfort, under a wide verandah, directly overhanging the river and overlooking the Pool, with all the fine shipping which comes up to that picturesque reach of the Thames--‘Dutch Crawls’ inclusive.

“I dined with the Eustace Cecils, meeting, amongst others, Professor and Mrs. Flower, of whom the former was holding Arthur Stanley’s hand when he died.

“At a quarter to five yesterday I went to Buckingham Palace--no string, no crowd, no difficulty. By my ticket I had to enter through the hall and rooms beyond it--the most picturesque way. The terrace was already full of people, but the space is so vast there never could be a crowd, and the scene was beautiful, looking down upon the sunlit lawns, the lake and fountain, and the thousands of gaily-dressed people--the splendid uniforms and lustrous robes and sparkling jewels of the Indians glistening amongst them. It was impossible to find any one one looked for, but one came upon hundreds of unexpected friends. Very few young men seemed to have been asked, but there were galaxies of pretty girls. One ancient Indian chief in white, with a flowing beard and a robe of cloth of gold over his shoulders, was told he might salute the Queen. He said he must do it after his fashion, which was to wipe the dust from her feet with his handkerchief, and then kiss it.

“The beloved Queen, though very hot and tired (she had been before to revisit her birthplace at Kensington), looked very sweet and smiling, and walked indefatigably from side to side of the long avenues of people, shaking hands with different ladies. There was the usual procession of princes and princesses, including the white-haired Duchess of Mecklenbourg and the ever-pretty group of Hesse princesses. The Princess Beatrice’s baby assisted at the party in her perambulator, pushed by a nurse in white. A good deal of my time was taken up by the Duchess of Cleveland insisting that she could have no refreshment but lemonade, and that being quite a quarter of a mile off; but I could not get it after all, through people ten deep in the refreshment tents. Some of the guests were rowed by the Queen’s boatmen in their gorgeous mediaeval costume upon the lake, with very pretty effect. The palace is very handsome on the garden side.”

* * * * *

“July 8, 1887.--I made rather friends at the Speaker’s with his eldest boy, Willie Peel, and walked about with him on the terrace. He is in all the first flush of people-seeing, and thinks everybody full of originality; yet how few ever say more than something they have heard or read long ago, and dug up out of some remote corner of their brain. He is, however, delightful, and being evidently ambitious, will some day be very distinguished, I should think.

“How often one wishes one could enter society again, with one’s past conversation like a white page, that where one could not say good of any one, one had always kept silence. I sympathise with General Gordon saying that one reason why he never desired to enter social life was the very great difficulty of knowing people and not discussing others.”

* * * * *

“July 9.--At Lambeth garden-party I sat with ----, whose marriage, an admirable one, was quelched by worldly motives on the other side, sadly, long ago. She spoke of the married happiness of her brilliant and popular namesake ‘Yes, life for her is always delightful now; but I--but I!’--‘Where do you live?’--‘I don’t live, I exist.’

“I sat at dinner by Lady C, a very singular religious ‘talker,’ who plunged at once into--‘I trust you are interested in the good work.’--‘What good work?’--‘Raising the classes,’ and so on, and so on, endless well-meant nonsense, in very grand expressions, till I longed to say to her, and did, in other words, what Madame de Sévigné said to some one, ‘Thicken me your religion a little; it is evaporating altogether by being subtilised.’ I tried to dwell upon the really higher life (for she had talked of her own neglected education), of teaching herself first as much as possible, that she might help herself to teach her young son. I suppose that, for her, would be the higher life. How much, in this generation, ‘religious people’ are apt to forget John Wyckliff’s motto, ‘He who liveth best, prayeth best.’”

* * * * *

“Sunday, July 10.--Sat in the afternoon in the garden at Lowther Lodge, seeing a long diorama of people drop in and have tea.

“Afterwards I ascended the great brick mansions close by to see Mrs. Procter (Barry Cornwall’s widow), who is not the least aged in mind, and apparently not in body. People thought she would be broken by her daughter’s death; but constitutions, especially of the old, seldom take any notice of heart-blows, though there is something touching in the way she speaks of her lost daughters as ‘my Edith,’ ‘my Adelaide.’ People call her ‘Our Lady of Bitterness,’ but her words have no touch of sharpness. No one is more agreeable still: no one has more boundless conversational powers: indeed, she often says of herself that ‘talking is meat, drink, and clothing’ to her. Her sense of humour is exquisite; she never speaks bad grammar herself, so she can never tolerate it in others. She wears a front of blonde cendré, and boldly speaks of it as a wig. Mr. Browning came in, and they were most amusing together. ‘My wife thought you would not perhaps like to meet Mr. Labouchere, Mrs. Procter?’ said Mr. Thompson of the Pall Mall Gazette, rather interrogatively. ‘Your wife was quite right: had I found, on coming to dine with you, that Mr. Labouchere was expected, I should have been compelled to ask you at once to call me a cab.’--‘Ah! Labby, Labby!--Hie, cabby, cabby!!’ cried Mr. Browning in the quaintest way.[456] Mr. Browning goes to see Mrs. Procter every Sunday afternoon, giving up all else for it.

“Mrs. Procter has the almost lost art of conversation in the fullest degree. Lord Houghton recollects how she was asked to meet Macaulay at one of Rogers’ breakfasts. Afterwards she said to Rogers, ‘But where was Macaulay?’--‘Why, he sat opposite to you!’--‘Was that him? Why, I always heard he was such a tremendous talker.’--‘So he is,’ said Rogers; ‘but you see I talked so much myself, I only left one opening, and that you took.’”

* * * * *

“July 11.--Dined with the Seymour Hughes’s, where General Higginson was full of indignation about the mismanagement of royal invitations--that it was impossible for the Lord Chamberlain to do it alone, but that he might have a committee--three or four men of the Kenneth Howard kind--who would see that the right people were asked. The Prince of Wales had said to one lady, ‘I did not see you at the garden-party,’ and she had answered, ‘No, I was not asked; but my dressmaker was.’”

* * * * *

“July 15.--Dined with Mrs. Portman--a very large party. She told me that, close to her country-house, a labourer had watched some boys bathing, and thought how delightful was the way in which they dived, floated, &c., and, though he could not swim, he determined that, on the very first chance, he would enjoy the same amusement. Soon after, he was sent to cut rushes with two other men. When his work was finished, he remembered his wish, and did not even wait to undress, but, pulling off his boots, jumped into the water with his clothes on. Soon he got into a hole and began to sink. He called for help, and another of the men jumped in, and was sucked into the hole also, and so the third. Mr. Fitzhardinge Portman came up when it was all over, and said, ‘I will ride on and break it to Mrs. W.,’ the wife of one of the men. As he reached the cottage, Mrs. W. came out to meet him and said, ‘I know what you have come to tell me, sir. Poor W. is dead.’--‘How can you know it?’--‘Why, sir, just now my little girl came running in all awestruck, and said that she had met a figure all in white in the wood-path down which she always ran to meet her father; and then I knew it was a warning.’

“There was a beautiful ball at Lowther Lodge--the Princess Christian there and the garden illuminated, and looking, in that dress, as big as the Green Park. I sat out with Lady Strathmore, full of all the discomforts of a great inheritance--such endless details to be filled up: such endless new responsibilities; and just what seems the wrong things always left away.

“I heard such a charming story of little Jane Smith the other day. Her nurse told her to say her prayers. She wouldn’t; she said God wouldn’t expect her to. ‘But He always expects it,’ said the nurse. ‘No, He doesn’t,’ replied little Jane, ‘for I told Him the other day I couldn’t say them, I was so sleepy, and He said, ‘Don’t mention it, Miss Smith.’”

* * * * *

“July 15.--Rain on St. Swithin’s Day. Lady Lyndhurst says, ‘Do you know that he was three times Lord Chancellor of England, and that the only man who has filled that office three times since was my lord.’

“Went to see Mrs. Ross,[457] a breeze from Castagnuolo in London. She was full of the enchantment of a visit to Lacaita at Leucaspide, and of a tour she had made to Otranto; to Lecce, where all the professors had met to receive ‘una donna molta istruita’ at the museum, where she had not known anything whatever of the subjects they discoursed upon, but, by judicious silence and an occasional ‘si,’ had now the highest opinions; to Manfredonia, where the inn is now kept by one Don Michele, to whom the would-be sojourners have to be formally presented, when he accepts or rejects them, with ‘mi piace’ or ‘non mi piace.’ On one of these excursions she heard the sound of an instrument hitherto unknown to her from a hollow below the road, and going down, found a boy playing on a long pipe of birch-bark. ‘Cosa è questo?’--‘Il fischio della primavera;’ and she bought it for ten centimes--the sweetest of music and of instruments; but it only lasts a week, and can only be obtained with the spring.

“Afterwards I sat with Miss Seymour, who talked of the political state of France, and of Kisseloff saying, ‘Ils se croient toujours malades quand ils n’ont pas la fièvre.’

“Then to Mrs. Liddell (of Christ-Church). Princess Christian had just been there for a committee for women’s work. Mrs. Liddell said she went about immensely amongst the poor of Windsor, and had a district. Once, when she went for a month to Berlin, she said to one of her poor women that she was going away, but that she would be well looked after, as she had got some one to take her place. ‘Yes, but it will not be the same to me; for I shall have no one to tell my troubles to.’

“Mrs. Liddell had some capital oil-portraits. She asked who I thought they were by. I supposed by young Richmond. ‘No; by my daughter Violet.’”

* * * * *

“July 16.--Luncheon with Lady Knightley and then to Osterley--a soft warm day; the flowers, from the long drought, quite magnificent under the dark cedars by the lake.

‘Look how the roses Hold up their noses,’

said old Lord Ebury, with whom I walked about, and who begged Miss Grosvenor not to leave him till she had found him an innamorata; which she eventually did in the person of Lady Balfour of Burleigh, very pretty in her attentions to the old man. Then the Duchess of Mecklenbourg came, and also sat under the trees. Lady Wynford brought Mr. Graham Vivian and me home, and I went to a Cinderella ball at Lady Guinness’s--quite splendid; and though it began at ten and ended at twelve, very crowded and successful, showing that the introduction of an earlier hour for balls would be perfectly easy.”

* * * * *

“July 17.--Met Mr. Reeve, the editor of the Quarterly. Mr. Tedder reminded me of Mark Pattison’s speaking (in the Academy) of ‘those old three-deckers--the Edinburgh and the Quarterly; the latter of which sets to sea under the guidance, apparently, of the Ancient Mariner.’

“I had luncheon yesterday with Mrs. Cyril Flower, the most amusingly decided of women, and met young Lady Wenlock, pining to return to India, where she enjoyed so much the languid life, or rather, as she called it, the time for thought which the heat gave her.

“A most pleasant dinner at Charlie Balfour’s, meeting a group of real friends--Guy Sebright and his nice wife, Basil Levett and his sweet Lady Margaret, and Sir John Maxwell, who is most simple, clever, and pleasant,--delightful to be with. Minnie Balfour was full of Mrs. Slingsby, whose curious old house in Yorkshire is so strangely haunted. One hot night, very late, when her husband was away, Mrs. Slingsby sat out on the terrace, and below her, in the park, saw the most brilliant light apparently burning on the grass. She went down to it, reached it, and it disappeared. Exactly that day year, she watched for it and saw it again. That time she went behind it, and saw it between herself and the house.

“Lady Heathcote Amaury, whom I took down to dinner, said, ‘You know young Lady Onslow was a daughter of Lord Gardner. She told me that her father rented a place called Chilton from Colonel ----. When he took it, Colonel ---- said, “As you are taking the place for some time, I think perhaps it is my duty to tell you that the state bedroom is haunted. A young ancestor of mine, dressed in a blue coat and breeches, with a rose in his button-hole, comes in, arranges his hair at the mirror, looks at the occupant of the room, throws up the window, and vanishes through it. He does nobody any harm, and is excessively pleasant-looking, still I ought not to let you take the place without telling you.”

“‘Lord Gardner said he did not care a bit; but the state bedroom had very remarkable furniture,--a magnificent bed with curtains looped up by gilt cherubs, and, after Lady Gardner heard the story, she got leave to change the furniture, and the old hangings were carefully put away, and modern furniture used instead.

“‘Soon after some cousins of Lord Gardner, two ladies belonging to the elder branch of the family, came from Scotland to stay, and were put into that room. When they came down next morning, Lord Gardner asked the elder if she had rested well after her journey. She answered, “Yes, indeed, and I have had the most delightful dream: I dreamt that the room I was in was furnished in the most beautiful way, with gilt cupids, hangings, &c.,--and really what I dreamt was so charming that I longed for you some time to be able to furnish the room just in that way. And then--I seemed to be awake, but of course I could not have been--I saw a young man of most beautiful countenance come into the room, dressed in a blue coat, &c., which was quite in keeping with the room, and he went up to the glass and arranged his hair, then he looked at me with a charming expression upon his face, but just when he seemed going to speak, and I was longing to know what he would say, he threw open the window, and disappeared through it.”

“‘Lady Onslow said, “You may imagine the breathless interest with which we listened.”’

* * * * *

“July 17.--Supper at the Miss Hollands’. Met Mr. Turner, rather a remarkable American. The sight of white roses made him say, ‘A white rose comes home to me, Miss Holland, and I will tell you why. Many years ago, in Philadelphia, I met a party of cousins, and we all spent the evening together. A young cousin of mine--very pretty--was there, who was lately married, and I was very glad to see her, and we talked much together--so much together all evening that it was a matter of comment--of foolish comment. When we parted, she gave me a white rose, and she said, “You must keep that rose as long as we live.” I took the rose home and pressed it. From time to time I heard from her afterwards, but I never saw her, and I forgot the rose. Long afterwards I was in Philadelphia again, and in the evening, opening a book, something fell out on the floor: it was the white rose. I felt it an omen, and I said to myself, “It is long since I heard of her; something has happened. I will just go round to Uncle Joe’s and inquire.” I went, and found that Uncle Joe knew nothing; but whilst I was there the news arrived that she was dead.

“‘The white rose, when it fell, had told me that already.

“‘I believe in such things. I possess a looking-glass that I have long had in my keeping. One day, there seemed no reason why, I saw it slide from the table: it fell. The corner was broken off. I had it mended. Almost immediately a cable was brought in announcing the death of a near relation. Some time after it fell again. The other corner was broken off. I said, “What is going to happen now?” The next day I heard of the deaths of three intimate friends. So I said, “It will never do to go on like this,” and I had the glass sawn down, and so framed and padded with india-rubber at the back, that, if it fell, it was scarcely possible it could be broken. Well, that--stopped it.’

“Mr. Turner gave a very curious account of the early state of many American settlements--that the rivers or any running stream generally marked the track for civilisation. It was easier to make a path along them than anywhere else; a road followed, eventually a railway. Along one of these tracks, many years ago, came annually a venerable old man. People expected him--watched for his coming. He always came from the east, and he was never observed to return: yet he came again from the east in the following year. He was a kind of primitive missionary, bringing Bibles, which he cut up, leaving parts in the different houses he passed. Thus he would leave the Gospel of St. John one year, and the next would call for it, and leave the Acts in its place. He had a pocket-full of apple-seed, and wherever he stopped in the middle of the day, he made a hole with his stick, and dropped one of his seeds into it. People called him ‘Old John Apple-seed.’ Mr. Turner had seen many fine apple-trees along the banks of streams, of which it was remembered that they were planted by old John Apple-seed.

“Mr. Turner described how primitive many of the early lines of railway were, made at the rate of three miles a week. At Harrisburg several of these lines met, and it was a very dangerous point. A poor half-witted man found his vocation in life by joining trains at this point, and running in front screaming, ‘The engine is coming: the engine is coming.’ And thus he would run for miles, keeping just in front of the train, and if he saw a child, would seize it and throw it out of the way, and would often seize a woman by the shoulder, and would almost lift her off the line; but at last, after many years, whilst saving another, he was killed himself.”

* * * * *

“July 18.--A party at Lady Bantry’s, where Lady Helen Stewart recited a poem much like the above story. Dined with the Grants. Old Lady Frances Higginson[458] frightened a mincing curate out of his life who said to her, ‘Will you take some potatoes?’ by saying in her most abrupt way, ‘God bless my soul, aren’t you going to give me some?’”

* * * * *

“July 20.--At luncheon at the Higginsons’, I met the Storys from Rome, very happy in London, but ‘it is surely a bad arrangement of Nature,’ he said, ‘that one should have so many coats and only one body. I should like to have several--a body to work with; and a young smart body to go into society with; and the old body, which always sleeps so well, to go to bed with.’

“At luncheon at Lady Airlie’s I met Henry Cowper,[459] Mr. Morley, Lady Tweeddale, and Miss Betty Ponsonby. Henry Cowper talked of the friendship between Bright and Tuke. They had always been intimate. Then they loved the same woman. In his great friendship Tuke gave way, and the lady became the first Mrs. John Bright. Afterwards they were greater friends, and saw more of each other than ever: Bright would do anything for Tuke. But the conversation was chiefly about Gladstone, giving instances of his marvellous personal charm--of his way of telling things, bearing out Goethe’s words--

‘Märchen! doch so wunderbar, Dichterkünster machen’s wahr.’

“Tea with Mrs. Ford--always interesting. She talked much of Dr. Morell Mackenzie--well known to her. When he arrived at Berlin, he found six great doctors waiting for him at the palace. They took him to a room filled with knives, &c. ‘What are these for?’--‘For your choice in operating upon the Crown Prince.’--‘But I can only operate upon him in one way, that is my own;’ and he explained it. Four of the doctors agreed with what he said, two violently opposed it. He was taken at once to Bismarck, who said, ‘Do not consult me: ask me as many questions as you like about la haute politique, but about this I can say nothing.’ Then he was taken to the Emperor, to whom he explained his views. The Emperor listened to all, and then only said quietly--turning to those who were with him--‘Let the Englishman act.’ He then went at once to the Crown Prince. He performed the operation with his own forceps, steeped in cocotine, which deadens, absolutely paralyses the throat, and seizing the wart, dragged--not cut--it out. It seemed like a terrible responsibility for England, as if the life of the Crown Prince was in its hands.

“Mr. Browning described how he had been asked to dinner by two elderly ladies--sisters. He did not know them, but it was very kind of them to ask him, and he went. He met a very singular party at their house--Gladstone, Mrs. Thistlethwayte, and others. Going down to dinner, the lady who fell to his share suddenly said to him, ‘You are a poet, aren’t you?’--‘Well, people are sometimes kind enough to say that I am.’--‘Oh, don’t mind my having mentioned it: you know Lord Byron was a poet!’

“Browning is unlike Tennyson; he does not write from inspiration, but by power of work. He says he sets himself a certain number of lines to write in a day, and he writes them. Sometimes he says, ‘To-morrow morning I will write a sonnet; and he writes it. Nevertheless he is always greater in aspiration than achievement. Mr. Carlyle could not bear his poems. ‘What did the fellow mean by leaving that cart-load of stones at my door?’ he said to Alfred Tennyson when Browning left one of his poems there.

“London is now always asking itself ‘What is the cause of this long drought?’--‘Because we have had fifty years’ rain (reign).’

“Went to the Halifax’s in the evening to meet the Indian princes, and then to Lady Lamington’s party, made exceedingly pretty by its arcaded garden on the roof.”

* * * * *

“Langleybury, August 2.--I am staying with Harry Loyd, who at twenty-six is certainly as near perfection as any one can possibly be in every relation of life--son, brother, friend, landlord, county magnate. His mother and four sisters live with him, and their hospitalities are boundless.”

* * * * *

“August 28.--Little Holmhurst has been full of summer guests--gentle Lady Donoughmore and Lady Margaret Hamilton, Lady Airlie and Lady Griselda Ogilvie, Basil Levett and his Lady Margaret, Lady Sherborne, and lastly George Jolliffe and Lady Bloomfield, the latter a constant ripple of interesting anecdote.”

* * * * *

“Tatton Park, Sept. 2, 1887.--The large party in this large pleasant hospitable house has included the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs. Benson, with their daughter--the ‘modest philosopher,’ as Miss Egerton aptly calls her. We have been to Manchester to see the exhibition of all the works of artists of Victoria’s reign--a very fine collection, from the vapid works of Etty and the hard commonplaceness of the earlier Landseers to the noble ‘Christ or Diana’ of Long, which struck most of us as the grandest and most expressive work amongst such multitudes. There is a curious contrast between the last and this Lady Egerton, who cannot enjoy life enough herself, or contribute enough to making it enjoyable for others.

“We have just been across the park to the old Hall, where a fine timber roof remains, very richly carved; and we have driven to Tabley and its old isleted hall in the lake, so mysteriously beautiful, which the family abandoned two hundred and fifty years ago, leaving all its contents in the deserted house, so that you still see the open spinnet with the mouldering keys, the lace half worked on the cushion, the flax half spun on the distaff in the little low rooms, with their carved furniture and fireplaces, opening, in two stories, around the great timbered hall.

“Raglan Somerset is here, unspeakably funny, so décousu in his conversation, which never stops for an instant. I like also Lord and Lady Rayleigh: he is learned, but perfectly simple, and she, née Balfour, is thoroughly pleasant and unsophisticated. Miss Mary Egerton, very handsome, with her grey hair and youthful animated countenance, is a delightful addition to the party. But the great, the real pleasure to me, has been finding Derek Keppel (Lord Bury’s second son and brother-in-law of the only daughter of the house) almost domesticated here: I like him so very much, certainly better than any one I know in the same degree. It is Sunday, and we have been to the new church at Aston, built by Lord and Lady Egerton without an architect, and so pleasant to look upon inside that an old man said, ‘Why, sir, one can be cheerful in it, even when one is saying one’s prayers.’”

* * * * *

“Woodlands, Glassbury, Sept. 7.--I came here through the lovely Church Stretton country, stopping at picturesque Shrewsbury on the way to stay with the Bishop of Lichfield and Augusta. Yesterday we went by rail through the beautiful but drippingly wet valleys to visit the Venables near Builth. Our host was the well-known and severe critic in the Saturday--a pleasant old man to visitors, but evidently awful to the younger members of his family.

“Augusta had many interesting reminiscences of Lord Beaconsfield. One day, at luncheon, she offered him the mustard. ‘I never take mustard,’ he replied in his sepulchral voice. ‘Oh, don’t you?’ she said airily. ‘No,’ he continued in solemnest tones. ‘There are three things I have never used: I have never touched mustard; I have never had a watch; and I have never made use of an umbrella.’--‘Well,’ said Augusta, ‘I can understand the mustard--that is a mere matter of taste; but surely going without the other things must have been sometimes rather inconvenient.’--‘And why should I want them?’ continued Disraeli more sepulchrally than ever. ‘I live under the shadow of Big Ben, and there is a clock in every room of the House of Commons, so that I cannot possibly require a watch; and as I always go about in a close carriage, I can never want an umbrella.’ Disraeli was always full of these small affectations.”

* * * * *

“Woodlands, Sept. 8.--This is a charming visit, and the place is delightful--close to the glistening Wye, with green hills--‘mountains’ in Welsh--folding around, exquisite in the soft haze of early morning.

“Augusta has been giving an interesting account of Champlatreux in France, belonging to the Duc d’Ayen, a representative of the De Noailles family. In the château is preserved the precious volume of the ‘Imitation of Christ,’ which the young Duchesse de Noailles used in the prison of the Luxembourg, where she devoted herself to keeping up the courage of her mother-in-law and daughter. When the three generations of the House of Noailles were summoned together to the scaffold, the Duchesse was reading aloud to her fellow-prisoners from the chapter of the ‘Chemin de la Croix.’ She turned down the page at that point and gave the book to one of her companions in prison, begging her, if she ever escaped, to convey it, as a memorial, to the De Noailles family.”

* * * * *

“Sept. 10.--Two pleasant days with Graham Loyd in his charming cottage at Sketty near Swansea, and a great cementing of friendship with him. The first day he took me by a terrible path overhanging an unprotected chasm opposite the Mumbles. All the population of Swansea seem to pour out to drink in the neighbourhood of the Mumbles. ‘You want to close the public-houses at Swansea, that men may get drunk at the Mumbles,’ said Judge Bradwin, in opposing the Sunday-closing movement. At the same time he said that he did not see any more reason why men should call beer a ‘pernicious liquor’ than that they should call water a ‘drowning fluid.’

“We have been to luncheon at Clyne, where Graham Vivian has an unkempt but beautiful place, full of fine Italian treasures, and have dined at Singleton with Lady Hussey Vivian.[460] Besides this, we have had a wonderful drive, by heath, sandhill, and precipice, through the strange district of Gower, where all the houses are whitewashed, and where there are constant wrecks on the rock-girt coast, though a great bell tolls eerily through the night on a sandbank, with the waves for its ringers.”

* * * * *

“Sept. 12.--Two days at the Deanery at Llandaff, where family furniture and pictures--familiar from Alderley, Norwich, Canterbury, Oxford days--give a homelike aspect.

“Kate said that when she was in Madeira last year, a Mr. Husband, a dentist from Hull, was staying in the same hotel. She had heard that he had seen a ghost there, and she asked him about it. It was only on being very much pressed that he told how that one night, when he was in his bed in the hotel, a young man in lawn-tennis dress came in, stood at the foot of the bed, and pointed with his finger at the pillow. Mr. H. was not frightened, only annoyed, and asked the young man what he wanted. He did not speak, and continued to point at the pillow. At last Mr. Husband was so irritated that he said, ‘Well, if you will neither speak nor go away, take that,’ and dealt him a blow, but his hand only seemed to sink into cold icy vapour, and the apparition vanished.

“Next day Mr. Husband told the landlord of the hotel what had happened, when he said, ‘Your story is very extraordinary, because a young man, who was staying here for some time, and was treated by a doctor for a very slight ailment, died in that bed under very suspicious circumstances; and, as long as he was about, that young man was never seen out of lawn-tennis dress.’

“Afterwards Mr. Husband heard of that young Mr. Hyndeman from other people in Madeira. They remembered him perfectly. He was very silent and shunned all society, and he was never out of lawn-tennis dress.”

* * * * *

“Sept. 16.--A happy visit at cheerful merry Hardwick, which unites the charms of an interesting house, of exquisite gardens, and most varied and amusing society. There is a curious picture there of Elizabeth Drury reclining on her side with her hand under her head, which perhaps led to the story that she died of a box on the ear. She was a great friend of Wotton and of Donne, who wrote verses to her, and also her epitaph.”

* * * * *

“Sept. 19.--A visit to the Ordes at Hopton, in the flat marshy country near Yarmouth--a happy united family, with a very beautiful eldest daughter, Evelyn. Hopton village is the Blunderstone of ‘David Copperfield.’ Charlie Orde took me to Caister, the grandest fragment of a castle I ever saw--so very lofty a tower rising abruptly from the edge of a very wide moat. On Sunday we saw the great low-lying lake of Flitton, which belongs to one of the Buxtons.”

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Sept. 22.--On Monday I went to Sculthorpe, near Fakenham, where I saw the site of the old manor-house, part of the property which came to Bishop Hare through his marriage with Mary-Margaret Alston. It has the odd name of Hos Tendis. Only the foundation-walls exist now, with remains of the moat, overhung with old apple-trees. The church is a very fine one, and the existing manor-house, Cranmer, is an exceedingly handsome, pleasant house inside. Sir Laurence Jones, who lives there, had brought out quantities of old Hare and Alston deeds to show me: it was odd to see them there, but they had been sold with the property.

“My kind host, the Rector, Herbert Jones, the squire’s uncle, was the picture of old-fashioned courtesy. His wife, a Gurney, sister of Mrs. Orde at Hopton, is well known for her archaeological writings. They took me, with their niece Miss Laura Troubridge and her betrothed, Adrian Hope, to the beautiful old brick and terra-cotta house of Wolterton, with a very fine gateway.

“Yesterday we went to Houghton, in a well-timbered park--a house full of stately magnificence. The present Lord Cholmondeley has sold many of its treasures, but, though much has been taken away, it is especially interesting because nothing has been added since the time of Sir Robert Walpole. George, Lord Walpole, destroyed the grand staircase of the house, so that you now have to enter through the basement, instead of in state by the grand hall on the first floor, where Sir Robert and his companions used to carouse, and where the chairs which they used still remain, with the rings in the ceiling which supported the scales for weighing deer. The pictures are interesting--Sir Robert over and over again, with his beloved first wife, Catherine Shorter, and his inferior second wife Maria Skerret; his daughter and heiress, who brought the place to the Cholmondeleys; and his sister Dorothy, who still walks as a ghost at Rainham, where she was the wife of Lord Townshend, who is said to have walled her up in a spot where bones have been found, supposed to be hers.

“In one of the drawing-rooms is a glorious picture of the Duchess of Ancaster, who was sent to bring Princess Charlotte of Mecklenbourg-Strelitz to England when she came to marry George III. ‘Pug, pug, pug!’ cried the people when they saw her appearance as she was entering London. ‘Vat is dat they do say--poog?’ said the Princess, ‘vat means poog?’--‘Oh, that means, God bless your Majesty,’ promptly replied the Duchess, without the slightest hesitation. The pictures which are not portraits are wretched, chiefly bad copies.

“In the grounds is the little garden of Catherine, Lady Walpole, which in her time was surrounded by a yew hedge. Now the yews have grown into tall trees and are interweaving overhead above the little grassy circle.

“I came last night to the Locker-Lampsons at Cromer, finding Julia, Lady Jersey, Brandling, Lady Kathleen Bligh, and Rollo Russell here. To-day we have been to Blickling, where we found Lady Lothian and Lady Pembroke walking in the radiantly beautiful garden of the grand old house. Lady Lothian showed it all delightfully--the staircase, with its carved figures on the banisters; the tapestried rooms; the long library with a very rich ceiling, the room itself in exquisite harmony with its ranges of wonderful old books. At tea in the dining-room Baroness Coutts appeared, and many other unexpected persons dropped in.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Salisbury, Sept. 28.--A very delightful visit to Canon Douglas Gordon[461] and Lady Ellen, full of old-fashioned peculiarities and brimming over with real excellence. One son, George, is at home, a successful young architect, and two daughters, of whom the eldest is a good artist. The Canon is interesting in his recollections--amongst many others, of the Queen Dowager, whom, as Rector of Stanmore, he saw constantly; and a portrait of her with the last words she ever wrote beneath it--her gift to him--hangs over the drawing-room chimney-piece. Near it is a very old oil-picture of Balmoral, interesting because the sight of that picture first decided the Queen to buy the place, which she had not then visited: it also shows how exactly her large modern house follows the main lines of the old Scotch castle.

“Canon Gordon says that instantly after the Queen Dowager’s death, when they were all in tears, and all the servants were waiting in the hall for the last news of their mistress, they were startled by a tremendous knocking at the door and a trumpet blowing, and three men entered with the announcement, ‘We are the royal embalmers, and we are come to perform our duty!’ They had actually been waiting outside--waiting for the first announcement of the death. In this case, however, they were sent away, as Queen Adelaide had left especial orders that her body was not to be embalmed.

“In the Canonry garden here is a fine mulberry-tree. The only fact remembered about the old Canon who planted it is that whilst it was being placed in the ground the cathedral bell rang for service, and the gardener said, ‘You’ll be late for church, sir: the bell is ringing.’ To which the Canon rejoined, ‘Church be d--d; but I’ll see this mulberry planted.’ A lesson to be careful of what one says.

“Yesterday I went to Wilton in the pony-carriage with Miss Gordon, who left me there. Lady Pembroke[462] soon came in in her riding-habit, and took me at once through the beautiful brilliant gardens ending in the old building still called ‘Holbein’s Porch,’ though it is now far away from the house to which it once belonged. Then we walked on the sunny lawns swept by the massy branches of grand old cedars and intersected by three rivers, over one of which is a beautiful Palladian bridge like that at Prior Park.

“Somehow Lady Pembroke is a person with whom one begins to talk intimately very soon, and her own conversation is most original and delightful. But she spoke much of her wish that religion was ‘not so very odd,’--of her intense craving to know something, anything tangible, about a future state. She had been seeing the Roman Mr. Story lately, who has been much amongst spiritualists, had heard speaking spirits, and had the very utmost faith in them. The spirits all confirmed faith in a future state. Once a bad spirit came; its language was perfectly horrible: in life it had been a pirate!

“Returning to the house, we saw the Vandykes, which are most glorious. There is a very curious contemporary picture of the coronation of Richard II. in the presence of his patron saints and of the heavenly host. Lady Pembroke talked on and on, and when I got up to go, kept me: but it was most interesting, and I would willingly have listened for many hours more. Eventually she went with me to the end of the grounds, and let me out at a postern-gate in the wall.

“To-day we have been to tea with the Pigott family, who live in George Herbert’s rectory (which he built) at Bemerton. It is a lovely spot, with the little church (vulgarised inside by glazed tiles), beneath the altar of which he is believed to rest. The garden reaches to the clear rushing Madder, full of trout and grayling, and has a beautiful view of the cathedral across the water-meadows. We saw the register with the notice of the burial of ‘Mr. George Herbert, Esquire, parson of this place,’[463] and his old study with its very thick walls: but he was only at Bemerton two years, leading a life ‘little less than sainted, though not exempt from passion and choler,’ as his brother, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, tells us in his memoirs. Americans come in crowds to see the place, and can often repeat half his poems. Mr. Pigott asked one of them to spend the night there, and in the morning inquired how he had slept. ‘Sleep,’ he said, ‘do you suppose I could sleep in George Herbert’s house? Why, I sat up all night thinking of him.’”[464]

* * * * *

“Oct. 2.--Again at Highcliffe with Lady Waterford, whose conversation is as charming as ever.

‘And thy eternal summer shall not fade,’

is a line of Shakspeare which seems ever to apply to her. Here are some fragments from her lips:--

“‘That is like the priest who, when he was remonstrated with for eating meat on Friday, said, “All flesh is grass.”

“‘When I was young, I delighted in Tittenhanger.[465] We used to post down from London--a most delightful drive then. I thought it all charming--the old house, and a wood with bluebells, and the Colne, a mere dull sluggish stream, I suppose, but it had frogs and bulrushes, and I found it enchanting. A few years ago I thought I would post down to Tittenhanger in the old way, but it was a street all the way to Barnet, and when the people saw the white horses and postillion in blue, they came crowding round; for, though it was only my little maid Boardman and me, they thought, “Now we shall see them: now we shall see the newly-married pair.”

“The Duc d’Aumale is married. He married Mademoiselle Clinchamps, who was lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Salerno, the Duchesse d’Aumale’s mother. She does the honours of his house, but it is a sort of morganatic marriage.... Madame Adelaide was married too to one of the generals.... I remember the Aumales riding through the green avenues near Ossington; Mary Boyle was with them. She was a most excellent horsewoman, but a great gust of wind came, and the whole edifice of her chignon was blown off before she could stop it. The little Prince de Condé was very young then, and he was riding with her. He picked it up and said, “I will keep it in my pocket, and then, when we reach Thoresby, you can go away quietly and get it put on;” and so she did. That young Condé used to say, “I am not le grand Condé; I am le petit Condé.” ... Madame de Genlis used to write to Louis Philippe--“Sire et cher enfant.”

“‘That Lord Shrewsbury[466] you were speaking of received Henri V. at Alton Towers--received him as king of France, and dressed up all the people of the different lodges to represent the different nations of Europe giving him welcome. It was he who made the beautiful gardens. There is a bust of him there, and inscribed beneath it--“He made the desert to smile.” “And I don’t wonder at it,” said Lady Marian (Alford) when she saw the bust: he was so comically hideous.’”

* * * * *

Whilst I was away on my visits, I had left my dear old cousin Charlotte Leycester provided with companions at Holmhurst during the annual summer visit of several months, which had never failed since my mother’s death. I felt that thus my mother’s home, thus her own especial room, were fulfilling what she would most have wished for them. And (though, unlike my gentle mother, Calvinistic, vehement, with a habit of constantly “improving the occasion,” and utterly intolerant still of all that did not agree with her in religious matters), the beloved and beautiful old cousin, at nearly ninety, was this year more than ever occupied by plans and thoughts for the good of all around her, more full of spiritual meditation herself, lifting her own heart and mind into celestial dwelling-places. For her truly one might say, “The poetry of earth is never dead,” and I often found that I knew little of the natural charms of my own little home till she had shown them. “Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee” is a verse of Job for which she had a constant application, and the shrubs and flowers--at Holmhurst always planted in the same places--were intimate and familiar friends to her--

“Still within this life, Though lifted o’er its strife.”[467]

Sunday was always her great delight--a Sunday to be dealt with as John Knox would have used it, and a church service freed from anything of ritual, but with an extempore preacher if possible. She felt, “I always like my victuals hot when I can get them,” as an old woman said in reference to her preacher. Latterly, however, Charlotte Leycester was scarcely able to hear sermons, though, as she wrote to me during my last absence,--“I always enjoy the sermon, though I do not hear it; for, as our old friend George Herbert says, ‘God takes a text, and preaches patience,’ and I can generally catch all texts quoted, which helps me to follow the drift, like finding one stone after another in crossing a current.”

When turned to her reminiscences of the past, her conversation was often very interesting. I remember her telling me this summer of her visit to Paris in 1827, and going to the Royal Chapel, into which came the king, Louis XVIII., and the Duchess d’Angoulême with full evening dress in the morning and feathers on her head. When the king entered, a great picture of our Lord hung opposite where he was to sit, to which the master of the ceremonies seemed to introduce him--“Le roi.” “At Rosny, a beautiful old château with chestnut avenues, to which we drove out one October evening after dining at Mantes, we saw the Duchesse de Berri. Most amusing the travelling then was, with the postillions in blue and in great jack-boots, into which they had to be lifted, with the blowing of their horns at every village we passed through.”

* * * * *

A few days after I reached home, two more volumes of mine were published, “Paris” and “Days near Paris.” They had been the engrossing work of the last two years. My hourly thought had been for them, and I had taken all the pains I could with them. I knew their faults, and know them still; but all the same I am conscious, and I am sure it is not conceit, that no better general books on those subjects have ever been written,--certainly in French there is nothing of the kind. I suppose it is one of the penalties of a lonely life, of having no near belongings, that it seemed--perhaps a little bathos as regarded the subjects which had filled one’s life--that no one spoke of them; that day after day passed on, and no one ever mentioned their existence. And then came a Review--a leading article indeed--in the Athenæum, not of mere abuse of the books, though no words were strong enough for that, but of such bitter personal malignity against myself, as gave one the shuddering conviction that one must indeed have an enemy as virulent as he was unscrupulous. “Turn author,” says Gray, “and straightway you expose yourself to pit, boxes, and gallery: any coxcomb in the world may come in and hiss if he pleases; ay, and what is almost as bad, clap too, and you cannot hinder him.” Most of the Reviews of my books have been unfavourable, but the books have always contrived to outlive them; and generally, when they have been found fault with, I have felt almost grateful for such lessons of humility, and have longed to say with Goethe, “Pray continue to make me acquainted with my own work.” Even honest reviewers, however, seldom read beyond the first chapter of a book; that they usually read, and occasionally criticise; but even then the tendency to save themselves trouble generally causes a great deal of copying. I have always found that a first Review has influenced all the others except the very best. The excessive injustice and untruthfulness this time made me understand the pain which Chatterton felt, especially when it was said that the hundred and forty-seven quotations, which I had been at such pains to find for my “Versailles,” were “all taken second-hand from Dussieux’ History” of that palace, though I am assured that not one (!!) of them is to be found there, except the few taken from S. Simon, the especial historian of Versailles, to which any one writing about it would naturally apply.

“Every white will have its black, And every sweet its sour,”

and though serious disappointments are always a most bitter medicine, life becomes much the same again after they are once swallowed and assimilated. I know they must be good for one, like all the other humiliations of--is it?--yes, I suppose in a right spirit it may be, le chemin de la croix. Still I often wonder whether the writer of such an article, when he knows it is false and unjust, as this writer must have done, does it with pleasure in taking away an author’s innocent enjoyment in the birth of his book-child. In most cases of personal injustice and injury, I am sure that it answers to take some secret opportunity of doing something very kind towards the aggressor--it “takes out the taste;” but when the intentional injury is anonymous, one is deprived of even this consolation. Yet, to a certain extent, an inner consciousness of high aims and disinterested intentions may raise a screen against the base scurrilousness with which every one is assailed at some time in their lives. Fortunately, also, I have never quite--though very nearly--had to put in practice the maxim that--

“Those who live to please must please to live.”

It is curious, certainly, how one has only to turn to the pages of a book which collects Reviews of past authors, like “Alibone’s Dictionary,” to find plentiful consolation. I chanced to open it on Thackeray, and found the Edinburgh Review, after abusing “Esmond” in the most contemptuous tones, saying patronisingly, “If Esmond had been confined within as short limits, it might have taken rank with the ‘Defence of Natural Society,’ but a parody three volumes long becomes tiresome.” The same Edinburgh Review advised Byron to abandon poetry and apply his talents to some better use; and declared Coleridge’s “Christabel” to be “a thing utterly destitute of value.” I think it is Montaigne who says, “Aucun chemin de fleurs ne conduit à la gloire.”

XXV

IN PLEASURE AND PAIN

“Why, of all the countless faces which I meet as I walk down the Strand, are the enormous majority failures--deflections from the type of beauty possible to them?”--DEAN CHURCH.

“Before the beginning of years there came to the making of man, Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran.” --SWINBURNE.

“From the black depths, the ashes, and the dross Of our waste lives, we reach out to the Cross, And by its fulness measure all our loss.” --WHITTIER.

In the middle of October I went North for a short time.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Thoresby, Oct. 20, 1887.--A visit here has been charming--its inmates all so filled with kindness and goodness of every description, and Lady Manvers so very agreeable--‘une conversation si nourrie.” Nothing could exceed the dying splendour of the autumnal tints in the forest, of which we saw a great deal, as we sat out through the whole of each morning drawing amongst the tall golden bracken, over which the great antlers of a stag were now and then uplifted. My companions were Lady Mary Pierrepont, very pretty and charming, and Mrs. Trebeck, daughter and sister of a Bishop Wordsworth, who is here with her husband, Canon Trebeck of Southwell, a very singular and admirable muscular Christian. They have asked me to visit them. The first day of my visit I was delighted to meet Lord and Lady Montagu, unusually pleasant people, with a very nice daughter.”

* * * * *

“Southwell, Oct. 21.--Lord Manvers--kindest of hosts--sent me here, fourteen miles. It is a tiny town clustered around its--chiefly Norman--minster. The beautiful chapter-house has a wreathed door, before which Ruskin stood for an hour when he was here, motionless in rapt contemplation. On one of the old Norman pillars on the right of the nave are remains of a fresco of the Annunciation, evidently painted over an altar of the Virgin: on the other side are traces of a very early organ. In the graveyard is the tomb of Robert Lowe, Lord Sherbrooke’s father. The Sub-dean and his wife are the centre around which the whole little place revolves with its society and charities. The Bishop, who lives in the country, seems rather to despise Southwell and to wish his cathedral had been at Nottingham.

“We went from Thoresby to Rufford,[469] a curious old low-lying house containing much fine tapestry, but where the old furniture is greatly made up. The house has an obstreperous ghost, that especially haunted the room which Augustus Lumley chose as his own, and frightened his pug-dog out of its wits; for beyond that room is a little chamber in which a girl was once shut up and starved to death; but since some bones have been found under one of the passages and received christian burial, the ghost has been laid. There is a portrait of a boy who was taken as a baby from gipsies and brought up in the house, but who disappeared after he grew up and never was heard of again: it was supposed that the impulse was too strong, and that he rejoined the tribe he came from.”

* * * * *

“Raby Castle, Oct. 25.--The Duchess of Cleveland has been describing Lord Crawford’s interview with a famous clairvoyant. Lord Crawford saw the medium go and hold his head in the fire: the flames played round him and he was quite unhurt. Then the medium said he could make Lord Crawford impervious to fire: ‘Would he like it?’ He said ‘yes,’ and the medium took a large live coal from the fire and put it on the palm of one of his hands, which was entirely unhurt, though the coal was left upon it, and Lord Crawford was told to light his cigar at it, which he did. The clairvoyant then said, ‘Your other hand is not impervious: touch the coal with it,’ and he touched the coal which lay in the palm of his left hand, and one of the fingers of his right hand bears the marks of it still.”

* * * * *

“Oct. 26.--It has been a great pleasure during this visit that the Duke[470] has come in each morning for talk, generally more or less narrative--in which he rises suddenly from his chair, walks rapidly backwards and forwards to the fire, and then sits down again, always with his sharp fiery restless look; but all he says most interesting. To-day he told of his father’s early life,--sent to Oxford with a tutor, Mr. Lipscombe, then abroad for three years, spent chiefly at Orleans learning French with John, Duke of Bedford (the father of Lord Russell). The Duke of Dorset was ambassador then, and took the two young men to Versailles, where they played billiards with Marie Antoinette. The French aristocracy were quite unconscious then of the coming danger, and would not believe in the serious state of politics. The Duc de Bouillon was the great person, and they stayed with him in the country. They went on to Rome, where Cardinal York was then living. They went to his weekly receptions, where he was always treated as royalty. ‘The Duchesse d’Albanie gave my father a ring,’ said the Duke, ‘but after my father’s death it was stolen from the Duchess Elisabeth by her maid. All young men stayed abroad their three years at that time, and so did my father, then as soon as he came home he was married to my mother, who was the Duke of Bolton’s daughter.

“‘For myself, I went to Paris at eighteen in diplomacy, and was there for many years. I spoke French better than English, and lived entirely in French society. Thiers I knew intimately in all the different phases of his life. He was said to have had an intrigue with Madame Dombes. I don’t know how that may have been, but he married her daughter, and she made him a very good wife. He always began his writing at six, when he had a cup of coffee, and he wrote on--no one being allowed to disturb him--till 12 A.M., which was the hour of déjeûner, and it was this which enabled him to write his histories; when he was in office he had not time. He and Guizot were always rivals.

“‘I was in Paris in Louis Philippe’s time, but not under the Restoration. Many of the Dames de la Cour of the older time, however, were still in Paris, and had salons--Madame de Noailles, &c. I used to see much of Princess Charlotte de Rohan, who had been privately married to the Duc d’Enghien, and whose excitement was great when Louis Philippe was appointed. I was at Marienbad when the news of that revolution came, and posted back to Paris at once: we expected great difficulty on the way, but there was none. I saw the barricades, however, in the early émeute of Louis Philippe’s time, and the people with their passions roused, and the gamins who used to come under the windows of the Palais Royal and call for the king till he came out and made them a bow: it was the regular thing that was done.

“‘I was at Paris when the Duc de Bourbon hung himself. Cuvier and another great naturalist were sent down to examine into it, and they both said he must have done it himself; but the Legitimists declared it was an arrangement between the Orleanists and Madame de Feuchères, who shared his property between them.

“‘I was at Coppet with Auguste de Staël a few years after Madame de Staël died: he asked Sismondi to meet me there and several others. Old Madame Necker--Madame de Staël’s mother--had a very remarkable salon in Paris: her daughter was Duchesse de Broglie and her grand-daughter married the Comte d’Haussonville, whom I knew very well: but, oh! it is more than half a century ago now that I was at Coppet.’

* * * * *

“Oct. 27.--Mrs. Forester, wife of the Duke’s nephew, who is here, has told me much that is curious.

“‘An old Mrs. Sauchiehall, unfortunately dead now, told Lady Vane that when she was a girl at Doncaster, at a famous school of that time, she made a very intimate friendship with two other girls, and when they parted, they made each other a solemn vow that if either of the three were in any real trouble in after life, the others would do all they could to help her.

“They parted, and Mrs. Sauchiehall married in Cumberland--married twice, and became a second time a widow. Life had seemed constantly to drift her away from her old friends. At last, at Marienbad, she met one of them, then Mrs. A., and spent some weeks there with her, renewing all their old intimacy.

“Mrs. A. told her that she had always continued to be on terms of the most extreme intimacy with their third friend--Lady B. Her own story had been a very sad one. She had been left a widow with several children, and almost in a state of destitution. In all her troubles, she had continued to confide in Lady B., who never lost sight of her. At one time especially, Lady B. was perplexed as to how she could help her, and spoke of it to her husband, who said, ‘Well, there is at least one thing I could do for her: there is that old place of ours in Dorsetshire, where nobody lives. It is all being kept up for nothing, so if Mrs. A. likes to go and inhabit it, she is quite welcome; only, you know, she ought to be told that it is said to be haunted.’

“Lady B. made the proposal to Mrs. A., who was enchanted, and she moved at once with her children to the house in Dorsetshire, where she seemed to find a refuge from her troubles and every comfort. She asked the servants whom she found in the house about the ghosts, and they said, ‘Oh yes, the great hall and the rooms beyond it are said to be haunted, but we never go there, and the ghosts never come to our part of the house, so we are never troubled by them in the least.’ For several years Mrs. A. lived most happily in the old house, and nothing happened.

“At last, on one of her children’s birthdays, she invited some children from the neighbourhood to come and play with her own children, who begged that, after tea, they might all go and play hide-and-seek in the great disused hall. The children had finished their games, and Mrs. A. was alone in the hall setting things to rights afterwards, about 8 P.M. in the evening, with an unlighted candle in her hand, when she heard some one call out loudly, ‘Bring me a light! bring me a light!’ Then, almost immediately, the door from the inner passage leading to the farther rooms opened, and a lady rushed in, beautifully dressed in white, but with all her dress in flames. She ran across the hall screaming ‘She’s done it! she’s done it!’ and vanished through a door on the other side. Mrs. A. instantly lighted her candle, and ran with it up the passage from which the lady had emerged, but she found all the doors locked. The next night, at exactly the same hour, she came again to the hall, and exactly the same thing happened. She then wrote to Lady B. that she should be obliged to leave the place, unless Lord B. could explain the mystery.

“Lord B. then said that an ancestress of his--a widowed Lady B.--had an only son, who fell in love with the charming daughter of a neighbouring clergyman. The young lady was lovely, fascinating, and very well educated, but the mother regarded it as a mésalliance and would not hear of it. The young man, who was a very dutiful son, consented to gratify his mother by waiting, and went abroad for two years. After that time, as their attachment was unbroken, and he was of age, he married the young lady.

“It was with joyful surprise that the young married pair received a very kind letter from the mother, saying that as all was now settled, she should make a point of welcoming the bride as her daughter, and always living happily with her afterwards. They went home to the mother at the old house which Lord B. had lent to Mrs. A., and were most kindly received. All seemed perfectly smooth. At last a day came on which the mother had invited an immense party to be introduced to and do honour to the bride. The evening arrived, and the young lady was already dressed, when her mother-in-law came into the room, kissed her affectionately, and then said to her son, ‘Now that she is indeed my daughter, I am going to fetch the family diamonds, that I may have the pleasure of decorating her with them myself.’ The diamonds spoken of were really the property of the son, but he had never liked to irritate his mother by claiming them, and rejoiced that his wife should accept them from her.

“The mother then went to fetch the diamonds, the son lighting her. As they were coming back, they heard the voice of the young lady calling to her husband to bring her a light. ‘Oh, I will take it to her,’ cried the mother suddenly, and snatched the candle out of his hand. In another instant the girl rushed by with her white dress enveloped in flames, screaming ‘She’s done it! she’s done it!’ The mother confessed that her hate and jealousy had been too much for her.

“Now the house is pulled down, and a railway passes over its site.

“Another curious story, told by Mrs. Sauchiehall to Lady Vane, was that of a young lady, a great Cumberland heiress, who was engaged to be married, but who pined away from some mysterious and causeless illness. As there was no definite reason for her being ill, so nothing seemed to do her any good, but she wasted constantly, and at last she died. After her death, her old nurse, who had been her devoted attendant, rather surprised those who knew her by insisting upon leaving the place and moving to the south of England. A cousin succeeded to the property, but did not prosper. His wife died, then his children, one after another. A ghostly appearance also frequently took place, and was especially seen by a little boy, the son of the house. At last the whole family became extinct, and quite passed away out of Cumberland memory.

“Many, many years afterwards, Mrs. Sauchiehall was herself at Richmond in Surrey, when she heard that a very old woman, a native of Cumberland, was dying in the workhouse--dying, apparently, with some secret upon her mind, which she could not bring herself to confess, but which never allowed her to rest. ‘Well,’ said Mrs. Sauchiehall to her informant, ‘I am a Cumberland woman myself; I will see what I can do.’ She went to the workhouse, and soon found that the old woman had been the nurse of the young heiress who had died so long before, and heard her confess that she had accepted a large bribe from the cousin who succeeded, to poison her by slow degrees. The bribe had done her no good. She had married, all her children had died, her husband had gambled away her money, and she herself had come to die in the workhouse.

“Mrs. Forester told me of a girl who had gone to a famous school at Brighton. She was allowed to study after hours to fit her for the place of a pupil-teacher, which she wanted to get. After some time, she looked so pale and thin, that the mistress thought she was over-worked and called in a doctor. He asked her many questions, and at last ‘if she ever saw any strange visions.’ This she could conscientiously say she did not. On learning this, the doctor said that being the case, it could do her no harm to continue her studies, but that if she ever fancied she saw anything unusual, it would be a sign that her brain was overworked, and she must give up her studies at once.

“It was very soon after this that one night she distinctly heard the door of her room, which was behind a screen at the foot of her bed, open and shut again. She got up and went to the door, but it was closed, and when she opened it, there was no one there. This happened several times. At last she locked the door. Still it happened again. That night, however, she assured herself that the delusion came from being over-tired, and by sheer force of will she went to sleep.

“The next night, however, the same thing happened, and she again locked the door. Happening to look up soon after, she saw something hanging over the screen in front of her. It was a hand--an attenuated human hand. It remained there some time, then it disappeared.

“The girl then felt that she must lessen her studies, but, for fear they should be stopped altogether, she said nothing, whilst at the school, of what she had seen. Soon after this, however, she went home to the old aunt who had brought her up, and who was in very poor circumstances. She was almost surprised at the extreme and anxious tenderness with which she was received. After tea she said, ‘Auntie, I have a curious little story I want to tell you,’ and she told her what she had seen. The aunt said, ‘My love, you have unconsciously made easier for me the task of telling you some very sad news; I did not know how to break it to you, but Edward’ (the young man to whom the girl was engaged) ‘is dead; he died the night you saw the hand.’

“Mrs. Forester told this story to Lord Rayleigh, who said, ‘That is a very simple and explicable story: it is a case of telepathy.’

“The Duchess of Cleveland says that when the Sultan was at Buckingham Palace, one of his servants offended him, and he condemned him to death. The Sultan was informed that he could not execute him in this country; then he said he should do it on board his own ship. One of his wives also is said to have been executed whilst he was here, ‘because, poor thing, she had been so dreadfully sea-sick, that it was quite disgusting,’ and she is said to be buried in the palace garden.

“‘Mr. Lowell asserted to me,’ said the Duchess, ‘that there were no really old families in England. “Surely the Nevilles?” I protested. The next morning Lowell said, “I’ve been thinking that I am descended myself from the Nevilles, but I never thought it worth while before to inquire about it.”’

“‘Some one went,’ said the Duchess, ‘to inquire after the health of Madame Brunnow. “Oh,” said the servant, “she will never be any better.” The inquirer was admitted afterwards to see Baron Brunnow, to whom he said, “I am so grieved to hear from your servant that Madame Brunnow is never likely to be any better.” “Did he really say that?” said Baron Brunnow. “Oh, the faithfulness of these English servants! The fact is, Madame Brunnow really died three days ago; but the servant knows that it was not at all convenient that she should die before the reception of the Duke of Edinburgh is over, so--for inquirers--she is still only very ill.”’”

* * * * *

“Raby Castle, Oct. 28.--A pleasant Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson--neighbours--came to stay yesterday. He told me a very remarkable story.

“One day last year, Mr. Gurdon, an excellent Catholic priest belonging to a mission in the East End of London, had come in from his labours dreadfully wet and tired, and rejoicing in the prospect of a quiet evening, when the bell rung, and he was told that a lady wanted to see him on most urgent business. He said to a friend who was with him, how sincerely he dreaded being called out again into the wet that night, and how he hoped that the visit meant nothing of the kind; but he admitted the lady. She was a remarkably sweet, gentle-looking person, who told him that there was a case in most urgent need of his immediate ministrations at No. 24 in a street near, and she implored him to come at once, saying that she would wait to point out the house to him. So he only stayed to change his wet things, and then prepared to follow the lady. He took with him the Host, which he wore against his breast, holding, as is the custom, his hand over it. It is not considered right for a priest carrying the Host to engage in conversation, so Mr. Gurdon did not speak to the lady on the way to the house, but she walked a little way in front of him. At last she stopped, pointed to a house, and said, ‘This, Father, is No. 24.’ Then she passed on and left him.

“Mr. Gurdon rang the bell, and when the servant came, asked who it was who was seriously ill in the house. The servant looked much surprised and said there was no illness there at all. Much astonished, Mr. Gurdon said he thought the servant must be mistaken, that he had been summoned to the house to a case in most urgent need. The servant insisted that there was no illness; but Mr. Gurdon would not go away without seeing the owner of the house, and was shown up to a sitting-room, where he found the master of the house, a pleasant-looking young man of about five-and-twenty. To him Mr. Gurdon told how he had been brought there, and the young man assured him that there must be some mistake--there was certainly no illness in the house; and to satisfy Mr. Gurdon, he sent down to his servants, and ascertained that they were all perfectly well.

“A tea-supper was upon the table, and very cordially and kindly the young man asked Mr. Gurdon to sit down to it with him. He pressed it, so they had tea together and much pleasant conversation. Eventually the young man said, ‘I also am a Catholic,’ adding, in an ingenuous way, ‘but I fear you would think a very bad one;’ and he explained that the sacraments and confession had long been practically unknown to him. ‘As long as my dear mother lived,’ he said, ‘it was different: but she died three years ago, and since her death I have paid no attention to religion.’ And he described the careless life he had been leading.

“Very earnestly and openly Mr. Gurdon talked with him, urging him to amend his ways, to go back to his old serious life. At first he urged it for his mother’s sake, then from higher motives. He seemed to make an impression, and the young man was touched by what he said, and said no one had spoken to him thus since his mother died. At last Mr. Gurdon said, ‘Why should you not begin a new life now? I might hear your confession, and then be able to give you absolution this very evening. But I should not wish you to decide this hurriedly: let me leave you for an hour--let me leave you perfectly alone for that time--you will then be able to think over your confession, and decide what you ought to tell me.’ The young man consented, but urged Mr. Gurdon not to leave the house again in the rain: there were a fire and lights in the library, would not Mr. Gurdon wait there?

“Mr. Gurdon willingly went to spend the time in the library, where two candles were lighted on the chimney-piece. Between these he placed the Host. Then he occupied himself by examining the pictures in the room. There were many fine engravings, and there was also the crayon portrait of a lady which struck him very much. He seemed to remember the original quite well, and yet he could not recall where he had seen her. On going back to the other room, he told the young man how very much he had been struck by the picture. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘that is the portrait of my dear mother, and it is indeed the greatest comfort I have, it is so very like her.’ At that moment Mr. Gurdon suddenly recollected where he had seen the lady: she it was who had come to fetch him to the house.

“Mr. Gurdon heard the young man’s confession and gave him absolution; he seemed to be in the most serious and earnest frame of mind. He could not receive the sacrament, because it must be taken fasting, so the evening meal they had had made it impossible. But it was arranged that he should come to the chapel at eight o’clock the next morning, and that he should receive it then. Mr. Gurdon went home most deeply interested in the case, and truly thankful for having been led to it; but when morning came, and the service took place in the chapel, to his bitter disappointment the young man was not there. He feared that he had relapsed altogether, but he could not leave him thus, and as soon as the service was over he hastened to his house. When he reached it, the blinds were all down. The old female servant who opened the door was in floods of tears: her master had died in his sleep.

“On the last evening of his life his mother had brought Father Gurdon to him.”

* * * * *

“Muncaster Castle, Oct. 30.--What a gloriously beautiful place this is!--an ascent from the station, and then a descent through massy woods, till the castle appears--infinitely picturesque in outline and in its red and grey colouring--on the edge of a gorge, wooded on both sides, and which now has every tint, from the dark blue-green of the hollies and the russet of dead fern, through crimson, scarlet, orange, to the faintest primrose colour of the fading chestnut leaves. Then behind are the finest of Cumbrian mountains, and in front terraced gardens, and the not far distant sea. The interior has almost an equal charm, in the thick velvet-pile carpets of the long passages hung with portraits, the fine collection of books in the (too dark) octagonal library, and the low hall, which has an organ, flowers, and books, and is the common sitting-room. I sleep in ‘the ghost-room,’ and in a red silk bed used by Henry VI. when he was here, and when he gave ‘the luck of Muncaster’ to the family--an old Venetian glass bowl, from which every child of the house has been christened since. Once it was thrown from an upper window: the owners never had the courage to hunt for and examine it, and it remained buried in the earth for some years: then it was dug up quite uninjured.

“We have driven up Eskdale--a delightfully wild mountain glen, with a clear, tossing river, and dark mountains of jagged outline, covered with brown bracken wherever a turfy space is left between the rocks.

“My host--‘Josceline’--is geniality itself, and very amusing, and Lady Muncaster excessively pleasant. Only her sister, pretty Lady Kilmarnock, is here with her little Ivan, and two young ladies, Miss Rhoda Lestrange and Miss Winifred Yorke,[471] whom her friends call ‘Frivolina.’ The Muncasters have lived here for six hundred years; then they came from Pennington, where a mound still exists which was crowned by their residence in ancient British times.”

* * * * *

“Alnwick Castle, Nov. 4.--Yesterday I left Muncaster at eight, and had two hours in the middle of the day to wait at Carlisle. Whilst I was sauntering round the cathedral, one of the Canons came up to me, introduced himself as a college acquaintance--son of Richmond the artist--and asked me to luncheon. He also showed me the cathedral, ‘restored’ out of much interest, with a miserable modern reredos and other rubbish, but with two fine old tombs, and the modern monuments of Paley and Law. Below the great east window Sir Walter Scott was married. A noble fragment remains of a beautiful renaissance screen, and at the back of the stalls are very curious early pictures of the lives of S. Anthony, S. Augustine, &c. Close to the cathedral is the Fratry--the refectory of the abbey--now used for lectures. Carlisle is a black and truly uninviting place.

“Lady Airlie and Lady Griselda Ogilvy were at the station, and I travelled with them as far as Naworth. On arriving here, it was pleasant to be met by the cordial welcome of Duchess Eleanor, always most genial and kind. The actual Duchess[472] did not appear till dinner, when she was wheeled into the room in a chair, very sweet and attractive-looking, but very fragile. The Duke[473] looks wiry, refined, rather bored, and some people would find him very alarming. Lord and Lady Percy seem to be two of the most silent people in the world--she pretty still in spite of her ten children. There are also here pleasant little Lady Constance Campbell, Miss Ellison, who goes about with Duchess Eleanor, and Lady Emma and Miss M’Neile--the former a violent Radical, who went to bed at once when the Primrose League became the topic of conversation. We played at whist in the evening, but it was broken at ten by going to prayers, which the Duke reads in the chapel. It is the only time I have seen evening prayers in any country-house for the last fifteen years.

“This morning Duchess Eleanor showed me the rooms--the magnificent Italian rooms, which owe their glory to her husband, Duke Algernon, who, when remonstrated with for thus changing a mediaeval fortress, said, ‘Would you wish us only to sit on benches upon a floor strewn with rushes?’ He purchased the whole of the great Camuccini collection at Rome, because of his great wish to have one single picture, which they would not sell separately. It is the so-called ‘Feast of the Gods’ by Gian Bellini, with a landscape by Titian. Other noble pictures involved in the purchase are a Crucifixion by Guido, singularly dark for the master; a splendid portrait attributed to Andrea del Sarto, but more like Franciabigio; and a little Raffaelle of SS. Mary Magdalen and Catherine. Bought from the Manfrini Palace at Venice are two noble works of Pordenone--one of them the picture of the father, mother, and son mentioned by Byron (in ‘Beppo’). From the Davenport collection are portions of a grand fresco of the ‘Salutation,’ by Sebastian del Piombo, once in S. Maria della Pace at Rome. The magnificent decorations of the rooms are by Canina. But the most lasting attraction of the castle is the library, with the really splendid collection of books formed by Duke Algernon.

“The Percies are Irvingites now, as well as the Duke and Duchess. Her father, Mr. Drummond, was ‘one of the twelve apostles,’ in whose time it is a tenet of faith that the Lord must return. Now only one ‘apostle’ is alive, and when he dies what will happen? Meantime, though a very old man, he is hard at work beating up recruits and inciting proselytism. The family go to the church here, but then the vicar of Alnwick is also an Irvingite. All the gibberish which the Irvingites talk when seized by the spirit is taken down and treasured up as ‘prophecy.’”

* * * * *

“Nov. 5.--This Irvingite family is constantly waiting and looking out for the millennium: it is terribly anxious work. But their faith is most simple and touching. When one of the Percy boys was very ill, they had him anointed with oil; after that he recovered. ‘We had no doubt it would be so,’ said Lady Percy, ‘no doubt whatever.’ After the anointing, the friends of a patient have altogether done with human agency, and leave everything in the Divine hands. It is curious to hear members of this family say casually--‘The angel was here on Monday, and will be here again on Friday.’

“I have had an interesting hour with the Duchess in her own sitting-room, where she showed me all the treasures in her cabinet--two miniatures of Elizabeth, contemporary, for they are painted without any shadow, which she forbade, upon her face, and two others, evidently painted afterwards, and naturally much more becoming; a miniature of Mary Queen of Scots painted in prison, with the fat face and thick neck which want of exercise caused in one used to so much riding; some of the hair of Charles I., cut off by Sir Henry Halford when the king’s coffin was opened at Windsor; miniatures of James I., Anne of Denmark, and three of their children; the splendid ‘George’ of the fifth Earl of Northumberland, made with the blue enamel which is now a lost art; one of the amber snuff-boxes which Queen Charlotte had constructed in Germany for her ladies, with her miniature on the outside, her dog inside the lid, and her monkey at the bottom of the box; the pencil-case of Lord Chesterfield, with a diamond at the end, being the pencil mentioned by Pope. Not less interesting is a little (Dutch) silver woman, which runs by clockwork, because it was the means of saving all the family plate. For when burglars broke into Sion, it scampered about the floor when they were going to pack it up, which made them think the plate was possessed, and they took to flight, leaving all their booty behind, with the baskets in which they had intended to carry it off.”

* * * * *

“Nov. 6.--All this morning I was left to ‘browse in the library,’ as Dr. Johnson expresses it. In the afternoon I had a walk with the Duke and Percy to Alnwick Abbey--utterly unknown to history, and with only the ruin of its fine gateway standing, yet which must have been one of the most important buildings in the North of England. Its substructions were sought and dug for in exact accordance with the rules laid down for building a Premonstratensian abbey, and so they were found. The church must have been grand as any cathedral.”

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Holmhurst, Nov. 27, 1887.--I am greatly enjoying a little solitude in this time so congenial for hard work, when all nature seems wrapped in a swampy mist-cloud. There are great improvements in the garden. Along that little upper walk to the field, where the frames were, is now a rockery with rare heaths, and behind it a bed of kalmias, and then the cypress hedge of my especial little garden. Rock and fern are also put on the steep descent to the pond, opposite the line of tree-fuchsias.

“I wonder if you remember hearing of the extraordinary visitation of crickets on the night of (my mother’s death) Nov. 12-13, seventeen years ago--the uproar, like the sea in a storm, all night, scarcely allowing a voice to be heard: then heard no more till the night, twelve years after, in which dear Lea passed away. I was so struck by coming across an allusion to it when reading the last chapter of Ecclesiastes as the lesson in church last Sunday--‘And the grasshopper shall become a burden, because man goeth to his long home.’”

* * * * *

“Dec. 24.--The dreary Christmas season of damp and dyspepsia, bills and bother, is less odious than usual this year, as the day itself is swallowed up in Sunday. I have, however, also had a real pleasure in a present from the Duchess of Cleveland of her Life of Everard Primrose, only printed for his friends. It is most beautifully, touchingly, really nobly done, and the most perfect memorial of a high-minded single-hearted young man’s life. I think I never read so perfect a biography. The story is entirely told in Everard’s own admirable letters, but the Duchess has not shrunk from her own part, and the little touches from her own life, the Duke’s, &c., are indescribably simple, graceful, and sincere. The book gives one a far higher opinion of her (of Everard I had always the very highest), and makes one regret many hasty judgments. I have been quite engrossed with the book, so perfectly delightful is it.”

* * * * *

After a busy six weeks of work, I spent the New Year again at Cobham, always charming in its quiet home life, but was glad to return soon again to work.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Holmhurst, Feb. 10, 1888.--The news of Lady Marian Alford’s sudden death removes from the cycle of life one whom I had felt to be a true friend for more than thirty years. Our meetings were at long intervals, but when we met, it was as more than mere acquaintances. With a grace which was all her own, she often unfolded beautiful chapters in her own life to me, and she was one of the very few persons who have read in manuscript much of these written volumes of my past. She was a perfect grande dame, unable to harbour an ignoble thought, incapable of a small action. Regal, imperious, and extravagant,[474] she was generous, kind, and personally most unselfish, and, had the real greatness and goodness that was in her been regulated and disciplined by the circumstances of her early life, she would have been one of the noblest women of her century. Alas! only yesterday she was! How soon one has to school oneself to say ‘would have been.’ Thus, however, it will certainly be with oneself. The day after one dies people will say--and how few with even a pang--‘He would: he might have been.’”

* * * * *

“March 14.--Met Lady Fergusson Davy (née Fortescue). She told me that when Lady Hills Johnes, the friend of Thirlwall, was twenty-four, she was once in society with the late Lord Lytton, who was talking of second-sight, and of his own power of seeing the future of those he was with. She urged him very much to tell her future, but he was very unwilling to do so. Still she urged it so much that at last he did. He did it after the manner of the Chaldees--told it to her, and wrote it down at the same time in hieroglyphics. He said, ‘You will have a very great sorrow, which will shake your faith in man: then you will have another even greater sorrow, which will come to you through an old and trusted servant: you will marry late in life a king among men, and the close of your existence will be cloudlessly happy.’ All the first part of the prophecy has come true--the breaking off of her first engagement; the terrible murder of her father by his servant; her marriage with Sir James Hills; all that remains now is happiness.”

* * * * *

“Holmhurst, May 14.--I have just returned from an interesting month in London, seeing many people delightfully and making some pleasant new acquaintance. At Lady Delawarr’s I was presented to the young Duchess of Mecklenbourg, very pretty and full of life and animation. No one else came up to talk to her, and I was left to make conversation from five till a quarter to seven! by which time I think we had both exhausted all possible topics, though she was very charming. At last she said, ‘I always go at six to read to the Duchess of Cambridge.’--‘Well, ma’am,’ I answered, ‘you will certainly be terribly late to-day.’--‘What very odd things you do say to me!’ she said. The next day I sent her my ‘Walks in London,’ and as her speaking of the Duchess of Cambridge convinced me of her identity, I directed to the ‘Hereditary Grand Duchess of Mecklenbourg-Strelitz.’ The next time I saw her I had found out, and said, ‘I am sorry, ma’am, that I have made three mistakes in one line in directing to you--that you are not ‘Hereditary,’ not ‘Grand,’ and not ‘Strelitz;’ for she was the Duchess Paul of Mecklenbourg-Schwerin; but she laughed heartily.

“In going to London, I first saw, on a placard at the station, that Matthew Arnold was dead. It seemed to carry away a whole joyous part of life in a moment--for I have known Matthew Arnold ever since I remember anything, though I did not know till I lost him that his happy personality and cordial welcome had made a real difference to me for years, especially in the rooms of the Athenaeum, where I have spent so much time of late years. He had an evergreen youth, and died young at sixty-six, and he was so impregnated with social tact and courtesy, as well as with intellectual buoyancy, that he was beyond all men liveable with. Herman Merivale has written some lines which seem to express what I shall always remember--

‘Thrice happy he, whose buoyant youth In light of Beauty sought for Truth,

* * * * *

And to the longing listener showed How Beauty decks the ugliest road.’

“All who knew Matthew Arnold well loved him, though ‘the Apostle of Moderation in Criticism’ would certainly have been shocked by some of the fulsome articles which have followed his death; and I doubt of any of his writings surviving his generation, especially his refined and delicate verses, which surely lack the fire of a poet whose work is to be eternal. I went on April 19, with Montagu Wood, to his funeral in the graveyard of the ancient church at Laleham, where his father was vicar before he went to Rugby, and where his children are buried. It was a day of pitiless rain, which pelted upon the widow and sisters and crowd of mourners round the grave, and on the piles of exquisite flowers beneath which his coffin was hidden. As Alfred Austin says in a beautiful article upon him, ‘Wherever he lies, there will be a Campo-Santo.’ I was glad in going down to the funeral to make friends with Edward Arnold, a charming fellow, who is the present editor of Murray’s Magazine.

“At dinner at the Miss Monks’ I was interested to find myself sitting next to Lady Sawle, who told me that she was niece of the Rose Aylmer who was the love of Landor’s youth. It was on her that he wrote the lines which Archbishop Trench declared to be better than many an epic, and which Charles Lamb said he lived upon for a fortnight. Lady Sawle was herself one of the three Roses to whom Landor afterwards addressed a poem, the third Rose being her mother. She described the death, when she was at Rome, of Miss Bathurst--beautiful, radiant, and a splendid horsewoman, riding along the narrow path between the Acqua Acetosa and the Ponte Molle. The horse suddenly slipped backwards into the Tiber. She called out to Lord Aylmer, ‘Uncle, save me!’ but he could not swim, nor could any of the gentlemen or the groom who was present. Another groom, who was a good swimmer, had been sent back to Rome with a restive horse. She sank in her long blue habit, and her body was never found. All Rome mourned ‘La bella Inglesa,’ and the little party of friends, closely united and present at her death, dispersed sadly. One of them alone, Mr. Charles Mills (of the Villa Mills), returned to Rome in the autumn. As he was about to enter the city, he sent his carriage on to the gate from the Ponte Molle, and walked slowly along the Tiber bank by what had been the scene of the accident six months before. As he walked, he saw two peasants on the other side of the river catch at something which looked like a piece of blue cloth on the mud, and pass on. A sudden impulse seized him, and he got some men to come at once with spades and dig there in the Tiber bank. There Miss Bathurst was found as if she were embalmed, in her blue riding-habit, perfectly beautiful, and with her long hair over her shoulders. There was only one little mark of a wound in her forehead. For a minute she was visible in all her loveliness--a minute only. She was buried in the English cemetery.”[475]

* * * * *

On 28th May 1888 I went abroad to my French work, feeling as usual greatly depressed at leaving home and going off into solitude, but soon able to throw myself vigorously into all the interests of my foreign life and its work. How full each week seemed!--the two first alone amongst quiet villages and churches in Picardy and afterwards in Auvergne, and many others after my friend Hugh Bryans joined me at wild S. Flour, in the hill country of Auvergne, at beautiful Obazine, and at Rocamadour again, then at beautiful S. Emilion, in wandering amongst the innumerable historic relics of La Vendée; lastly by the Loire and its surroundings. Three places especially come back to me with pleasant memories--the home-like inn at S. Emilion, its beautiful old buildings radiant with the blossom of pinks and valerian, and the sunset walks on its old walls looking into the vineyards and cornfields:--the little fishing port of Le Croisic, with its gay boats, its snow-white houses, and its windy surroundings:--and charming Clisson, with its pleasant inn and its balconies overhung with roses and wistaria. Hugh was a capital companion, and full of interest in what he saw, though--like so many at twenty-four--he pretended to hate all the historic detail. However, I am sure my endless archaeological inquiries must have sorely tried his patience, and he was always unweariedly good to me.

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Beauvais, June 1, 1888.--A number of friends wrote urging me to give up what was ‘entirely an imaginary duty.’ However, I felt it was a duty to finish what I had worked at so long, though perhaps it had not been a duty to begin it; and so, much as I hated coming, I am here! It is no use thinking of all one has left, and there is a great deal in what one has, most of all le grand air for hours and hours, and the marvellous light and shade, which is in itself such a beauty in this pellucid atmosphere. Then the peasants in Western France are delightful, and I have not much fear of being taken up here; and I come so well primed and informed that I know exactly what to look for everywhere, and where to find it, and almost what to say about it.

“I left dear Holmhurst at 6.30 P.M. and at 2.30 A.M. was carrying my own portmanteau down the desolate moonlit streets of Abbeville, where the old town struck me more than ever, such a complete change from England, and so romantically picturesque.”

* * * * *

“Clermont Ferrand, June 9.--Oh, it has been so hot! Never in my life have I been so grilled, roasted, boiled, and melted down; and it has been hard having to work on all day, whatever the intense exhaustion from the heat. But I have kept up to exactly the tale of work measured out for each day before I left home.”

* * * * *

“Le Puy, June 13.--We had an exquisite journey on Tuesday by rail down the valley of the Alagnon to Neussargues, the quantity of old castles on the rocky hills as striking as those on the Rhine were forty years ago, and the mountain flowers lovely. Then we drove up through the cool forests to the high plateau which is under snow nine months of the year, and which was quite chilly even now. Here, in the evening, we reached the old episcopal town of S. Flour, on a great basaltic rock, the most wonderfully placed of all French cities, and much recalling Orvieto. Everything seemed to belong to another world. From my window I could throw anything sheer down the most tremendous of quite perpendicular precipices, and the view was magnificent. The house had been in the same family for four hundred years, and the landlady showed with pride the dark passage where her ancestor intercepted the Protestants when they were trying to take the city by stealth, the stone on which they were beheaded, and the drain by which their blood flowed away. The other side of the house opened into a great square, with the cathedral standing amongst trees as in an English close, and houses with sixteenth-century colonnades. I saw the huge modern viaduct bridge of Garrabit, most extraordinary certainly, but though much more interesting to most people, less so to me than the glorious views of S. Flour itself, on its black and orange rocks, backed by the great purple towers of the cathedral.”

* * * * *

“S. Nectaire le Haut, June 28.--It was dark and raining in torrents before we arrived here, and the driver suddenly announced not only that he had lost his way, but that one of our wheels was likely to come off! We were skirting a precipice by a rocky road without any parapet, and at last, by holding the carriage lamps low, found that we had somehow got into a very ancient churchyard, where stone coffins were strewn all about. At last we knocked up a woman at a farmhouse, who guided us back to the hotel, which we had long passed in the dark. This is an enchanting place, beautifully situated in a wooded gorge below the old romanesque church, where the Sunday congregation--from many far-away villages--winding up the hill with baskets of food for the day, has been most picturesque. There are lovely walks in all directions, and Switzerland at its best never had more beautiful flowers, fields covered with lilies, orchis, narcissus, globe ranunculus, pansies, pinks, &c.”

* * * * *

“Le Croisic, July 17.--At this little fishing-town there is no fine scenery, but it is most artistically lovely, with wide views over the grey reaches of sea and yellow sandy flats to the soft hills, and endless fishing-boats with red sails and nets.

“Yesterday we spent the day at La Guerande, a little unaltered mediaeval town above the salt-flats; a very superior Winchelsea, described in Balzac’s wonderful novel of ‘Beatrix.’”

* * * * *

I returned to England on August 7th, just in time to attend Alwyne Greville’s wedding in London. In September I paid the Eustace Cecils a visit, and then went to the Spencer Smiths at Kingston near Wareham.

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Sept. 17.--It was a great pleasure to find Sir Howard and Lady Elphinstone at the Eustace Cecils’. I like them both so very much. They say the Queen is much occupied in learning Hindustanee and speaks it now quite well--a great delight to her Indian subjects. She has three Indian servants in constant attendance, and converses fluently with them. This afternoon has been delightful, with Mrs. Spencer Smith and her children, at St. Alban’s (St. Aldhelm’s) Head. In the little hollow with stone cottages on the way thither a boy opened a gate for us whose name was Sagittary Clump. The name came from his parents’ lodger, but it must have had its origin in Sagittarius. Mrs. Spencer Smith spoke to the boy’s father about his daughter’s misconduct. ‘I can’t help it,’ he said; ‘I’d given her her documents,’ meaning that he had spoken to her seriously: Shakspeare uses ‘documents’ in the same sense. Walking up the hill, we were terribly bitten by harvest-bugs, which little Michael Smith poetically called ‘Ces petites bêtes rouges dans les fleurs bleues’ (harebells). Close to the coastguard station, near the edge of the cliff, is a tiny chapel, perfectly square, supported by a single pillar, and with only one wee romanesque window, so that almost all the light comes from the open door: however, there is only service here in summer. A monk of Sherborne Abbey was always kept here to toll a bell to warn off ships, whilst he prayed for the shipwrecked. Seven little children aged from three to four came up to us while we were drawing. ‘We be going to throw ourselves over the cliff, we be: we be going to smash ourselves quite up, we be,’ the little monsters announced to their mothers, as they all seven marched away arm-in-arm to the edge of the cliff. Then ‘little sister’ made ‘Ernest’ sit down upon a thistle, at which ‘Ernest’ roared; and finally the mother caught up Ernest and carried it off, ‘little sister’ whacking its little naked behind with a stick all the way as they went. Then a young Palgrave appeared, who took the Spencer Smith children down to a wreck in Chapman’s (Shipman’s) Bay, to their great delight. There were seven parrots saved from that ship, but one was lost which was prepared for death by being able to say the Lord’s Prayer straight through. We went afterwards to the desolate village of Worth, where, in the wind-stricken rectory, the clergyman and his wife see no one for five months of the year, and have to shout into each other’s ears to be audible in the roaring winter blast. The church has a Saxon arch, and in its graveyard two stone sarcophagi, one that of a child-abbot, with an incised crosier lying upon it; also the gravestone, of Mr. ‘Jessy,’ ‘who, by his great courage, innoculated his wife and two sons from the (cow)’--sic. He rode up to London with saddle-bags to give his experience to the Government. The Dorsetshire here is pure Anglo-Saxon: King Alfred spoke Dorsetshire. The people are very long-lived; at Steeple in Purbeck there have only been four rectors since the time of Charles I. Three Messrs. Bond have lasted 160 years, and an old Mrs. Ross of 101 drives up this hill in a dogcart to visit her old servant of ninety-four in the village. In church the clerk said ‘Stand in a wee (awe) and sin not!’”

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“Cadland, Sept. 21.--This comfortable house stands in a park, which is a piece of enclosed forest full of noble oaks and hollies, with glints of blue sea and shipping between. The passages are entirely clothed with fine prints and drawings, and in the rooms are many fine portraits, especially that by Zoffany of the Drummond who founded the Bank. The collection of autographs is priceless, and includes many by early kings of France, letters of Marie Antoinette, a charming one of the little Dauphin, and the execution-warrant of Madame du Barry. Amongst the drawings is the touching sketch which Severn made ‘to keep himself awake’ sitting by the death-bed of Keats.... We have driven to ‘the Cottage,’ a charming house where Lady Elizabeth Drummond lived, in woods of ilex and fir above the Solent.... The company has included Valletort; Harry Forster, a very good-looking fellow; Robert Scott, Lord Montagu’s second son; and Christopher Walsh, a very nice son of Lord Ormathwayte.”

* * * * *

“Malshanger, Sept. 25.--I came here on the 22nd to visit Mr. Wyndham Portal, and (in her grandmotherhood) his most beautiful as well as charming wife. After luncheon we drove to the Vyne, admirable in the rich colour of its old red brick and grey copings, and greatly beloved by Horace Walpole, who used to stay there with his friend John Chute, to whom he gave many pictures, and whose ‘Chutehood’--depression of spirits and gout--he often deplored. It was to him that Gray wrote ‘suavissime Chuti.’ The house has always been cared for and never allowed to ‘run down,’ and there is much of interest in its fine old rooms, especially in its two stories of ‘gallery,’ lined with busts and portraits. Four of these were brought hither by Lady Dacre of Hurstmonceaux, upon her second marriage with Challoner Chute of the Vyne, and include a portrait of Chrysogona Baker, afterwards Lady Dacre; of the widow of the Lord Dacre who was executed, with his picture hanging behind her, and two of the Chute Lady Dacre herself, one of them copied from a picture now at Belhus, the place of the Lennards. The present owner of the Vyne, who married Miss Eleanor Portal, showed it all admirably, and has written a capital book on the place.[480] He educates his own beautiful boys, making scholars of them before they are ten years old.

“This district--‘Portalia,’ as people call it--is quite peopled with Portals and their connections. They were a French Protestant family, greatly persecuted under Louis XIV., when they took refuge at La Cavalerie in the Larzac. Jean François de Portal escaped to Holland, and his eight children, concealed in barrels and smuggled out of the kingdom by faithful nurses, reached England. The eldest of these became tutor to George III., and the second, Henri, obtained the monopoly of the manufacture of bank-notes, which the family have enjoyed ever since. The last Portal left his vast landed estates to his eldest son, Melville, and his mills to his second son, Wyndham: now the land is only a burden, but, police-guarded, the mills at Laverstoke constantly increase in value, and turn out daily 50,000 Bank of England notes, 12,000 Indian notes, and 100,000 postal orders. By the process of one beautiful machine, the linen rags (nothing but new rags of the best linen being used) are reduced to pulp, the pulp is flattened into paper, stamped, drained, dried, and behold! before it leaves the machine, a bank-note ready for the printer. All the machinery is turned by the transparent Teste, which is full of trout almost up to its source. The workmen, who live in comfortable cottages near the mills and receive high wages, are hereditary, and always fulfil their quota of duty from father to son. Mr. Portal throws open his fine gardens here every Saturday to the people of Basingstoke, who play tennis and generally enjoy themselves, and do no harm whatever.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL AND LETTERS TO MISS LEYCESTER.

“Ford Castle, Northumberland, Nov. 23.--I set out to come here on Wednesday evening, after attending Miss Higginson’s wedding at Marlow. When we--two other guests, Mr. and Mrs. Bellairs, and I--reached the desolate station amongst the bleak moorlands, we found only one little gig in waiting, and no chance of anything else. Mrs. B. and I struggled into it, and came through the howling raging storm for seven miles here; Mr. B. walked; but our reception in these fine old rooms made us forget all else, and to-day has been like all days at Ford and Highcliffe--drawing, reading aloud with talking at intervals, and walks in the glen and gardens.”

* * * * *

“Nov. 26.--A delightful walk, combating with the wind, to the Devil’s rocks, ‘where,’ say the Northumbrians, ‘the devil hanged his grandmother.’ Mr. Neville (the rector) dined. He says the old rectory here was haunted. His sister came to stay with him in the spare room that looked out on the castle. The second day she said very quietly but firmly that she could not sleep in that room again; another must be given her or she must leave. Then she described that, on two successive nights, the curtain of her bed had been drawn, and a strange voice had distinctly said to her, ‘This is not a spare room.’

“Mr. Neville said--

“‘I belong to the Neville-Rolfes of Hitcham in Norfolk. After my cousin, Charles Neville-Rolfe, who was beloved by every one, died, his boxes were all found to be fastened with letter-locks, and the family were a long time before they were able to get them undone, as he had not left the clue. My cousins suggested to me afterwards that I should ask Crisp the carpenter how he had discovered it at last; so, as I was rubbing an inscription on a stone in the church, I got him to come and move part of a pew which covered it, and I asked him about it. He said, “Whilst we were puzzling over those locks, I heard in a dream the voice of Mr. Charles, and he said, ‘Crisp, come and walk and talk,’ and I said, ‘Yes, sir, gladly;’ and then he turned to me and said, ‘Crisp, guess!’--and I woke, and ‘guess’ was the word we wanted.” I told my cousins afterwards what Crisp had told me, and they said, “Yes, but the really curious part was that only three letters were wanted. Crisp thought ‘guess’ was spelt ‘ges,’ still we acted on what he said, and it was right.’”

“Lady Waterford says--‘My maid is very good, very good: her only fault is that she has three hands, she has a right hand and a left hand, and a little behind-hand.’

“Mr. Bellairs, the Highcliffe agent, who is here, said--

“‘My grandfather was both at Trafalgar and Waterloo, for he was wounded as a middy at Trafalgar, and then went into the army. It was odd when, long afterwards, some one said about Trafalgar, “It was so and so” and he said, “No, it was not, for I was there,” and that the conversation then went on to Waterloo, “It was so and so.”--“No, I beg your pardon, but I was there.”

“‘Afterwards he fell in love with Miss Mackenzie, one of two heiress sisters. He had nothing to marry upon, and the father forbade him the house, but he was allowed one interview, and in that he found out that the butler was just leaving, and the family would be wanting another. He dressed up and came and applied for the place. He got it, and it was three weeks before he was found out, and then Mr. Mackenzie allowed that he was too much for him, and allowed that he should marry his daughter. But he insisted that my grandfather should leave the army. “Very well,” he said, “if you like I will go into the Church.” So that was agreed to, and in time he became a Canon. He was as earnest in the Church as everywhere else. Soon after his appointment to a country living, as he was crossing some fields on a Sunday, he found a number of miners crowding round some prize-fighters. “Come,” he said, “I can’t have this: I shall not allow this.” “But you can’t prevent it,” they cried. “Can’t prevent it! you’ll soon see if I can’t fight for my God as well as for my king: I’ll fight you all in turn,” and he polished off the two strongest miners in fair fight, and then the others were so pleased, they chaired him, and carried him through the village to his church, which they filled from that time forward.’

“Most delightful and full of holiest teaching have been the many quiet hours I have spent with the lady of the castle. There is a sentence of Confucius which says--‘If you would escape vexation, reprove yourself liberally and others sparingly.’ It is exactly her case. And there is another sentence of Confucius which applies to her--‘The wise have no doubts, the virtuous no sorrows, the brave no fears.’ Being here so quietly, I have seen even more of her than on other visits, and more than ever has she seemed to be a fountain of original, interesting, noble, and elevating words and thoughts. She is wonderfully well now, and able to walk, and take all her old energetic interest in the place and people, and oh! how we have talked!”

* * * * *

“Littlecote, Wilts, Dec. 3.--A charming visit to this beautiful old house, which mostly dates from Henry VII., and has a noble hall hung with armour and the yellow jerkins of the Commonwealth, a long gallery filled with fine Popham portraits, and a charming old pleasaunce with bowling-green and long grass walks. I sleep in the ghost-room, and just outside my door is the ante-chapel where Wild Darrell roasted the baby as described in the notes to ‘Rokeby,’ but the grandfather of the present possessor was so bored by inquiring visitors that he burnt the old hangings of the bed by which the nurse identified the room of the crime, and the bed itself, with much other old furniture, was sold to provide the fortunes of the younger children in the present generation. Nothing can be more delightfully comfortable, however, than the house as it now is, and my young host--Frank Popham--is most pleasant and genial. It has been a great pleasure to find Lady Sherborne domesticated here, and to listen once more on a Sunday evening to her exquisite singing of ‘Oh rest in the Lord’--so delicate and touching in its faintly vanishing cadences as to draw tears from her audience. Very pleasant too has it been to meet charming Mrs. Howard of Greystoke and her daughter again.”

* * * * *

“Dec. 11.--My old cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Thurlow, who had often invited me before to their house of Baynards, wrote that this week was my last chance of going, as Baynards was just sold, so I have been for one night. The house is partly modern, but the place was an ancient royal residence, and was part of the dower of Katherine Parr. A pretty statue of Edward VI. was discovered there walled up, and Margaret Roper lived there afterwards, and long kept her father’s head in a box, which still exists at the foot of the staircase. There are also numbers of fine portraits, the dressing-box and travelling trunk of Elizabeth, and I slept in a magnificent old tapestried room and in Henry VIII.’s bed.

“Mrs. Thurlow says that Cardinal Wiseman went to dine with some friends of hers. It was a Friday, but they had quite forgotten to provide a fast-day dinner. However, he was quite equal to the occasion, for he stretched out his hands in benediction over the table and said, ‘I pronounce all this to be fish,’ and forthwith enjoyed all the good things heartily.”

* * * * *

“Dec. 12.--Henry Lyte says that Porson was told to write a Latin theme as to whether Brutus did well or not in killing Cæsar--‘Si bene fecit aut male fecit.’ He wrote--‘Non bene fecit, nee male fecit, sed interfecit.’

“The Stuart Exhibition is most indescribably interesting. A glorious Vandyke hangs there representing Henrietta Maria in radiant youth and happiness, with husband and children. Close by hangs the most touching portrait in the gallery--Henrietta Maria, the same person exactly, with the same curls, only grey, the same features sunken and worn by sorrow, in her old age at Chaillot, by Le Fevre.”[481]

* * * * *

“Cobham, Jan. 3, 1889.--Drove with Lady Kathleen Bligh, Lady Mary, and Lady Lurgan to Rochester to see the interesting old hospice for ‘six poor travellers, not rogues or proctors,’ where that number are still daily received and cared for. They are given half a loaf, boiled beef, and porter for supper, have six small clean comfortable rooms lighted by a street gas-lamp outside, and are sent away with fourpence each in the morning. On Christmas Day a lady sends the travellers of the day some tobacco, a pipe, and a sixpence each, and quaint are their letters of thanks. ‘May you live for ever and a day after,’ was the good wish of one of them this year.

“Lord Darnley went himself into the village of Cobham to engage lodgings at a poor woman’s cottage for a man who wanted to come there. Lady Kathleen went to see the poor woman afterwards, and found her greatly delighted. ‘As soon as my Lord was gone,’ she said, ‘up I went to my room, and down upon my knees I dropped to return thanks to the Almighty, because the Lord above, and the Lord below, were working together for my good.’”

* * * * *

“Jan. 10.--To tea with Mrs. Humphry Ward, almost a celebrity now as authoress of ‘Robert Elsmere,’ at her house in Russell Square. She said it tried her somewhat to receive from an American ‘Whiteley’ his circular with--‘for economy in literature we defy anything to beat our Elsmere at six cents.’”

* * * * *

On Shrove Tuesday, March 6, I left home for the south, and spent a fortnight at Mentone in the Hotel d’Italie, which I remembered--one of the few houses then existing--as the residence of Mrs. Usborne when we were living close by in 1869-70. My cousin Florentia Hughes was at Mentone with her youngest daughter, and we had many pleasant excursions together. In the hotel were Lord Northbrook and his daughter, with whom I dined several times, meeting the excessively entertaining Lord Alington and his pleasant daughters. On the 22nd I reached Rome, where I spent six weeks in the Hotel d’Italie, seeing many friends, correcting my “Walks in Rome,” and drawing a great deal.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“April 7.--On Friday I went with some friends to Albano, and, whilst they drove to Neni, drew in the glen at Ariccia, and never was I so tormented by children as by a beautiful little cowherd--Amalia Maria--who, on my refusing her demand for soldi, vowed she would ‘lead me a life,’ which she did by fetching six other little demons worse than herself, when they all joined hands and danced round me and my campstool, kicking and screaming with all their might. Then they fetched a black pecorello, and having tried to make it eat my paints, danced again, the pecorello, held by a string, prancing behind them. Happily at last the cow which Amalia Maria was supposed to be chaperoning made its escape over a hedge, and whilst she was pursuing it over the country, I fled, and joined my companions at a little caffè, where we had a delicious luncheon of excellent bread, hard-boiled eggs--painted purple for Lent--and sparkling Aleatico, for fourpence a head. Afterwards we sat to draw, looking down upon that loveliest of lakes and woods full of cyclamens and anemones.

“The crowds in the Roman galleries are endless. Whole families arrive together, every member of them carrying a campstool, and they will sit down opposite each of the statues in turn, and move onwards gradually, whilst the father reads aloud from a guidebook, and they all drink it in. He often begins the description at the wrong end, but they do not find it out, and ... it does not signify! An American, a Mrs. Ruggles, coming to the Apollo Belvidere, said, ‘Is that the Apollo Belvidere?’--‘Yes, that’s the Apollo Belvidere.’--‘Well, then, if that’s the Apollo Belvidere, I don’t think much of him: give me Ruggles.’”

* * * * *

“April 18.--Caught in tremendous rain and hail near a warehouse at the back of the Palatine, and took refuge under a rude porch with a number of peasants and was kept there an hour. One of the men described his life as a soldier when his battalion was sent against the brigands near Pescara. Of these, the famous Angelo Maria was so horrible a monster, that his own mother determined to rid the world of such a fiend and to deliver him up. He discovered this, seized his mother, laid her on a table, ripped her up, and taking out her steaming heart--ate it! Words cannot describe the horrible gestures with which the peasant told this story, or the dramatic power with which he described the sister seeing the terrible scene through a chink in the door, and coming afterwards to the guard-house, saying that she wished to betray her brother. ‘Oh,’ said the officer, ‘you need not suppose that we trust you; this is a trap you have laid for us.’--‘Yesterday,’ she answered, ‘I might have laid a trap, but I had not then seen that monster eat my mother’s heart.’ And he was taken.

“But Capolo Roscia was worse. He came one night to a masseria. The doors were barred, but he forced his way in with his band. The head of the farm hid himself in the straw, but he was found and dragged out. All the men in the masseria, eighteen in number, were brought out and made to sit in a row. ‘Now you must all be shaved,’ said Capolo Roscia, and he cut all their eighteen heads off and put them in a basket.

“‘Oh, in that time when we were brigand-hunting we did not stop much to inquire how far they were guilty. “A ginocchio: avete cinque minuti,” we shouted to a peasant if we caught him. “Oh, ma signori, signori!” he would say. “A ginocchio! Un minuto, due, tre, cinque--bo-o-o-ah!” and he was done for; for he had given the brigands provisions, and so he was as bad as themselves. Even with i sindaci, well, we often did the same; but--we got rid of the brigands.’”

* * * * *

“Easter Sunday, April 21.--To St. Peter’s. The service was under the dome, but the group around the shrine would not call up even a reminiscence of the glorious services under the Papacy. The relics were shown afterwards from a high gallery--the spear-head of Longinus, the bit of the true cross, the napkin of Veronica, to the sight of which seven thousand years’ indulgence is attached. I gazed hard, but could only see its glittering frame, nor could any other member of the congregation see any more.”

* * * * *

After leaving Rome, I spent ten days with a pleasant party of friends at beautiful Perugia, and then went on to Venice, where I saw much of Ainslie Bean, who took me in his gondola to many places I wanted to see, and much also of the Comte and Comtesse de Lützow, on the eve then of the great but still unforeseen sorrow of losing the dear daughter Maude who was the sunshine of their lives. I was at the Pension Anglaise, crowded with lively, kindly ultra-English people, whose mistakes were amusing. “Gesu-Maria!” suddenly exclaimed the gondolier on narrowly escaping a concussion at a sharp corner. “Why on earth does he say ‘Je suis marié’?” said a Mrs. R. Afterwards I had a week’s hard work in intense heat in Eastern France, and reached home on May 27.

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Holmhurst, May 27, 1889.--How quiet it is here! how shady! how thankful I am to be back! The heat yesterday at Amiens was appalling, but I reached the green retreat this morning at nine, a telegram announcing my advent having only been delivered five minutes before, so that I had the amusement of seeing Holmhurst as I had never done before, in complete un-dress.... I never saw such foliage. Charles II. might easily hide this year in any of the oak trees.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“July 16.--Dined at Lord Chetwynd’s, taking down a Mrs. Severn. She talked of the difficulties of faith; of the comfort she had received from Farrar’s ‘Justice and Mercy;’ of the simple impossibility of eternal punishment; of the verse ‘The Lord shall save all men, especially such as are of the household of faith,’ as especially indicating gradations of happiness in a future state.”

* * * * *

“July 18.--With troops of the London ‘world’ to a garden-party at Hatfield to meet the Shah of Persia (Nasr-ed-Din), who looks most savage and unimpressionable. He is, however, preferred to his servants, who give themselves endless airs, refusing the rooms prepared for them, &c., and their hosts are afraid to complain of them to the Shah, for fear he should cut off their heads! He is a true Eastern potentate in his consideration for himself and himself only: is most unconcernedly late whenever he chooses: utterly ignores every one he does not want to speak to: amuses himself with monkeyish and often dirty tricks: sacrifices a cock to the rising sun, and wipes his wet hands on the coat-tails of the gentleman next him without compunction. He expressed his wonder that Lord Salisbury did not take a new wife, though he gave Lady Salisbury a magnificent jewelled order. He knows no English and very few words of French, but when the Baroness Coutts, as the great benefactress of her country, was presented to him by the Prince of Wales, he looked in her face and exclaimed, ‘Quelle horreur!’”

* * * * *

“July 22.--A wonderful speech (at the Aberdeens’) on Christian work from the Bishop of Ripon (Boyd Carpenter)--eloquent, elevating, touching beyond description. He pictured the system of work going on through all creation--some one resting under a tree as under an object in repose, and then, if the senses could be quickened, hearing the pulse, the ever-labouring pulse which sends the sap through its every fibre: of how fallacious is the ordinary view of God as a sovereign in contemplative repose--how inconsistent with the description given us, ‘My Father worketh and I work:’ of the way in which every practical worker might be a particle of the Spirit of God: of the way in which the Christian life of every individual might radiate on others and permeate their existence, like the halos--unseen by the wearers--on the brows of saints: of the way in which the impression of a visit carried away from each country-house might influence a life, and the duty of leaving the right impression--never by ‘religious talking,’ but by loving action: that the usual saying was ‘Omnia vincit labor,’ but a truer one would be ‘Laborem vincit amor.’”

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Holmhurst, August 15, 1889.--I wish you were here this morning. A delicate haze softens the view of the distant sea, sprinkled over with vessels, and the castle-rock rises up pink-grey against it. Far overhead, the softest of white clouds float in the blue ether. In the meadows, where the cows are ringing their Swiss bells, the old oak-trees are throwing long deep shadows across lawns of the most emerald green, and the flower-beds and the terrace borders are brimming with the most brilliant flowers, over which whole battalions of butterflies and bees are floating and buzzing; the little pathlet at the side winds with enticing shadows under the beech-trees, whilst the white marble Venetian well, covered with delicate sculpture of vines and pomegranates, standing on the little grassy platform, makes a point of refinement which accentuates the whole. Selma steals lazily round the corner to see if she can catch a bird, but finds it quite too hot for the exertion; and Rollo raises himself now and then carelessly to snap at a fly. The doves are cooing on the ledge of the roof, and the pigeons are collecting on the smokeless chimneys. Upstairs Mrs. Whitford and Anne are dusting and laughing over their work, with the windows wide open above the ivied verandah, and Rogers is planting out a box of sweet-scented tobacco-plants which has come by the post.

“Such is little Holmhurst on an August morning. You would be amused with my hearing the other day that one of the servants had said, ‘Our master’s a gentleman as knows his place,’ which meant that I never find fault with an under-servant except through an upper, or cast even the faintest shadow upon an upper-servant if an under-servant is present. After all, it is only another form of Landor’s observation--‘The spider is a gentleman, for he takes his fly in secret.’”

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“St. Michael’s Mount, Sept. 7, 1889.--This is a wonderful and delightful place. It was nearly 10 P.M. when I reached the Marazion station. The day had been very hot, and the evening lights and reflections perfectly lovely; but night had quite closed in. Lord St. Levan’s carriage met me at the station, and stopped at the head of a staircase leading to the sea, where four sturdy boatmen took possession of me and my things, and rowed away on a waveless sea, following up the long stream of brilliant light which fell from one of the upper windows of the castle on the sacred mount, grim and black in the still night. An old man with a lanthorn met me at the landing-place, and guided me up a steep pathlet in the rocks. At the door a maid received me, for the family were all at dinner, but I found a pleasant meal ready for me in a small sitting-room, and then was ushered in to the large party--Lord and Lady St. Levan, six daughters, a son, a niece--Lady Agnes Townshend, Hugh Amherst, two Misses Tyssen Amherst, Mr. and Lady Harriet Cavendish, Miss Hill Trevor, Mr. Stewart, a young Manners, and Mrs. and Miss Lowther. With the latter I have spent many pleasant mornings in drawing on the rock (really improving greatly, I think, in knowledge of the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of everything), whilst the whole family has gone out fishing, and most glorious are the subjects. Mrs. Lowther’s enthusiastic energy makes her a first-rate companion. ‘Elle est au-dessus de l’ennui et de l’oisiveté, deux vilaines bêtes,’ as Madame de Sévigné would have said.

“It is a life apart. The chapel-bell rings at nine, and I always meet Mrs. Lowther on the staircase hurrying up to the service, which is reached by an open-air walk at the top of everything. Then, before breakfast in the ‘Chevy Chase Hall’ (surrounded by old stucco hunting scenes), we linger on the grand platform, looking down into the chrysoprase waves with sea-birds floating over them, and across to the mainland with its various bays, and its fleeting golden lights and purple shadows.

“On Friday we went a long drive, passing St. Buryan’s, one of the three parishes of the Deanery of St. Levan. A Mr. Stanhope was long the rector here, having also a rich living, where he resided, in Essex. At St. Buryan’s he kept a curate, to whom it was only necessary to give a very small stipend indeed, because he was--a harmless maniac! He used to be fastened to the altar-rail by a long chain, which allowed him to reach either the altar or the reading-desk. When once there, he was quite sane enough to go through the service perfectly! On week-day evenings he earned his subsistence by playing the fiddle at village taverns; but he continued to be the officiating clergyman of St. Buryan’s till his death in 1808.

“This truly aquatic family bathe together from a raft at 7 A.M. most mornings. To-day they were all rowed in their scanty bathing costumes, looking like Charon’s souls being ferried to purgatory, into the little port, and there (at twelve mid-day) one after the other took a header into the sea, and swam--many of the guests with them--to the main-shore at Marazion, to the great astonishment of the natives on the beach there. The parents followed or accompanied their mermaid-daughters in safety-boats, but instead of being anxious about those who became exhausted, encouraged them to hold on. George Manners was almost choked by a butterfly flying down his throat, mistaking his head for an unexpected islet.

“The place is beyond everything poetical: even I have been unable to refrain from some verses, which I send you.

“Grey cloud-wreaths lovingly entwine, And in their mystic maze enfold The sacred Mount, which day’s decline Shadowed upon a sheet of gold: And faint and sweet, the surges beat The burthen of the ancient lay, Which low or loud, through mirk and cloud, The Past bewails eternally.

But when the radiant morn awakes To kiss fresh life into the flowers, The windows beam, the turrets gleam, The blue waves break in silver showers, Tossing their glistening foam away In merry riplets to the shore: The Present reigns; the murmuring Past, Though whispering still, is heard no more.

Serene, the great Archangel keeps His vigil here on high, Whilst in the changeful world below Fleet life is fluttering by. Through shine or shower, his silent power, Unheard, unseen his sway, Spirits of ill, which daunt or chill, Shall drive rebuked away.”

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“St. Michael’s Mount, Sept. 7, 1889.--I have enjoyed my visit here extremely, and, difficult as it was to manage coming, it is more difficult to get away, from the extreme kindness and genuine hospitality of Lord and Lady St. Levan, who would like one to stay months. I think I never saw such excellent people, or a happier, more united family; and being very well off, their kindnesses to rich and poor cannot be calculated. Then it is indeed the most delightful of homes, so healthy in its pure air of mingled sea and mountain exhilaration, so glorious in its views over land and water, with every atmospheric effect which Nature, never the same, can paint upon both. Looking down from the ramparts into the deep clear chrysoprase water is in itself a delight, and watching the fish rising and leaping with sparkling showers, and the great white seagulls swooping down upon them. No wonder the sons of the house, devoted to sport of every kind, think there is nothing to compare to the fishing excursions round their home. But there is unspeakable grandeur, too, when the sacred Mount is enveloped in sea-fog, shrouding it from all sign of the mainland and everything else, and when nothing is heard but the distant booming of the waves far down below. This is the one great house of England, I suppose, which is approached by no road whatever, for even the pathlet which winds among the cliffs and low wind-blown bushes of the island is lost where it crosses the turfy slopes which intervene here and there. The castle is in seven stories (of which I inhabit the second); many of the rooms are walled with rock, and in one of the narrow passages it is known that a number of skeletons--naughty nuns, I suppose--are walled up. I never saw a place where so much of daily life was in the open air.”

* * * * *

“Holmhurst, Sept. 19.--From the Mount I went to visit the Tremaynes in the Vale of Tavistock. It was an exquisite still evening when I arrived at Sydenham, and it is a beautiful drive through a richly-wooded valley, till a sharp turn brings one to the old bridge over the clear tossing Lyd, on the other side of which rises the noble old manor-house, only separated from the road by ‘the green court’ with a wrought iron gate. By this gate, as I drove up, stood, with her daughter, Mrs. Tremayne, her exquisite profile, quite white, like a Greek gem, relieved against the dark yew foliage: it is a picture that remains with one. We had tea in the old panelled hall, surrounded by four fine Chinese dogs.

“It would be difficult to over-praise the sweet seclusion of the spot, the constant merry ripple of the sparkling river, the deep shade of the tall trees, the old-fashioned gardens of splendid herbaceous flowers, the charming old rooms and staircase, in which--even in this desolate place--the two powdered footmen do not look out of keeping. But the great charm lies in the family itself--in the ever-genial, courteous, sweet-tempered father--the perfectly beautiful and dignified but simple mother--the daughters and the only son.

“A relic in the house is the ‘tongue-token,’ only given during the Civil Wars to the most faithful friends of the King and Queen,--a little gold medal which could be concealed under the tongue. In this case it was given to the Tremayne of the day, because, at imminent risk to himself, he rode to announce to the King at Oxford the birth of the Princess Henrietta at Exeter.

“We went several excursions: to the fine old gateway of Bradstone; to the Kellys of Kelly, who have a most admirable collection of Alpine plants, growing upon little but old mortar; to the Duke of Bedford’s house of Ensleigh, beautiful in hilly woods feathering down to a river; and to Launceston, a dull place, where the castle recalls that of Gisors.

“From Sydenham I went to see the Elphinstones[484] at their beautiful Government House at Plymouth, and on the same evening to Whiteway, where I paid a delightful visit to the dear Dowager Lady Morley, who is still as genially kind and as sharply truth-exacting as ever. It was comically characteristic that when the foolish Bishop of Exeter (Bickersteth) came over to Whiteway, Lady Morley, with innocent pride, showed him the improvements she had made. ‘You should not take a sinful pride in your possessions,’ said the Bishop; ‘all God’s works are beautiful, and all these are the works of God.’--‘That is all very well,’ answered Lady Morley, ‘but I made this walk.’ It was sad to see Lady Katherine, the companion of many happy mountain excursions long ago, laid up as a permanent invalid; but she is indescribably brave and cheerful.

“A child at Whiteway, being asked where the eggs were laid, answered, ‘On an average.’--‘What do you mean? who told you so?’--‘Father; he said the hens laid, on an average, twenty eggs a day.’

“With the Lowthers and Listers we one day met the Halifaxes and their two eldest children at Bovey, and we all went a delightful excursion over Dartmoor to several of the great tors, which rise above the russet wastes of moor, like castles in the south of France, and to Tecket Falls, near which Lord Devon has a cottage. Hence, after ascending through the mazes of a wood, Charlie H. insisted on our being taken blindfold till we reached ‘Exclamation Point,’ where the present Archbishop of Canterbury had fallen on his knees from the beauty of the view. We did not return till eight, when the Halifaxes stayed to dine, and went home at eleven, walking miles over the moors by night in true Charlie Halifax fashion.

“Endless was the amusing talk of Devonshire quaintnesses. ‘How did you break your arm?’ said Lady Katherine to an old woman. ‘Well, ‘twere all along of gathering apples; ‘twere first the apples and then the fall: I were like Eve, I reckon.’ ‘Blow your nose,’ she said to a child. ‘Yes, mum, but her won’t bide blowed.’”

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“Holmhurst, Nov. 1889.--I have been far too long without writing, life ripples by so quickly: it seems every day more different from the years before I was grown up, when all was so long.... My ‘outing’ to the North was very enjoyable. I was nearly a week at Tatton, where the host and hostess were boundlessly kind. The party there had admirable elements--Lord Savile, Lord and Lady Knutsford, Lord and Lady Jersey, Lord and Lady Waldegrave, Lord and Lady Amherst, Sir Redvers and Lady Audrey Buller, Mr. and Mrs. Piers Warburton, Mrs. Percy Mitford, Mrs. Legh of Lyme, Sir Charles Grant, and Dick Bagot. We were all taken to see the Ship Canal in a royal way, with special trains, luncheon sent on, and tea at the mouth of the Canal in ‘Bridgewater House,’ where the old Duke of Bridgewater spent his later years, and where his picture still presides in the seldom-used dining-room.

“I left with Mrs. Legh, whose ponies met us at the Disley station, and took us a wild drive over moor and fen, rock and fell--a drive of glorious views, but no road whatever--before returning to Lyme. Lady Lovelace came in the evening and was most agreeable, especially in her reminiscences of India and Lady Canning. With her and Mrs. Legh I went to draw the old hall at Marple, an interesting house of the Usherwoods, who inherited it from the Bradshaws: the regicide’s chamber has its original furniture and tapestry.

“Next, I went to Ingmire, a fine old place of Mrs. Upton Cottrell-Dormer, beautifully situated amongst the Westmoreland fells, though geographically in Yorkshire. John Way, the vicar of Henbury, was there, who said that when the boys in his school were reading of Jezebel, how she ‘painted her face, tired her head,’ &c., he asked, ‘Why do you suppose she did that?’--‘She wanted to get married,’ promptly answered a boy--true, probably, too. He described how his great-grandfather, Sir Roger Hill, and his son lay dying at Denham at the same time. It was of the most vital importance to the son’s wife to keep her husband alive beyond his father, just sufficient time to enable him to sign a will, and this she did by killing one pigeon after another, keeping his feet immersed in the body of the hot steaming bird, and, as soon as it chilled, changing it for another. The pigeons conquered, and the Hedgeley property was left away to the son’s widow. The Denham property went to the daughter, Mrs. Lockey, whose daughter Abigail married Mr. Way, and was mother of Benjamin Way and Lady Sheffield.

“From Ingmire I went to Muncaster, which I thought even more beautiful and delightful than before. With Lady Muncaster and Lady Kilmarnock I had one lovely day at Wastwater--glorious in the last coruscations of Nature. The Bishop of Carlisle had just been at Muncaster, who said that a boy in a Board-school examination, being asked one of the foolish Catechism questions of ‘Why is a boy baptized when by reason of his tender age?’ &c., wrote, ‘Why indeed?’

“Another child in a higher class, being asked to define faith, said it was ‘the power of believing absolutely what was utterly incredible.’”

* * * * *

“Bramfield House, Hertford, Nov. 27, 1889.--Lady Bloomfield is very comfortably established here in a good house of Abel Smith’s, near a pretty little church and village, and in the midst of the amiable Smith colony. She finds no end of good works to do, and really is beyond measure kind, in addition to a thousand other unostentatious goodnesses, in filling her extra rooms with homeless and feeble gentlefolk needing help, kindness, and temporary home. We went through Panshanger yesterday, but I do not admire this cabbage-tree district, all so prosperously unpicturesque.

“You must buy, you really must, ‘John Smith on Church Reform.’ It is by no means the dull book it sounds. You will delight in it, and will present it to Mr. Neville, as I shall to our little clergyman, who is becoming quite as like naughty Rome as he dares, but is a good little man all the same.”

* * * * *

In quoting so constantly from journal and letters, I do not think I have mentioned how much poverty had been pressing upon me in the last few years. Not only had Messrs. Daldy and Virtue, representing my first publishers, ceased to pay even the interest of their large debt, or paid it most irregularly, but under my second set of publishers I had made nothing whatever during the seven years I had been with them. Their accounts showed that 28,000 of my books had been sold in the time, but the innumerable percentages, &c., had swallowed up the whole of the profits, leaving me nothing but the loss of money expended on woodcuts, &c.

“’Tis a very good world that we live in, To lend, or to spend, or to give in; But to beg or to borrow, or get a man’s own, ’Tis the very worst world that ever was known.”

Whilst I was at Muncaster, however, Mrs. Arthur Severn came to the castle, and told me how Mr. Ruskin also had made nothing by his books in the hands of my then publishers, but that they had brought him in a good income since they were removed to the hands of Mr. Allen of Orpington. To his hands, therefore, I soon after removed all my books. I had no complaint of unfairness to make against those I had lately employed; they only acted according to their agreements and their usual method, which I had long hoped against hope might eventually result to my advantage: and they behaved very handsomely about parting with the books, though it must have been both a loss and disappointment to them.

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“Campsea Ashe High House, Dec. 27, 1889.--We have had a very pleasant merry week in this most kindly and happy of family homes, not going out much, but the days full of intellectual interest, the evenings of games, acting, &c. The party has been the two really charming Miss Farquhars, their brother Ernest, pretty, attractive Miss Theresa Lister, Lady Cecily Clifton, Captain Sydney, Kenneth and Miss Matheson, James Lowther, young Brooke--a pleasant clever little county magnate, delightful Jack Cator and his remarkably nice sister, a young Macgregor in the Guards, and to-day the Anstruther Thompsons, the Edmund Fanes, Miss Mullholland, and a young Burroughs have come. Last night we acted a play, ‘The Bilious Husband,’ before a large audience of neighbours. Can you fancy me as Captain Marmaduke Mynch of the Royal Berkshire Plungers? Then there was ‘Barnum’s Show’--Miss Matheson as a mermaid, myself as a dwarf, Miss Lowther as the tattooed woman, Miss Farquhar the fat woman, Brooke a Zulu, Ernest Farquhar an Arab, and Mr. Lowther as ‘The Bearded Lady!’ Another day I dressed up and came in as an old aunt of the family--being the first scene of the word Antidote, for which we made a little story. I have liked my frivolous week very much, but it is enough, and I shall be glad to go back to my solitary work at Holmhurst on Monday.

“Kenneth Matheson very kindly said, ‘I know you will consider it sacrilege my pressing you to come to Highcliffe whilst I am its tenant’--which I allowed to be the case!

“I was very glad to hear of Lady Ossington’s will--just like an echo from the generosity, justice, and beneficence of her life.”

* * * * *

From Christmas 1889-90 people were already beginning to talk a great deal about the “Influenza epidemic” which was spreading over Europe, and was like a malarial fever. I was in London for a few hours on January 11, and bringing it back to Holmhurst with me, was very ill for nearly a month, but with the comfort of being in my own home, and, to me, the great comfort of being alone. In illness I quite feel the extreme blessing of religion--not the religion worried and touzled by a thousand million vagaries of personality, but the simple main facts, in which I believe so fully. I find some lines of Elizabeth Trench which exactly express what I feel myself:--

* * * * *

“Lord, I believe not yet as fain I would; Dimly Thy dealings have I understood: Thy word and message yet to me have brought Only a shadow of Thy wondrous thought.

Fain would I follow on to know thee, Lord, Fain learn the meaning of Thy every word; Truth would I know--the truth that dwells in Thee, Setting the lowest heart from doubting free.

Lord, I believe! oh fan this trembling spark, Lest all my hope be lost in endless dark; And where I yet believe not, lead Thou me, And help my unbelief, which seeks for Thee.”

“When all fails, and to stand firm seems impossible, stand on the wood of the Cross; it will float with you,” said Queen Marie Leczinska.

“The Mercy of God--all is included in that word Mercy,” was a saying of the Mère Angelique.

* * * * *

Yet I find it very difficult to endure any other religious book than the Bible itself: all are so self-asserting, so self-seeking; and hymns, with one or two sublime exceptions, are either abjectly foolish or full of the self, even if it be the religious self, of man.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Feb. 13, 1890.--In December my old servant Joe Cornford died, who had been all my lifetime in the family service. For several years he had been too old and infirm to do any work, but, when he was well enough, he made a pretence of picking up a leaf or two, and received his wages all the same. If it had not been for his grumbling old wife, it would have been a pleasure to see him slowly dragging himself about the walks, but her temper was a trial! He was worse for some time. One day I went in to the lodge to see him after breakfast, and at that moment he suddenly died! Again, as often before, I felt the wonderful power of the great mystery of death, actually seeing life ebb downwards: the forehead become white and waxen, then the cheeks, then the whole being. How I was reminded of the lines of Caroline Bowles (Mrs. Southey):--

‘Oh change, oh wondrous change! Burst are the prison bars, This moment there so low, So agonized, and now Beyond the stars!

Oh change, stupendous change! There lies the soulless clod; The sun eternal breaks, The new immortal wakes-- Wakes with his God.’

“I was at his funeral some days afterwards, the poor old man carried to the grave by our workmen, and followed by seventeen of his descendants, children and grandchildren. He has left me a chair which came out of Hurstmonceaux Castle.”

* * * * *

“Feb. 26, 1890.--Went to see Lady De Ros,[485] aged ninety-five. She brought out for me her greatest treasure, a beautifully printed Church of England Prayer-book in Spanish. It belonged to the great Duke of Ormonde, and descended from him to Lady Eleanor Butler, by whom and Miss Ponsonby--‘ladies of Llangollen’--it was given to the Duke of Wellington as a boy. He taught himself Spanish by following its services, as he himself says in an inscription on the fly-leaf. In his old age, when Lady De Ros was with him at Strathfieldsaye, she found it in the library, and told him what a valuable book she thought it. ‘Then, if you think it such a valuable thing, I will give it you, my dear.’--‘So, as Douro and Charles were just coming, I took my book away at once,’ said Lady De Ros, ‘for fear they should stop me.’ Some years afterwards the Duke asked Lady De Ros to lend him the book to show to some great librarian. She let it go, but made it a condition that, before it was returned, the Duke should write its history in the book with his own hands; and this he did.

“Lady De Ros also showed me a brush of hogs’-bristles, mounted in ebony, and with a silver plate. And she told how, when she was hunting wild boars with the Duke on Mont St. Jean near Cambrai, an immense boar sprang out of the thicket close by her. The Duke speared it. It was a horrid sight and she shrank from it. ‘Oh, my dear,’ said the Duke, ‘you must not mind it, for I am prouder of having killed that boar than of the battle of Waterloo.’

“Lady De Ros was very full of her dispute with Sir William Fraser about the house in which the ball was given at Brussels by her father, the Duke of Richmond, on the eve of the battle of Waterloo. She was quite certain of her facts, and that the house was now gone. She had been living in the house itself, in the Rue de la Blanchisserie (‘where the Duke would direct to me “in the wash-house“‘), and cited as a proof that the ball was given in her own house, the fact that her youngest sister, who had been sent to bed, stole out, and watched the company arrive through the banisters. ‘I believe Sir William Fraser asserts,’ said Lady De Ros, ‘that I am confused and doting now through my great age, but you know very old people remember the long-ago as if it was to-day, and that is the case with me. In 1860 I went back to see Brussels, and I could not find our house then; the whole street was swept away. At last, as I was walking up and down, I was attracted by the name on a pastry-cook’s shop: it was a name I remembered in that long-ago time. So I went in and asked if they knew anything of our house. “Oh, a house in the Rue de la Blanchisserie,” they said; “it has been pulled down years and years ago.”’

XXVI

AT HOME AND ABROAD

“Le monde n’est éternel pour personne; laisse le passer, et t’attache à celui qui l’a fait.”--DIDEROT, “Sarrasins.”

“Time there was, but it is gone; Time there may be--who can tell? Time there is to act upon, Help me, Lord, to use it well.” --LADY WATERFORD’S Note-Book.

“Non aver tema, disse il mio Signore: Fatti sicuro, chè noi siamo a buon punto: Non stringer, ma rallarga ogni vigore.” --DANTE, “Purgatorio,” Canto ix.

“I hope the hereafter will not lack something to remind us of the beautiful earth-life--beautiful in spite of its sin and sorrow.”--WHITTIER’S Letters.

When my friend George Jolliffe had passed his diplomatic examination, I promised him that I would go out and pay him a month’s visit wherever he was sent to. Thus I came to set out for Constantinople on April 10, 1890. The faithful Hugh Bryans went with me. At Vienna I spent several days with the Lützows, who showed me the sights in the most agreeable way. The town was full of grand-dukes or exiled princes--Cumberland, Parma, Tuscany, &c., all very rich and adding to its prosperity.

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“British Embassy, Constantinople, April 22, 1890.--We came straight through from Vienna, through the strange unknown country. There were vast plains of corn till Belgrade, a poor town hanging shaggy on the hillside: then we entered low wooded hills like the Sabina. In the Servian villages of rude huts and ruder fences we could see the swarming people, men and women in loose folds of white linen, the former with the air of princes. All seemed remote and unreal, and the shadows, as in Syrian clearness, fell pure blue upon the dusty hills. By the second morning we were passing through Roumelia. All had become poorer. The villages, of wretched huts, stood in wattled enclosures of thorns, inside which all the domestic animals are driven. Now, the men were seen in crimson and green, with magnificent mahogany-coloured faces beneath their turbans, and the women, all closely veiled, moved like masses of dark drapery; a little mosque appeared, with a delicate and refined minaret; a little fountain-cistern with a gothic arch in a grove of thorns; marshes with storks; plains with buffaloes.

“About 3 P.M. the lovely Sea of Marmora gleamed upon the right, with a variety of inlet bays of solitary beauty, and, in the distance, the aërial mountains of Asia. Then a succession of battlemented towers rose on the left from the untrodden plain--the walls of Stamboul! Through these the train passes. We were far from the station still, but what a change from our two days’ desolation! We rushed across many shabby courts, paved either with mud or rough stones. The old houses, with their projecting lattices, were veiled in a web of flowering wistaria, and shaded by pink Judas-trees in fullest bloom. Then above us rose the mosques with their slender minarets and huge storm-blasted cypresses. St. Sophia itself, Achmet, Suleiman, Mahmoud were passed, with many a strange gothic fountain or decorated cistern, before we reached the shed-like station, where George was a most welcome sight, armed with an Embassy cavass to extricate us from the mass of yelping, screaming natives.

“Off we went across the creaking, rocking, timber bridge over the Golden Horn, thronged by the strangest of multitudes. Then up the steep street of Galata, where the lattices project till they almost obliterate the sky, and the pavement is made of rough stones set edgeways, up which the horses scrambled like cats. A road succeeded, a dusty deep-rutted track, overlooking an old burial-ground without barriers, where, amid the immemorial cypresses, thousands of battered tombstones remain, neglected, ruined, but never wilfully destroyed; and so we reached the handsome palace of the Embassy, with its delightful garden, overlooking the valley of the Golden Horn.

“I have been here two days now, and cannot say how delightful I find it to be with George, with whom every thought may be exchanged. I live in the room of an absent attaché, and the life is like that of a college. Unfortunately, on the first afternoon I caught a dreadful chill in the boat, and have been very ill ever since, though I dragged myself out yesterday to take advantage of a rarely procured permit to see the famous church of St. Irene, where the Council of Constantinople was held, and where the Christian emperors, Constantine, Arcadius, &c., repose, some of them in grand porphyry sarcophagi. I went with two clergymen, friends of Arthur Stanley, Canon Farrar of Durham, and Dr. Livingstone, who had been to every other scene of a General Council: this was the last!”

* * * * *

“April 27.--I have been suffering terribly from rheumatic fever, but am better to-day, and have been to St. Sophia. The carriage stopped at an obscure door on the N.W., where the cavass took off his boots and fetched some of the Turkish guardians of holiness, who, for a very large consideration of baksheesh, put slippers over ours. Then we passed the curtain, and found ourselves at once at the northern extremity of the great western narthex, like that of St. Mark’s at Venice on a huge scale, and--almost immediately--from a side-door, in the church itself.

“It is so unspeakably, overwhelmingly, indescribably, entrancingly, bewilderingly glorious, words can give no idea of it.

“Of the immense space--a St. Mark’s lifted into the heavens, soaring far above in the mystic involutions of its entwining arches and the delicate nuances of its grey-golden colouring, never sufficiently defined to be obtrusive in any special point, only melting and harmonising into a whole as tender and glorious as the hues on a dove’s back. So also in the architectural details; all the walls, all the chapels are filled with the most exquisite and graceful sculptured ornament, but the grand impression of space is never lessened by any single object leaving its own identity upon the vision, till the gaze rests far above upon the pendentives of the mightiest dome, where float the four huge prophetic seraphim[486] with their many wings folded in repose--with twain they covered their breasts, with twain they covered their feet, and with twain they did fly.

“Close to the entrance was a vast fountain gurgling, rushing, spouting--a fountain of ablutions. Far towards the east, and beneath the two floating green banners of the Prophet, was the mimber or pulpit of Friday prayer, and near it a platform for the choir, who face, not the east, but the Kibla, the holy house of Mecca. Under the shadowy arches are the cup and cradle of Jesus of Bethlehem, revered as a great teacher, the latter a hollowed block of red marble; the ‘sweating column,’ the ‘shining stone,’ and the ‘cold window,’ fresh with the north wind, where the Sheik Shemseddin, the companion of Mahomet II. (the Conqueror), expounded the Koran. We may also see the pillar on which Mahomet the Conqueror left the mark of his bloody hand; for through the church itself, and the crowds of clergy and virgins who had taken refuge there, he rode, exclaiming ‘There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his Prophet,’ and ordaining the violation of sanctuary. Here and there, but lost in the extreme immensity, are chapels or refuges where groups of men, or of veiled women apart from them, seem to hold little services, with private litanies of their own. In some of these, solitary individuals, wrapped in devotion or penance, were perpetually smiting the earth with their foreheads: in one an old man was shouting, yelling, screaming portions of the Koran, flinging the words with savagest ferocity amongst groups of squatters in fezes and turbans, who received them quite unconcerned.

“The columns in the church make up the mystic number of forty, typical to the Eastern mind of all pomp and splendour. The cupola is inscribed ‘God is the light of the heavens and the earth!’ On its Rhodian tiles are written ‘God hath founded it, and it will not be overthrown: God will support it in the blush of the dawn.’ Nothing probably remains of the fourth-century church of Constantine, but the present church is chiefly that of Justinian, who employed a hundred architects, each with a hundred masons under him, of whom five thousand worked on the right, and five thousand on the left, according to the advice given to the emperor by an angel. The church itself is under the guardianship of an angel, who appeared to a boy watching the tools of lazy masons, and bade him hurry them back to their work, saying he would guard his charge till he came back. But the boy never came back, for the emperor intercepted him, and sent him off, well provided for, to the Cyclades, that the angel might be obliged to watch for ever.

“Our driver stuck his cigarette behind his ear and took us to the Hippodrome, where we saw the great obelisk, raised by Theodosius on a base with curious reliefs: and the brazen serpents supposed to have been brought from Delphi, or the remains of them, for the Sultan Murad broke off one of their heads. Along the side of the square runs the screen of the Mosque of Ahmed (the state church), enclosing its vast dusty court, old elm-trees, cloister, and a fountain, around which were groups of people washing, dressing, and being shaved before entering the sanctuary.

“We drove by the tomb of the Sultan Mahmoud the Reformer, where we stared through a metal screen at his sarcophagus, to the finest of the great mosques or djami, the glorious Suleimanyeh, which Solyman the Magnificent intended to surpass St. Sophia. On its giant dome is the truly catholic inscription (Sura xxiv. 36), ‘God is the light of heaven and earth. His light is in the windows on the wall, in which a lamp burns covered with glass. The glass shines like a star, the lamp is lit with the oil of a blessed tree. No Eastern, no Western oil; it shines for whoever wills it.’ On the ever-clean matted floor of this mosque of glorious proportions numbers of barefooted children were sporting as in a playground, and very pretty and graceful were the interlacing groups which they made. The ecclesiastical revenue of Suleimanyeh is 300,000 piastres. Behind is a curious burial-ground, crowded with tombs, chiefly of women, marked by a sculptured rose, whilst the headstones of the men are crowned by a turban or fez. In two great sepulchral chapels or turbé lie Solyman the Magnificent and his immediate family and successors. The sarcophagi are covered with splendid embroideries and delicate muslins, those of the sultans being often shrouded by their favourite wives with their shawls--most precious of their possessions. At their heads are their tall white turbans, with bunches of peacocks’ feathers on either side. The famous Roxolana lies amongst the group of ladies.

“But all through the streets of Stamboul the greatest feature is the little burial-grounds, with their closely packed tombs and their huge cypresses or tamarind trees, which always give them picturesqueness, between the houses, at the angles of the streets, everywhere--the dead forced, as it were, into the very life of the living, and never to be forgotten for a moment.

“The next great feature--and an odious one--is the swarms of dogs, like little foxes, which lie about everywhere in the sun, encumbering the footways, and refusing to move for any one. They are the friends of cats, but if a strange dog enters their quarter, they demolish him at once. They never bite a human being, at least they have never been known to bite more than one, and that was--the Russian ambassador! Successive travellers have given the idea that they are scavengers, but it is quite false: a man goes round at night with a cart and takes everything undesirable away. All night the air resounds with the yells of the dogs. The English doctor is obliged to poison them by hundreds near the hospital, or all the patients would die of the noise.

“We ended our first eventful drive at the Mosque of Bajazet, where the court was now turned into a bazaar, and round the central fountain glowed a moving mass of colour--white turbans, green turbans of Mecca, pilgrims, negroes, Armenians, robed women in shot violet silk. Overhead a perfect roar of wings indicated that the sacred pigeons of the mosque were moving in vast battalions from one part to another. At the many-coloured stalls, the beads--especially the green beads--were quite irresistible. In the turbé of Bajazet, under the head of the Sultan, is a brick made of all the dust collected off his clothes and shoes during his lifetime: his mother and his two daughters lie beside him.

“It is a great pleasure having Gerard Lowther here; and the other attachés, Finlay and Tower, are charming.”

* * * * *

“May 12.--As I have felt stronger, each day here has been more full of interest. On alternate mornings I stay quietly in the Embassy garden or the adjoining cemeteries and have luncheon with my kind hosts, with whom I have several times been out afterwards to the bazaars, steep, rugged, stony lanes, arched overhead, and a blaze of colour from their shops and costumes. Here we have been served with cups of coffee in the inner den of Marchetto, the tradesman of ‘Paul Patoff,’[487] whilst going through the wearisome routine of bargaining for old silver, weighing and reweighing, and only discovering one had concluded a purchase when one had utterly despaired of it. How forcibly the truth of that verse of Proverbs strikes one here--‘It is nought, it is nought, saith the buyer, but when he goeth his way, he boasteth thereof.’ The whole bazaar seems like an inextricable web to outsiders, yet any one or anything can be found there in ten minutes by one who knows the place; and, amid all the bustle and confusion, one sees many a charming picture of an old Turk with snowy beard and robes, sitting cross-legged at an angle of his counter, poring over an ancient parchment Koran, and as utterly absorbed in it as if he were in the Great Desert. How the names Aladdin, Mustapha, Scheherazade, Zobeide, recalled the large edition of the ‘Arabian Nights’ which was at Hurstmonceaux Rectory in my childhood.

“On other days I have gone off immediately after breakfast with a cavass from the Embassy--Dimitri--as my guard, making much use of the trams, from which one sees so much that is curious, and in which one has so many experiences of Turkish life, from the ladies like bundles of green, brown, or shot silk, who are huddled behind the curtain at the end of the carriage, to the child-pasha well provided with copper coins to quiet the numerous clamourers for baksheesh. Thus I have twice reached Yedi Kouli, the Seven Towers, where the triple walls of the town make their farthest angle close to the Sea of Marmora--bluest of blue waters melting into chrysoprase-green near the shore. Here I was drawing an old gate in pencil in my little book, heedless of an old Turk who had been cursing the ‘christian dog’ as a breaker of the second commandment, when suddenly, with a spring, he flew upon me, and in an instant his long talons would have torn out my eyes, if Dimitri, throwing himself upon him, had not hurled him on his back in the gutter, after which he got up, and went away quite quietly. Another day, after we had made the circuit of the wonderful walls, I was sitting to draw in the middle of the white dusty road near the Adrianople gate, and Dimitri had fallen asleep on a tombstone a few steps behind me, when suddenly he called out with a rueful voice that he had been robbed, plundered of his watch and chain, whilst I, rather more in evidence in the sunshine, had escaped. It is near this gate, the Polyandria of the Greeks, that we saw the curious mosque, once a church covered with mosaics like St. Mark’s, and still retaining many of them. One was shown as the Virgin waiting for her Teskerei, or passport, to go into Egypt!

“All around the walls are tombs: the woods are filled, the hillsides are powdered, with them. The woods are all of cypress, which is supposed to neutralise effluvia. When a death occurs, a body is hurried to the grave as soon as possible, for the soul is always in torment, it is believed, between the death and burial. Little parcels of food are laid in holes by the side of the grave, and large headstones are always erected, stones on which the angels Nebir and Munkir sit to judge the souls of the dead. We saw many touching little funerals--young girls being carried to the grave without any coffin or shroud. The blocks of stone on the road date from the time of Justinian. At an angle of the cemetery opposite the gate of Silivri a row of head-stones marks the graves of the heads of Ali Pacha (de Tébelin) and his four sons, cut off in 1827. Close to this a lane turns off through the tombs and cypresses to the monastery of Baloukli. Here, from a courtyard, filled, like everything else, with tombs, we descended a staircase at the head of which an old priest was squatting as guardian of a number of huge brass alms-dishes. In the subterranean chapel below are more alms-dishes, and a fountain with the ‘miraculous fish,’ black on one side, red on the other. On the 29th of May 1455, a monk was engaged in frying them, when a man rushed in and announced the capture of Constantinople by the Turks. ‘I shall believe it,’ said the monk, ‘when these fish leap out of the frying-pan,’ and they leapt out immediately, and have remained half-cooked to this day! At the little restaurant close to the monastery, shaded by pink Judas-trees and strewn with white sand, we had our luncheon, bread, pilaf, galetta, hard eggs, wine, and syrup of roses.

“Beyond the Adrianople Gate the walls and cemetery descend together to Eyoub, a hamlet at the head of the Golden Horn, with a very sacred mosque, which heretics are not allowed to enter, as it contains the sword of Mahomet, with which the Sultan girds himself on the day of his installation, and in its court, shaded by noble plane-trees, the tomb of Eyoub, standard-bearer of the Prophet, near whose resting-place are grouped a number of royal turbé, those of the Valide Sultana, mother of Selim III., and of Hussein Pacha being the most remarkable. We made a separate excursion hither, finding the rugged streets round the mosque occupied by the gay booths of a fair shaded by banksia roses in full bloom, and the keeper of the sanctuary standing at the gate with a drawn sword to prevent the entrance of the giaours. But we wandered behind, by the steep ascent between the eternal burial-grounds, where there was a grand view down the Golden Horn between the old cypresses, all the mosques of Stamboul embossed upon an aërial sunset sky.

“On May 3 we met a large party at Dolma Baghtché, one of the great palaces which are memorials of the extravagance of Abdul Medjid. The rooms are those in which his son, the savage Abdul Aziz, used to throw everything that came to hand at those who offended him. They are only used by the present Sultan for the great reception of Beiram, when all the great dignitaries of the empire flock to kiss the hem of his garment. The palace is vast, but decorated like a French café, with glass banisters to the staircase and numbers of fifth-rate pictures: nothing but the hall is worth seeing. Close by is the mosque of Abdul Medjid, with two slender minarets, and beyond it the palace of Teheragan-Sérai, where the ex-Sultan Murad is kept a prisoner, no one being allowed to linger either on the road or in a boat in front of the building. The existing Sultan goes to see him sometimes, but asserts ‘My brother and every one belonging to him are quite perfectly mad.’

“We all went by carriage with an order to the Seraï or Seraglio near St. Sophia, which occupies at least two-thirds of the ancient Byzantium, selected by Constantine for his capital. By an unkempt ascent we reach the Bab-el-Sélam, or Gate of Safety, which had doors on either side, and in the intermediate space of which high officials condemned by the Divan were executed. Passing an avenue of cypresses, we reached a second gate, the Bab Seadet, or Gate of Happiness, guarded by white eunuchs. It was here that the sultans used to give up their unpopular ministers to the popular fury; that Murad III. gave up his favourite falconer, Mehemet, to be cut to pieces before his eyes; that Mahomet III. gave up his three chief eunuchs, and Murad IV. his grand-vizier Hafiz, who was killed by seventeen wounds. Many old aunts and cousins of sultans still reside in the inner apartments, guarded by numbers of eunuchs, the historic criminal figures of Turkish history, whose existence is expressly condemned by the Koran, and who are generally bought or stolen as children from Syria or Abyssinia. Without name, family, or sex, they often marry, and even have harems for the sake of feminine friendship.

“The treasury is full of boundless barbaric treasures, uncut emeralds, &c., and much fine armour and china. The finest single object is the throne of Selim I., taken from the Shah of Persia, of green enamel studded with pearls and rubies. In the Salle du Divan is the curious bed where the sultans received ambassadors, though they only saw him through the window. We also saw the glorious Bagdad mosque lined with blue Persian tiles, built by the Sultan Amurath in remembrance of one he had known at Bagdad. In the garden is the famous cage where, from the time of Mahomet IV., sultans shut up princes who rebelled against them: Abdul Aziz was confined there from his deposition to his death. Afterwards, I sat with Sir George Bowen on the terrace, which has an exquisite view up the Bosphorus, while immediately below us ran the railway line, which suggests the fall of Turkey. We were served with sweetmeats of rose-leaves, and coffee in golden cups studded with diamonds, by an attendant who bore an embroidered cloth upon his shoulder to conceal the empty cups which had been used by Christians, and were therefore unclean. This would sound hospitable on the part of the Sultan if one forgot to mention that we had each had to pay about fifteen francs to enter the palace, and that there were about thirty of us.

“Another day we went to the mosque of Selimyeh, beautifully situated, and afterwards I sat to draw under a bower of banksia roses, surrounded by a marvellous group of Turkish figures, in the Saddlers’ Bazaar (serra-jobane-jamissi). Here the people were good to us, as there are so many Christians in that quarter of the town, but generally the natives never cease cursing those who are breaking the second commandment by making a likeness of something in heaven or earth. In the courtyard of Suleimanyeh I was less fortunate: a number of soldiers crowded in front, wholly obstructing all view, and on Dimitri remonstrating, their officer came up quite furious, with ‘My men shall stand where they like, and if they wish to hide the man’s view they shall certainly do so.’ Twice I have toiled to the distant mosque of Mehmedyé, for Mahomet the Conqueror built it on the site of the famous church of the Holy Apostles, founded by Constantine the Great, and where he was buried with eleven other emperors. A dial over a gate near this is inscribed (from the Koran), ‘Didst thou not see thy Lord, how He extended thy shadow?’ On some of these excursions it has been most difficult to procure anything whatever for luncheon, for it is the fast of Ramazan, when no good Turk allows any food whatever to pass his lips between sunrise and sunset, on the approach of which he will begin to hold in his hands the viands which he will devour the very instant the gun fires. Wine at all times is described as ‘the father of all abominations,’ yet Solyman the Great, who burnt all the vessels laden with wine in the port, himself died drunk: Murad IV., who cut off the head of any one who smelt of wine, was a regular drunkard: Bajazet I. and II. both drank, and to Selim II. was given the surname of ‘mesth’--the drunkard: so much for the far-famed Turkish consistency.

“We went to the evening service at St. Sophia, three white-turbaned figures receiving us in the dark at a postern door, and--after exacting ten francs apiece--conducting us by a winding stair to the broad gallery, far beneath which the great chandeliers gleamed like flower-beds over the immense grey space, intersected by long lines of black figures--all males, for women are soulless--bending, curvetting, prostrating symmetrically like corn in a wind, and with the same kind of rush and rustle. It is a curious but monotonous sight, a repetition of the same movement over and over again, and the shrill harsh cry of the swaying and falling lines, even more discordant in its echo by the choir, soon grates upon one: especially as the priests never cease whispering and worrying for extra baksheesh.

“After waiting one morning for a weary time with an order at the ‘Selamlik,’ we saw the Sultan go to the Yildis mosque. The coachman was gorgeous in his golden livery, but the ‘Sultan of Sultans, the King of Kings,’ was a piteous sight, a mixture of boredom and terror. Cringing cowardice prevents his going to Stamboul more than one day in the year, and this occurred lately. It is a great day for the court ladies, who are all allowed to accompany him in three hundred carriages, and avenge themselves for veiled faces by exhibiting their bare arms covered with bracelets and as much else as they dare. Mahomet says, ‘He who espouses only one wife is praiseworthy,’ and now it is considered indiscreet to have more than four legitimate wives, who are all equal, and who have each their own dowry and servants. Women are generally well treated here now, a divorce is easy, and each wife has a right to a separate room, and may even exact a separate house, if she cannot get on with the other wives.

“Almost every night through the streets there is a rush of the Talumbodgi or firemen--half-naked savages with primitive engines, who scurry to save the valuables of burning houses, not for the owners, but for themselves, so that they are far more dreaded than the flames. In recent conflagrations in Galata and Pera it is certain that the fire began in three or four places at the same moment; for when a street in Constantinople is wholly bad or unsafe, the authorities do not scruple to set fire to it, regardless of the consequences, though the people are such fatalists that they will not leave their dwellings till the last moment, and then fly, leaving everything behind them.”

* * * * *

“May 22.--I write during a quiet day with George at the Embassy, after my return from Broussa, where I have been spending a week.... It was a voyage of five hours in a steamer crowded with Turks on their carpets, sleeping, praying, or reciting the Koran, and at the ends of the vessel knots, lumps, and clusters of women. Outside Seraglio Point the view of Stamboul is very fine, St. Sophia and the Achmet mosque rising above the old sea-walls, and the gardens lovely with rich green and pink Judas bloom. We passed the islands--Antigone, where Sir H. Bulwer lived with the Greek princess, and Prinkapo, to which the Empress Irene was banished, and where she is buried. After two hours it became very rough, and all were sick, especially a number of Turkish officers, who up to that time had been eating voraciously. So it was indeed a relief when we entered the comparatively calm bay of Mudania, with its glorious leaping ‘multitudinous seas’ of sapphire and chrysoprase waves, amid which endless dolphins--true clowns of the sea--were tumbling and sporting.

“At Mudania a horde of half-naked savages leaped on board to seize our luggage, and a hand-to-hand fight ensued, during which we had to scale the bulwarks of the vessel to reach the pier. Then came a scramble and a bargaining for carriages, but at last we were off and up the hills, where boys were selling piles of cherries for half a piastre (1¼ d.) on the ascent. In the valley beyond, we came up with a knot of carriages in a desolate place, the inmates standing in the road round one whose wheel was coming off. It had contained two ladies, and I took up one of them, who turned out to be Miss Holmes, sister of the librarian at Windsor. Very lovely was the ascent to Broussa, through the rich green walnut-woods and by rushing streams, to the exquisite chain of mosques and minarets under the lower slopes of Olympus. At the table-d’hôte we had the British Consul, who stated that he ‘was not at all gone on mosques;’ he had been seventeen years in Constantinople and had seen nothing but St. Sophia--‘what on earth was the good?’ The hotel was delightful, and nothing could be more exquisite than the view from my window, whence I watched the long lines of camels following the inevitable donkey, and the handsome population, arrayed in every colour of the rainbow as to male turbans and girdles and the loose robes women are arrayed in. Thence also, I constantly heard, from the mosque of Murad, the shrill voice ‘La Ilah il Allah vè Mohammed resoul Allah,’ calling the people to prayer.

“On the first day I joined Miss Holmes and her friend Miss Bacon on a long excursion through the town, going first to the famous Green Mosque (Yéchil-Djami), which stands on a platform with old trees and a glorious view over the plain. We were not allowed to enter at once; it was the service for women, who are permitted this mosque only. ‘Priest very old and well covered up: it must be so,’ said the dragoman; ‘it is necessary to guard their moralities: just let them a little loose, and it is a very bad job.’

“Close by is a beautiful turbé with an entrance worthy of the Alhambra, and lovely tiles and jewelled glass within. Beneath the dome lies the sarcophagus of Mahomet I., with those of his son, his six daughters, and their nurse--the last very plain, but close to the royal coffins. In the centre of the mosque itself is a beautiful fountain, which freshens the air with a rush of falling waters: around are inscriptions--‘God is love,’ ‘Mahomet is the prophet of God,’ and the names of the six caliphs who were the companions of Mahomet. The mimber here is only ascended by the Sheik el Islam himself, when he gives the blessing with the Koran. As an interior, Oulou-Djami, the great mosque in the centre of the town, has even more perfect proportions--a perfection of interlacing architecture inclining to gothic, forming twenty-four cupolas, and centering in the great dome above a splashing fountain. Outside this mosque, facing the street, a bay-tree overshadows the tomb of a sainted dervish: sick people hang bits of their clothes around it, and think that, with them, they leave their ailments there. Oulou-Djami stands on the edge of the vast bazaar, where splendid Eastern dresses are seen in perfection: the perfectly fitting jackets and breeches of the men, of richest embroidered stuff, never costing less than from £3 to £10, so that one wondered at their not minding the frequent torrents of rain; but it is all ‘kismet.’ When at home these glorious-looking Turks do nothing, for there is nothing to do: if a house takes fire, they do not care--there is nothing to burn but a few divans: perhaps the owner takes his clothes with him when he escapes--there is nothing else to take. They rise early and have a cup of coffee, at ten they breakfast, at six is dinner, at eight they go to bed: a few possible visits are the only variety of the day.

“It was a delightful drive to the Citadel, where all the space not occupied by wonderful old buildings is shaded by the most magnificent planes and cypresses, watered by crystal streams, which have their source here. The tombs of the first Osmanli princes, Osman and Orchan, are here, restored after an earthquake. On the tomb of Osman lies the order of the Osmanlieh: two of his sons and fourteen of his daughters surround him. A more curious family burial-place is that of Mouradié, a green enclosure, bright with fountains and roses, and containing a whole succession of venerable turbé of the family of Murad I. and Mehemet II., chiefly murdered victims. Amongst the latter, the tomb of the hero-prince Djem is especially rich and striking. The grave of Murad, by his own desire, is left open to the rain of heaven, and is covered with sickly grass. Of the early Broussa Sultans, several--being sons of fathers of eighteen and mothers of sixteen--were generals of armies and governors of provinces at fourteen, and their enormous families were due to the fact that they continued to have children from sixteen to seventy.

“We drove on to another noble mosque at Tchékirgué, about two miles from Broussa, with more tombs and relics. Amongst the latter is shown a prayer, inscribed on wood and enclosed in a bottle. ‘When the bottle breaks, Broussa will become christian,’ is the tradition--suggesting an easy and cheap enterprise for missionaries. In front of this mosque (Ghazy-Hounkiar) is a fountain surrounded by cold and hot springs alternately, and a little below the village, on the edge of the valley, are the picturesque old domed baths, the strong sulphuric springs of which are famous throughout Turkey. All around Broussa is rich soil and vegetation; hollyhocks grow wild along the hedges: it is a glorious climate: only justice and government are needed.

“I am sorry to go away without seeing more of the Bosphorus, but I have just been to Therapia, where the villeggiatura life in summer must be delightful.”

* * * * *

“May 23.--My last hours at Constantinople were spent in an expedition with the Whites in their picturesque state barge to the Sweet Waters of Europe. I believe I have said nothing of Sir William White, though he is the ambassador in whose house I have been living so long. His simple manners are full of bluff humour. He is said to understand the Turk perfectly, and rose entirely by his own merits, with the help of a lucky appointment to the Conference of 1876-77.”

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“Ober-Ammergau, June 2.--We have seen the Passion-Play. It is a day to have lived for: nothing can be more sublimely devotional, more indescribably pathetic.

“Our journey from Constantinople was accomplished very easily. We stayed to see Buda-Pesth, a very handsome modern city, and then had two days of perfect enjoyment at Halstadt and the exquisite Gosau Lake. On Friday night we slept at Oberau, and drove here early on Saturday morning, finding the Lowthers at once in the village street, and spending most of that day in drawing with them. We went at once to the house of the Burgomaster to inquire where we were billeted. All the material part of life is most comfortably and economically arranged for visitors. I am quartered with St. Thomas, and all through the day one meets peasants with long hair, recalling Biblical figures. The Burgomaster’s beautiful daughter is the Virgin Mary. In a gracious and touching spirit of unselfish love all these villagers live together for mutual help and comfort. They have been trained under their late pastor, Aloys Daisemberger, to regard the Passions-Spiel, which is the great event of their quiet lives, not only as a religious service of thanksgiving to which every talent and energy must be contributed for the glory of God, and a manifestation of gratitude for His preservation of them, but they are also taught to look upon it as an instrument which God’s grace has placed in their hands for the calling back of Europe to Christianity, through the dark mists of infidelity which have been creeping over it in the nineteenth century. And truly in this the actual visit to Ober-Ammergau may be as full of teaching as the great representation itself--the simple contact with such men as ‘Christus Maier,’[488] as he is called, whose life’s work is ‘to endeavour to do God’s will aufs innersten, and to be helpful to those around him.’ Here, in Ober-Ammergau--perhaps here alone--religion takes no heed of Roman Catholic or Protestant vagaries; the will of God, the example of Christ, those are the only guidance of life. In the five sermons of Daisemberger preparatory to the Passion-Play of 1871,[489] there is not a single word which indicates Romanism. ‘Look, O disciples of Christ,’ says Daisemberger to his people; ‘see your Master, how gentle, how kind He is, how mild in His intercourse with those around Him, how full of heartiest sympathy for their joys and sorrows. Then can you, in your intercourse with those around you, be grumbling, rough, discourteous, self-asserting, repellent, and wanting in sympathy? Oh no! you could never endure to be so unlike your Master.’

“It is a beautiful place, a high upland mountain valley, covered with rich pastures and enamelled with flowers. A long street, or rather road, lined by comfortable detached timber houses, leads to the handsome church, around which the older part of the village groups itself above the clear rushing Ammer, and is highly picturesque. Beyond the village, in the meadows overlooked by the peak of the Kofel, is the theatre where the great drama of the Passion is enacted, which, ever since 1634, has commemorated every tenth year the then deliverance of Ammergau from the plague which was devastating the neighbouring villages.

“All through Friday it was curious to meet a succession of London acquaintances, and most unexpected ones, but from all being here with one object, no one was uncongenial. And all is so perfectly managed, there is no fuss or hurry; comfortable accommodation, good seats, excellent food are provided for all who are permitted to come, for the visitors for every performance are limited to the 2000 for whom there is room; no unexpected persons, no excursionists are ever admitted. No thought of gain has ever the slightest influence upon the villagers, and the prices are only such as pay what is absolutely due.

“Yesterday morning, I imagine, no visitor could sleep after four, when their peasant hosts began to tramp overhead and clatter down their narrow oak staircases. Then, after an excellent breakfast of hot coffee, cream, eggs, and toast, many visitors and all the people of Ober-Ammergau hurried to the six-o’clock service in the church, where all the five hundred actors knelt with their pastor in silent prayer, and many of them received the Sacrament. At eight all were comfortably placed in their seats in the open-air theatre, and the soft wild music of Schutzgeister, which seems to come from behind the hills, preluded the performance.

“One might be seated in the Piazza del Popolo at Rome with one’s back to the gate. There is the same vast intervening space, and the same three branching streets (the central closed by an inner theatre for tableaux), with marked buildings at the entrance. Only here those buildings are the houses of Annas, Caiaphas, and Pilate, and the streets are those of Jerusalem, lined with Eastern houses, domes, and here and there a palm-tree, and they melt far away into lovely ethereal mountain distances, the real mountains of the Bavarian Alps. The performance begins when the spirit-chorus of eighteen persons, male and female, in many-coloured tunics and mantles, advance in stately lines from either side of the stage, and in a chaunt, weird but most distinctly audible, explain what is coming, and urge those present to receive it in a humble spirit of reverence and adoration of God. Then, on the central stage, begin the strange series of types and antitypes, and, as the veil falls the second time, the vast Hosanna-procession of five hundred men, women, and children, singing, shouting, and strewing palm-branches, appears down the distant streets, and, as it draws nearer, and the mountains resound with jubilant shouts and the whole air is ablaze with life and colour, the serene, rapt, stately figure of the Christus, riding upon the ass, but even then spiritualised into absolute sublimity by the sense of his divine mission, comes for the first time before us. Afterwards, through the long eight hours of thrilling tension which follow, overshadowing the endless, almost wearisome, series of Old Testament scenes, drawing every heart and eye nearer to himself through the agony of the trial, the cross-bearing, the crucifixion, does that sublime figure become more familiar; never again can the thought of the God-man be severed from it. And in the great drama itself one sees all the rest, but one feels with, one lives for, the Christ alone; and the dignity of his lofty patience, unmoved from the holy calm which pervades his whole being even when four hundred savage Jews are shouting and jibing round in clamorous eagerness for his death, must be present with one through life.

“I cannot tell it all. Words fail and emotions are too much. Through that long day--oh! is it that day alone?--one knows how to live with, to suffer with Christ: one is raised above earth and its surroundings: one dies with Him to sin and suffering: one is raised with Him into heavenly places. After some hours, England is forgotten, Germany is forgotten. You are a Jew. Jerusalem is your home: all, all your interests are centred there: nothing earthly is of the very least importance to you except the great tragedy that is being enacted before your eyes. It is perhaps the humanity of Christ which is brought most forcibly before you; but oh! how divinely human, how humanly divine!

“Could one wonder that Mr. Vanderbilt, the American millionaire, said that he owed everything--everything for this world and the next--to Ober-Ammergau? it had unveiled and explained religion for him: it had made the Bible a living reality.

“I think of the Old Testament scenes, the Fall of the Manna is the most beautiful. More than four hundred Israelites, including a hundred and fifty children, are seen--groups of the most exquisite and harmonious colour--with Moses and Aaron in the desert; and between you and them, and amongst and around them, falls mysteriously the soft vaporous manna; whilst the chorus in sweet, wild, lingering monotone chaunt the beautiful hymn beginning--

‘Gut ist der Herr, gut ist der Herr.’

“Of the New Testament scenes, the leave-taking with the family of Bethany is perhaps the most pathetic. It is an exquisite sunset scene. Huge olive-trees stretch their gnarled boughs overhead and are embossed against the amber sky, in the distance the village of Bethany stands out in the soft blue mists of evening. Through the sunset comes the Christ in lingering last words with the sisters and Lazarus, and there, under the old trees, is their last farewell, touching indescribably, after which the weeping family return to Bethany, and he goes away, a solitary figure upon the burnt hills in the twilight, to his death at Jerusalem.

“At Ober-Ammergau one for the first time realises the many phases of the trial--in the house of Caiaphas, of Annas, of Pilate, of Caiaphas again, of Pilate again; and all is terribly real--the three crosses, for instance, so really heavy, that none but a very strong man can support them. One thinks better of Pilate after the performance, through which one has watched his struggles--his weary, hopeless struggles to save the life of Christ. Almost every act, nearly every word, is directly taken from the Gospel history. Amongst the few touches added is that of Mary the mother, accidentally arriving at Jerusalem, meeting the other Marys in one of the side streets and talking of the condemnation of a Galilean which has just taken place. Then, as the street opens, suddenly seeing the cross-bearing in the distance, and thrilling the whole audience with anguish in her cry of ‘It is my son: it is Jesus!’ The Last Supper is an exact reproduction of Leonardo’s fresco, and many of the other scenes follow the great masters.

“How thrilling were the words, how almost more thrilling were the silences, of Christ.[490]

“The evening shadows are beginning to fall as we see Christ raised on the cross. He hangs there for twenty minutes, and most indescribably sublime are the words given from thence. When all is over, it is so real, you think that this time death must really have taken place. The three crosses, the bound thieves, the fainting women, the mounted centurion, the soldiers drawing lots, all seem to belong to real events, enacted, not acted. The deposition of the dead Christ on the white sheet is a vast Rubens picture.[491]

“The resurrection is more theatrical, but in the final scene, where the perfect figure of the spiritual Christ is seen for the last time, he goes far away with his disciples and the Marys, and then, upon Olivet, in the midst of the group relieved against the golden sunset, he solemnly blesses his beloved ones, and whilst you gaze rapt, seems to be raised a little, and then you look for him and he is not.

“Each one of the four thousand spectators then sits in a vast sense of loneliness amid the silent Bavarian hills. The long tension is over. The day is lived out. The Master we have followed we can follow no longer with material sight. He has suffered, died, and risen from the grave, and is no longer with us: in the heavens alone can we hope to behold Him as He is.”

* * * * *

After leaving Ober-Ammergau, Hugh Bryans and I went with the Lowthers and Mrs. Ridley to Rothenburg, still an unaltered diminutive mediaeval city, and the most interesting place in Germany. Then I paid a delightful visit to my dear Bunsen friends at Carlsruhe and Herrenalb, and on our way back to England we saw the marvellous Schloss Eltz, going thither in a bullock-cart up the bed of the river from the attractive little inn at Moselkern, kept by a very old man and woman, sitting upon the very border-land of heaven.

* * * * *

During the varied occupations of this summer of 1890 I was asked to write biographies of several members of my family for the “Dictionary of National Biography,” and did so. My articles appeared, but greatly altered. The editor had a perfect right to condense them at his pleasure, but I was astonished to find additions. Bishop Hare was saddled with a third son, Richard Hare, “an apothecary of Winchester,” who was the father of James Hare, afterwards called the “Hare with many friends.” This son of my great-great-grandfather is entirely imaginary; our family was never in the remotest degree related to Richard or James Hare. It gave one a terrible impression of how the veracity and usefulness of a work of really national importance might be spoilt by the conceited ignorance of an editor; and to add such trash to an article published with the signature of another was as unjustifiable as it was abominable.

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Woodbastwick Hall, August 6, 1890.--I have enjoyed a visit at Cobham very much. We had only the usual circle of guests, but summer days in that beautiful place are a delicious halt in life. Thence I went to Osterley, which looked bewitching, with its swans floating in sunshine beyond the shade of the old cedars. Those radiant gardens will now bloom through five years unseen, for Lord Jersey has accepted the Governorship of New South Wales, which can only be from a sense of duty, as it is an immense self-sacrifice, though he and Lady Jersey can never fail anywhere to be a centre of all that is most interesting and useful. To English society her absence will be a terrible loss, as, with the utmost simplicity of high breeding, she is the one person left in England who is capable of holding a salon and keeping it filled, to the advantage--in every best sense--of all who enter it. Nothing can be more charming than the relation of Lord and Lady Jersey to their children, and the fact that the latter were always of the party, yet never in its way, was the greatest testimony to their up-bringing. The weather was really hot enough for the luxury of open windows everywhere and for sitting out all day. The party was a most pleasant one--M. de Staël, the Russian Ambassador; Lady Crawford, still lovely as daylight, and her nice daughter Lady Evelyn; Lady Galloway, brimming with cleverness; M. de Montholon, French Minister at Athens; Mr. and Mrs. Frank Parker, most amusing and cheery; Sir Philip Currie, General Fielding, &c. Everything was most unostentatiously sumptuous and most enjoyable. On Monday we were sent in three carriages to Richmond, where we saw Sir Francis Cooke’s collections, very curious and worth seeing as it is, but which, if his pictures deserved the names they bear, would be one of the finest galleries in the world. Then, after a luxurious luncheon at the ‘Star and Garter,’ we went on to Ham House, where Lady Huntingtower showed the curiosities, including all the old dresses kept in a chest in the long gallery. Finally, I told the Jersey children--splendid audience--a long story in a glade of the Osterley garden, where the scene might have recalled the ‘Decameron.’ I was very sorry to leave these kind friends, and to know it would be so long before I saw them again.

“I came here with the Lowthers, finding kind Mrs. Cator surrounded by three sons and eight daughters. This is a luxurious modern house, replacing one which was burnt. Only a lawn and trees separate it from the Norfolk Broads, and we have floated down the Bere in a delightful sailing-boat, through the huge thirsty water-plants, to the weird remains of St. Benet in the Holme, of which the Bishops of Norwich are still titular Abbots.”

* * * * *

“Sept. 6.--I have enjoyed a visit to Holmbury (Mr. Leveson Gower’s), now let to Mr. Knowles of the Nineteenth Century--a lovely place with a delightful view over Surrey plains. I like its homelike character better than the larger place of Mr. Ralli, whither we went yesterday to a garden-party. Mr. Knowles is most delightful company, full of pertinent and never _im_pertinent questions. He has talked much of Tennyson, with whom his family are very intimate, and who used often to stay with him when he first married and lived on Clapham Common. Tennyson speaks every thought without respect of persons. ‘What fish is this?’ (at dinner).--‘Whiting.’--‘Yes, the meanest fish there is.’ Yet his kindness of heart is such, that when his partridge was afterwards given him almost raw, he ate steadily through it, for fear his hostess might be vexed.

“After dinner Tennyson will sit smoking his pipe by the chimney-corner. That is his great time for inspiration, but he will seldom write anything down. ‘Thousands of lines just float up this chimney,’ he said one day. Sometimes he will go into the drawing-room and recite something he has just composed. Some of these poems Mr. Knowles has written down. If asked to repeat them again, Tennyson can never do it in the same way, something is always altered or forgotten: so hundreds of his poems are lost. One day lately, when he was unusually melancholy, his nurse, whom he greatly likes (he always has a nurse now), took him to task. ‘Mr. Tennyson, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for grumbling in this way: you ought to be expressing your gratitude for your recovery from your bad illness by giving us something--by giving it to the world.’ And he took her reproof very well, and went away to his own room, and in half-an-hour had written his lines ‘Crossing the Bar,’ which he gave to her.

“Tennyson was very rude to Mrs. Brotherton, a neighbour at Freshwater. The next day he came to her house with a great cabbage under each arm. ‘I heard you liked these, so I brought them.’ It was his idea of a peace-offering.

“My ‘France’ is just appearing, under the guardianship of Ruskin’s friend Allen. I think it is good. I have certainly worked hard at it. The woodcuts are beautifully engraved, and with the letterpress I have even more than usual followed Arthur Young’s advice to authors--‘To expunge as readily as to compose.’”

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Oct. 14, 1890.--I went on the 27th to Worth, the ultra-luxurious house of the Montefiores, where the servants have their own billiard-tables, ballroom, theatre, and pianofortes, and are arrogant and presumptuous in proportion. It was a pleasure to drive over to the picturesque old manor-house of Gravetye, which belongs to Mr. W. Robinson, who wrote ‘The English Flower-Garden;’ but except the thickets of Michaelmas daisies, I was disappointed in his flowers, for he only attempts those which belong to the naturally existing soil. A far more beautiful garden is that of Mrs. Rate at Milton Court, near Dorking, whither I went afterwards. John Evelyn’s own house of Wotton is much altered, but this, which was the dower-house of the Evelyns, remains as it was in his time, and most lovely are the ranges of brilliant old-fashioned flowers relieved against the yew-hedges. Mrs. Rate took me a long drive over the back of Leith Hill, with views of unspeakable beauty: abroad, there is nothing like such radiance and wealth of woodland, such exquisite delicacy of misty distance. I was put down at the station on my way to Highcliffe, to which I hastened in answer to an unusually urgent and affectionate invitation from its dear lady, bidding me on no account to miss coming at that time; at another time it might not be possible. I found the dear Lady Waterford sadly ailing, but I hope I was able to be useful to her during some days of extreme quietude and much reading aloud. She had lately been to the Queen at Osborne, crossing the Solent in the Elfin, seated between the two great bags--‘as big as large arm-chairs’--containing the Queen’s letters for the day. ‘The Queen would have my drawings in. It was dreadful! for you know how a big portfolio slides off the table, and the Queen looked at them all so closely, and I was afraid the portfolio would slip and catch hold of her nose, and then I should have been sent to the Tower or something. There was one of the drawings she liked so much that I gave it to her. It was of Time with his scythe over his shoulder. A quantity of little children were gambolling and sporting in front and beckoning him onwards, but behind were a number of old people trying to hold him back; for one wanted to go on with his book, another to finish a drawing, and so on, and so they were clinging to his skirts as he was striding away.’

“Lady Waterford cannot understand the physical signs of age which seem to be suddenly attacking her: yet spiritually she is more than ever living in Eternity’s sunrise. Truly those who have lived much at Highcliffe or Ford can never ‘think this life a low and poor place in which to seek the Divine Master walking to and fro.’[492]

“I felt sadder than usual in leaving Highcliffe this time, as if it might be a last visit, yet it is difficult to imagine life without what has given its greatest interest and charm. The dear lady was down before I came away, though it was very early, and I retain a beautiful picture of her standing in the conservatory under the great brugmantia laden with its orange flowers. She came with me through the rooms, and I looked back at her, and found her still looking after me, and so, somehow walked away sadly down the dewy lanes to the station, with a desolate feeling that I might see her no more.

“I went on to Babraham (the Adeanes’), whence I drove with Charlie to spend the afternoon at Audley End--what a magnificent place! Afterwards I had two days at pleasant, merry Hardwick.”

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“Nov. 10, 1890.--On October 20 I went to Tatton, meeting a large and pleasant party for the week, and one sees every one there to perfection, Lady Egerton knowing so well how to unlock a portal of communication--often of friendship--with just the right key. Truly, indeed, might Lady Egerton say--

‘Je suis né pour plaire aux nobles âmes, Pour les consoler un peu d’un monde impur.’[493]

The country is black but always interesting. Little Knutsford was sanded all over in patterns (as in India) for a wedding: it is a custom which dates from King Alfred, who met a wedding-party as he was passing through the town and threw down some sand, saying that he hoped the descendants of the marriage might be as numerous as its grains. The patterns of sand--flowers, love-knots, &c.--are made through the spout of a teapot. One day the conversation fell upon the little hamlet of Flash in the Cheshire hills. Pedlars from Manchester used to waste their time there in drinking on their way to London, whence the term ‘flash-goods!’ We drove to Holford Hall, passing on the outskirts of Tabley many of the brown many-horned sheep, which are said to have descended from some washed ashore from the Armada. I was glad to go again with Lady Egerton to Arley, where the beautiful gardens, really modern, have all the picturesqueness of antiquity. It is typical of the kindness which old Mr. Warburton shows in everything that all round the roads on his estate he leaves open spaces with plenty of brambles for blackberry gatherers.

“Lord Donington told Lady Egerton that when he went to live where he does now, his two young boys were taught by an admirable English governess. One day, having observed the housekeeper carefully locking the door of a spare bedroom, she casually said, ‘Do you always keep the doors of the unused bedrooms locked?’--‘No,’ said the housekeeper, ‘only this one;’ and she invited the governess to look into it, saying that there was a mystery about it. Some one always seemed to come to sleep there, whom she could not imagine, and she believed some trick was being played upon her. As an experiment, she said she would be very much obliged if the governess would take away the key after the room was locked, and keep it till the following morning. The next day they went together to the room, which showed every appearance of having been slept in, yet the window was carefully fastened inside, and there was no other possible entrance.

“Some time after, a young man came to shoot with the boys, and was put into that room. In the morning he came down with a very scared look, and said he was very sorry, but he must leave. Being much pressed, he allowed that he had been dreadfully frightened. He had kept his candle by his bed to finish a book he had been reading, and, looking up, he saw an old man sitting by the fire, who eventually rose, came, looked into the bed, and seeing him there, walked away. ‘And,’ said the visitor, ‘that is the man!’ pointing to a picture on the wall of an ancestor who had died centuries before.

“Amongst the guests at Tatton were a Mr. and Mrs. Crum, most delightful people. He had made a fortune as a manufacturer, and they now live at Broxton Old Hall, a dower-house and beautiful old black and white manor of Sir Philip Egerton’s, whither I went to visit them. Thence I saw Mr. Wolley Dodd’s wonderful garden, the most interesting herbaceous collection in England. Mr. Wolley, well known as an Eton master, married Miss Dodd, the heiress of Edge, and of a family which has lived there from Saxon times, and of which a member was knighted at Agincourt; and he has turned a farmyard, a quarry, a pond, a wood, &c., into the most astonishing of gardens, in which each genus of plants is provided with the exact soil it loves best, and grows as it never does elsewhere. Near Edge we saw the noble old black and white house of Carden. We also saw the once splendid church of Malpas, utterly ruined by its so-called ‘restoration’ under a Chester architect named Douglas--old pavements, old pews ruthlessly destroyed, and a vestry by Vanbrugh only spared for want of funds to pull it down. A miserable window commemorates Reginald Heber, once rector, and a lime avenue leads to his rectory. I was several days at Drayton as I returned--most beautiful and interesting.

“C. writes to me for advice, but I feel more and more diffident about giving any. I found such a capital bit about this in a novel called ‘Margaret Maliphant,’ the other day. The old servant Deborah says, ‘What you think’s the right way most times turns out to be the wrong way; and when you make folks turn to the right when they was minded to turn to the left, it’s most like the left would have been the best way for them to travel after all. I’ve done advisin’ long ago; for it’s a queer tract of country here below, and every one has to take their own chance in the long-run.’

“How tiresome the shibboleth which many clergymen talk in church is! Mr. ---- has been dwelling upon the exceeding sinfulness of sin. We may find a meaning for this, but is it in fact different from the beautifulness of beauty, which we should call nonsense?”

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“Nov. 30, 1890.--I had a pleasant visit at St. Audries, Sir A. Acland Hood’s beautiful place. It is a red sandstone house, enfolded amongst green hills, chiefly covered with golden or russet woods or rich growth of arbutus, and in front is the sea. In the morning-room are Turner’s water-colour pictures of Sussex (including one of Hurstmonceaux), executed for Mr. Fuller of Rosehill, of whom, with two other fortunes, Lady Hood was the heiress. In a corner of the hall are baby-clothes of three boys beneath the portrait of another remote ancestor, Edward Palmer of Ightham Mote. One Whitsunday morning a servant came in and said, ‘Sir, your lady has presented you with a son.’--‘The most joyful news you could have brought me!’ said Mr. Palmer. The following Sunday the servant came again: ‘Sir, your lady has presented you with another son.’--‘Oh, God bless my soul! you don’t say so?’ exclaimed Mr. Palmer. But the third Sunday the servant came in with ‘Sir, your lady has presented you with another son.’ It seemed quite too much; but the babies all lived, and grew up to be very distinguished men, being all knighted for their valour by Henry VIII.[494] I was delightfully taken about--to Crowcombe, where the Carew heiress has married Cranmer Trollope, and where there are noble Vandykes and a fine Titian portrait: to Quantockshead, with a delightful old hall and carved chimney-pieces: and to Nettlecombe, where the old hall of the Catholic Sir Alfred Trevelyan nestles close to the parish church. Sir Alfred described how the ‘church restorers’ at Bideford had turned all that was worth having out of the church. A figure of a man was bought by an old woman, but she thought it was too undressed and kept it--in bed! There it was found with its head comfortably laid on the pillow, a figure of St. John Baptist. The old woman had some notion of its value, as she asked £600 for it; but it was well worth that, as it was a priceless Donatello!

“All about this neighbourhood it is the same thing. Sir A. Hood had been to see a friend of his, and remarked, ‘What a pretty and peculiar flower-stand you have.’--‘Yes,’ said the friend, ‘and an interesting one too, for it is the font of Ongar church, in which Gunthran the Dane was baptized, and by which King Alfred stood as his sponsor.’

“Mr. W. Neville, who was one of the guests at St. Audries, had been to hear Dr. Parker, of the Congregational Hall, preach. He began his sermon by saying, ‘My brethren, I have received a letter from a gentleman saying that he intends to be present to-day and to make a philosophical analysis of my discourse to you. I am sure you will all sympathise with me in the embarrassment and nervousness which I must experience on such an occasion, though certainly I may derive some little comfort from the fact that my correspondent spells “philosophical” with an f.’

“Mr. Neville told me that he had asked a boy in his parish what was the difference between the head and the stomach. ‘The head has brains in it, if the owner has any,’ replied the boy; ‘the stomach has bowels; they are five--a-e-i-o-u.’

“It was only a drive from St. Audries to Dunster, where I spent three days, and which is, as Charlie Halifax has often described it, quite the most beautiful place in the south of England. It is an old castle, of which the earlier parts are of Edward I., on a great height, rising from glorious evergreen woods, with a view of the sea on one side and russet moorland on the other: in the depth, on one side, a tossing crystalline river and old pointed bridge; on the other, the town with its ancient market-house and glorious church. I slept in ‘King Charles’s Room,’ in a great carved bed. The cottages in the villages around are covered with myrtle, coronilla, and geranium.

“Mrs. Stucley, one of the Fanes of Clovelly, was at St. Audries. She told me that one Sunday their clergyman preached entirely on Thermopylae, and wound up by saying that the Spartans were much the bravest men that ever lived; that there was never any battle like Thermopylae. Afterwards, at luncheon, Colonel Stucley said he did not agree with what the preacher had said, for all the Thespians perished, whilst the Spartans survived: had the Thespians survived, they might have proved as good as their rivals.

“Three weeks afterwards the clergyman surprised the Stucleys by saying, ‘Well, my case is proved. I’ve the opinion of the greatest Greek scholar of the age--Mr. Gladstone--that it is as I stated it, that the Spartans were the bravest.’ He had actually written to Mr. Gladstone, and produced the answer.

“Afterwards Mrs. Stucley was dining out in London, and went down with Mr. Godley, one of Gladstone’s secretaries. She said, ‘I am afraid my name may not be unknown to you?’--‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Thermopylae,’ and went on to tell that when one of the secretaries opened the letter, they all discussed the question, and not being able to agree, took it in to Mr. Gladstone, who was so excited by it that he left his finance and all else, and walked about for three hours talking of nothing but Thermopylae.

“Except the Lefevres and Brasseys, I think my Dunster visit is the only time I have ever stayed in a Radical house; but its mistress, Mrs. Luttrell, with the support of her own family twelve miles off, holds out as a Conservative.

“From Somersetshire I went to Hatfield, arriving just after sunset. You could only just see the red colouring on the majestic old house, but all the windows blazed and glittered with light through the dark walls; the Golden Gallery with its hundreds of electric lamps was like a Venetian illumination. The many guests coming and going, the curiously varied names inscribed upon the bedroom doors, give the effect of having all the elements of society compressed under one roof. It was pleasant to meet Lady Lytton, beautiful still, and with all the charm of the most high-bred refinement. Another guest was Count Herbert Bismarck. Lady Salisbury had spoken of him as a fallen power, greatly broken by his fall, and so had enlisted our sympathies for him, but he quenched them by his loud authoritative manner, flinging every sentence from him with defiant self-assertion. He was especially opinionated about Henry VIII.’s wives, utterly refusing to allow that Anne of Cleves did not precede Anne Boleyn. He is a colossal man and a great eater, and would always fill two glasses of wine at once, to have one in reserve. At dinner he was rather amusing about the inefficiency of doctors, and said that the only time when cause follows effect was when a doctor follows the funeral of his patient. Lord Selborne, who was sitting near, spoke of Baron Munchausen, how he took the whole College of Physicians up in his balloon, and kept them there a month, and then, when he sent them down again out of pity for their patients, found all their patients had got quite well in their absence, but that all the undertakers were ruined.

“The life of a Prime Minister’s family is certainly no sinecure. Lady Salisbury and her daughter have constantly to go off to found or open charities of every description. Lord Salisbury is occupied with his secretaries to the very last moment before breakfast and luncheon, into which he walks stooping, with hands folded behind him, and a deeply meditative countenance, and by his side the great boar-hound called ‘Pharaoh’--‘because he will not let the people go;’ but when once seated as a host, he wakes up into the most interesting and animated conversation.

“How cold it is! but, as Mr. Bennett has been saying in Curzon Street Chapel, ‘Winter is like the pause of the instrument; not the paralysis, but the preparation of Nature.’ These sermons at Curzon Street are one of the greatest interests of London now. Last Sunday’s was on ‘anonymous sins.’ ‘How many there are,’ said the preacher, ‘even in fashionable life, who say, “Lord, I will follow Thee, I mean to follow Thee ... but ...;”’ and proceeded to describe how ‘the future of the world depends upon its unknown saints.’ Very different are these from the nonsensical sermons one often hears about ‘the awful circumstances of the times,’ interlarded with prophetic texts.

“There has been a long and amusing Review of my ‘France’ in the Speaker, reproaching me with my Roman Catholic tendencies, as evinced in the length of my account of Ars and its Curé, the writer being evidently unconscious that for every English traveller who lingers at Lyons, at least a hundred (Catholics) turn aside to Ars. This Review is noticed in an American paper, which says, ‘As a matter of fact, Mr. Hare is a well-known Low Church clergyman, who poses at clerical meetings as an advanced Evangelical!’ The other Reviews seem to have been mostly written by men who knew nothing of the subject, and who have not taken the trouble to know more of the book than, at most, the first chapter. One of them asserts that ‘the illustrations, said to be taken from original sketches, are evidently all from photographs’ (!); but ‘j’ai pour principe que le radotage des sots ne tire pas à conséquence,’ as Ernest Renan says.”

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“Dec. 7, 1890.--I have had an interesting visit to the De Capel Brookes in the old grey Tudor house of Great Oakley Hall in Northamptonshire. Thence I saw two of the finest houses in England. Rushton (Mr. Clarke Thornhill’s) is a great Tudor house with a screen like that of a Genoese palace. In the garden is ‘Dryden’s Walk,’ and the three-cornered lodge built by Richard Tresham (with Lyveden and the town-hall of Rothwell) as a strange votive offering to propitiate the Trinity for success in the enterprise of the Gunpowder Plot. Rockingham is even more interesting. Once the hunting-palace of King John, it was inhabited ever afterwards by the English kings till the time of Henry VII., since which the Watsons have possessed it. The position is splendid, with a wide view of map-like Northamptonshire country, and it is approached by a gateway between noble Plantagenet towers. All additions have been made in the best taste, and the great drawing-room is magnificent. King John’s treasure-chest remains in the hall. There is a noble Sir Joshua, and a most beautiful Angelica Kauffmann, probably her finest work. Other interesting pictures came to the Watsons through marriages, many of Lord Strafford and his surroundings through the marriage of his daughter with Lord Rockingham; those of Henry Pelham, the Duke of Newcastle, &c., through the daughter of the former.

“How interesting is the Parnell crisis! At Miss Seymour’s I met a Countess Ziski, who talked of how curious it was that abroad, if a woman misconducts herself, she is boycotted, but no notice is taken of the misconduct of the man: here, if a woman misconducts herself, an easy-going society makes excuses for her, but the man is cashiered for ever.

“The Dean of Chester says that a friend of his was once baptizing a child of six. All went well, till it came to making the sign of the cross, when the child exclaimed, ‘If you do that again, I’ll hit yer in the eye.’ At a recent Board-school examination ‘Education’ was defined as ‘that which enables you to despise the opinions of others, and conduces to situations of considerable emolument.’ I think it was Miss Cobbe who defined ‘Conscience’ as ‘that which supplies you with an excellent motive for doing that which you desire to do, and which fills you with self-satisfaction when you have done it.’”

* * * * *

To W. H. MILLIGAN.

“Llandaff, Dec. 18, 1890.--I was a week at Ammerdown, meeting Lord and Lady Temple, the Phelips’s of Montacute, and a charming Miss Devereux, Lord Hereford’s daughter.... The Dean of ---- had been out with a shooting party in the neighbourhood. ‘I hope you sent some pheasants the Dean’s way,’ said the owner of the ground to a keeper. ‘Oh yes, that I have, and his holiness has been pepperin’ away as stiff as a biscuit.’

“Here at Llandaff it has been interesting to meet Mr. Herbert Ward of the African Stanley rearguard, a most frank, simple, and evidently most truthful fellow, who speaks with great moderation of the leader of the expedition, to whom they owed so much of suffering, misery, death, and slander.

“Have you never remarked how hypnotism is described in Wisdom xvii.?”

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“Honingham, Norfolk, January 8, 1891.--I enjoyed my Christmas visit to the Lowthers, though it was rather spoilt by what novelists would call the incipient agonies of a cold, which has about attained its perfection now, and I am glad to be in this warm house of the hospitable Ailwyn Fellowes’s, where I am well looked after.

“I heard such a capital story of Bishop Magee the other day. He was in a carriage on the Great Western with two young clergymen, one of whom began, and went on violently abusing the Bishop of Peterborough by name, without observing who he was. At Swindon the Bishop got out to have some soup. When he was gone, the other curate said, ‘How could you go on like that? couldn’t you see that was the Bishop of Peterborough?’--‘Why didn’t you stop me?’--‘Well, I did all I could; I’m sure I kicked you hard enough.’--‘What can I do?’--‘Well, if I was you, I should apologise.’ So, when the Bishop came back, the young man said, ‘I’m very sorry, my Lord, to have said all I did in your presence. I am sure I had not an idea who you were, and if there is anything you especially objected to, I should be very glad to withdraw it and apologise.’--‘Well,’ said the Bishop, ‘there was one thing, there certainly was one thing which annoyed me very much: you would call me Majee; now my name is Magee!”

* * * * *

Alas! the shadows which I had observed during my last visit to my dear friend Lady Waterford were now gathering very thickly around her. She had failed rapidly from the time of her removal from Highcliffe to her Northumbrian home, and was no longer able to answer me; but I still wrote to her.

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“Athenaeum Club, March 1, 1891.--I am thankful still to hear of you from many common friends, and quite satisfied without hearing from yourself, and rejoice to think of you as able to enjoy drives. I think you will often find out, by carriage, points which will be almost new to you, and I can imagine how lovely the effects must have been in the hazy hollows of the Cheviots in these last days, when even here sunshine has broken through the fog in which London was shrouded for a week. It is Sunday, and I am just going to Curzon Street Chapel. I would not miss one of Mr. Bennett’s sermons on any account.... The one which struck me most was on the brief text ‘Nothing but leaves!’--so many bear those, quite a great growth of them, and no more: I am sure I do.”

* * * * *

“March 16.--Two days ago I ran in from this Club to luncheon at the Brownlows’ close by, and had such a pleasant visit.

“I went first into the large room they call the library on the ground floor--the most enchanting of rooms, hung all round with noble Italian pictures, some of them bequeathed by Miss Talbot, and bright with many flowers; some of your prettiest drawings on the table; Westminster Abbey, faint, grey, and impressive, beyond the leafless trees outside the window. Here I found Lord Pembroke, always as genial, pleasant, and charming as he is handsome.

“The staircase is quite beautiful, chiefly designed by Lord Brownlow, but partly taken from the old palace-inn at Parma, with friezes and alcoves, and lighted by a copy of Michelangelo’s lanthorn. In the wide gallery above we found Lady Brownlow. Her two sisters came in, and then we had luncheon.

“Afterwards we went to the pretty little sitting-room, full of beautiful things, which is called Lady Lothian’s. What an attractive group the sisters made--the pale, spiritual, abstracted Lady Lothian, the very type of refined gentleness: Lady Brownlow, with her noble Bronzino-like head and colouring, and the figure of a classic caryatide: Lady Pembroke, less interesting at first, but so intensely grande dame; and then the two husbands leaning over them, on such happy, devoted terms with all three, were such noble specimens of humanity. The conversation there is delightful--so un-Londony, so original, so high-minded and high-meaning.

“To-day I have been to Edward Clifford’s studio to see his drawings and his Burne-Jones’s--all of the usual lean, limp, scared-woman kind. What was more interesting was the handsome, radiant, bright-eyed elderly woman who was looking over the drawings: it was the famous Madame Novikoff. I had much talk with her, and found her most simple and attractive, and not the least an alarming person.”

* * * * *

It was on the day after writing this that I first truly realised that my dearest Lady’s illness must be fatal. Our Lady was told that it must be so, that the end might come any day, any hour. At first she shed a few natural tears, and said, “I thought I should have lived to seventy-seven, as my mother did,” and then added sweetly, “But why should I mind, since God so wills it? tell me how it will be.”--“Perhaps in your chair, just as you are sitting now.”--“Oh, that will be well--so quiet, so well.” One day soon afterwards she wished to go out into the garden when it was not thought good for her. “Perhaps you might die when you are out.”--“And why should it not be like that? If God called me in the garden, it would be as well as in any other place.” I could not go to Ford, because Lady Waterford was not allowed to see any one unnecessarily, but for many weeks succeeding my whole heart was there with the faithful friend, the kind sympathiser, the constant correspondent of thirty years. One heard of the gradual increase of the disease: of her laying aside all painting and writing: of her reading prayers to her servants for the last time; but still talking in her wise and beautiful way of all things “lovely and of good report,” laughing brightly over old recollections: then of her lying constantly on a sofa, always rejoicing to see those she loved, but mistaking her younger relations for their mothers, dear to her in the long ago. Often also others, those dearest to her, who had gone before, appeared to be present with her as angel ministrants to cheer and comfort. The sweet face of old Lady Stuart, her mother, seemed visibly present: she imagined her old governess to be in the house, and bade Miss Lindsay to be sure to arrange for the drives which she knew the old lady liked. Through the flowers upon her table she constantly saw her sister Charlotte, Lady Canning, in all her loveliness. Her sense of the companionship of this beloved sister was so vivid, and she spoke of her so often, that at last one of those present thought it necessary to say to her, “Dear lady, Lady Canning died very many years ago.” “Oh, did she? How delightful! then I shall soon be able to talk to her. I see her now, but soon we shall talk as we used to do.” One evening there was a beautiful sunset. Our dear Lady sat watching it. “It is like the coming of the Lord,” she said. Surely the watchers at Ford realised General Gordon’s words--“Any one to whom God gives to be much with Him, cannot even suffer a pang at the approach of death. For what is death to a believer? It is a closer approach to Him whom, even through the veil, he is ever with.”

Mr. Neville, the rector of Ford, prayed with her daily. “How I wish that others might have the solace this is to me,” she said, with her peculiar emphasis on the word “solace.”

Lady Brownlow was with her three days, and was her last visitor: she came away saying it had been like being in a beautiful church, so pervading was the sense of holiness. “Oh, darling Adelaide! goodness and beauty, beauty and goodness: those are ever the great things!” were our dear Lady’s last words to her, as she took her hands and gazed at her earnestly. They were very characteristic.

* * * * *

To LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.

“April 12, 1891.--How often my thoughts go to Ford, and how well I can imagine all that surrounds you there--the snowy Cheviots, that pretty little garden in the bastion tower, the warm bright library; most of all the constant care of Miss Thompson and Miss Lindsay. I am so glad I know it so well, and have so many memories of happy visits--in the old castle, in the cottage with dear Lady Stuart, in the renewed castle since. I seem to see you this bright Sunday morning, and hope it is as bright with you. Inwardly I am sure the sun is shining, and that the Saviour you have loved so well is very near you in hours of weakness. I often wish I could do something--anything--for you, but I can only think of you with ever-grateful love, and pray that all may be peaceful and smooth with you.

“Lady Bloomfield is feeling the loss of her old friend Mrs. Hogg,[495] but she had the most gentle and peaceful end, just talking to her sister and daughter very calmly and quietly without any pain or fear, and then falling sweetly asleep and not waking....

“‘The Blessed Trinity have you in his keeping,’ as Margaret Paston wrote in 1461.”

* * * * *

“April 26.--Another week of bitter cold and biting winds, and I fear you will have been the worse for them. Your state of suspension from so much that you used to be able to do so constantly recalls that of my dearest mother--in winter--for many years; but when the limbs seemed least helpful, and eyes and hands least active, all happy memories of her wealthy past seemed brighter to her, and she was always able to find comfort in the feeling that ‘they also serve who only stand and wait.’ ... I know that, to the weakest, Christ can give such blessed assurance of His love, that in the joy of it all pain and fear are unfelt and vanish. Oh, would that I could do anything for you, but you know how much I always am your most affectionate and grateful

“A. J. C. H.”

This letter was read to our Lady: then I was told to write no more. The end was very near, and each hour became filled with a tensity of waiting for the silent summons. There were none of the ordinary signs of an illness. Our Lady suffered no pain at all, scarcely even discomfort. Her former beauty returned to her, only in a more majestic form, the signs of age seeming to be smoothed away, except in the grey hair half hidden by soft lace. She rarely spoke, and noticed little except the beauty of the flowers by which she was surrounded. But when she did speak, those with her knew that, with entire and humblest prostration of self at the foot of the Cross, her faith and hope had never been brighter. She looked beyond the snowy hills into a sky of unearthly beauty. And so, peacefully, radiantly, our dearest Lady fell into the ever-smiling unconsciousness, in which, on May 11th, she passed away from us to join the beloved and honoured who are at rest with Christ. As I think of her, some lines come back to me which I read to her on my last morning at Ford:--

“Now for all waiting hours Well am I comforted, For of a surety now I see That, without dire distress Of tears or weariness, My Lady verily awaiteth me: So that, until with her I be, For my dear Lady’s sake I am right fain to make Out of my pain a pillow, and to take Grief for a golden garment unto me; Knowing that I, at last, shall stand In that green garden-land, And, in the holding of my Lady’s hand, Forget the grieving and the misery.”[496]

I should have gone to Ford afterwards, but our Lady only died on Monday, and it was late on Wednesday night before I heard that she was to be buried on Thursday afternoon, so to arrive in time was impossible. Miss Lindsay wrote to me how her coffin was carried on the shoulders of her own labourers to the churchyard, how all the village and all her tenantry came to her funeral, with the few intimate friends within reach, and how Helmore’s music was sung. It was well the end was at Ford. Highcliffe is a rapidly changing place, and it has already passed to comparative strangers; but at Ford she will always be the Lady Waterford, “the good, the dear Lady Waterford.”

There our Lady rests, within view of her own Cheviots, surrounded by the affectionate Border people, to whom their “Border Queen” was their greatest pride and interest and joy. An aching void will remain in our hearts through life, but it is only for our poor selves. When one thinks of her, earth fades and vanishes, and if--when one is alone--one allows oneself to think, to dwell upon all the glory of what she was, an all-pervading sense of peace and holiness comes upon one, and one seems, for the moment, almost to pass into the Land of Beulah--into the higher life, without worry or vexation, where she is.

When her things were being distributed, the distributors were surprised to hear that “the odd man” most earnestly begged for something: it was for her old sealskin jacket. It was thought a most singular request at first, but he urged it very much: he should “treasure the jacket as long as ever he lived.”

He had been walking by her donkey-chair in the road, when they found a female tramp lying in the ditch, very ill indeed. Lady Waterford got out of her chair and made the man help her to lift the poor woman into it. Then she took off her own jacket, and put it upon the sick woman, and walked home by the side of the chair, tending and comforting her all the way. “But it was not my Lady’s putting her jacket on the woman that I cared about,” said the man, “but that she did not consider her jacket the least polluted by having been worn by the tramp; she wore it herself afterwards as if nothing had happened.”

XXVII

SOCIAL REMINISCENCES

“Napoleon used to say that what was most fatal to a general was the knack of combining objects into pictures. A good officer, he said, never makes pictures; he sees objects, as through a field-glass, exactly as they are.”--Macmillan, No. 306.

“Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy when great ones are not in the way. For want of a block, he will stumble on a straw.”--SWIFT.

“Errors like straws upon the surface flow, He who would search for pearls must dive below.” --DRYDEN.

To the HON. G. JOLLIFE.

“Holmhurst, August 1891.--I enjoyed my months in London at the time, yet was very glad to come away. It is a terrible waste of life. The size and lateness of dinners have killed society. Scarcely any one says anything worth hearing, and if any one does, nobody listens.

“‘Que de bonnes choses vont tous les jours mourir dans l’oreille d’un sot,’ was always a true saying of Fontenelle, but is less true now than formerly--there are so few bonnes choses.

“People love talking, but not talk. Dinners are rather display than hospitality, supplying abundance of sumptuous viands, but no esprit. I heard pleasanter conversation in one quiet luncheon at the Speaker’s from his delightful family than at a hundred parties: as a social art it is extinct. One never hears such conversationalists as gathered round my aunt Mrs. Stanley’s homely table long ago, or as, in later times, round Arthur Stanley, Mrs. Grote, Madame Mohl, the first Lady Carnarvon, Lord Houghton, Lady Margaret Beaumont. The dinners, in food sense, have never any attraction to me. L. and I dined out together at ---- and I think it was an even match which of us suffered most, L. or myself: myself, because the dinner was too good; L., because it was not good enough.

“From what I hear from the East End, the scandal of Tranby Croft seems to be acting as the affaire du collier did in France in preparing the way for a revolution. But the West End goes on as if nothing had happened. I saw the Emperor (of Germany) several times, a fat young man with a bright good-humoured face, though apparently never free from the oppression of his own importance, as well as of the importance of his dress, which he changes very often in the day. And I went, one glorious afternoon, when the limes were in blossom, with several thousand other people to Hatfield to meet the Prince of Naples, whose intelligence (especially on subjects connected with Natural History) seems to have pleased everybody. He is very small, but has none of the aggressive ugliness of his father and grandfather. One day I went to luncheon with Miss Rhoda Broughton, who is seen at her very best in her little house at Richmond, most attractive in its old prints and furniture and lovely river view. Then I spent a Sunday with my cousin Theresa Earle in her pretty Surrey home, and wound up the season by meeting a large party at Cobham.”

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER (æt. 94).

“Holmhurst, Sept. 2, 1891.--You will imagine how your birthday makes me think of you, and how much I give thanks for the blessing which your love and kindness has been to us for so many years. I like to think of you on your peaceful sofa, and I know you are like John Wilson Croker, who, when some one remarked in his presence that death was an awful thing, said, ‘I do not feel it so. The same Hand which took care of me when I came into this world will take care of me when I go out of it.’”

* * * * *

To W. H. MILLIGAN, and Note-book.

“Holmhurst, Oct. 1891.--I have returned from my autumn visits, which have been delightful. The Watsons, who live at Rockingham, the old royal palace of the Midlands, are well worthy of its noble rooms and its brilliant gardens, relieved against the quaintest of yew hedges.

“At Hovingham, in Yorkshire, I found Mrs. Lowther, and we sketched together very happily. It is an unusual great house, approached through a riding-school and a sculpture gallery, which contains a huge work of Giovanni da Bologna and the loveliest little Greek statue in England. Genial Sir William Worsley, the adopted uncle of all the nicest young ladies in the county, is a centre of love and goodness, and his saint-like wife, crippled and utterly motionless from chronic rheumatism, is the sunshine of all around her. Most quaint are some of the old-fashioned dependants. The old coachman seriously asked his master, ‘Is it true, Sir William, that Baron Rothschild was refused when he offered to pay the whole of the natural debt if he might drive eight horses like the Queen, instead of seven horses and a mule?’

“We saw Gilling, the fine old Fairfax castle, and spent a delicious day at Rievaulx. Sir William has oratorios(!) annually performed in his riding-school.

“I arrived at Bishopthorpe the day before the Archbishop’s enthronement, and found a large party of relations assembling; but it would be difficult to crowd the house, as there are forty bedrooms and the dining-room is huge. The palace lies low, and out of the dining-room window you could very nearly fish in the Ouse, which often floods the cellars, the only part remaining of the original house of Walter de Gray. The rococo gateway is imposed by guidebooks upon the uninitiated as that of Wolsey’s palace at Cawood: perhaps a few of its ornaments came from thence. The ceremony in the Minster was very imposing, the more so as a military escort was given to the Archbishop, as having been an old soldier. Most moving was his address upon the responsibilities, and what he felt to be the duties, of his office. The ebb and flow of processional music was beautiful, as the long stream of choristers and clergy flowed in and out of the Minster. The Archbishop’s brothers--one of them, Sir Douglas-Maclagan, being eighty--made a very remarkable group.

“Most happy and interesting were my four succeeding days at Hickleton, where I met one of the familiar circles of people I always connect with Charlie Halifax--Lady Ernestine Edgecumbe, Lady Morton, Canon and Lady Caroline Courtenay, the Haygarths. More characteristic still of the host was the presence of a nun in full canonicals--Sister Caroline--‘this religious,’ as Charlie called her--who appeared at meals, though only to partake of a rabbit’s diet. In the churchyard a great crucifix, twelve feet high, is being erected, and the people of Doncaster do not come out to stone it; on the contrary, the crucifix and its adjuncts attract large congregations of pitmen, who would not go to church at all otherwise; and the neighbourhood is beginning to wonder how long the Church of England can dare to deny its Lord by condemning the crucifix, the vacant cross being but the frame of the picture with the portrait left out, and in itself an eloquent protest against the omission. Another smaller crucifix commemorates the three dear boys who have ‘gone home.’ The shadow of their great loss here is ever present, but it is truly a sanctified grief: their memory is kept ever fresh and the thought of them sunny, and thus they still seem to have their part--invisible--in the daily life, upon which their beautiful pictured semblances look down from the walls of their home. Only a deep sudden sigh from the father now and then recalls all he has undergone. The short morning services in the house-chapel, with its huge crucifix from Ober-Ammergau, where the household sing in parts, are very touching. Still more so are the Sunday services in the beautiful church, close to the house, the low mass, then the full surpliced choir and the blazing lights, and the holy rood above the reredos glittering through them in a golden glamour. In the darker aisle where we sat were the sleeping alabaster figures of the late Lord and Lady Halifax upon their great altar-tomb, and near me the dearest friend of my long-ago was kneeling--a stainless knight--in a rapt devotion which seemed to carry him far into the unseen. I could only feel, as Inglesant at Little Gidding, the presence of a peace and glory utterly unearthly, and as if there--as nowhere else--Heaven took possession of one and entered into one’s soul.

“A journey through the Fen country took me to Campsea Ashe, where the artistic party collected in the pleasant Lowther home spent a most pleasant week in drawing--studying--by the silent moats of old-timbered houses--Parham, Seckford, and Otley. We went also to the attractive old town of Woodbridge, where Percy Fitzgerald lived, who wrote so many capital articles. A characteristic story told of him is that he once spent the evening in the company of a bore who buzzed on incessantly about this lord and that till he could bear it no longer and left the room, but as he did so, opened the door once more, and, putting in his head, said, ‘I knew a lord once, but he’s dead!’

“I was at Felixstowe for a day afterwards, and made acquaintance--friends, I hope--with Felix Cobbold, a most attractive fellow, with a delightful house, and a garden close above the sea, which truly makes ‘the desert smile’ in that most hideous of all sea-places. Then I was a night at the Palace at Norwich, full of childish reminiscence to me, and most stately and beautiful it all looked--the smooth lawns and bright flowers, the grand grey cathedral and soaring spire, the old chapel and ruin; only the palace itself has had all the picturesqueness washed out of it. Its geography is entirely altered, but it was delightful to recognise old nooks and corners, and I almost seemed to see my Mother sitting by the old-fashioned chimney-piece in the Abbey-room. I spent a delightful evening with the Bishop (Pelham), who poured out a rich store of anecdote and recollection for hours. He spoke much of Manning, whom he had known most intimately--how his characteristic had always been his ambition. He wanted in early life to have gone into Parliament; then, when that failed, he wished to have entered diplomacy; then his father’s bank broke, and he was obliged to go into the Church. ‘Your uncle Julius and he,’ said the Bishop, ‘were once with my brother (Lord Chichester), and Manning had been holding forth upon the celibacy of the clergy. “At least you will agree with me,” he said, turning to my brother, “that celibacy is the holier state.” “Then of course you think,” said my brother, “that matrimony is a less holy state than celibacy.” And he started, with a reminiscence of his own happy married life, and said, “Oh no!”’

“The Bishop talked much of Jenny Lind’s visit to Norwich when he was here with the Stanleys; how the Duke of Cambridge had spoken to her of the wonderful enjoyment her noble gift of voice must be, and how she had answered, ‘I do enjoy it, and I thank God for giving it to me, and I feel that in return I ought to use it first for His glory, and then for the raising of my profession.’ When her great concert took place, Mr. Thompson, a Norwich doctor, who had the management of the town charities, ventured to put the best of the workhouse school-girls under the orchestra, where no one could see them, whilst they could hear everything. But Jenny was sometimes greatly overcome at the end of one of her own songs, and it was so then, and when her song was over, she retired to her own room; but, to reach it, she had to pass under the orchestra, and there she saw a number of girls in tears, and asked who they were. Mr. Thompson came to explain with some diffidence, for he did not know how she would take it; but she was much interested, and asked, ‘Is there any one of your charities especially to which I could be of any use?’ And he thought a minute and said, ‘What we really want is a children’s hospital; there has never been one in Norwich.’--‘Then that is just what I will give a concert for,’ said Jenny Lind; and of course every one was delighted, and so the hospital was started. Afterwards she sent down some one incognito to see how it was managed, and the report was so favourable that she said she would give another concert, and that set it up altogether. It is now the ‘Jenny Lind Hospital.’

“Talking of the late event at York led to the Bishop’s saying, ‘I heard a fine thing of Archbishop Musgrave. I was not meant to hear it, though. I was at Bishopthorpe to preach a consecration sermon for the Bishop of Ripon. It was before I was a bishop myself, and I knew nothing about precedence, and did not take my proper place in the procession as was intended, though I was all ready, and I let them all pass out before me. Only the Archbishop and Mrs. Musgrave remained. The Archbishop had had a stroke of apoplexy then, from which he was only just recovering, and it was his first appearance since, and they were all very anxious about him. Just as they were leaving the house, the Archbishop said to his wife, “My dear, take this key: it will unlock that box, in which you will find a commission ready signed and sealed for the three bishops present to take my place if anything happens to me during the service: whatever happens to me, the service must not be stopped.” And they went on quietly to the church. I did not know which to admire most, the Archbishop for making the speech, or Mrs. Musgrave’s perfect calmness in hearing it and in taking the key. I spoke of it to Mrs. Bickersteth (the Bishop of Ripon’s wife) afterwards, and she said, “That explains what the Archbishop said to me last night--‘I am afraid you may be anxious about the service to-morrow: set yourself quite at rest: everything is quite settled, so that, whatever happens to me, the ceremony of to-morrow will be carried out.’”

“The Lowthers joined me at Norwich, and we went together to Woodbastwick, and for a delightful visit to the Locker-Lampsons at Cromer. What an enchanting place it is! All the society meets on the beach. Two bathing-machines were drawn up side by side, and their inmates were in the sea. ‘I hope you will kindly consider this as a visit,’ said one of them to his neighbour, with his head just above the water. ‘Oh, certainly,’ said the neighbour, ‘and I hope you will kindly consider this as a visit returned.’

“Mr. Locker is delightful. He says, ‘I suppose what makes a bore is a man’s perpetually harping upon one subject, not knowing what details to leave out, and insisting upon making his voice heard at unsuitable times. But certainly a bore is a bore in accordance with what he is talking about: if, for instance, a man went on talking for hours of my “Lyra Elegantiarum,” I should never think him a bore.’ ‘My dear,’ he says to Mrs. Locker-Lampson, ‘are you not sometimes of rather too rigid a disposition? You know, at railway stations you often point out to me a man as eternally damned because he wears trousers with rather a broad check, and has an unusually large cigar in his mouth.’

“In Lady Buxton’s pretty house are a whole gallery of Richmond portraits--a stately full-length of (her aunt) Mrs. Fry, most speaking likenesses of her benignant father, her beautiful mother, of Sarah and Anna Gurney, the ‘Cottage Ladies’--of her father-in-law, Sir Fowell of the Slave Trade--of her sons and brothers-in-law. Yellow tulips, like those at Florence, grow wild in her fields in abundance, and the cows eat them.”

* * * * *

To the COUNTESS OF DARNLEY.

“Hotel d’Italie, Rome, March 30, 1892.--I think you will have wondered what has become of me, and that you will like to know.

“I have been abroad since November 16, beginning by a week at Paris with George Jolliffe, who was very ill then, and a month spent at Cannes in visits to the De Wesselows, old friends of my Hurstmonceaux childhood; and to my old schoolfellow Fred Walker and his nice wife, one of the few people I know who have seen two separate and undoubted ghosts with their own eyes. How civilised and be-villa’d Cannes is now, almost the least pretentious house remaining in it being the little Villa Nevada, where the Duke of Albany died, which was close to us, and which was so often visited by ‘Madame d’Angleterre,’ as the people of Cannes call our Queen. My ever-kindest of hosts were more people-seeking than place-seeing. We had one delightful picnic, however, at the old deserted villa of Castellaras, looking upon the blue gorge of the Saut de Loup. A little suspicion of earthquake remained in the air from the alarm of the last shock, when my friends’ native housemaid had refused to leave the window, saying, ‘Puisque le dernier jour est arrivé, je veux avoir les yeux partout, pour voir ce que se passe!’ Here at Rome there was a smart shock this spring. Our old friend Miss Garden asked her ‘donna’ if she was frightened. ‘Oh yes,’ she said; ‘I felt the two walls of my little room press in upon my bed. I knew what it was. But I could not remember which was the right saint to pray to in an earthquake. So I just prayed to my own grandmother, for she was the best person I ever knew, and immediately I heard the voice of my grandmother, who said, “Don’t be frightened; it will all pass; no harm will come to you.” So then I was quite calm and satisfied.’ Might not this incident account for many stories of Catholic saints?

“I spent a week at Bordighera. Such varied points for walks! villages like Sasso, which are just bright bits of umber colour amongst the tender grey olives; little painted towns amongst the orange-gardens, like Dolceacqua, with its pointed bridge and blue river and great deserted palace of the Dorias. George Macdonald, a most grand old patriarch to look upon, is king of the place. He writes constantly, and never leaves the house, except to see a neighbour in need of help or comfort. One after another of his delicate daughters has faded away, but his sons seem strong and well, and there are several adopted children in the house, half in and half out of the family, but all calling Mrs. Macdonald ‘Mama.’ It is a very unusual household, but ruled in a spirit of love which is most beautiful. I dined with them, the dining-table placed across one end of the vast common sitting-room. On Sunday evenings he gives a sort of Bible lecture, which all the sojourners in Bordighera may attend.

“Then I was a month in a palatial hotel at S. Remo, and greatly enjoyed bright winter days of quiet drawing in its ravines with their high-striding bridges, by its torrents full of Titanic boulders, or on its pathlets winding through vine and fig gardens or along precipitous crags; most of all in a delicious palm-shaded cove by the sea, where I spent whole days alone with the great chrysoprase waves breaking over the rocks in showers of crystal spray. With a charming Mrs. Rycroft and her pleasant Eton boys, I made longer excursions to Ceriano and Badalucco, very curious places surrounded by high mountains, with deep gorges, old bridges, and waterfalls.

“But it is in changed, spoilt Rome that I have spent the last two months. All picturesqueness is now washed out of the place, so that people who have any interest about them now usually give it only a glance and pass on. It has been delightful for me, however, that Miss Hosmer is settled in this hotel, and that we dine together daily at a little round table, where she is a constant coruscation of wit and wisdom. All day she is shut up in her studio, which is closed to all the world, but she cannot have a dull time, by the stories she has to tell of the workmen and models who are her only companions. Here are a few of them, only they sound nothing without her twinkling eyes and capital manner of telling:--

“‘Minicuccia was an excellent model, but very jealous. “Have you seen Rosa? What fine arms she has!” I said to her one day. “I have seen Rosaccia” she replied, “and I should have thought, Signorina, that a lady of your taste would have known better than to admire her arms. What are they in comparison with really fine arms--with mine, for instance?”

“‘One day Minicuccia was at a café, and some one admired the legs of another model. Forthwith she gathered up her petticoats, and danced with her legs perfectly bare all about the place. She was not a bad woman; on the contrary, she was a very moral one, and there was never a word against her, but she wanted to show what fine legs were. The police, however, heard of that escapade, and she was put in prison for a month afterwards for such an offence against the decenza pubblica. Poor Minicuccia!

“‘Then there was Nana, whom Lady Marian (Alford) painted so often, and whom she was so fond of. She was a magnificent woman. Dear Lady Marian used to say, “I would give anything to be able to come into a room with the grace and dignity of Nana.” Her dignity was natural to her. Another model once said to me, “I met that Nanaccia; she was walking down the Via Sistina as if it all belonged to her.”

“‘There was a very nice boy-model I had, Fortunato he was called. He is dead now--died of consumption, for he was always delicate. One day he said to me, “Last Sunday, Signorina, I went to the garden of the Cappuccini, and it is such a garden!--quite full of fruit, the most beautiful fruit. And the Fathers are so kind; they said I might eat as much as ever I liked; only think of that, Signorina!”--“Well, that was kind indeed; but what sort of fruit was it?”--“O, cipolle and lettuge,[499] Signorina--most delicious fruit.”

“‘Marietta was another model who came to me, a large handsome woman. One day I said to her, “Now, Marietta, I want you to look sad--tutta dolorosa.”--“What! lagrime, Signorina?”--“No,” I said, “only look sad; but if I wanted lagrime, could I have them too?”--“Sì, Signora: basta pensare a quel calzolajo chi m’a fatto pagare sette lire in vece di cinque, et piango subito.”[500]

“‘Marietta had a brother who managed her little business for her. I asked her if it would not be very easy for him to misappropriate a scudo now and then. “Facile sì,” she said, “essendo fratello.”

“‘Mariuccia lived to be old, and many is the dinner and paolo I have given her; but when she was fifteen or so, she was the model for Mr. Gibson’s ‘Psyche borne by the Zephyrs.’ She was always a wonderful model: no one could act or stand as she did.

“‘Then there was that woman who had the drunken husband, who used to beat her. One night he came in late and fell down dead drunk across the bed. She took her needle and thread, and sewed him up in the sheets so that he could not move, and then she took a stick, and beat him so that he died of it: she was imprisoned for some years for that, though.

“‘I asked one of the workmen what he did when every one was away. “Why, Signorina, I have the studio to clean out.”--“Well, I suppose that takes you half-an-hour; and what do you do then?”--“Ma, Signorina, sto a sedere.”--“And after your dinner, what do you do then?”--“Sto ancora a sedere, Signorina.”--“Well, and in the evening?”--“Ma, Signorina, continuo di stare a sedere.”

“‘My man Gigi came to me the other day and said, “I went to the Acqua Acetosa[501] last Sunday, Signorina, and I liked the water so much, I drank no less than twenty fiaschi of it.”--“Well,” I said, “Gigi, that was a good deal; I’ll get twenty fiaschi of it, and put twenty scudi down by them, and then, if you can drink them all off, you shall have the scudi.”--“Well, Signorina, perhaps I did exaggerate a little: now I come to think it over, perhaps it was ten fiaschi I drank.”--“Well, do it again before me, and you shall have ten scudi.” “Now, Signorina, you know I like to be precise, perhaps it was six fiaschi I drank.”--“Well, do it again and you shall have six scudi.”--“Well, I suppose it really was two fiaschi.”--“Oh, I could drink that myself!”’

“You may imagine how entertaining stories like these--traits from the life around one--make our little dinners, and afterwards we often go into the Storys’ apartment close by, where the easy intellectual pleasant talk and fun are always reviving. Besides, it amuses Mrs. Story, who is most sadly ailing now, though her cheerfulness is an example. She says she comforts her sleepless nights by the old distich--

‘For all the ills beneath the sun There is a cure, or there is none: If there is one, try to find it; If there is none, never mind it.’

“Nothing can describe the charm of Mr. Story’s natural bubble of fun and wit, or the merry twinkle which often comes into his eye, even now, at moments when his wife’s illness does not make him too anxious.[502] He and Miss Hosmer are capital together. It is difficult to say what are their ‘projecting peculiarities,’ as Dr. Chalmers would have called them, they have so many; but they are all of a perfectly delightful kind.

“‘Well, what’s the news, Harriet?’ he said as we went in to-night. ‘Why, that I am going to be married.’--‘What! to the Pope?’--‘Yes, only I didn’t want it to get out till he announced it himself.’

“‘An American was looking at my statue of Canidia the other day,’ said Mr. Story, and exclaimed--“Ah! Dante, I suppose, or is it--Savonarola?” Another man who came to my studio said, “Mr. Story, have you baptized your statue?”--“Why, yes,” I said; “generally we think of the name first, and then we set to work in accordance with it.”--“Well,” he said, “there’s some as doos, and there’s some as doosn’t.”’

“Mrs Story was very amusing about an Italian who wanted a portrait of his father very much, and came to an artist she knew and asked him to paint it. The artist asked, ‘But when can I see your father?’--‘Oh, you can’t see him: he’s dead.’--‘But how can I paint him, then?’--‘Well, I can describe him, and he was very like me: I think you can paint him very well.’ So the artist painted away, according to the description, as well as he could. When he had finished the portrait he sent for the son, anxious to see if he would find any likeness. The son rushed up to the picture, knelt down by it, was bathed in tears, and sobbed out, ‘O padre mio, quanto avete sofferto, o quanto siete cambiato: O non l’aveva mai riconosciuto.’

“Mr. Story says that when Othello was performed at Rome, he saw it with an Italian friend, who said afterwards, ‘Convengo che ci sono qualche belle concette in questa dramma, ma fare tanto disturbo per un fazzoletto non mi conviene.’

“Miss Hosmer told of a countryman who was asked what he thought of a train, for he had just seen one for the first time--seen it as it was entering a tunnel. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it was just a black monster with a goggle eye, and when it saw me, it gave a horrible shriek and ran into its hole.’

“I should like you to have heard Miss Hosmer’s recollections of Kestner, whose name was so familiar to me in old Bunsen days. He died soon after she first came to Rome, but she recollects him as always wearing his old red studio cap. He knew he was dying, and when it was very near the end, he said to those who were with him, ‘Now, my dear friends, it is a very sad experience to see a person die: I must beg you to leave me: it is my great wish to be alone, and you may come back in two hours.’ They came back in two hours, and found him lying peacefully dead. That is a beautiful story, I think. It was Kestner who, priding himself very much on his good English, said to Lord Houghton, ‘Allow me to present to you my knee-pot (nipote).’

“Outside the charmed circle of Palazzo Barberini there is little now at Rome but the most inferior American society. ‘We must stop at Milan, you know, going back; there is a picture there by a man called Leonard Vinchey we must be sure to see,’ said a neighbour at the hotel luncheon. And, ‘Mr. Brown, sir, how’s Mrs. Brown’?--‘Well, she’s slim but round’ (meaning weak but about): this is the sort of thing one hears.

“In this hotel is the intelligent Indian Princess Tanjore, with whom I have spent several evenings very pleasantly. Her ‘lady’ is Miss Blyth, sister of the Bishop of Jerusalem, and authoress of that capital novel ‘Antoinette.’

“Dear old Miss Garden, whom you will remember hearing of as the kindest and most original of Scottish ladies, still lives at 64 Via Sistina. ‘How did you manage to boil the eggs so well, Maria, when you can’t tell the clock?’ said Miss Garden to her old donna, ‘for the eggs are just perfect.’--‘Why, I’ll tell you how it is,’ said Maria: ‘a lady I lived with showed me how to do it. I just put them into the water, and then I say thirty-three Credos, and then I know that they’re done.’

“With Miss Garden and Mrs. Ramsay I went one day to the curious little early christian cemetery of S. Generosa, a lovely spot, where marble slabs covering the graves of martyrs under Diocletian are still seen in a little hollow surrounded by wild roses and fenochii.

“My room in this hotel looks out on the Barberini gardens, and the splash of its fountain is an enjoyment. Its being lighted by electricity for the King’s visit the other day was a type of the times, rather a contrast to twenty years ago, when there were torches on every step of the great staircase to welcome even a cardinal, and when not only the staircase, but the whole street as far as S. Teresa, was hung with tapestries for the Prince’s funeral.

“On Ash-Wednesday I went, as I have always done here, to the ‘stations’ on the Aventine. It is still a thoroughly Roman scene. Before one reaches S. Sabina, one is assailed by the chorus of old lady beggars seated in a double avenue of armchairs leading up to the door, with ‘Datemi qualche cosa, signore, per l’amore della Madonna, datemi qual’co;’ and behind them kneel the old men--‘Poveri, poveretti cieci, signore,’ in brown gowns and with arms stretched out alla maniera di S. Francesco. Spread with box is the church itself, with its doors wide open to the cloistered porch and the sacred orange-tree[504] seen in the sunny garden beyond. The Abbot is standing there, and has his hand kissed by all the monks who arrive for the stations, till a cardinal appears, after which he takes the lower place and is quite deserted. Then we all hurry on to S. Alessio and its crypt, and then to the Priorato garden, where, by old custom, we look through the keyhole of the door, and see St. Peter’s down a beautiful avenue of bays.

“The passage of the Pope to the Sistine on his coronation anniversary was a very fine sight. Borne along in his golden chair, with the white peacock fans waving in front of him, and wearing his triple crown, Leo XIII. looked dying, but gave his benediction with the most serene majesty, sinking back between each effort upon his cushions, as if the end had indeed come. Only his eyes lived, and lived only in his office; otherwise his perfectly spiritualised countenance seemed utterly unconscious of the thundering evvivas with which he was greeted, and which rose into a perfect roar as he was carried into the Sala Regia. The potency of ‘Orders’ here is so great, that my Swedish decoration not only gave me the best place, but I took in two young men as my chaplain and equerry! After the Pope had entered the Sistine, we sat in great comfort in the Sala Regia till he returned, and then, as there was no one between us and the procession, we saw all the individual faces of the old cardinals--how few of them the same now as those I remember in the processions of Pius IX.

“There are no evvivas now for the comparatively young king with the white hair and the ever-tragic countenance: the taxes are too great. I believe that he can read, if no one else can, the handwriting on the wall which foretells the doom of his southern kingdom. And yet personally no one could be braver or more royal, and, where they detest the king, the people honour the man. ‘Your king is at that house which has fallen down, helping with his own hands to dig out that old man who is buried: he won’t leave till the old man is safe,’ said Mrs. Story to her Italian maid Margherita. ‘Si, Signora, casa di Savoia manca qualche volta di testa, mai di cuore;’ and it is quite true. All one hears of the King’s self-abnegation is so fine. He used to be quite devoted to smoking, but he was ill, and one day his physician told him that it was extremely deleterious to him. He instantly took his cigar out of his mouth, threw it into the back of the fire, and has never smoked again.

“The Pope’s secretary has just died of the influenza. Leo XIII. was much attached to him, and is greatly distressed by his death. There is something touching in the newspaper account of the Pope’s having refused to eat, and his attendants having had to use qualche dolce violenze to make him do it.

“We have had two months of rain, only four fine days last week, in which I went to the Crimera, to Fidenae, to Ostia, and to a touching and beautiful Mass in the heart of the Catacomb of S. Praetextatus, where the martyrs’ hymn was sung by a full choir upon their graves, its cadences swelling through the subterranean church and dying away down the endless rude passages, so long their refuge, and at last their place of death.

“And now I must stop. I am just come up from luncheon. ‘Wal, I guess I’m stuffed, but I’m not appeased,’ said my neighbour as we came out; and she was con rispetto parlando, as they say here--a lady.”

* * * * *

To HUGH BRYANS.

“Rome, April 26, 1892.--How I wish you were here: how you would enjoy it, though there is little to admire now in this much-changed Rome beyond the extreme loveliness of the spring, with its Judas and May flowers, and the golden broom of the Campagna. I have just been, with my old friends Mrs. Ramsay and Miss Garden, to the Villa Doria to pick anemones. There were thousands of them, and the ladies gathered them in like a harvest. Their servant was told off to look after the violets. Their late man, Francesco, said his was usually a very light place--‘ma nella primavera, al tempo dei violette, e duro veramente.’

“I have seen little of the Easter ceremonies. On Holy Thursday I went to St. Peter’s, and watched in the immense crowd for the extinction of the last candle and beginning of the Miserere; but all the effect was lost and the music inaudible from the incessant moving and talking. Afterwards there was a fine scene at the blessing of the altar in the already dark church--the procession, with lights, moving up and down the altar-steps, and then kneeling all along the central aisle, whilst the relics were exhibited from the brilliantly lighted gallery.

“Fifty-eight artisans and schoolmasters from the Toynbee Hall Institute, with some of their wives, have been in Rome for the Easter holidays. On Thursday I took them all over the Palatine, finding them most delightful companions, and the most informed and interested audience I have ever known. So since that I have been with them to the Appian Way, and Miss Fleetwood Wilson kindly invited the whole party to tea at the old Palazzo Mattei, unaltered through three hundred years. I made friends with many of the party individually, and think that for really good, intelligent, high-minded society, one should frequent the East End.

“What struck me most of all was the absence amongst them of the scandal-talk which in our own society is so prevalent. ‘Consider how cheap a kindness it is not to speak ill: it only requires silence,’ is an exhortation of Bishop Tillotson. They remember this; we don’t.

“Do you recollect the pretty Miss Cators? With them and some pleasant Americans, and Lanciani the famous archaeologist, I have been up Monte Cavi. Lanciani was most delightful, and told us about everything in a way which had all the enthusiasm and colour without the dry bones of archaeology, and oh! what lilies, violets, cyclamen, narcissus, covered the woods. Another day he lectured on old Fidenae, standing aloft on the ancient citadel, with all his listeners in groups on the turf around him, and afterwards they all had luncheon--still in scattered groups: it was like the pictures of the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

“It has been a great pleasure to see a good deal of ‘Mark Twain’ (Mr. Samuel Clemens) and his most charming wife. He is a wiry, thin old man, with abundant grey hair, full round the head, like an Italian zazzara. He speaks very slowly, dragging his words and sentences laboriously, and is long in warming up, and when he does, he walks about the room whilst he makes all his utterances, which have additional drollery from the slowness with which they are given. He began life as a wharfinger, throwing parcels into barges, and as he threw them the overseer called out ‘Mark one, Mark twain,’ and the chime of the words struck him, and he took the name. Speaking of the Catacombs he said, ‘I might have hooked the bone of a saint and carried it off in my carpet-sack, but then I might get caught with it at the frontier. I should not like to get caught with a thing like that; I would rather it were something else.’ ‘That story by Symonds,’ he said, ‘of a crucifix which contained a dagger, reminds me of the State of Maine. Spirits were strictly forbidden there, but pocket-testaments became very abundant. They contained two or three leaves, then there was a whisky flask. Now with one of those crucifixes and one of these pocket-testaments, one might cope with the worst society in the world.’

“‘My man George has made his fortune,’ said Mark Twain. ‘He used to bet on revivals, then he took to betting on horses: he understands it all round, and he has made a good thing of it.

“‘One night when I came home unawares, I found the house-door open. After going in and poking round, I rang up George. “Well,” I said, “George, you’ve been here probably some hours with the house-door undone.”--“Good heavens!” he cried, striking his forehead, and rushed up the stairs five steps at a time. When he came down I said, “Why, George, what was the matter?”--“The matter! why, that the house-door was left open, and that there were fifteen hundred dollars between my mattresses.”’

“Mrs. Clemens spoke to George one day about his answering ‘Not at home’ when she did not want to see visitors. In England it is understood, but in quiet places in America it is not: it is a lie. And Mrs. Clemens said, ‘George, you really should not say what you know is not true; you should say I’m engaged or that I beg to be excused.’ George came close up to her and said, ‘Mrs. Clemens, if I did not lie, you’d not be able to keep house a month.’

“A rival to Mark Twain, or rather one who draws him out capitally, is an American Miss Page, a very handsome elderly woman like an ancient Juno. She said yesterday, ‘I must be going home soon to see all the coloured friends and relations. Aunt Maria was groaning very much one day, so I asked her if she had found religion. She said, “No, but she was on the anxious bench.” A few days after she had “found religion,” and I asked her about it. “Why,” she said, “I got religion, and when I found that I’d got religion, I just did make the chignots (chignons) fly. And so we did all; we danced so hard that Uncle Adam had to be sent right away the next day to bring them all home in a wheelbarrow.”

“‘My cousin was begged of by a woman one night,” said Miss Page. ‘She was very violent, and she said, “You must give me money, you shall, or I’ll say you’re Jack the Ripper.” He went close up to her, and in sepulchral accents whispered “I am!” and the woman ran off as hard as she could.’

“There are other friends I must tell you about. At No. 38 Gregoriana, in a delightfully home-like apartment with a view of St. Peter’s, live Miss Leigh Smith and her friend Miss Blyth. The former is a sister of Madame Bodichon, who was such an admirable artist, and is of a most serene, noble, and beautiful countenance, but perhaps severe: the latter is gentleness and sweetness itself, though she is less striking in appearance. Every one likes them both, but every one loves Miss Blyth. They are known as ‘Justitia’ and ‘Misericordia.’

“Another person of interest, another American, who has come to Rome to visit Miss Hosmer, is Mrs. Powers. She is charming. She said this to me to-day: ‘I took a young lady with me on a Mississippi steamer. She was very pretty and attractive. On the deck she sat by an old lady, who looked at her and ejaculated “Married?”--“No.” “Engaged?”--“No.” Just then her husband came up, and she said to him, “Here’s a young lady who says she’s not married and not engaged: how’s that?” He looked her all over and said, “Guess the pattern don’t take.”’

“And now, that you may be introduced to all my present society, Miss Hosmer is going to give you one of her dinner enliveners. ‘An American came in one day with, “Have you heard this extraordinary news from England?”--“No; what?”--“Why, about the Archbishop of Canterbury.”--“No; what about him?” “Why, about his having refused to bury a waiter at the Langham Hotel.”--“No; what a proud contemptuous priest he must be; but what possible reason could he give for refusing to bury the waiter?”--“Why, that he was not dead.”

“‘That’s a good catch,’ says Miss Hosmer, who is talking to you; ‘and now I’ll give you another. A young man--a very charming young man--was engaged to be married, and he went down from London for the wedding to the place where his bride lived, full of the brightest hopes and expectations, and in his pocket he carried the ring with which he was going to marry his love. But alas! when he reached his destination, his love had changed her mind, thought better of it, would not marry him at all. So he came away very miserable, and he thought he would go and hide his sorrows in a little fishing-village, where he had often been in happier days; he really could not face the world yet. And as soon as he arrived at the village, he went out in a boat, and took the ring from his pocket, and threw it far out to sea. Next day a remarkably fine fish was brought to table, and when it was opened, what do you think they found?--“Why, the ring,” of course you will say, as I did--No, a fishbone.’ A most provoking story!

“There are two Misses Feuchtwanger in the hotel, kindest of elderly American ladies, full of funny reminiscence. ‘Mrs. Broadhurst,’ said one of them, ‘liked nothing so much as going to dine with her old “Black Mammy;” it was the thing she liked best: and so, through a long course of years, she heard Black Mammy’s old husband say grace, and the words he used were always the same. “Beautiful mansions, we thee redorable, many sensations, Amen.” The sound meant a whole world to him.’

“But I shall send you too much anecdotage, so good-night.”

* * * * *

To the HON. G. H. JOLLIFFE and JOURNAL.

“Rome, April 27.--All the features of this Roman spring have been American. Mrs. Lee was in this hotel. ‘I was just raised in the South,’ she said, ‘and I’m a Southerner to the backbone. Some one wanted to be complimentary, and wrote of me in a newspaper as one raised in the lap of luxury, but I was just raised in the lap of an old nigger.’ She was very full of having been to the masquerade ball at La Scala. ‘It was awfully indecent. I could not have let my daughter go, but for me it did not matter; so I just went, and stayed to the end, for I thought some one might come along and say, “Ah! you don’t know about that, because it happened after you left,” so I thought I’d just see what was indecent for once; it might be my only chance; and I made quite sure nothing should happen after I left.’

“‘Don’t you know,’ she says, ‘that we call a story we have heard before “a chestnut”? Why, in America the smart young men used to wear a little bell on their watch-chains, and if they heard a story too often, they rung it to show the story was stale. That was the chestnut-bell.’

“Perhaps the most interesting American here is the Bishop of Nova Scotia. ‘“I’ve captured a church,” said a young American parson to me. “Captured a church! what in the world do you mean?”--“Why, I went into a church where the boys (soldiers) go, and I was asked to take the service. Soon the boys came in, and I saw that there was going to be a row. A lot of them sat down by the door, and as soon as I began to preach, one of them crowed like a cock. I said, ‘Just crow again, will you; I’m not ready for you yet.’ So he crowed again. Then I said, ‘Now, if you crow again, I’ll just fix up your beak to the anvil of God’s righteousness, and I’ll beat out your brains with the sledge-hammer of the wrath of God. Now, crow again, if you dare,’ and he did not crow any more, so I captured the church.”

“‘I would not give five cents to hear what Bob Ingleson considers to be the faults of Moses, but I’d give every cent I possess to know what Moses thinks of the faults of Bob Ingleson.

“‘I asked somebody if he thought my sermon was too low or too high, and he said “Neither, but I thought it was too long.”’

“I always dine at a little table with Miss Hosmer, where I am sure her fun and wit are more nourishing than all the rest of the viands put together. She says, ‘Our real name is Osmer, but our country people could never manage a name like that, so we voluntarily added the H. Generally, provided we are born somehow, we never care who our fathers and mothers were; but I did, and I had an uncle who found out that we were descended from a robber chieftain on the Rhine. Afterwards, in Turner’s “History of the Anglo-Saxons,” I found that the robber chief Osmer was one of the sons of Ida, king of Northumberland, and Ida claimed descent from Odin, so it is from Odin that I descend.’

“‘I promised to tell you about the siege of Rome,’ said Miss Hosmer the other day. ‘All that year we knew it was coming, and at last it came. The Italians had 70,000 men, and the Pope had only 11,000, so of course all effectual resistance was out of the question; but it was necessary to make a semblance of defence, to show that the Romans only gave in to force. September came, and the forestieri who remained in Rome were all urged to leave, but Miss Brewster and I elected to stay. We were not likely to have another chance of seeing a bombardment, so we just hung an American flag out of our windows; that we were told we must do, as it might be necessary to protect us from pillage. All the other forestieri left, and most of the Roman aristocracy. In the last days, when the Sardinians were just going to enter, there was a solemn Mass in St. Peter’s for the Pope, to implore protection for him against his enemies. I went with Miss Brewster. It was the most striking sight I ever saw. Every corner of the vast church was filled. Every one was in black--every one except the Pope in his white robes, and when he appeared, a universal wail echoed through the church. It was not a silent cry; it was the wail of thousands. There was not a dry eye in the church. The Pope passed close to me. His face was as white as his dress, and down his face the large tears kept rolling, and all his clergy, in black, were crying too. Oh, it was a terrible sight. I am not a Catholic, I am much the contrary, but I sobbed; every one did. Well, the Pope passed into the chapel where he was to say Mass, and he said it, and he walked back again; but he was still crying. It was very piteous, and when we went out into the piazza, there was Monte Mario white with the tents of the Italians, waiting, like vultures, to descend. It was uncertain, for the last few days, by which gate they would enter. It was thought it would be by the Porta Angelica, then by the Porta del Popolo; finally, it was by the Porta Pia.

“‘We were told that there would be no bombardment, but at five in the morning we were waked by the cannon, and they went on till ten. Shells came flying over our house, and one of them struck the church near us, and carried part of it away. At ten there seemed to be a cessation, so I sallied out as far as the Quattro Fontane, with my man Pietro behind me. When I got into the Via Pia (now Venti Settembre), I heard a cry of “In dietro! in dietro!” and the people ran. I thought I might as well get out of the way too, but indeed, any way, I was carried back by the crowd. I heard what I thought was a scampering of feet behind me, and when I reached the Quattro Fontane, I looked back, and seeing a man I knew, I said, “Why, what is the matter with you?” for he was covered with blood, and he said, “Why, Signorina, did not you know that a shell burst close behind you, and it has carried off several of my fingers, Signorina?” So I just took him into my house and gave him some wine, and bound his hand up as well as I could, and then sent him on to a surgeon. Then I went up to Rossetti’s house beyond the Cappuccini, because I thought from his loggia I should be able to see all that was to be seen; but as soon as we reached the roof a musket-ball grazed my face, and others were playing round us, so I said, “We had better get out of this,” and we went down.

“‘After the firing finally stopped, we went to Porta Pia to see the damage. The house which is now the British Embassy was completely riddled. Six dead Zouaves were lying in the Villa Napoleone opposite, and though the statues of S. Peter and S. Paul, which you will remember at the gate, were otherwise intact, both their heads were lying at their feet.

“‘At four, we went out again to see the Italian troops march into the city. There was no enthusiasm whatever. The troops divided, some going by S. Niccola, others by the Quattro Fontane, to their different barracks.’

“No one who did not know the ‘has been’ can believe how the sights of the Rome of our former days have dwindled away. All is now vulgarity and tinsel: the calm majesty of the Rome of our former winters is gone for ever.”

* * * * *

To MISS LEYCESTER.

“Cadenabbia, May 13.--At Florence, I went with the Duchess of Sermoneta and Lady Shrewsbury to spend an evening with the grand old family of Torrigiani, in the palace where the four sons, their wives, and children innumerable, live with their charming mother, the Marchesa Elisabetta, in perfect harmony and love; and another day went out to Poggio Gherardo, a grand fortified villa, approached through half-a-mile of roses, where the Ross’s now live. Then I was half a day at Padua, visiting it as a tourist after many years, with my own book as a guide, and a most delightful book I thought it!

“At Venice, I went to see ‘Pen Browning’ at the Palazzo Rezzonico, his most beautiful old palace, full of memorials of Pope Clement XIII. The son Browning has no likeness to either father or mother: he has worked hard, both as painter and sculptor, and has a good portrait as well as a bust of his father, from his own hands. There were many relics of his parents and their friends, amongst them a sketch by Rossetti of Tennyson reading one of his own poems to them, with an inscription by Mrs. Browning. ‘Pen’ was going off to his house at Asolo, a place which his father first brought into notice when he walked there and wrote ‘Pippa Passes.’

“Calling on a Mrs. Bronson in a neighbouring house, I met a young lady with fluffy hair, a Countess Mocenigo. ‘My dear, how many Doges had you in your family?’ said Mrs. B. ‘Seven,’ she answered, and there really were seven Doges of the name Mocenigo, besides all those from whom she was descended by the different marriages of her ancestors.

“Venice is still as full of odd stories as when my sister went to a party there, and was surprised because the oddly dressed old lady by her side never answered when she spoke, and then found she was made of wax. Most of the company were, being ancestors present thus in the family life of the present. Recently a lady named Berthold has lived at Venice who was of marvellous beauty and charm. All the society flocked to her parties. One evening she invited all her friends as usual. They found the palace splendidly lighted, and listened to the most exquisite music. At the close of the evening, curtains which concealed a platform at the end of the principal room were drawn aside, and within, the beautiful hostess was seen, seated on a throne, and sparkling with jewels, in all her resplendent loveliness. And then, as she waved a farewell to all present, the curtains were suddenly drawn, and she disappeared for ever. No human eye has seen her since. She had observed signs, unperceived by others, that her beauty was beginning to wane!

“In the hotel was a charming old lady who had just come back from Japan, and who was arrayed in a thick quilted and embroidered dress, presented to her by a Japanese lady. Her name, American fashion, was Mrs. Mary Ridge Perkins. Her husband had sent her abroad, as she said, ‘with a big letter of credit.’ ‘Mary, you may just go and do the honours of the old country alone.’ She hates English aristocrats, but was ameliorated towards Lord Digby, with whom she travelled back from Japan. He pressed her to come and see him in London--‘Not if you have your paint on.’ She has no children of her own, but, in the war, she and her husband adopted no less than thirty, who were rendered homeless. They all call her ‘Auntie Perkins,’ but their children call her grandmother. All the thirty are married now, and Mrs. Perkins never intends to leave her own home again, except to visit them. She came down to the gondola to see me off to the station with no bonnet on her aureole of short white curls, and I was touched by her parting benediction: ‘May your life always be happy, for you have always made others happy.’

“Here, at pleasant Cadenabbia, I have been glad to fall in with Lord and Lady Ripon. He said, ‘Do you know that you have been the cause of my buying a property in Italy?’ It was in consequence of the sentence in my ‘Cities of Central Italy’ beseeching some Roman Catholic nobleman to save such a sacred and historic place, that he had bought S. Chiara’s convent of S. Damiano near Assisi, giving its use to the monks on the sole condition that it was never to be ‘restored.’

“An odd thing has happened to me here, almost like a slight shadow on the path. I met ---- who lives here, and whom I used to know very well, and went up to meet him with pleasure, and he cut me dead! I have not an idea why, and he will give no explanation. ‘Il faut apprendre de la vie à souffrir la vie.’

“The Archbishop of York and Augusta are at Cadenabbia, and have taken me across the lake in their little boat to tea with Charlie Dalison on that lovely terrace of Villa Serbelloni.”

XXVIII

A KNOCKING AT THE DOOR

“Let us try to see, try to do, better always and better. No honourable, truly good and noble thing we do or have done for one another, but will bear its good fruit. That is as true as truth itself, a faith that should never fail us.”--CARLYLE’S Letters.

“What I must do is all that concerns me, and not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.

“It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what your duty is better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion: it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”--EMERSON.

“On parent knees, a naked new-born child, Weeping thou sat’st, while all around thee smiled: So live, that, sinking in thy last long sleep, Calm thou may’st smile while all around thee weep.” --SIR W. JONES, from the Persian.

The summer of 1892 was full of quiet pleasures. Visits to Cobham, Chevening, and to Mrs. Rycroft at Everlands, leave little to be remembered except the pleasant parties and the extreme kindness of hosts and hostesses everywhere. I am indeed glad that my visiting-lines are cast in such pleasant places, that I so seldom have to consort with the drearier part of human nature--the “Hem-haw, really, you don’t say so” sort of people. In these houses, where the conversation is perfectly charming, yet where no evil is spoken of any one or by any one, one sees truly how a christian spirit will christianise everything it touches, and one learns--as, indeed, when does one not learn?--that the best shield against slander is to live so that nobody may believe it.

In September I was at gloriously picturesque Montacute in Somersetshire, a noble house of yellow grey stone, where all the surroundings, terraces, vases, flowers, chime into the most harmonious whole. With its charming owner, Mrs. Phelips, I made an excursion to Ford, a grand old abbey altered into a luxurious dwelling-house by Inigo Jones, and where Time has blended the new work with the old, till they are equally picturesque. The great hall has its gothic roof of abbatial times, and in the stately saloon are noble Mortlake tapestries, said to have been presented by Charles I. to his Chancellor, but more probably the gift of Anne. Then I was with Lord Zouche, a pleasant friend of late times, at his fine old haunted house and ferny deer-park at Parham, meeting, with others, Lord Robert Bruce, called “the King of Hayling Island,” where he lives and brims over with fun and anecdote. I saw from Parham the new castle at Arundel, magnificently uncomfortable and containing little of interest. But there was something touching in looking into the open grave in which Cardinal Howard was to be laid in a few days, and remembering the different phases in which I had known him well--as the smartest of young Guardsmen, as a priest, where he seemed so unnatural, and finally as Cardinal. The recollection came back of how, when the other cardinals were shuffling along St. Peter’s, Cardinal Howard marched along in stately complacency, holding back his train on one side as a lady does her dress. “E troppo soldato,” said the other cardinals.

At Petworth I saw the magnificent Vandykes, Turners, and Reynoldses in the waste of its dreary saloons. Then with Mary Hare I went to Woolbeding, a drive through loveliest lanes, across an open common covered with fern turned brown by the early frost, and then down an avenue of magnificent Scotch firs, to where lines of gorgeous flowers led up to the house, like a French château with high roof and dormer windows. I had always wished to see its charming owner, Lady Lanerton, who was just what I expected--a beautiful old lady, quite unable from rheumatism to move out of the chair in which, put upon wheels, she can be taken to the services in the little church in the garden, filled with memorials of those she has loved and outlived. In her face was the satisfied and restful expression of one waiting in grateful patience and humblest hope upon the borderland. She seemed to say, what I have just read as amongst Mrs. Stowe’s last words, “I feel about all things now as I do about the things that happen in a hotel after my trunk is packed to go home. I may be vexed and annoyed--but what of it? I am going home soon.” In the garden, amongst the splendid profusion of old-fashioned flowers, I was glad to find Lady Bagot, linked with many memories of my long ago.

* * * * *

To the HON. G. H. JOLLIFFE.

“Nov. 1.--I have had an interesting and most pleasant visit to Sir John Lubbock, one of the most delightful of men, so entirely captivating in his simplicity of true wisdom, that no one could fail to be fond of him. His home of High Elms, near Orpington, is a beautiful place, quite near London, but with glorious woods and an entirely country aspect. Professor Forster and many other clever men were there, all far too learned for me, but I did not even try to ‘live up to them,’ and so enjoyed myself thoroughly. I went on from High Elms to Sir George Higginson’s at Great Marlow, and he--a very dear old friend--with all the manly straightforwardness of a splendid soldier and the chivalry of the most refined gentleness, is almost as attractive as Sir John, doing far more than many cleverer people to make life pleasant, and verifying Madame Swetchine’s words, ‘C’est par l’esprit qu’on s’amuse, c’est par le cœur qu’on ne s’ennuie pas.’ Thence, I was taken to see my Dashwood cousins at West Wycombe House, which is full of curious pictures and furniture, recalling a French château of the beginning of the eighteenth century, even in the peculiarly refined and delicate loveliness of its chatelaine.”

* * * * *

To VISCOUNT HALIFAX.

“Nov. 9.--I have been very ill. It was a bad chill at first, followed by most terrible pains, which I thought were part of the chill, and struggled against, moving about when I ought to have kept perfectly still. When at last I sent for a doctor, he said I had been in most imminent danger for several days, and that I must have died before another forty-eight hours were over if he had not come just then. A slight operation was necessary at once to re-arrange an internal misplacement, and this relieved the agonising pain. I have not often been before so immediately, never so suddenly, face to face with possible death. For some hours no one knew how it would go, yet I have often felt more ill. There was constantly in my mind a text which I believe is in the Old Testament somewhere, ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’ and I rested upon it somehow. There seems something almost cowardly in the way in which, when very ill, one turns for comfort to texts and hymns and prayers, which one seldom thinks of at other times. But I do find them a comfort, and I suppose it is partly the natural transition from active to contemplative life.... Still I cannot say what my extreme thankfulness was when it was pronounced that all was going on well and that I was likely to recover. I suspect that I shall have to ‘go softly’ for a long time to come, perhaps always, and never be quite as well as I have been: still, in the many mercies which are left to me, I shall never have time to think of the disagreeables.

“How strange it is when one knows, when one is told, that one is almost in the valley of the shadow of death! I felt more surprised than frightened; indeed, I do not think I felt frightened at all, I could leave it so completely in wiser Hands. But I know that I looked very wistfully at all the little familiar pictures on the wall, feeling how sorry I should be to see them for the last time, and to part from all ‘the boys’ and my many interests here, and go into the unknown, of which one knows so little; only that I do, absolutely and entirely, trust in the mercy of God, and know that it will be well somehow; as to the how, God will know best how to settle it.

“Perhaps it may be, as in Michelangelo’s sonnet--

‘Not death indeed, but the dread thought of death saveth and severeth.’

“I may not always go on feeling so; but I feel now as if I had left my long youth on the other side of this illness. Andersen says, ‘The stem of the pine-tree forms knots which betray the age of the tree: human life has also its perceptible rings;’ I suspect this illness will be a perceptible ring to me.”

* * * * *

To the HON. G. H. JOLLIFFE.

“Dec. 21, 1892.--You know how ill I was in November, but you do not know all the serious thoughts it awakened. ‘Il est ennuyeux de vivre dans la grâce de Dieu, mais tout le monde veut y mourir;’ is that what you would answer? I have a great deal to say about it, but as you will like facts better, I will only tell you that since I recovered I have been quite a tour of visits, beginning with Lady Beauchamp,[507] and meeting charming Lady Granville and a party of sixteen young men and maidens at Madresfield Court, a moated house with a lovely view of the Malvern Hills, and full of precious collections of every kind--old books, old music, old miniatures, ivories, enamels, &c. In my room, ‘the Stuart Room,’ it was a pleasure to live with portraits inscribed ‘Mary Stewart, Princess of Orange,’ and ‘King James III.’ There is a chapel, where Lady Mary Lygon watches over the musical part of the services, aided by a footman who sings splendidly and plays five instruments well!

“I was several days at Moor Park near Ludlow, the stately house of Mrs. Johnston Foster and her pleasant heiress-daughters. They have built a huge and handsome church near their present home, and another in Yorkshire. Mrs. Foster took me to spend the day at the curious old house of Kyre, where there is a hiding-place in the hall behind a picture on a sliding panel, and an oubliette in the floor beneath a trap-door. Amongst the pictures was a curious portrait of Lady Pytts, whose daughter married Sir Thomas Stanley, the first baronet of Alderley, and planted the Alderley wood with beech-nuts from her old home, for before that ‘there were no beech-trees in Cheshire.’ The lady of the house, Mrs. Childe, has a wonderful power of making slight sketches from all such old portraits in the houses where she visits, and has many volumes of them.

“At Hereford I spent a most pleasant day with kindly Dean Herbert, who showed me all the details of his cathedral, which is beautiful still, though somewhat spoilt by Wyatt. Nothing was more interesting than the slab tombs of a bishop and dean, who were such friends, that their hands are represented as clasping each other from their adjoining gravestones. How seldom this can have been possible!

“I was one day with my Biddulph cousins at Ledbury, and was even more struck than before with their delightful old house of 1590, ‘entre cour et jardin,’ like the houses of the Faubourg S. Germain, entered by a court from the little town, and with a delicious garden and an old deer-park--perhaps the smallest in England--on the other side. I was at Shakspeare’s Charlecote afterwards, and at Warwick, and oh! so bitterly cold!

“It has been almost constantly bad weather, but I do not mind that as I used. I think it was Caroline Fox who first reminded us of ‘A wet day and all its luxuries, a fine day and all its liabilities.’

“Then I had a happy week at beautiful old Blickling, with Constance, Lady Lothian, who--though no blood relation to her--reminded me more than any one else of my dear Lady Waterford, with much the same charm of manner and power of enjoyment of all the smallest things of beauty. The park, gloriously wild, belonged to Harold, and endless illustrious owners since. The house is a dream of beauty externally, and is full of ghost-stories. It was the family home of the Boleyns, and in the tapestried drawing-room Anne Boleyn is still supposed to walk at night with her head in her hand. In the present serving-room the devil appeared to Lord Rockingham, who threw an inkstand at him, which missed, and marked the wall. When Lord and Lady Lothian first came to Blickling, they altered the house and pulled down partitions to make the present morning-room. ‘I wish these young people would not pull down the partitions,’ said an old woman in the village to the clergyman. ‘Why so?’--‘Oh, because of the dog. Don’t you know that when A. was fishing in the lake, he caught an enormous fish, and that, when it was landed, a great black dog came out of its mouth? They never could get rid of that dog, who kept going round and round in circles inside the house, till they sent for a wise man from London, who opposed the straight lines of the partitions to the lines of the circles, and so quieted the dog. But if these young people pull down the partitions, they will let the dog loose again, and there’s not a wise man in all London could lay that dog now.’

“Lady Lothian took me to Mannington, Lord Orford’s[508] curious little place. The garden, with its clipped hedges, statues, and vases, is surrounded, with the house, by a wide moat. The house is full of old pictures and furniture. In the dining-room is a sculptured skeleton whispering to a monk. It was here that Dr. Jephson saw his much-talked-of ghost. He had been sitting up late over the MSS., when an old man appeared to him. He spoke to the figure, and, though it did not answer, he was for some time quite certain of the apparition. Whilst I was at Blickling, however, Dr. Jephson was one of my fellow-guests, and he now thinks the vision was an optical delusion.

“On the outer wall of the house of Mannington are a number of Latin inscriptions, put up by the present owner. They are all most bitter, vehement, and incisive against women. But in a distant part of the grounds there is also a monument to ‘Louise,’[509] with ‘Pensez à lui, et priez pour elle.’ This is in a little wood, close to an old ruined chapel, within which Lord Orford has already placed his own sarcophagus, with an inscription (saying nobody else would ever do it), and around which he has collected a vast number of architectural fragments from destroyed churches. Lord Orford seldom comes to Mannington now, but till five years ago he was much here in strictest seclusion, with his adopted son and his wife, who were much tried by the dinner at half-past six, always of exactly the same food, after which he would talk to the lady with incessant quotations from the Latin poets, of which she did not understand a word. Every Saturday he used to pass Blickling on his way to Norwich, where he used to see his doctor, play a game of whist, and hear a mass, returning next day.

“I was two days at Titsey with Granville Leveson Gower, who is a delightful archaeologist. I remember him at Oxford. Now he has six sons of his own, several of them very handsome.

“And all this time dear Lady Egerton’s death has been a shadow. She was a most kind friend to me, and ‘La Mort laisse souvent plus de vide que la Vie ne prenait de place.’ It was characteristic of her great unselfishness that, when she knew her illness must be a very suffering one and certainly fatal, she insisted upon being removed from the home she loved so devotedly to a hired house at Eastbourne, in order that Tatton might not be left with any distressing association for her husband. Truly of her may be said--

‘But by her grave is peace and perfect beauty, With the sweet heaven above, Fit emblems of a life of Work and Duty Transfigured into Love.’”

* * * * *

To W. H. MILLIGAN and JOURNAL.

“Belvoir Castle, Jan. 6, 1893.--‘Be firm with the weather, and it’s sure to clear up,’ said old Miss Hammersley, and, after the terrible early winter, the weather, though bitterly cold, is most glorious. My arrival at this stately castle was a fiasco. The Duchess had forgotten that she had told me to come to their little station of Redmile, and when I arrived at that desolate place, with deep snow on the ground and night fast closing in, there was nothing to meet me. The stationmaster sent his little boy to the next village, and in an hour he returned with an open waggonette, agonisingly cold across the open plain. But I was repaid when we entered the still loveliness of the ice-laden woods, every bough sparkling in the moonlight like crystallised silver; and still more when we emerged upon the plateau at the top of the hill, and the mighty towers of the castle rose pale grey into the clear air, looking down into the wooded frost-bound gorges like the palace of the ice-queen. I found the Duchess waiting for me in the corridor, with that genial solicitude for one’s comfort which goes straight to the heart when one does meet with it, which is so seldom.

“It was a great pleasure to find the all-delightful Speaker here, with his pleasant daughters, also my friend Wilfrid Ricardo. The rest of the party are Lady Bristol and her daughter, Lady Clancarty and hers, pleasant Fred Henniker and his sister, Mr. Macalmont, Mr. G. H. Smith, Miss De la Brosse, &c., besides the sons and daughters of the house.

“How I like all the mediaeval ways--the trumpeters, who walk up and down the passages and sound the dressing-time: the watchman, who calls the hours through the night; the ball-room, always ready in the evenings for those who want to dance: the band, in uniform, which plays soft music from an adjoining room during dinner, at which all the hunting men appear in their red coats, and add brilliancy and colour to the immensely long table with its glorious old silver ornaments.

“On the first morning, the Speaker and I went after breakfast with the Duchess to her private rooms, filled with comfort and sunshine, where she fed thousands of birds upon the little platform outside her windows, and the Duke, amongst other treasures, showed me a deed of King John conferring Haddon upon Richard Manners.

“At 12, I met the Duke and Duchess again, and walked alone with them on the terraces and along the exquisitely beautiful wood walks, all glistening in silvered splendour, whilst the sun was bright and the air quite still. The Duke told me how he had the bill--at £60 a piece--of those curious statues by Cibber which are such an ornament to the garden. Nothing could be more delightful than the way in which he talked about the place, and with great affection of his brother the late Duke. When we reached a little garden where there is a slab inscribed with verses by Mrs. Kemble, he was tired and returned. I went on with the Duchess, a long and most attractive path through the woods, and she talked of her real devotion to the Queen, and of the Queen’s extreme kindness to her, especially in insisting on the Duke’s going to Wiesbaden to the doctor who cured his eyes when he seemed upon the verge of total blindness. After luncheon, the Duke took the Speaker and me to see in detail the miniatures, which are so beautifully arranged in little panels on the drawing-room walls, with movable glasses in front. Wonderful are those portraits of Sir Philip Sidney, of his friend Prince Henry (with pearl earrings), and of Charles I. as a boy, with an inscription speaking of him as ‘the Hope of England.’ Then we saw those two little tables; one a sort of shrine to the Duke of Wellington, with the (framed) letter which he wrote to the then Duchess after her son Lord Robert was wounded in Spain--the prettiest, kindest letter ever written: the other a shrine to the Duke of York, with his little bust, part of his famous Protestant speech on yellow satin, and part of the famous Cheshire cheese presented to him after it, and a bit of which he sent, with a letter, to the Duchess of Rutland.

“In an exquisite old case worked by the Duke’s great-grandmother, and beneath a heart of pearls enclosing his hair, is the last letter of her son, Lord Robert Manners, who fell as captain of the Resolution in action under Rodney. The letter is addressed to the captain of another ship, asking him to come to see him, and is written in the utmost cheerfulness--‘though one leg is off, the other shattered, and one arm broke.’ He died immediately afterwards of lockjaw. The beautiful portrait of this very handsome young hero hangs in the ball-room.

“Yesterday the Duchess was ill, and I went out alone with the Duke to the kitchen-garden and to the fine stables, of Charles II.’s time, where there are still sixty horses, over which Edward Manners presides as ‘field-master.’ The Government gives £5 annually as a retaining fee for ten of the best horses being always entered to serve in case of an invasion. I cannot say how delightful I think the Duke, what a noble old man in every truest sense.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“Jan. 1893.--Mrs. Kemble was certainly the living person I most wished to see, but I have let too many opportunities slip, and she has passed away without my knowing her. She must have been a great and generous woman, and those who knew her always loved though they feared her. Miss Hosmer has often told me how dearly she and her companions loved Mrs. Kemble when she was at school in America near the place where she lived. She would come voluntarily and read to the school-girls half a play in the morning and would finish it in the evening. Once, when she was reading, snow came on, and when she was to go home it was quite deep; so all the school-girls turned out with spades and brooms and cleared it away before her.

“But her severe manner terrified those who were given that way. ‘We had some private theatricals,’ Mrs. Story told me, ‘and Mrs. Kemble came to look on at the rehearsal, at which a girl was acting who was supposed to do it very well. Afterwards, when she came in, Mrs. Kemble walked up to her, and ‘Are you a fool?’ was all she said.

“Dr. Silas Bartol, the Unitarian minister at Boston, took his girl to see Mrs. Kemble. He was nervous, and said, ‘My daughter wished so much to have the honour of knowing--rather of hearing--rather of seeing Mrs. Kemble, that I have ventured to bring her.’ Mrs. Kemble bowed stiffly, and motioned them to sit down, but she said nothing. The girl only sat and stared at her. Then the father[510] tried again--‘My daughter is very young--is very nervous--is very shy.’ Then Mrs. Kemble looked at them both, and, in her most sepulchral accents, said, ‘Shy! I also am shy. And since your daughter has nothing to say to me, and since most assuredly I have nothing to say to her, I will wish you good morning.’

“To some Americans she met she said, ‘We hate you for your politics: we hate you for your prosperity: we hate you for your manners: and ... I don’t wonder at it.’

“Mrs. Sartoris had more talent, but Mrs. Kemble had the greater genius. Those who met her recognised it at once. I heard one who loved her best say, ‘She married Mr. Butler because, for once in her life, she was a fool. He was very faulty as a husband, but she was so imperious, no one could have lived with dear Mrs. Kemble.’

“When Mr. Cummings was taking the duty in the chapel at Dresden, they lived in the same house. Mrs. Cummings wishing to be civil, after some time sent her card, and asked if she might wait on Mrs. Kemble. The daughter came up at once and explained, very civilly, that her mother now saw no one, so Mrs. Cummings thought no more about it. But some time after, as she was sitting alone in her room, came a tap at the door, and on her opening it, she saw a lady in black velvet and lace, closely veiled, who startled her by saying in sepulchral accents, ‘I’m come to say that I shall never come again.’--‘Oh, is that really you, Mrs. Butler?’ said lively little Mrs. Cummings, and the sound of her real name, unheard for years, made her quite pleasant, and she came in, and was glad to hear of many mutual friends in the Berkshire of Massachusetts. But unfortunately Mrs. Cummings made some allusion to Shakspeare, and ‘I did not come here to speak of Shakspeare,’ said Mrs. Kemble in her most awful accents, and the charm was broken.

“When in Boston long ago, while she was reading in public, she ordered dresses, pink and blue satin, at the great shop, the Marshall & Snelgrove of the town, but gave no address. The shopmen were afraid to ask her. The manager felt he must run after her and ask where the things should be sent. Unfortunately, to attract her attention, he touched her. ‘Unhand me, ruffian,’ she shouted in her most ferocious tone. ‘And such was the man’s terror,’ said my informant, ‘that, though he was quite young, his hair was turned white that night.’

“From personal vanity she was absolutely free. Miss Hosmer once expressed her regret that she had been photographed in a hat--‘We would so much rather have seen your head.’--‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Kemble, ‘my sister, and my friends, and you yourself expressed a wish to possess my photograph, so, as I was passing a photographer’s shop, I just went in and flopped down and was photographed as I was.’

“A lady was once alluding to the hope she entertained of reducing her figure. In her most tragical voice Mrs. Kemble said, dwelling on every syllable, ‘With a hereditary tendency to fat, nor exercise, nor diet, nor grief may avail.’”

* * * * *

To MRS. C. VAUGHAN and JOURNAL.

“Longford Castle, Salisbury, Jan. 18.--I have been five days in this magnificent old place, and it has been a very interesting visit--and weird, from being with people to whom the other world is so very near, who seem to be as intimate with the dead as with the living, and who think no more of ‘receiving a message’ from one of their ‘guiding spirits’ than we should of a note from an ordinary acquaintance. These spirits, the wise ‘Huldah,’ the scientific ‘Iganesis,’ the sympathetic ‘Echord,’ the evangelistic ‘Ernest,’ and ‘Semirus,’ the wise physician, are the friends of the Radnors’ daily life. There comes a rap, such a noise as we should speak of as ‘only the furniture,’ and then it is supposed that one of the spirits has something to say, and a pencil is put into the hand of a medium. One cannot say that she writes, for she often even goes fast asleep! but it writes, frequently volumes--not the sprawling incomprehensible stuff which I have often seen before from ‘Planchette,’ but clear MS. in different handwritings, and purporting to come from one of the spiritual friends. Personally, I should say that most of these communications were not the least worth the immense amount of time and thought given to them. The letters--‘messages’--from Echord and Ernest, are excellent certainly, but mild and affectionate religious platitudes, such as might be written by an Evangelical clergyman of rather poetical tendencies. They all, however, speak of the dead as not asleep, but in action: of there being no ‘place,’ but ‘a state’ after death: of existence after death being a process through gradations. None of the spirits have seen ‘God,’ but ‘the dear Master,’ ‘the sweet Master,’ is ever with them and amongst them. The communications from Semirus are more important. He is the great physician, and his advice has provided means of healing and safety for numbers, where earthly physicians have proved powerless or helpless. The Bishop of Salisbury has been scandalised at the state of things at Longford and felt impelled to come and testify against it. He recognised all that happened as fact, as every one must, but denounced it as ‘devilry,’ saying that the owners of the castle were risking their own souls and all the souls around them. They answer: ‘It was said to Christ, Thou hast a devil.’

“The great medium is Miss K. Wingfield, now aged about twenty-six. The Radnors have known her and her family most intimately for many years, and are certain of her absolute trustworthiness with regard to what she hears or writes. She is almost as a daughter to them, and they have watched the development of her psychical powers, through various steps, with the greatest interest. Her most remarkable gift is automatic writing, which has been given in many languages, several with which she is wholly unacquainted (including a very old form of Chinese, only decipherable at the British Museum), and in many different handwritings. When her hand writes, or rather the pencil in her hand, she has never the least idea of what is being written. A divining rod has unfailing power in her hands.

“The really remarkable communications are those which have reference to History. In August 1889, Sir Joseph (then Mr.) Barnby, came down to Longford to play the organ at Lady Skelmersdale’s marriage. One day at this time Miss Wingfield’s hand wrote a communication in strange old-fashioned characters, which purported to come from one ‘John Longland.’ When asked why he came, he said that he had been brought ‘by the influence of Mr. Barnby, whose music he had heard in Eton College Chapel, where he was buried.’ Later in the day, the party went to Salisbury Cathedral, and while Lady Radnor and Miss Wingfield were sitting in the Hungerford Chapel (the freehold family pew of the Radnor family), Mr. Barnby played. Whilst he was playing, Miss Wingfield saw, as in a vision, various scenes enacted, culminating in a procession of monks and other ecclesiastics with banners and canopies: one of these, a grave-faced man, came up to the chapel and looked in at her through the bars. At the same time he announced (by loud raps on the wainscot, which is the ordinary means of communication) that he was John Longland, that it was he who had written in the morning, and that he had come to the cathedral because he had been Dean there in 1514, and that he had more to tell. Another vision in the cathedral showed the gorgeous ceremonial of a consecration, which was announced to be that of one Brian Duppa, Bishop of Salisbury: in a third vision, Brian Duppa was again seen, lying dead in his coffin.

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