XVII Literary Work at Home and Abroad
“Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast.”
—Goethe.
“Leisure and I have taken leave of one another. I propose to be busy as long as I live, if my health is so long indulged to me.”
—John Wesley.
“To seek fame is even a solemn duty for men endowed with more than ordinary powers of mind. First, as multiplying the ways and chances by which a useful work comes into the hands of such as are prepared to avail themselves of it; secondly, as securing for such a work that submissiveness of heart, that docility, without which nothing really good can be really acquired; and lastly, because the individuality of the author, with all the associations connected with his name and history, adds greatly to the effect of a work.”—Coleridge to Sir G. Beaumont.
“For ever I wrastle, for ever I am behind.”—Gower, Confessio Amantis.
“’Tis not in mortals to command success;
But we’ll do more, Sempronius—we’ll deserve it”
—Addison, Cato.
The success of “Walks in Rome,” and the great pleasure which I had derived from the preparation of my “Days near Rome,” made me undertake, in the spring of 1874, the more ambitious work of “Cities of Northern and Central Italy,” in preparation for which I left England at the end of January, accepting on the way an oft-repeated invitation from Mr. and Mrs. de Wesselow to their beautiful home at Cannes.
Journal.
“Villa La Cava, Cannes, Jan. 30, 1874.—What a view I look upon here from my beautiful room!—a pure blue sky all around, fading into the softest most delicate golden hues where it meets the waveless expanse of sea, upon which the islands seem asleep in the sunshine; on one side the old town of Cannes, with its pier and shipping and the white sails of its boats; on the other, the endless villas, and Mougins, and the mountains—all rising from a wealth of orange and cypress groves; and, close at hand, masses of geraniums and roses and the ‘sunshine tree’ (golden mimosa) in full blossom,—and thus, they say, it has been all winter.
“Paris was at its ugliest. I had a pleasant dinner at the Embassy, and I went to see old Madame Dubois at the top of a house, in her room which is at once sitting-room, bedroom, and kitchen. She was full of the wretchedness of living in a country where your servant had no scruple in telling you she was your equal, and that she was jealous of your being richer than herself. She showed her household treasures, especially a little silver owl, ‘qui est restée longtemps sans se marier, et puis a fait un petit hibou.’
“I left in the evening for my four-and-twenty hours’ journey. The train was crowded, every place full, but, in spite of my seven companions and their twenty-eight handbags, which obliged me to sit bolt upright the whole way, I rather enjoyed it. There is something so interesting in the rapid transitions: the plains of Central France: the rolling hills of Burgundy in the white moonlight: the great towns, Dijon and Lyons, deep down below, and mapped out by their lamps: the dawn over the Rhone valley: the change to blue sky melting into delicate amber: the first stunted olives: the white roads leading, dust-surrounded, to the white cities, Avignon and Tarascon and Arles: the desolate stone-laden Crau: the still blue Mediterranean, and Marseilles with its shipping, and then the granite phase of southern Provence and its growth of heath and lavender and pines.
“On this, the eastern side, Cannes is a new world to me, but on Sunday, with Marcus Hare and G., I went up to the other side, to the Villa S. François and our beloved pine-wood, alive still with sacred memories, where the dear form still might seem to wander with her sunshade and camp-stool, and where we sat on the very stone she used to rest on in ‘the Shepherdesses’ Walk.’ G. is too matter of fact to enjoy this country. When I exclaimed over the glorious beauty and variety of the view of the Rocher de Bilheres, standing out as it does from the supreme point of the forest promontory, with the purple shadows behind it in the deep rift, she could only say, ‘I should be better satisfied if I could ascertain exactly what it is mineralogically.’
“I went with Frank de Wesselow to Vallauris, the walk a perfect series of pictures—the winding road with its glorious sea-views; then, at the chapel, the opening upon all the Alpine range; then the deep hollow ways overhung by old gnarled olives, and peopled by peasants with their mules and baskets.
“Yesterday I had a visit from George Sutherland, whom I looked after in his fever at Rome, full of his spiritualism, of his drawings made under the influence of spirits, who ‘squeeze out just the amount of colour to be used and no more,’ and of his conversations with his dead mother, whom he described as ‘touching him constantly.’
“In the evening we talked of the De Wesselows’ faithful servant Mrs. Manning, of her wonderful power of making people understand her, and how her appreciation of foreigners was entirely in proportion to their doing so. Frank was standing by her one day in the garden when their maid Thérèse passed by. Mrs. Manning said quickly, ‘Teresa, acqua fresca pully, and these things want lavering,’ and, without giving another moment’s attention, went on with what she had been doing. Thérèse, in her slow way, said ‘Yees,’ thinking that she talked English very well, and understood perfectly that she was to give some water to the chickens and that the things wanted washing.”
To Miss Leycester.
“Villa Heraud, Cimies, Feb. 6, 1874.—I am writing from a beautiful country villa, where, in sweet Mary Harford,71 I find the friend of my childhood quite unchanged, though it is fifteen years since I have seen her. In spite of being the mother of six daughters and two sons, she looks still as young as the Mary Bunsen who was carried quite helpless into Hurstmonceaux Place twenty-three years ago. It is a most united family, and you would admire the ’way in which the six daughters take arms and sing a hymn behind their mother (who plays) after family prayers.”
“Parma, Feb. 12, 1874.—I had so many kind invitations at Nice, I rather longed to remain there. On Sunday I went home after church with Lady Jocelyn and her little grand-daughter. I had not seen her since the loss of her children. Her sweet sad face quite haunts me. I said to her, ‘Do you often drive out.’—‘No,’ she said; ‘I must always walk, or else the days would be too long.’
“I had an interesting railway journey on Monday with Madame Franzoni, who lives in the house at Taggia described in ‘Dr. Antonio.’ She was Swiss. Her husband, of an old Swiss-Italian family, was disinherited on becoming Protestant, and was obliged to become an engineer. His father, still living, has been prevented by his priests from speaking to him for five-and-twenty years, though devotedly fond of him. She took her two little children and made them sing a hymn beneath the tree in which their grandfather was sitting. Tears streamed down the old man’s cheeks, but he would not look at them; he said it must be a lesson to his other children. The mother offered her whole fortune if her son would consent to hear one mass; she believed that one mass would reconvert him. Since then the Protestant part of the family have been dreadfully poor, whilst the rest are immensely rich. Madame Franzoni said that the priests of Taggia were very kind to them privately, but would not recognise them in public.
“When we parted, I gave her my card. Some Americans in the carriage saw it and almost flew into my arms. ‘Oh, the “Quiet Life”—too great happiness,’ &c. Afterwards I had a warning to be careful what subjects one touched upon with strangers, for I said something about the loss of the Ville de Havre. The lady (Mrs. Colt) burst into tears, and her daughter said, ‘Mother’s brother was the judge who was lost; he would not leave his wife, and went down with her in his arms, saying, “Let us die bravely!”’ Afterwards at Genoa I met a young lady (Miss Bulkeley) who went down with her mother. The mother was lost. As the daughter rose, something hurt her head; she put her hand to it and caught a chain, and finding her head above water, called, ‘A woman! help!’ She heard men say, ‘American sailors are saving you,’ but became unconscious and knew nothing for long afterwards. She said it was quite a mistake to say drowning was painless—the oppression on the lungs was agony.
“I enjoyed Genoa and my work there, and made several pleasant Italian acquaintances, the Genoese are so hospitable. The Marchese Spinola showed me all the treasures and pictures of his old palace himself. I suppose I must take this as a great compliment, for I was amused the other day by an anecdote of the Marchesa Spinola, who made herself most agreeable to an Englishman she met at the Baths of Monte Catini. On taking leave, he politely expressed a hope that, as they were both going to Rome in the winter, they might meet there. ‘Mais non, Monsieur,’ she replied; ‘à Monte Catini je suis charmée de vous voir, mais à Rome c’est toute autre chose.’ Yesterday I spent in correcting my account of Piacenza—bitterly cold, children sliding all over the streets, which were one mass of ice.... I had forgotten the intense interest of Parma and its glorious pictures, especially what a grand master Pordenone was.”
“59 B. Mario de’ Fiori, Rome, Feb. 22.—Rome is fearfully modernised, such quantities of new houses built, such quantities of old buildings swept away—the old shell fountain in the Felice, the lion of the Apostoli, the Vintner’s fountain at Palazzo Simonetti, the ruins of the Ponte Salara, and... all the shrines in the Coliseum, even the famous cross on the wall. The last nearly caused a Revolution. On the Pincio a Swiss cottage is put up, strangely out of place amongst the old statues, and a clock which goes by water. Even the most ardent Protestants too are a little shocked that the famous Quirinal Chapel, so redolent of Church history, should be turned into a cloak-room for balls, and the cloak-tickets kept in the holy water basins. The poverty and suffering amongst the Romans is dreadful, the great influx of Torinese taking the bread out of their mouths.
“You would be amused with the economy of my servants Ambrogio and Maria. They think it most extravagant if I have both vegetables and a pudding, and quite sinful to have soup the same day; and the first day, after I had seen the kitchen fire blazing away all afternoon, and ‘Il Signorino è servito’ was announced very magnificently, behold the dinner was—three larks! But what a pleasure it is to hear again from servants—‘Felicissima notte,’—that sweetest bidding of repose, as Palgrave calls it.”
“March 1.—I know, as usual, far too many people here for comfort, nearly three hundred. But I have enjoyed constant drives with Lady Castletown and her most sweet and charming daughter, Mrs. Lewis Wingfield. The Miss Seymours also are here, and very agreeable, with their very handsome sister, married to the Austrian Count von Lutzow. The Duchesse S. Arpino and her mother and engaging little daughter make their house as pleasant as ever. Mr. Adolphus Trollope has a pretty little daughter who sings most enchantingly.75 I also like Lady Paget, the Minister’s wife, who is a clever artist in her own way.
“The spoliation of Rome continues every day. Its picturesque beauty is gone. Nothing can exceed the tastelessness of all that is being done—the Coliseum, Baths of Caracalla, and the temples are scraped quite clean, and look like sham ruins built yesterday: all the pretty trees are cut down: the outsides of the mediæval churches (Prassede, Pudentiana, &c.) are washed yellow or painted over: the old fountains are stripped of their ferns and polished: the Via Crucis and other processions are forbidden: and the Government has even sent out the ‘pompieri’ to cut down all the ivy from the aqueducts. I have, however, got back one thing—the Lion of the Apostoli! I went round to a number of people living in that neighbourhood, and engaged them to go in the morning to the Senators in the Capitol and demand its restoration: and a message was sent that the lion should be restored at once. So the little hideous beast goes back this week to his little vacant sofa, where he has sat for more than six hundred years.
“The cardinals have been dying off a good deal lately, and a curious relic of old times was the lying in state of Cardinal Bernabo in the Propaganda Fide—the chapel hung with black, the catafalque with cloth of gold, a chain of old abbots and cardinals standing and kneeling round with tapers, and all the students singing. Pius IX. is well, and Antonelli has never been the least ill, except in the Times, in which he has received the last sacraments.”
“Tivoli, March 22.—I have been greatly enjoying a little mountain tour with Lady Castletown and Mrs. Lewis Wingfield. On Wednesday we spent the day in the villas Aldobrandini and Mondragone at Frascati, and the next morning had the most charming drive by Monte Porzio and Monte Compatri, chiefly through the desolate chestnut forests, to Palestrina. It was the fair of Genazzano, and the whole road was most animated, such crowds of peasants in their gayest costumes and prettiest ornaments. At beautiful Olevano we had just time to go to the little inn and visit my friend of last year, Peppina Baldi. It was a tiring journey thence to Subiaco after such a long day, and we only passed the worst precipices by daylight, so it was quite dark when we reached Subiaco, where we found rooms with difficulty, as, quite unwittingly, we had arrived on the eve of the great festa of S. Benedetto. Most delighted we were, however, of course, and most picturesque and beautiful was the early pilgrimage, with bands of music and singing, up the stony mountain paths. Lady Castletown travels with a second carriage for her maids, so prices naturally rise at first sight of so grand a princess.... On the way here we diverged to the farm of Horace in the Licenza valley, all marvellously unaltered—the brook, the meadows, the vines, the surrounding hills and villages, still just as he described them eighteen hundred years ago. It is a wonderful country, one lives so entirely in the past.”
I have seldom enjoyed Tivoli more than in this spring of 1874. It was then that, sitting in the scene I describe, I wrote the paragraph of “Days near Rome” which I insert here.
“Nothing can exceed the loveliness of the views from the road which leads from Tivoli by the chapel of S. Antonio to the Madonna di Quintiliolo. On the opposite height rises the town with its temples, its old houses and churches clinging to the edge of the cliffs, which are overhung with such a wealth of luxuriant vegetation as is almost indescribable; and beyond, beneath the huge pile of building known as the Villa of Maecenas, the thousand noisy cataracts of the Cascatelle leap forth beneath the old masonry, and sparkle and dance and foam through the green—and all this is only the foreground to vast distances of dreamy campagna, seen through the gnarled hoary stems of grand old olive-trees—rainbow-hued with every delicate tint of emerald and amethyst, and melting into sapphire, where the solitary dome of St. Peter’s rises, invincible by distance, over the level line of the horizon.
“And the beauty is not confined to the views alone. Each turn of the winding road is a picture; deep ravines of solemn dark-green olives which waken into silver light as the wind shakes their leaves—old convents and chapels buried in shady nooks on the mountain-side—thickets of laurustinus, roses, genista, and jessamine—banks of lilies and hyacinths, anemones and violets—grand masses of grey rock, up which white-bearded goats are scrambling to nibble the myrtle and rosemary, and knocking down showers of the red tufa on their way;—and a road, with stone seats and parapets, twisting along the edge of the hill through a constant diorama of loveliness, and peopled by groups of peasants in their gay dresses returning from their work, singing in parts wild canzonetti which echo amid the silent hills, or by women washing at the wayside fountains, or returning with brazen conche poised upon their heads, like stately statues of water-goddesses wakened into life.”
Great was the difficulty of securing any companion for the desolate excursion to the Abruzzi, but at length I found a clever artist, Mr. Donne, who agreed to go with me.
“Sora in the Marsica, April 2.—Mr. Donne and I left the train at Terni, taking diligence to Rieti, the capital of the Sabina. Next day we had a long dreary drive to Aquila, a dismal place, but full of curious remains, surrounded by tremendous snow mountains. Thence we crossed a fearful pass in ghastly barren mountains to Solmona, a wonderful mediæval city seldom visited. On Sunday we clambered up the mountains above the town to the hermitage of Pietro Murrone, afterwards Cœlestine V., and then, as the snow was too deep to make it possible to cross the mountain, returned by night to Aquila. On Tuesday our journey of a whole day was through perfectly Lapland scenery, the road a mere track in the deep snow, which covered hedges and fields alike. Fortunately the weather was lovely, but it was a relief to come down again to even partial civilisation at Avezzano, on the borders of what was once the Lago Fucino, now dried up and spoilt by Prince Torlonia. Here I had an introduction to Count and Countess Restà, to whom I paid a most curious visit. On Wednesday we drew at S. Maria di Luco, a picturesque church on the site of a temple above the lake, and in the evening came on here, arriving at 2 A.M.—glorious moonlight and grand scenery, but the diligence unspeakably wretched. We have just been spending a charming day, partly at Arpino, the birthplace of Cicero, where there are wonderful Pelasgic remains, and a gateway which is the oldest architectural monument in Europe, and partly at Cicero’s island home on the Liris, a lovely place, all primroses and violets as in England, but with a background of snow mountains.”
“April 7.—In the second-class carriage of the train on our way to Velletri sat a venerable and beautiful old man, to whom we talked of Aquino, the birthplace of St. Thomas Aquinas, where we spent yesterday. Gradually we found out that he was the Abbot of Monte Vergine, and he told us much that was interesting about that wonderful place—of the intense love and veneration of the Neapolitan people for the sanctuary, which is connected with the different events of their domestic life; that no betrothal or marriage or birth was considered entirely consecrated without receiving a benediction at the sanctuary; that peasant women had it entered in their marriage contracts that they should be allowed to make the pilgrimage from time to time, and after the birth of each child; that because, on account of the suppression, two miles of the road to the sanctuary still remained unfinished, the peasants voluntarily undertook to finish it themselves, 30,000 persons subscribing one soldo apiece; that when, at the same time, he, the Abbot, was obliged to give up keeping a carriage, five Neapolitan families insisted upon undertaking to keep one for him, one paying the horses, another the coachman, &c. The Abbot gave us his benediction on taking leave, and invited us to Monte Vergine.”88
“April 14.—I met Mademoiselle von Raasloff at Mrs. Terry’s. She narrated to me some facts which had been told to her by the well-known Dr. Pereira.
“An acquaintance of his, a lady, was travelling with some friends in an out-of-the-way part of Poland. Suddenly, late at night, their carriage broke down and they were obliged to get out, and as they knew of no shelter near, they were in great difficulties. At this juncture a gentleman appeared, who said to the lady that if she would take the trouble to walk a few steps farther, she would come to the gate of his house; that he was unable to accompany her, but that if she would mention his name she would be received, and would find all she required. She thanked him and followed his directions. The servant to whom she spoke at the house seemed very much surprised, but seeing her plight, brought her in, left her in a library, and went to get some refreshment. When she was alone, a door in the panelling opened and the unknown master of the house came in and sat down by her. As he said nothing, she felt rather awkward, and more so when the servant, coming in with a tray, seemed to brush up close to him in a very odd way as he set it down. When the servant left the room, the unknown said, ‘Ne vous étonnez pas, Mademoiselle, c’est que je suis mort;’ and he proceeded to say that he was most thankful she had come, and that he wished her to make him a solemn promise; that the people who were now in possession of the property were not the rightful heirs, but that he had left a will, deposited with a certain lawyer in a certain place, the name of which he made her write down. She listened as in a trance, but did as she was bid. The servant, coming in again about this time, walked straight through the unknown. Presently the carriage, being mended, was announced to be at the door, upon which the unknown walked with her to the porch, bowed, and disappeared.
“When the lady got to Warsaw, she had an attaque des nerfs, was very ill, and sent for Dr. Pereira. She told him all she had seen, and also gave him the paper with the directions she had written down. Dr. Pereira, finding that the person and place mentioned really existed, inquired into the matter, and the result was that the will was found, the wrongful possessors ejected, and the rightful owners set up in their place.”
“One evening at the Palazzo Odescalchi, when everybody had been telling stories, and nothing very interesting, Mademoiselle von Raasloff suddenly astonished us by saying, ‘Now I will tell you something.’ Then she said—
“There was a young lady in Denmark, whose family, from circumstances, had lived very much before the Danish world, and with whom, in so small a society as that of Copenhagen, almost every one was acquainted. Consequently it was a subject of interest, almost of universal interest, at Copenhagen, when it became known that this young lady, with the full approval of her parents and joyful consent of every one concerned, had become engaged to a young Danish officer of good family and position.
“‘Now in Danish society a betrothal is considered to be almost the same thing as a marriage: new relationships date from that time, and if either the affianced bride or bridegroom die, the family of the other side mourn as for a son or brother, as if the marriage had actually taken place.
“‘While this young lady of whom I have spoken was only engaged, her betrothed husband was summoned to join his regiment in a war which was going on; and very soon to the house of his betrothed came the terrible news that he was dead, that he was killed in battle. And the way in which the news came was this. A soldier of his regiment was wounded and was taken prisoner; and as he was lying in his cot in the hospital, he said to his companion who was in the next bed, “I saw the young Colonel—I saw the young Colonel on his white horse, and he rode into the ranks of the enemy and he never came back again.” And the man who said that died, but the man to whom he said it recovered, and, in process of time, he was ransomed, and came back to Copenhagen and told his story with additions. “My comrade, who is dead, said that he saw the young Colonel on his white horse, and that he saw him ride into the ranks of the enemy and the soldiers of the enemy drag him from his horse and kill him, so that he never came back again.” This was the form in which the story reached the family of the affianced wife of the young Colonel, and they mourned him most truly; for they loved him much, and they put on all the outward signs of deepest grief. There was only one person who would not put on the outward signs of mourning, and that was his affianced bride herself. She said, and persisted in saying, that she could not believe that, where two persons had been as entirely united as she and her betrothed had been, one could pass entirely out of life without the other knowing it. That her lover was sick, in prison, in trouble, she could believe, but that he was dead—never, without her having an inner conviction of it; and she would not put on the outward signs of mourning, which to her sense implied an impression of ill omen. Her parents urged her greatly, not only because their own reality of grief was very great, but because, according to the feeling of things in Copenhagen, it cast a very great slur upon their daughter that she should appear without the usual signs of grief. They urged her ceaselessly, and the tension of mind in which she lived, and the perpetual struggle with her own family, added to her own deep grief, had a very serious effect upon her.
“‘It was while things were in this state that one day she dreamt—she dreamt that she received a letter from her betrothed, and in her dream she felt that it was of the most vital importance that she should see the date of that letter; and she struggled and laboured to see it, but she could not make it out; and she laboured on with the utmost intensity of effort, but she could not decipher it; and it seemed to her the most wearisome night she had ever spent, so incessant was her effort, but she could not read it: still she would not give it up, and at last, just as the dawn was breaking, she saw the date of the letter, and it was May the 10th. The effort was so great that she woke; but the date remained with her still—it was May the 10th.
“‘Now she knew that if such a letter had been really written on the 10th of May, by the 1st of June she must receive that letter.
“‘The next morning, when her father came in to see her before she was up, as he had always done since their great sorrow, he was surprised to find her not only calm and serene, but almost radiant. She said, “You have often blamed me for not wearing the outward signs of mourning for my betrothed: grant me now only till the 1st of June, and then, if I receive no letter from him, I will promise to resign myself to believe the worst, and I will do as you desire.” Three weeks of terrible tension ensued, and the 1st of June arrived. She said then that she felt as if her whole future life hung upon the postman’s knock. It came—and there was the letter! Her lover had been taken prisoner, communication with him had been cut off—in fact, till then it was impossible she should hear. Soon afterwards he was exchanged, came home, and they were married.
“‘Now,’ said Mademoiselle von Raasloff, as she finished her narrative, ‘that is no story which I have heard. The young lady was my dear mother; she is here to testify to it: the young officer was my dear father, General von Raasloff; he is here to confirm it.’ And they were both present.”
“April 15.—There is a pretty young American lady at the table-d’hôte—most amusing. Here are some snatches from her lips:—
“‘I wonder if the old masters who painted such absurd figures of saints and angels meant to be funny, or if they were only funny by mistake.’
“‘Pity is like eating mustard without beef, and you wouldn’t like that, would you?’
“‘I was at a pension at Castellamare—Miss Baker’s. Avoid it. There were places for fifty at dinner, and forty-nine of them were old maids. No gentleman stayed—of course he couldn’t: they would have gobbled him up alive.’
“‘I went to the Trinità to hear the nuns sing. The nun who opened the door said, “You’re too late!”—“Well,” I said, “you declared I was too early yesterday. When am I to come?”—“Well, I don’t know,” she said; “we’re always changing.”—“Well, you are a civil old party, you are,” I said—and the old tigress actually slammed the door in my face.’
“‘Somebody said to me about a nigger I was abusing that I shouldn’t, because he was a man and a brother. “Well, sir, he may be your brother,” I said, “but most certainly he is not mine.” I should think not indeed, with a leg that comes down in the middle of his foot.’
“‘I shall be burnt, I hope, when I die. I feel like the old lady I heard of the other day who knew she was getting immensely old and could not live long, so paid down three thousand dollars to have a good big stove made right off at once.’
“‘I hope when I’m dying my people won’t be able to go on pegging away at their dinner just as if nothing was happening: I should not like that at all.’”
To Miss Leycester.
“Assisi, April 26.—I had a proposal from the Miss Seymours and Miss Ellis that if I would wait at Rome till Saturday the 18th, they would set off with me in search of the lost monastery of Farfa, which was, of all places, the one I wanted most to see, and from which fear of brigands had previously caused all my companions to fail at the last moment. If you have read any old histories of Italy, you will remember how all-important Farfa was in the Middle Ages, and will wonder that no one, not even the best Roman antiquarians, knew anything about its present state, or even where it is. We could only judge by old maps and chronicles. However, the excursion completely answered, and, after divers little adventures, which ‘Days near Rome’ will narrate, we not only arrived at Farfa, but found the Father-General of the Benedictines accidentally there to receive us. Greatly astonished he was at our arrival, but said that one enterprising stranger had reached the place three years before—I need hardly add, an English lady. Really Farfa is one of the most radiant spots in Italy, and the sheets of wild-flowers, and the songs of nightingales and cuckoos enhanced its charms. My companions were so delighted that they consented, if I would stay till Wednesday, to set off again on a long, wild, and very rough tourette to the monasteries of the Hernican mountains. So on the 22nd we went by rail to Frosinone, and thence drove to Casamari, going on by a grand mountain road to sleep at Alatri. The next day we rode up a jagged rock path for many hours to the Carthusian Trisulti, a huge monastery in a mountain forest, amid Alpine flowers and close under the snows. Then we saw the famous Grottoes of Collepardo—a sort of underground Staffa, very grand indeed, and returned at night to Frosinone, and next day to Rome.”
Journal.
“May 4, Florence.—General von Raasloff is here, and says that a friend of his going to China received endless commissions for things he was to bring home, but that only one of the people who gave them sent money for the things they wanted. On his return, this commission was the only one he had fulfilled. His disappointed friends upbraided him, and he said, ‘You see it was very unfortunate, but when we were nearing China, I spread out all my different commissions on the deck that I might examine them, and I put the money for each on the paper to which it belonged: and—it was very unfortunate, but my attention was called away for an instant, and behold a great gust of wind had come, and all those commissions which were not weighted by money had been blown far out to sea, and I never saw them again.’
“Mademoiselle von Raasloff told me that—
“Count Piper, an ancestor of the present Count Piper, was a very determined gambler. Being once at one of his desolate country estates, he was in perfect despair for some one to play with him, but he was alone. At last, in a fit of desperation, he said, ‘If the devil himself were to come to play with me, I should be grateful.’ Soon a tremendous storm began to rage, during which a servant came in and said that a gentleman overtaken by night was travelling past, and implored shelter. Count Piper was quite enchanted, and a very gentlemanlike man was shown in. Supper was served, and then Count Piper proposed a game of cards, in which the stranger at once acquiesced. Count Piper won so enormously, that he felt quite ashamed, and at last he proposed their retiring. As they were leaving the room, the stranger said, ‘I am very much concerned that I have not sufficient money with me to pay all my debt now; however, I shall beg you to take my ring as a guarantee, which is really of greater value than the money, and which has very peculiar properties, one of which is that as long as you wear it, all you possess is safe from fire.’ The Count took the ring, and escorting the stranger to his room, wished him good-night. The next morning he sent to inquire after him: he was not there, his bed had not been slept in, and he never was heard of again. Count Piper wore the ring, but after some time, as it was very heavy and old-fashioned, he took it off and put it away. The next morning came the news that one of his finest farm-houses had been burnt down. And so it always is in that family. The descendants of Count Piper always have to wear the ring, and if ever they leave it off for a single day, one of their houses on one of their great estates is burnt.”
“Florence, May 10.—Ten days here in the radiant spring-tide have been very delightful. I have seen a great deal of Mrs. Ross, Lady Duff Gordon’s beautiful daughter, who is now writing the story of her mother’s life. She has a noble head, which is almost more full of expression than that of any one I know, and I am sure that her character is noble too, with all the smallnesses of life, which make a thoroughly anglicised character ignoble, washed out, and its higher qualities remaining to be mingled with the Italian frankness and kindly simplicity which English-English do not possess, and consequently cannot understand. Her singing to a guitar is capital—chiefly of Italian stornelli, rendered with all the verve which a contadina herself could give them. It is no wonder that Italians adore her. Each summer she and her husband spend at Castagnuolo with the Marchese Lotteria della Stufa, the great friend of her father, who died in his arms. This is ‘Il Marchese’ par excellence with the Florentines, to whom he is public property. When a child accidentally shot him with a pistol through the crown of his hat, thousands of people thronged the street before his house to inquire, and in all the villages round his native valley of Signa the price of wax went up for a fortnight, so many candles were burnt to the Madonna as thank-offerings for his escape. The next day, as he was crossing one of the bridges, he met Giacomo, a flyman he knew, driving a carriage full of very respectable old Scotch ladies. Giacomo flung his reins on the box, and rushing up to the Marchese, threw himself sobbing on his breast.
“I have been out with Mrs. Ross to the Stufa villa of Castagnuolo, seven miles off, near the Badia di’ Settimo, in a tiny baroccino, drawn by Tocco, the smallest of spirited ponies, and with Picco, the weest terrier ever seen, upon our knees. As we turned up from the highroad to the villa on the hills through the rich luxuriant vineyards, the warmest welcome met us from all the peasants, and Mrs. Ross received them with ‘Ah, caro Maso, e come va la moglie,’—‘Addio, caro Guido mio.’ In a house in the grounds—a ‘podere’—the whole family of inmates thronged round her with ‘Vi pigliero un consiglio, Signora,’ about a sick child. We wandered up the woods, gathering lovely wild orchids, and then went to the farm, where the creatures, like the people, seemed to regard Mrs. Ross as one of themselves: the cows came and licked her, the sheep came and rubbed against her, the pigeons perched, and even the wild boars were gentleness itself. She was first able to make her way at Castagnuolo by nursing day and night an old contadino who died in her arms. She described comically, though pathetically, the frantic grief which ensued: how the son, Antonio, tried to drown himself, and was pulled out of the water by his breeches: how the whole family insisted upon being bled: how a married daughter, a niece, and a cousin came and had strong convulsions; and how, when she ventured to leave them for a little to go to her dinner, the fattore rushed after her with—‘Ma Signora, tutte le donne son svenute;’92 how eventually she locked up each separately for the night with a basin of soup, having made them a little speech, &c. Whenever any of the contadini have burns, they are cured by poultices of arum-leaves.
“All is simple, graceful goodness at Castagnuolo.”
“Venice, May.—I feel that I am now learning much about masters I never knew before. One is introduced to them at one place and continues the acquaintance at another, till one becomes really intimate. Marco Basaiti is the best of these new friends, with his sad shadowy figures always painted against an afterglow. One learns how, as Savonarola says, ‘every painter paints himself. However varied his subjects, his works bear the sign-manual of his thought.’93
“At Milan, on the Eve of S. Ambrogio, an American next me at the table-d’hôte said to his neighbour opposite, ‘I have been, Marm, to see St. Ambrose; and I say, Marm, do you know that to-morrow they are going to tootle the old gentleman all round the town?’”
In returning from Italy this year I made the excursion to the curious shrine of Paray le Monial which I have described in an article in Evening Hours. All the time I had been abroad, as during my tour in Spain, I had sent monthly articles to Good Words, for which I was paid at the rate of five guineas a page—a sum, I believe, given besides only to Dean Alford and Arthur Stanley. But those were the palmy days of the magazine. I was paid much less afterwards, till it came down to a fifth of that sum. I spent the rest of the summer in London. It was during this year that I became a member of the Athenæum Club—an incalculable advantage. Twelve years before, old Dr. Hawtrey, the Provost of Eton, had said to me, “You ought to be a member of the Athenæum,” and I had answered “Then I wish you would propose me.” But I had quite forgotten about this, and had never known that the kind old man, long since dead, had really done it; so the news that my name was just coming up for ballot was a joyful surprise. I have since spent every London morning in steady work at the Athenæum, less disturbed there than even at Holmhurst. The difficulties which the club rules throw in the way of receiving visitors are a great advantage to students, and my life at the Athenæum has been as regular as clockwork. At breakfast I have always occupied the same table,—behind the door leading to the kitchen, the one which, I believe, was always formerly used by Wilberforce. In the afternoons, when all the old gentlemen arrive, to poke up huge fires in winter and close all the windows in summer, I have never returned to the club.
Journal.
“London, June (in the Park).—Fine Lady.—‘How strange it is to see all these smart carriages driving about and nobody in them.’
“My simple self.—‘Nobody in them! why, they are quite full of people.’
“Fine Lady.—‘Ah, ye-es—people, but nobody all the same. We never drive in the Park now. It was only to show you this mob that I came. We are obliged to retreat, though, before their advancing battalions. They pursue us everywhere. There is no humiliation and suffering they won’t undergo in the chase. They drove us out of the Row long ago, and this year we took a row of chairs on Sunday afternoons on a little rising ground between Albert Gate and Stanhope Gate;96 but the enemy pursued us, and as they always get the better of us, we shall be obliged to yield that position too. There is never any safety from them but in flight, for they are certainly our superiors in—numbers.’”
“June 22.—Went to see Madame du Quaire,97 whom I found in her low French-looking room in Wilton Street, perfectly covered with pictures and oggetti. She talked of spiritualism—how she had been to a meeting at Mrs. Gregory’s—‘a truthful woman, who would not stand imposture if she knew it.’ She ‘cottoned’ up the medium, ‘parcequ’il faut mieux s’adresser à Dieu qu’à ses saints.’ They sat in the dark, which was depressing. Soon after she felt a shock ‘like a torpedo,’ and something like the leg of a chair came and scratched her head. A voice called her and said, ‘I am John King, and I want you, Madame du Quaire; I have got something for you.’ ‘Then,’ said Madame du Q., ‘he gave me a sort of chain of sharks’ teeth; the kind of thing of which, when it was given to some one at Honolulu, the recipient inquired, “C’est un collier?”—“Mais pardon,” said the donor, “c’est une robe.”’
“June 24.—I dined with Lord Ravensworth at Percy’s Cross, and he told me—
“When I was a young man, I was staying at Balnagowan with Lady Mary Ross. She had a son and daughter. The daughter was a very handsome, charming girl. One day I was walking with her, and she told me that when her brother was ill of the measles, at their other place, Bonnington, where the Falls of the Clyde are, an old nurse who lived at the lodge some way off used to come up and sit by him in the day, returning home at night. One morning when she arrived, she was most dreadfully depressed, and being questioned as to the cause, said, ‘I am na lang for this warld; and not only me, but a greater than I is na lang for this warld—and that is the head o’ this hoose.’ And she said that as she was walking home, two lights came out of the larches and flitted before her: one was a feeble light, close to the ground; the other a large bright light higher up. They passed before her to the park gates and then disappeared. ‘And,’ she said, ‘I know that the feeble light is myself, and the greater light is the head o’ this hoose.’
“A few days afterwards the old woman took a cold and died, and within a fortnight Sir C. Ross died too,98 while the little boy recovered and is alive still.”
Captain Fisher, who is engaged to be married to Victoria Liddell, told me that—
‘When Mr. Macpherson of Glen Truim was dying, his wife had gone to rest in a room looking out over the park, and sat near the window. Suddenly she saw lights as of a carriage coming in at the distant lodge-gate, and calling to one of the servants, said, ‘Do go down; some one is coming who does not know of all this grief.’ But the servant remained near her at the window, and as the carriage came near the house, they saw it was a hearse drawn by four horses and covered with figures. As it stopped at the porch door, the figures looked up at her, and their eyes glared with light; then they scrambled down and seemed to disappear into the house. Soon they reappeared and seemed to lift some heavy weight into the hearse, which then drove off at full speed, causing all the stones and gravel to fly up at the windows. Mrs. Macpherson and the butler had not rallied from their horror and astonishment, when the nurse watching in the next room came in to tell her that the Colonel was dead.
“I was surprised to hear that Mrs. Hungerford was in London, and asked why she had left Ireland so unexpectedly. I was told she had had a great fright—then I heard what it was.
“She was in her room in the evening in her beautiful house, which looks out upon a lake, beyond which rise hills wooded with fir-trees. Suddenly, on the opposite side of the lake, she saw a form which seemed—with sweeping garments—to move forward upon the water. It was gigantic. Mrs. Hungerford screamed, and her sister, Miss Cropper (who afterwards married Mr. Jerome), and the nurse came to her from the inner nursery. The three remained at the window for some time, but retreated as the figure advanced, and at length—being then so tall that it reached to the second floor—looked in at the window, and disclosed the most awful face of a hideous old woman.
“It was a Banshee, and one of the family died immediately afterwards.”
Captain Fisher also told us this really extraordinary story connected with his own family:—
“Fisher may sound a very plebeian name, but this family is of very ancient lineage, and for many hundreds of years they have possessed a very curious old place in Cumberland, which bears the weird name of Croglin Grange. The great characteristic of the house is that never at any period of its very long existence has it been more than one story high, but it has a terrace from which large grounds sweep away towards the church in the hollow, and a fine distant view.
“When, in lapse of years, the Fishers outgrew Croglin Grange in family and fortune, they were wise enough not to destroy the long-standing characteristic of the place by adding another story to the house, but they went away to the south, to reside at Thorncombe near Guildford, and they let Croglin Grange.
“They were extremely fortunate in their tenants, two brothers and a sister. They heard their praises from all quarters. To their poorer neighbours they were all that is most kind and beneficent, and their neighbours of a higher class spoke of them as a most welcome addition to the little society of the neighbourhood. On their part the tenants were greatly delighted with their new residence. The arrangement of the house, which would have been a trial to many, was not so to them. In every respect Croglin Grange was exactly suited to them.
“The winter was spent most happily by the new inmates of Croglin Grange, who shared in all the little social pleasures of the district, and made themselves very popular. In the following summer, there was one day which was dreadfully, annihilatingly hot. The brothers lay under the trees with their books, for it was too hot for any active occupation. The sister sat in the verandah and worked, or tried to work, for, in the intense sultriness of that summer day, work was next to impossible. They dined early, and after dinner they still sat out in the verandah, enjoying the cool air which came with evening, and they watched the sun set, and the moon rise over the belt of trees which separated the grounds from the churchyard, seeing it mount the heavens till the whole lawn was bathed in silver light, across which the long shadows from the shrubbery fell as if embossed, so vivid and distinct were they.
“When they separated for the night, all retiring to their rooms on the ground-floor (for, as I said, there was no upstairs in that house), the sister felt that the heat was still so great that she could not sleep, and having fastened her window, she did not close the shutters—in that very quiet place it was not necessary—and, propped against the pillows, she still watched the wonderful, the marvellous beauty of that summer night. Gradually she became aware of two lights, two lights which flickered in and out in the belt of trees which separated the lawn from the churchyard, and as her gaze became fixed upon them, she saw them emerge, fixed in a dark substance, a definite ghastly something, which seemed every moment to become nearer, increasing in size and substance as it approached. Every now and then it was lost for a moment in the long shadows which stretched across the lawn from the trees, and then it emerged larger than ever, and still coming on—on. As she watched it, the most uncontrollable horror seized her. She longed to get away, but the door was close to the window and the door was locked on the inside, and while she was unlocking it, she must be for an instant nearer to it. She longed to scream, but her voice seemed paralysed, her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth.
“Suddenly, she never could explain why afterwards, the terrible object seemed to turn to one side, seemed to be going round the house, not to be coming to her at all, and immediately she jumped out of bed and rushed to the door, but as she was unlocking it, she heard scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window, and saw a hideous brown face with flaming eyes glaring in at her. She rushed back to the bed, but the creature continued to scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window. She felt a sort of mental comfort in the knowledge that the window was securely fastened on the inside. Suddenly the scratching sound ceased, and a kind of pecking sound took its place. Then, in her agony, she became aware that the creature was unpicking the lead! The noise continued, and a diamond pane of glass fell into the room. Then a long bony finger of the creature came in and turned the handle of the window, and the window opened, and the creature came in; and it came across the room, and her terror was so great that she could not scream, and it came up to the bed, and it twisted its long, bony fingers into her hair, and it dragged her head over the side of the bed, and—it bit her violently in the throat.
“As it bit her, her voice was released, and she screamed with all her might and main. Her brothers rushed out of their rooms, but the door was locked on the inside. A moment was lost while they got a poker and broke it open. Then the creature had already escaped through the window, and the sister, bleeding violently from a wound in the throat, was lying unconscious over the side of the bed. One brother pursued the creature, which fled before him through the moonlight with gigantic strides, and eventually seemed to disappear over the wall into the churchyard. Then he rejoined his brother by the sister’s bedside. She was dreadfully hurt and her wound was a very definite one, but she was of strong disposition, not given either to romance or superstition, and when she came to herself she said, ‘What has happened is most extraordinary and I am very much hurt. It seems inexplicable, but of course there is an explanation, and we must wait for it. It will turn out that a lunatic has escaped from some asylum and found his way here.’ The wound healed and she appeared to get well, but the doctor who was sent for to her would not believe that she could bear so terrible a shock so easily, and insisted that she must have change, mental and physical; so her brothers took her to Switzerland.
“Being a sensible girl, when she went abroad, she threw herself at once into the interests of the country she was in. She dried plants, she made sketches, she went up mountains, and, as autumn came on, she was the person who urged that they should return to Croglin Grange. ‘We have taken it,’ she said, ‘for seven years, and we have only been there one; and we shall always find it difficult to let a house which is only one story high, so we had better return there; lunatics do not escape every day.’ As she urged it, her brothers wished nothing better, and the family returned to Cumberland. From there being no upstairs in the house, it was impossible to make any great change in their arrangements. The sister occupied the same room, but it is unnecessary to say she always closed her shutters, which, however, as in many old houses, always left one top pane of the window uncovered. The brothers moved, and occupied a room together exactly opposite that of their sister, and they always kept loaded pistols in their room.
“The winter passed most peacefully and happily. In the following March the sister was suddenly awakened by a sound she remembered only too well—scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window, and looking up, she saw, climbed up to the topmost pane of the window, the same hideous brown shrivelled face, with glaring eyes, looking in at her. This time she screamed as loud as she could. Her brothers rushed out of their room with pistols, and out of the front door. The creature was already scudding away across the lawn. One of the brothers fired and hit it in the leg, but still with the other leg it continued to make way, scrambled over the wall into the churchyard, and seemed to disappear into a vault which belonged to a family long extinct.
“The next day the brothers summoned all the tenants of Croglin Grange, and in their presence the vault was opened. A horrible scene revealed itself. The vault was full of coffins; they had been broken open, and their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, were scattered over the floor. One coffin alone remained intact. Of that the lid had been lifted, but still lay loose upon the coffin. They raised it, and there, brown, withered, shrivelled, mummified, but quite entire, was the same hideous figure which had looked in at the windows of Croglin Grange, with the marks of a recent pistol-shot in the leg; and they did—the only thing that can lay a vampire—they burnt it.”
Journal.
“Highcliffe, June 30, 1874.—It is delightful to be here again. I came on Friday with Everard Primrose,99 a friend who always especially interests me, in spite of the intense melancholy which always makes him say that he longs for an early death.
“This place, so spiritually near the gates of heaven, is a great rest—quite a halt in life—after London, which, though I thought it filled with all great and beautiful things, packs in too much, so that one loses breath mentally. Here all is still, and the touching past and earnestly hopeful future lend a wonderful charm to the quiet life of the present. ‘Les beaux jours sont là; on ne les voit pas, on les sent.’100
“The dear lady of the castle is not looking well. I believe it is owing to her conversion to Lady Jane Ellice’s teetotalism; but she says it is not that. Lady Jane herself is a perpetual sunshine, which radiates on all around her and is quite enchanting. Miss Lindsay is the only other guest. In the evening Lady Jane sings and Miss Lindsay recites—most wonderfully—out of Shakspeare, with great power and pathos.
“It has not been fine weather, but we have had delightful walks on the sand, by the still sad-looking sea, with the Isle of Wight and its Needles rising in the faint distance, or in the thick woods of wind-blown ilex and arbutus. One day we went to ‘the Haven House,’ which is a place that often comes back to my recollection—picturesquely, gauntly standing on a tongue of land at the meeting of river and bay, at the end of a weird pine-wood, where the gnarled roots of the trees all writhe seawards out of the sand. Here groups of children were at play on the little jetties of sea-weedy stones and timber, while a row of herons were catching fish—solitarily—at great intervals, in the bay.
“Lady Mary Lambart came last night—a simple, self-composed girl, with a pale face and golden hair. She lives exclusively with her aunt, Lady Alicia Blackwood.
“Yesterday, in the ‘Lady Chapel’ of the great church at Christ-Church, I suddenly came upon the tomb of Mary Morgan, who died in 1796. She was companion to my great-aunt, the unhappy Countess of Strathmore, and this monument was dedicated ‘to the most rare of all connections, a perfect and disinterested friend, by the Countess of Strathmore, who, conscious of the treasure, valued its possession and mourned its loss.... To her heroic qualities, her cool deliberate courage, and her matchless persevering friendship, the tears of blood shed by one who despises weakness, the records of law and justice, and perhaps even the historic page, will bear witness to an astonished and admiring posterity.’
“On the whole, Christ-Church is dull inside: it is so vast, and chiefly perpendicular. The old tombs are used as pedestals for modern monuments, and the old gravestones, stripped of their brasses, have modern epitaphs inserted between the ancient gothic inscriptions. Outside, the position is beautiful, on a little height above the river, near which are some old ruins, and which winds away to the sea through flat reedy meadow-lands, still marked by sails of boats where its outline is lost in distance.”
“June 30.—Mrs. Hamilton Hamilton came last night. She was a daughter of Sir G. Robinson. Her father’s aide-de-camp, Captain Campbell, a poor man, wanted to marry her, and she was attached to him; but it was not allowed, and they were separated. She was married to Mr. Hamilton Hamilton, but Captain Campbell never ceased to think of her, and he was ambitious for her sake, and became Sir Colin Campbell and Lord Clyde. Afterwards, when she was free, it was thought he would marry her. He sent her an Indian shawl, and he wrote to her, and he came to see her, but he never proposed; and she waited and expected, and at last she heard he had said, ‘No, it could not be; people would say it was absurd.’ But it would not have been absurd at all, and she would have liked it very much.
“One always feels here as if one did not half appreciate the perfection of each day as it goes by. It needs time to recognise and realise the warmth and colour which a noble mind, a true heart, and an ever heaven-aspiring soul can throw into even the commonest things of life. I often wonder how these walks, how these rooms with their old boisserie would appear with another inhabitant; quite unimpressive perhaps—but now they are simply illuminated. Beautiful pictures remain with one from everything at Highcliffe, but most of all that of the noble figure, seated in her high tapestried chair, painting at her little table by the light of the green lamp, and behind her a great vase filled with colossal branches of green chestnut, mingled with tall white lilies, such as Gabriel bore before the Virgin. As Lady Jane sings, she is roused to call for more songs, for ‘something pathetic, full of passion—love cannot be passionate enough.’—‘What! another?’ says Lady Jane. ‘Another, two nothers, three nothers: I cannot have enough.’
“‘In the perfect Christian, the principal virtues which produce an upright life and beauty of form are fervent faith and the love of our crucified Redeemer. As faith and love deepen, so external grace and beauty increase, until they become able to convert the hearts of men.... The soul that is beloved of God becomes beautiful in proportion as it receives more of the Divine grace.’ These words are from Savonarola’s Sermons, and do they not apply to our Lady?
“Lady Caroline Charteris103 came to luncheon—plain in features, but in mind indescribably beautiful and interesting. She brought with her a most touching letter she had received from Dr. Brown104 after his wife’s death. He spoke of the wells of salvation which men came to when they were truly thirsty, otherwise most people either passed them altogether, or stayed an instant, gazed into them admiringly, and still passed on. With Lady Caroline came Mrs. David Ricardo in a beautiful pink hat, like a Gainsborough in flesh and blood.”
“July 1.—A delightful morning in the library, fitful sunlight gleaming through the stained windows and upon the orange datura flowers in the conservatory, Lady Waterford painting at her table, Lady Jane and Miss Lindsay and Lady Mary Lambart105 (a noble-looking girl like a picture by Bronzino) working around. Lady Waterford talked of the odd mistakes of words—how an old lady always said ‘facetious’ for ‘officious’—that when she came by the railway the porters had been so very ’facetious,’ &c. Miss Mary Boyle condoled with an old woman at the Ashridge almshouses on the loss of her old husband. ‘Oh, yes, ma’am, it’s a great loss; but still, ma’am, I’m quite happy, for I know that he’s gone to Beelzebub’s bosom.’—‘I think you must mean Abraham.’—‘Well, yes, ma’am, since you mention it, I think that was the gentleman’s name.’
“In the afternoon we had a delightful walk to Hoborne, across a common on which a very rare kind of ophrys grows. Lady Waterford talked of a visit she had had at Ford from Mr. Wayte, the new Rector of Norham, who told her that a few nights before, his curate, Mr. Simon, had been obliged to go to fetch some papers out of the vestry at night. When he opened the church door, the moonlight was streaming in at the west window, and the middle of the nave was in bright light, but the side aisles were dark. He walked briskly down the middle of the church to the vestry, and, as he went, was aware that a figure dressed in white was sitting motionless in the corner of one of the pews in the aisle. He did not stay, but went into the vestry to get his papers, and, as he returned, he saw that the figure was still in the same place. Much agitated, he did not go up to it, but hurried home, and waited for daylight, when he returned at once to the church. The figure was still there, and did not move as he approached. When he uncovered its face, he saw that it was a dead body. The body had been found in the Tweed the day before, and the finders had not known what to do with it, so they had wrapped it in a sheet, and set it up in the church.”
“July 3.—We drove to Ashley Clinton—a charming place. Lady Waterford talked of the origin of words—of weeds as applied to dress. Mrs. Hamilton said how the Queen of the Sandwich Islands always spoke of flowers as weeds. ‘What pretty weeds there are in the cottage gardens.’
“Lady Waterford spoke of the picture of Miss Jane Warburton near her bedroom door; how she was appointed maid of honour to Queen Caroline at a time when maids of honour were rather fast, and how, at dinner, when the maids proposed toasts, and one gave the Archbishop of Canterbury, another the Dean of St. Paul’s, or some other old man, she alone had the courage to give the smartest and handsomest man of the day, the Duke of Argyll.108 She was so laughed at by her companions that it made her cry, and at the drawing-room somebody said to the Duke of Argyll, ‘That is a young lady who has been crying for you,’ and told him the story. He was much touched, but unfortunately he was married. Afterwards, however, when his Duchess died, he married Miss Warburton, and, though she was very ugly, he thought her absolute perfection. In the midst of the most interesting conversation he would break off to ‘listen to his Jane;’ and he had the most absolute faith in her, till once he discovered that she had deceived him in something about a marriage for one of her daughters with an Earl of Dalkeith, which was not quite straightforward; and it broke his heart, and he died.”
“July 5.—I came up to London with Lady Waterford on Friday, and as usual I find what Carlyle calls ‘the immeasurable, soul-confusing uproar of a London life’ rather delightful than otherwise. To-day I have been with Mary Lefevre to Marylebone, to hear Mr. Haweis109 preach. He is like a Dominican preacher in Italy, begins without a text, acts, crouches, springs, walks about in the pulpit—which is fortunately large enough, and every now and then spreads out vast black wings like a bat, and looks as if he was about to descend upon his appalled congregation. Part of his sermon was very solemn, but in part preacher and audience alike giggled. ‘He was converted last Sunday week: he was converted exactly at half-past four P.M., but since then they say that he has been seen at a theatre, at a ball, and at a racecourse, and that therefore his conversion is doubtful. Now you know my opinion is that none of these things are wrong in themselves. The question is not what the places are, but with what purpose and in what spirit people go to them. Our Saviour would not have thought it wrong to go to any of these places. John the Baptist certainly acted altogether on a lower level and went out as an ascetic into the wilderness. But our Saviour was both charitable and large-hearted. When He was asked to a feast, he went. He never sacrificed Himself unnecessarily, and so the ’religious people’ of that day abused him for eating with publicans and sinners. It is just what ’religious people,’ the Pharisees of our own day, say now.... Oh, let us leave these perpetual judgments of others.’
“I went afterwards to luncheon at Lady Castletown’s; she was not come in from church, but I went up into the drawing-room. A good-looking very smart young lady was sitting there, with her back to the window, evidently waiting also. After a pause, I made some stupid remark to her about heat or cold, &c. She looked at me, and said, ‘That is a very commonplace remark. I’ll make a remark. If a woman does not marry, she is nobody at all, nothing at all in the world; but if a man ever marries at all, he is an absolute fool.’ I said, ‘I know who you are; no one but Miss Rhoda Broughton would have said that.’ And it was she.
“Mr. Browning came and sat on the other side of her at luncheon. She said something of novels without love: I said something of black dose as a cure for love. Mr. Browning said that Aristophanes spoke of ‘the black-dose-loving Egyptians.’ Miss Broughton said, ‘How do you know the word means black dose?’—‘Because there is a similar passage in Herodotus which throws light upon the subject, with details on which it would not be delicate to dwell.’”
“July 6.—Dined with Madame du Quaire, meeting Mr. and Mrs. Wigan and Mr. and Mrs. Preston. Mrs. Wigan talked of children’s odd sayings: of one who, being told that God could see everywhere, asked if He could see the top of His own head; of another, at a school-feast, who being asked to have another bun, said, ‘Oh no, want to go home.’—‘Nonsense! have another bun.’—‘No, want to go home;’ upon which the giver of the feast took him up, and the child exclaimed, ‘Oh don’t, don’t bend me.’”
“July 8.—A drawing-party at Lambeth. Madeleine Lefevre and I went afterwards to show our drawings to Mrs. Tait, and had luncheon in the large cool pleasant rooms. In the afternoon I went with the Lefevres to the camp at Wimbledon. It is an immense enclosure, with streets of tents, lines of flags. In front of the officers’ tents are masses of flowers in pots sunk in a substratum of tan, as by law the turf may not be broken. Lady Ducie’s tent, whither we went, was most luxurious. We went on afterwards to Lady Leven’s garden, which was a beautiful sight, with brilliant groups of people. At the end, children were watching the manœuvres of some cats, who sat quiet with garlands of mice and birds upon their heads.”
“July 10.—Drew in the Tower of London, and dined at Lord Castletown’s to meet Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Pearse (she Mario’s daughter), Madame du Quaire, and the truly extraordinary M. Vivier.
“He talked incessantly, but expected what Lady Castletown called ‘a gallery,’ and perfect silence and attention. ‘Je suis intéressant, moi! La petite de C. elle n’a rien: elle chante, elle fait les oiseaux, voilà tout. Pour entendre les oiseaux, vous ferez mieux d’aller dans vos squares: vous les entendrez, et vous payerez rien. Mais la petite de C. elle est moralement malsaine: moi je ne le suis pas, et je suis—intéressant.’
“He was so surprised at the number of servants: ‘And does all that sleep in the house?’ he said.
“In the evening he sang ‘Nellie,’ and his ‘Drame’—of a blind Spanish musician with a violin, watching windows for money, a perfect passion of avarice and expectation.”
“July 11.—Luncheon with Lady Morley, meeting Miss Flora Macdonald, who has still a reminiscence of the great beauty which brought such a surprise to the old Duchess of Gloucester when she asked Victor Emmanuel what he admired most in England, and he answered so promptly, ‘Miss Flora Macdonald.’ Lady Katherine Parker described—‘because, alas! it was discovered that we date just a little farther back than the Leicesters,’ having to sit near ——, the most airified man in London. She was congratulated afterwards upon his having condescended to speak to her, but said he wouldn’t, only his neighbour on the other side was even more insignificant than herself, and to her he did not speak at all. He said, apropos of a dinner at Dorchester House, ‘Pray who are these Holfords?’—‘Oh,’ said Lady Katherine, ‘I believe they are people who have got a little shake-down somewhere in Park Lane.’
“I was at the ‘shake-down’ in the evening—something quite beautiful. The staircase is that of an old Genoese palace, and was one blaze of colour, and the broad landings behind the alabaster balustrades were filled with people, sitting or leaning over, as in old Venetian pictures. The dress of the time entirely lends itself to these effects. I sat in one of the arcades with Lady Sarah Lindsay and her daughters, then with Lady Carnarvon. We watched the amusing contrasts of the people coming upstairs—the shrinking of some, the dégagée manner of others, the dignity of a very few—in this, no one to be compared with Princess Mary. The Prince and Princess of Wales were close by (he very merry, talking with much action, like a foreigner), also the Prince and Princess of Prussia. Lady Somers looked glorious in a black dress thickly sprinkled with green beetles’ wings and a head-dress of the same.
“With Lady Carnarvon I had a long talk, and could not help feeling how truly one might apply to her Edgar Poe’s lines:—
“Thou would’st be loved, oh! then thy heart
From its present pathway part not:
Being everything that now thou art,
Be nothing that thou art not.
So, with the world, thy winning ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be the theme of endless praise,
And love, and simple duty.”
“July 12.—Yesterday there was a great party at Hatfield. I drove with the Woods to King’s Cross for the special train at 4 P.M., but was separated from them at the station, and joined Lady Darnley and Raglan Somerset. A tremendous storm was brewing over London, but we left it behind at first. Quantities of carriages from the house were in waiting at the Hatfield station. The street was lined with wreaths and flowers, and a succession of triumphal arches made the steep hill look like a long flowery bower. In the park, the grand old limes were in full blossom in front of the stately brick house. On the terrace on the other side the mass of guests was assembling. I went off with Lady Braybrooke to the labyrinth, then with Lady Darnley and the E. de Bunsens over the house. The storm now broke with tremendous lightning and loud peals of thunder, and in the Golden Gallery it was almost dark. Just as it began, the royal party drove up, the Prince and Princess of Wales, Prince and Princess of Prussia, Prince Arthur, the Tecks, the Duchess of Manchester, and a great quantity of suite—a very pretty procession, vehemently cheered by the people. When the storm cleared, we went out upon the terraces; the royal party went to the labyrinth. As it returned, I was standing with the Leghs of Lyme at the head of the steps, when Prince Arthur came up to me, was very cordial, and talked for some time about Rome, &c. I asked him if the Queen drew still. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘she is quite devoted to it: and I am very fond of it too, but then I have so little time.’
“Owing to the rain, the dinner for eight hundred had to be moved into the Armoury. The royal guests and a few others dined in the Marble Hall; the Princess of Prussia was forgotten as they were going in, and had to be hunted for. We all dined at little tables; I was at one with Mrs. Stuart Wortley, Mrs. W. Lowther, and Lord Sydney. Afterwards the terraces and house were beautifully illuminated with coloured lights, in which, through what looked like a sea of fire and blood, the cascades of white roses frothed up. Every one walked out. The royalties seemed to spring up everywhere; one was always running against them by mistake. There was a pretty procession as they went away, and immediately afterwards I returned with Miss Thackeray, her sister, and the Master of Napier.
“An excursion of this kind from London is delightful. C’est l’entr’acte!”
“July 13.—Yesterday (Sunday) I had luncheon with Lady Castletown; young Mr. Astley was there, and Miss Trollope. Lady Castletown talked of Vivier, of the marvellous versatility of his genius, of his absolute refusal to go any way but his own; that except for love he never sang a single song under three thousand francs; that when he gave a concert at Nice he asked ‘cent francs chaque,’ and the rooms were crowded; that at Compiègne he did some things, but he only allowed three persons to be present—the Emperor and two others. He excluded the Empress, because, in his Spanish scene, she had dared, Spanish-wise, to throw a bracelet into his hat, which so offended him that he told the Emperor he should never let her see him again. The Emperor quite delighted in him, and could not bear him to go away. He persuaded Vivier to go with him to Vichy, and there some of the great men of the court called to him from a window, as he was walking in the garden, and begged him to come to them. He was furious, and complained to the Emperor. ‘Sire, ce n’est pas comme cela qu’il faut appeler Vivier.’ On one occasion he stopped and threw up his whole comedy in the middle before a large audience because Lord Houghton sneezed. It was therefore necessary carefully to select his audience, otherwise he might take offence and never return. He has discovered powers in a French horn which no one had any idea of before, and he can sit close by you and play it with a degree of delicacy which perfectly transports you—the most sublime philosophy of music.
“We went afterwards to Holland House. I sat in the carriage at first under the shadow of the grand old red pile, but Lady Holland sent Mr. Hayward out to fetch me in, which he did with a bad grace.113 Lady Holland is a very little woman, simply dressed, with a white cap. She has sparkling eyes, which give her face a wonderful animation; which is almost beauty in itself, and which, in the setting of that house and its historic memories, makes her quite a person to remember. Mrs. Locke was there, and Lord Tankerville, whom I was very glad to see again. Outside, on a comfortable bench, we sat some time with the old Duc de Richelieu. Mrs. Wingfield and I wandered about in the gardens, which were glorious!—such blazes of flowers between the trees, such splashing fountains, such armies of scarlet lilies looking over the clipped yew hedges; and the house itself so rich in colour and in shadow. Then there is a glade—a grass walk of immense length, completely shut in by trees and forest-like tangle, so that you might think yourself in the deep recesses of Sherwood instead of close to London.
“Everard Primrose called to us out of a window, and we went up to him in the old library. He was in a melancholy mood, and would not come down with us; but Mrs. Wingfield went back to him alone, and, with that wonderful sympathy which is natural to her, she soon tamed him, and he came to us and was as pleasant as possible.
“The picture of Marie, Princess Lichtenstein, hung, pale and sad, looking down on us from a corner, and seemed to say, ‘Hence I am now banished; even my portrait is put away.’”
“July 14.—Dined at Lady Carnarvon’s to meet Lord Stanhope. Only the two mothers of the house, Lady Chesterfield and Lady Carnarvon—a charming good-humoured old lady, and a Mr. Townshend were there. Lord Carnarvon talked much of the interests of regular work and the unutterable weariness of interruptions. Lord Stanhope was very agreeable at dinner, but fell asleep afterwards. The younger Lady Carnarvon, with her hair sprinkled with diamonds, looked unspeakably lovely.”
To Miss Wright.
“Holmhurst, July 19, 1874.—I know half my friends wonder how I can like the change from the intellectual interests and luxurious life of London to the society of the bumble-bees and butterflies in this little hermitage; but I am sure the absolute quietude is very good for one, and I rush into my work at once, and get through no end of it. I came away from London, however, rather pining to stay for the party at Holland House, because I thought it was a duty to Lea and Miss Leycester, and I experienced the bathos, which so often comes when one is rather conceited about a little piece of self-sacrifice, of finding they would both much rather I had gone to the party, that they might have heard all about it!
“Miss Leycester is very cheerful, and greatly enjoys her summer retreat here—sitting out amid the scent of the lime-flowers: being wheeled about in her chair amongst the baskets of geraniums: having tea upon the terrace, &c. Another sweet old lady cousin, Miss Tatton, who cannot walk at all, is just arriving for a fortnight, and the Hospice is quite full of dear feeble beings.
“As to the little troubles about which you ask me, I can only reply in the words of Delatouche to George Sand, ‘Patientez avec le temps et l’expérience, et soyez tranquille: ces deux tristes conseilleurs viendront assez vite.’
“I shall be very anxious to hear about your German travels.... To me, if one is not in a fever about going on, the lingering in the wonderful old towns by the way, so full of a past deeply written still on their remains, is far more interesting than that part of the tour which all the world takes, and the little glimpses of people and life which one gets in them give one far more to think about afterwards. Würtzburg and Ratisbon I forbid you to pass unseen: they used to be reached, toiled after with such labour and fatigue; and now, in these railway days, they are generally—passed.”
Journal.
“July 29.—I have been in London again for two days. On Tuesday Sir Howard Elphinstone, the Lefevres, and I went to Holland House, where Lady Castletown and Mrs. Wingfield joined us. We drew in the Arcade, and then Miss Coventry came out in her Spanish hat and called us in to Lady Holland. She was in the west room, sitting in the wide window, and, like a queen, she sat on, moving for nobody. She was, however, very kind, and pleased with our drawings. She talked of the royal ball, and said that the two little Princes were so delighted with Puss in Boots that they pulled his tail incessantly, till at last Puss said, ‘Remember I have got teeth and claws as well as a tail,’ and then they were frightened and left off.
“Wednesday was Victoria Liddell’s wedding-day.116 All Fulham turned out, and Walham Green was a succession of triumphal arches, garlands, and mottoes. I went with Victor Williamson, and they mistook us for the bridegroom and best man. They told us to go up and wait near the altar, and the Wedding March struck up, but stopped abruptly as we went into a pew.”
“July 30.—Yesterday I dined at Lord Castletown’s, and met, as usual, an interesting party. Lord Castletown117 talked of his youth at Holland House, when he was brought up there as the ward of Lord Holland. ‘Lord H. was most indulgent, and was always finding amusements for me. One day, two days before the end of the Eton holidays, he asked me to go somewhere. “No, sir,” I said, “I cannot do that, because I have got my holiday task to finish.”—“And what is your task?” said Lord Holland. “Latin verses on St. Paul preaching at Athens, seventy lines.”—” Oh, what a grand subject,” said Lord Holland; “leave it for me. I will do your task for you, and do you go out and amuse yourself.” And he did it all but four lines, and then some important business called him away, and he gave them back to me, saying I must finish them as well as I could. It was a most grand set of verses, and when I gave them up to Keats, he would read them aloud before the whole school. In the middle he said, “Who wrote these, sir?”—“I, sir.”—“You lie, sir,” said Keats. At last he came to the last four lines. “You wrote these, sir,” he said. I heard no more of it, but I never got back my copy of verses.
“‘Once I escaped from Eton, and Lord Holland caught me—found me in the streets of London. He made me get into his carriage at once, and told the man to drive to the White Horse Cellar, whence the coach started for Eton. Unfortunately for me, there was one starting at once, and he made me get in. I remonstrated, saying that I had not got my things. “They shall be sent after you,” he said. “But I shall be flogged, sir.”—“Serve you right, too; I hope you will be flogged,” he said. I looked very piteous, and as I got into the coach he said, “Well, good-bye, John; I hope you’ll be flogged,” and he shook hands with me, and in my hand I found a five-pound note. He was always doing those kind things.
“‘At Holland House I saw everybody most worth seeing in Europe. All that was best flowed in to Lord Holland, and he was equally hospitable to all. The Whigs, not only of England, but of all the world, came to him.’
“Lady Castletown told a story of a Russian Princess who had a very hideous maid. One morning her maid came to her looking very much agitated—perfectly défaite. The Princess asked her what was the matter, when she said, ‘Oh, I have had the most extraordinary night. As I was going to bed, I saw a man’s foot under the bed. I was going to ring the bell when he stopped me by saying, “Oh, don’t ring; I have been brought into this predicament by my hopeless passion for you. I felt that there was no other chance of seeing you, so I ran this risk.” Seeing that he was serious, and never having had a proposal before, I could not but talk to him; and we talked all night, and now it is all settled, and we are to be married.’—‘Well,’ said the Princess, ’that is very strange; and now I am going to court, so where are my diamonds?’—‘Oh, of course where they always are,’ said the maid; but, when she looked, they were gone: the lover had taken them. ‘Of course that is what he came for,’ said the Princess; ’do you think he would have come for you?’ And the diamonds were never recovered.”
“August 8.—Came to Chevening. The house strikes one by its overwhelming impression of sadness. The sunshine is all blotted out since last year by the death of its beloved mistress last winter;119 but I am glad I came, as it gives pleasure, and I am glad I was asked so soon, as it shows their liking to have me. Walking with Lady Mahon120 between the same beds of tall flowers amongst which I walked with Lady Stanhope last year, she spoke of her very touchingly, how, though there might be many pleasures and interests left in life, there was always the feeling that there never could be what had been—the warm interest in others, the cheerful sunny nature which radiated on all it came in contact with. The illness was very sudden, and little alarm felt till just the end. Her last words to her poor broken-hearted husband were, ‘Do not fret, love; I shall soon be quite well now.’ Lady Mahon said that Lord Stanhope’s heroic determination to bear up for all their sakes enabled them to follow his example.”
“August 10, Sunday.—This afternoon I drove with Lord Stanhope in the long grassy glades of the park, the highest and prettiest of which gave a name to the place—Chevening, ‘the Nook in the Hill.’ We drove afterwards from one fine young Wellingtonia which he had planted to another, examining them all, and came back by the Spottiswoodes’. It is a fine old place, intended as an imitation of the Villa Doria at Rome, and though in nowise like Villa Doria, it has a look of Italy in its groves of ilexes and its cypresses. Lady Frederick Campbell121 lived here. Her first husband was the Lord Ferrers who was hanged, and some evidence which she gave was instrumental in bringing about his condemnation. Lord Ferrers cursed her, saying that her death would be even more painful than his; and so in fact it was, for in 1807 she was burnt in one of the towers of the house, from spontaneous combustion it is said. Nothing was found of her but her thumb, she was so completely consumed, and ever since it is said that the ghost of Lady Frederick Campbell wanders in the grounds at night, brandishing her thumbless hand, and looking for her lost thumb. The place lends itself to this from its wonderful green glades lined with cedars and guarded by huge grey stone vases.
“Coomb Bank was afterwards bought by the Claytons, who spent all they had in the purchase and had nothing left for keeping it up, so eventually they sold it to Mr. Spottiswoode, the King’s Printer, to whom the monopoly of printing Bibles and Prayer-books has been the source of a large fortune. Mr. Spottiswoode himself is a most remarkable man, who, for hours before his daily walk to the City, is occupied with the highest mathematical speculations, and returns to spend his evenings in studies of the most abstract nature. It is said that the present generation is more indebted to him than to any other person for its improved powers of analysis. He has made no important discoveries yet, but he probably will make them, if he lives long enough. His character seems to be a wonderful combination of profound knowledge and power and profound humility.”
“August 11.—A semi-wet day, spent chiefly in the library, which is attached to the house by a corridor full of portraits. In the afternoon, though it poured, we had a long drive on the Chart. The Spottiswoodes dined, and Mrs. Spottiswoode sang very old music.”
“August 12.—Came to Cobham. It has a beautiful approach across the broken ground of a very wild park with grand old trees. In the hollow is the old house, which is immense, of red brick with projecting oriels and towers. Lady Darnley122 received me in the library; she has an unintentionally haughty manner, but when you are accustomed to her, you find that she is charming—
‘Si sta placido e cheto,
Ma serba dell’ altiero nel mansueto;’123
and soon it seemed as if one had known her all one’s life. The children came dropping in—two grown-up daughters, two little girls, Lord Clifton, and two fine frank younger boys—Ivo and Arthur. There are many guests.”
“August 13.—A most pleasant morning sitting with Lady Darnley under the fine old trees drawing the house, and seeing the rooms and the pictures, which are mostly dull—chiefly nymphs and satyrs with very few clothes on—two very fine Titians being the redeeming part of the gallery. The pictures are wisely devoted to the public; they are too uncomfortable to live with, and the Chatham people adore them.
“I find this house, where no one is too clever, but every one is pleasant nevertheless, a great rest after Chevening, where I always felt struggling up to an intellectual level which I have no right to and which I cannot attain. Apropos, the last morning Lord Stanhope talked much of the origin of words, and said ‘Beldam’ came from ‘Belle dame’ used satirically.”
“August 15.—Returned to Holmhurst. Mr. Thomas, the landscape gardener, travelled with me. He spoke of an obnoxious American coming into a great hotel at Liverpool and boasting of how much finer American hotels were—‘a hundred times the size,’ &c. The man he addressed listened quietly and then said, ‘But you have not yet seen our great hotel at Southampton, sir; it is a mile long, will accommodate 5000 people, and all the waiters wait on horseback.’—‘I guess that’s a lie, sir,’ said the American. ‘Yes, it is,’ replied the Englishman, ’but then I thought you were telling lies.’”
“Sept. 28.—A very pleasant visit of two days to the Shaw-Lefevres. They are certainly one of the happiest and most united of families. We made a delightful excursion of sixteen miles to Sutton Court, where they lived formerly. It must be very seldom that, after a lapse of ten years, a father and mother can return to such a place in old age with their family of the original seven unbroken, only many others added. Sutton, the beautiful old house of the Westons, inlaid with terra-cotta, is just the place for a story, with the closed wing where the ivy forces its way through the walls and wreaths round the frames of the old family portraits, which, rent and forlorn, flap in the gusts of wind whenever a distant door opens. Then there is the still-used Roman Catholic chapel, with its priest and its country congregation.”
“Powderham Castle, Oct. 4.—A week here has been most delightful. I had not felt certain how much I might like it, how much my dear friend of old days might be changed by lapse of time and new relations. I can only say that, if he is changed, it is in being more entirely and perfectly delightful than ever, more indescribably thoughtful for others, more filled with plans for the good of every one, and withal so simple, so free from cant, that all else seems unchristian and mundane by comparison. Lady Agnes is the one person I have seen who is quite entirely worthy of him, and it does seem as if a reward of such perfectly beautiful lives was given even in this life, that they should have been thrown together.
“I arrived about half-past five. Powderham has a low park, rising into high ground as it approaches the castle, which has a gateway and courtyard. Here Charlie was walking about amongst orange-trees in large boxes like those at the Tuileries. The bedrooms are dilapidated and falling into decay: Lord Devon will not restore them, nor will he set any of his estates free by selling the rest, but he goes on planting quantities of Wellingtonias in his park and making expensive fences round them. In himself he is charming, with a perfect and entirely courteous manner. Colonel and Mrs. Heygarth have been here, he still lame with shot in the leg from the battle of the Alma, where he was wounded again while lying on the ground, having been noticed because he tried to save Lord Chewton, who was lying near him, and whom a Russian soldier was about to murder.
“With Charlie and Lady Agnes I have been completely at home and perfectly happy. One day we went to the sands, and walked along them to Dawlish. But yesterday was quite charming; I had much wished to go to Lady Morley at Whiteway, and after luncheon we set off—Charlie, Lady Agnes, and I. When the narrow lanes grew too steep for the pony-carriage, we left it under a hedge, and putting a saddle on Jack the pony, rode and walked by turns up the hill and across the wild heath of the open moor: Charlie rode pick-a-back behind Lady Agnes. In the woods we met Morley, greatly surprised to see us arrive thus. The others were out, but Morley showed all the curiosities of the house, which were many in a small way. Just as we were setting off, Lady Morley and Lady Katherine returned, and, after many pro’s and con’s, we stayed to a most amusing dinner, and only set off again at 10 P.M. with lanthorns in pitch darkness. Morley and Lady Katherine walked with us the first three miles over the wild moor with their lanthorn, and then we dived down into the eerie lanes closely overhung with green and fringed with ferns, and most lovely were the effects as the lanthorn revealed one gleam of glistening foliage after another out of the darkness. When we reached home at 11 P.M., we found the servants alarmed and a horseman sent out to search for us; and no wonder.
“I was ill all night from having eaten junket at Whiteway. Charlie says this Devonshire dainty is so called from the Neapolitan joncetta—cream on rushes. In Devon they pretend it is a relic of the Roman invasion!
“We have just been to church at Kenton. An immense funeral party (from last week) walked in, two and two, with great importance and occupied three pews. They sat through the whole service, as if too overwhelmed by their late grief to rise, and the women held handkerchiefs to their faces, and rocked, and shook the crape bows upon their bonnets, while waiting for the expected ‘funeral discourse.’ The people here are delightfully primitive. The other day, at a dinner Lord Devon gave, a man of the place rose to propose his health, and comprised all that needed to be said in—‘I don’t know what Lord Devon du, but all I du know is that if more would du as Lord Devon du du, there wouldn’t be so many as would du as they du du.’
“The wife of a neighbouring clergyman was very seriously ill of a strange and mysterious complaint. It was observed that her worst attacks always came on after her husband had administered the Sacrament to her. Mr. O., who was attending her, studied her case very much, and came to the conclusion that, if the peculiar symptoms she exhibited came from unnatural causes, they could only be produced by a single and very rare drug. Forthwith he set himself to find out if there was any place in the neighbourhood where that drug was sold, and at last he did find it. He asked at the place if they had sold any of it. ‘Oh, yes; to the parson at ——; he bought some yesterday.’ As Mr. O. was going home he met the clergyman himself. He stopped him and said, ‘I have just found out that yesterday you bought some drugs at M.: now if Mrs. X. is worse to-morrow, I shall know what has caused it.’ That afternoon the clergyman went down to the shore to bathe, and he never returned. He was known to be a splendid swimmer, and he was seen to swim far, far out to sea.
“To-night Lady Agnes talked of her grandmother, who, at sixteen, was sent down to speak to the housekeeper at Audley End. The woman, who was raving mad, shut the door and said, ‘Now you must say your prayers at once, for I have a commission from heaven to kill you.’—‘Oh, you cannot dare to do that,’ said the girl without hesitation, taking up a white napkin which lay upon the table and giving it to her with an air of the utmost conviction, ’for here is a reprieve.’ And the woman gave in at once.”
“Anthony, Plymouth, Oct. 7.—On Monday I went to Exeter to my Aunt FitzGerald,124 who was greatly pleased to see me. Her house is charming, full of relics, and, as she says, certainly ‘shows that she is somebody.’ Over the dining-room chimney-piece hangs a magnificent Mignet of the Duchess of Portsmouth. There are interesting pictures of Lord Edward FitzGerald, and beautiful china given by Frederick the Great to the Duchess of York, and by her to Pamela. Most of the drawing-room furniture is from Malmaison.
“Yesterday I came here to Anthony (the Pole-Carews). It is a strange drive from Plymouth, through endless courts, dockyards, &c., and then crossing an arm of the sea by a ferry, which was very rough when I came, and worse at night, when the family crossed to a ball; but, as Mr. Carew says, it is very well to have the sea between him and such a population as that of Plymouth.
“This house is perfectly charming—the old hall and its pictures, the oak staircase, the warm tapestried sitting-room—all, as it were, typical of the broad christian kindness and warm-hearted cordiality of its inmates. It is a house in which no ill is ever spoken, and where scandal sits dumb; where, with the utmost merriment, there is the most sincere religious feeling, and yet an entire freedom from cant and what is called ‘religious talking.’ There is here a mutual spirit of forbearance, and an absence of all egotism and self-seeking, which is more instructive than a thousand sermons; and it almost seems as if it were arranged that what might be the asperities of any one member of the family should be softened and smoothed out by the qualities of another. Mrs. Carew is the picture of a warm-hearted, most loving English mother, who enters into and shares all the interests, all the amusements, of her children; and between the father and his sons there is none of the shadow which so often exists, but the truest confidence and friendship.”125
“Oct. 11.—It is only by a long stay that one learns all that the Carews really are—the perfect charm of this most united and beautiful family life. Just now their goodness has been especially drawn out by the parting of Captain Ernest Rice and his wife in this house, he going to India for three years. The Carews especially wished it to be here, that they might soften it to both, and wonderfully have they helped them through—cheering, enlivening, nerving, where it was possible, but never intruding comfort when the natural burst of grief must come.
“It has been very pleasant seeing the different guests come and go. The Dean of St. Paul’s and Mrs. Church have been here. He is an excellent person, but very nervous and twitchy.126 She has a repose of goodness which sets you at rest with her, and imparts a confidence in her at once.
“Sir John and Lady Duckworth were here for two days. His father was military governor of Portsmouth. One day his mother was crossing the green at Mount Wyse when the sentry stopped her. ‘Do you know who you are speaking to?’ she said. ‘No, I don’t,’ he replied, ‘but I know you are not the governor’s cow, and that is the only thing which has any business here.’
“Lord Eliot127 was also here. I found great grace in his sight, and was most pressingly invited to Port Eliot. I went on Saturday. He met me at the station, and I was almost walked off my feet for four hours, being shown every picture in the house, every plant in the garden, and every walk in the woods. There is a limit in what ought to be shown, and Lord Eliot has never found it out.
“Still Port Eliot is a beautiful place. The house and the grand old church of St. German’s Priory—chiefly Norman—stand close together, on shaven green lawns, radiant with masses of flowers and backed by luxuriant woods, amid which walks open here and there upon glimpses of rock and terraces near one of the salt fiords which are so common in this country.
“Lord St. Germans,128 who is paralysed, is a beautiful and venerable old figure, with white hair and beard, wheeling himself about in a chair. Lord Eliot returned with me to Devonport, and introduced me to the frightful sights of that most hideous place.
“Some of the pictures at Port Eliot are beautiful, the most so that of Lady Cornwallis—so simple and stately in its lines. It is engraved, but without the figure of a child, probably not born at that time, but introduced afterwards in the picture.
“On Friday I had a charming drive with Mrs. Carew to ‘the Hut,’ through the narrowest lanes imaginable. An old clergyman near this, Mr. Wood, was driving there, who told things in a most slow and solemn manner. He said, ‘Mrs. Wood was dreadfully frightened as we were driving, and said we should be upset. I said, “My dear, it is imposs”——“ible,” I could not say, for we were over.’
“Last night (Sunday) the family sang hymns beautifully in the hall. ‘No horrid Gregorians,’ said Miss Julia, ‘for the old monks only sang those by way of penance, so why should we sing them?’”
“Stone Hall, Plymouth, Oct. 13.—Another pleasant family home! I came on Monday to the George Edgcumbes. I had known Mrs. Edgcumbe well before at Rome, but had never seen her ‘dear old man,’ her ‘bird,’ &c., as she calls her kind old husband.129 They do not dislike having married their three daughters at all. It is less embarras in their old age, and they enjoy having a constantly open house full of kindly hospitalities to their neighbours. Young Alwyn Greville has been here twice since I came, and I like him increasingly. It is a charming old house, close to the town, but its tall trees and disordered garden give it a quaint look, which one would be sorry to see rectified. There is a view across the still reaches of the harbour, with masses of timber floating close by and great ships lying far off, nearer the beautiful woods of Mount Edgcumbe. Close by are many delightful walks amongst the rocks, and varied views. We went to ‘the Winter Villa,’ a luxurious sun-palace with a great conservatory, backed by natural rock. The late Lord Mount Edgcumbe lived here for many years, quite helpless from rheumatic gout. It was his mother130 who was buried alive and lived for many years afterwards. It was known that she had been put into her coffin with a very valuable ring upon her finger, and the sexton went in after the funeral, when the coffin was put into the vault, to get it off. He opened the coffin, but the ring was hard to move, and he had to rub the dead finger up and down. This brought Lady Mount Edgcumbe to life, and she sat up. The sexton fled, leaving the doors of the vault and church open. Lady Mount Edgcumbe walked home in her shroud, and appeared in front of the windows. Those within thought it was a ghost. Then she walked in at the front door. When she saw her husband, she fainted away in his arms. This gave her family time to decide what should be done, and they settled to persuade her it had been a terrible delirium. When she recovered from her faint, she was in her own bed, and she ever believed it had been a dream.
“On Monday we went in the Admiral’s steam-pinnace to Cotehele; Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Freemantle, and Charlie Williamson with us. I sat outside the little cabin, and it was charming—gliding up the quiet river past the richly wooded banks. Up steep woods we walked to Cotehele, an unaltered old house, with gate-tower, courtyard, chapel, armour-hung hall, and dark tapestried bedrooms. Within the entrance are ever-fresh stains like blood, which you can mop up with blotting paper. Sir Richard Edgcumbe went out, bidding the porter, on peril of his life, to let no one in without a password. To prove his obedience, he came back himself and demanded entrance. The porter, recognising his master’s voice, let him in, upon which Sir Richard cleft open his skull with his battle-axe as he entered. The so-called blood forms a dark pool, and looks as if it had been spilt yesterday. Some say it is really a fungus which only grows where blood has been shed, and that the same existed on the site of the scaffold on Tower Hill.
“In the wood of Cotehele is a little chapel standing on a rock above the river. It was built by one of the Edgcumbes in the Wars of the Roses, who, closely pursued, vowed it if he escaped in safety. In desperation he threw his cap and coat into the river from hence, and concealed himself in a hollow tree: his enemies thought he was drowned.”
“Rockwood, Oct. 16.—I came from Plymouth here to the John Boyles’. Mr. Boyle is failing rapidly, tenderly cared for by his son Edmund and his daughter Mrs. Quin. The house is delightful and most comfortable. We have been a charming drive by Babbicombe and Watcombe. At St. Mary Church we saw the two great churches—Roman Catholic and High Church. In the churchyard of the latter Bishop Phillpotts and his wife are buried under simple crosses of grey Cornish granite. Watcombe is a curiously tumbled valley, full of grassy knolls interrupted by red rocks.”
“Abbots Kerswell, Oct. 26.—I have been very glad to see this place—my cousin Marcus Hare’s home. We have been several excursions—to Berry Pomeroy, an old castle too much overgrown by woods, named from the Cotentin family of Pommeraye: to Sharpham, a pretty place on the Dart with lovely grounds: and to Darlington, a fine old place of the Champerownes. Two more days at Powderham have given another most happy sight of Charlie and Lady Agnes. Quite a large party were there—the Dowager Lady Fortescue and her pleasant Irish sister Miss Gale; Lord Fortescue with his three daughters and a pleasant and very good-looking midshipman son, Seymour; Sir Edward, Lady, and Miss Hulse, and Miss A. Grosvenor, &c.
“Lord Fortescue131 talked much of Mr. Beresford Hope, his oddities and his wisdom—how at Oxford he puzzled all the Dons and frightened them very considerably by his questions from the Fathers and obscure Churchmen: how some friend of his, seeing in one of Mr. Hope’s books the family motto, ‘At Spes non fracta,’ wrote beneath, ‘So Hope is not cracked.’
“‘In these days of Homeopathy and Romanism,’ said Lord Fortescue, ’one never knows where one is. I never knew what peace or comfort was till I took to leaving out the prefix to the word “vert.” Neither party can be offended by your speaking of “a vert to Homeopathy” or “a vert to Romanism.”’
“He talked much of different public men—of the accuracy of Disraeli’s name for Mr. Cardwell—an inferior imitation of Peel—‘Peel and water:’ of Lord Russell, the ‘abruptness and deadness’ of most of his remarks, and yet how some of them had passed into a proverb; for instance, his definition of a proverb, ‘One man’s wit and every man’s wisdom:’ of Peel’s personal shyness and his awkward way of walking up the House, on which occasions O’Connor used to say, ‘Oh, there goes Peel with his two left legs.’”
“Ford Castle, Oct. 29.—I came here yesterday after a weary journey from Devonshire to Northumberland. Only Lady Sarah Lindsay, her two daughters, and Alick Yorke are here. This morning we had most interesting visitors. Two women were seen coming in under the gateway, one in a red cloak, the other carrying a bundle. It was Her Majesty Queen Esther Faa and the Princess Ellin of the Gipsies!
“When she had had her breakfast, the Queen came up into the library. She has a grand and beautiful old face, and she was full of natural refinement and eloquence. She said how she would not change places with any one, ‘not even with the Queen upon the throne,’ for ‘God was so good to her;’ that she ‘loved to wander,’ and that she wanted nothing since she ‘always drove her own pair,’ meaning her legs.
“She spoke very simply of her accession—that she was the last of the Faas; that she succeeded her uncle King William; that before him came her great-uncle, of whom we ‘must have read in history, Jocky Faa;’ that as for her subjects, she ‘couldna allude to them,’ for they were such a set that she kept herself clear of them; that she had had fourteen children, but they were none of them Faas. She spoke of her daughter as ‘the Princess that I have left downstairs,’ but all she said was quite simple and without any assumption. She sang to us a sort of paraphrase of Old Testament history. Lady Waterford asked her if there was anything she would like to have. She said she cared for nothing but rings—all her family liked them; that her daughter, Princess Ellin, had wished to have the ring Lady Waterford gave her when she last came to Ford, but that she had told her she ‘never meant to take off her petticoats till she went to bed;’ that next to rings, she liked ‘a good nate pair of shoes,’ for she ‘didna like to gang confused about the feet.’
“When she went away she blessed us. She said to Alick, ‘You are a bonnie lad, and one can see that you belong to the Board of Health.’ She said to me that she loved Lady Waterford, so that, ‘if it wouldna be too bould,’ she should ‘like to take her in her arms and kiss her and cuddle her to her old bosom.’”132
“Oct. 30.—It has been very pleasant having Alick Yorke here. He is most amusing. His impersonations are wonderful, and his singing very good. Owing to his being here, Lady Waterford has talked much of her childhood at Wimpole,133 the delights of visits to the dairy, and receiving great hunches of brown bread and little cups of cream there, and how, with her ‘mind’s nose,’ she still smelt the smell of a particular little cupboard near her nursery, &c.
“Yesterday we walked to Crookham, as Lady Waterford wished to visit a man dying there of consumption. Lady Sarah Lindsay went in the donkey-chair. She talked of Stichill, the old Pringle place on the other side of the Tweed. It is now inhabited by a coal-master named Baird, who has amassed an immense fortune, but retains all the old simplicity of his character. He bought a quantity of books, from the idea of their being proper furniture for the house, but when there was a discussion as to whether they should be bound in Russia or Morocco, said, ‘Na, but I will just ha’ them bound i’ Glasgow, my ain native place.’ In the evening Lady Waterford sang to us—her voice like a silver clarion and most touching—‘Far away, far away,’ till with the melting words dying into such indescribable sweetness, one’s whole soul seemed borne upwards.”
“Oct. 31.—Lady Waterford said, ‘Now I must tell you a story. Somers134 came to Highcliffe this year. I like having Somers for a cousin, he is always so kind and pleasant, and tells me so many things that are interesting. I felt it particularly this year, for he was suffering so much from a piece of the railroad that had got into his eye and he was in great pain, but he was just as pleasant as ever. “Oh, love has sore eyes,” he said, but he would talk. The next day he insisted on going off to Lymington to see Lord Warwick,135 who was there, and who had been ill; and it was an immense drive, and when he came back, he did not come down, and Pattinson said, “Lord Somers is come back, but he is suffering so much pain from his eye that he will not be able to have any dinner.” So I went up to sit with him. He was suffering great pain, and I wanted him not to talk, but he said, “Oh, no; I have got a story quite on my mind, and I really must tell it you.” And he said that when he got to Lymington, he found Lord Warwick ill in bed, and he said, “I am so glad to see you, for I want to tell you such an odd thing that has happened to me. Last night I was in bed and the room was quite dark (this old-fashioned room of the inn at Lymington which you now see). Suddenly at the foot of the bed there appeared a great light, and in the midst of the light the figure of Death just as it is seen in the Dance of Death and other old pictures—a ghastly skeleton with a scythe and a dart: and Death balanced the dart, and it flew past me, just above my shoulder, close to my head, and it seemed to go into the wall; and then the light went out and the figure vanished. I was as wide awake then as I am now, for I pinched myself hard to see, and I lay awake for a long time, but at last I fell asleep. When my servant came to call me in the morning, he had a very scared expression of face, and he said, ‘A dreadful thing has happened in the night, and the whole household of the inn is in the greatest confusion and grief, for the landlady’s daughter, who slept in the next room, and the head of whose bed is against the wall against which your head now rests, has been found dead in her bed.’”136
“Nov. 1, Sunday.—Lady Waterford has talked much of how few people in the world each person has to whom their deaths would make a real void; that she had scarcely any one—General Stuart perhaps, and Lady Jane; that others would be sorry at the time, but that it would to them make no blank; that somehow it would be pleasant to leave more of a void, but that even with brothers and sisters it was seldom so. I spoke of her own sister and of the great grief her death had been. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘a great grief, but still it is wonderful how little we had been together—scarcely three years, putting all the weeks together, out of the fourteen years we had been married. Of all my relations, Mama is certainly the greatest loss to me, we had been so much together latterly, and were so much to each other.’
“Lady Waterford talked much of her mother’s life in Paris as ambassadress, and of her own birth there at the Embassy. ‘I went many years after with Mama to Spa, and there was a very agreeable old gentleman there, to whom we talked at the table-d’hôte. He found out that we knew Paris and the people there, and then he talked, not knowing who we were, of the different ambassadresses. “Celle que j’ai preféré de toutes les ambassadrices,” he said, “c’était Lady Granville.” He saw somehow that he had not said quite the right thing, and next day he wanted to make the amende, and he talked of the Embassy again before all the people, of this room and that room, and then he said, “Est ce que c’était dans cette chambre, Miladi, que vous êtes accouchée de Miladi Waterford!” He was a M. de Langy, and was a very interesting person. His family belonged to the petite noblesse, and at the time of the flight to Varennes, after the royal family was captured, theirs was one of the houses to which they were brought to rest and refresh on the way,—for it was the custom then, when there were so few inns. M. de Langy’s mother was a staunch royalist, and when she knew that the King and Queen were coming, she prepared a beautiful little supper, everything as nice as she could, and waited upon them herself. When they were going away, the Queen, who had found it all most comfortable, said, “Où est donc la maîtresse de la maison? j’ai ête si bien ici, je voudrais la remercier avant de partir.” Madame de Langy, who was waiting, said simply, “J’étais la maîtresse de la maison avant que votre majesté y est entrée.”’
“We went to church at Etal in the afternoon. Both there and at Ford, it being All Saints’ Day, the sermons were wholly in exaltation of the saints, church services, and salvation by works. Lady Waterford was pained by it: coming back she spoke of a simple rule of doctrine:—
‘Just before God by faith,
Just before men by works:
Just by the works of faith,
Just by the faith which works.’
In the evening she talked much of her first visit to Italy, her only visit to Rome. ‘Char. was just married then, and I was just come out: we went pour un passe-temps. We travelled in our own carriage, and the floods had carried away the bridges, and it was very difficult to get on. It was the year of the cholera, and we had to pass quarantine. My father knew a great many of the people in authority, and we hoped to get leave to pass it in one of the larger towns. Mantua was decided upon, but was eventually given up because of the unhealthiness, and we had to pass ten days at Rovigo. We arrived at last at Bologna. The people were greatly astonished at the inn when we asked if the Cardinal Legate was at home: it was as if we had asked for the Pope: and they were more astonished still the next day when he came to call upon us. We went to a party at his palace. He was Cardinal Macchi. I shall never forget that party or the very odd people we met—I see them now. The Cardinal was in despair because the theatres were closed—“Je vous aurais preté ma loge, et je vous aurais donné des glaces!” The next day Rossini came to see us—“Je suis un volcan éteint,” he said. Afterwards we went to Rome and stayed four months there. I liked the society part best—the balls at the Borgheses’ and those at the Austrian Embassy: they were great fun.’
“On Saturday we went to Norham—the Lindsays and I. Even coming from Devonshire, the interest of this country strikes one excessively. It is bare, it is even ugly, but it is strangely interesting. There is such breadth and space in the long lines and sweeping distances, amidst which an occasional peel-tower stands like a milestone of history, and there is such a character in the strange, jagged, wind-tossed, storm-stricken trees. But it became really beautiful when we descended into the lovely valley of the Tweed with all its radiant autumnal tints, and sat under the grand mass of ruin, with great flights of birds ever circling round it and crying in the still air.”
“Nov. 4.—Yesterday we went quite a round of visits, seeing different phases of Border family life. We lunched at the Hirsel (Lord Home’s)—a great Scotchy-looking house in a rather featureless park. There were two tables and an immense party at luncheon—Mr. and Lady Gertrude Rolle, Lord Romney, and others. I did not think it an interesting place, though it contains a fine portrait of Sir Walter Scott by Raeburn; but Lady Waterford delighted in the happy family life, and says whenever she sees Lord Home she is reminded of the Frenchman who said, ‘Oh, mon Dieu! pourquoi est ce qu’il n’est pas mon père?’
“We went next to Sir John Marjoribanks of Lees. He was just come in from hunting, and his wife was fishing in the Tweed. We went to her there: she was standing up at the end of a boat which a man was rowing, and the whole picture was reflected in a river so smooth that it looked as if they were floating on a mirror.
“Then we went to the Baillie Hamiltons at Lenels, another and prettier place on the Tweed near Coldstream Bridge. The house contained much that was interesting, especially two enormous Chelsea vases representing ‘Air’ and ‘Water.’ Mrs. Baillie Hamilton was a daughter of Lord Polwarth—very pleasing, and her sister came in with the most perfect manners of good-breeding, &c. Then we went to the Askews.
“Lady Waterford stopped to take our luncheon—prepared but not eaten—to a poor man in a consumption. She beguiled the way by describing her visit to Windsor, and the Queen showing her the Mausoleum.
“She talked also of the passion for jewels: that she could understand it in the case of such persons as Madame Mère, who, when remonstrated with on buying so many diamonds, said, ‘J’accumule, j’accumule,’ for it had been very useful to her. Apropos of not despising dress, she gave me the quotation from Pope’s Homer’s Odyssey139—
‘A dignity of dress adorns the great,
And kings draw lustre from the robe of state.’
“Last Monday, having a great deal of natural talent for singing, reciting, &c., in the castle, Lady Waterford would not keep it to herself, and asked all the village people to the school, and took her guests there to sing, &c., to them. At the end, just before ‘God save the Queen,’ she was surprised by Miss Lindsay’s ode:—
‘All hail to thee, sweet lady, all hail to thee this night,
Of all things bright and beautiful, most beautiful, most bright;
Thou art a welcome guest alike in cottage and in hall,
With a kindly word and look and smile for each one and for all.
May every blessing life can give be thine from day to day,
May health, and peace, and happiness for ever strew thy way;
May the light thou shedd’st on others be reflected on thy brow,
May a grateful people’s love and pride like a stream around thee flow,
And all our prayers unite in one upon this festive e’en,
That long thou may’st be spared to Ford, to reign its Border queen.’”
“Nov. 7.—Lord and Lady Warwick have been here for some days. She is so simple and genial, that the Italian word simpatica is the only one to describe her.140
“Yesterday, Lady Waterford, Miss Lindsay, and I had a delightful long walk across the moor and through charming relics of forest. It was a succession of pictures—long extents of moss backed by ferny hills, downy uplands breaking into red rocks, lighted here and there by the white stem of an old birch-tree, and overlooking the softest expanses of faint blue distance. We found several curious fungi. Lady Waterford said that at Balmoral the Duchess of Edinburgh shocked the royal household by eating almost all she found. They thought she would be poisoned; but in Russia they are accustomed to eat fungi, and they make little patties of them which they eat in Lent when meat is forbidden—‘and they taste so like meat that there is almost the pleasure of doing something which is not quite right.’
“The objects of the walk were two. One was the fall of the Rowling Lynn in a chaos of red and grey rocks overhung by old birch-trees, a spot which seems photographed in Coleridge’s lines—
‘Beneath yon birch with silver bark
And boughs so pendulous and fair,
The brook falls scattered down the rock,
And all is mossy there.’
The other was the sacrificial stone covered with the mysterious rings which have given rise to boundless discussion among Northumbrian archæologists. When we reached home, we found the Bloomfields arrived.141 In the evening Lady Bloomfield told a curious story.
“‘I was very intimate at Vienna with the Princess Reuss, whose first husband was Prince of Anhalt. She was a niece of Queen Teresa of Bavaria. She told me that her aunt was at Aschaffenberg with the intention of going next day to Munich. In the evening the lady-in-waiting came in and asked the Queen if she was intending to give an audience. The Queen said, “Certainly not,” and that “she could not see any one.” The lady then said that there was a lady sitting in the ante-chamber who would not go away. Queen Teresa then desired her brother to go out and find out who it was. He came back much agitated, and said it was sehr unheimlich (very uncanny), for it was the Black Lady, and that when he came up to her she disappeared; for the Bavarian royal family have a Black Lady who appears to them before a death, just as the White Lady appears to the Prussian royal family. The next day the Queen left Aschaffenberg, but being a very kind-hearted woman, she sent back her secretary to fetch some petitions which had been presented, but which she had not attended to, and when the secretary came into her room, he found the Black Lady standing by the table where the papers were, but she vanished on his approach. That night, when the old castellan of Aschaffenberg and his wife were in bed, the great bell of the castle began to toll, and they remembered that it could toll by no human agency, as they had the key of the bell-tower.
“At that moment Queen Teresa died at Munich. She arrived at three: at five she was seized with cholera: at eleven she was dead.’”
“Nov. 8.—The two Miss Lindsays and I have been for a most wild excursion into the Cheviot valleys to the Heathpool Lynn—a ravine full of ancient alders and birch, and a mountain torrent tossing through grey rocks. The carriage met us at a farmhouse—a most desolate place, cut off by snow all through the winter months, and almost always cold and bleak.”
“Nov. 9.—Lady Waterford, Miss Lindsay, and I walked to distant plantations to see some strange grass, which, from being surrounded by water at times, had been matted together so that it formed a thick trunk, and branched out at the top like a palm-tree, with the oddest effect. Lady Waterford talked of an old woman she knew, whose husband was very ill, dying in fact. One day when she went to see him, she found his wife busy baking cakes, and she—the old woman—said that as he was dying she was getting them ready for his funeral. Going again some days later, Lady Waterford found the man still alive, and she could not resist saying to the woman that she thought her cakes must be getting rather stale. ‘Yes, that they are,’ said the wife; ‘some folks are so inconsiderate.’
“When we returned to the castle, we found that old Mr. Fyler, the Vicar of Cornhill, had arrived, and he was very amusing all evening. He talked much of Sir Horace St. Paul (a neighbour here), who had become a teetotaler, and had thrown away all the wine in his cellar. His mother was a daughter of Lord Ward, who had challenged and run through with his sword a brother officer, who, when he was engaged to his wife, had snatched away a brooch he had given her and exhibited it at mess as her present. It was the Lord Ward who was brother of Lady St. Paul, who was made the prominent figure in the picture by Copley of the death of the Earl of Chatham. It is a grand portrait in a fine picture, and Copley gave the life-size sketch which he made for it to the Ward family.
“When Sir Horace St. Paul was at college, he found a man lying drunk in the quadrangle and tried to make him get up. ‘You’re drunk,’ he said; ‘you don’t even know who I am.’—‘Yes, I know very well who you are,’ said the man; ’you’re the fellow that wrote an epistle to Timothy and never got an answer.’ I have heard this quoted as one of the naturally clever retorts of drunken men.
“Lady Waterford told Lord Grey’s story of the death—in a court in Edinburgh—of a naval captain who had been noted for his cruelties at sea, but especially in the slave trade. Mental terror made his death-bed most appalling. According to Scottish custom, the family opened the door for the spirit to pass more easily, when, to their horror, the bloody head of a black man suddenly rolled into the room.
“The dying man gave the most fearful scream, and his relations rushed to his bedside. When they looked round, the head was gone, but there was fresh blood upon the floor. To them it seemed inexplicable, but the fact was that Professor Owen had been attending an anatomical séance at which the body of a black man had been dissected, and there was something so curious in the way in which the head had been attached to the body, that he had obtained leave to carry it home in a cloth, that he might examine it more carefully. It was a very slippery, wet day, and as he was passing the open door of the dying man, the Professor had stumbled, and the head, slipping out of the cloth, had rolled into the house; then, in the moment when they were all occupied with the dying man, he had pursued it and whipped it up into the cloth again, and hoped it had not been observed.”143
“Nov. 10.—Last night Mr. Fyler told his famous story of ‘the nun.’ It is briefly this:—
“A son of Sir J. Stuart of Allanbank, on the Blackadder, where Lady Boswell lives now, was in Rome, where he fell in love with a novice in one of the convents. When his father heard of it, he was furious, and summoned him home. Young Stuart told the nun he must leave Rome, and she implored him to marry her first; but he would do nothing of the kind, and, as he left, she flung herself under his carriage; the wheels went over her, and she was killed. The first thing the faithless lover saw on his return to Scotland was the nun, who met him in the bridal attire she was to have worn, and she has often appeared since, and has become known in the neighbourhood as ‘Pearlin Jean.’ On one occasion seven ministers were called in to lay her, but with no effect.
“Mr. Fyler says that when people on the Border are not quite right in their heads, they are said to ‘want twopence in the shilling.’ A poor cooper at Cornhill was one of these, and one day he disappeared. The greatest search was made for the missing man, for he was a Johnson, and almost all the village at Cornhill are Johnsons—fishermen. So every one went out to look, and though nothing was found, they came to the conclusion that he had been drowned in the Tweed.
“That evening Mr. Fyler observed that his church windows had not been opened as he desired, and going up to them and looking in, he saw a white figure wrapped in a sheet walking up and down the aisle and flapping its arms. He went back and said, ‘I’ve found the lost man. He is in the church, and two of the strongest men in the place must go with me and get him out.’ But if any one else had looked into the church, they would have thought it was a ghost. As it was, one of the men who came to get him out fainted dead away.”
“Winton Castle, Nov. 14.—Dear Lady Ruthven is stone deaf, almost blind, and her voice like waggon-wheels, but—in her eighty-sixth year—she is as kind and good and as truly witty as ever.
“On Friday we went to Gosford—five in the carriage. It is a dull flat park, redeemed by being so near the sea, and contains two great houses close to each other, of which one—the modern one—has never been inhabited, as sea-sand was mixed with its mortar. We found old Lady Wemyss144 sitting behind a screen, much like a lady-abbess in appearance. I was most warmly received by two child-friends—little Lady Eva Greville and her brother Sidney—a charming boy with dark eyes and light flowing hair. Then Lady Warwick came in with Lady Jane Dundas, and, with one hand-candle, showed us the pictures, just as Lady Elcho did many years ago.
“Yesterday we went to Ormistoun, an attractive place, to see the Dempsters, the uncle and aunt who brought up the authoress of ‘Vera’—charming old people. He talked much of former times in Scotland, and said that much the most agreeable women in the country were considered to be Lady Ruthven and Mrs. Stewart Mackenzie. He described the attachment of one of Mrs. Stewart Mackenzie’s sisters—a certain very untidy Frances Mackenzie—to Thorwaldsen, but they were not allowed to marry. The last word Thorwaldsen spoke was ‘Francesca.’
“In the garden of Ormistoun is a yew six hundred years old, but with every appearance of being still quite in its prime, growing hard, and likely to do so for another six hundred years. John Knox is said to have preached under it.
“I sat by Lady Ruthven at dinner. She talked of the quaintnesses of her village people. The schoolmaster was very particular about pronunciation. When his wife died, some one came in and said, ‘What a very lamēntable,’ &c.—‘Oh, do say lamentable,’ interrupted the schoolmaster. When the minister was marrying a couple he said, ‘Art thou willing to take this woman,’ &c.?—‘Yes, I am willing,’ replied the bridegroom, ‘but I had rather it had been her sister.’
“To-day Lady Ruthven walked with me to the kirk. She had neither her ‘speaking tubes’ nor her slate, so I could not answer her, but she told me the whole story of Lady Belhaven’s death, how it was ‘all arranged as was best for her, just a gentle passing away, almost unconscious, but perfectly happy;’ yet how, though one glibly said, ‘God’s will be done,’ it was so hard to feel it. In returning, she talked of the trees, how the forester wished her to cut one down where there were two close together, but how she was ‘unwilling to separate friends who had lived together so long.’
“One day Lady Ruthven had a letter asking for the character of her footman, John Smith, who was leaving her—if he was ‘clever, honest, sober, a Christian, a recipient of the Holy Communion,’ &c. She answered, ‘If John Smith could answer to half your demands, I should have married him long ago.’”
“Raby Castle, Nov. 20.—A week here with a large party, which I began to think delightful as soon as I could cure myself of the uncomfortable sensation of being so much behind my kind, all the other people knowing each other better, and being more in possession of their tongues and faculties than myself. ‘Be insignificant, and you will make no enemies,’ is, however, a very good piece of advice I once received. Interesting members of the circle have been the Fitzwilliams from Wentworth, and the Quaker family of Pease, of whom the mother is one of the sweetest, most charming people I ever saw, like a lovely picture by Gainsborough, and with the expression of one of Perugino’s angels. But the great feature of the visit has been the Butes, and I have been absorbed by them. I never expected to make much acquaintance, but from the first Lord Bute145 annexed himself to me, perhaps because he thought I was shy, and because of other people he felt very shy himself. He has great sweetness and gentleness of manner, and a good-looking, refined face.
“Lady Bute146 says the happiest time in her life was the winter they spent in Majorca, because then she got away, not only from all the fine people, but from all the people who wanted to know what they thought must be the fine people; but that it was such a bore even there bearing a name for which the natives would raise their prices. Next winter they mean to spend at Nazareth, where they will hire the Bishop’s house; ‘no one can get at us there.’ They are supposed to long very anxiously for the birth of a son, for now—
‘That little something unpossess’d
Corrodes and poisons all the rest.’147
“I walked with Lord Bute each day. It was like reading ‘Lothair’ in the original, and most interesting at first, but became somewhat monotonous, as he talks incessantly—winding into his subject like a serpent, as Johnson said of Burke—of altars, ritual, liturgical differences; and he often almost loses himself, and certainly quite lost me, in sentences about ‘the Unity of the Kosmos,’ &c.
“He spoke much of Antichrist—the mark 666, the question if it had been Nero, or if Nero was only a type, and the real Antichrist still to come; and of the other theory, that the reason why no ten thousand were sealed of Dan was that Antichrist was to come from that tribe, the dying words of Jacob tending to this belief.
“He talked much of fasting; that he had often fasted for twenty-four hours, and that he preferred fasting as the practice existed ‘before the folly of collations.’ I asked if it did not make him ill. He said ‘no,’ for if the hunger became too great he took a cigar, which allayed it, and that he went out and ‘ate the air’ while taking plenty of exercise; that poor people seldom became thin in Lent, because what they did eat was bread and potatoes. I said I thought it must make him dreadfully ill-tempered to be so hungry, and thus conduce rather to vice than virtue. He said he did not think it made him vicious; but he agreed with me that persons naturally inclined to be ill-tempered had better fast alone.
“From what he said it was evident that he would like to give up all his goods to the poor, and that the Island of Bute stands a chance of becoming a vast monastery. He talked much of the Troitska in Russia, where he had been; that the monks there were too lax, and that the really desirable monastic life was that of those who lived in the cells established some miles off by Philaret, which were subterranean, with a stove, and no other furniture. When mass was celebrated in their chapel, these anchorite monks could faintly discern, down a channel hollowed in the rock, the glitter of the candles on the altar, and occasionally, mingled with this, appeared a ray or two of bluish light, and this was daylight. It was the only time they ever saw it.
“Amongst the young men here is a young Ashburnham, third son of Lord Ashburnham, who reads Greek in his room for his amusement, and is a lawyer, but says he has not yet been able to realise the hymn, ‘Brief life is here our portion.’ He told me that the expression of minding your p’s and q’s came from toupets and queues.”
“Whitburn Hall, Nov. 24.—I returned here from Raby with my Williamson cousins,148 who are always so kind that they make one feel at Whitburn ‘où peut’on être mieux qu’au sein de sa famille?’ The place has much interest of its own kind. There is something even fine in the vast black cloud of Sunderland smoke, obliterating the horizon and giving such an idea of limitless and mysterious space with the long lines of white breakers foaming up through the gloom; while at night the ghastly shriek of the fog-horn and the tolling of the bell, and the occasional boom of a cannon through the storm, give such dramatic effect that one forgets the waste inland landscape, the blackened hedges and wind-stricken coalfields.”
“Ravensworth, Nov. 29.—I was one night with poor Cousin Susan (Davidson), much aged and altered. She lay chiefly on a sofa in her own sitting-room, with her two favourite white dogs—the ‘boy and girl’—Fritz and Lulu, by her side, and half the birds in the neighbourhood pecking bread and potatoes outside the windows. It seemed a dreary life to leave her to, but she does not feel it so; hers is one of the cases in which only the body, and not the mind, seems to require nourishment. Thursday, when I came away, was her rent-day, and she wished me to go and see her tenants and speak to them at dinner, and said to the agent, ‘I wish that all my tenants should see my cousin;’ but fortunately the train came at the right moment to save me from this alarming encounter, which would have given a (probably) wrong impression—at least to the tenants.
“Lord Ravensworth149 welcomed me with such cordial kindness, and has been so genial and good to me ever since, that I quite feel as if in him I had found the ideal uncle I have always longed for, but never before enjoyed. He is certainly the essence of an agreeable and accomplished scholar, with a faultless memory and apt classical quotations for every possible variety of subject. He told me, and made me write down, the following curious story:—
“It is going back a long time ago—to the time of Marie Antoinette. It will be remembered that the most faithful, the most entirely devoted of all the gallant adherents of Marie Antoinette was the Comte de Fersen. The Comte de Fersen was ready to lay down his life for the Queen, to go through fire and water for her sake; and, on her side, if Marie Antoinette had a corner in her heart for any one except the King, it was for the Comte de Fersen.150 When the royal family escaped to Varennes, it was the Comte de Fersen who dressed up as coachman and drove the carriage; and when the flight to Varennes failed, and when, one after another, he had seen all his dearest friends perish upon the scaffold, the Comte de Fersen felt as if the whole world was cut away from under his feet, as if life had nothing whatever left to offer, and he sunk into a state of apathy, mental and physical, from which nothing whatever seemed to rouse him; there was nothing whatever left which could be of any interest to him.
“The physicians who were called in said that the Comte de Fersen must have absolute change; that he must travel for an unlimited time; that he must leave France; at any rate, that he must never see again that Paris which was so terrible to him, which was stained for ever with the blood of the Queen and Madame Elizabeth. And he was quite willing; all places were the same to him now that his life was left desolate: he did not care where he went.
“He went to Italy, and one afternoon in November he drove up to what was then, as it is still, the most desolate, weird, ghastly inn in Italy—the wind-stricken, storm-beaten, lava-seated inn of Radicofani. And he came there not to stay; he only wanted post-horses to go on as fast as he could, for he was always restless to be moving—to go farther on. But the landlord said, ‘No, it was too late at night; there was going to be a storm; he could not let his horses cross the pass of Radicofani till the next morning.’—‘But you are not aware,’ said the traveller, ’that I am the Comte de Fersen.’—‘I do not care in the least who you are,’ said the landlord; ‘I make my rules, and my rules hold good for one as well as for another.’—‘But you do not understand probably that money is no object to me, and that time is a very great object indeed. I am quite willing to pay whatever you demand, but I must have the horses at once, for I must arrive at Rome on a particular day.’—‘Well, you will not have the horses,’ said the landlord; ’at least to-morrow you may have them, but to-night you will not; and if you are too fine a gentleman to come into my poor hotel, you may sleep in the carriage, but to-night you will certainly not have the horses.’
“Then the Comte de Fersen made the best of what he saw was the inevitable. He had the carriage put into the coach-house, and he himself came into the hotel, and he found it, as many hundreds of travellers have done since, not half so bad as he expected. It is a bare, dismal, whitewashed barracky place, but the rooms are large and tolerably clean. So he got some eggs or something that there was for supper, and he had a fire made up in the best of the rooms, and he went to bed. But he took two precautions; he drew a little round table that was there to the head of the bed and he put two loaded pistols upon it; and, according to the custom of that time, he made the courier sleep across the door on the outside.
“He went to bed, and he fell asleep, and in the middle of the night he awoke with the indescribable sensation that people have, that he was not alone in the room, and he raised himself against the pillow and looked out. From a small latticed window high in the opposite whitewashed wall the moonlight was pouring into the room, and making a white silvery pool in the middle of the rough boarded oak floor. In the middle of this pool of light, dressed in a white cap and jacket and trousers, such as masons wear, stood the figure of a man looking at him. The Comte de Fersen stretched out his hand over the side of the bed to take one of his pistols, and the man said, ‘Don’t fire: you could do no harm to me, you could do a great deal of harm to yourself: I am come to tell you something.’ And the Comte de Fersen looked at him: he did not come any nearer; he remained just where he was, standing in the pool of white moonlight, half way between the bed and the wall; and he said, ‘Say on: tell me what you have come for.’ And the figure said, ‘I am dead, and my body is underneath your bed. I was a mason of Radicofani, and, as a mason, I wore the white dress in which you now see me. My wife wished to marry somebody else; she wished to marry the landlord of this hotel, and they beguiled me into the inn, and they made me drunk, and they murdered me, and my body is buried beneath where your bed now stands. Now I died with the word vendetta upon my lips, and the longing, the thirst that I have for revenge will not let me rest, and I never shall rest, I never can have any rest, till I have had my revenge. Now I know that you are going to Rome; when you get to Rome, go to the Cardinal Commissary of Police, and tell him what you have seen, and he will send men down here to examine the place, and my body will be found, and I shall have my revenge.’ And the Comte de Fersen said, ‘I will.’ But the spirit laughed and said, ‘You don’t suppose that I’m going to believe that? You don’t imagine that you are the only person I’ve come to like this? I have come to dozens, and they have all said, “I will,” and afterwards what they have seen has seemed like a hallucination, a dream, a chimæra, and before they have reached Rome the impression has vanished altogether, and nothing has been done. Give me your hand.’ The Comte de Fersen was a little staggered at this; however, he was a brave man, and he stretched out his hand over the foot of the bed, and he felt something or other happen to one of his fingers; and he looked, and there was no figure, only the moonlight streaming in through the little latticed window, and the old cracked looking-glass on the wall and the old rickety furniture just distinguishable in the half light; there was no mason there, but the loud regular sound of the snoring of the courier was heard outside the bedroom door. And the Comte de Fersen could not sleep; he watched the white moonlight fade into dawn, and the pale dawn brighten into day, and it seemed to him as if the objects in that room would be branded into his brain, so familiar did they become—the old cracked looking-glass, and the shabby washing-stand, and the rush-bottomed chairs, and he also began to think that what had passed in the earlier part of the night was a hallucination—a mere dream. Then he got up, and he began to wash his hands; and on one of his fingers he found a very curious old iron ring, which was certainly not there before—and then he knew.
“And the Comte de Fersen went to Rome, and when he arrived at Rome he went to the Swedish Minister that then was, a certain Count Löwenjelm,151 and the Count Löwenjelm was very much impressed with the story, but a person who was much more impressed was the Minister’s younger brother, the Count Carl Löwenjelm, for he had a very curious and valuable collection of peasants’ jewelry, and when he saw the ring he said, ‘That is a very remarkable ring, for it is a kind of ring which is only made and worn in one place, and that place is in the mountains near Radicofani.’
“And the two Counts Löwenjelm went with the Comte de Fersen to the Cardinal Commissary of Police, and the Cardinal also was very much struck, and he said, ‘It is a very extraordinary story, a very extraordinary story indeed, and I am quite inclined to believe that it means something. But, as you know, I am in a great position of trust under Government, and I could not send a body of military down to Radicofani upon the faith of what may prove to have been a dream. At any rate (he said) I could not do it unless the Comte de Fersen proved his sense of the importance of such an action by being willing to return to Radicofani himself.’ And not only was the Comte de Fersen willing to return, but the Count Carl Löwenjelm went with him. The landlord and landlady were excessively agitated when they saw them return with the soldiers who came from Rome. They moved the bed, and found that the flags beneath had been recently upturned. They took up the flags, and there—not sufficiently corrupted to be irrecognisable—was the body of the mason, dressed in the white cap and jacket and trousers, as he had appeared to the Comte de Fersen. Then the landlord and landlady, in true Italian fashion, felt that Providence was against them, and they confessed everything. They were taken to Rome, where they were tried and condemned to death, and they were beheaded at the Bocca della Verità.
“The Count Carl Löwenjelm was present at the execution of that man and woman, and he was the person who told the Marquis de Lavalette, who told Lord Ravensworth, who told me. The by-play of the story is also curious. Those two Counts Löwenjelm were the natural sons of the Duke of Sudomania, who was one of the aspirants for the crown of Sweden in the political crisis which preceded the election of Bernadotte. He was, in fact, elected, but he had many enemies, and on the night on which he arrived to take possession of the throne he was poisoned. The Comte de Fersen himself came to a tragical end in those days. He was very unpopular in Stockholm, and during the public procession in which he took part at the funeral of Charles Augustus (1810) he was murdered, being (though it is terrible to say so of the gallant adherent of Marie Antoinette) beaten to death with umbrellas. And that it was with no view to robbery and from purely political feeling is proved by the fact that though he was en grande tenue, nothing was taken away.”
“Hutton, Yorkshire, Nov. 30.—I came here yesterday, arriving in the dark. It was a great surprise, as I expected to find the place amid the Middlesborough smoke, to see from the window on awaking a beautiful view of high moorland fells beyond the terraced gardens. I laugh when I think how the Duchess of Cleveland rejoiced in giving Mrs. Pease such a pleasant change to Raby, to see this intensely luxurious house by Waterhouse, filled with delightful collections of books, pictures, and carved furniture, and its almost Arabian-Night-like conservatories.
“We have been through bitter wind to Guisborough Abbey—only a grand church front standing lonely near a fine avenue of trees in the grounds of Colonel Challoner.
“Mr. and Mrs. Pease are excellent. He is member for Darlington, son and nephew of the famous Pease Brothers. She, formerly a Fox of Falmouth, is one of the most charming people I ever saw, full of the sweetest and simplest natural dignity. She lives in and for her children, and though the mother of six girls and two boys, looks about six-and-twenty herself.152
“There is a Mr. Stover here who is amusing. An uncle of his lives in the haunted house at Biddick. One day when he came in from shooting, he hung his hat on a pole-screen, and sat down by the fire to read his newspaper. Presently, looking over his paper, he saw, to his amazement, his hat on the top of the screen nodding at him. He thought he must be dreaming, but watched, and it certainly nodded again. He got up and walked round it, when it seemed still. Then he sat down again and watched it, and it nodded again, and not only that, but the screen itself seemed to be moving bodily towards him. He watched it, and it certainly crossed part of the pattern of the carpet: of this there could be no doubt. Then he could bear it no longer, and he rushed at the screen and knocked it over. Underneath was his tame tortoise.”
“Wentworth Wodehouse, Dec. 3.—This house has a very stately effect as you approach it, with a truly majestic portico. On the first floor is an immense hall like those in the great Roman houses, and on either side diverge the reception rooms, hung with pictures. Amongst the portraits are several of the great Lord Strafford, with his parents, his son, and his two daughters—Anne and Arabella. Of these, the elder married the Marquis of Rockingham, from whom the present owners are descended. The picture by Vandyke of Lord Strafford and his secretary is glorious. The rooms themselves want colour and effect. Sixty guests can stay in the house, and a hundred and twenty can dine without any crowd, but the place needs great parties of this kind, for smaller ones are lost in these vast suites of too lofty rooms. Lord Fitzwilliam153 is the very type of a high-bred nobleman, and Lady Fitzwilliam154 has a sweet and gentle manner; but Lady F. is calm and placid, her two daughters calmer and placider, and Lord F. calmest and placidest.
“To-day we were taken by Lord Fitzwilliam to the two churches. One by Pearson is new and most magnificent; the other is old and very ugly, but has interesting monuments. That of Lord Strafford is mural, with his figure kneeling near the altar. The epitaph does not allude to the manner of his death, but, after setting forth his virtues, simply says ‘he died May 8th, 1641.’ The ghost of Lord Strafford is still said to walk down the oak staircase at Wentworth every Friday night, carrying his head. An old gateway with several fragments of the house of his time remain, and many of his books are preserved in the library. My bedroom is hung with white worked with red by his daughter Lady Rockingham.”
“Dec. 4.—Lady Fitzwilliam has been showing us the house. It contains much of interest, especially in the pictures, and they are repeated so often that one learns to know the family faces—Lord Strafford and his three wives, his son and his two daughters by his second wife, and the second Lord Strafford with his wife, who was the daughter of James, Earl of Derby, and Charlotte de la Tremouille. His inscriptions in the Bibles of her father and mother, which are here, and the many memorials he raised to her, are so touching that it is quite a shock to find he married again after her death; but in his will he always speaks of the second as only his “wife,” the first as his “deare wife.” He restored the old church in her memory, and enjoined upon his descendants always to keep it up for her sake.
“Lady Albreda drove us about the park and to the ‘Mausoleum,’ a commemorative monument raised to the Minister Lord Rockingham by his son. It is copied from the Roman monument at S. Remy near Aries, and contains, in a kind of Pantheon, a statue by Nollekens of Lord Rockingham surrounded by his friends. The face is from a mask taken after death, and the figure is full of power and expression, with a deprecatory ‘Oh, pray don’t say such a thing as that.’”
“Temple Newsam, Dec. 6.—This great house is four miles from Leeds, by a road passing through a squalid suburb of grimy houses and muddy lanes, with rotten palings and broken paving-stones, making blackened pools of stagnant water; then black fields succeed, with withered hedges, stag-headed trees, and here and there a mountain of coal refuse breaking the dismal distances. It was almost dark as I drove up the steep park to the house.
“In an immense gallery, hung with red and covered with pictures, like the gallery at Chesney Wold in Bleak House, I found Mrs. Meynell Ingram and Freddie Wood155 sitting. It was like arriving at a bivouac in the desert; the light from the fire and the lamps gleamed on a little tea-table and a few chairs round it, all beyond was lost in the dark immensity.... Soon other guests arrived—Judge Denman, come for the assizes at Leeds, and his marshal, young Ottaway, the cricketer; Admiral Duncombe, the High Sheriff; Mr. Glyn, Vicar of Beverley, the chaplain; and Sir Frederick Grey and his wife ‘Barberina.’ Some of the pictures are very fine—a portrait by Titian, several Vandykes, Reynolds’ ‘Shepherd Boy,” and some fine Reynolds portraits of Lord and Lady Irvine, the former possessors of this place—the Templar’s Stow of ‘Ivanhoe.’ They left it to their five daughters in turn. The eldest was Lady Hertford, and, if she had two sons, it was to go to the second, but she had only one; the second daughter was Lady Alexander Gordon, who was childless; the third was Mrs. Meynell, mother-in-law of the present possessor.”
“Dec, 7.—Deep snow all to-day and a furious wind. But yesterday we reached Leeds for the assize sermon from the Sheriff’s chaplain, Mr. Glyn,156 a really magnificent sermon on ‘What is thy life?’ The music also was very fine, and the great church filled with people.
“This house, where Lord Darnley was born, and whence Lord Strafford issued his summons to the Cavaliers to meet in defence of the King, is very curious. In point of amusement, the Judge is the principal feature of the present party, and how he does trample on his High Sheriff! He coolly said to him yesterday that he considered a High Sheriff as ‘dust under his feet;’ and he narrated before him a story of one of his brother judges, who, when his High Sheriff had left his hat in court, not only would not let him go to fetch it, but would not wait while his servants fetched it, and ordered him instantly to take him back to his lodgings without his hat! In court, Judge Denman was annoyed by some stone-breakers outside the window, and was told it would cost a matter of £40 to have them stopped. ‘Stop the noise instantly,’ he said; and the Mayor had to pay for it out of his own pocket. Yesterday, when the snow was so deep, the High Sheriff timidly suggested that they might be snowed up. ‘That is impossible,’ said the Judge; ‘whatever the difficulties, Mr. High Sheriff, you are bound to see me conveyed to Leeds by the opening of the court, if the whole of Leeds is summoned out to cut a way for me.’
“Lord Strafford was here because he borrowed the house of Sir Arthur Ingram as the largest to which to summon the Cavaliers. Sir Arthur was rewarded by Charles II. for his devotion to the Stuarts by being made Viscount Irvine.”
“Ripley Castle, Dec. 12.—In this pleasant hospitable house I greatly miss the gentle presence of the beloved Lady Ingilby, who was so long a kind and warm-hearted friend; but it is pleasant to find her cordial welcome still living in that of her son, Sir Henry, and her pretty graceful daughter-in-law, who is a daughter of Lord Marjoribanks of Ladykirk.
“I found here Count and Countess Bathyany, people I was very glad to see. They retain their old castle in Hungary, where they are magnates of the first rank, but for some years they have lived chiefly in England, at Eaglehurst on the Solent, and receive there during the yachting season. The Countess has remains of great beauty and is wonderfully agreeable. As I sat by her at dinner, she talked much of Lady William Russell,157 and told me the story of Lord Moira’s appearance, which she had heard from her own lips. “Lady William was at Brighton, where her friend Lady Betty —— was also staying. One day when Lady Betty went to her, she found her excessively upset and discomposed, and she said it was on account of a dream that she had had of her uncle, who, as Lord Moira, had brought her up, and who was then Governor of Malta. She said that she had seen a very long hall, and at the end of the hall a couch with a number of female figures in different attitudes of grief and despair bending over it, as if they were holding up or attending to some sick person. On the couch she saw no one, but immediately afterwards she seemed to meet her Uncle Moira and embraced him, but said, with a start, ‘Uncle, how terribly cold you are!’ He replied, ‘Bessie, did you not know that I am dead?’ She recollected herself instantly and said, ‘Oh, Uncle, how does it look on the other side?’—‘Quite different from what we have imagined, and far, far more beautiful,’ he replied with a radiant smile, and she awoke. Her dream occurred just when Lord Hastings158 (formerly Lord Moira) died on a couch in a hall at Malta; but she told the circumstances to Lady Betty long before the news came.159
“Another story which Countess Bathyany told from personal knowledge was that of Sir Samuel Romilly.
“Lord Grey160 and his son-in-law, Sir Charles Wood, were walking on the ramparts of Carlisle. The rampart is there still. It is very narrow, and there is only one exit; so if you walk there, you must return as you came. While they were walking, a man passed them, returned, passed them again, and then disappeared in front of them over the parapet, where there was really no means of exit. There was a red scarf round his throat. ‘How very extraordinary! and how exactly like Sir Samuel Romilly!’ they both exclaimed. At that moment Sir Samuel Romilly had cut his throat in a distant part of England.
“We have tea in the evening in the oak room in the tower, where Miss Ingilby has often had much to say that is interesting, especially this story.161
“A regiment was lately passing through Derbyshire on its way to fresh quarters in the North. The Colonel, as they stayed for the night in one of the country towns, was invited to dine at a country-house in the neighbourhood, and to bring any one he liked with him. Consequently he took with him a young ensign for whom he had taken a great fancy. They arrived, and it was a large party, but the lady of the house did not appear till just as they were going in to dinner, and, when she appeared, was so strangely distraite and preoccupied that she scarcely attended to anything that was said to her. At dinner, the Colonel observed that his young companion scarcely ever took his eyes off the lady of the house, staring at her in a way which seemed at once rude and unaccountable. It made him observe the lady herself, and he saw that she scarcely seemed to attend to anything said by her neighbours on either side of her, but rather seemed, in a manner quite unaccountable, to be listening to some one or something behind her. As soon as dinner was over, the young ensign came to the Colonel and said, ‘Oh, do take me away: I entreat you to take me away from this place.’ The Colonel said, ‘Indeed your conduct is so very extraordinary and unpleasant, that I quite agree with you that the best thing we can do is to go away;’ and he made the excuse of his young friend being ill, and ordered their carriage. When they had driven some distance the Colonel asked the ensign for an explanation of his conduct. He said that he could not help it: during the whole of dinner he had seen a terrible black shadowy figure standing behind the chair of the lady of the house, and it had seemed to whisper to her, and she to listen to it. He had scarcely told this, when a man on horseback rode rapidly past the carriage, and the Colonel, recognising one of the servants of the house they had just left, called out to know if anything was the matter. ‘Oh, don’t stop me, sir,’ he shouted; ‘I am going for the doctor: my lady has just cut her throat.’
“I may mention here a very odd adventure which the other day befell my cousin Eliot Yorke. He had been dining with the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace, in company with Captain Fane, commander of H.M.S. Bellerophon on the Australian Station, who had been well known to the Duke and Eliot when the former was in the South Pacific in command of the Galatea. At a late hour Eliot and Captain Fane left the Palace to go to their club. The night was cold and wet, and, at a crossing in Pall-Mall, their attention was attracted by a miserable-looking little boy, ragged and shoeless, who, even in the middle of the night, was still plying his broom and imploring a trifle from the passers-by. Eliot, according to his usual custom, stopped to talk to the boy before relieving him. The child told him he was a stranger in London, that he had walked there to seek his fortune from some place on the south-west coast, that he was friendless, homeless, and penniless. The proprietor of the crossing had lent it to him, with his broom, for that day only: he had earned very little, but Eliot’s gift would secure him a lodging for that night, and then—he supposed there was nothing for him but starvation or the workhouse. ‘And have you really no friends or relations in the world?’ said Eliot. ‘Well, sir, it’s the same as if I had none; I’ve one brother, but I shall never see him again: I don’t even know if he is alive.’—‘What is your brother’s name?’—‘He is—— a signalman on board the Bellerophon, and he’s been away so long, he must have forgotten me.’—‘It’s perfectly true,’ said Captain Fane; ’that is the name of my signalman, and a very smart fellow he is, and I see a strong likeness between him and the boy.’ The end of the story was, that the two gentlemen secured a lodging for the boy, bought him some clothes, and, through Captain Fane’s influence, he has been placed on board one of the training vessels, the Dreadnought, for the merchant service, to become a good sailor like his brother. But the combination of coincidences is most striking and providential. The boy only had the crossing for that one night. Captain Fane, almost the only person in the world who could testify to the truth of the story, was only in London for two nights; and he chanced to be walking with Eliot, probably the only person who would have thought of stopping to talk to a crossing-sweeper.”
“Hickledon, Dec. 12.—I came here yesterday, cordially welcomed by Lord and Lady Halifax, and was glad to find the John Greys here. In the evening my dear Charlie and Lady Agnes came, but our meeting was sadly clouded by the terrible news of poor George Grey’s162 death at Sandringham. Charlie had brought back many stories from Bedgebury. Mr. Beresford Hope told him that:—
“His uncle Lord Decies, who had lived very much in Paris, met, somewhere abroad, young Lionel Ashley, a brother of Lord Shaftesbury, then about twenty-two, and living abroad, as he was, very much out at elbows. Lord Decies remarked upon a very curious iron ring which he wore, with a death’s-head and cross-bones upon it. ‘Oh,” said young Ashley, ‘about that ring there is a very curious story. It was given to me by a famous conjuring woman, Madame le Norman, to whom I went with two friends of mine. She prophesied that we should all three die before we were twenty-three. My two friends are already dead, and next year I shall be twenty-three: but if you like I will give you the ring;’ and he gave it to Lord Decies. When Lord Decies returned to Paris, Lionel Ashley came there too, and he frequently dined with him. A short time before the expiration of the year, at the end of which Ashley was again engaged to dine with him, Lord Decies was sitting in his room, when the door opened, and Lionel Ashley came in. As to what was said, Mr. Hope was not quite clear, but the circumstances were so singular, that when he was gone, Lord Decies rang the bell, and asked the servant who had let Mr. Ashley into the house. ‘Mais, Milord, M. Ashley est mort hier,’ said the servant.’163
“Another curious story was that—
“Lord Waterford (the third Marquis) was one day standing talking to the landlord of the little inn in the village close to his place of Curraghmore, when some one rushed up looking very much agitated, and said that there had been a most dreadful murder in the neighbouring hills. ‘Then it must be the little one,’ exclaimed the landlord. ‘What can you possibly mean?’ said Lord Waterford, feeling that the landlord’s knowing anything about it was at the least very suspicious. ‘Well, my lord,’ he said, ‘I am afraid you will never believe me, but I must tell you that last night I dreamt that two men came to my inn, a tall man and a little, and in my dream I saw the tall man murder the little man with a very curious knife, the like of which I never saw before. I told my wife when I woke, but she only laughed at me. To my horror, in the course of the morning, those very two men came to my inn, and I was so possessed by my dream, that I refused them admittance; but coming back some time after, I found that my wife had let them in when my back was turned. I could not turn them out of my house when they were once in it, but going in, some time after, with some refreshments, my horror was increased by seeing on the table between them the very knife I had seen in my dream. Then they paid for their refreshments and went away.’
“The dream of the landlord and the coincidences were considered so extraordinary, that as the bridge at Carrick-on-Suir was the only bridge in that part, and so in a sort of sense divided the country, a watch was put there, and in course of time a man exactly answering to the landlord’s description crossed the bridge and was arrested. In prison, he confessed that he had been in the cod-fishery trade with his companion, who had boasted to him of his great earnings. He forthwith attached himself to him, travelled with him, and watched for the opportunity of murdering him. His weapon was a knife used in the cod-fishery, quite unknown in those parts.”164
“Hickledon, Dec. 15.—I have been indescribably happy here with Charlie Wood, and every hour spent with him makes one more entirely feel that there is no one like him—no one.
‘He is indeed the glass
Wherein the noble youth may dress themselves.’
To be with him is like breathing a pure mountain air of which one cannot imbibe enough, and which strengthens one for weary months of other people. One cannot give greater praise to Lady Agnes than by saying that she is quite worthy of him. Charlie’s relation to his parents is perfect. They often cannot agree with his High Church opinions, but he never obtrudes his views or annoys them, and while his whole life is what it is, could they grudge or regret what is so much to him?”
“Dec. 27.—I have been staying at Brighton with old Mrs. Aïdé, who looks like Cinderella’s godmother or some other good old fairy. It amused me exceedingly to see at Brighton an entirely new phase of society—two pleasant old ladies, daughters of Horace Smith, being its best and leading elements. Every one was full of the ‘Rink,’ where all the young gentlemen and all the young ladies skate all morning on dry land, come home to luncheon, and skate again all afternoon. No balls or picnics can promote the same degree of intimacy which is thus engendered, young men walking about (on wheels) all day long, holding up and assisting their partners. I heard this curious story:—
“The Princess Dolgorouki had been a great heiress and was a person of great wealth and importance. One day she was driving through a village near S. Petersburg, when she heard the clear glorious voice of a young girl ringing through the upper air from a high window of one of the poor houses by the wayside. So exquisitely beautiful was the voice, that the Princess stopped her carriage to listen to it. The voice rang on and on for some time, and, when it ceased, the Princess sent into the house to inquire who the singer had been. ‘Oh,’ they said, ‘it is one of your own serfs: it is the girl Anita;’ and they brought the singer out, a sweet, simple, modest-looking girl of sixteen, and at the bidding of the Princess she sang again, quite simply, without any shyness, in the road by the side of the carriage. The Princess was greatly captivated by her, and finding that she was educated beyond most of those in her condition of life, and being at that time in want of a reader in her palace at S. Petersburg, she took her to live with her, and Anita occupied in her house a sort of intermediate position, arranging the flowers, and reading when she was wanted. Gradually the Princess became very fond of her, and gave her masters, under whom she made such astonishing progress, that she became quite a well-educated young lady, while her glorious voice formed the great attraction to all parties at the Dolgorouki Palace.
“The Princess Dolgorouki never foresaw, what actually happened, that when her son returned from ‘the grand tour,’ which young men made then, and found a very beautiful, interesting girl domesticated with his mother, he would fall in love with her. When she saw that it was so, she said to her son that she had a great regard for the girl and could not have her affections tampered with, so that he had better go away again. The young prince answered that he had no idea whatever of tampering with the girl’s affections, that he loved her and believed that she loved him, and that he meant to marry her.
“On hearing this the fury of the Princess knew no bounds. She tried to reason with her son, and when she found him perfectly impracticable, she expelled him from her house and got him sent to France. She also sent for the parents of Anita, and told them that they must look out at once for a suitable person for her to marry, for that she must be married before Prince Dolgorouki returned. She said that she had no complaint to make of the girl, and that she would help her to make a good marriage by giving her a very handsome dowry; all that she required was that she should be married at once. Before leaving, however, Prince Dolgorouki had found means to be alone for a few minutes with Anita, and had said to her, ‘I know my mother well, and I know that as soon as I am gone she will try to insist upon your marriage. She will not consider you, and will sacrifice you to the fulfilment of her own will. Have faith, however, in me, hold out, and believe that, however impossible it may seem, I shall be able at the last moment to save you.’
“The bridegroom whom Anita’s father found was a certain Alexis Alexandrovitch, a farmer near their village and a person in a considerably higher position than their own. He was rich, he was much esteemed, he was greatly in love with Anita, but he was vulgar, he was hideous, he was almost always drunk, and Anita hated him. He came to her father’s house and proposed. She refused him, but he persisted in persecuting her with his attentions, and her own family tried to force her consent by ill-treatment, half-starved her, cut her off from all communication with others and from all her usual employments, and shut her up in a room at the top of the house.
“At last, when the girl’s position was becoming quite untenable and her courage was beginning to give way, Prince Dolgorouki contrived to get a note conveyed to her. He said, ‘I know all you are suffering; it is impossible that you can go on like this. Pretend to accede to their wishes. Accept Alexis Alexandrovitch, but believe that I will save you at the last moment.’
“So Anita said to her father and mother that she gave in to their wishes, that she would marry Alexis Alexandrovitch. And the wedding-day was fixed and the wedding-feast was prepared. And the old Princess Dolgorouki gave not only a very handsome dowry, but a very splendid set of peasant’s jewellery to the bride. She did not intend to be present at the ceremony herself, but she would send her major-domo to represent her.
“The wedding-day arrived, and the bride went with her family to the church, which was darkened, with candles burning everywhere. And Alexis Alexandrovitch also arrived, rather more drunk than usual. The church was thronged with people from end to end, for the place was within a drive of S. Petersburg, and it was fine weather, and hundreds of persons who remembered Anita and had admired her wonderful voice at the Dolgorouki palace drove out to see her married. According to the custom of the Greek Church, the register was brought to be signed before the ceremony. He signed his name ‘Alexis Alexandrovitch,’ and she signed her name ‘Anita.’ And the service began, and the crowd pressed thicker and thicker round the altar, and there was a constant struggle to see. And the service went on, and the crowd pressed more closely still, and somehow in the press the person who stood next to Anita was not Alexis Alexandrovitch, and the service went on, and Anita was married, and then the crowd opened to let the bridal pair pass through, and Anita walked rapidly down the church on the arm of her bridegroom, and it was not Alexis Alexandrovitch, and it was Prince Dolgorouki. And a carriage and four was waiting at the church door, and the bridal pair leapt into it and were whirled rapidly away.
“The old Princess Dolgorouki sent at once to stop them at the frontier, but the flight had been so well arranged, that she was too late. Then she swore (having everything in her own power) that she would cut off her son without a penny, and that she would never see him again. Happy in each other’s love, however, the young Prince and Princess Dolgorouki lived at Paris, where, though they were poor, Anita’s wonderful voice could always keep them from want. There, their two children were born. Four years elapsed, and they heard nothing from their Russian home. Then the family lawyer in S. Petersburg wrote to say that the old Princess Dolgorouki was dead. Whether she had repented of disinheriting her son and had destroyed her will before her death, or whether she had put off making her unjust will till it was too late, no one ever knew. The will of disinheritance was never found, and her son was the heir of all his mother’s vast estates.
“The young couple set out with their children for Russia to take possession, but it was in the depth of winter, the Prince was very delicate, and the change to the fierce cold of the north made him very ill, and at some place on the frontier—Wilna, I think—he died. The unhappy widow continued her journey with her children to S. Petersburg, but when she arrived, the heir-at-law had taken possession of everything. ‘But I am here; I am the Princess Dolgorouki,’ she said. ‘No,’ was the answer; ‘you have been residing for four years with Prince Dolgorouki, but the person you married was Alexis Alexandrovitch, and the register in which you both signed your names before your marriage exists to prove it.’ A great lawsuit ensued, in which the young widow lost almost all the money she had, and eventually she lost her lawsuit too, and retired in great penury to Warsaw, where she maintained herself and her children by singing and giving music lessons.
“But at Warsaw, as at Paris, her beauty and gentleness, and the patience with which she bore her misfortunes, made her a general favourite. Amongst those who became devoted to her was a young lawyer, who examined into the evidence of the trial which had taken place, and then, going to her, urged her to try again. She resisted, saying that the case was hopelessly lost, and besides, that she was too poor to reopen it. The lawyer said, ‘If you regain the vast Dolgorouki inheritance, you can pay me something: it will be a drop in the ocean to you; but if the lawsuit fails I shall expect no payment.’ So she let him try.
“Now the lawyer knew that there was no use in contending against the register, but he also felt that as—according to his view—in the eyes of God his client had been Princess Dolgorouki, there was no harm in tampering with that register if it was possible. It was no use, however, to alter it, as hundreds of witnesses existed who had seen the register as it was, and who knew that it contained the name of Alexis Alexandrovitch as the husband of Anita, for the trial had drawn attention to it from all quarters. It was also most difficult to see the register at all, because it was now most carefully guarded. But at last there came a time when the young lawyer was not only able to see the register, but when for three minutes he was left alone with it. And he took advantage of those three minutes to do what?
“He scratched out the name, or part of the name of Alexis Alexandrovitch, and he wrote the name of Alexis Alexandrovitch over again.
“Then when people came and said, ‘But here is the register—here is the name of Alexis Alexandrovitch,’ he said, ‘Yes, there is certainly the name of Alexis Alexandrovitch, but if you examine, you will find that it is written over something else which has been scratched out.’
“And the case was tried again, and the young widow was reinstated in the Dolgorouki property, and she was the grandmother of the present Prince Dolgorouki.”
“Holmhurst, Dec. 28.—Lea says, ‘You may put ought to ought (0 to 0) and ought to ought till it reaches to London, and it will all come to nothing at last if you don’t put another figure to it’—apropos of Mr. G. P. neglecting to do his duty.”
“Battle Abbey, Jan. 26, 1875.—The news of dear Lady Carnarvon’s death came yesterday as a shadow over everything. Surely never was there a more open, lovable, unselfish, charming, and truly noble character. She was the one person in England capable ‘tenir salon,’ to succeed—in a far more charming way—to Lady Palmerston’s celebrity in that respect.
‘Sat vixit, bene qui vixit spatium brevis aevi:
Ignavi numerant tempore, laude boni.’
Apparently radiant with happiness, and shedding happiness on all around her, she yet had often said latterly that she ‘did not feel that the compensations made up for the anxieties of life,’ and that she longed to be at rest.
“In the agreeable party at Battle it has been a great pleasure to find the French Ambassador and the Comtesse de Jarnac. Lord Stanhope is here, and has talked pleasantly as usual. Apropos of the custom of the living always closing the eyes of the dead, he reminded us of the admirable inscription over the door of the library at Murcia, ‘Here the dead open the eyes of the living.’
“He said how the Pineta at Ravenna was really a change in gender from the original name Pinetum in the singular: first it had become the plural of that; then Pineta itself had become a singular word.
“He described a dreary Sunday spent in Sabbatarian Glasgow, and how, everything else being shut up and forbidden, he had betaken himself for hours to examining the epitaphs in the churchyard, and at length found a single verse which atoned for the badness of all the rest:—
‘Shed not for me the bitter tear,
Nor pour for me the vain regret,
For though the casket is not here,
The gem within it sparkles yet.’”
“Jan. 27.—Count Nesselrode has come. He has been describing to the Duchess how parents are always proposing to him for their beautiful young girls of fifteen or sixteen. He says that he answers, ‘Est que à mon âge je puis songer à me marier?’ and that they reply, ‘Avec le nom que vous portez, M. le Comte, on est toujours jeune.’... ‘et ça me donne le chair de poule.’
“On the Duchess asking Count Nesselrode after his sons, he said they were at a tutor’s, ‘pour former le cœur et l’esprit.’
“There used to be a ghost at Battle Abbey. Old Lady Webster told Mr. Hussey of Scotney Castle how she saw it soon after her marriage, an old woman of most terrible aspect, who drew the curtains of her bed and looked in. Immediately after, Sir Godfrey came into the room. ‘Who was that old woman?’ she said. ‘There could have been no old woman.’ ‘Oh, yes, there was, and you must have met her in the passage, for she has only just gone out of the room.’ In her old age Lady Webster would describe the pattern on the old woman’s dress, and say that she should recognise it anywhere.”
“Holmhurst, Feb. 1.—A long visit to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe in Lady Jocelyn’s singular house at St. Leonards, which you enter from the top story. Lord Stratford is a grand old man with high forehead and flowing white hair. He can no longer walk, and sits in his dressing-gown, but his artistic daughters make him very picturesque, hanging his chair with a shade of purple which matches the lining and cuffs of his dressing-gown, &c. He talked of many different people he had seen, of Goethe, ‘who had a very high forehead’ (but ‘the highest forehead known was that of the immortal Shakspeare, who had every great quality that could exist phrenologically’), and then he spoke of Mezzofanti, whom he had known personally in Italy, and who had told him the story of his life. He had been a carpenter’s apprentice, and had one day been at his work outside the open window of a school where a master was teaching. Having a smattering of Greek, which he had taught himself, he felt sure that he detected the master in giving a wrong explanation. This worried him so much that he could not get it out of his head, and, after the school and his own work were both over, he rang the bell and begged to see the master. ‘I was at work, sir, and I heard you speaking, and I think you gave such and such an explanation in Greek.’—‘Well, and what do you know about Greek?’—‘Not much, sir; but, if you will forgive my saying so, I am sure you will find, if you examine, that the explanation was not the correct one.’ The master found that the young carpenter was right, and it led to his obtaining friends and being educated. Lord Stratford said that Mezzofanti spoke English perfectly to him, and excellent modern Greek to his servant, and yet that, apart from his wonderful versatility in languages, he seemed to be rather a dull man than otherwise, utterly wanting in originality.
“Lord Stratford described going to dine one day with his agent, and meeting there a lady whose name he did not catch, but whom he was told to take down to dinner. In the course of dinner the conversation turned upon some subject of mathematics, ‘And then,’ said Lord Stratford, ‘I did what I have never done at any other time on a mathematical question. I tried to explain it and make it easy for my companion, who listened with polite attention. When I went upstairs I inquired her name, and it was... Mrs. Somerville! I knew her intimately afterwards, and she told me something of her early life, which I regret should not have appeared in her memoirs. Her childhood was passed in Burntisland, whither her brother returned for his holidays, having some school-work to do whilst at home. One day, when he was called out, she took up the Euclid he had been studying. ‘Ah! what curious little designs! let me see if I can understand what it is about.’ And she found that she could, and devoured Euclid with avidity. Afterwards she got hold of her brother’s Æschylus and taught herself Greek in order to read it.
“Lord Stratford talked much of the extraordinary change, not only in politics, but in ‘the way of carrying on politics,’ since he was young.”
“69 Onslow Square, Feb. 4.—Aunt Sophy166 had a pleasant party yesterday of Theodore Martins, Lady Barker, &c. Mrs. Theodore Martin’s is a fine illuminative face, like that of Madame Goldschmidt. As Helen Faucit she was celebrated as an actress and as having done her utmost to elevate the stage; but I do not admire her reading of Shakspeare, in which I think there is too much manner. He is evidently most excellent. He talked perfectly simply, but only when asked, of his intercourse with the Queen, with whom he must be on happy terms of mutual confidence.
“Feb. 7, 1875.—Yesterday, when I was with Louisa, Lady Ashburton, at Kent House, which is being beautifully arranged, Lady Bloomfield came in and then Mr. Carlyle—weird and grim, with his long coat and tall wizard-befitting hat. He talked in volumes, with fathomless depths of adjectives, into which it was quite impossible to follow him, and in which he himself often got out of his depth. A great deal was about Garibaldi, who was the ‘most absolute incarnation of zero, but the inexplicable perversity and wilfulness of the human race had taken him up, poor creature, and set him on a pedestal.’ Then he went on about ‘the poor old Pope, so filled with all the most horrible and detestable lies that ever were conceived or thought of.’ He was like the man who asked his friends to dinner and said, ‘I am going to give you a piece of the most delicious beef—the most exquisite beef that ever was eaten,’ and all the while it was only a piece of stale brown bread; but the host said to his guests, ‘May God damn your souls for ever and ever, if you don’t believe it’s beef,’ so they ate it and said nothing.
“Then he talked of the books of Mazzini, which were ‘well worth reading,’ and of Saffi, ‘made professor of something at Oxford, where he used to give lectures in a moth-eaten voice.’”
“Feb. 11.—Sir Garnet and Lady Wolseley, Miss Thackeray, and others dined. I was not prepared to like Sir Garnet much, a hero is usually so dull, but he is charming, so frank and candid, and most natural as well as good-looking. He has a very young face, though his hair is grey, almost white. Lady Wolseley is remarkably pretty and attractive; Sir Garnet was quite devoted to drawing, and had a great collection of sketches, the work of his life. In the Crimea he drew everything, and it was a most precious collection; but in returning it was all lost at sea. The rest of his drawings he put into the Pantechnicon, where they were every one of them burnt. Miss Thackeray has a sweet voice, which is music in every tone.
“I have frequently seen lately, at the Lefevres’, old Lord Redesdale, with whom we have some distant cousinship through my Mitford great-grandmother. He is very kind, clever, old-fashioned, and always wears a tail-coat. He took us into the far-away by telling us of having heard his father, Speaker Mitford, describe having known a man in Swaledale named Rievely, whose earliest recollection was of being carried across the Swale by Henry Jenkyns (who lived to 160), who recollected having gone as a boy, with a sheaf of arrows and his elder brother on a pony, from Ellerton in Swaledale to Northallerton, to join the army before the battle of Flodden. He would tell all about the battle in a familiar way—‘the King was not there; but the Duke of Suffolk was there,’ &c.
“Much of the conversation in certain houses is now about Moody and Sankey, the American ‘revivalists,’ who are supposed to ‘produce great effects.’ Moody preaches and Sankey sings. They are adored by some, others (including most Americans) think them ‘mere religious charlatans’—and altogether they offer a famous opportunity for all the barking and biting which ’truly religious people’ often delight in.”
“Feb. 20.—Dined with the Rafe Leycesters in Cheyne Walk, where they have a charming old manor-house with a stone gateway, flagged walk, ancient bay-trees, a wide staircase, and panelled rooms. Mrs. Leycester was picturesquely dressed like a picture by Millais. The company were Mr. and Mrs. Haweis, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Taylor, and the Augustus Tollemaches. It was an agreeable party, and a pleasant dinner in a room redolent of violets.”
“Feb. 21.—Dined with Lady Margaret Beaumont, who talked of dress and the distinction of a gown by Worth, which ‘not only looked well, but walked well.’”
“Thorncombe, Feb. 27.—This place is a dell in the undulating hills about five miles from Guildford, very pretty and pleasant; and our new cousin, Edward Fisher, to whom it belongs, is one of the kindest, cheeriest, pleasantest fellows who ever entered a family.
“We have been to see Loseley, which belongs to my old college acquaintance Molyneux—a grand old house, gabled and grey, with a great hall, and richly carved chimney-pieces of white chalk, which looks like marble. It has three ghosts, a green-coated hunter, a sallow lady, and a warrior in plate-armour. The last appeared to the kitchen-maid as she was drawing some beer in the cellar, and almost frightened her out of her wits.”
“London, March 7, Sunday.—Breakfast at Lord Houghton’s, who has adopted Rogers’ custom of social breakfasts. It was a very amusing party—Joaquin Miller167 the American writer, Henry Cowper, Lord Arthur Russell, &c. There was a young man there whom I did not notice much at first, but I soon found that he was very remarkable, and then that he was very charming indeed. It was Lord Rosebery. He has a most sweet gravity almost always, but when his expression does light up, it is more than an illumination—it is a conflagration, at which all around him take light. Joaquin Miller would have been thought insufferably vulgar if he had not been a notoriety: as it was, every one paid court to him. However, I ought not to abuse him, as he suddenly turned round to me and said, ‘Do you know, I’m glad to meet you, for you write books that I can read.’ Quantities of good stories were told—one of a party given by George IV. as Prince Regent to the Irish peer Lord Coleraine. Smoking was allowed. After supper, when Lady Jersey drank, the Regent kissed the spot upon the cup where her lips had rested: upon which the Princess took a pipe from Lord Coleraine’s mouth, blew two or three whiffs, and handed it back to him. The Prince was quite furious, but it was a lesson.”
“Holmhurst, March 14.—Went to see Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who talked incessantly and most agreeably for an hour. He said how surprised he had been to read in the ‘Greville Memoirs’ of himself as ill-tempered; he always thought he was ‘rather a good-tempered sort of fellow.’ It was Madame de Lieven who said that, and she had always hated him. She prevented him having an embassy once, but they made peace afterwards through a compliment he paid her at Paris. He talked of Madame de Lieven’s extraordinary influence, arising chiefly from our inherent national passion for foreigners.
“I asked Lord Stratford which he thought the most interesting of the many places in which he had lived. He said, ‘Oh, England is the most interesting by far.’ He described his first going out to Constantinople, before he had taken his degree, only going for four months, and staying for four or five years in a position equal to a Minister. He took his degree afterwards, and by literary merit, though there was a way then of giving degrees to those who were employed in the public service, and since then they had made him a doctor of both Universities. Now, in his helplessness, he amused himself by writing Greek verses. Once, walking about his room, he thought, ‘Well, I have often written Latin verses; let me see if I can write Greek.’ And his Greek has all come back to him.”
The enormous circulation of the “Memorials of a Quiet Life” in the two years which had elapsed since its publication astonished those who were opposed to it; and in America the sale had been even greater than in England. Numbers of Americans had come to England entirely from the desire to visit the different scenes of my mother’s quiet life, and had gone in turn to Toft, Stoke, Alton, Hurstmonceaux, Holmhurst, and some even to the distant grave of Lucy Hare at Abbots Kerswell. At Holmhurst there were frequently many sets of visitors in a day—“pilgrims” we used to call them,—and even if I was at home I could never bear to refuse them admittance, while to my dear old Lea, who was in very poor health at this time, they were a positive benefit, in rousing her from dwelling upon sad recollections. It was in answer to a constantly expressed desire that, in the autumn of 1874, I occupied myself with the third volume of the Memorials, containing more of my mother’s thoughts upon especial subjects, and photographs from family portraits and of the places described in the first two volumes. The book was, as it were, a gift to the public. It had a large circulation, but no remuneration whatever was ever looked for or obtained. Soon after the publication of the volume, a review appeared in the Spectator (July 8, 1876), speaking of “the veiled self-conceit” with which Mr. Hare had placed himself “upon the voluminous records of his family as upon a pedestal;” that Mrs. Hare was far from being honoured by “the capital” her adopted son had made of her, though, “if his public likes and is willing to pay for the contents of the family album, there is nothing more to be said.... Here, however, let us be thankful, is, so far as anything can be predicated safely on such a subject, the last of the ‘Memorials,’ and that is so grateful a thought as to justify tolerance of what already is.” It seemed a singular review to have been admitted by the Spectator, which, four years before (December 11, 1872), had written of the “Memorials” as containing “passage after passage worthy of comment or quotation,” and as “an interesting record of spiritual conflicts and spiritual joy, free from narrowness and fanaticism, and marked throughout by the most guileless sincerity.” I suppose that editors of reviews, when biassed by intense personal feeling, often trust to the public having forgotten what has appeared before in their pages.
Annually, I had tried to make my dearest mother’s home as useful as possible to all those in whom she was most nearly interested, as well as to keep up her charities, especially at Alton. It had also been a great pleasure, with what my books produced, to fit up a cottage close to Holmhurst as a Hospice for needy persons of a better class. These I have always invited to come for a month at a time, their travelling expenses being fully paid, and firing, linen, farm and garden produce, with an outfit of grocery, being supplied to them. Many are the interesting and pleasant persons whom I have thus become acquainted with, many the touching cases of sorrow and suffering with which I have come in contact. In the month of October the Deaconesses of St. Peter’s, Eaton Square, for several years occupied the Hospice, and they generally remained over All Saints’ Day, when they sang the Te Deum in the field round the twisted tree where the dear mother used to sit—“the Te Deum tree.”
In the spring of 1875 I was obliged to go to Italy again, to continue collecting materials for my “Cities of Northern and Central Italy.”
To Mary Lea Gidman.
“Rimini, April 4, 1875.—I made my first long lonely expedition from Turin, going for an hour by rail to the town of S. Ambrogio, and then walking up through the forests to the top of the high mountain of S. Michele, where there is a famous monastery in which the sovereigns of the country—Dukes of Savoy—used to be buried many hundreds of years ago. It is a wonderful place, quite on the highest peak, looking into the great gorges of snow. As I was sketching, the old Abbot was led by on his mule, and stopped to speak to me. I found he was a famous missionary preacher—Carlo Caccia—and had been in England, where he knew Lord Bute well, and was very glad to hear of him. So we made great friends, and as he was going to Turin for Easter, we travelled back together.
“From Turin I went to Parma, where I had a great deal of work to finish. The cold there was ferocious, but I made the great excursion I went for—to Canossa, where the Emperor Henry IV. performed his famous penance, though it is a most dreadfully fatiguing walk, either in snow above the knees, or in the furrows of streams from the melted snow. At Bologna I never saw anything like the snow—as high as the top of the omnibus, and darkening the lower windows, with a way cut through it down the middle of the street. I had the same room at the Hotel S. Marco which you and the dear Mother had for those anxious days in 1870, and of course I seemed to see her there, and it was a very sad visit. The Librarian told me that hundreds of people had been to look at the portrait of Clotilda Tambroni since reading the ‘Memorials.’
“We slept here once in 1857, but did not appreciate Rimini properly then, I think, for it is a charming place, with a delightful seashore and interesting old town; but the country is strange and wild, and there is not a sign of vegetation on the hedges; so that when I remember the buds on the deutzia opposite your window at Holmhurst, it seems most dismal in Italy.”
To Miss Wright.
“Citta di Castello, April 12, 1875.—It is very cold in Italy, but glorious weather now—ceaseless sunshine and the pellucid skies of Perugino. I have been many great excursions already; to the Sagro di S. Michele, to desolate Canossa, and to S. Marino and the extraordinary S. Leo near Rimini. Then from Forli I paid an interesting visit to Count Saffi, one of the Roman triumvirate, whom I had known well at Oxford, and who lives, with his wife (Miss Craufurd of Portincross) and many children, in a farmhouse-like villa near the town. At Ancona, Charlie Dalison came to meet me, a pleasant change after much silence and solitude. We went together to Loreto, and next day a dreary journey to Urbino, which is more curious than beautiful, though there is a noble old palace of its Dukes. It was a thirteen hours’ drive thence through hideous country to Gubbio, where the inns are wretched, but the town full of interest. Charlie left me at Perugia, and I came on here into the Piero della Francesca country, which is more instructive than captivating.”
“Forli, April 2.—In one of the old churches here is the tomb of Barbara Ordelaffi, wife of the Lord of Forli, who was one of the most intensely wicked women of her own or any other age. But her tomb is indescribably lovely, her figure, that of quite a young girl, lying upon its marble sarcophagus with a look of innocence and simplicity which can scarcely be equalled.
“The tomb is in a side-chapel, separated by a heavy railing from the church. Inside this railing, in an arm-chair, with his eyes constantly fixed upon the marble figure, sat this morning a very old gentleman, paralysed and unable to move, wrapped in a fur cloak. As I looked in at the rails, he said, ‘And you also are come to see Barbara; how beautiful she is, is not she?’ I acquiesced, and he said, ‘For sixty years I have come constantly to see her. It is everything to me to be here. It is the love and the story of my life. No one I have ever known is half so beautiful as Barbara Ordelaffi. You have not looked at her yet long enough, but gradually you will learn this. Every one must love Barbara. I am carried here now; I cannot walk, but I cannot live without seeing her. My servants bring me; they put me here; I can gaze at her figure, then I am happy. At eleven o’clock my servants will come, and I shall be taken home, but they will bring me again to see Barbara in the afternoon.’
“I remained in the church. At eleven o’clock the servants came. They took up the old gentleman and carried him up to the monument to bid it farewell, and then out to his carriage; but in the afternoon, said the Sacristan, they would come again, for he always spent most of the day with Barbara Ordelaffi; when he was alone with the marble figure, he was quite quiet and happy, and as they always locked him into the chapel, he could never come to any harm.”
To Mary Lea Gidman.
“Florence, April 28.—On Monday I went to the excellent inn at Lucca, and on Tuesday to the Bagni. Never was a place less altered—only one new house, I think, and very pretty and rural it all looked. I went up to the dear old Casa Bertini, and into the little garden looking down on the valleys, quite as pretty as my recollection of it. Quintilia (our maid) was enchanted to see me, but has grown into a very old woman, though only sixty-three.
“I liked Lucca better than all the other places. It was the festival of S. Zita when I was there, who was made a saint because she had been such a good servant for forty years. I thought, if my dear Lea had lived in those days, how she would have had a chance of being canonised.”
To Miss Wright.
“Florence, May 2, 1875.—No words can express the fatigue or discomfort of my Tuscan tour. The food, in the mountain convents especially, was disgusting—little but coarse bread with oil and garlic; the inns were filthy and the beds damp; and the travelling, in carts or on horseback, most fatiguing, often sixteen hours a day. And yet—and yet how thrilling is the interest of Monte Oliveto, S. Gemignano, Volterra, La Vernia, Camaldoli!”
Journal.
“Castagnuolo, May 3.—I am writing from the old country palace of the Marchese Lotteria Lotharingo della Stufa. It is reached by driving from Florence through the low envineyarded country for five miles. Then, on the left, under the hills, one sees what looks like a great old barrack, grimy, mossy, and deserted. This is the villa. All outside is decay, but when you enter, there are charming old halls and chambers, connected by open arches, and filled with pictures, china, books, and beautiful old carved furniture. A terrace, lined with immense vases of lilies and tulips, opens on a garden with vine-shaded pergolas and huge orange-trees in tubs; and beyond are the wooded hills.
“The Marchese is charming, living in the hearts of his people, sharing all their interests, working with them—taking off his coat and tucking up his sleeves to join in the sheep-shearing, gathering the grapes in the vintage, &c. But the presiding genius of the place is Mrs. Ross (Janet Duff Gordon), who has redeemed lands, planted vineyards, introduced new plans for pressing the grapes—whose whole heart and soul are in the work here.”
To Miss Wright.
“Vicenza, May 20, 1875.—I have been to Genoa and Pegli, and to Piacenza again for a tremendous excursion of sixty-eight miles, eighteen riding on a white mule, to the grave of S. Columbano in the high Apennines. After this, the Italian lakes were comparative rest. I thought the Lago d’Iseo far the most beautiful of them all. To-day I have been on a family pilgrimage to Valdagno, where my grandmother lived so happily, and where my uncle Julius Hare was born. There is much also here in Vicenza to remind me of a later past, for opposite the window of this room are the trees in the Marchese Salvi’s garden, where my dearest Mother took her last walks.”
Journal.
“Herrenalb, in the Black Forest, June 14.—A week at Venice was a great refreshment. Then I crossed the S. Gothard to Lucerne and came on here. The semi-mountain air of this lovely place is as refreshing to the body as the pure high-minded Bunsen character is to the soul. A little branch railway brought me from the main line to Gernsbach, a pretty clean German village with picturesque gabled houses girding a lovely river. Hence it is a charming drive of two hours through forest into the highlands, where the wood-clad hills break occasionally into fine crags. Herrenalb itself takes its name from the abbey on the little river Alb, while a monastery for women on the same stream a few miles off gives its name to ‘Frauenalb.’ The former is Protestant now, the latter is still Catholic, but in the valley of Herrenalb are the immense buildings of the abbey, its great granaries with wooden pillars, and the ruins of its Norman church.
“Frances de Bunsen and one of her Sternberg nieces met me in the valley, and we were soon joined by the dear old Frau von Bunsen in her donkey-chair. At eighty-six her wonderful power of mind and charm of intellect and conversation are quite unimpaired. She has still the rare art, described by Boileau, ‘passer du grave au doux, du plaisant au sévère.’ The whole family breakfast at seven, and for an hour before that the dear Grandmother is in the little terraced garden, examining and tending her flowers. The house is full of souvenirs: in the Baroness’s own room is a large frame with photographs of all her numerous descendants, sent by the Grand Duchess of Baden to greet her first arrival in this her new country home.”
To this happy visit at Herrenalb, and to the long conversations I used to have with my dear old friend, walking beside her donkey-chair in the forest, I owe the power of having been able to write her Memoirs two years afterwards. It was my last sight of this old friend of my childhood. I returned from Herrenalb to England.
Journal.
“London, June 23, 1875.—Called on Mrs. Leslie in her glorious old house in Stratford Place, which is beautiful because all the colour is subdued, no new gilding or smartness. She herself sat in the window embroidering, with the bright sunlight just glinting on her rippled hair and sweet face, at once a picture and a poem.”
“June 26.—A great party at Lambeth Palace, the lawn and its many groups of people very charming. Going in to tea with Miss Elliot down a narrow passage, I came suddenly upon Arthur Stanley. In that moment I am sure we both tried hard to recollect what had so entirely separated us for five years, but we could not, and shook hands. The Spanish Lady Stanley seeing this, threw up her hands—‘Gratias a Deo! O gratias a Deo! una reconciliatiōn!’
“In the evening there was an immense party at Lady Salisbury’s to meet the Sultan of Zanzibar.177 He had a cold, so sent to say he could not have the windows opened; the consequence of which was, that with thousands of wax-lights and crowds of people, the heat was awful, positively his native climate. The Sultan has a good, sensible, clever, amused face, but cannot speak a word of any language except Arabic, of which Lady Salisbury said that she had learnt some sentences by the end of the evening, from hearing them repeated so often through the interpreter, and at last ventured to air her new acquirements herself. When the Sultan went away, the suite followed two and two—a picturesque procession. Lord Salisbury walked first, leading the Sultan, or rather holding his right hand in his own left, which it seems is the right thing to do. The Sultan was immensely struck by Lady Caithness, and no wonder, for her crown of three gigantic rows of diamonds, and then huge diamonds and emeralds, had the effect of a sunlit wave in the Mediterranean.”
“June 27, Sunday.—To Holland House. Lady Holland sat at the end window, looking on the garden, with a group round her. I went out with Lord Halifax, then with Everard Primrose, who appeared as usual from the library, and a third time with Lord Stanhope, who took me afterwards in his carriage to Airlie Lodge. There the garden was in great beauty, and we met Lady Airlie sauntering through its green walks with the Duke of Teck. We went to sit in a tent, where we found Mr. Doyle, Mr. Cheney, and a young lady who greeted me with, ‘Now, Mr. Hare, may I ask if you never can remember me, or if you always intend to cut me on purpose?’ It was Miss Rhoda Broughton.
“Lady Airlie talked of the death of Madame Rossetti. Her husband178 felt so completely that all his living interests were buried with his wife, that he laid his unpublished poems under her dead head, and they were buried with her. But, after a year had passed, his feeling about his wife was calmed, while the longing for his poems grew daily, and people urged him that he was forcing a loss upon the world. And the coffin of the poor lady was taken up and opened to get at the poems, and behold her beautiful golden hair had grown and grown till the whole coffin was filled with it—filled with it and rippling over.179 Lady Airlie had the account from an eye-witness. For one moment Madame Rossetti was visible in all her radiant loveliness, as if she were asleep, then she sank into dust. She was buried with her Testament under her pillow on one side and her husband’s poems on the other.
“The Duke of Teck looked very handsome and was most pleasant and amiable. He said that an old lady in Germany, an ancestress of his, had the most glorious pearl necklace in the world, and when she died, she desired that the pearl necklace might be buried with her. And the family were very sorry to part with their aged relative, but they were still more sorry to part with the family jewels; and in time their grief for the old lady was assuaged, but their grief for the pearl necklace was never assuaged at all, and at last there came a moment when they dug up the coffin, and took the pearl necklace from the aged neck. But behold the pearls were quite spoilt and had lost all their lustre and beauty. Then pearl-doctors were summoned, men who were learned in such things, and they said that the only thing which would restore the beauty of the pearls would be if three beautiful young ladies would wear them constantly, and let the pearls drink in all their youth and beauty. So the eldest daughter of the house took them and wore them constantly, and all the beauty and brilliancy of her loveliness flowed into the pearls, which grew brighter and better every day. And as her beauty faded, another daughter of the house took them, and so three beautiful young ladies took them and wore them in three generations, till, when sixty years were passed, the pearls were so beautiful and glorious, so filled with youth and radiancy, that there is no such pearl necklace in the whole world.”
“June 28.—Luncheon with dear old Lady Grey. Then to Lady Wharncliffe, who looked very lovely seated beneath a great blue-green vase filled with lilies.
“The way young men now weary their friends to ask for invitations for them is almost as contemptible as the conduct of the ladies who ask others to invite their guests for them that they may ‘get into society.’ ‘Que ne fait-on pour trouver un faux bonheur!’ says Fénélon; ’quels rebuts, quelles traverses n’endure t’on point pour un fantôme de gloire mondaine! quelles peines pour de misérables plaisirs dont il ne reste que des remords.’”
“June 29.—With the Archbishop of Dublin, Miss Trench, and Lady Charles Clinton to Strawberry Hill, the ‘little plaything house’ of Horace Walpole. It had been so wet that one had almost to wade from the station to the house, and the beautiful breakfast was sopping in a tent on the mossy lawn, so little being left in the house that the Princess of Wales had to drink her tea out of a tumbler in a corner. Still the interior of the house was full of interest—the historic pictures, especially those of the three beautiful Waldegrave sisters, and of Maria, Duchess of Gloucester; and then in the gallery are, by Sant and Bucknor, all the especial friends of the house—all the beautiful persons who have stayed there.
“Lady Waldegrave180 (assisted by art) looked twenty-five years younger than she did twenty-five years ago. The Princess of Wales, in a pink dress under black lace and a little hat to match, copied as a whole from pictures of Anne Boleyn, looked lovely.
“In the evening I went to Lady Salisbury’s reception. At the latter was the Sultan of Zanzibar. Suddenly, in the midst of the party, he said to Lady Salisbury, ‘Now, please, it is my time to say my prayers: I should like to go into your room, and to be alone for ten minutes.’ And he did, and he does it four times a day, and never allows anything whatever to interfere with it. The Archbishop of Dublin, when presented, said, ‘I am glad to have the honour of being presented to a man who has made a promise and kept it.’ The Sultan answered, ‘It can only be your goodness which makes you say that.’”
To Miss Leycester.
“How glad I am that we do not agree about Sunday. I think your view of ‘the Sabbath’ so entirely derogatory to all the dignity and beauty of Christianity, and I cannot understand any one not becoming an infidel, if they think God so mean as to suppose that He would consider ‘His day’ (though Sunday is only the Church’s day, all days are God’s days) dishonoured by walking with one’s intimate friends in a garden, or having tea in another garden with several persons, all infinitely better and wiser than oneself. ‘I am amazed,’ says Professor Amiel, ’at the vast amount of Judaism, of formalism, that still exists, eighteen centuries after the Redeemer’s declaration that the letter killeth.... Christian liberty has yet to be won.’”
Journal.
“June 30.—A very pleasant party in the Duke of Argyll’s garden, in spite of a wet afternoon; all the little golden-haired daughters of the house very kind in entertaining the guests. I returned with Louisa, Lady Ashburton, to her beautiful Kent House. The rooms, hung with yellow, with black doors and picture-frames, are very effective. There are some semi-ruined cartoons of Paul Veronese upon the staircase.
“In the evening I went to Lady Margaret Beaumont’s to meet the Queen of the Netherlands, ‘La Reine Rouge,’ as she is often called from her revolutionary tendencies. She sat at the end of the room, a pleasant natural woman, with fuzzy hair done very wide in curls, and a quaint little diamond crown as an ornament at the back. She was most agreeable in conversation, and, as Prosper Merimée says in one of his letters to Panizzi, ‘would have been quite perfection, if she had not wished to appear a Frenchwoman, having had the misfortune to be born in Würtemburg.’”
“July 1.—Luncheon at Lord Stanhope’s to meet Miss Rhoda Broughton. Lord Stanhope aired one of his pet hobbies—the virtues of the novel ‘Anastasius.’ Mrs. Hussey says that his father used to say of him, ‘My son is often very prosy, but then he has been vaccinated;’ for the fourth Earl Stanhope had a familiar of whom he always spoke as ‘Tesco,’ and Tesco had inveighed against vaccination to him, and had told him that to be vaccinated had always the effect of making the recipient prosy.
“Mrs. Hussey mentioned this at a dinner to Mr. John Abel Smith, who exclaimed, ‘Oh, that accounts for what has always hitherto been a mystery to me. I went with that Lord Stanhope to hear a man named Belloni lecture on “the Tuscan Language,” and we sat behind him on the platform. He was most terribly lengthy. Suddenly, Lord Stanhope caught him by the coat, and, arresting the whole performance, said, “Pray, sir, have you ever been vaccinated?”—“Certainly, my Lord,” said the astonished lecturer. “Oh, that is quite enough; pray continue,” said Lord Stanhope, and the lecture proceeded, and Lord Stanhope composed himself to sleep.’”
“July 2.—A large sketching party at Holland House. We sat for three hours in the Lily Garden, with birds singing, fountains playing, and flowers blooming, as if we had been a hundred miles from London. Our sketches were all sent in afterwards to Lady Holland, who sent them out in the order of merit—Mrs. Lowther’s first, mine second.
“I dined with the Ralph Duttons and sat by Lady Barker, who was full of Moody and Sankey, to whom she has been often with the Duchess of Sutherland, who insists upon going every day. She says the mixture of religious fervour with the most intense toadyism of the Duchess was horribly disgusting; that the very gift of fluency in the preachers contaminated and spoilt their work. Sometimes they would use the most excellent and powerful simile, and then spoil it by something quite blasphemous. Speaking of the abounding grace of God, Moody compared Him to a banker who scolded the man who only drew for a penny, when he might draw for a pound and come again as often as he liked. So far the sermon was admirable, and all understood it; but then he went on to call it the ‘Great I Am Bank,’ and to cut all sorts of jokes, whilst the audience roared with laughter; that when a man presented his cheque, however large—‘Here ye are, says I Am,’ &c.
“Went on to the ball at Dorchester House, which was beautiful; the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Tecks were there. The great charm of the house is in the immensely broad galleries, which are so effective when filled with beautiful women, relieved, like Greek pictures, against a gold background. Miss Violet Lindsay, in a long white dress embroidered with gold and a wreath of gold oak-leaves, was quite exquisitely lovely.”
“July 3.—Breakfast with Sir James Lacaita to meet Mr. Gladstone, Lord Napier and Ettrick, and the Marchese Vitelleschi. The great topic was Manning. About him and Roman Catholicism in general, Gladstone seems to have lost all temperance, but told much that was curious. He described the deathbed of Count Streletski and Manning’s attempts to get in. Lacaita said that there was a lady still living to whom Manning had been engaged—‘fatto l’impégno’—and that he had jilted her to marry one of two heiress sisters: now, whenever she hears of any especial act of his, she says, ’As ever, fickle and false.’
“‘False,’ said Gladstone, ‘always, but never fickle.’
“Lacaita described the illness, the apparently hopeless illness, of Panizzi, when he and Mr. Winter kept guard. The Padre Mela came and tried to insist upon seeing the patient. He told the Padre it was quite impossible, but, upon his insisting, he assured him that if Panizzi rallied, he would at once mention the Padre’s wish. At that time it was ‘impossible, as Panizzi was quite unconscious.’ When the Padre heard that Panizzi was insensible, he implored and besought an entrance ‘basta anche un’istante,’ but was positively and sternly refused.
“The next day Panizzi rallied, upon which both Lacaita and Mr. Winter thought it necessary to mention the strong wish of the Padre Mela to see him. ‘Oh, il birbone!’ said Panizzi, ‘vuol dunque convertirmi,’ and he was so excited, that in order to content him they were obliged to engage a policeman to stand constantly at the door to keep the priests out.
“Gladstone said he knew that the Pope (Pius IX.) had determined against declaring the doctrine of personal infallibility, till Manning had fallen at his feet, and so urged and implored him to do so, that at length he had consented. He (Gladstone) upheld that there was no going back from this, and that even in case of the Pope’s death, the condition of the Roman Church was absolutely hopeless. Vitelleschi agreed so far, that if a foreign Pope were chosen, for which an effort would be made, there was no chance for the Church; but if an Italian were elected—for instance, Patrizi or Bilio, who had especially opposed the doctrine of personal infallibility—the sense of the doctrine would be so far modified that it would practically fade into nothingness, and that every advantage would be taken of the Council not being yet closed to make every possible modification.
“Vitelleschi lamented the utter want of religious education in modern Italy—that he had been in schools where, when asked who Jesus Christ was, all the boys differed, one saying that he was a prophet, another something else; that when the question was put to Parliament how morality was to be taught without religion, the answer was, ‘Faremmo un trattato morale.”
“Lord Napier every now and then insisted on attention, and delivered himself of some ponderous paragraph, on which occasions Gladstone persistently and defiantly ate strawberries.”
“July 4.—Tea at the Duchess of Cleveland’s. Lord John Manners was there. They were full of the dog Minos and his extraordinary tricks. In invitation cards to parties, ‘To meet the dog Minos’ is now constantly put in the corner. When told to take something to the most beautiful woman in the room, however, he made a mistake, and took it to the Queen, who flicked him with her pocket-handkerchief; and then he took it to the Princess of Wales. Being left alone in the room with a plate on which there were three sandwiches, he could not resist eating them, but found three visiting cards and deposited them in their place!”
“July 7.—A party at Holland House. The old cedars, the brilliant flowers, and more brilliant groups of people, made a most beautiful scene.”
“July 8.—A party at Lady Airlie’s for the Queen of Holland—very pleasant.”
“July 9.—Luncheon at Mrs. Harvey of Ickwellbury’s. The whole family were full of Nigger stories:—of a man who, being pursued by an Indian for the sake of his scalp, and finding escape hopeless, pulled off his wig and presented it with a bow, upon which the Indian fell down and worshipped him as a god!—Of a negro who, on being told that the strait path to heaven was full of thorns and difficulties, said, ‘Den dis ere nigger take to the woods!’”
“July 11.—To hear Mr. Stopford Brooke preach. It was most interesting—upon the love of God. He began by saying that he would not undertake to prove the existence of God, for ‘God is, and those who love Him know it.’
“He said, ‘Think in everything which you are about to do, whether it will be for the good of the human race; if not, if it is only good for yourself, your family, your society, don’t do it: that is the love of God.
“‘Fight against all power which in the name of religion seeks to narrow it. Fight against all, whether of caste or family, which seeks to elevate one power to the exclusion of another; for the perfection of the whole human nature, that is God’s will. This is the service we must give to Him, which separates worship from selfishness, and makes it more praise than prayer: thus, with our sails filled with the winds of God, may we drive over the storms of the human race to the harbour of unity.’”
“July 12.—To luncheon at Lord Northampton’s, but, except Lady Marion Alford, I do not much like the Comptons. Lady Alwyn, who is charming, was very amusing about them. ‘Lord Alwyn pretends not to hear; that is because he is displeased, for he thinks I am abusing the Comptons. He cannot bear me to find fault with any of his ancestors, however remote they may be, for he thinks that the Comptons are quite perfect, and always have been. When I first married, I hoped to have made a compromise, and I told Lord Alwyn that if he would give up to me his great-grandfather, I would spare all the rest; but he wouldn’t.... After all, the Comptons were quite ruined, and we owe everything to old Sir John Spencer who lived at Crosby Hall in the City, and he had so poor an opinion of the Comptons, that he wouldn’t let the Lord Northampton of that day marry his daughter on any account. But Lord Northampton dressed up as the baker’s boy and carried his bride off on his head in a basket. He met Sir J. Spencer on the stairs, who gave him a sixpence for his punctuality, and afterwards, when he found out that his daughter was in that basket, swore it was the only sixpence of his money Lord Northampton should ever see. But the next year Queen Elizabeth asked him to come and be ’gossip’ with her to a newly-born baby, whom she hoped he would adopt instead of his disinherited daughter, and he could not refuse; and you may imagine whose that baby was.’
“Five-o’clock tea at Ashburnham House. The pictures there are beautiful, a Mantegna and several Ghirlandajos, and it is a charming old house in itself. In the evening to a party at the Duchess of Cleveland’s given to the blind Duke of Mecklenburg and his Duchess.”
“Highcliffe, July 18.—The usual party are here.... Lady Jane Ellice is full of a theory that she is an Israelite, that we are all members of the lost tribes of Israel, that our royal family are the direct descendants of Tepha, the beautiful daughter of Zedekiah, who was brought to Ireland by Jeremiah, and married to its king.
“Mrs. Hamilton Hamilton has much that is interesting to tell of her old embassy life in France. She was at S. Leu the day before the Duc de Bourbon’s death. She would not go in, though urged to do so, because ‘that woman, Madame de Feuchères,’ was there, but heard how well the Duke was, preparing for the chase, ‘never better in his life.’ The next day, in returning to Paris, their carriage was passed and repassed by quantities of royal servants riding to and fro. At last they asked why it was. The Duc de Bourbon was dead, found hung up to the blind of the window.
“A few days before, the Duke had declared his intention of altering his will in favour of the Comte de Chambord. Previously Chantilly had been settled upon the Duc d’Aumale. Madame de Feuchères had said long before to Louis Philippe, ‘Leave it all to me.’
“Madame de Feuchères (once an orange-girl at Southampton) was left enormously rich. She promised to settle all her property on the Duc d’Aumale if the Duchess of Orleans would receive her. Mrs. Hamilton Hamilton was seated at the end of the room between the Duchesse Decazes and another great lady of the old régime. Suddenly the Duchess of Orleans got up and crossed the whole room to receive some one at the door. Generally she remained in her place, making only one step even for a duchess. It was Madame de Feuchères who entered.
“At the Court of Charles X. it was the Dauphine who received. She was very severe in her manner and had a very harsh voice: it was as if the shadow of the Temple always rested upon her. The Duchesse de Berri was of gentler manners, but less wise. When the family of Charles X. fled after the revolution of four days, the deputation going to offer the crown to Louis Philippe found he was out; they found only the Duchess of Orleans. She was horrified at the very idea and refused point-blank, saying that her husband would never do such a wrong to his cousin—‘Grace à Dieu! mon mari ne sera pas usurpateur.’ Going through the garden at Neuilly, however, the deputation met Madame Adelaïde, who asked what their business was, and being told what the Duchess had answered, said, ‘Oh, mais mon frère accepte, certainement il accepte;’ and her view was definitive. She never separated from her brother afterwards, and he always deferred to her opinion; indeed, as Napoleon used to say, she was ‘the only man of the family.’ The whole family paid her great attention. She was enormously rich, and made the Prince de Joinville her heir. Louis Philippe chose her epitaph in the vaults at Dreux. It is from Gen. xii. 13: ‘Thou art my sister, and it has been well with me for thy sake.’
“Mrs. Hamilton Hamilton was the first person Queen Marie Amelie sent for after her accession. She went in the evening, and found the Queen sitting at a table with Madame Adelaïde and one other lady, the wife of the Swedish Minister. A place was given to her between the Queen and Madame Adelaïde. The first words of the Queen seemed ominous—‘Nous avons laissé notre bonheur à Neuilly, Madame Hamilton.’ But Madame Adelaïde instantly took up the conversation, and talked of a bullet which she had found in her mirror, saying that she should never have the mirror mended, but should preserve it as ‘un souvenir historique.’
“Lady Waterford says how much brighter and happier people are for having something young about them,—a young lady, a child, a young dog even. She says, ‘I want to make a picture of Hope painting the future in the brightest colours. It will be such a beautiful subject. A rainbow will pour into the room and all its colours be reflected on her palette.’”
“July 20.—Lady Waterford and the Ellices went to Broadlands, and returned in the evening radiant, and full of the Conference, with which they were delighted. I was very sorry indeed to be too ill to go, these Broadland ‘Conferences’ being quite a type of the times.
“They had a delightful drive through the forest and halted at Lyndhurst, visiting the ‘King’s House’ and seeing the stirrup which is said to have belonged to William Rufus. It is of gigantic size, and was probably really intended, when dogs were forbidden in the forest, as a sort of standard of measurement, only dogs which could pass through that stirrup being allowed.
“At Broadlands, after luncheon, they went out on the lawn, where the Conference was proceeding under some fine beech-trees. ‘It was like a Claude,’ said Lady Waterford, the view being over the water, with a temple on one side and a cypress cutting the sky.’ Mr. Cowper Temple opened the afternoon meeting with a little speech; a Nonconformist minister followed, and then the High Church Mr. Wilkinson gave an address. The most remarkable thing he told was a story of a young lady who went to a meeting and returned resolved to dedicate herself to God. She wrote down her dedication, and then said, ‘It shall be from to-day.’ Then she considered that there was so much to be done, &c.—‘It shall be in three years.’ Again she hesitated and altered what she had written—‘I may not live: it shall be to-night.” But finally she thought again how much there was she wanted to do first, and finally wrote—‘In three weeks I will dedicate myself to God.’ In the morning the paper was found with all the different erasures and alterations, but the young lady was dead.... Several other speakers followed, and then Mr. Cowper Temple knelt on the gravel and prayed: all was most simple and earnest.
“Here at Highcliffe we have sat in the library in the morning, the great Brugmantia bursting into its bloom of scarlet bells in the conservatory beyond, Lady Waterford painting at her table, the rest working beneath the stained window.”
“Heckfield Place, August 13.—This is a beautiful open country with lovely woods and purple heaths studded with groups of fine old firs. The grounds of Heckfield itself are delightful, and the house, of red brick, stands upon a high bastioned terrace filled with brilliant flower-beds and overlooking undulating green lawns and an artificial sheet of water.
“Lord Eversley and his daughter Emma received me with most cordial kindness and a real family welcome, and it was pleasant to see so many interesting pictures of our common ancestors,—on the staircase a full-length of my great-grandmother Mrs. Hare, as a young girl tripping along with her apron full of flowers. There are fine portraits of her father and mother; and her sister, Helena Lefevre, is represented again and again, from youth to age.
“Lord and Lady Selborne have been here. He has a stiff manner, but warms into much pleasantness, and she is very genial: their daughter, Sophy, is a union of both. I went with Lord Selborne and Miss Palmer to Strathfieldsaye. The Duke (of Wellington), dressed like a poor pensioner, received us in his uncomfortable room, where Lord Selborne, who has a numismatical mania, was glad to stay for two hours examining coins. Meanwhile the Duke, finding we were really interested, took Miss Palmer and me upstairs, and showed us all his relics. It was touching to see the old man, who for the greater part of his lifetime existed in unloving awe of a father he had always feared and been little noticed by, now, in the evening of life, treasuring up every reminiscence of him and considering every memorial as sacred. In his close stuffy little room were the last pheasants the great Duke had shot, the miniatures of his mother and aunt and of himself and his brother as children, his grandfather’s portrait, a good one of Marshal Saxe, and the picture of the horse Copenhagen. Most of the bedrooms were completely covered with prints pasted on the walls. It was the great Duke’s fancy. Some of them are amusing, but the general effect is poor and bad, and the medley curious, especially in some rooms where they were framed in crowds—Lord Eldon, Melancthon, and views of the Alhambra together. In the hall hung a fine beginning of a picture of the great Duke, painted by Goya at Madrid. Before it was finished the army had moved on to Salamanca. The Duke had then been made Captain-General of the forces, and upon the Spanish commander saying in a huff, ‘I will not serve under a foreigner,’ Goya rejoined, ‘And I will not finish his portrait.’ And he never did.
“Strathfieldsaye is an unprepossessing house—as the Duke himself said, ‘like a great cottage.’
“Lord Eversley gave, as a curious instance of the awe in which the great Duke kept his Duchess, that Mrs. Lefevre, going one day to visit her, found her dissolved in tears. When she asked the reason, the Duchess said, sobbing, ‘Look there,’ and from the window Mrs. Lefevre saw workmen cutting down all the ivy which made the whole beauty of the trees before the house; and when Mrs. Lefevre asked the Duchess why she did not remonstrate, she showed her a written paper which the head man had just brought in, having received it from the Duke—‘Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington desires that the ivy may immediately be cut down from every tree on his estate.’ They had begun with those nearest home; the Duke had evidently forgotten to except those, but his order could not be trifled with.
“One day the great Duke was much surprised by receiving a letter which he read as follows:—‘Being in the neighbourhood, I venture to ask permission to see some of your Grace’s best breeches. C. London.’ He answered to the Bishop of London that he had great pleasure in assenting to his request, though he must confess it had given him very considerable surprise. London House was thrown into confusion. The note was from Loudon, the great gardener, and ‘breeches’ should have been read ‘beeches.’185
“We went on to Silchester, which is one of the three walled Roman towns of England, Wroxeter and Risborough being the others. The walls, three miles in circumference, are nearly perfect. In the centre is the forum, an immense square, 315 feet by 276, surrounded by shops, amongst which those of the oyster-monger, game-seller, butcher, and jeweller have been identified. One house retains its curious apparatus for warming very perfect.”
“Heckfield, August 14.—Yesterday Colonel Townley came to dine, celebrated for his ride of eight hundred miles without stopping. It was of great importance that certain despatches from our Government should reach Constantinople before the Austrian messenger could deliver his, and Colonel Townley accomplished it. When within a few hours of Constantinople, an old wound opened from his exertion, and he felt almost dying; but just then he caught sight of the Austrian envoy coming over the brow of a distant hill, and it nerved him, and he rode on and arrived first. It gained him his colonelcy. He is a pleasant, handsome, unaffected man.”
“Deanery, Salisbury, August 15.—I came here yesterday morning to the Venerable Dean Hamilton of eighty-two, and his wife of seventy-two. He was a Cambridge friend of my uncle Julius Hare, and lived in the same circle, of Thirlwall, Whewell, Sedgwick, and the Malcolms, &c. His mind has all its old power, and he has much that is most interesting to tell of all the people he has seen. He gave a curious account of breakfasts at the house of Ugo Foscolo, where everything was served by the most beautiful maidens in picturesque dresses. He described the eccentric Mr. Peate, who lived in Trinity, but never came out of his rooms except to dinner or supper, when he always appeared to the moment. When Dr. Parr dined, Mr. Peate drew him out in Combination Room, but retired at the usual hour; only on going away, he walked up to Dr. Parr and said, ‘I will take leave of you, sir, in words which may possibly not be unfamiliar to you,’ and made a long set complimentary speech in honour of learning; it was all taken word for word from an essay Dr. Parr had published many years before; Peate’s memory was so very extraordinary. It was not, however, always very convenient, for if a neighbour at dinner affirmed an opinion, Peate would sometimes say, ‘On such a day or such a year you expressed such and such an opinion, which was exactly the reverse of this,’ for he never forgot anything, even the very terms of an expression.
“There is here in Salisbury the usual familiar society of a cathedral close—the Canon in residence and the other inhabitants meeting and going in and out of each others’ houses at all hours. With Canon Douglas Gordon I have been to the Palace, where we found the Bishop in his garden, which is quite lovely, the rich green and brilliant flowers sweeping up into and mingling with the grey arcades and rich chapels of the cathedral; and from all points the tall heaven-soaring spire is sublime, especially in the purple shadows of evening, with birds circling ceaselessly round it.
“The Palace has a grand dull room full of portraits of deceased bishops, where we had tea. Bishop Moberly, who is still rather schoolmasterish, has no end of daughters, all so excellent that it has been observed that whenever a colonist sends home for a commendable wife, you may, with the most perfect confidence, despatch a Miss Moberly.”
“August 16.—To Breamore, the fine old Elizabethan house of Sir Edward Hulse, almost gutted by fire some years ago. I was taken up to the housetop to survey several surrounding counties, and sat the rest of the afternoon with the family in the shade of the old red gables. Two very handsome boys, Edward and Westrow, asked for a story.”
“Stanmer Park, August 18.—I came here yesterday to Lord Chichester’s. It is a moderate house in a dullish park, with fine trees and a bright flower-garden. We pray a great deal, and Lord Chichester—who is intensely good—makes little sermons at prayers.... Lord Pelham is very amusing under a quiet manner. ‘I thought I heard your dulcet tones, my love, so I am coming out to you,’ he is just saying, as he steps through the open window to his wife upon the verandah.”
“Oct. 4.—A most charming visit to Lady Mary Egerton at Mountfield Court. Mr. Charles Newton186 of the British Museum is here, who is always charming, with ripple of pleasantest anecdote and kindly, genial manners. He says:—
“General Skenk had a monkey and a parrot, which hated each other. One day he imprudently went out, leaving them alone together in a room. When he came back, the monkey was sitting in his arm-chair, bleeding profusely, and looking very sheepish and ashamed of himself, while the floor was covered with feathers. The parrot had disappeared, but while General Skenk was looking for any further remains of it, out from under a sofa walked a perfectly naked bird, and said, ‘What a hell of a time we’ve had!’
“Mr. Newton was at a spiritual séance. An old man of the party was told that the spirit manifested was his wife, upon which he said:—
“‘Is that you, ’Arriet?’
“‘Yes, it’s me.’
“‘Are you ’appy, ’Arriet?’
“‘Yes, very ’appy.’
“‘’Appier than you were with me, ’Arriet?’
“‘Yes, much ’appier.’
“‘Where are you, ‘’Arriet?’
“‘In ’ell.’
“Mr. Newton says that the cry of the wood-pigeon is ‘Sow peas, do, do.’ There is a bird in Turkey of which the male seems to say a string of words meaning ‘Have you seen my sheep?’ when the female replies, ‘No, I have not seen them.’ They are said to be a shepherd and shepherdess who lost all their sheep and died of a broken heart, when they were turned into birds. But the interesting point is that the story is found in an old Greek novel—‘Longus.’
“‘The origin of the Torlonia family,’ said Mr. Newton, ‘is very curious. When Pius VII. wished to excommunicate Napoleon I., he could not find any one who was bold enough to affix the scomunica to the doors of the Lateran. At length an old man who sold matches was found who ran the risk and did it. On the return of the Pope in triumph, the old man was offered any favour he liked, and he chose the monopoly of tobacco. From that time every speculation that the Torlonias entered upon was sure to answer.’
“The late Prince Torlonia, being at Naples, went into the room where the public appointments were sold by auction. He left his umbrella there, and went back to get it while the sale was going on. The bidders, chiefly Neapolitan nobles, were aghast to see the great Torlonia reappear, and at last, after some consultation, one of them came up to him and said they would give him 60,000 francs if he would leave. Instead of showing the intense astonishment he felt at this most unexpected proposal, Torlonia only shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘È póco,’ and they gave him 100,000.
“The only other guests at Mountfield are a Mr. Baker, a Gloucestershire squire, and his wife. He is an excellent man, and was the first who instituted a Reformatory. This he did first at his own expense, but the Government bought it from him. He speaks with the most dreary voice. Mr. Newton says it is ‘just the sort of utterance he should be grateful for if he was making his last speech upon the scaffold.’”
“Sonning, Dec. 30.—My ever-kind friend Lord Stanhope died on Christmas Eve. It was only two years from the time of dear Lady Stanhope’s death, on New Year’s Eve, 1873. She left a paper for her husband—what she called her ‘Last Words’—imploring him, for her sake, to go back to his literary interests, not to give up what had been his work, to try to fill up the blank in his life.
“When Lord Stanhope was dying, he said touchingly to Lady Mohun, ‘You know what my dearest Emily asked of me in her last words. I have tried to do as she wished, and you, my dear, have been such a good and kind daughter to me, you have almost made me wish to live.’
“I have been spending charming days with Hugh Pearson. He says, ‘What will become of a country in which the upper classes are content to be fed upon Farrar’s ‘Life of Christ’ and the middle classes upon Moody and Sankey?’ He told me of Justice Knight Bruce’s capital lines—
‘The ladies praise our curate’s eyes;
I cannot see their light divine:
He always shuts them when he prays,
And, when he preaches, closes mine.’”
Notes
85 “Easter Sunday, 1874.—The Count and Countess de Lützow, the two Miss Seymours, and Miss Ellis87 met me at S. Germano, and we have been spending to-day in the monastery of Monte Cassino, gloriously beautiful always, with its palatial buildings on a mountain-top, and all around billows of purple hill tipped with snow. An introduction from the Duke of Sermoneta caused the gentle-looking Abbot to receive us, and then the great bent figure of the great Tosti came forward, his deep-set eyes excessively striking. After the service in the church they entertained us to an excellent dinner, finishing with delicious Aleatico wine. They were ‘spogliati,’ they said, but ‘La Providenza’ still watched over them.”