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Title: Story of My Life, volumes 1-3
Author: Hare, Augustus J. C., 1834-1903
Language: English
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THE STORY OF MY LIFE
VOLUMES 1-3
[Illustration: Georgiana Hare Naylor
From a miniature]
THE STORY OF
MY LIFE
BY
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
AUTHOR OF "MEMORIALS OF A QUIET LIFE,"
"THE STORY OF TWO NOBLE LIVES,"
ETC. ETC.
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1896
[_All rights reserved_]
_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_At the Ballantyne Press_
VOLUME 1
PREFACE
In the autumn of 1878, the desire to comfort and amuse one of my kindest
friends during hours of wearing pain and sickness induced me to begin
writing down some of the reminiscences of my life. As almost all those
who shared my earlier interests and affections had passed away, I
fancied at first that it would be impossible to rescue anything like a
connected story from "the great shipwreck of Time." But solitude helps
remembrance; and as I went on opening old letters and journals with the
view of retracing my past life, it seemed to unfold itself to memory,
and I found a wonderful interest in following once more the old track,
with its almost forgotten pleasures and sorrows, though often reminded
of the story of the old man who, when he heard for the first time the
well-known adage, "Hell is paved with good intentions," added promptly,
"Yes, and roofed with lost opportunities."
Many will think mine has been a sad life. But, as A. H. Mackonochie
said, "No doubt our walk through this little world is through much fog
and darkness and many alarms, but it is wonderful, when one looks back,
to see how little the evils of life have been allowed to leave real
marks upon our course, or upon our present state."
And besides this, Time is always apt to paint the long-ago in fresh
colours, making what was nothing less than anguish at the time quite
light and trivial in the retrospect; sweeping over and effacing the
greater number of griefs, joys, and friendships; though ever and anon
picking out some unexpected point as a fixed and lasting landmark. "Le
Temps, vieillard divin, honore et blanchit tout."
Many, doubtless, who read these pages, may themselves recollect, or may
remember having heard others give, a very different impression of the
persons described. But, as the old Italian proverb says, "Every bird
sings its own note," and I only give my own opinion. Pope reminds us
that--
"'Tis with our judgments as our watches--none
Go just alike--yet each believes his own."
And after all, "De mortuis omnia" is perhaps a wholesomer motto than
"Nil nisi bonum," and if people believed it would be acted upon, their
lives would often be different. While one is just, however, one ought to
remember that nothing can be more touching or pathetic than the
helplessness of the dead. "Speak of me as I am," says Othello, "nothing
extenuate, nor set down aught in malice."
Since I have latterly seen more of what is usually called "the
world"--the little world which considers the great world its
satellite--and of the different people who compose it, the later years I
have described will probably be the most interesting to such as care to
read what I have written. I have myself, I think, gradually learnt what
an "immense folio life is, requiring the utmost attention to be read and
understood as it ought to be."[1] But to me, my earlier years will
always seem far the most important, the years throughout which my
dearest mother had a share in every thought and was the object of every
act. To many, my up-bringing will probably appear very odd, and I often
feel myself how unsuited it was to my character, and how little that
character or my own tastes and possible powers were consulted in
considerations of my future. Still, when from middle life one overlooks
one's youth as one would a plain divided into different fields from a
hill-top, when "la v\xE9rit\xE9 s'est fait jour," one can discern the faulty
lines and trace the mistakes which led to them, but one cannot even then
see the difficulties and perplexities which caused inevitable errors of
judgment in those who could not see the end when they were thinking
about the beginning. Therefore, though there is much in the earlier part
of my life which I should wish to rearrange if I could plan it over
again, I am sure that the little which may be good in me is due to the
loving influence which watched over my childhood, whilst my faults are
only my own. In the latter years of her life, my dear adopted mother and
I became constantly more closely united. The long period of sickness and
suffering, which others may have fancied to be trying, only endeared her
to me a thousandfold, and since the sweet eyes closed and the gentle
voice was hushed for ever in November 1870, each solitary year has only
seemed like another page in an unfinished appendix.
I once heard a lady say that "biographies are either lives or stuffed
animals," and there is always a danger of their being only the latter.
But, as Carlyle tells us, "a true delineation of the smallest man and
the scene of his pilgrimage through life is capable of interesting the
greatest man, and human portraits, faithfully drawn, are of all pictures
the welcomest on human walls." It is certainly in proportion as a
biography is human or individual that it can have any lasting interest.
Also, "Those relations are commonly of the most value in which the
writer tells his own story."[2]
I have allowed this story to tell itself when it was possible by means
of contemporary letters and journals, convinced that they at least
express the feeling of the moment to which they narrate, and that they
cannot possibly be biassed by the after-thoughts under the influence of
which most autobiographies are written, and in which "la m\xE9moire se plie
aux fantasies de l'amour propre."
* * * * *
My story is a very long one, and though only, as Sir C. Bowen would have
called it, "a ponderous biography of nobody," is told in great--most
people will say in far too much--detail. But to me it seems as if it
were in the petty details, not in the great results, that the real
interest of every existence lies. I think, also, though it may be
considered a strange thing to say, that the true picture of a whole
life--at least an English life--has never yet been painted, and
certainly all the truth of such a picture must come from its delicate
touches. Then, though most readers of this story will only read parts of
it, they are sure to be different parts.
The book doubtless contains a great deal of _esprit des autres_, for I
have a helpless memory for sentences read or heard long ago, and put
away somewhere in my senses, but not of when or where they were read or
heard.
Many of the persons described were very important to those of their own
time who might have had a _serrement de c\x9Cur_ in reading about them.
Therefore, if their contemporaries had been living, much must have
remained unwritten; but, as Sydney Smith said, "We are all dead now."
Still, in looking over my MS., I have always carefully cut out
everything which could hurt the feelings of living persons: and I
believe very little remains which can even ruffle their sensibilities.
CONTENTS
PAGE
ANTECEDENTS 1
CHILDHOOD 43
BOYHOOD 170
LYNCOMBE 247
SOUTHGATE 297
OXFORD LIFE 402
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. I
GEORGIANA, MRS. HARE NAYLOR. (_Photogravure_) _Frontispiece_
PAGE
HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE. (_Full-page woodcut_) _To face_ 4
GLAMIS CASTLE 22
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE WITH LUCIA CECINELLI.
(_Photogravure_) _To face_ 50
HURSTMONCEAUX RECTORY 55
LIME 58
FRANCIS G. HARE. (_Photogravure_) _To face_ 84
HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE 93
THE DRAWING-ROOM AT LIME 101
RUIN IN THE PALACE GARDEN, NORWICH 117
THE CHAPEL DOOR, NORWICH 119
STOKE RECTORY--THE APPROACH 126
REV. O. LEYCESTER. (_Photogravure_) _To face_ 128
PETSEY 132
STOKE CHURCH 136
STOKE RECTORY--THE GARDEN SIDE 141
HURSTMONCEAUX 165
THE VESTRY, HURSTMONCEAUX 188
LEWES 195
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. _From S. Lawrence._
(_Photogravure_) _To face_ 202
REV. O. LEYCESTER'S GRAVE, STOKE CHURCHYARD 208
EDWARD STANLEY, BISHOP OF NORWICH. (_Photogravure_) _To face_ 232
THE TOWER AT ROCKEND, TORQUAY 252
WILMINGTON PRIORY 257
FLOWERS GREEN, HURSTMONCEAUX 259
THE RYE GATE, WINCHELSEA 290
IN ST. HELEN'S, BISHOPSGATE 336
LE TOMBEAU NAPOLEON 349
CANON STANLEY'S HOUSE, CANTERBURY 358
SITE OF BECKET'S SHRINE, CANTERBURY 361
STEPS AT LIME 367
LIME, THE APPROACH 410
ARCHDEACON HARE'S STUDY, HURSTMONCEAUX RECTORY 466
JULIUS C. HARE. _From Richmond._ (_Photogravure_) _To face_ 468
HURSTMONCEAUX CHURCH 483
LIME, FROM THE GARDEN 491
ALFRISTON 506
I
ANTECEDENTS
"Time doth consecrate;
And what is grey with age becomes religion."--SCHILLER.
"I hope I may be able to tell the truth always, and to see it
aright, according to the eyes which God Almighty gives
me."--THACKERAY.
In 1727, the year of George the First's death, Miss Grace Naylor of
Hurstmonceaux, though she was beloved, charming, and beautiful, died
very mysteriously in her twenty-first year, in the immense and weird old
castle of which she had been the heiress. She was affirmed to have been
starved by her former governess, who lived alone with her, but the fact
was never proved. Her property passed to her first cousin Francis Hare
(son of her aunt Bethaia), who forthwith assumed the name of Naylor.
The new owner of Hurstmonceaux was the only child of the first marriage
of that Francis Hare, who, through the influence first of the Duke of
Marlborough (by whose side, then a chaplain, he had ridden on the
battle-fields of Blenheim and Ramilies), and afterwards of his family
connections the Pelhams and Walpoles, rose to become one of the richest
and most popular pluralists of his age. Yet he had to be contented at
last with the bishoprics of St. Asaph and Chichester, with each of which
he held the Deanery of St. Paul's, the Archbishopric of Canterbury
having twice just escaped him.
The Bishop's eldest son Francis was "un facheux d\xE9tail de notre
famille," as the grandfather of Madame de Maintenon said of his son. He
died after a life of the wildest dissipation, without leaving any
children by his wife Carlotta Alston, who was his stepmother's sister.
So the property of Hurstmonceaux went to his half-brother Robert, son of
the Bishop's second marriage with Mary-Margaret Alston, heiress of the
Vatche in Buckinghamshire, and of several other places besides. Sir
Robert Walpole had been the godfather of Robert Hare-Naylor, and
presented him with a valuable sinecure office as a christening present,
and he further made the Bishop urge the Church as the profession in
which father and godfather could best aid the boy's advancement.
Accordingly Robert took orders, obtained a living, and was made a Canon
of Winchester. While he was still very young, his father had further
secured his fortunes by marrying him to the heiress who lived nearest to
his mother's property of the Vatche, and, by the beautiful Sarah Selman
(daughter of the owner of Chalfont St. Peter's, and sister of Mrs.
Lefevre), he had two sons--Francis and Robert, and an only daughter Anna
Maria, afterwards Mrs. Bulkeley. In the zenith of her youth and
loveliness, however, Sarah Hare died very suddenly from eating ices when
overheated at a ball, and soon afterwards Robert married a second
wife--the rich Henrietta Henckel, who pulled down Hurstmonceaux Castle.
She did this because she was jealous of the sons of her predecessor, and
wished to build a large new house, which she persuaded her husband to
settle upon her own children, who were numerous, though only two
daughters lived to any great age. But she was justly punished, for when
Robert Hare died, it was discovered that the great house which Wyatt had
built for Mrs. Hare, and which is now known as Hurstmonceaux Place, was
erected upon entailed land, so that the house stripped of furniture, and
the property shorn of its most valuable farms, passed to Francis
Hare-Naylor, son of Miss Selman. Mrs. Henckel Hare lived on to a great
age, and when "the burden of her years came on her" she repented of her
avarice and injustice, and coming back to Hurstmonceaux in childish
senility, would wander round and round the castle ruins in the early
morning and late evening, wringing her hands and saying--"Who could have
done such a wicked thing: oh! who could have done such a wicked thing,
as to pull down this beautiful old place?" Then her daughters, Caroline
and Marianne, walking beside her, would say--"Oh dear mamma, it was you
who did it, it was you yourself who did it, you know"--and she would
despairingly resume--"Oh no, that is impossible: it could not have been
me. I could not have done such a wicked thing: it could not have been me
that did it." My cousin Marcus Hare had at Abbots Kerswell a picture of
Mrs. Henckel Hare, which was always surrounded with crape bows.
[Illustration: HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE.]
The second Francis Hare-Naylor and his brother Robert had a most unhappy
home in their boyhood. Their stepmother ruled their weak-minded father
with a rod of iron. She ostentatiously burnt the portrait of their
beautiful mother. Every year she sold a farm from his paternal
inheritance and spent the money in extravagance. In 1784 she parted with
the ancient property of Hos Tendis, at Sculthorpe in Norfolk, though
its sale was a deathblow to the Bishop's aged widow, Mary-Margaret
Alston. Yet, while accumulating riches for herself, she prevented her
husband from allowing his unfortunate elder sons more than \xA3100 a year
apiece. With this income, Robert, the younger of the two, was sent to
Oriel College at Oxford, and when he unavoidably incurred debts there,
the money for their repayment was stopped even from his humble pittance.
Goaded to fury by his stepmother, the eldest son, Francis, became
reckless and recklessly extravagant. He raised money at an enormous rate
of interest upon his prospects from the Hurstmonceaux estates, and he
would have been utterly ruined, morally as well as outwardly, if he had
not fallen in with Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who was captivated
by his good looks, charmed by his boldness and wit, and who made him the
hero of a living romance. By the Duchess he was introduced to her
cousin, another even more beautiful Georgiana, daughter of Jonathan
Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, and his wife Anna Maria Mordaunt, niece of
the famous Earl of Peterborough; and though Bishop Shipley did
everything he could to separate them, meetings were perpetually connived
at by the Duchess, till eventually the pair eloped in 1785. The
families on both sides renounced them with fury. The Canon of Winchester
never saw his son again, and I believe that Bishop Shipley never saw his
daughter. Our grandparents went to Carlsruhe, and then to Italy, where
in those days it was quite possible to live upon the \xA3200 a year which
was allowed them by the Duchess of Devonshire, and where their four
sons--Francis, Augustus, Julius, and Marcus--were born.
The story of Mrs. Hare-Naylor's struggling life in Italy is told in
"Memorials of a Quiet Life," and how, when the Canon of Winchester died,
and she hurried home with her husband to take possession of
Hurstmonceaux Place, she brought only her little Augustus with her,
placing him under the care of her eldest sister Anna Maria, widow of the
celebrated Sir William Jones, whom he ever afterwards regarded as a
second mother.
The choice of guardians which Mrs. Hare-Naylor made for the children
whom she left at Bologna would be deemed a very strange one by many: but
gifted, beautiful, and accomplished, our grandmother was never
accustomed either to seek or to take advice: she always acted upon her
own impulses, guided by her own observation. An aged Spanish Jesuit was
living in Bologna, who, when his order was suppressed in Spain, had
come to reside in Italy upon his little pension, and, being skilled in
languages, particularly in Greek, had taken great pains to revive the
love of it in Bologna. Amongst his pupils were two brothers named
Tambroni, one of whom, discouraged by the difficulties he met with,
complained to his sister Clotilda, who, by way of assisting him,
volunteered to learn the same lessons. The old Jesuit was delighted with
the girl, and spared no pains to make her a proficient. Female
professors were not unknown in Bologna, and in process of time Clotilda
Tambroni succeeded to the chair of the Professor of Greek, once occupied
by the famous Laura Bassi, whom she was rendered worthy to succeed by
her beauty as well as by her acquirements. The compositions of Clotilda
Tambroni both in Greek and Italian were published, and universally
admired; her poems surprised every one by their fire and genius, and her
public orations were considered unrivalled in her age. Adored by all,
her reputation was always unblemished. When the French became masters of
Bologna, the University was suppressed, and to avoid insult and danger,
Clotilda Tambroni retired into private life and lived in great
seclusion. Some time after, she received an appointment in Spain, but,
just as she arrived there, accompanied by her monk-preceptor Dom
Emmanuele Aponte, the French had overturned everything. The pair
returned to Bologna, where Aponte would have been in the greatest
distress, if his grateful pupil had not insisted upon receiving him into
her own house, and not only maintained him, but devoted herself as a
daughter to his wants. After the Austrians had re-established the
University on the old system, Clotilda Tambroni was invited to resume
her chair, but as her health and spirits were then quite broken, she
declined accepting it, upon which the Government very handsomely settled
a small pension upon her, sufficient to ensure her the comforts of life.
With Clotilda Tambroni and her aged friend, our grandmother Mrs.
Hare-Naylor, who wrote and spoke Greek as perfectly as her native
language, and who taught her children to converse in it at the family
repasts, naturally found more congenial companionship than with any
other members of the Bolognese society; and, when she was recalled with
her husband to England, she had no hesitation in intrusting three of her
sons to their care. Julius and Marcus were then only very beautiful and
engaging little children, but Francis, my father, was already eleven
years old, and a boy of extraordinary acquirements, in whom an almost
unnatural amount of learning had been implanted and fostered by his
gifted mother. The strange life which he then led at Bologna with the
old monk and the beautiful sibyl (for such she is represented in her
portrait) who attended him, only served to ripen the seed which had been
sown already, and the great Mezzofanti, who was charmed at seeing a
repetition of his own marvellous powers in one so young, voluntarily
took him as a pupil and devoted much of his time to him. To the year
which Francis Hare passed with Clotilda Tambroni at Bologna, in her
humble rooms with their tiled floors and scanty furniture, he always
felt that he owed that intense love of learning for learning's sake
which was the leading characteristic of his after life, and he always
looked back upon the Tambroni as the person to whom, next to his mother,
he was most deeply indebted. When he rejoined his parents at
Hurstmonceaux, he continued, under his new tutor, Dr. Lehmann, to make
such amazing progress as astonished all who knew him and was an intense
delight to his mother.
Hurstmonceaux Place was then, and is still, a large but ugly house. It
forms a massy square, with projecting circular bows at the corners, the
appearance of which (due to Wyatt) produces a frightful effect outside,
but is exceedingly comfortable within. The staircase, the floors, and
the handsome doors, were brought from the castle. The west side of the
house, decorated with some Ionic columns, is part of an older
manor-house, which existed before the castle was dismantled. In this
part of the building is a small old panelled hall, hung round with
stags' horns from the ancient deer-park. The house is surrounded by
spacious pleasure-grounds. Facing the east front were, till a few years
ago, three very fine trees, a cedar, a tulip-tree, and a huge silver
fir. In my childhood it often used to be a question which of these trees
should be removed, as they were crowding and spoiling each other, and it
ended in their all being left, as no one could decide which was the
least valuable of the three. The wind has since that time carried away
the cedar. The tulip-tree was planted by our great-aunt Marianne,
daughter of Mrs. Henckel Hare, and I remember that my uncle Julius used
to say that its gay flowers were typical of her and her dress.
For several years our grandparents carried on a most laborious contest
of dignity with poverty on their ruined estate of Hurstmonceaux, where
their only daughter Anna Maria Clementina was born in 1799. Finding no
congenial associates in the neighbourhood, Mrs. Hare-Naylor consoled
herself by keeping up an animated correspondence with all the learned
men of Europe, while her husband wrote dull plays and duller histories,
which have all been published, but which few people read then and nobody
reads now. The long-confirmed habits of Italian life, with its peculiar
hours and utter disregard of appearances, were continued in Sussex; and
it is still remembered at Hurstmonceaux how our grandmother rode on an
ass to drink at the mineral springs which abound in the park, how she
always wore white, and how a beautiful white doe always accompanied her
in her walks, and even to church, standing, during the service, at her
pew door.
Upon the return of Lehmann to Germany in 1802, Francis Hare was sent to
the tutorship of Dr. Brown, an eminent professor in Marischal College at
Aberdeen, where he remained for two years, working with the utmost
enthusiasm. He seems to have shrunk at this time from any friendships
with boys of his own age, except with Harry Temple (afterwards
celebrated as Lord Palmerston), who had been his earliest acquaintance
in England, and with whom he long continued to be intimate. Meanwhile
his mother formed the design of leaving to her children a perfect series
of large finished water-colour drawings, representing all the different
parts of Hurstmonceaux Castle, interior as well as exterior, before its
destruction. She never relaxed her labour and care till the whole were
finished, but the minute application, for so long a period, seriously
affected her health and produced disease of the optic nerve, which ended
in total blindness. She removed to Weimar, where the friendship of the
Grand Duchess and the society of Goethe, Schiller, and the other learned
men who formed the brilliantly intellectual circle of the little court
did all that was possible to mitigate her affliction. But her health
continued to fail, and her favourite son Francis was summoned to her
side, arriving in time to accompany her to Lausanne, where she expired,
full of faith, hope, and resignation, on Easter Sunday, 1806.
After his wife's death, Mr. Hare-Naylor could never bear to return to
Hurstmonceaux, and sold the remnant of his ancestral estate for
\xA360,000, to the great sorrow of his children. They were almost more
distressed, however, by his second marriage to a Mrs. Mealey, a
left-handed connection of the Shipley family--the Mrs. Hare-Naylor of my
own childhood, who was less and less liked by her stepsons as years went
on. She became the mother of three children, Georgiana, Gustavus, and
Reginald--my half aunt and uncles. In 1815, Mr. Hare-Naylor died at
Tours, and was buried at Hurstmonceaux.
The breaking up of their home, the loss of their beloved mother, and
still more their father's second marriage, made the four Hare brothers
turn henceforward for all that they sought of sympathy or affection to
their Shipley relations. The house of their mother's eldest sister, Lady
Jones, was henceforward the only home they knew. Little Anna Hare was
adopted by Lady Jones, and lived entirely with her till her early death
in 1813: Augustus was educated at her expense and passed his holidays at
her house of Worting, her care and anxiety for his welfare proving that
she considered him scarcely less her child than Anna; and Francis and
Julius looked up to her in everything, and consulted her on all points,
finding in her "a second mother, a monitress wise and loving, both in
encouragement and reproof."[3] While Augustus was pursuing his education
at Winchester and New College, and Marcus was acting as midshipman and
lieutenant in various ships on foreign service; and while Julius (who
already, during his residence with his mother at Weimar, had imbibed
that passion for Germany and German literature which characterised his
after life) was carrying off prizes at Tunbridge, the Charter House, and
Trinity College, Cambridge; Francis, after his mother's death, was
singularly left to his own devices. Mr. Hare-Naylor was too apathetic,
and his stepmother did not dare to interfere with him: Lady Jones was
bewildered by him. After leaving Aberdeen he studied vigorously, even
furiously, with a Mr. Michell at Buckland. From time to time he went
abroad, travelling where he pleased and seeing whom he pleased. At the
Universities of Leipsic and G\xF6ttingen the report which Lehmann gave of
his extraordinary abilities procured him an enthusiastic reception, and
he soon formed intimacies with the most distinguished professors of both
seats of learning. At the little court of Weimar he was adored. Yet the
vagaries of his character led him with equal ardour to seek the
friendship and share the follies of Count Calotkin, of whom he wrote as
"the Lord Chesterfield of the time, who had had more princesses in love
with him and perhaps more children on the throne than there are weeks in
the year." At twenty, he had not only all the knowledge, but more than
all the experiences, of most men of forty. Such training was not a good
preparation for his late entrance at an English University. The pupil of
Mezzofanti and Lehmann also went to Christ Church at Oxford knowing far
too much. He was so far ahead of his companions, and felt such a
profound contempt for the learning of Oxford compared with that to which
he had been accustomed at the Italian and German universities, that he
neglected the Oxford course of study altogether, and did little except
hunt whilst he was at college. In spite of this, he was so naturally
talented, that he could not help adding, in spite of himself, to his
vast store of information. Jackson, Dean of Christ Church in his time,
used to say that "Francis Hare was the only rolling stone he knew that
ever gathered any moss." That which he did gather was always made the
most of for his favourite brother Julius, for whose instruction he was
never weary of writing essays, and in whose progress he took the
greatest interest and delight. But through all the changes of life the
tie between each of the four brothers continued undiminished--"the most
brotherly of brothers," their common friend Landor always used to call
them.
After leaving Oxford, my father lived principally at his rooms in the
Albany. Old Dr. Wellesley[4] used often to tell me stories of these
pleasant chambers (the end house in the court), and of the parties which
used to meet in them, including all that was most refined and
intellectual in the young life of London. For, in his conversational
powers, Francis Hare had the reputation of being perfectly unrivalled,
and it was thus, not in writing, that his vast amount of information on
all possible subjects became known to his contemporaries. In 1811, Lady
Jones writes of him "at Stowe" as "keeping all the talk to himself,
which does not please the old Marquis much."
Francis Hare sold his father's fine library at Christie's soon after his
death, yet almost immediately began to form a new collection of books,
which soon surrounded all the walls of his Albany chambers. But his
half-sister Mrs. Maurice remembered going to visit him at the Albany,
and her surprise at not seeing his books. "Oh, Francis, what have you
done with your library?" she exclaimed. "Look under the sofa and you
will see it," he replied. She looked, and saw a pile of Sir William
Jones's works: he had again sold all the rest. And through life it was
always the same. He never could resist collecting valuable books, and
then either sold them, or had them packed up, left them behind, and
forgot all about them. Three of his collections of books have been sold
within my remembrance, one at Newbury in July 1858; one at Florence in
the spring of 1859; and one at Sotheby & Wilkinson's rooms in the
following November.
Careful as to his personal appearance, Francis Hare was always dressed
in the height of the fashion. It is remembered how he would retire and
change his dress three times in the course of a single ball! In
everything he followed the foibles of the day. "Francis leads a rambling
life of pleasure and idleness," wrote his cousin Anna Maria Dashwood;
"he _must_ have read, but who can tell at what time?--for wherever there
is dissipation, there is Francis in its wake and its most ardent
pursuer. Yet, in spite of this, let _any_ subject be named in society,
and Francis will know more of it than nineteen out of twenty."
In 1816-17, Francis Hare kept horses and resided much at Melton Mowbray,
losing an immense amount of money there. After this time he lived almost
entirely upon the Continent. Lord Desart, Lord Bristol and Count d'Orsay
were his constant companions and friends, so that it is not to be
wondered at that attractions of a less reputable kind enchained him to
Florence and Rome. He had, however, a really good friend in John
Nicholas Fazakerley, with whom his intimacy was never broken, and in
1814, whilst watching his dying father at Tours, he began a friendship
with Walter Savage Landor, with whom he ever afterwards kept up an
affectionate correspondence. Other friends of whom he saw much in the
next few years were Lady Oxford (then separated from her husband, and
living entirely abroad) and her four daughters. In the romantic
interference of Lady Oxford in behalf of Caroline Murat, queen of
Naples, and in the extraordinary adventures of her daughters, my father
took the deepest interest, and he was always ready to help or advise
them. On one occasion, when they arrived suddenly in Florence, he gave a
ball in their honour, the brilliancy of which I have heard described by
the older Florentine residents of my own time. Twice every week, even in
his bachelor days, he was accustomed to give large dinner-parties, and
he then first acquired that character for hospitality for which he was
afterwards famous at Rome and Pisa. Spa was one of the places which
attracted him most at this period of his life, and he frequently passed
part of the summer there. It was on one of these occasions (1816) that
he proceeded to Holland and visited Amsterdam. "I am delighted and
disgusted with this mercantile capital," he wrote to his brother
Augustus. "Magnificent establishments and penurious
economy--ostentatious generosity and niggardly suspicion--constitute the
centrifugal and centripetal focus of Holland's mechanism. The rage for
roots still continues. The gardener at the Hortus Medicus showed me an
Amaryllis (alas! it does not flower till October), for which King Lewis
paid one thousand guelders (a guelder is about 2 francs and 2 sous).
Here, in the sanctuary of Calvinism, organs are everywhere
introduced--though the more orthodox, or puerile, discipline of Scotland
has rejected their intrusion. But, in return, the sternness of
republican demeanour refuses the outward token of submission--even to
Almighty power: a Dutchman always remains in church with his hat unmoved
from his head."
The year 1818 was chiefly passed by Francis Hare in Bavaria, where he
became very intimate with the King and Prince Eugene. The latter gave
him the miniature of himself which I still have at Holmhurst. For the
next seven years he was almost entirely in Italy--chiefly at Florence or
Pisa. Sometimes Lord Dudley was with him, often he lived for months in
the constant society of Count d'Orsay and Lady Blessington. He was f\xEAted
and invited everywhere. "On disait de M. Hare," said one who knew him
intimately, "non seulement qu'il \xE9tait original, mais qu'il \xE9tait
original sans copie." "In these years at Florence," said the same
person, "there were many ladies who were aspirants for his hand, he was
_si aimable, pas dans le sens vulgaire, mais il avait tant
d'empressement pour tout le sexe feminin_." His aunts Lady Jones and her
sister Louisa Shipley constantly implored him to return to England and
settle there, but in vain: he was too much accustomed to a roving life.
Occasionally he wrote for Reviews, but I have never been able to trace
the articles. He had an immense correspondence, and his letters were
very amusing, when their recipients could read his almost impossible
hand. We find Count d'Orsay writing, apropos of a debt which he was
paying--"Employez cette somme \xE0 prendre un ma\xEEtre d'\xE9criture: si vous
saviez quel service vous renderiez \xE0 vos amis!"
The English family of which Francis Hare saw most at Florence was that
of Lady Paul, who had brought her four daughters to spend several years
in Italy, partly for the sake of completing their education, partly to
escape with dignity from the discords of a most uncongenial home. To the
close of her life Frances Eleanor, first wife of Sir John Dean Paul of
Rodborough, was one of those rare individuals who are never seen without
being loved, and who never fail to have a good influence over those with
whom they are thrown in contact. That she was as attractive as she was
good is still shown in a lovely portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Landor
adored her, and rejoiced to bring his friend Francis Hare into her
society. The daughters were clever, lively and animated; but the mother
was the great attraction to the house.
[Illustration: GLAMIS CASTLE.]
Defoe says that "people who boast of their ancestors are like potatoes,
in that their best part is in underground." Still I will explain that
Lady Paul was the daughter of John Simpson of Bradley in the county of
Durham, and his wife Lady Anne Lyon, second daughter of the 8th Earl of
Strathmore, who quartered the royal arms and claimed royal descent from
Robert II. king of Scotland, grandson of the famous Robert Bruce: the
king's youngest daughter Lady Jane Stuart having married Sir John Lyon,
first Baron Kinghorn, and the king's grand-daughter Elizabeth Graham
(through Euphemia Stuart, Countess of Strathern) having married his son
Sir John Lyon of Glamis. Eight barons and eight earls of Kinghorn and
Strathmore (which title was added 1677) lived in Glamis Castle before
Lady Anne was born. The family history had been of the most eventful
kind. The widow of John, 6th Lord Glamis, was burnt as a witch on the
Castle Hill at Edinburgh, for attempting to poison King James V., and
her second husband, Archibald Campbell, was dashed to pieces while
trying to escape down the rocks which form the foundation of the castle.
Her son, the 7th Lord Glamis, was spared, and restored to his honours
upon the confession of the accusers of the family that the whole story
was a forgery, after it had already cost the lives of two innocent
persons. John, 8th Lord Glamis, was killed in a Border fray with the
followers of the Earl of Crawford: John, 5th Earl, fell in rebellion at
the battle of Sheriffmuir: Charles, 6th Earl, was killed in a quarrel.
The haunted castle of Glamis itself, the most picturesque building in
Scotland, girdled with quaint pepper-box turrets, is full of the most
romantic interest. A winding stair in the thickness of the wall leads to
the principal apartments. The weird chamber is still shown in which, as
Shakspeare narrates, Duncan, king of Scotland, was murdered by Macbeth,
the "thane of Glamis." In the depth of the walls is another chamber more
ghastly still, with a secret, transmitted from the fourteenth century,
which is always known to three persons. When one of the triumvirate
dies, the survivors are compelled by a terrible oath to elect a
successor. Every succeeding Lady Strathmore, Fatima-like, has spent her
time in tapping at the walls, taking up the boards, and otherwise
attempting to discover the secret chamber, but all have failed. One
tradition of the place says that "Old Beardie"[5] sits for ever in that
chamber playing with dice and drinking punch at a stone table, and that
at midnight a second and terrible person joins him.
More fearful than these traditions were the scenes through which Lady
Anne had lived and in which she herself bore a share. Nothing is more
extraordinary than the history of her eldest brother's widow,
Mary-Eleanor Bowes, 9th Countess of Strathmore, who, in her second
marriage with Mr. Stoney, underwent sufferings which have scarcely ever
been surpassed, and whose marvellous escapes and adventures are still
the subject of a hundred story-books.
The vicissitudes of her eventful life, and her own charm and cleverness,
combined to make Lady Anne Simpson one of the most interesting women of
her age, and her society was eagerly sought and appreciated. Both her
daughters had married young, and in her solitude, she took the eldest
daughter of Lady Paul to live with her and brought her up as her own
child. In her house, Anne Paul saw all the most remarkable Englishmen of
the time. She was provided with the best masters, and in her home life
she had generally the companionship of the daughters of her mother's
sister Lady Liddell, afterwards Lady Ravensworth, infinitely preferring
their companionship to that of her own brothers and sisters. Lady Anne
Simpson resided chiefly at a house belonging to Colonel Jolliffe at
Merstham in Surrey, where the persons she wished to see could frequently
come down to her from London. The royal dukes, sons of George III.,
constantly visited her in this way, and delighted in the society of the
pretty old lady, who had so much to tell, and who always told it in the
most interesting way.
It was a severe trial for Anne Paul, when, in her twentieth year (1821),
she lost her grandmother, and had to return to her father's house. Not
only did the blank left by the affection she had received cause her
constant suffering, but the change from being mistress of a considerable
house and establishment to becoming an insignificant unit in a large
party of brothers and sisters was most disagreeable, and she felt it
bitterly.
Very welcome therefore was the change when Lady Paul determined to go
abroad with her daughters, and the society of Florence, in which Anne
Paul's great musical talents made her a general favourite, was the more
delightful from being contrasted with the confinement of Sir John Paul's
house over his bank in the Strand. During her Italian travels also, Anne
Paul made three friends whose intimacy influenced all her after life.
These were our cousin, the clever widowed Anna Maria Dashwood, daughter
of Dean Shipley; Walter Savage Landor; and Francis Hare; and the two
first united in desiring the same thing--her marriage with the last.
Meantime, two other marriages occupied the attention of the Paul family.
One of Lady Paul's objects in coming abroad had been the hope of
breaking through an attachment which her third daughter Maria had formed
for Charles Bankhead, an exceedingly handsome and fascinating, but
penniless young attach\xE9, with whom she had fallen in love at first
sight, declaring that nothing should ever induce her to marry any one
else. Unfortunately, the first place to which Lady Paul took her
daughters was Geneva, and Mr. Bankhead, finding out where they were,
came thither (from Frankfort, where he was attach\xE9) dressed in a long
cloak and with false hair and beard. In this disguise, he climbed up and
looked into a room where Maria Paul was writing, with her face towards
the window. She recognised him at once, but thought it was his double,
and fainted away. On her recovery, finding her family still inexorable,
she one day, when her mother and sisters were out, tried to make away
with herself. Her room faced the stairs, and as Prince Lardoria, an old
friend of the family, was coming up, she threw open the door and
exclaimed--"Je meurs, Prince, je meurs, je me suis empoisonn\xE9."--"Oh
Miladi, Miladi," screamed the Prince, but Miladi was not there, so he
rushed into the kitchen, and seizing a large bottle of oil, dashed
upstairs with it, and, throwing Maria Paul upon the ground, poured the
contents of it down her throat. After this, Lady Paul looked upon the
marriage as inevitable, and sent Maria to England to her aunt Lady
Ravensworth, from whose house she was married to Charles Bankhead,
neither her mother or sisters being present. Shortly afterwards Mr.
Bankhead was appointed minister in Mexico, and his wife, accompanying
him thither, remained there for many years, and had many extraordinary
adventures, especially during a great earthquake, in which she was saved
by her presence of mind in swinging upon a door, while "the cathedral
rocked like a wave on the sea" and the town was laid in ruins.
While Maria Paul's marriage was pending, her youngest sister Jane had
also become engaged, without the will of her parents, to Edward, only
son of the attainted Lord Edward Fitz Gerald, son of the 1st Duke of
Leinster. His mother was the famous Pamela,[6] once the beautiful and
fascinating little fairy produced at eight years old by the Chevalier de
Grave as the companion of Mademoiselle d'Orleans; over whose birth a
mystery has always prevailed; whose name Madame de Genlis declared to be
Sims, but whom her royal companions called Seymour. To her daughter
Jane's engagement Lady Paul rather withheld than refused her consent,
and it was hoped that during their travels abroad the intimacy might be
broken off. It had begun by Jane Paul, in a ball-room, hearing a
peculiarly hearty and ringing laugh from a man she could not see, and in
her high spirits imprudently saying--"I will marry the man who can laugh
in that way and no one else,"--a remark which was repeated to Edward
Fitz Gerald, who insisted upon being immediately introduced. Jane Paul
was covered with confusion, but as she was exceedingly pretty, this only
added to her attractions, and the adventure led to a proposal, and
eventually, through the friendship and intercession of Francis Hare, to
a marriage.[7]
Already, in 1826, we find Count d'Orsay writing to Francis Hare in
August--"Quel diable vous possede de rester \xE0 Florence, _sans Pauls_,
sans rien enfin, except\xE9 un rhume imaginaire pour excuse?" But it was
not till the following year that Miss Paul began to believe he was
seriously paying court to her. They had long corresponded, and his
clever letters are most indescribably eccentric. They became more
eccentric still in 1828, when, before making a formal proposal, he
expended two sheets in proving to her how hateful the word _must_ always
had been and always would be to his nature. She evidently accepted this
exordium very amiably, for on receiving her answer, he sent his banker's
book to Sir John Paul, begging him to examine and see if, after all his
extravagancies, he still possessed at least "fifteen hundred a year,
clear of every possible deduction and charge, to spend withal, that is,
four pounds a day," and to consider, if the examination proved
satisfactory, that he begged to propose for the hand of his eldest
daughter! Equally strange was his announcement of his engagement to his
brother Augustus at Rome, casually observing, in the midst of
antiquarian queries about the temples--"Apropos of columns, I am going
to rest my old age on a column. Anne Paul and I are to be married on the
28th of April,"--and proceeding at once, as if he had said nothing
unusual--"Have you made acquaintance yet with my excellent friend Luigi
Vescovali," &c. At the same time Mrs. Dashwood wrote to Miss Paul that
Francis had "too much feeling and principle to marry without feeling
that he could make the woman who was sincerely attached to him happy,"
and that "though he has a great many faults, still, when one considers
the sort of wild education he had, that he has been a sort of pet pupil
of the famous or infamous Lord Bristol, one feels very certain that he
must have a more than commonly large amount of original goodness (not
sin, though it is the fashion to say so much on that head) to save him
from having many more."
It was just before the marriage that "Victoire" (often afterwards
mentioned in these volumes) came to live with Miss Paul. She had lost
her parents in childhood, and had been brought up by her grandmother,
who, while she was still very young, "pour assurer son avenir," sent her
to England to be with Madame Girard\xF4t, who kept a famous shop for
ladies' dress in Albemarle Street. Three days after her arrival, Lady
Paul came there to ask Madame Girard\xF4t to recommend a maid for her
daughter, who was going to be married, and Victoire was suggested, but
she begged to remain where she was for some weeks, as she felt so lonely
in a strange country, and did not like to leave the young Frenchwomen
with whom she was at work. During this time Miss Paul often came to see
her, and they became great friends. At last a day was fixed on which
Victoire was summoned to the house "seulement pour voir," and then she
first saw Lady Paul. Miss Paul insisted that when her mother asked
Victoire her age, she should say twenty-two at least, as Lady Paul
objected to her having any maid under twenty-eight. "Therefore," said
Victoire, "when Miladi asked 'Quelle age avez vous?' j'ai r\xE9pondu
'Vingt-deux ans, mais je suis devenu toute rouge, oh comme je suis
devenu rouge'--et Miladi a r\xE9pondu avec son doux sourire--'Ah vous
n'avez pas l'habitude des mensonges?'--Oh comme c\xE0 m'a tellement
frapp\xE9."[8]
My father was married to Anne Frances Paul at the church in the Strand
on the 28th of April 1828. "Oh comme il y avait du monde!" said
Victoire, when she described the ceremony to me. A few days afterwards a
breakfast was given at the Star and Garter at Richmond, at which all the
relations on both sides were present, Maria Leycester, the future bride
of Augustus Hare, being also amongst the guests.
Soon after, the newly-married pair left for Holland, where they began
the fine collection of old glass for which Mrs. Hare was afterwards
almost famous, and then to Dresden and Carlsbad. In the autumn they
returned to England, and took a London house--5 Gloucester Place, where
my sister Caroline was born in 1829. The house was chiefly furnished by
the contents of my father's old rooms at the Albany.
"Victoire" has given many notes of my father's character at this time.
"M. Hare \xE9tait sev\xE8re, mais il \xE9tait juste. Il ne pouvait souffrir la
moindre injustice. Il pardonnait une fois--deux fois, et puis il ne
pardonnait plus, il faudrait s'en aller; il ne voudrait plus de celui
qui l'avait offens\xE9. C'\xE9tait ainsi avec Fran\xE7ois, son valet \xE0 Gloucester
Place, qui l'accompagnait partout et qui avait tout sous la main. Un
jour M. Hare me priait, avec cette intonation de courtoisie qu'il
avail, que je mettrais son linge dans les tiroirs. 'Mais, tr\xE8s
volontiers, monsieur,' j'ai dit. Il avait beaucoup des choses--des
chemises, des foulards, de tout. Eh bien! quelques jours apr\xE8s il me
dit--'Il me manque quelques foulards--deux foulards de cette esp\xE8ce'--en
tirant une de sa poche, parcequ'il faisait attention \xE0 tout. 'Ah,
monsieur,' j'ai dit, 'c'est tr\xE8s probable, en sortant peut-\xEAtre dans la
ville.' 'Non,' il me dit, 'ce n'est pas \xE7a--je suis vol\xE9, et c'est
Fran\xE7ois qui les a pris, et \xE7a n'est pas la premi\xE8re fois,' ainsi enfin
il faut que je le renvoie." It was not till long after that Victoire
found out that my father had known for years that Fran\xE7ois had been
robbing him, and yet had retained him in his service. He said that it
was always his plan to weigh the good qualities of any of his dependants
against their defects. If the defects outweighed the virtues, "il
faudrait les renvoyer de suite--si non, il faudrait les laisser aller."
When he was in his "col\xE8re" he never allowed his wife to come near
him--"il avait peur de lui faire aucun mal."
The christening of Caroline was celebrated with great festivities, but
it was like a fairy story, in that the old aunt Louisa Shipley, who was
expected to make her nephew Francis her heir, then took an
offence--something about being godmother, which was never quite got
over. The poor little babe itself was very pretty and terribly
precocious, and before she was a year old she died of water on the
brain. Victoire, who doated upon her, held her in her arms for the last
four-and-twenty hours, and there she died. Mrs. Hare was very much
blamed for having neglected her child for society, yet, when she was
dead, says Victoire, "Madame Hare avait tellement chagrin, que Lady Paul
qui venait tous les jours, priait M. Hare de l'ammener tout de suite.
Nous sommes all\xE9s \xE0 Bruxelles, parceque l\xE0 M. FitzGerald avait une
maison,--mais de l\xE0, nous sommes retourn\xE9s bien vite en Angleterre \xE0
cause de la grossesse de Madame Hare, parceque M. Hare ne voulut pas que
son fils soil n\xE9 \xE0 l'\xE9tranger, parcequ'il disait, que, \xE9tant le
troisi\xE8me, il perdrait ses droits de l'h\xE9ritage.[9] C'est selon la loi
anglaise--et c'\xE9tait vraiment temps, car, de suite en arrivant \xE0
Londres, Fran\xE7ois naquit."
The family finally left Gloucester Place and went abroad in consequence
of Lady Jones's death. After that they never had a settled home again.
When the household in London was broken up, Victoire was to have left.
She had long been engaged to be married to F\xE9lix Ackermann, who had
been a soldier, and was in receipt of a pension for his services in the
Moscow campaign. But, when it came to the parting, "Monsieur et Madame"
would not let her go, saying that they could not let her travel, until
they could find a family to send her with. "It was an excuse," said
Victoire, "for I waited two years, and the family was never found. Then
I had to _consigner_ all the things, then I could not leave Madame--and
so it went on for two years more, till, when the family were at Pisa,
F\xE9lix insisted that I should come to a decision. Then M. Hare sent for
F\xE9lix, who had been acting as a courier for some time, and begged him to
come to Florence to go with us as a courier to Baden. F\xE9lix arrived on
the _Jeudi Saint_. M. Hare came in soon after (it was in my little room)
and talked to him as if they were old friends. He brought a bottle of
champagne, and poured out glasses for us all, and _faisait clinquer les
verres_. On the Monday we all left for Milan, and there I was married to
F\xE9lix, and, after the season at Baden, F\xE9lix and I were to return to
Paris, but when the time came M. Hare would not let us."
"Wherever," said Victoire, "M. Hare \xE9tait en passage--soit \xE0 Florence,
soit \xE0 Rome, n'importe o\xF9, il faudrait toujours des diners, et des
f\xEAtes, pour recevoir M. Hare, surtout dans les ambassades, pas seulement
dans l'ambassade d'Angleterre, mais dans celles de France, d'Allemagne,
etc. Et quand M. Hare ne voyageait plus, et qu'il \xE9tait \xE9tabli dans
quelque ville, il donnait \xE0 son tour des diners \xE0 lui."
"Il s'occupait toujours \xE0 lire,--pas des romans, mais des anciens
livres, dans lesquelles il fouillait toujours. Quand nous voyageons,
c'\xE9tait toujours pour visiter les biblioth\xE8ques, \xE7a c'\xE9tait la premi\xE8re
chose, et il emporta \xE9norm\xE9ment des livres dans la voiture avec lui....
Quand il y'avait une personne qui lui avait \xE9t\xE9 recommand\xE9e, il fallait
toujours lui faire voir tout ce qu'il avait, soit \xE0 Rome, soit \xE0
Bologne,--et comme il savait un peu de tout, son avis \xE9tait demand\xE9 pour
la valeur des tableaux, et n'importe de quoi."
On first going abroad, my father had taken his wife to make acquaintance
with his old friends Lady Blessington and Count d'Orsay, with whom they
afterwards had frequent meetings. Lady Blessington thus describes to
Landor her first impressions of Mrs. Hare:--
"_Paris, Feb. 1829._--Among the partial gleams of sunshine which
have illumined our winter, a fortnight's sojourn which Francis
Hare and his excellent wife made here, is remembered with most
pleasure. She is indeed a treasure--well-informed, clever,
sensible, well-mannered, kind, lady-like, and, above all, truly
feminine; the having chosen such a woman reflects credit and
distinction on our friend, and the community with her has had a
visible effect on him, as, without losing any of his gaiety, it has
become softened down to a more mellow tone, and he appears not only
a more happy man, but more deserving of happiness than before."
My second brother, William Robert, was born September 20, 1831, at the
Bagni di Lucca, where the family was spending the summer. Mrs. Louisa
Shipley meanwhile never ceased to urge their return to England.
"_Jan. 25, 1831._--I am glad to hear so good an account of my two
little great-nephews, but I should be still more glad to see them.
I do hope the next may be a girl. If Francis liked England for the
sake of being with old friends, he might live here very
comfortably, but if he _will_ live as those who can afford to make
a show, for one year of parade in England he must be a banished man
for many years. I wish he would be as 'domestic' at home as he is
abroad!"
In the summer of 1832 all the family went to Baden-Baden, to meet Lady
Paul and her daughter Eleanor, Sir John, the FitzGeralds, and the
Bankheads. All the branches of Mrs. Hare's family lived in different
houses, but they met daily for dinner, and were very merry. Before the
autumn, my father returned to Italy, to the Villa Cittadella near Lucca,
which was taken for two months for Mrs. Hare's confinement, and there,
on the 9th of October, my sister was born. She received the names of
"Anne Frances Maria Louisa." "Do you mean your ?????????? daughter to
rival Venus in all her other qualities as well as in the multitude of
her names? or has your motive been rather to recommend her to a greater
number of patron saints?" wrote my uncle Julius on hearing of her birth.
Just before this, Mrs. Shelley (widow of the poet and one of her most
intimate friends) had written to Mrs. Hare:--
"Your accounts of your child (Francis) give me very great pleasure.
Dear little fellow, what an amusement and delight he must be to
you. You do indeed understand a Paradisaical life. Well do I
remember the dear Lucca baths, where we spent morning and evening
in riding about the country--the most prolific place in the world
for all manner of reptiles. Take care of yourself, dearest
friend.... Choose Naples for your winter residence. Naples, with
its climate, its scenery, its opera, its galleries, its natural
and ancient wonders, surpasses every other place in the world. Go
thither, and live on the Chiaja. Happy one, how I envy you. Percy
is in brilliant health and promises better and better.
"Have you plenty of storms at dear beautiful Lucca? Almost every
day when I was there, vast white clouds peeped out from above the
hills--rising higher and higher till they overshadowed us, and
spent themselves in rain and tempest: the thunder, re-echoed again
and again by the hills, is indescribably terrific.... Love me, and
return to us--Ah! return to us! for it is all very stupid and
unamiable without you. For are not you--
'That cordial drop Heaven in our cup had thrown,
To make the nauseous draught of life go down.'"
After a pleasant winter at Naples, my father and his family went to pass
the summer of 1833 at Castellamare. "C'\xE9tait \xE0 Castellamare" (says a
note by Madame Victoire) "que Madame Hare apprit la mort de Lady Paul.
Elle \xE9tait sur le balcon, quand elle la lut dans le journal. J'\xE9tais
dans une partie de la maison tr\xE8s \xE9loign\xE9e, mais j'ai entendu un cri si
fort, si aigu, que je suis arriv\xE9e de suite, et je trouvais Madame Hare
toute \xE9tendue sur le parquet. J'appellais--'Au secours, au secours,' et
F\xE9lix, qui \xE9tait tr\xE8s fort, prenait Madame Hare dans ses bras, et
l'apportait \xE0 mettre sur son lit, et nous l'avons donn\xE9 tant des choses,
mais elle n'est pas revenue, et elle restait pendant deux heures en cet
\xE9tat. Quand M. Hare est entr\xE9, il pensait que c'\xE9tait \xE0 cause de sa
grossesse. Il s'est agenouill\xE9 tout en pleurs \xE0 cot\xE9 de son lit. Il
demandait si je lui avais donn\xE9 des lettres. 'Mais, non, monsieur; je ne
l'ai pas donn\xE9 qu'un journal.' On cherchait longtemps ce journal,
parcequ'elle l'avait laiss\xE9 tomber du balcon, mais quand il \xE9tait
trouv\xE9, monsieur s'est aper\xE7u tout de suite de ce qu'elle avait." The
death of Lady Paul was very sudden; her sister Lady Ravensworth first
heard of it when calling to inquire at the door in the Strand in her
carriage. After expressing her sympathy in the loss of such a mother,
Mrs. Louisa Shipley at this time wrote to Mrs. Hare:--
"I will now venture to call your attention to the blessings you
possess in your husband and children, and more particularly to the
occupation of your thoughts in the education of the latter. They
are now at an age when it depends on a mother to lay the foundation
of principles which they will carry with them through life. The
responsibility is great, and if you feel it such, there cannot be a
better means of withdrawing your mind from unavailing sorrow, than
the hope of seeing them beloved and respected, and feeling that
your own watchfulness of their early years, has, by the blessing of
God, caused them to be so. Truth is the cornerstone of all virtues:
never let a child think it can deceive you; they are cunning
little creatures, and reason before they can speak; secure this,
and the chief part of your work is done, and so ends my sermon."
It was in the summer of 1833, following upon her mother's death, that a
plan was first arranged by which my aunt Eleanor Paul became an inmate
of my father's household--the kind and excellent aunt whose devotion in
all times of trouble was afterwards such a blessing to her sister and
her children. Neither at first or ever afterwards was the residence of
Eleanor Paul any expense in her sister's household: quite the contrary,
as she had a handsome allowance from her father, and afterwards
inherited a considerable fortune from an aunt.
In the autumn of 1833 my father rented the beautiful Villa Strozzi at
Rome, then standing in large gardens of its own facing the grounds of
the noble old Villa Negroni, which occupied the slope of the Viminal
Hill looking towards the Esquiline. Here on the 13th of March 1834 I was
born--the youngest child of the family, and a most unwelcome addition to
the population of this troublesome world, as both my father and Mrs.
Hare were greatly annoyed at the birth of another child, and beyond
measure disgusted that it was another son.
II
CHILDHOOD
1834-1843
"Sweete home, where meane estate
In safe assurance, without strife or hate,
Findes all things needfull for contentment meeke."--SPENSER.
"Is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and best some of the
child's heart left to respond to its earliest enchantments?"--C.
LAMB.
"I cannot paint to Memory's eye
The scene, the glance, I dearest love;
Unchanged themselves, in me they die,
Or faint, or false, their shadows prove."--KEBLE.
"Ce sont l\xE0 les s\xE9jours, les sites, les rivages,
Dont mon \xE2me attendrie \xE9voque les images,
Et dont, pendant les nuits, mes songes les plus beaux
Pour enchanter mes yeux composent leurs tableaux."--LAMARTINE.
Maria Leycester had been married to my uncle Augustus Hare in June 1829.
In their every thought and feeling they were united, and all early
associations had combined to fit them more entirely for each other's
companionship. A descendant of one of the oldest families in Cheshire,
Miss Leycester's childhood and youth had been spent almost entirely in
country rectories, but in such rectories as are rarely to be found, and
which prove that the utmost intellectual refinement and an interest in
all that is remarkable and beautiful in this world are not incompatible
with the highest aspirations after a Christian and a heavenly life. Her
father, Oswald Leycester, Rector of Stoke-upon-Terne in Shropshire, was
a finished scholar, had travelled much, and was the most agreeable of
companions. Her only sister, seven years older than herself, was married
when very young to Edward Stanley, Rector of Alderley, and afterwards
Bishop of Norwich, well known for the picturesqueness of his imaginative
powers, for his researches in Natural History, and for that sympathy
with all things bright and pleasant which preserved in him the spirit of
youth quite to the close of life. Her most intimate friend, and the
voluntary preceptor of her girlhood, had been the gifted Reginald Heber,
who, before his acceptance of the Bishopric of Calcutta, had lived as
Rector of Hodnet--the poet-rector--within two miles of her home.
One of the happy circle which constantly met at Hodnet Rectory, she had
known Augustus Hare (first-cousin of Mrs. Heber, who was a daughter of
Dean Shipley) since she was eighteen. Later interests and their common
sorrow in Heber's death had thrown them closely together, and it would
scarcely have been possible for two persons to have proved each other's
characters more thoroughly than they had done, before the time of their
marriage, which was not till Maria Leycester was in her thirty-first
year.
Four years of perfect happiness were permitted them--years spent almost
entirely in the quiet of their little rectory in the singularly small
parish of Alton Barnes amid the Wiltshire downs, where the inhabitants,
less than two hundred in number, living close at each other's doors,
around two or three small pastures, grew to regard Augustus Hare and his
wife with the affection of children for their parents. So close was the
tie which united them, that, when the rich family living of
Hurstmonceaux fell vacant on the death of our great-uncle Robert,
Augustus Hare could not bear to leave his little Alton, and implored my
father to persuade his brother Julius to give up his fellowship at
Trinity and to take it instead.
"Having lived but little in the country, and his attention having
been engrossed by other subjects, Augustus Hare was, from education
and habits of life, unacquainted with the character and wants of
the poor. The poverty of their minds, their inability to follow a
train of reasoning, their prejudices and superstitions, were quite
unknown to him. All the usual hindrances to dealing with them, that
are commonly ascribed to a college life, were his in full force.
But his want of experience and knowledge touching the minds and
habits of the poor were overcome by the love he felt towards all
his fellow-creatures, and his sympathy in all their concerns. In
earlier days this Christ-like mind had manifested itself towards
his friends, towards servants, towards all with whom he was brought
in contact. It now taught him to talk to his poor parishioners and
enter into their interests with the feeling of a father and a
friend.... He had the power of throwing himself out of himself into
the interests and feelings of others; nor did he less draw out
their sympathies into his own, and make them sharers in his
pleasures and his concerns. It was not only the condescension of a
superior to those over whom he was placed, it was far more the
mutual interchange of feeling of one who loved to forget the
difference of station to which each was called, and to bring
forward the brotherly union as members of one family in Christ,
children of the same Heavenly Father, in which blessed equality all
distinctions are done away. Often would he ask their counsel in
matters of which he was ignorant, and call upon their sympathy in
his thankful rejoicing. His garden, his hayfield, his house, were
as it were thrown open to them, as he made them partakers of his
enjoyment, or sought for their assistance in his need.... The one
pattern ever before his eyes was his Lord and Master Jesus Christ;
the first question he asked himself, 'What would Jesus Christ have
me to do? What would He have done in my place?'
"Perfect contentedness with what was appointed for him, and deep
thankfulness for all the good things given him, marked his whole
being. In deciding what should be done, or where he should go, or
how he should act, the question of how far it might suit his own
convenience, or be agreeable to his own feelings, was kept entirely
in the background till all other claims were satisfied. It was not
apparently at the dictate of duty and reason that these thoughts
were suppressed and made secondary: it seemed to be the first, the
natural feeling in him, to seek first the things of others and to
do the will of God, and to look at his own interest in the matter
as having comparatively nothing to do with it. And so great a dread
had he of being led to any selfish or interested views, that he
would find consolation in having no family to include in the
consideration--'Had I had children I might have fancied it an
excuse for worldly-mindedness and covetousness.' His children truly
were his fellow-men, those who were partakers of the same flesh and
blood, redeemed by the same Saviour, heirs of the same heavenly
inheritance. For them he was willing to spend and be spent, for
them he was _covetous_ of all the good that might be obtained....
He was never weary in well-doing, never thought he had done enough,
never feared doing too much. Those small things, which by so many
are esteemed as unnecessary, as _not worth while_, these were the
very things he took care not to leave undone. It was not rendering
a service when it came _in_ his way, when it occurred in the
natural course of things that he should do it; it was going _out_
of the way to help others, taking every degree of trouble and
incurring personal inconvenience for the sake of doing good, of
giving pleasure even in slight things, that distinguished his
benevolent activity from the common form of it. The love that dwelt
in him was ready to be poured forth on whomsoever needed it, and
being a free-will offering, it looked for no return, and felt no
obligation conferred."
I have copied these fragments from the portrait which Augustus Hare's
widow drew of his ministerial life,[10] because they afford the best
clue to the way in which that life influenced hers, drawing her away
from earth and setting her affections in heavenly places. And yet,
though in one sense the life of Augustus Hare and his wife at Alton was
one of complete seclusion, in another sense there were few who lived
more for, or who had more real communion with, the scattered members of
their family. Mrs. Stanley and her children, with her brother Mr.
Penrhyn[11] and his wife, were sharers by letter in every trifling
incident which affected their sister's life; and with his favourite
brother Julius, Augustus Hare never slackened his intellectual
intercourse and companionship. But even more than these was Lucy Anne
Stanley,[12] the life-long friend of Maria Hare, till, in the summer of
1833, the tie of sisterhood, which had always existed in feeling, became
a reality, through her marriage with Marcus Hare, the youngest of the
four brothers.
A chill which Augustus Hare caught when he was in Cheshire for his
brother's marriage, was the first cause of his fatal illness. It was
soon after considered necessary that he should spend the winter abroad
with his wife, and it was decided that they should accompany Marcus and
Lucy Hare to Rome. At Genoa the illness of Augustus became alarming, but
he reached Rome, and there he expired on the 14th of February 1834, full
of faith and hope, and comforting those who surrounded him to the last.
My father felt his brother's loss deeply. They had little in common on
many points, yet the close tie of brotherhood, which had existed
between them from early days at Bologna, was such as no difference of
opinion could alter, no time or absence weaken. When Augustus was laid
to rest at the foot of the pyramid of Caius Cestius, my father's most
earnest wish was to comfort his widowed sister-in-law, and in the hope
of arousing an interest which might still give some semblance of an
earthly tie to one who seemed then upon the very borderland of heaven,
he entreated, when I was born in the following month, that she would
become my godmother, promising that she should be permitted to influence
my future in any way she pleased, and wishing that I should be called
Augustus after him she had lost.
I was baptized on the 1st of April in the Villa Strozzi, by Mr. Burgess.
The widow of Augustus held me in her arms, and I received the names of
"Augustus John Cuthbert," the two last from my godfathers (the old Sir
John Paul and Mr. Cuthbert Ellison), who never did anything for me, the
first from my godmother, to whom I owe everything in the world.
[Illustration: Augustus J. C. Hare.
And his nurse Lucia Cecinelli.]
Soon afterwards, my godmother returned to England, with her faithful
maid Mary Lea, accompanied by the Marcus Hares. She had already decided
to fix her future home in the parish of Julius, who, more than any
other, was a fellow-mourner with her. As regarded me, nothing more
than the tie of a godmother had to that time been thought of; but in the
quiet hours of her long return journey to England, while sadly looking
forward to the solitary future before her, it occurred to Augustus
Hare's widow as just possible that my parents might be induced to give
me up to her altogether, to live with her as her own child. In July she
wrote her petition, and was almost surprised at the glad acceptance it
met with. Mrs. Hare's answer was very brief--"My dear Maria, how very
kind of you! Yes, certainly, the baby shall be sent as soon as it is
weaned; and, if any one else would like one, would you kindly recollect
that we have others."
Yet my adopting mother had stipulated that I was to be altogether hers;
that my own relations were henceforward to have no claim over me
whatever; that her parents were to be regarded as my grandparents, her
brother and sister as my uncle and aunt.
Meantime my father took his family for the hot summer months to one of
the lovely villas on the high spurs of volcanic hill, which surround
picturesque romantic Siena. They had none of the English society to
which they had been accustomed at Lucca Baths and at Castellamare, but
the Siennese are celebrated for their hospitality, and my father's
talents, famous then throughout Italy, ensured him a cordial welcome
amongst the really cultivated circle which met every evening in the old
medi\xE6val palaces of the native nobility. Of English, they had the
society of Mr. and Mrs. Bulwer, who were introduced by Landor, while
constant intercourse with Landor himself was one of the chief pleasures
which the family enjoyed during this and many succeeding years. With
Francis Hare he laid the plan of many of his writings, and in his
judgment and criticism he had the greatest confidence. To this he
alludes in his little poem of "Sermonis Propriora:"--
"Little do they who glibly talk of vrese
Know what they talk about, and what is worse,
Think they are judges if they dare to pass
Sentence on higher heads.
The mule and ass
Know who have made them what they are, and heed
Far from the neighing of the generous steed.
Gell, Drummond, Hare, and wise and witty Ward
Knew at first sight and sound the genuine bard,
But the street hackneys, fed on nosebag bran,
Assail the poet, and defame the man."
After another winter at Rome, the family went to Lausanne, and thence
my father, with my beautiful Albanese nurse, Lucia Cecinelli, took me to
meet Mrs. Gayford, the English nurse sent out to fetch me by my adopted
mother from Mannheim on the Rhine. There the formal exchange took place
which gave me a happy and loving home. I saw my father afterwards, but
he seldom noticed me. Many years afterwards I knew Mrs. Hare well and
had much to do with her; but I have never at any time spoken to her or
of her as a "mother," and I have never in any way regarded her as such.
She gave me up wholly and entirely. She renounced every claim upon me,
either of affection or interest. I was sent over to England with a
little green carpet-bag containing two little white night-shirts and a
red coral necklace--my whole trousseau and patrimony. At the same time
it was indicated that if the Marcus Hares should also wish to adopt a
child, my parents had another to dispose of: my second brother William
had never at any time any share in their affections.
On reaching England I was sent first to my cousin the Dowager Countess
of Strathmore, and from her house was taken (in the coach) by Mrs.
Gayford to my mother--my real only mother from henceforth--at
Hurstmonceaux Rectory, which at that time was as much a palace of art,
from its fine collection of pictures and books, as a country rectory
could be.
My adopted mother always used to say that the story of Hannah reminded
her of the way in which I was given to her. She believed it was in
answer to a prayer of my uncle Augustus in the cathedral at Chalons,
when he dropped some money into a box "pour les femmes enceintes,"
because he knew how much she wished to have a child. His eldest
brother's wife was then _enceinte_, and I was born soon afterwards.
[Illustration: HURSTMONCEAUX RECTORY.]
_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.
"On Tuesday, August 26, 1835, my little Augustus came to me. It was
about four o'clock when I heard a cry from upstairs and ran up.
There was the dear child seated on Mary's (Mary Lea's) knee,
without a frock. He smiled most sweetly and with a peculiar
archness of expression as I went up to him, and there was no
shyness. When dressed, I brought him down into the drawing-room: he
looked with great delight at the pictures, the busts, and
especially the bronze wolf--pointed at them, then looked round at
Jule and me. When set down, he strutted along the passage, went
into every room, surveyed all things in it with an air of
admiration and importance, and nothing seemed to escape
observation. The novelty of all around and the amusement he found
at first seemed to make him forget our being strangers. The next
day he was a little less at home. His features are much formed and
an uncommon intelligence of countenance gives him an older look
than his age: his dark eyes and eyelashes, well-formed nose and
expressive mouth make his face a very pretty one; but he has at
present but little hair and that very straight and light. His limbs
are small and he is very thin and light, but holds himself very
erect. He can run about very readily, and within a week after
coming could get upstairs by himself. In talking, he seems to be
backward, and except a few words and noises of animals, nothing is
intelligible. Number seems to be a great charm to him--a great many
apples, and acorns to be put in and out of a basket. He has great
delight in flowers, but is good in only smelling at those in the
garden, gathers all he can pick up in the fields, and generally has
his hands full of sticks or weeds when he is out. He wants to be
taught obedience, and if his way is thwarted or he cannot
immediately have what he wants, he goes into a violent fit of
passion. Sometimes it is soon over and he laughs again directly,
but if it goes on he will roll and scream on the floor for
half-an-hour together. In these cases we leave him without
speaking, as everything adds to the irritation, and he must find
out it is useless. But if by _prevention_ such a fit may be avoided
it is better, and Mary Lea is very ingenious in her preventing."
"_Oct. 3._--Augustus improves in obedience already. His great
delight is in throwing his playthings into a jug or tub of water.
Having been told not to do so in my room, he will walk round the
tub when full, look at Mary, then at me, and then at the tub with a
most comical expression, but if called away before too long will
resist the temptation. He is very impatient, but sooner quiet than
at first: and a tear in one eye and a smile in the other is usually
to be seen. His great delight lately has been picking up mushrooms
in the fields and filling his basket."
It was in October that my mother moved from the Rectory to Lime--our
own dear home for the next five-and-twenty years. Those who visit
Hurstmonceaux now can hardly imagine Lime as it then was, all is so
changed. The old white gabled house, with clustered chimneys and roofs
rich in colour, rose in a brilliant flower-garden sheltered on every
side by trees, and separated in each direction by several fields from
the highroad or the lanes. On the side towards the Rectory, a drive
between close walls of laurel led to the old-fashioned porch which
opened into a small low double hall. The double drawing-room and the
dining-room, admirably proportioned, though small, looked across the
lawn, and one of the great glistening pools which belonged to an old
monastery (once on the site of the house), and which lay at the foot of
a very steep bank carpeted with primroses in spring. Beyond the pool was
our high field, over which the stumpy spire of the church could be seen,
at about a mile and a half distant, cutting the silver line of the sea.
The castle was in a hollow farther still and not visible. On the right
of the lawn a grass walk behind a shrubbery looked out upon the wide
expanse of Pevensey Level with its ever-varying lights and shadows, and
was sheltered by the immensely tall abele trees, known as "the Five
Sisters of Lime," which tossed their weird arms, gleaming silver-white,
far into the sky, and were a feature in all distant views of
Hurstmonceaux. On the left were the offices, and a sort of enclosed
court, where the dogs and cats used to play and some silver pheasants
were kept, and where my dear nurse Mary Lea used to receive the endless
poor applicants for charity and help, bringing in their many complaints
to my mother with inimitable patience, though they were too exclusively
self-contained to be ever the least grateful to her, always regarding
and speaking of her and John Gidman, the butler, as "furriners, folk
from the shires."
[Illustration: LIME.]
No description can give an idea of the complete seclusion of the life at
Lime, of the silence which was only broken by the cackling of the
poultry or the distant threshing in the barn, for the flail, as well as
the sickle and scythe, were then in constant use at Hurstmonceaux, where
oxen--for all agricultural purposes--occupied the position which horses
hold now. No sound from the "world," in its usually accepted sense,
would ever have penetrated, if it had not been for the variety of
literary guests who frequented the Rectory, and one or other of whom
constantly accompanied my uncle Julius when he came down, as he did
every day of his life, to his sister-in-law's quiet six-o'clock dinner,
returning at about eight. Of guests in our house itself there were very
few, and always the same--the Norwich Stanleys; Miss Clinton, a dear
friend of my mother; after a time the Maurices, and Mr. and Mrs.
Pile--an Alton farmer of the better class, and his excellent wife: but
there was never any variety. Yet in my boyhood I never thought it dull,
and loved Lime with passionate devotion. Even in earliest childhood my
dearest mother treated me completely as her companion, creating
interests and amusements for me in all the natural things around, and
making me so far a sharer in her own spiritual thoughts, that I have
always felt a peculiar truthfulness in Wordsworth's line--
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy."
If my mother was occupied, there was always my dear "Lea" at hand, with
plenty of farmhouse interests to supply, and endless homely stories of
country life.
_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.
"_Lime, Oct. 23, 1835._--My little Augustus was much astonished by
the change of house, and clung to me at first as if afraid of
moving away. The first evening he kissed me over and over again, as
if to comfort and assure me of his affection."
"_Nov. 21._--Augustus has grown much more obedient, and is ready to
give his food or playthings to others. Some time ago he was much
delighted with the sight of the moon, and called out 'moon, moon,'
quite as if he could not help it. Next day he ran to the window to
look for it, and has ever since talked of it repeatedly. At
Brighton he called the lamps in the streets 'moon,' and the
reflection of the candles or fire on the window he does the same.
He is always merriest and most amiable when without playthings: his
mind is then free to act for itself and finds its own amusement;
and in proportion as his playthings are artificial and leave him
nothing to do, he quarrels or gets tired of them. He takes great
notice of anything of art--the flowers on the china and plates, and
all kinds of pictures."
"_Stoke Rectory, Jan. 7, 1836._--During our stay with the Penrhyns
at Sheen, Baby was so much amused by the variety of persons and
things to attract attention, that he grew very impatient and
fretful if contradicted. Since we have been at Stoke he has been
much more gentle and obedient, scarcely ever cries and amuses
himself on the floor. He is greatly amused by his Grandpapa's
playful motions and comical faces, and tries to imitate them. When
the school children are singing below, he puts up his forefinger
when listening and begins singing with his little voice, which is
very sweet. He will sit on the bed and talk in his own way for a
long time, telling about what he has seen if he has been out: his
little mind seems to be working without any visible thing before
it, on what is absent."
"_Alderley, March 13._--My dear boy's birthday, two years old. He
has soon become acquainted with his Alderley relations,[13] and
learnt to call them by name. He has grown very fond of 'Aunt
Titty,' and the instant she goes to her room follows her and asks
for the brush to brush the rocking-horse and corn to feed it. His
fits of passion are as violent, but not so long in duration, as
ever. When he was roaring and kicking with all his might and I
could scarcely hold him, I said--'It makes Mama very sorry to see
Baby so naughty.' He instantly stopped, threw his arms round my
neck, and sobbed out--'Baby lub Mama--good.' When I have once had a
struggle with him to do a thing, he always recollects, and does it
next time."
"_Lime, June 13._--On the journey from Stoke to London, Baby was
very much delighted with the primroses in the hedgerows, and his
delight in the fields when we got home was excessive. He knows the
name of every flower both in garden and field, and never forgets
any he has once seen.... When he sees me hold my hand to my head,
he says, 'Mama tired--head bad--Baby play self.'"
"_July 9._--Baby can now find his way all over the house, goes up
and down stairs alone and about the lawn and garden quite
independently, and enjoys the liberty of going in and out of the
windows: runs after butterflies or to catch his own shadow: picks
up flowers or leaves, and is the picture of enjoyment and
happiness. Tumbling out of the window yesterday, when the fright
was over, he looked up--'Down comes Baby and cradle and all.' He
tells the kitten 'not touch this or that,' and me 'not make noise,
Pussy's head bad.'"
"_Sept. 28._--The sea-bathing at Eastbourne always frightened Baby
before he went in. He would cling to Mary and be very nervous till
the women had dipped him, and then, in the midst of his sobs from
the shock, would sing 'Little Bo Peep,' to their great amusement.
He was very happy throwing stones in the water and picking up
shells; but above all he enjoyed himself on Beachy Head, the fresh
air and turf seemed to exhilarate him as much as any one, and the
picking purple thistles and other down flowers was a great
delight.... His pleasure in returning home and seeing the flowers
he had left was very great. He talks of them as if they were his
playmates, realising Keble's--'In childhood's sports, _companions_
gay.'"
"_Oct. 17._--After dinner to-day, on being told to thank God for
his good dinner, he would not do it, though usually he does it the
first thing on having finished. I would not let him get out of his
chair, which enraged him, and he burst into a violent passion.
Twice, when this abated, I went to him and tried, partly by
encouragement, partly by positively insisting on it, to bring him
to obedience. Each time I took him up from the floor, he writhed on
the floor again with passion, screaming as loud as he could. After
a while, when I had left him and gone into the drawing-room, he
came along the walk and went back again two or three times as if
not having courage to come in, then at last came and hid his face
in my lap. I carried him back to the dining-room and put him in his
chair and talked to him about his dinner, did not he love God for
giving him so many good things, and I knelt by him and prayed God
to forgive him for being so naughty and to take away the naughty
spirit. All the time he was struggling within himself,
half-sobbing, half-smiling with effort--'I can't say it'--and then,
after a time, 'Mama thanks God for Baby's good dinner.' 'No,' I
said, 'Baby must do it for himself.' Still he resisted. At length
on getting down from the chair he said, 'Kneel down under
table'--and there at last he said, 'Thank God for Baby's good
dinner,' and in a minute all the clouds were gone and sunshine
returned to his face. The whole struggle lasted I suppose
half-an-hour. In a few minutes after he was calling me 'Mama dear'
and as merry as ever."
"_Stoke Rectory, Nov. 26._--Baby asks 'Who made the dirt? Jesus
Christ?' It is evident that he has not the slightest notion of any
difference between the nature of God and any man, or between Heaven
and London or any name of a place. Perhaps in this simplicity and
literality of belief he comes nearer the truth than we in the
sophistications and subtilties of our reasonings on such things:
but the great difficulty is to impress awe and reverence for a holy
and powerful Being, and to give the dread and serious sense of
being under His eye, without a slavish fear and distance.
"He always asks when he sees my Bible--'Mama reading about Adam and
Eve and Jesus Christ?'--a union of the two grand subjects, very
unconsciously coming to the truth."
"_Jan. 16, 1837._--Time is as yet a very indistinct impression on
Baby's mind. Going round the field, he gathered some buttercups. I
said, 'Leave the rest till to-morrow.' When we returned the same
way, he asked, 'Is it to-morrow now?' ... After a violent passion
the other day he looked up--'Will Jesus Christ be shocked?' He
comes often and says--'Will 'ou pray God to make little Augustus
good?' and asks to 'pray with Mama.'
"The other day he said--'My eyes are pretty.' 'Oh yes,' I said,
'they are, and so are Mama's and Na's.'--'And Grandpapa's and
Grannie's too?'--'Yes, they are all pretty, nothing so pretty as
eyes.' And I have heard no more of it.
"'Look, Mama,' he says, 'there is a bird flying up to God.'--'Where
have you been to, Baby?'--'To a great many wheres.' He visits all
the flowers in Grannie's garden, quite as anxiously as if they were
living beings, and that quite without any hope of possessing them,
as he is never allowed to gather any. He puts the different flowers
together--and invents names for them--Hep--poly--primrose, &c. He
also talks to animals and flowers as if they were conscious, and in
this way creates constant amusement for himself: but the illusion
is so strong he hardly seems to separate it from fact, and it
becomes increasingly necessary to guard against the confusion of
truth and error."
Children are said seldom to remember things which happen when they are
three years old; but I have a distinct recollection of being at my
mother's early home of Toft in Cheshire during this spring of 1837, and
of the charm, of which children are so conscious, of the Mrs. Leycester
("Toft Grannie"--my mother's first cousin) who lived there. I also
recollect the great dog at Alderley, and being whipped by "Uncle Ned"
(Edward Stanley) at the gate of the Dutch garden for breaking off a
branch of mezereon when I was told not to touch it. Indeed I am not sure
whether these recollections are not of a year before, in which I
distinctly remember a terrible storm at Lime, when Kate Stanley was with
us, seeing a great acacia-tree torn up by the roots and hurled against
the drawing-room window, smashing all before it, and the general panic
and flight that ensued. Otherwise my earliest impressions of
Hurstmonceaux are all of the primroses on the Lime bank--the sheets of
golden stars everywhere, and the tufts of pure white primroses which
grew in one particular spot, where the bank was broken away under an old
apple-tree. Then of my intense delight in being taken in a punt to the
three islets on the pond--Mimulus Island, Tiny and Wee; and of the
excessive severity of Uncle Julius, who had the very sharpest possible
way of speaking to children, even when he meant to be kind to them.
Every evening, like clockwork, he appeared at six to dine with my
mother, and walked home after coffee at eight. How many of their
conversations, which I was supposed neither to hear or understand, have
come back to me since like echoes: strange things for a child to
remember--about the Fathers, and Tract XC., and a great deal about hymns
and hymn-tunes--"Martyrdom," "Irish," "Abridge," &c.; for an organ was
now put into the church, in place of the band, in which the violin never
could keep time with the other instruments. Sir George Dasent has told
me how he was at Hurstmonceaux then, staying with the Simpkinsons.
Arthur Stanley was at the Rectory as a pupil, and he asked Arthur how he
liked this new organ. "Well," he said, "it is not so bad as most organs,
for it does not make so much sound." Uncle Julius preached about it,
altering a text into "What went ye out for to hear."
A child who lives much with its elders is almost certain to find out
what it is most intended to conceal from it. If possible it had better
be confided in. I knew exactly what whispers referred to a certain dark
passage in the history of the Rectory before Uncle Julius's time--"il y
avait un crime"--and I never rested till I found it out. It was about
this time that I remember Uncle Julius going into one of his violently
demonstrative furies over what he considered the folly of "Montgomery's
Poems," and his flinging the book to the other end of the room in his
rage with it, and my wondering what would be done to me if I ever dared
to be "as naughty as Uncle Jule."
_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.
"_Lime, June 20, 1837._--Augustus was very ill in coming through
London.... Seeing Punch one day from the window, he was greatly
amused by it, and laughed heartily. Next day I told him I had seen
Punch and Judy again. 'No, Mama, you can't have seen Judy, for she
was killed yesterday.' On getting home he was much pleased, and
remembered every place perfectly. Great is his delight over every
new flower as it comes out, and his face was crimsoned over as he
called to me to see 'little Cistus come out.' At night, in his
prayers he said--'Bless daisies, bluebells,' &c.... I have found
speaking of the power exercised by Jesus Christ in calming the wind
a means of leading him to view Christ as God, which I felt the want
of in telling him of Christ's childhood and human
kindness,--showing how miraculous demonstration is adapted to
childhood."
I have a vivid recollection of my long illness in Park Street, and of
the miserable confinement in London. It was just at that time that my
Uncle Edward Stanley was offered the Bishopric of Norwich. His family
were all "in a terrible taking," as they used to call that sort of
emotion, as to whether it should be accepted or not, and when the matter
was settled they were almost worse--not my aunt, nothing ever agitated
her, but the rest of them. Mary and Kate came, with floods of tears, to
tell my mother they were to leave Alderley. My Uncle Penrhyn met Mary
Stanley coming down our staircase, quite convulsed with weeping, and
thought that I was dead.
When I was better, in the spring, we went to my Uncle Penrhyn's at East
Sheen. One day I went into Mortlake with my nurse Mary Lea. In
returning, a somewhat shabby carriage passed us, with one or two
outriders, and an old gentleman inside. When we reached the house, Lea
asked old Mills, the butler, who it was. "Only 'Silly Billy,'" he said.
It was King William IV., who died in the following June. He had
succeeded to the sobriquet which had been applied to his cousin and
brother-in-law, William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, who died in 1834.
John Sterling had been living at Hurstmonceaux for several years as my
uncle's curate, and was constantly at Lime or the Rectory. I vividly
recollect how pleasant (and handsome) he was. My mother used to talk to
him for hours together and he was very fond of her. With Mrs. Sterling
lived her sister Annie Barton, whom I remember as a very sweet and
winning person. During this summer, Frederick Maurice, a Cambridge pupil
of my uncle's, came to visit him, and confessed his attachment to her.
There were many obstacles to their marriage, of which I am ignorant; but
my mother was always in favour of it, and did much to bring it about. I
recollect Annie Barton as often sitting on a stool at my mother's feet.
On our way to Stoke in the preceding autumn, we had diverged to visit
Frederick Maurice at his tiny curacy of Bubnell near Leamington. With
him lived his sister Priscilla, for whom my mother formed a great
friendship, which, beginning chiefly on religious grounds, was often a
great trial to her, as Priscilla Maurice, with many fine qualities and
great cleverness, was one of the most exacting persons I have ever
known. I am conscious of course now of what fretted me unconsciously
then, the entire difference of class, and consequent difference in the
measurement of people and things, between the Maurices and those my
mother had been accustomed to associate with, and of their injurious
effect upon my mother herself, in inducing her to adopt their peculiar
phraseology, especially with regard to religious things. They persuaded
her to join in their tireless search after the motes in their brother's
eyes, and urged a more intensified life of contemplative rather than
active piety, which abstracted her more than ever from earthly
interests, and really marred for a time her influence and usefulness.
The Maurice sisters were the first of the many so-called "religious"
people I have known, who did not seem to realise that Christianity is
rather action than thought; not a system, but a life.
It must have been soon after this that Frederick Maurice moved to
London, and our visits to London were henceforth for several years
generally paid to his stuffy chaplain's house at Guy's, where, as I
could not then appreciate my host, I was always intensely miserable,
and, though a truly good man, Frederick Maurice was not, as I thought,
an attractive one. What books have since called "the noble and pathetic
monotone"[14] of his life, which was "like the burden of a Gregorian
chaunt," describes him exactly, but was extremely depressing. He
maundered over his own humility in a way which--even to a child--did not
seem humble, and he was constantly lost mentally in the labyrinth of
religious mysticisms which he was ever creating for himself. In all he
said, as in all he wrote, there was a nebulous vagueness. "I sometimes
fancy," "I almost incline to believe," "I seem to think," were the
phrases most frequently on his lips. When he preached before the
University of Cambridge to a church crowded with dons and
undergraduates, they asked one another as they came out, "What was it
all about?" He may have sown ideas, but, if they bore any fruits, other
people reaped them.[15] Still his innate goodness brought him great
devotion from his friends. Amongst those whom I recollect constantly
seeing at Guy's, a man in whose society my mother found much pleasure,
was John Alexander Scott, whom Mrs. Kemble describes as being mentally
one of the most influential persons she had ever known.
Priscilla Maurice henceforward generally came to Lime soon after our
annual return from Shropshire, and usually spent several months there,
arriving armed with plans for the "reformation of the parish," and a
number of blank books, some ruled in columns for parochial visitation,
and others in which the names of all communicants were entered and
preserved, so as to make the reprobation of absentees more easy at
Hurstmonceaux.
As she established her footing, she frequently brought one of her many
sisters with her: amongst them Esther Maurice, who at that time kept a
ladies' school at Reading. Priscilla, I believe, afterwards regretted
the introduction of Esther, who was much more attractive than herself,
and in course of time entirely displaced her in my mother's affections.
"Priscilla is like silver, but Esther is like gold," I remember my
mother saying to Uncle Julius. Of the two, I personally preferred
Priscilla, but both were a fearful scourge to my childhood, and so
completely poisoned my life at Hurstmonceaux, that I looked to the
winters spent at Stoke for everything that was not aggressively
unpleasant.
Little child as I was, my feeling about the Maurices was a great bond
between me and my aunt Lucy Hare, who, I am now certain, most cordially
shared my opinion at this time, though it was unexpressed by either.
Otherwise my Aunt Lucy was also already a frequent trial to my
child-life, as she was jealous for her little Marcus (born in 1836) of
any attention shown to me or any kindness I received. I felt in those
early days, and on looking back from middle life I know that I felt
justly, that my mother would often pretend to care for me less than she
did, and punish me far more frequently for very slight offences, in
order not to offend Aunt Lucy, and this caused me many bitter moments,
and outbursts of passionate weeping, little understood at the time. In
very early childhood, however, one pleasurable idea was connected with
my Aunt Lucy. In her letters she would desire that "Baby" might be
allowed to gather three flowers in the garden, any three he liked: the
extreme felicity of which permission that Baby recollects still--and the
anxious questionings with himself as to which the flowers should be.
_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.
"_Lime, July 24, 1837._--Augustus continually asks 'Why,' 'What is
the reason.' If it be in reference to something he has been told to
do, I never at the _time_ give him any other reason than simply
that it is my will that he should do it. If it refers to something
unconnected with practical obedience, it is right to satisfy his
desire of knowledge as far as he can understand. Implicit faith and
consequent obedience is the first duty to instil, and it behoves a
parent to take care that a child may find full satisfaction for its
instinctive moral sense of justice, in the consistency of conduct
observed towards him; in the sure performance of every promise; in
the firm but mild adherence to every command.
"He asks, 'Is God blue?'--having heard that He lived above the
sky."
"_Stoke Rectory, Jan. 1, 1838._--On Christmas Day Augustus went to
church for the first time with me. He was perfectly good and kept a
chrysanthemum in his hand the whole time, keeping his eyes fixed on
it when sitting down. Afterwards he said, 'Grandpapa looked just
like Uncle Jule: he had his shirt (surplice) on.'
"He has got on wonderfully in reading since I began to teach him
words instead of syllables, and also learns German very quickly.
"Having been much indulged by Mrs. Feilden (Mrs. Leycester's
sister), he has become lately what Mary (Lea) calls rather
'independent.' He is, however, easily knocked out of this
self-importance by a little forbearance on my part not to indulge
or amuse him, or allow him to have anything till he asks
rightly.... There is a strong spirit of expecting to know the
reason of a thing before he will obey or believe. This I am anxious
to guard against, and often am reminded in dealing with him how
analogous it is to God's dealing with us--'What thou knowest not
now, thou shalt know hereafter.' Now he is to walk by faith, not by
sight, not by _reason_."
"_Lime, May 14, 1838._--Yesterday being Good Friday, I read to
Augustus all he could understand about the Crucifixion. He was a
little naughty, and I told him of it afterwards. 'But I was good
all yesterday, won't that goodness do?' His delight over the
flowers is as excessive as ever, but it is very necessary to guard
against greediness in this."
"_August 10._--Being told that he was never alone, God and Jesus
Christ saw him, he said, 'God sees me, but Jesus Christ does
not.'--'But they are both one.'--'Then how did John the Baptist
pour water on His head, and how could He be crucified?' How
difficult to a child's simple faith is the union of the two
natures![16]
"Two days ago at prayers he asked what I read to the servants, and
being told the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, he said, 'I know what
"Amen" means. It means, "It is done."'
"_June 11._--Having knocked off a flower on a plant in the nursery,
Lea asked how he could have done such a thing--'What tempted you to
do such a thing?' He whispered--'I suppose it was Satan.'
"Yesterday he told us his dream, that a beast had come out of a
wood and eat him and Lea up; and Susan came to look for them and
could not find them; then Mama prayed to God to open the beast's
mouth, and He opened it, and they both came out safe.
"One night, after being over-tired and excited by the Sterlings, he
went to bed very naughty and screamed himself asleep. Next morning
he woke crying, and being asked why he did so, sobbed out, 'Lea put
me in bed and I could not finish last night: so I was obliged to
finish this morning.'
"Going up to London he saw the Thames. 'It can't be a river, it
must be a pond, it is so large.' He called the sun in the midst of
the London fog 'a swimming sun:' asked if the soldiers in the Park
were 'looking out for the enemy.' 'Does God look through the
keyhole?'
"Two days ago, having been told to ask God to take away the
naughtiness out of him, he said, "May I ask Jesus Christ to take
away the naughtiness out of Satan? then (colouring he said it, and
whispering) perhaps He will take him out of hell.'
"On my birthday he told Lea at night, 'They all drank her health
but Uncle Jule, and he loved her so much he could not say it.'"
I was now four years old, and I have a vivid recollection of all that
happened from this time--often a clearer remembrance than of things
which occurred last year. From this time I never had any playthings,
they were all banished to the loft, and, as I had no companions, I never
recollect a game of any kind or ever having played at anything. There
was a little boy of my own age called Philip Hunnisett, son of a
respectable poor woman who lived close to our gate, and whom my mother
often visited. I remember always longing to play with him, and once
trying to do so in a hayfield, to Lea's supreme indignation, and my
being punished for it, and never trying again. My mother now took me
with her every day when she went to visit the cottages, in which she was
ever a welcome guest, for it was not the lady, it was the woman who was
dear to their inmates, and, when listening to their interminable
histories and complaints, no one entered more into George Herbert's
feeling that "it is some relief to a poor body to be heard with
patience." Forty years afterwards a poor woman in Hurstmonceaux was
recalling to me the sweetness of my mother's sympathy, and told the
whole story when she said, "Yes, many other people have tried to be kind
to us; but then, you know, Mrs. Hare _loved_ us." Truly it was as if--
"Christ had took in this piece of ground,
And made a garden there for those
Who want herbs for their wound."[17]
Whilst my mother was in the cottages, I remained outside and played with
the flowers in the ditches. There were three places whither I was always
most anxious that she should go--to Mrs. Siggery, the potter's widow,
where I had the delight of seeing all the different kinds of pots, and
the wet clay of which they were made: to "old Dame Cornford of the
river," by which name a tiny stream called "the Five Bells" was
dignified: and to a poor woman at "Foul Mile," where there was a ruined
arch (the top of a drain, I believe!) which I thought most romantic. We
had scarcely any visitors ("callers"), for there were scarcely any
neighbours, but our old family home of Hurstmonceaux Place was let to
Mr. Wagner (brother of the well-known "Vicar of Brighton"), and his wife
was always very kind to me, and gave me two little china mice, to which
I was quite devoted. His daughters, Annie and Emily, were very clever,
and played beautifully on the pianoforte and harp. The eldest son,
George, whose Memoirs have since been written, was a pale ascetic youth,
with the character of a medi\xE6val saint, who used to have long religious
conversations with my mother, and--being very really in earnest--was
much and justly beloved by her. He was afterwards a most devoted
clergyman, being one of those who really have a "vocation," and probably
accomplished more practical good in his brief life than any other five
hundred parish priests taken at random. Of him truly Chaucer might have
said--
"This noble sample to his sheep he gave,
That first he wrought, and afterwards he taught."
From the earliest age I heartily detested Hurstmonceaux Rectory, because
it took me away from Lime, to which I was devoted, and brought me into
the presence of Uncle Julius, who frightened me out of my wits; but to
all rational and unprejudiced people the Rectory was at this time a very
delightful place. It is situated on a hill in a lonely situation two
miles from the church and castle, and more than a mile from any of the
five villages which were then included in the parish of Hurstmonceaux;
but it was surrounded by large gardens with fine trees, had a wide
distant view over levels and sea, and was in all respects externally
more like the house of a squire than a clergyman. Inside it was lined
with books from top to bottom: not only the living rooms, but the
passages and every available space in the bedrooms were walled with
bookcases from floor to ceiling, containing more than 14,000 works.
Most of these were German, but there were many very beautiful books upon
art in all languages, and many which, even as a child, I thought it very
delightful to look at. The only spaces not filled by books were occupied
by the beautiful pictures which my uncle had collected in Italy,
including a most exquisite Perugino, and fine works of Giorgione, Luini,
Giovanni da Udine, &c. I was especially attached to a large and glorious
picture by Paris Bordone of the Madonna and Child throned in a sort of
court of saints. I think my first intense love of colour came from the
study of that picture, which is now in the Museum at Cambridge; but my
uncle and mother did not care for this, preferring severer art. Uncle
Julius used to say that he constantly entertained in his drawing-room
seven Virgins, almost all of them more than three hundred years old. All
the pictures were to me as intimate friends, and I studied every detail
of their backgrounds, even of the dresses of the figures they portrayed:
they were also my constant comforters in the many miserable hours I even
then spent at the Rectory, where I was always utterly ignored, whilst
taken away from all my home employments and interests.
Most unpleasant figures who held a prominent place in these childish
years were my step-grandmother, Mrs. Hare Naylor, and her daughter
Georgiana. Mrs. H. Naylor had been beautiful in her youth, and still,
with snowwhite hair, was an extremely pretty _petite_ old lady. She was
suspicious, exacting, and jealous to a degree. If she once took an
impression of any one, it was impossible to eradicate, however utterly
false it might be. She was very deaf, and only heard through a long
trumpet. She would make the most frightful tirades against people,
especially my mother and other members of the family, bring the most
unpleasant accusations against them, and the instant they attempted to
defend themselves, she took down her trumpet. Thus she retired into a
social fortress, and heard no opinion but her own. I never recollect her
taking the wisest turn--that of making the best of us all. I have been
told that her daughter Georgiana was once a very pretty lively girl. I
only remember her a sickly discontented petulant woman. When she was
young, she was very fond of dancing, and once, at Bonn, she undertook to
dance the clock round. She performed her feat, but it ruined her health,
and she had to lie on her back for a year. From this time she defied
the Italian proverb, "Let well alone," and dosed herself incessantly.
She had acquired "l'habitude d'\xEAtre malade;" she liked the sympathy she
excited, and henceforth _preferred_ being ill. Once or twice every year
she was dying, the family were summoned, every one was in tears, they
knelt around her bed; it was the most delicious excitement.
Mrs. Hare Naylor had a house at St. Leonards, on Maize Hill, where there
were only three houses then. We went annually to visit her for a day,
and she and "Aunt Georgiana" generally spent several months every year
at Hurstmonceaux Rectory--employing themselves in general abuse of all
the family. I offended Aunt Georgiana (who wore her hair down her back
in two long plaits) mortally, at a very early age, by saying "Chelu (the
Rectory dog) has only one tail, but Aunt Georgie has two."[18]
On the 28th of June 1838, the Coronation of Queen Victoria took place,
when a great f\xEAte was given in the ruins of Hurstmonceaux Castle, at
which every person in the parish was provided with a dinner. It was in
this summer that my father brought his family to England to visit Sir
John Paul, who had then married his second wife, Mrs. Napier, and was
living with her at her own place, Pennard House, in Somersetshire. In
the autumn my father came alone to Hurstmonceaux Rectory. I remember him
then--tall and thin, and lying upon a sofa. Illness had made him very
restless, and he would wander perpetually about the rooms, opening and
shutting windows, and taking down one volume after another from the
bookcase, but never reading anything consecutively. It was long debated
whether his winter should be passed at Hastings or Torquay, but it was
eventually decided to spend it economically at West Woodhay House, near
Newbury, which Mr. John Sloper (nephew of our great-uncle--the husband
of Emilia Shipley) offered to lend for the purpose. At this time my
father's health was already exciting serious apprehensions. Mrs. Louisa
Shipley was especially alarmed about him, and wrote:--
"Dr. Chambers says your lungs are not _now_ in diseased state, but
it will require great care and caution for a long time to keep them
free, though with that he hopes that they may recover their
usual tone and become as stout as you represent them; so remember
that it depends on yourself and Ann's watchfulness and care of you,
whether you are to get quite well, or be sickly for the remainder
of your life, and also that the former becomes a duty, when you
think of your children."
[Illustration: Francis G. Hare.]
My father never once noticed my existence during his long stay at the
Rectory. On the last day before he left, my mother said laughingly,
"Really, Francis, I don't think you have ever found out that such a
little being as Augustus is in existence here." He was amused, and said,
"Oh no, really!" and he called me to him and patted my head, saying,
"Good little Wolf: good little Wolf!" It was the only notice he ever
took of me.
Instead of going as usual direct to Stoke, we spent part of the winter
of 1838-39 with the Marcus Hares at Torquay. Their home was a most
beautiful one--Rockend, at the point of the bay, with very large grounds
and endless delightful walks winding amongst rocks and flowers, or
terraces overhanging the natural cliffs which there stride out seawards
over the magnificent natural arch known as London Bridge. Nevertheless I
recollect this time as one of the utmost misery. My Aunt Lucy, having
heard some one say that I was more intelligent than little Marcus, had
conceived the most violent jealousy of me, and I was cowed and snubbed
by her in every possible way. Little Marcus himself was encouraged not
only to carry off my little properties--shells, fossils, &c.--but to
slap, bite, and otherwise ill-treat me as much as he liked, and when,
the first day, I ventured, boylike, to retaliate, and cuff him again, I
was shut up for two days on bread and water--"to break my spirit"--and
most utterly miserable I became, especially as my dear mother treated it
as wholesome discipline, and wondered that I was not devoted to little
Marcus, whereas, on looking back, I wonder how--even in a modified
way--I ever endured him.
_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.
"_Torquay, January 7, 1839._--Augustus was very good on the
journey, full of spirits and merriment. He was much delighted in
passing through the New Forest to see the place where Rufus was
shot, of which he has a picture he is fond of. At Mr. Trench's[19]
he enjoyed, more than I ever saw him, playing with the children,
and the two elder ones were good friends with him directly. They
joined together and had all kinds of games. At Exmouth the shells
were a great delight while they were embarking the carriage that we
might cross the ferry.
"It has been a trial to him on coming here to find himself quite a
secondary object of attention. At first he was so cowed by it that
he seemed to have lost all his gaiety, instead of being pleased to
play with little Marcus. In taking his playthings, little Marcus
excited a great desire to defend his own property, and though he
gives up to him in most things, he shows a feeling of trying to
keep his own things to himself, rather than any willingness to
share them. By degrees they have learnt to play together more
freely, and on the whole agree well. But I see strongly brought out
the self-seeking of my dear child, the desire of being first,
together with a want of true hearty love for his little companion,
and endeavour to please him."
"_Stoke, February 26._--All the time of our stay at Rockend,
Augustus was under an unnatural constraint, and though he played
for the most part good-humouredly with little Marcus, it was
evident he had no great pleasure in him, and instead of being
willing to give him anything, he seemed to _shut up_ all his
generous feelings, and to begin to think only of how he might
secure his own property from invasion: in short, all the
selfishness of his nature seemed thus to be drawn out. For the most
part he was good and obedient, but the influence of reward and
dread of punishment seemed to cause it. He has gained much greater
self-command, and will stop his screams on being threatened with
the loss of any pleasure immediately, and I fear the greater part
of his kindness to little Marcus arose from fear of his Aunt Lucy
if he failed to show it. Only once did he return a blow, and knock
little Marcus down. He was two days kept upstairs for it, and
afterwards bore patiently all the scratches he received; but it
worked inwardly and gave a dislike to his feeling towards his
cousin.... He seemed relieved when we left Torquay."
"_March 13, 1839._--My little Augustus is now five years old.
Strong personal identity, reference of everything to himself,
greediness of pleasures and possessions, are I fear prominent
features in his disposition. May I be taught how best to correct
these his sinful propensities with judgment, and to draw him out of
self to live for others."
On leaving Torquay we went to Exeter to visit Lady Campbell, the eldest
daughter of Sir John Malcolm, who had been a great friend of my Uncle
Julius. She had became a Plymouth sister, the chief result of which was
that all her servants sate with her at meals. She had given up all the
luxuries, almost all the comforts, of life, and lived just as her
servants did, except that one silver fork and spoon were kept for Lady
Campbell. Thence we proceeded to Bath, to the house of "the Bath
Aunts," Caroline and Marianne Hare, daughters of that Henrietta Henckel
who pulled down Hurstmonceaux Castle. The aunts were very rich. Mrs.
Henckel Hare had a sister, Mrs. Pollen, who left \xA360,000 to Marianne,
who was her god-daughter, so that Caroline was the principal heiress of
her mother. After they left Hurstmonceaux, they rented a place in the
west of Sussex, but in 1820 took a place called Millard's Hill near
Frome, belonging to Lord Cork, and very near Marston, where he lived. I
was there many years after, on a visit to our distant cousin Lady Boyle,
who lived there after the Bath Aunts left it, and then found the
recollection still fresh in the neighbourhood of the Miss Hares, their
fine horses, their smart dress, their splendid jewels, and their
quarrelsome tempers. Their disputes had reference chiefly to my Uncle
Marcus, to whom they were both perfectly devoted, and furious if he paid
more attention to one than the other. Neither of them could ever praise
him enough. Caroline, who always wrote of him as her "treasure," was
positively in love with him. Whenever he returned from sea, to which he
had been sent as soon as he was old enough, the aunts grudged every day
which he did not spend with them. But their affection for him was
finally rivetted in 1826, when he was accidentally on a visit to them at
the time of their mother's sudden death, and was a great help and
comfort. Mrs. Henckel Hare had been failing for many years, and even in
1820 letters describe her as asking for salt when she meant bread, and
water when she meant wine; but her daughters, who had never left her,
mourned her loss bitterly. Augustus wrote to Lady Jones in 1827, that
the most difficult task his aunts had ever imposed upon him was that of
writing an epitaph for their mother, there was "so remarkably little to
say." However, with Julius's assistance, he did accomplish an
inscription, which, though perfectly truthful, is strikingly beautiful.
Besides her country house, Mrs. Henckel Hare had a large house in the
Crescent at Bath, where her old mother, Mrs. Henckel, lived with her to
an immense age. Old Mrs. Hare was of a very sharp disposition. Her
niece, Lady Taylor, has told me how she went to visit her at Eastbourne
as a child, and one day left her work upon the table when she went out.
When she came in, she missed it, and Mrs. Hare quietly observed, "You
left your work about, my dear, so I've thrown it all out of the window;"
and sure enough, on the beach her thimble, scissors, &c., were all
still lying, no one having picked them up!
In their youth "the Bath Aunts" had been a great deal abroad with their
mother, and had been very intimate with the First Consul. It is always
said that he proposed to Marianne before his marriage with Josephine,
and that she refused him, and bitterly regretted it afterwards.
Certainly he showed her and her sister the most extraordinary attentions
when they afterwards visited Milan while he was there in his power.
The Bath Aunts had two brothers (our great-uncles) who lived to grow up.
The eldest of these was Henry (born 1778). He was sent abroad, and was
said to be drowned, but the fact was never well established. Lady Taylor
remembered that, in their later life, a beggar once came to the door of
the aunts at Bath, and declared he was their brother Henry. The aunts
came down and looked at him, but not recognising any likeness to their
brother, they sent him away with a few shillings. The next brother,
George (born 1781), grew up, and went to India, whence he wrote
constantly, and most prosperously, to his family. After some years, they
heard that he was dead. He had always been supposed to be very rich, but
when he died nothing was forthcoming, and it was asserted by those on
the spot, that he had left no money behind him; yet this is very
doubtful, and it is possible that a fortune left by George Hare may
still transpire. Some people have thought that the account of George
Hare's death itself was fictitious; but at that time India was
considered perfectly inaccessible; there was no member of the family who
was able to go and look after him or his fortunes, and the subject
gradually dropped.
[Illustration: HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE.]
Before leaving George Hare, perhaps it is worth while to introduce here
a story of later days, one of the many strange things that have happened
to us. It was some time after our great family misfortunes in 1859,
which will be described by-and-by, that I chanced to pass through
London, where I saw my eldest brother, Francis, who asked me if we had
any ancestor or relation who had gone to India and had died there. I
said "No," for at that time I had never heard of George Hare or of the
Bishop's youngest son, Francis, who likewise died in India. But my
brother insisted that we must have had an Indian relation who died
there; and on my inquiring "why," he told me the following story. He
assured me, that being resolved once more to visit the old family home,
he had gone down to Hurstmonceaux, and had determined to pass the night
in the castle. That in the high tower by the gateway he had fallen
asleep, and that in a vision he had seen an extraordinary figure
approaching him, a figure attired in the dress of the end of the last
century and with a pig-tail, who assured him that he was a near relation
of his, and was come to tell him that though he was supposed to have
died in India and insolvent, he had really died very rich, and that if
his relations chose to make inquiries, they might inherit his fortune!
At the time I declared that the story could not be true, as we never had
any relation who had anything to do with India, but Francis persisted
steadfastly in affirming what he had seen and heard, and some time
afterwards I was told of the existence of George Hare.
At the time we were at Bath, Aunt Caroline was no longer living there;
she had become so furiously jealous of Mrs. Marcus Hare, that she had to
be kept under restraint, and though not actually mad, she lived alone
with an attendant in a cottage at Burnet near Corsham. There she died
some years after, very unhappy, poor thing, to the last. Her companion
was a Mrs. Barbara, with whom Aunt Caroline was most furious at times.
She had a large pension after her death. It used to be said that the
reason why Mrs. Barbara had only one arm and part of another was that
Aunt Caroline had eaten the rest.[20]
It was when we were staying with Aunt Marianne in 1839 that I first saw
my real mother. "On est m\xE8re, ou on ne l'est pas," says the Madame
Cardinal of Ludovic Hal\xE9vy. In my case "on ne l'\xE9tait pas." I watched
Mrs. Hare's arrival, and, through the banisters of the staircase, saw
her cross the hall, and was on the tiptoe of expectation; but she
displayed no interest about seeing me, and did not ask for me at all
till late in the evening, when all enthusiasm had died away. "I hope the
Wolf answered your expectations, or still better surpassed them," wrote
my father to his wife from West Woodhay. He was in the habit of calling
all his children by the names of beasts. "Bring some cold-cream for the
Tigress" (my sister), he wrote at the same time, and "the Owl (Eleanor
Paul) and the Beast (William) are going to dine out." Francis he
generally called "Ping," and his wife "Mrs. Pook."
Aunt Marianne, wishing to flatter Uncle Julius's love of learning,
proudly announced to him that she had given me a book--a present I was
perfectly enchanted with--when, to my intense dismay, he insisted upon
exchanging it for a skipping-rope! which I could never be persuaded to
use.
In the autumn of 1839 my father again returned with his family to Pisa,
to the bitter grief of old Mrs. Louisa Shipley, who refused altogether
to take leave of Mrs. Hare, though she afterwards wrote (Oct. 16), "I
hope Anne has forgiven my rudeness her last day. I was too sorry to part
with you to admit any third person." She was already rapidly failing,
but she still wrote, "Your letters always give me pleasure, when I can
read them, but to be sure they take a long time in deciphering." In the
course of the following winter Mrs. Louisa Shipley died, without seeing
her favourite nephew again. It was found then that she had never
forgiven the last emigration to Italy against her wishes. Except a
legacy to my Uncle Marcus, she left all she possessed to her next
neighbour and cousin, Mrs. Townshend (daughter of Lady
Milner--half-sister of Mrs. Shipley)--a will which caused terrible
heartburnings amongst her more immediate relations, especially as many
precious relics of Lady Jones and of Mrs. Hare Naylor were included in
the property thus bequeathed. At the same time the estate of Gresford in
Flintshire, which Bishop Shipley had left to each of his daughters in
turn, now, on the death of the last of them, descended to my father, as
the eldest son of the eldest daughter who had left children.
Victoire remembered the arrival of the letter, sealed with black, which
announced the death of Mrs. Shipley, whilst the Hare family were at
Florence. F\xE9lix was with his master when he opened the letter, and came
in afterwards to his wife, exclaiming, "Oh mon pauvre M. Hare a eu bien
de malheur." Francis Hare had thrown up his hands and said, "F\xE9lix, nous
sommes perdus." All that day he would not dress, and he walked up and
down the room in his dressing-gown, quite pale. He never was the same
person again. Up to that time he had always been "si gai"--he was always
smiling. He was "si recherch\xE9." "Avec les grands il \xE9tait si franc, si
charmant, mais avec les personnes de basse condition il \xE9tait encore
plus aimable que avec les grands personnages. Oh! comme il \xE9tait
aim\xE9.... Jusque l\xE0 il \xE9tait invit\xE9 partout, et il donnait toujours \xE0
diner et ses f\xEAtes, et son introduction \xE9tait comme un passeport
partout. Mais depuis l\xE0 il ne faisait pas le m\xEAme--et c'\xE9tait juste: il
faudrait penser \xE0 ses enfants."[21]
But I am digressing from my own story, and must return to the intensely
happy time of escaping from Rockend and going to Stoke. It was during
this journey that I first saw any ruin of importance beyond
Hurstmonceaux and Pevensey. This was Glastonbury Abbey, and it made a
great impression upon me. I also saw the famous Christmas-blooming
thorn, which is said to have grown from St. Joseph of Arimathea's staff,
in the abbot's garden, bright with hepaticas. I remember at Stoke this
year having for the first time a sense of how much the pleasantness of
religious things depends upon the person who expresses them. During the
winter my mother saw much of the voluminous author Mr. Charles Tayler,
who was then acting as curate at Hodnet. He was very frank and sincere,
and his "religious talking" I did not mind at all; whereas when the
Maurices "talked," I thought it quite loathsome. In the following summer
I used often to listen to conversations between Mr. Manning (afterwards
Archdeacon, then Cardinal) and my mother, as he then first fell into the
habit of coming constantly to Hurstmonceaux and being very intimate with
my mother and uncle. He was very lovable and one of the most perfectly
gentle _gentle_-men I have ever known; my real mother used to call him
"l'harmonie de la po\xE9sie religieuse." My mother was very unhappy when he
became a Roman Catholic in 1851.
How many happy recollections I have of hot summer days in the unbroken
tranquillity of these summers at Lime. My mother was then the object of
my uncle's exclusive devotion. He consulted her on every subject, and he
thought every day a blank in which they had no meeting. We constantly
drove up to the Rectory in the afternoon, when he had always some new
plant to show her and to talk about. I well remember his enchantment
over some of the new flowers which were being "invented"
then--especially _Salpiglossis_ (so exceedingly admired at first, but
now forgotten), _Salvia patens_ and _Fuchsia fulgens_, of which we
brought back from Wood's Nursery a little plant, which was looked upon
as a perfect marvel of nature.
Often when awake in the night now, I recall, out of the multiplicity of
pretty, even valuable things, with which my house of Holmhurst is
filled, how few of them belonged to our dear simple home in these early
days. The small double hall had nothing in it, I think, except a few
chairs, and some cloaks hanging on pegs against the wall, and the simple
furniture of the double drawing-room consisted chiefly of the gifts made
to my mother by her family when she went to Alton. One wall--the
longest--was, however, occupied by a great bookcase, filled with
handsomely bound books, chiefly divinity, many of them German. On the
other walls hung a very few valuable engravings, mostly from Raffaelle,
and all framed according to Uncle Julius's fancy, which would have
driven print-collectors frantic, for he cut off all margins, even of
proofs before letters. The only point of colour in the room, not given
by flowers, came from a large panel picture presented by Landor--a
Madonna and Child by Raffaellino da Colle, in a fine old Italian frame.
The few china ornaments on the chimney-piece beneath were many of them
broken, but they were infinitely precious to us. In the dining-room were
only a few prints of Reginald Heber, my Uncle Norwich, my grandfather
Leycester, and others. Simpler still were the bedrooms, where the
curtains of the windows and beds were of white dimity. In my mother's
room, however, were some beautiful sketches of the older family by
Flaxman. The "pantry," which was Lea's especial sitting-room, where the
walls were covered with pictures and the mantel-piece laden with china,
had more the look of rooms of the present time. I believe, however, that
the almost spiritualised aspect of my mother's rooms at Lime were as
characteristic of her at this time, as the more mundane rooms of my
after home of Holmhurst are characteristic of myself!
[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM AT LIME.]
My mother and I breakfasted every morning at eight (as far as I can
remember, I _never_ had any meal in the so-called nursery) in the
dining-room, which, as well as the drawing-room, had wide glass doors
always open to the little terrace of the garden, from which the smell of
new-mown grass or dewy pinks and syringa was wafted into the room. If it
was very hot too, our breakfast took place _on_ the terrace, in the deep
shadow of the house, outside the little drawing-room window. After
breakfast I began my lessons, which, though my mother and uncle always
considered me a dunce, I now think to have been rather advanced for a
child of five years old, as besides English reading, writing and
spelling, history, arithmetic and geography, I had to do German reading
and _writing_, and a little Latin. Botany and drawing I was also taught,
but they were an intense delight. Through plans, maps, and raised
models, I was made perfectly familiar with the topography of Jerusalem
and the architecture of the Temple, though utterly ignorant of the
topography of Rome or London and of the architecture of St. Peter's or
St. Paul's. But indeed I never recollect the moment of (indoor)
childhood in which I was not undergoing education of some kind, and
generally of an unwelcome kind. There was often a good deal of screaming
and crying over the writing and arithmetic, and I never got on
satisfactorily with the former till my Aunt Kitty (Mrs. Stanley) or my
grandmother (Mrs. Leycester) took it in hand, sitting over me with a
ruler, and by a succession of hearty bangs on the knuckles, forced my
fingers to go the right way. At twelve o'clock I went out with my
mother, sometimes to Lime Cross (village) and to the fields behind it,
where I used to make nosegays of "robin's-eye and ground-ivy,"--my love
of flowers being always encouraged by mother, whose interest in Nature
had a freshness like the poetry of Burns, observing everything as it
came out--
"The rustling corn, the freited thorn,
And every happy creature."
Generally, however, we went to the girls' school at "Flowers Green,"
about half a mile off on the way to the church, where Mrs. Piper was the
mistress, a dear old woman who recollected the destruction of the
castle, and had known all my uncles in their childhood at Hurstmonceaux
Place. At the school was a courtyard, overhung with laburnums, where I
remember my mother in her lilac muslin dress sitting and teaching the
children under a bower of golden rain.
I wonder what would be thought of dear old Mrs. Piper, in these days of
board-schools and examinations for certificates. "Now, Mr. Simpikins,"
she said one day to Mr. Simpkinson the curate, whose name she never
could master--"Now Mr. Simpikins, do tell me, was that Joseph who they
sold into Egypt the same as that Joseph who was married to the Virgin
Mary?"--"Oh no, they were hundreds of years apart."--"Well, they both
went down into Egypt anyway." Yet Mrs. Piper was admirably suited to her
position, and the girls of her tuition were taught to sew and keep house
and "mind their manners and morals," and there were many good women at
Hurstmonceaux till her pupils became extinct. The universal respect with
which the devil is still spoken of at Hurstmonceaux is probably due to
Mrs. Piper's peculiar teaching.
But, to return to our own life, at one we had dinner--almost always
roast-mutton and rice-pudding--and then I read aloud--Josephus at a
_very_ early age, and then Froissart's Chronicles. At three we went out
in the carriage to distant cottages, often ending at the Rectory. At
five I was allowed to "amuse myself," which generally meant nursing the
cat for half-an-hour and "hearing it its lessons." All the day I had
been with my mother, and now generally went to my dear nurse Lea for
half-an-hour, when I had tea in the cool "servants' hall" (where,
however, the servants never sat--preferring the kitchen), after which I
returned to find Uncle Julius arrived, who stayed till my bedtime.
As Uncle Julius was never captivating to children, it is a great pity
that he was turned into an additional bugbear, by being always sent for
to whip me when I was naughty! These executions generally took place
with a riding-whip, and looking back dispassionately through the
distance of years, I am conscious that, for a delicate child, they were
a great deal too severe. I always screamed dreadfully in the
anticipation of them, but bore them without a sound or a tear. I
remember one very hot summer's day, when I had been very naughty over my
lessons, Froissart's Chronicles having been particularly uninteresting,
and having produced the very effect which Ahasuerus desired to obtain
from the reading of the book of the records of the chronicles, that
Uncle Julius was summoned. He arrived, and I was sent upstairs to
"prepare." Then, as I knew I was going to be whipped anyway, I thought I
might as well do something horrible to be whipped _for_, and, as soon as
I reached the head of the stairs, gave three of the most awful,
appalling and eldrich shrieks that ever were heard in Hurstmonceaux.
Then I fled for my life. Through the nursery was a small bedroom, in
which Lea slept, and here I knew that a large black travelling
"imperial" was kept under the bed. Under the bed I crawled, and wedged
myself into the narrow space behind the imperial, between it and the
wall. I was only just in time. In an instant all the household--mother,
uncle, servants--were in motion, and a search was on foot all over the
house. I turn cold still when I remember the agony of fright with which
I heard Uncle Julius enter the nursery, and then, with which, through a
chink, I could see his large feet moving about the very room in which I
was. He _looked under the bed_, but he saw only a large black box. I
held my breath, motionless, and he turned away. Others looked under the
bed too; but my concealment was effectual.
I lay under the bed for an hour--stifling--agonised. Then all sounds
died away, and I knew that the search in the house was over, and that
they were searching the garden. At last my curiosity would no longer
allow me to be still, and I crept from under the bed and crawled to the
window of my mother's bedroom, whence I could overlook the garden
without being seen. Every dark shrub, every odd corner was being
ransacked. The whole household and the gardeners were engaged in the
pursuit. At last I could see by their actions--for I could not hear
words--that a dreadful idea had presented itself. In my paroxysms I had
rushed down the steep bank, and tumbled or thrown myself into the pond!
I saw my mother look very wretched and Uncle Julius try to calm her. At
last they sent for people to drag the pond. Then I could bear my dear
mother's expression no longer, and, from my high window, I gave a little
hoot. Instantly all was changed; Lea rushed upstairs to embrace me;
there was great talking and excitement, and while it was going on, Uncle
Julius was called away, and every one ... forgot that I had not been
whipped! That, however, was the only time I ever escaped.
In the most literal sense, and in every other, I was "brought up at the
point of the rod." My dearest mother was so afraid of over-indulgence
that she always went into the opposite extreme: and her constant habits
of self-examination made her detect the slightest act of especial
kindness into which she had been betrayed, and instantly determine not
to repeat it. Nevertheless, I loved her most passionately, and many
tearful fits, for which I was severely punished as fits of naughtiness,
were really caused by anguish at the thought that I had displeased her
or been a trouble to her. From never daring to express my wishes in
words, which she would have thought it a duty to meet by an immediate
refusal, I early became a coward as to concealing what I really desired.
I remember once, in my longing for childish companionship, so intensely
desiring that the little Coshams--a family of children who lived in the
parish--might come to play with me, that I entreated that they might
come to have tea in the summer-house on my Hurstmonceaux birthday (the
day of my adoption), and that the mere request was not only refused, but
so punished that I never dared to express a wish to play with any child
again. At the same time I was _expected_ to play with little Marcus,
then an indulged disagreeable child whom I could not endure, and because
I was not fond of _him_, was thought intensely selfish and self-seeking.
As an example of the severe discipline which was maintained with regard
to me, I remember that one day when we went to visit the curate, a lady
(Miss Garden) very innocently gave me a lollypop, which I ate. This
crime was discovered when we came home by the smell of peppermint, and a
large dose of rhubarb and soda was at once administered with a
forcing-spoon, though I was in robust health at the time, to teach me to
avoid such carnal indulgences as lollypops for the future. For two
years, also, I was obliged to swallow a dose of rhubarb every morning
and every evening because--according to old-fashioned ideas--it was
supposed to "strengthen the stomach!" I am sure it did me a great deal
of harm, and had much to do with accounting for my after sickliness.
Sometimes I believe the medicine itself induced fits of fretfulness; but
if I cried more than usual, it was supposed to be from want of
additional medicine, and the next morning senna-tea was added to the
rhubarb. I remember the misery of sitting on the back-stairs in the
morning and having it in a tea-cup, with milk and sugar.
At a very early age I was made to go to church--once, which very soon
grew into twice, on a Sunday. Uncle Julius's endless sermons were my
detestation. I remember some one speaking of him to an old man in the
parish, and being surprised by the statement that he was "not a good
winter parson," which was explained to mean that he kept the people so
long with his sermons, that they could not get home before dark.
With the utmost real kindness of heart, Uncle Julius had often the
sharpest and most insulting manner I have ever known in speaking to
those who disagreed with him. I remember an instance of this when Mr.
Simpkinson had lately come to Hurstmonceaux as my uncle's curate. His
sister, then a very handsome young lady, had come down from London to
visit him, and my mother took her to church in the carriage. That Sunday
happened to be Michaelmas Day. As we were driving slowly away from
church through the crowd of those who had formed the congregation, Uncle
Julius holding the reins, something was said about the day. Without a
suspicion of giving offence, Miss Simpkinson, who was sitting behind
with me, said, in a careless way, "As for me, my chief association with
Michaelmas Day is a roast goose." Then Uncle Julius turned round, and,
in a voice of _thunder_, audible to every one on the road, exclaimed,
"Ignorant and presumptuous young woman!" He had never seen her till that
day. As she said to me years after, when she was a wife and mother,
"That the Archdeacon should call me ignorant and presumptuous was
trying, still I could bear that very well; but that he should dare to
call me a _young woman_ was not to be endured." However, her only
alternative was to bear the affront and be driven two miles home, or to
insist upon getting out of the carriage and walking home through the
mud, and she chose the former course, and afterwards my uncle, when he
knew her good qualities, both admired and liked her.
It must have been about this time that Uncle Julius delivered his
sermons on "the Mission of the Comforter" at Cambridge, and many of his
friends used to amuse my mother by describing them. The church was
crowded, but the congregation was prepared for sermons of ordinary
length. The Halls then "went in" at three, and when that hour came, and
there was no sign of a conclusion, great was the shuffling of feet. This
was especially the case during the sermon on "The Church the Light of
the World," but Uncle Julius did not care a bit, and went on till 3.20
quite composedly.
At this time it used to be said that Uncle Julius had five
popes--Wordsworth, Niebuhr, Bunsen, Frederick Maurice, and Manning.[22]
They were very different certainly, but he was equally up in arms if any
of these were attacked.
I was not six years old before my mother--under the influence of the
Maurices--began to follow out a code of penance with regard to me which
was worthy of the ascetics of the desert. Hitherto I had never been
allowed anything but roast-mutton and rice-pudding for dinner. Now all
was changed. The most delicious puddings were talked of--_dilated_
on--until I became, not greedy, but exceedingly curious about them. At
length "le grand moment" arrived. They were put on the table before me,
and then, just as I was going to eat some of them, they were snatched
away, and I was told to get up and carry them off to some poor person in
the village. I remember that, though I did not really in the least care
about the dainties, I cared excessively about Lea's wrath at the fate of
her nice puddings, of which, after all, I was most innocent. We used at
this time to read a great deal about the saints, and the names of
Polycarp, Athanasius, &c., became as familiar to me as those of our own
household. Perhaps my mother, through Esther Maurice's influence, was
just a little High Church at this time, and always fasted to a certain
extent on Wednesdays and Fridays, on which days I was never allowed to
eat butter or to have any pudding. Priscilla Maurice also even persuaded
Uncle Julius to have a service in the schoolroom at (the principal
village) Gardner Street on saints' days, which was attended by one old
woman and ourselves. My mother, who always appropriated to charities all
money she received for the sale of my Uncle Augustus's sermons, also now
spent part of it in the so-called "restoration" of Hurstmonceaux Church,
when all the old pews were swept away and very hideous varnished benches
put in their place. Uncle Julius, as soon as he became Archdeacon, used
to preach a perfect crusade against pews, and often went, saw and hammer
in hand, to begin the work in the village churches with his own hands.
Our own life through these years continued to be of the most primitive
and simple kind. A new book or a new flower was its greatest event--an
event to be chronicled and which only came once or twice a year. Many
little luxuries, most common now, were not invented then, steel-pens and
wax-matches for instance, and, amongst a thousand other unobserved
deficiencies, there were no night-lights, except of a most rudimentary
kind. No one ever thought of having baths in their rooms then, even in
the most comfortable houses: a footpan or a "bidet" was the utmost
luxury attempted.
It was in the spring of 1839 that I had my first associations with
death. Often, in my earliest childish days, had I seen the sweet and
charming Lady Parry, who, as Bella Stanley, had been one of the dearest
friends of my mother's youth. While our dear cousins Charlotte and Emma
Leycester were at Lime, the news came of her death, and I remember how
they and my mother sate over the fire crying, and of gradually
understanding the cause, and of tears being renewed for several mornings
afterwards, when details were received from Sir Edward Parry and old
Lady Stanley.
_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.
"_Lime, June 18, 1839._--During a week spent in London, Augustus
was part of every day with his brothers and sister. Their first
meeting was at Sheen. Augustus was much excited before they came,
and when he saw his brothers, threw himself on my neck and kissed
me passionately. They were soon intimate, and he was very much
delighted at playing with them, and was not made fretful by it.
There seemed to be a strong feeling of affection awakened towards
them, unlike anything he has shown to other children. I have begun
to teach Augustus to draw, but it is wearisome work from his
inattention.... His delight in flowers and knowledge of their names
is greater than ever, and it is equally necessary to control his
gratification in this as in other pleasures. The usual punishment
for his impatience over dressing is to have no garden flowers.
"In all the books of education I do not find what I believe is the
useful view taken of the actual labour of learning to read--that of
forcing the child's attention to a thing irksome to it and without
interest. The task is commonly spoken of as a means to an end,
necessary because the information in books cannot otherwise be
obtained, and it is to be put off till the child's interest in the
information is excited and so made a pleasure to him. Now it seems
to me to be an excellent discipline whereby daily some self-denial
and command may be acquired in overcoming the repugnance to doing
from duty that which has in itself no attraction. In the first
struggle to fix the attention and learn that which is without
interest, but which _must be done_, a habit is gained of great
importance. And in this way nothing is better suited to the purpose
than the _lesson_ of reading, even though little progress may be
made for a long time.
"I find in giving any order to a child, it is always better not to
_look_ to see if he obeys, but to take it for granted it will be
done. If one appears to doubt the obedience, there is occasion
given for the child to hesitate, 'Shall I do it or no?' If you seem
not to question the possibility of non-compliance, he feels a trust
committed to him to keep and fulfils it. It is best never to repeat
a command, never to answer the oft-asked question 'why?'
"Augustus would, I believe, always do a thing if _reasoned_ with
about it, but the necessity of obedience without reasoning is
specially necessary in such a disposition as his. The will is the
thing that needs being brought into subjection.
"The withholding a pleasure is a safe punishment for naughtiness,
more safe, I think, than giving a reward for goodness. 'If you are
naughty I must punish you,' is often a necessary threat: but it is
not good to hold out a bribe for goodness--'If you are good I will
give you such a thing.'"
In the autumn of 1839 we went for the first time to Norwich and spent
Christmas there, which was most enchanting to me. The old buildings of
Norwich gave me, even at five years old, the intense and passionate
pleasure with which I have ever since regarded them. No others are the
same. No others come back to me constantly in dreams in the same way.
[Illustration: RUIN IN THE PALACE GARDEN, NORWICH.]
How I revelled in the old Palace of that time, with its immensely long
rambling passages and carved furniture; in the great dining-room with
the pictures of the Christian Virtues, and the broad damp matted
staircase with heavy banisters which led through it towards the
cathedral, which it entered after passing the mysterious chapel-door
with its wrought-iron grille, and a quaint little court, in which a
raven and a seagull, two of the many pets of my uncle the Bishop,
usually disported themselves! Then, in the garden were the old gateway
and the beautiful ruin of the first bishop's palace, and, beyond the
ruin, broad walks in the kitchen-garden, ending in a summer-house, and a
grand old mulberry-tree in a corner. Outside the grounds of the Palace,
it was a joy to go with Lea by the old gate-house over the Ferry to
Mousehold Heath, where delightful pebbles were to be picked up, and to
the Cow Tower by the river Wensum: and sometimes Aunt Kitty took me in
the carriage to Bramerton, where my kind old uncle taught me the names
of all the different fossils, which I have never forgotten to this day.
My Aunt Kitty was deeply interesting, but also very awful to me. I could
always tell when she thought I was silly by her looks, just as if she
said it in words. I was dreadfully afraid of her, but irresistibly
attracted to her. Like my mother, I never differed from her opinion or
rebelled against her word. She was pleased with my attempts to draw, and
tried to teach me, drawing before me from very simple objects, and then
leaving me her outlines to copy, before attempting to imitate the
reality.
[Illustration: THE CHAPEL DOOR, NORWICH.]
My cousins, Mary and Kate, had two rooms filled with pictures and other
treasures, which were approached by a very steep staircase of their own.
I soon began to be especially devoted to Kate, but I thought it perfect
rapture to pay both of them visits in their rooms and "make waxworks"
with the little bits of coloured wax off the taper-candles which they
collected for me. Besides, in her room Kate kept a wonderful little live
owl. My cousin Arthur Stanley was also very attractive to me. He was
quite young at this time--had not taken his Oxford degree, I think--and
had a very charming and expressive countenance. If it had not been for
this, and his winning smile, I suppose that in manners (certainly in
dress) he would have been thought very wanting. He scarcely ever spoke
to strangers, and coloured violently when spoken to. His father he was
most piteously afraid of. I do not think he was quite comfortable and at
home with any one except his two sisters. But he noticed me a good deal
as a child, and told me stories out of the History of England, which I
liked immensely. Hugh Pearson, afterwards my dear friend, recollected
how, on overhearing him and Arthur in the chapel talking about the
inscription on the tomb of Bishop Sparrow, who wrote the "Rationale," I
exclaimed, "Oh cousin Arthur, _do_ tell me about Bishop Sparrow and the
Russian lady." I used to play with the children of Canon Wodehouse, who,
with his charming wife, Lady Jane, lived close to the Palace. With their
two youngest daughters, Emily and Alice, I was great friends, and long
kept up a childish correspondence with them, on the tiniest possible
sheets of paper. Emily had bright red hair, but it toned down, and after
she grew up she was very much admired as Mrs. Legh of Lyme. On the way
to the Ferry lived Professor Sedgwick, who was always very kind to me.
He once took me with him to a shop and presented me with a great
illustrated "Robinson Crusoe."
_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.
"_Stoke, Feb. 12, 1840._--Augustus's chief delight of late has been
stories out of the History of England, and the 'Chapter of Kings'
is a continual source of interest and pleasure. His memory in
these things is very strong and his quick apprehension of times and
circumstances. I should say the historical organ was very decided
in him, and he seems to have it to the exclusion of the simple
childlike view of everything common to his age. In reading the
account of the flood yesterday he asked, 'What books did Noah take
into the Ark? he must have taken a Bible.'--'No--the people lived
after his time.'--'Then he must have had one of Adam and Eve and
Cain and Abel.'--'How dreadful it must have been for Noah to see
all the dead bodies when he came out of the Ark.'
"'How much ground there will be when we all die!'--'Why
so?'--'Because we shall all turn to dust.'
"There is a strong predominance of the intellectual over the moral
feeling in him, I fear, and it must be my endeavour always to draw
out and encourage the love of what is good and noble in character
and action. His eyes, however, always fill with tears on hearing
any trait of this kind, and he readily melts at any act of
self-denial or affection, so that his talking little of these
things must not perhaps be dwelt upon as a sure sign of not
estimating them."
"_August 5._--There is just the same greediness in Augustus now
about books that there used to be about flowers, and I have to
restrain the taste for novelty and excitement. Reading of a little
girl who was fond of her Bible, he said, 'I should not have been
so. I like my fat Yellow Book much better, but I like the Bible far
better than the Prayer-Book: I do not like that at all.'"
In this year of 1840, Uncle Julius accepted the Archdeaconry of Lewes,
which wrought a change in our quiet life from the great number of clergy
who were now constant guests at the Rectory and the greater frequency of
clerical subjects of discussion at Lime. Once a year also, we went
regularly to Hastings for a night before my uncle gave his charge to the
clergy, driving back late afterwards through the hot lanes. I always
liked this expedition and scrambling about with Lea on the mile of open
common which then intervened between St. Leonards and Hastings: but it
was dreadfully tantalising, when I was longing to go to the sea on the
second day, that I was expected to remain for hours in the hot St.
Clement's Church, while the sermon and charge were going on, and that
the charge, of which I understood nothing except that I hated it,
sometimes lasted three hours!
Mr. John Nassau Simpkinson[23] was now curate to my uncle, and lived in
"the Curatage" at Gardner Street with his sister Louisa and her friend
Miss Dixon, whom we saw constantly. They persuaded my mother to have
weekly "parish tea-parties," at which all the so-called "ladies of the
parish" came to spend the evening, drink tea, and work for the poor,
while one of them read aloud from a Missionary Report. I think it was
also at the suggestion of Miss Simpkinson that my mother _adopted_ a
little Hindoo girl (whom of course she never saw), putting her to
school, paying for her, and otherwise providing for her.
A little excitement of our quiet summer was the marriage, in our old
church, of my half-uncle Gustavus Hare, then a handsome young officer,
to a pretty penniless Miss Annie Wright. It was a most imprudent
marriage, and would probably have been broken off at the last moment, if
my mother had not been melted by their distress into settling something
(\xA31200 I think) upon them. I remember that it was thought a good omen
that a firefly (one had never been seen at Hurstmonceaux before)
perched, with its little lamp, upon the bride on the evening before the
marriage. Mrs. Gustavus Hare proved an admirable wife and a good mother
to her army of children. They lived for some time in Devonshire, and
then in Ireland: whence, in 1868, they went to Australia, and afterwards
passed entirely out of the family horizon, though I believe many of the
children are still living.
In the autumn, a great enjoyment was driving in our own little
carriage, with "Dull," the old horse (mother, Uncle Julius, Lea, and I),
to spend a few days with the Penrhyns at Sheen, sleeping at Godstone and
passing through Ashdown Forest. In those days, however, by starting
early and posting, the journey from Lime to London could be accomplished
in one day, but our annual journey from London to Stoke (in Shropshire)
occupied three days. My mother and I used to play at "gates and stiles,"
counting them, through the whole journey. Unluckily the swinging motion
of our great travelling chariot always made me so sick that I had a
horror of these journeys; but we had pleasant hours in the evenings at
the old posting-inns, with their civil old-fashioned servants and
comfortable sitting-rooms with the heavy mahogany furniture which one so
seldom sees now, and sometimes we arrived early enough for a walk, which
had all the interest of an expedition into an unknown territory. Well do
I remember certain fields near the comfortable old inn of Chapel House,
and the daisies which Lea and I used to pick there. After my Aunt Kitty
gave me my first taste for antiquities when showing me, at Stoke, the
picture of Old Time in the frontispiece of Grose's "Antiquities," these
journeys had a fresh interest, and greatly did I delight in the glimpse
of Brambletye House, as we passed through Ashdown Forest, and the little
tower of Stafford Castle at the top of its wooded hill. Once also we
slept at Peterborough and saw its cathedral, and on the way to Norwich
it was always an ecstasy to see and draw Thetford Abbey.
On the third day from London, when evening was drawing to a close, we
began to reach familiar scenes--the inn of "the Loggerheads," with the
sign of the two heads and the motto--
"We three
Loggerheads be."
Market-Drayton, paved with round pebbles, over which the carriage jolted
violently, the few lamps being lighted against the black and white
houses at the dark street corners: Little Drayton shabbier still, with
the gaudy sign of the Lord Hill public-house, then of "The Conquering
Hero," with the same intention: Stoke Heath, at that time a wild
pine-wood carpeted with heather: some narrow lanes between high
hedgerows: a white gate in a hollow with river-watered meadows: a drive
between steep mossy banks with beech-trees, and a glimpse of an old
church and tufted islands rising from the river in the flat meadows
beyond: then the long windows and projecting porch of a white house with
two gables. As we drove up, we could see through the windows two figures
rising hastily from their red armchairs on either side the fire--an
ancient lady in a rather smart cap, and an old gentleman with snow-white
hair and the dearest face in the world--Grannie and Grandpapa.
[Illustration: STOKE RECTORY--THE APPROACH.]
The happiest days of my childish years were all condensed in the five
months which we annually spent at Stoke (away from Uncle Julius, Aunt
Georgiana, and the Maurices). Grandpapa did not take much notice of my
existence, but when he did it was always in kindness, though I believe
he had rather resented my adoption. Grannie (who was only my mother's
stepmother but married to Grandpapa when she was quite a child) was
tremendously severe, but also very good to me: she never "kept me at a
distance," so, though she often punished me, I was never afraid of
her--"Better a little chiding than a great deal of heart-break."[24]
The quaint old house was also suited to my imaginative disposition, and
I thought the winding passage in the older part quite charming, and
never observed that my bedroom had no carpet, and that the fender, which
was the whole height of the mantel-piece, shut in all the warmth of the
fire. A dark back-staircase with a swing door and a heavy bolt, which I
thought most romantic, led hence to the offices.
In memory I can still see dear Grannie coming downstairs in the morning,
with her little fat red and white spaniel Rose (it had belonged to her
sister Rosamund) barking before her. She used to make Grandpapa read
prayers in the study, a little long room close to the offices, which
had a white bookcase along one side full of old books in white paper
covers, and on the other a number of quaint old pictures of Switzerland.
Square green baize cushions were put down in front of each of the
"quality" for them to kneel upon, and were taken away as soon as the
performance was over. I had my breakfast in the little room of Mrs.
Cowbourne, my Grannie's dear old maid, which was through the kitchen,
and deliciously warm and comfortable. I always remember the three glazed
green flower-pots which stood in the window of that room, and which held
respectively a double geranium, a trailing hop, and a very peculiar kind
of small fuchsia, which one never sees now, with very small flowers.
Sometimes I went in to see the men and maids have their breakfast at the
long table in the servants' hall: the maids had only great bowls of
bread and milk; tea and bread and butter were never thought of below the
housekeeper's room.
[Illustration: Rev. Oswald Leycester
From a portrait in his 86th year]
I did my lessons in my mother's room upstairs, which, as she always
brought with her a picture of the four Hare brothers, and certain books
from home in familiar covers, suggested a salutary reminiscence of Uncle
Julius. Spelling and geography were always trials, the latter
because the geography book was so dreadfully uninteresting: it told us
how many inhabitants there were in the States of Lucca and Modena. I
never had any playthings at Stoke: my amusement was to draw on all the
bits of paper I could get hold of; but I only drew two subjects, over
and over again--the Day of Judgment, and Adam and Eve being turned out
of Paradise: these were of inexhaustible interest. Sometimes I was
allowed to have the little volumes of "Voyages and Travels" to look at
(I have them now), with the enchanting woodcuts of the adventures of
Columbus, Cortes, and Pizarro: and there were certain little books of
Natural History, almost equally delightful, which lived on the same
shelf of the great bookcase in the drawing-room, and were got down by a
little flight of red steps.
I scarcely ever remember Grannie as going out, except sometimes to
church. She was generally in one extreme or other of inflammation or
cold; but it never went beyond a certain point, and when she was thought
to be most ill, she suddenly got well. Grandpapa used to walk with my
mother in the high "rope-walk" at the top of the field, and I used to
frisk away from them and find amusement in the names which my mother
and her companions had cut on the beech-trees in their youth: in the
queer dark corners of rock-work and shrubbery: in the deliciously high
sweet box hedge at the bottom of the kitchen-garden; and most of all in
the pretty little river Clarence, which flowed to join the Terne under a
wooden bridge in a further garden which also belonged to the Rectory.
But, if Grandpapa was not with us, we used to go to the islands in the
Terne, reached by straight paths along the edge of wide ditches in the
meadows. Two wooden bridges in succession led to the principal island,
which was covered with fine old willow-trees, beneath which perfect
masses of snowdrops came up in spring. At the end was a little
bathing-house, painted white inside, and surrounded with cupboards,
where I used to conceal various treasures, and find them again the
following year. I also buried a bird near the bathing-house, and used to
dig it up every year to see how the skeleton was getting on. My mother
had always delightful stories to tell of this island in her own
childhood, and of her having twice tumbled into the river: I was never
tired of hearing them.
Another great enjoyment was to find skeleton-leaves, chiefly
lime-leaves. There was a damp meadow which we called "the
skeleton-ground" from the number we found there. I have never seen any
since my childhood, but I learnt a way then of filling up the fibres
with gum, after which one could paint upon them. Our man-servant, John
Gidman, used to make beautiful arrows for me with the reeds which grew
in the marshy meadows or by "Jackson's Pool" (a delightful place near
which snowdrops grew wild), and I used to "go out shooting" with a bow.
Also, in one of the lumber-rooms I found an old spinning-wheel, upon
which I used to spin all the wool I could pick off the hedges: and there
was a little churn in which it was enchanting to make butter, but this
was only allowed as a great treat.
[Illustration: PETSEY.]
I always found the Shropshire lanes infinitely more amusing than those
at Hurstmonceaux. Beyond the dirty village where we used to go to visit
"Molly Latham and Hannah Berry" was a picturesque old water-mill, of
which Grandpapa had many sketches. Then out of the hedge came two
streamlets through pipes, which to me had all the beauty of waterfalls.
Close to the Terne stood a beautiful old black and white farmhouse
called Petsey. The Hodnet Lane (delightfully productive of wool), which
ran in front of it, led also to Cotton, a farmhouse on a hill, whither
my mother often went to visit "Anne Beacoll," and which was infinitely
amusing to me. At the corner of the farmyard was a gigantic stone, of
which I wonder to this day how it got there, which Grandpapa always told
me to put in my pocket. But I liked best of all to beguile my mother in
another direction through a muddy lane, in which we were half swamped,
to Helshore, for there, on a promontory above the little river, where
she remembered an old house in her childhood, the crocuses and
polyanthuses of the deserted garden were still to be found in spring
under the moss-grown apple-trees.
My grandparents and my mother dined at six. The dining-room had two
pillars, and I was allowed to remain in the room and play behind them
noiselessly: generally acting knights and heroes out of my ballad-books.
At Hurstmonceaux I should have been punished at once if I ever made a
noise, but at Stoke, if I was betrayed into doing so, which was not very
often, Grannie would say, "Never mind the child, Maria, it is only
innocent play." I can hear her tone now. Sometimes when "Uncle Ned" (the
Bishop of Norwich) came, he used to tell me the story of Mrs. Yellowly,
cutting an orange like an old lady's face, and "how Mrs. Yellowly went
to sea," with results quite shocking--which may be better imagined than
described. In the dining-room were two framed prints of the death of
Lord Chatham (from Copley's picture) and of Lord Nelson, in which the
multitude of figures always left something to be discovered. At the end
of the room was a "horse"--a sort of stilted chair on high springs, for
exercise on wet days.
In the evenings my mother used to read aloud to her old parents. Miss
Strickland's "Queens of England" came out then, and were all read aloud
in turn. If I found the book beyond my comprehension, I was allowed,
till about six years old, to amuse myself with some ivory fish, which I
believe were intended for card-markers. Occasionally Margaret, the
housemaid, read aloud, and very well too. She also sang beautifully,
having been thoroughly well trained by Mrs. Leycester, and I never hear
the Collect "Lord of all power and might" without thinking of her.
Grannie was herself celebrated for reading aloud, having been taught by
Mrs. Siddons, with whom her family were very intimate, and she gave me
the lessons she had received, making me repeat the single line, "The
quality of Mercy is not strained," fifty or sixty times over, till I had
exactly the right amount of intonation on each syllable, her delicate
ear detecting the slightest fault. Afterwards I was allowed to read--to
devour--an old brown copy of "Percy's Reliques," and much have I learnt
from those noble old ballads. How cordially I agree with Professor
Shairp, who said that if any one made serious study of only two
books--Percy's "Reliques" and Scott's "Minstrelsy"--he would "give
himself the finest, freshest, most inspiring poetic education that is
possible in our age."
My mother's "religion" made her think reading any novel, or any kind of
work of fiction, absolutely wicked at this time, but Grannie took in
"Pickwick," which was coming out in numbers. She read it by her
dressing-room fire with closed doors, and her old maid, Cowbourne, well
on the watch against intruders--"elle prenait la peine de s'en divertir
avec tout le respect du monde;" and I used to pick the fragments out of
the waste-paper basket, piece them together, and read them too.
Sundays were far less horrid at Stoke than at home, for Grannie
generally found something for me to do. Most primitive were the church
services, very different indeed from the ritualism which has reigned at
Stoke since, and which is sufficient to bring the old grandparents out
of their graves. In our day the Rectory-pew bore a carved inscription--
God prosper y^{e} Kynge long in thys lande
And grant that Papystrie never have y^{e} vper hande,
but the present Rector has removed it.
[Illustration: STOKE CHURCH.]
I can see the congregation still in imagination, the old women in their
red cloaks and large black bonnets; the old men with their glistening
brass buttons, and each with his bunch of southern-wood--"old man"--to
snuff at. In my childhood the tunes of the hymns were always given with
a pitch-pipe. "Dame Dutton's School" used to be ranged round the altar,
and the grand old alabaster tomb of Sir Reginald Corbet, and if any of
the children behaved ill during the service, they were turned up and
soundly whipped then and there, their outcries mingling oddly with the
responses of the congregation. But in those days, now considered so
benighted, there was sometimes real devotion. People sometimes said real
prayers even in church, before the times since which the poor in village
churches are so frequently compelled to say their prayers to music. The
curates always came to luncheon at the Rectory on Sundays. They were
always compelled to come in ignominiously at the back door, lest they
should dirty the entrance: only Mr. Egerton was allowed to come in at
the front door, because he was "a gentleman born." How Grannie used to
bully the curates! They were expected not to talk at luncheon, if they
did they were soon put down. "Tea-table theology" was unknown in those
days. As soon as the curates had swallowed a proper amount of cold veal,
they were called upon to "give an account to Mrs. Leycester" of all that
they had done in the week in the four quarters of the parish--Eton,
Ollerton, Wistanswick, and Stoke--and soundly were they rated if their
actions did not correspond with her intentions. After the curates, came
the school-girls to practise their singing, and my mother was set down
to strum the piano by the hour together as an accompaniment, while
Grannie occupied herself in seeing that they opened their mouths wide
enough, dragging the mouths open by force, and, if they would not sing
properly, putting her fingers so far down their throats that she made
them sick. One day, when she was doing this, Margaret Beeston bit her
violently. Mr. Egerton was desired to talk to her afterwards about the
wickedness of her conduct. "How could you be such a naughty girl,
Margaret, as to bite Mrs. Leycester?"--"What'n her put her fingers down
my throat for? oi'll boite she harder next time," replied the impenitent
Margaret.
Grannie used to talk of chaney (china), laylocks (lilacs), and gould
(gold): of the Prooshians and the Rooshians: of things being "plaguey
dear" or "plaguey bad." In my childhood, however, half my elders used
such expressions, which now seem to be almost extinct. "Obleege me by
passing the cowcumber," Uncle Julius always used to say.
There were always three especial sources of turmoil at Stoke--the
curates, the butlers, and the gardeners. Grannie was very severe to all
her dependants, but to no one more than to three young lady _prot\xE9g\xE9es_
who lived with her in turn--Eliza Lathom, Emma Hunt, and Charlotte
Atkinson--whom she fed on skim-milk and dry bread, and treated so
harshly that the most adventurous and youngest of them, Charlotte
Atkinson,[25] ran away altogether, joined a party of strolling players,
and eventually married an actor (Mr. Tweedie). I remember Grannie going
down into the kitchen one day and scolding the cook till she could bear
it no longer, when she seized the dinner-bell from the shelf and rang it
in her ears till she ran out of the kitchen. When there was "a wash" at
Stoke, which was about every third week, it was a rule with Grannie
that, summer or winter, it must always begin at one A.M. At that hour
old Hannah Berry used to arrive from the village, the coppers were
heated and the maids at work. The ladies-maids, who were expected to do
all the fine muslins, &c., themselves, had also always to be at the
washtubs at three A.M.--by candlelight. If any one was late, the
housekeeper reported to Mrs. Leycester, who was soon down upon them
pretty sharply. Generally, however, her real practical kindness and
generosity prevented any one minding Mrs. Leycester's severity: it was
looked upon as only "her way;" for people were not so tender in those
days as they are now, and certainly no servant would have thought of
giving up a place which was essentially a good one because they were a
little roughly handled by their mistress. In those days servants were as
liable to personal chastisement as the children of the house, and would
as little have thought of resenting it. "You don't suppose I'm going to
hurt _my_ fingers in boxing _your_ ears," said Grannie, when about to
chastise the school children she was teaching, and she would take up a
book from the table and use it soundly, and then say, "Now, we mustn't
let the other ear be jealous," and turn the child round and lay on again
on the other side. Grannie constantly boxed her housemaids' ears, and
alas! when he grew very old, she used to box dear Grandpapa's, though
she loved him dearly, the great source of offence being that he would
sometimes slyly give the servant's elbow a tip when his daily
table-spoonful of brandy was being poured out.
[Illustration: STOKE RECTORY--THE GARDEN SIDE.]
As I have said, Grannie was quite devoted to Grandpapa, yet as she was
twenty years younger, his great age could not but accustom her to the
thought of his death, and she constantly talked before him, to his great
amusement, of what she should do as a widow. Judge Leycester ("Uncle
Hugh"), my grandfather's brother, had left her a house in New Street,
Spring Gardens, and whenever Mary Stanley went to Stoke, she used to
make her write down the different stages and distances to London to be
ready for her removal. Frequently the family used to be startled by a
tremendous "rat-a-tat-tat-tat," on the dining-room door. Grannie had
ordered Richard, the young footman, up, and was teaching him how to
give "a London knock"--it was well he should be prepared. One day the
party sitting in the drawing-room were astonished to see the family
carriage drive up to the door, with Spragg the butler on the box. "I was
only seeing how Spragg will look as coachman when your Grandpapa is
dead," said Grannie, and Grandpapa looked on at the arrangements and
enjoyed them heartily.
As for dear Grandpapa himself, he was always happy. He would amuse
himself for hours in touching up in grey or brown his own (very feeble)
sketches in Switzerland or France. Being a great classical scholar, he
also read a great deal of Italian and Latin poetry, and addressed a
Latin ode to his daughter-in-law Lady Charlotte Penrhyn when he was in
his ninety-second year! This kind aunt of my childhood--"Aunt Nin," as I
always called her--was a very simple person, utterly without pretension,
but because she was Lord Derby's daughter, Grannie always treated her as
the great person of the family. When we went to Stoke, no difference
whatever was made in the house, the stair-carpets were not laid down,
and though the drawing-room was constantly lived in, its furniture was
all swathed in brown holland after the fashion of an uninhabited London
house. When the Stanleys or Leycesters of Toft came to Stoke, the
stair-carpet was put down and the _covers-covers_ were taken off; but on
the rare occasions when Aunt Penrhyn came to Stoke--oh sublime
moment!--the _covers_ themselves were taken off.
From our constant winter walk--"the Rope Walk"--my mother and I could
see Hodnet Tower, of which Grandpapa had at one time been Rector as well
as of Stoke. Bishop Heber had been Rector before him, and in his time my
mother had found much of her chief happiness at Hodnet, from sources
which I did not understand, when I used so often to walk up and down
with her on Sundays, listening to the beautiful Hodnet bells. In my
childhood, Mrs. Cholmondeley was living at Hodnet Hall, having been Mary
Heber, the Bishop's sister. She was very kind to me, writing for my
instruction in English history a "Chapter of Kings," of which I can only
remember the two last lines, which were rather irreverent:
"William the Fourth was a long time sick,
And then was succeeded by little Queen Vick."
It was a great event at Stoke when my mother was allowed to have the
carriage, though what John Minshull the coachman generally did no one
could ever find out. If we drove, it was generally to Buntingsdale, a
fine old brick house of the last century standing at the end of a
terraced garden, with lime avenues above the Terne, near Market Drayton.
Here Mr. and Mrs. Tayleur lived with their four daughters--Mary,
Harriet, Lucy, and Emma, who were very severely brought up, though their
father was immensely rich. The old fashion was kept up at Buntingsdale
of all the daughters being expected to spend the whole morning with
their mother in the morning-room at work round a round table, and
formality in everything was the rule. Yet many of my childish pleasures
came from Buntingsdale, and I was always glad when we turned out of the
road and across some turnip-fields, which were then the odd approach to
the lime avenue on the steep bank above the shining Terne, and to see
the brilliant border of crocuses under the old garden wall as we drove
up to the house. The eldest daughter, Mary, who looked then like a
delicate china figure and always smelt of lavender and rose-leaves, used
to show me her shell cabinet and her butterflies, and teach me to
collect snail-shells! The bright energetic second daughter, Harriet,
drew capitally and encouraged my early interest in art. The other two
daughters, Lucy and Emma, died young, almost at the same time: my chief
recollection is of their bending over their eternal worsted-work, very
pale and fragile, and their passing away is one of my earliest
impressions of death.
The other neighbours whom we saw most of were the Hills of Hawkestone,
then a very numerous family. Five of the brothers--Sir Rowland
(afterwards Lord Hill), Sir Robert, Sir Francis, Sir Noel, and Colonel
Clement Hill, were in the battle of Waterloo, and my mother has often
described to me the sickening suspense in watching for the postman after
the first news of the engagement had come, with the almost certainty
that at least some of the brothers must be killed. Miss Emma was deputed
to receive the news, as the sister of strongest nerve, but when she
heard that all her brothers were safe (only Sir Robert being slightly
wounded), she fainted away. Lord Hill used to ride to see my Grandfather
upon the charger he rode at Waterloo, which horse had such a reputation,
that people would come from great distances more even to see the horse
than Lord Hill himself. In earlier days, the family at Hawkestone used
to be likened to that of the Osbaldistons in "Rob Roy"--and had all the
same elements--the chaplain, the soldiers, the sportsmen, the
fox-hunter, the fisherman, and in Rachel (daughter of the Colonel Hill
who was killed by a fall from his horse) a very handsome Diana Vernon,
with frank natural manners: people called her "the Rose of Hawkestone."
My mother often used to recall how remarkable it was that though, when
gathered at home, the family seemed to have no other purpose than to
pursue the amusements of a country life, when called on by their country
to go forth in her service, none of her sons were so brave, none more
self-devoted, than the Hill brothers.
When all the family were at Hawkestone, they dined early and had a hot
supper at nine o'clock. As the family interests were confined to
sporting, the conversation was not very lively, and was relieved by the
uncles endeavouring to provoke each other and the young ones--to yawn!
no very difficult task, seeing they had nothing to do. The eldest Miss
Hill (Maria) was a very primitive-looking person, with hair cut short,
and always insisted upon sitting alone at a side-table that no one might
see her eat; but I cannot remember whether she was alive in my time, or
whether I have only heard of her. Even in the days of a comparative
inattention to those niceties of feminine attire now universally
attended to, the extraordinary head-gear worn by the Misses Hill, their
tight gowns, and homely appearance, were matter for general remark. But
if they lacked in these points, they vied with their brothers in the
possession of brave hearts and loving sympathies--"Every eye blessed
them: every tongue gave witness" to their active benevolence.
In true patriarchal style, the six children of the eldest of the Hill
brothers were brought up with the uncles and aunts at Hawkestone Hall,
nor was any change made when the father's sudden death left a young
widow to be tended with all the kindness of real brethren in the old
family home. At length the grandfather died, and Sir Rowland, then about
eighteen, succeeded. But when his affairs were inquired into, it was
found, that in consequence of very serious losses in a county bankruptcy
and from mismanagement of the estate, there was a heavy debt upon the
property, which, at best, it would take years to liquidate. A plan of
rescue presented itself to Mrs. Hill, the young baronet's mother, who
was a clever and kind-hearted woman, but lacked the simplicity of her
sisters-in-law. A rich merchant, a Mr. Clegg from Manchester, had
bought the estate adjoining Hawkestone. His only grand-daughter was then
scarcely more than a child; but it was as great an object of desire to
old Mr. Clegg to ally his child with an ancient and respected family and
to procure for her the rank and station which his gold could not obtain,
as it was to Mrs. Hill to replenish her son's empty treasury, and enable
him to keep up the family place. A compact for the future was soon
settled. In a few years, however, the fatal illness of Mr. Clegg obliged
Mrs. Hill to hurry matters, and over her grandfather's deathbed Sir
Rowland was married to the girl of fifteen. Immediately after the
ceremony Mr. Clegg died. Mrs. Hill then took the girl-bride home, and
educated her with her own niece, no one suspecting her secret. Sir
Rowland went abroad. When two years had elapsed, Mrs. Hill also went
abroad with "Miss Clegg"--who returned as the wife of Sir Rowland,
received with great festivities. The marriage was a most happy one. The
unassuming gentleness of the lady was as great as if she had been born
in the station to which she was called: and in the charities of social
and domestic life and the exercise of the widest-hearted benevolence to
all around her, she long reigned at Hawkestone.[26] Her son Rowland was
only a year older than myself, and was the nearest approach to a
boy-acquaintance that I had quite as a child.
Hawkestone was and is one of the most enchanting places in England.
There, the commonplace hedges and fields of Shropshire are broken by a
ridge of high red sandstone cliffs most picturesque in form and colour,
and overgrown by old trees with a deep valley between them, where great
herds of deer feed in the shadow. On one side is a grotto, and a
marvellous cavern--"the Druid's Cave"--in which I used to think a live
Druid, a guide dressed up in white with a wreath, appearing through the
yellow light, most bewildering and mysterious. On the other side of the
valley rise some castellated ruins called "the Red Castle." There was a
book at Stoke Rectory about the history of this castle in the reign of
King Arthur, which made it the most interesting place in the world to
me, and I should no more have thought of questioning the fight of Sir
Ewaine and Sir Hue in the valley, and the reception of the former by
"the Lady of the Rock," and the rescue of Sir Gawaine from the gigantic
Carados by Sir Lancelot, than I should have thought of attacking--well,
the divine legation of Moses. But even if the earlier stories of the Red
Castle are contradicted, the associations with Lord Audley and the
battle of Blore Heath would always give it a historic interest.
Over one of the deep ravines which ran through the cliff near the Red
Castle was "the Swiss Bridge"--Aunt Kitty painted it in oils. Beneath
it, in a conical summer-house--"the Temple of Health"--an old woman used
to sit and sell packets of ginger-bread--"Drayton ginger-bread"--of
which I have often bought a packet since for association's sake.
But the most charming expedition of all from Stoke was when, once every
year, I was sent to pay a visit to the Goldstone Farm, where the mother
of my dear nurse Mary Lea lived. It was an old-fashioned farmhouse of
the better class, black and white, with a large house-place and a cool
parlour beyond it, with old pictures and furniture. In front, on the
green, under an old cherry-tree, stood a grotto of shells, and beyond
the green an open common on the hillside covered with heath and gorse,
and where cranberries were abundant in their season. Behind, was a large
garden, with grass walks and abundance of common flowers and fruit.
Dear old Mrs. Lea was charming, and full of quaint proverbs and sayings,
all, as far as I remember them, of a very ennobling nature. With her
lived her married daughter, Hannah Challinor, a very fat good-natured
farmeress. Words cannot describe the fuss these good people made over
me, or my own dear Lea's pride in helping to do the honours of her home,
or the excellent tea, with cream and cakes and jam, which was provided.
After Mrs. Lea's death, poor Mrs. Challinor fell into impoverished
circumstances, and was obliged to leave Goldstone, though the pain of
doing so almost cost her her life. I was then able for many years to
return in a measure the kindness shown me so long before.
Long after the railway was made which passed by Whitmore (within a long
drive of Stoke), we continued to go in our own carriage, posting, to
Shropshire. Gradually my mother consented to go in her own carriage, on
a truck, by rail as far as Birmingham; farther she could not endure it.
Later still, nearly the whole journey was effected by rail, but in our
own chariot. At last we came to use the ordinary railway carriages, but
then, for a long time, we used to have post-horses to meet us at some
station near London: my mother would not be known to enter London in a
railway carriage--"it was so excessively improper" (the sitting opposite
strangers in the same carriage); so we entered the metropolis "by land,"
as it was called in those early days of railway travelling.
On returning to Lime in the spring of 1841, I was sent to Mr. Green's
school, a commercial school at Windmill Hill, about a mile off. I used
to ride to the school on my little pony "Gentle," much to the envy of
the schoolboys; and in every way a most invidious distinction was made
between me and them, which I daresay would have been thoroughly avenged
upon me had I remained with them during play-hours; but I was only there
from nine to twelve, doing my lessons at one of the great oak desks in
the old-fashioned schoolroom. I chiefly remember of the school the
abominable cases of favouritism that there were, and that if one of the
ushers took a dislike to a boy, he was liable to be most unmercifully
caned for faults for which another boy was scarcely reproved. In the
autumn, when we went to Rockend, I was sent to another school at
Torquay, a Mr. Walker's, where I was much more roughly handled, the
master being a regular tartar. I remember a pleasant, handsome boy
called Ray, who sat by me in school and helped me out of many a scrape,
but Mr. Walker was very violent, and as he was not allowed to beat me as
much as he did the other boys, he soon declined teaching me at all.
The railway from London to Brighton was now just opened, and we took
advantage of it. As we reached Merstham (by the first morning train) the
train stopped, and we were all made to get out, for the embankment had
fallen in in front of us. It was pouring in torrents of rain, and the
line muddy and slippery to a degree. We all had to climb the slippery
bank through the yellow mud. I was separated from my mother and Lea and
Uncle Julius, who was with us, but found them again in a desolate house,
totally unfurnished, where all the passengers by the train were
permitted to take refuge. It was the place whither I have gone in later
days to visit Lord Hylton. Here we sat on the boarded floor, with very
little food, in a great room looking upon some dripping
portugal-laurels, all through the long weary day till four in the
afternoon, when omnibuses arrived to take us to another station beyond
the broken line. We did not reach Brighton till nine P.M., and when we
arrived at the station and inquired after our carriages, which were to
have met us at mid-day and taken us home, we heard that a bad accident
had taken place; one of the horses had run away, one of the carriages
been overturned down a steep bank, and one of the servants had his arm
broken. We remained at Brighton in some anxiety till Monday, when we
found that it was my uncle's horse "Steady" which had run away, and his
faithful old servant Collins who was injured.
When my uncle was driving himself, these accidents were so frequent that
we scarcely thought anything of them, as he drove so carelessly and
talked vehemently or composed his sermons or charges all the way. But if
the family had an accident on their way to church, they always returned
thanks for their preservation, which made quite a little excitement in
the service. I remember one occasion on which my mother and aunt did not
appear as usual, when a note was handed to Uncle Julius as he came out
of the vestry, upon which thanks were returned for the "merciful
preservation of Lucy and Maria Hare and Staunton Collins" (the
coachman)--and all the Rectory servants and all the Lime servants
immediately walked out of church to look after the wounded or--because
they were too excited to stay! The horse had taken fright at a gipsy
encampment in the marsh lane and the family had been precipitated into
the ditch.
At this time Uncle Julius had been made one of the Poor Law Guardians
and had to visit at the workhouse, and there was the most ceaseless
ferment and outcry against him. All sorts of stories were got up. One
was that he was going to put all the children into a boat and take them
out to sink them in Pevensey Bay! One day old Betty Lusted went up to
the Rectory and asked to see the Archdeacon. He went out to her: "Well,
Betty, and what do you want?"--"I want to know, zur, if you do know the
Scripture."--"Well, Betty, I hope I do, but why do you ask?"--"Because
if you _do_ know the Scripture, how coomes it that you doona zee--'them
whom God hath joined together let na man put asunder'?" (apropos of the
separation of husbands and wives in the workhouse); and though she was a
poor half-witted body, she brought the tears into his eyes. I remember
his asking her daughter Polly once what she prayed for every night and
morning. "Well, zur, I do pray for a new pair of shoes," replied Polly,
without the slightest hesitation.
Uncle Julius would have given the world to have been able to talk easily
and sympathetically to his people, but he could not get the words out.
Sick people in the parish used to say, "The Archdeacon he do come to us,
and he do sit by the bed and hold our hands, and he do growl a little,
but he do zay nowt."
One day he heard that a family named Woodhams were in great affliction.
It was just after poor Haydon had committed suicide, and he took down
Wordsworth's sonnet on Haydon, and read it to them by way of comfort. Of
course they had never heard of Haydon, and had not an idea what it was
all about.[27]
It was on our way from Norwich to Stoke in the autumn of 1841 that I
made my first sketch from nature. We slept at Bedford, to meet Charles
Stanley there, and I drew Bedford Bridge out of the window--a view made
by candlelight of a bridge seen by moonlight--but it was thought
promising and I was encouraged to proceed. My mother, who drew admirably
herself, gave me capital simple lessons, and in every way fostered my
love of the picturesque. Indeed Hurstmonceaux itself did this, with its
weird views across the levels to the faint blue downs, and its noble
ruined castle. Of the stories connected with this castle I could never
hear enough, and Uncle Julius told them delightfully. But the one I
cared for most was of our remote ancestress Sybil Filiol, who lived at
Old Court Manor in the reign of Edward II., I think. Uncle Julius used
to describe how, after her marriage in Wartling Church, she went to take
leave of her dead father's garden (before riding away upon a pillion
behind her husband), and, whilst there, was carried off by gipsies. Her
husband and other members of her family pursued them, but in those days
locomotion was difficult, escape in the Cheviot Hills easy, and she was
never heard of again.[28] How well I remember the pictorial description
of a strange funeral seen approaching over the hills--"the gipsies of
the north" bringing back the body of Sybil Filiol to be buried with her
ancestors at Wartling, and the story of how her husband devoted her
dowry to making "Sybil Filiol's Way," a sort of stone causeway to
Hurstmonceaux Church, of which I delighted to trace the old grey stones
near Boreham Street and in the Church Lane.
Our cousin Anna Maria Shipley, who had been cruelly married by her
father against her will to the savage paralytic Mr. Dashwood, and who
had been very many years a widow, had, in 1838, made a second marriage
with an old neighbour, Mr. Jones, who, however, lived only a year. In
1840, she married as her third husband the Rev. George Chetwode, and
died herself in the year following. Up to the time of her death, it was
believed and generally understood that the heirs of her large fortune
were the children of her cousin Francis,[29] but it was then discovered
that two days before she expired, she had made a will in pencil in
favour of Mr. Chetwode, leaving all she possessed in his power. This
news was an additional shock to my father, who had never recovered the
will of Mrs. Louisa Shipley, and he passed the winter of 1841 at Palermo
in the utmost melancholy. When he first arrived, he gave a few dinners,
but after that, says Victoire, he seemed to have a presentiment of his
end, though the doctors declared that he was not dangerously ill. For
several nights in February F\xE9lix sate up with him. Mr. Hare wished to
send him to bed, "mais F\xE9lix repondit, 'Rappelez-vous, monsieur, que je
suis ancien militaire, et que quand j'ai une consigne, je ne la quitte
jamais;'" and then he opposed F\xE9lix no longer. "One morning at five
o'clock A.M.," said Madame Victoire, "he asked F\xE9lix what o'clock it
was. F\xE9lix told him. Then he said, 'Dans une demi-heure j'aurais mon
lait d'\xE2nesse,' parceque l'\xE2nesse venait \xE0 six heures.... Puis il
commence \xE0 faire jour, et F\xE9lix se met \xE0 arranger un peu la chambre. Se
trouvant \xE0 la fen\xEAtre, il entend M. Hare faire un mouvement dans le lit:
F\xE9lix regarde de pr\xE8s, il \xE9coute, il touche: M. Hare venait de finir."
My father was buried in the English Cemetery at Palermo, where there is
a plain sarcophagus over his grave. The English Consul sent the
following certificate to Mrs. Hare:--
"On Saturday, the 15th January, 1842, the remains of the late
Francis George Hare, Esquire, were interred in the Protestant
Burial Ground at the Lazzaret of Palermo, in the presence of a
large concourse of Sicilian noblemen, and of the British, French,
and American residents. The service of the church was read by the
Rev. W. F. Holt, and the pall was supported by the Principino of
Lardoria, the Prince of Radali, the American Consul, and Mr. J. F.
Turner. As a token of respect to the memory of the deceased, the
flags of the British, French, and American vessels were hoisted
half-mast high during the forenoon."
The summer was spent by the Marcus Hares at the Rectory--one of those
intensely hot summers which I never remember since my childhood, when we
gasped through the day, and lay at night under bowers of ash-boughs to
keep off the torment of gnats, which used then to be as bad at
Hurstmonceaux as I have since known mosquitoes in Italy. Of my cousins I
preferred Theodore, who was a very engaging little child. I remember
Uncle Julius coming out with tears streaming down his cheeks, and an
open letter in his hand, one day when all the family were sitting under
the trees. It was the news of the death of Dr. Arnold of Rugby.
In the autumn Mrs. Hare came with her children to spend some time at
Hurstmonceaux Rectory. It was then arranged that I should call her
"Italima" (being a corruption of "Italian Mama"), and by that name I
will henceforth speak of her in these memoirs, but this must not be
taken to imply any greater intimacy, as she never treated me familiarly
or with affection. I remember the party arriving in their black
dress--Italima, Francis, William, Esmeralda, Mr. Gaebler--the admirable
tutor, F\xE9lix, Victoire, and Cl\xE9mence--my sister's maid. My sister, as a
little child, was always called "the Tigress," but as she grew older,
her cousin Lord Normanby remonstrated at this. "Then give her another
name," said Italima. "Esmeralda,"--and Esmeralda she was now always
called.
Italima must have found it intensely dull at the Rectory. She used to
walk daily to Gardner Street, where the sight of "_somebody_" and the
village shops was a consolation to her. She used to make my sister
practise on the pianoforte for hours, and if she did not play well she
shut her up for the rest of the day in a dressing-room, and I used to go
and push fairy-stories to her under the door. Though she was so severe
to my sister, she resented exceedingly any scoldings which Uncle Julius
gave to Francis, who richly deserved them, and was terribly spoilt. He
was, however, as beautiful as a boy as my sister was as a girl, and a
wonderfully graceful pair they made when they danced the tarantella
together in the evenings. Altogether my own brothers and sister being as
children infinitely more attractive than the Marcus Hares', I was much
happier with them, which was terribly resented in the family, and any
sign I gave of real enjoyment was always followed by some privation, for
fear I should be over-excited by it. Mr. Gaebler was a most pleasant and
skilful tutor, and I found it delightful to do lessons with him, and
made immense progress in a few weeks: but _because_ his teaching was
pleasant, it was supposed that the "discipline" of lessons was wanting,
and I was not long allowed to go on learning from him. In the afternoons
we were all made to go to the school and practise ridiculous Hullah
singing, which we loathed.
The Bunsens were now living at Hurstmonceaux Place. Bunsen had been
Minister for Prussia at Rome at the time of my birth and the death of my
uncle Augustus Hare, and had then become very intimate with my mother,
as he had previously been with my uncle. Therefore, when he became
Minister in London and wanted a country-house, Hurstmonceaux Place,
which was then to let, seemed wonderfully suited to his requirements.
The great distance from London, however (the railway then coming no
nearer than Brighton, twenty-four miles off) prevented the Bunsens from
remaining more than two years at Hurstmonceaux; but during this time
they added much to our happiness, and, child as I was, I was conscious
of the vivifying influence which their refinement, their liberal views,
and hightoned conversation brought into the narrow circle at
Hurstmonceaux, which being so much and so often cut off from outer
influences, was becoming more and more of a Mutual Admiration Society.
In the many loving daughters of the house, my mother found willing
helpers in all her work amongst the poor, while the cheerful wisdom and
unfailing spirit of Madame Bunsen made her the most delightful of
companions. For several months I went every morning to Hurstmonceaux
Place, and did all my lessons with Theodore Bunsen, who was almost my
own age, under the care of his German tutor, Herr Deimling.
It must have been in 1841, I think, that Bunsen inoculated my uncle and
mother with the most enthusiastic interest in the foundation of the
Bishopric of Jerusalem, being himself perfectly convinced that it would
be the Church thus founded which would meet the Saviour at his second
coming. Esther Maurice, by a subscription amongst the ladies of Reading,
provided the robes of the new Bishop.
In the spring of 1843 I was dreadfully ill with the whooping-cough,
which I caught (as I had done the chicken-pox before) from my mother's
numerous parochial godchildren, when they came to Lime for their
lessons. When I was better we went for three days in our own carriage to
the Mount Ephraim Hotel at Tunbridge Wells. It was my first "tour," and
it was with rapture that I saw Mayfield Palace, Bayham Abbey, and the
High Rocks, on our way to which Lea and I were run away with by our
donkeys.
When the Marcus Hares were not at the Rectory, Uncle Julius in these
years had a wonderfully varied society there, of whom we always saw more
or less--German philosophers, American philologists, English
astronomers, politicians, poets. Amongst those I particularly disliked
were Whewell and Thirlwall--so icily cold were their manners. Bunsen,
Star, Archdeacon Moore, Prentiss the American, Darley, Hull, I liked;
but Professor Sedgwick I was quite devoted to.[30] He "threw a mantle of
love over every one;"[31] and nothing could be more charming than his
stories, more attractive and interesting than his conversation,
especially with children, with whom he took pains to "be agreeable." I
saw so many people of this kind, that I used to think that what I heard
called "society" was all like these specimens: I was very much mistaken.
A visit from the gentle and amiable Copley Fielding early encouraged my
love of art. He greatly admired the peculiar scenery of
Hurstmonceaux--the views from the churchyard, so like the descent upon
the marshes of Ostia; the burnt uplands of the old deer-park; the long
flat reaches of blue-green level; and the hazy distant downs, which were
especially after his own heart. There was one view of the castle towers
seen from behind, and embossed against the delicate hues of the level,
which he used to make a frequent study of, and which my mother and
uncle ever after called "Copley Fielding's view."
[Illustration: HURSTMONCEAUX.]
Amongst other visitors of this year, I must mention our cousin Penelope,
Mrs. Warren (eldest daughter of Dean Shipley and sister of Mrs. Dashwood
and Mrs. Heber), who spent some days at the Rectory with her daughters,
because under her protection I had my only sight of the upper part of
Hurstmonceaux Castle. One of the staircases remained then, and the
timbers of many of the upper rooms were left, though the floors were
gone. One day we were with my mother and uncle in the ruins, and they
were saying how no one would ever see the upper floor again, when, to
their horror, Mrs. Warren seized me in her arms and darted up the
staircase. "Look, child, look!" she said, "for no one will ever see this
again," and she leapt with me from beam to beam. I recollect the old
chimney-pieces, the falling look of everything. It was wonderful that we
came down safe; the staircase was removed immediately after, that no one
might follow in our footsteps.
I remember Carlyle coming to stay at the Rectory, where they did not
like him much. He came in a high hat--every one wore high hats then. The
day he arrived, the wind blew his hat off into a ditch as he was
getting over a stile: and he went off at once into one of his unbounded
furies against "the most absurd outrageous head-covering in the world,
which the vanity of the Prince Regent had caused people to adopt."
Aunt Lucy and the Maurices had long urged my mother to send me to
school, and perhaps in many ways my terrible fits of naughtiness made it
desirable, though they chiefly arose from nervousness, caused by the
incessant "nagging" I received at home from every one except my mother
and Lea. But the choice of the school to which I was sent at nine years
old was very unfortunate. When illness had obliged my Uncle Augustus
Hare to leave his beloved little parish of Alton Barnes for Italy, a
Rev. Robert Kilvert came thither as his temporary curate--a very
religious man, deeply learned in ultra "evangelical" divinity, but
strangely unpractical and with no knowledge whatever of the world--still
less of the boyish part of it. As Dr. John Brown once said--"The grace
of God can do muckle, but it canna gie a man common-sense." Mr. Kilvert
was a good scholar, but in the dryest, hardest sense; of literature he
knew nothing, and he was entirely without originality or cleverness, so
that his knowledge was of the most untempting description. Still his
letters to my mother in her early widowhood had been a great comfort to
her, and there was no doubt of his having been a thoroughly good
parish-priest. He had lately married a Miss Coleman, who derived the
strange name of Thermuthis from the daughter of Pharaoh who saved Moses
out of the bulrushes, and he had opened a small school at his tiny
Rectory of Hardenhuish, or, as it was generally called, Harnish, the
estate of the Clutterbucks, near Chippenham in Wiltshire; so my mother,
thinking it of far more importance to select "a good man" than "a good
master," determined to send me there. How often since have I seen the
terrible mistake of parents in "packing off" children to a distant
school, to be entirely in the hands of masters of whose practical
influence and social competence for their duties they know nothing
whatever!
My own experience of Harnish is one of the many instances I have known
of how little the character of the head of an establishment affects the
members of it, unless his spirituality is backed up by a thorough
knowledge of the world. The greater portion of Mr. Kilvert's
scholars--his "little flock of lambs in Christ's fold"--were a set of
little monsters. All infantine immoralities were highly popular, and--in
such close quarters--it would have been difficult for the most pure and
high-minded boy to escape from them. The first evening I was there, at
nine years old, I was compelled to eat Eve's apple quite up--indeed, the
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was stripped absolutely bare:
there was no fruit left to gather.
I wonder if children often go through the intense agony of anguish which
I went through when I was separated from my mother. Perhaps not, as few
children are brought up so entirely by and with their parents in such
close companionship. It was leaving my mother that I minded, not the
going to school, to which my misery was put down: though, as I had never
had any companions, the idea of being left suddenly amongst a horde of
young savages was anything but comforting. But my nervous temperament
was tortured with the idea that my mother would die before I saw her
again (I had read a story of this kind), that our life was over, that my
aunts would persuade her to cease to care for me,--indeed, the anguish
was so great and so little understood, that though it is more than fifty
years ago, as I write this, I can scarcely bear to think of it.
III
BOYHOOD
1843-1848
"The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's returning stages:
A day to childhood seems an year,
And years like passing ages."
--THOMAS CAMPBELL.
"Oh if, in time of sacred youth,
We learned at home to love and pray,
Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth
May never wholly pass away."
--THACKERAY.
My mother took me to Harnish Rectory on July 28, 1843. The aspect of Mr.
Kilvert, his tall figure, and red hair encircling a high bald forehead,
was not reassuring, nor were any temptations offered by my companions
(who were almost entirely of a rich middle class), or by the playground,
which was a little gravelled courtyard--the stable-yard, in fact--at the
back of the house. The Rectory itself was a small house, pleasantly
situated on a hill, near an odd little Wrenian church which stood in a
well-kept churchyard. We were met at Harnish by Mrs. Pile, who, as
daughter of an Alton farmer, was connected with the happiest period of
my mother's life, and while I was a prey to the utmost anguish, talking
to her prevented my mother from thinking much about parting with me.
One miserable morning Mr. Kilvert, Mrs. Pile, and I went with my mother
and Lea to the station at Chippenham. Terrible indeed was the moment
when the train came up and I flung myself first into Lea's arms and then
into my mother's. Mrs. Pile did her best to comfort me--but ... there
_was_ no comfort.
Several boys slept in a room together at Harnish. In mine there was at
first only one other, who was one of the greatest boy-blackguards I ever
came across--wicked, malicious, and hypocritical. He made my life
indescribably miserable. One day, however, whilst we were wearily
plodding through our morning lessons, I saw a pleasant gentleman-like
boy come through the gate, who was introduced to us as Alick MacSween.
He was thirteen, so much older than any of the others, and he was very
good-looking, at least we thought so then, and we used to apply to him
the line in our Syntax--
"Ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris."
It was a great joy to find myself transferred to his room, and he soon
became a hero in my eyes. Imagination endowed him with every grace, and
I am sure, on looking back, that he really was a very nice boy.
Gradually I had the delight of feeling assured that Alick liked me as
much as I liked him. We became everything to each other, and shared our
"lockers" in school, and our little gardens in play-hours. Our affection
made sunshine in the dreariness. My one dread was that Alick would some
day like another boy better than he liked me. It happened. Then, at ten
years old, life was a blank. Soon afterwards Alick left the school, and
a little later, before he was fifteen, I heard that he was dead. It was
a dumb sorrow, which I could speak to no one, for no one would have
understood it, not even my mother. It is all in the dim distance of the
long ago. I could not realise what Alick would be if he was alive, but
my mind's eye sees him now as he was then, as if it were yesterday: I
mourn him still.
Mr. Kilvert, as I have said, was deeply "religious," but he was very
hot-tempered, and slashed our hands with a ruler and our bodies with a
cane most unmercifully for exceedingly slight offences. So intense, so
abject was our terror of him, that we used to look forward as to an
oasis to the one afternoon when he went to his parish duties, and Mrs.
Kilvert or her sister Miss Sarah Coleman attended to the school, for, as
the eldest boy was not thirteen, we were well within their capacities.
The greater part of each day was spent in lessons, and oh! what trash we
were wearisomely taught; but from twelve to one we were taken out for a
walk, when we employed the time in collecting all kinds of rubbish--bits
of old tobacco-pipe, &c.--to make "museums."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"DARLING MAMA,--I like it rather better than I expected. They have
killed a large snake by stoning it, and Gumbleton has skinned it,
such nasty work, and peged it on a board covered with butter and
pepper, and layed it out in the sun to dry. It is going to be
stuffed. Do you know I have been in the vault under the church. It
is so dark. There are great big coffins there. The boy's chief game
is robbers. Give love and 8 thousand kisses to Lea and love to the
Grannies. Good-bye darling Mama."
"Frederick Leuis has been very ill of crop. Do you know what that
is? I have been to the school-feast at Mr. Clutterbuck's. It was so
beautifull. All the girls were seated round little round tables
amongst beds of geraniums, heltrope, verbenas, and balm of Gilead.
We carried the tea and were called in to grapes and gooseberries,
and we played at thread-the-needle and went in a swing and in a
flying boat. Good-bye Mamma."
"MY DEAR MAMMA,--The boys have got two dear little rabbits. They
had two wood-pigeons, but they died a shocking death, being eaten
of worms, and there was a large vault made in which was interred
their bodies, and that of a dear little mouse who died too. All
went into mourning for it."
"MY DEAR MAMMA,--We have been a picknick at a beautiful place
called Castlecomb. When we got there we went to see the dungeon.
Then we saw a high tower half covered with ivy. You must know that
Castlecomb is on the top of an emense hill, so that you have to
climb hands and knees. When we sate down to tea, our things rolled
down the hill. We rambled about and gathered nuts, for the trees
were loaded. In the town there is a most beautiful old carved cross
and a church. Good-bye darling Mamma."
"_Nov. 11._--I will tell you a day at Mr. Kilvert's. I get up at
half-past six and do lessons for the morning. Then at eight
breakfast. Then go out till half-past nine. Then lessons till
eleven. Then go out till a quarter-past eleven. Then lessons till
12, go a walk till 2 dinner. Lessons from half-past three, writing,
sums, or dictation. From 5 till 6 play. Tea. Lessons from 7 to 8.
Bed. I have collected two thousand stamps since I was here. Do you
ever take your pudding to the poor women on Fridays now? Goodbye
darling Mamma."
As the holidays approached, I became ill with excitement and joy, but
all through the half years at Harnish I always kept a sort of map on
which every day was represented as a square to be filled up when lived
through. Oh, the dreary sight of these spaces on the first days: the
ecstasy when only one or two squares remained white!
_From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.
"When I arrived at Harnish, Augustus was looking sadly ill. As the
Rectory door was opened, the dear boy stood there, and when he saw
us, he could not speak, but the tears flowed down his cheeks. After
a while he began to show his joy at seeing us."
The Marcus Hares were at Hurstmonceaux all the winter, and a terrible
trial it was to me, as my Aunt Lucy was more jealous than ever of any
kind word being spoken to me. But I had some little pleasures when I was
at Hurstmonceaux Place with the large merry family of the Bunsens, who
had a beautiful Christmas-tree.
There is nothing to tell of my school-life during the next year, though
my mind dwells drearily on the long days of uninstructive lessons in
the close hot schoolroom when so hopelessly "nous suyons \xE0 grosses
gouttes," as Mme. de S\xE9vign\xE9 says; or on the monotonous confinement in
the narrow court which was our usual playground; and my recollection
shrinks from the reign of terror under which we lived. In the summer I
was delivered from Hurstmonceaux, going first with my mother to our dear
Stoke home, which I had never seen before in all its wealth of summer
flowers, and proceeding thence to the English lakes, where the delight
of the flowers and the sketching was intense. But our pleasure was not
unalloyed, for, though Uncle Julius accompanied us, my mother took
Esther Maurice with her, wishing to give her a holiday after her hard
work in school-teaching at Reading, and never foreseeing, what every one
else foresaw, that Uncle Julius, who had always a passion for
governesses, would certainly propose to her. Bitter were the tears which
my mother shed when this result--to her alone unexpected--actually took
place. It was the most dismal of betrothals: Esther sobbed and cried, my
mother sobbed and cried, Uncle Julius sobbed and cried daily. I used to
see them sitting holding each other's hands and crying on the banks of
the Rotha.
These scenes for the most part took place at Foxhow, where we paid a
long visit to Mrs. Arnold, whose children were delightful companions to
me. Afterwards we rented a small damp house near Ambleside--Rotha
Cottage--for some weeks, but I was very ill from its unhealthiness, and
terribly ill afterwards at Patterdale from the damp of the place.
Matthew Arnold, then a very handsome young man, was always excessively
kind to me, and I often had great fun with him and his brothers, but he
was not considered then to give any promise of the intellectual powers
he showed afterwards. From Foxhow and Rotha Cottage we constantly
visited Wordsworth and his dear old wife at Rydal Mount, and we walked
with him to the Rydal Falls. He always talked a good deal about himself
and his own poems, and I have a sense of his being not vain, but
conceited. I have been told since, in confirmation of this, that when
Milton's watch--preserved somewhere--was shown to him, he instantly and
involuntarily drew out his own watch, and compared, not the watches, but
the poets. The "severe creator of immortal things," as Landor called
him, read us some of his verses admirably,[32] but I was too young at
this time to be interested in much of his conversation, unless it was
about the wild-flowers, to which he was devoted, as I was. I think that
at Keswick we also saw Southey, but I do not remember him, though I
remember his (very ugly) house very well. In returning south we saw
Chester, and paid a visit to an old cousin of my mother's--"Dosey
(Theodosia) Leigh," who had many quaint sayings. In allusion to her own
maiden state, she would often complacently quote the old Cheshire
proverb--"Bout's bare but it's yezzy."[33] While at Chester, though I
forget how, I first became conscious how difficult the having Esther
Maurice for an aunt would make everything in life to me. I was, however,
at her wedding in November at Reading.
The winter of 1844-45 was the first of many which were made unutterably
wretched by "Aunt Esther." Aunt Lucy had chastised me with rods, Aunt
Esther did indeed chastise me with scorpions. Aunt Lucy was a very
refined person, and a very charming and delightful companion to those
she loved, and, had she loved me, I should have been devoted to her.
Aunt Esther was, from her own personal characteristics, a person I never
could have loved. Yet my uncle was now entirely ruled by her, and my
gentle mother considered her interference in everything as a cross which
was "sent to her" to be meekly endured. The society at the Rectory was
now entirely changed: all the relations of the Hare family, except the
Marcus Hares, were given to understand that their visits were unwelcome,
and the house was entirely filled with the relations of Aunt Esther--old
Mr. and Mrs. Maurice; their married daughter Lucilla Powell, with her
husband and children; their unmarried daughters--Mary, Priscilla, and
Harriet[34]--Priscilla, who now never left her bed, and who was
violently sick after everything she ate (yet with the most enormous
appetite), often for many months together.
With the inmates of the house, the whole "tone" of the Rectory society
was changed. It was impossible entirely to silence Uncle Julius, yet at
times even he was subdued by his new surroundings, the circle around him
being incessantly occupied with the trivialities of domestic or
parochial detail, varied by the gossip of such a tenth-rate provincial
town as Reading, or reminiscences of the boarding-school which had been
their occupation and pride for so many years. Frequently also the spare
rooms were filled by former pupils--"young ladies" of a kind who would
announce their engagement by "The infinite grace of God has put it into
the heart of his servant Edmund to propose to me," or "I have been led
by the mysterious workings of God's providence to accept the hand of
Edgar,"[35]--expressions which Aunt Esther, who wrote good and simple
English herself, would describe as touching evidences of a Christian
spirit in her younger friends.
But what was far more trying to me was, that in order to prove that her
marriage had made no difference in the sisterly and brotherly relations
which existed between my mother and Uncle Julius, Aunt Esther insisted
that my mother should dine at the Rectory _every_ night, and as, in
winter, the late return in an open carriage was impossible, this
involved our sleeping at the Rectory and returning home every morning in
the bitter cold before breakfast. The hours after five o'clock in every
day of the much-longed-for, eagerly counted holidays, were now absolute
purgatory. Once landed at the Rectory, I was generally left in a dark
room till dinner at seven o'clock, for candles were never allowed in
winter in the room where I was left alone. After dinner I was never
permitted to amuse myself, or to do _anything_, except occasionally to
net. If I spoke, Aunt Esther would say with a satirical smile, "As if
you ever _could_ say anything worth hearing, as if it was ever
_possible_ that any one could want to hear what you have to say." If I
took up a book, I was told instantly to put it down again, it was
"disrespect to my Uncle." If I murmured, Aunt Esther, whose temper was
absolutely unexcitable, quelled it by her icy rigidity. Thus gradually I
got into the habit of absolute silence at the Rectory--a habit which it
took me years to break through: and I often still suffer from the want
of self-confidence engendered by reproaches and taunts which never
ceased: for a day--for a week--for a year they would have been nothing:
but for _always_, with no escape but my own death or that of my
tormentor! Water dripping for ever on a stone wears through the stone at
last.
The cruelty which I received from my new aunt was repeated in various
forms by her sisters, one or other of whom was always at the Rectory.
Only Priscilla, touched by the recollection of many long visits during
my childhood at Lime, occasionally sent a kindly message or spoke a
kindly word to me from her sick-bed, which I repaid by constant
offerings of flowers. Most of all, however, did I feel the conduct of
Mary Maurice, who, by pretended sympathy and affection, wormed from me
all my little secrets--how miserable my uncle's marriage had made my
home-life, how I never was alone with my mother now, &c.--and repeated
the whole to Aunt Esther.
From this time Aunt Esther resolutely set herself to subdue me
thoroughly--to make me feel that any remission of misery at home, any
comparative comfort, was as a gift from her. But to make me feel this
thoroughly, it was necessary that all pleasure and comfort in my home
should first be annihilated. I was a very delicate child, and suffered
absolute agonies from chilblains, which were often large open wounds on
my feet. Therefore I was put to sleep in "the Barracks"--two dismal
unfurnished, uncarpeted north rooms, without fireplaces, looking into a
damp courtyard, with a well and a howling dog. My only bed was a rough
deal trestle, my only bedding a straw palliasse, with a single coarse
blanket. The only other furniture in the room was a deal chair, and a
washing-basin on a tripod. No one was allowed to bring me any hot water;
and as the water in my room always froze with the intense cold, I had to
break the ice with a brass candlestick, or, if that were taken away,
with my wounded hands. If, when I came down in the morning, as was often
the case, I was almost speechless from sickness and misery, it was
always declared to be "temper." I was given "saur-kraut" to eat because
the very smell of it made me sick.
When Aunt Esther discovered the comfort that I found in getting away to
my dear old Lea, she persuaded my mother that Lea's influence over me
was a very bad one, and obliged her to keep me away from her.
A favourite torment was reviling all my own relations before me--my
sister, &c.--and there was no end to the insulting things Aunt Esther
said of them.
People may wonder, and oh! how often have I wondered that my mother did
not put an end to it all. But, inexplicable as it may seem, it was her
extraordinary religious opinions which prevented her doing so. She
literally believed and taught that when a person struck you on the right
cheek you were to invite them to strike you on the left also, and
therefore if Aunt Esther injured or insulted me in one way, it was
right that I should give her the opportunity of injuring or insulting me
in another! I do not think that my misery cost her nothing, she felt it
acutely; but _because_ she felt it thus, she welcomed it, as a fiery
trial to be endured. Lea, however, was less patient, and openly
expressed her abhorrence of her own trial in having to come up to the
Rectory daily to dress my mother for dinner, and walk back to Lime
through the dark night, coming again, shine or shower, in the early
morning, before my mother was up.
I would not have any one suppose that, on looking back through the
elucidation of years, I can see no merits in my Aunt Esther Hare. The
austerities which she enforced upon my mother with regard to me she
fully carried out as regarded herself. "Elle vivait avec elle-m\xEAme comme
sa victime," as Mme. de Sta\xEBl would describe it. She was the Inquisition
in person. She probed and analysed herself and the motive of her every
action quite as bitterly and mercilessly as she probed and analysed
others. If any pleasure, any even which resulted from affection for
others, had drawn her for an instant from what she believed to be the
path--and it was always the thorniest path--of self-sacrifice, she
would remorselessly denounce that pleasure, and even tear out that
affection from her heart. She fasted and denied herself in everything;
indeed, I remember that when she was once very ill, and it was necessary
for her to see a doctor, she never could be persuaded to consent to it,
till the happy idea occurred of inducing her to do so on a Friday, by
way of a penance! To such of the poor as accepted her absolute
authority, Aunt Esther was unboundedly kind, generous, and considerate.
To the wife of the curate, who leant confidingly upon her, she was an
unselfish and heroic nurse, equally judicious and tender, in every
crisis of a perplexing and dangerous illness. To her own sisters and
other members of her family her heart and home were ever open, with
unvarying affection. To her husband, to whom her severe creed taught her
to show the same inflexible obedience she exacted from others, she was
utterly devoted. His requirement that she should receive his old friend,
Mrs. Alexander, as a permanent inmate, almost on an equality with
herself in the family home, and surround her with loving attentions, she
bowed to without a murmur. But to a little boy who was, to a certain
degree, independent of her, and who had from the first somewhat
resented her interference, she knew how to be--oh! she was--most cruel.
Open war was declared at length between Aunt Esther and myself. I had a
favourite cat called Selma, which I adored, and which followed me about
at Lime wherever I went. Aunt Esther saw this, and at once insisted that
the cat must be given up to her. I wept over it in agonies of grief: but
Aunt Esther insisted. My mother was relentless in saying that I must be
taught to give up my own way and pleasure to others; and forced to give
it up if I would not do so willingly, and with many tears, I took Selma
in a basket to the Rectory. For some days it almost comforted me for
going to the Rectory, because then I possibly saw my idolised Selma. But
soon there came a day when Selma was missing: Aunt Esther had ordered
her to be ... hung!
From this time I never attempted to conceal that I loathed Aunt Esther.
I constantly gave her the presents which my mother made me save up all
my money to buy for her--for her birthday, Christmas, New Year, &c.--but
I never spoke to her unnecessarily. On these occasions I always received
a present from her in return--"The Rudiments of Architecture," price
ninepence, in a red cover. It was always the same, which not only saved
expense, but also the trouble of thinking. I have a number of copies of
"The Rudiments of Architecture" now, of which I thus became the
possessor.
Only from Saturday till Monday we had a reprieve. The nearness of Lime
to the school which my mother undertook to teach on Sundays was the
excuse, but, as I see from her journal, only the excuse, which she made
to give me one happy day in the week. How well I remember still the
ecstasy of these Saturday evenings, when I was once more alone with the
mother of my childhood, who was all the world to me, and she was almost
as happy as I was in playing with my kittens or my little black spaniel
"Lewes," and when she would sing to me all her old songs--"Hohenlinden,"
"Lord Ullin's Daughter," &c. &c.--and dear Lea was able to come in and
out undisturbed, in the old familiar way.
[Illustration: THE VESTRY, HURSTMONCEAUX.]
Even the pleasures of this home-Sunday, however, were marred in the
summer, when my mother gave in to a suggestion of Aunt Esther that I
should be locked into the vestry of the church between the services.
Miserable indeed were the three hours which--provided with a sandwich
for dinner--I had weekly to spend there; and though I did not expect to
see ghosts, the utter isolation of Hurstmonceaux Church, far away from
all haunts of men, gave my imprisonment an unusual eeriness. Sometimes I
used to clamber over the tomb of the Lords Dacre, which rises like a
screen against one side of the vestry, and be stricken with vague
terrors by the two grim white figures lying upon it in the silent
desolation, in which the scamper of a rat across the floor seemed to
make a noise like a whirlwind. At that time two grinning skulls (of the
founder and foundress of the church, it was believed) lay on the ledge
of the tomb; but soon after this Uncle Julius and Aunt Esther made a
weird excursion to the churchyard with a spade, and buried them in the
dusk with their own hands. In the winter holidays, the intense cold of
the unwarmed church made me so ill, that it led to my miserable penance
being remitted. James II. used to say that "Our Saviour flogged people
to make them go out of the temple, but that he never punished them to
make them go _in_."[36] But in my childhood no similar abstinence was
observed.
It was a sort of comfort to me, in the real church-time, to repeat
vigorously all the worst curses in the Psalms, those in which David
showed his most appalling degree of malice (Psalm xxxv. 7-16, Psalm
lix., Psalm lxix. 22-29, Psalm cxl. 9, 10, for instance), and apply them
to Aunt Esther & Co. As all the Psalms were extolled as beatific, and
the Church of England used them constantly for edification, their
sentiments were all right, I supposed.
A great delight to me at this time was a cabinet with many drawers which
my mother gave me to keep my minerals and shells in, and above which
was a little bookcase filled with all my own books. The aunts in vain
tried to persuade her to take away "some of the drawers," so that I
might "never have the feeling that the cabinet was wholly mine." When I
returned to school, it was some amusement in my walks to collect for
this cabinet the small fossils which abound in the Wiltshire limestone
about Harnish, especially at Kellaway's quarry, a point which it was
always our especial ambition to reach on holidays. At eleven years old I
was quite learned about Pentacrinites, Bellemnites, Ammonites, &c.
It was often a sort of vague comfort to me at home that there was always
one person at Hurstmonceaux Rectory whom Aunt Esther was thoroughly
afraid of. It was the faithful old servant Collins, who had kept his
master in order for many years. I remember that my Uncle Marcus, when he
came to the Rectory, complained dreadfully of the tea, that the water
with which it was made was never "on the boil," &c.--"they really must
speak to Collins about it." But neither Uncle Julius nor Aunt Esther
would venture to do it; they really couldn't: he must do it himself. And
he did it, and very ill it was received.
The summer holidays were less miserable than those in the winter,
because then, at least for a time, we got away from Hurstmonceaux. In
the summer of 1845, I went with my mother to her old home of Alton for
the first time. How well I remember her burst of tears as we came in
sight of the White Horse, and the church-bells ringing, and the many
simple cordial poor people coming out to meet her, and blessing her. She
visited every cottage and every person in them, and gave feasts in a
barn to all the people. One day the school-children all sang a sort of
ode which a farmer's daughter had composed to her. Never was my sweet
mother more charming than in her intercourse with her humble friends at
Alton, and I delighted in threading with her the narrow muddy foot-lanes
of the village to the different cottages, of old and young Mary Doust,
of Lizzie Hams, Avis Wootton, Betty Perry, &c.
Alton was, and is, quite the most primitive place I have ever seen,
isolated--an oasis of verdure--in the midst of the great Wiltshire
corn-plain, which is bare ploughed land for so many months of the year;
its two tiny churches within a stone-throw of each other, and its
thatched mud cottages peeping out of the elms which surround its few
grass pastures. A muddy chalky lane leads from the village up to "Old
Adam," the nearest point on the chain of downs, and close by is a White
Horse, not the famous beast of Danish celebrity, but something much more
like the real animal. I was never tired during this visit of hearing
from his loving people what "Uncle Augustus" had said to them, and truly
his words and his image seemed indelibly impressed upon their hearts.
Mrs. Pile, with whose father or sister we stayed when at Alton, and who
always came to meet us there, was one of those rare characters in middle
life who are really ennobled by the ceaseless action of a true,
practical, humble Christianity. I have known many of those persons whom
the world calls "great ladies" in later times, but I have never known
any one who was more truly "a lady" in every best and highest sense,
than Mrs. Pile.
On leaving Alton, we went to join the Marcus Hares in the express train
at Swindon. Uncle Marcus, Aunt Lucy, her maid Griffiths, and my mother
were in one compartment of the carriage; my little cousin Lucebella,
Lea, an elderly peer (Lord Saye and Sele, I think), and I were in the
other, for carriages on the Great Western were then divided by a door.
As we neared Windsor, my little cousin begged to be held up that she
might see if the flag were flying on the castle. At that moment there
was a frightful crash, and the carriage dashed violently from side to
side. In an instant the dust was so intense that all became pitch
darkness. "For God's sake put up your feet and press backwards; I've
been in this before," cried Lord S., and we did so. In the other
compartment all the inmates were thrown violently on the floor, and
jerked upwards with every lurch of the train. If the darkness cleared
for an instant, I saw Lea's set teeth and livid face opposite. I learned
then for the first time that to put hand-bags in the net along the top
of the carriage is most alarming in case of accident. They are dashed
hither and thither like so many cannon-balls. A dressing-case must be
fatal.
After what seemed an endless time, the train suddenly stopped with a
crash. We had really, I believe, been three minutes off the line.
Instantly a number of men surrounded the carriage. "There is not an
instant to lose, another train is upon you, they may not be able to stop
it,"--and we were all dragged out and up the steep bank of the railway
cutting. Most strange, I remember, was the appearance of our ruined
train beneath, lying quite across the line. The wheels of the luggage
van at the end had come off, and the rest of the train had been dragged
off the line gradually, the last carriages first. Soon two trains were
waiting (stopped) on the blocked line behind. We had to wait on the top
of the bank till a new train came to fetch us from Slough, and when we
arrived there, we found the platform full of anxious inquirers, and much
sympathy we excited, quite black and blue with bruises, though none of
us seriously hurt.
[Illustration: LEWES.]
Soon after we reached Hurstmonceaux, my Uncle Marcus became seriously
ill at the Rectory. I went with my mother, Aunt Esther, and Uncle Julius
to his "charge" at Lewes, and, as we came back in the hot evening, we
were met by a messenger desiring us not to drive up to the house, as
Uncle Marcus must not be disturbed by the sound of wheels. Then his
children were sent to Lime, and my mother was almost constantly at the
Rectory. I used to go secretly to see her there, creeping in through the
garden so as not to be observed by the aunts, for Aunt Lucy could
scarcely bear her to be out of sight. At last one morning I was summoned
to go up to the Rectory with all the three children. Marcus went in
first alone to his father's room and was spoken to: then I went in with
the younger ones. Lucebella was lifted on to the pillow, I stood at the
side of the bed with Theodore; my mother, Uncle Julius, and Aunt Esther
were at the foot. I remember the scene as a picture, and Aunt Lucy
sitting stonily at the bed's-head in a violet silk dress. My dying uncle
had a most terrible look and manner, which haunted me long afterwards,
but he spoke to us, and I think gave us his blessing. I was told that
after we left the room he became more tranquil. In the night my mother
and Uncle Julius said the "Te Deum" aloud, and, as they reached the last
verse, he died.
Aunt Lucy never saw him again. She insisted upon being brought away
immediately to Lime, and shut herself up there. She was very peculiar at
this time and for a year afterwards, one of her odd fancies being that
her maid Griffiths was always to breakfast and have luncheon with the
family and be waited on as a lady. We children all went to the funeral,
driving in the family chariot. I had no real affection for Uncle Marcus,
but felt unusually solemnised by the tears around me. When, however, a
peacock butterfly, for which I had always longed, actually perched upon
my prayer-book as I was standing by the open grave in the most solemn
moment, I could not resist closing the book upon it, and my prayer-book
still has the marks of the butterfly's death. I returned to school in
August under the care of Mr. Hull, a very old friend of the family, who
had come to the funeral.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Harnish, August 8._--When we got to London we got a cab and went,
passing the Guildhall where Gog and Magog live, the great
Post-Office, the New Royal Exchange and the Lord Mayor's, to
Tavistock Square, where three young men rushed down-stairs, who Mr.
Hull told me were his three sons--John, Henry, and Frank. I had my
tea when they had their dinner. After tea I looked at Miss Hull's
drawings. Mr. Hull gave me a book called 'The Shadowless Man.' I
stayed up to see a balloon, for which we had to go upon the top of
the house. The balloon looked like a ball of fire. It scattered all
kinds of lights, but it did not stay up very long. We also saw a
house on fire, the flames burst out and the sky was all red. Do
give the kitten and the kitten's kitten some nice bits from your
tea for my sake."
"_August 30._--We have been a picknick to Slaughterford. We all
went in a van till the woods of Slaughterford came in sight. Then
we walked up a hill, carrying baskets and cloaks between us till we
came to the place where we encamped. The dinner was unpacked, and
the cloth laid, and all sate round. When the dishes were uncovered,
there appeared cold beef, bread, cheese, and jam, which were
quickly conveyed to the mouths of the longing multitude. We then
plunged into the woods and caught the nuts by handfuls. Then I got
flowers and did a sketch, and when the van was ready we all went
home. Goodbye darling Mamma. I have written a poem, which I send
you--
"O Chippenham station thy music is sweet
When the up and down trains thy neighbourhood greet.
The up train to London directeth our path
And the down train will land us quite safely at Bath."
"_October_ the I don't know what.--O dearest Mamma, what do you
think! Mr. Dalby asked me to go to Compton Bassett with Mr. and
Mrs. Kilvert and Freddie Sheppard.... When we got to the gate of a
lovely rectory near Calne, Mrs. Sheppard flew to the door to
receive her son, as you would me, with two beautiful little girls
his sisters. After dinner I went with Freddie into the garden, and
to the church, and saw the peacocks and silver pheasants, and made
a sketch of the rectory. On Sunday we had prayers with singing and
went to church twice, and saw a beautiful avenue where the ground
was covered with beech-nuts. On Monday the Dalbys' carriage brought
us to Chippenham to the Angel, where we got out and walked to
Harnish. Mr. Dalby told me to tell you that having known Uncle
Augustus so well, he had taken _the liberty_ to invite me to
Compton."
"_Oct. 6._--It is now only ten weeks and six days to the holidays.
Last night I had a pan of hot water for my feet and a warm bed,
and, what was worse, two horrible pills! and this morning when I
came down I was presented with a large breakfast-cup of senna-tea,
and was very sick indeed and had a very bad stomach-ache. But to
comfort me I got your dear letter with a sermon, but who is to
preach it?"
"_Nov. 6._--Dearest Mamma, as soon as we came down yesterday all
our dresses for the fifth of November were laid out. After
breakfast the procession was dressed, and as soon as the sentinel
proclaimed that the clock struck ten, the grand procession set
out: first Gumbleton and Sheppard dressed up with straps, cocked
hats, and rosettes, carrying between them, on a chair, Samuel
dressed as Guy Fawkes in a large cocked hat and short cloak and
with a lanthorn in his hand. Then came Proby carrying a Union Jack,
and Walter (Arnold) with him, with rosettes and bands. Then King
Alick with a crown turned up with ermine, and round his leg a blue
garter. Behind him walked the Queen (Deacon Coles) with a purple
crown and long yellow robe and train, and Princess Elizabeth (me)
in a robe and train of pink and green. After the procession had
moved round the garden, singing--
'Remember, remember,
The fifth of November, &c,'
the sentinel of the guard announced that the cart of faggots was
coming up the hill ... and in the evening was a beautiful bonfire
and fireworks.
"What a pity it is that the new railway does not turn aside to save
Lewes Priory. I shall like very much to see the skeletons, but I
had much rather that Gundrada and her husband lay still in their
coffins, and that the Priory had not been disturbed.... It is only
five weeks now to the holidays."
"_Nov. 28._--Counting to the 19th, and not counting the day of
breaking up, it is now only three weeks to the holidays. I will
give you a history of getting home. From Lewes I shall look out for
the castle and the Visitation church. Then I shall pass Ringmer,
the Green Man Inn, Laughton, the Bat and Ball; then the Dicker,
Horsebridge, the Workhouse, the turnpike, the turn to Carter's
Corner, the turn to Magham Down, Woodham's Farm, the Deaf and Dumb
House, the Rectory on the hill, the Mile Post--'15 miles to Lewes,'
Lime Wood, the gate (oh! when shall I be there!)--then turn in, the
Flower Field, the Beaney Field, _the_ gate--oh! the garden--two
figures--John and Lea, perhaps you--perhaps even the kittens will
come to welcome their master. Oh my Lime! in little more than three
weeks I shall be there!"
"_Hurrah for Dec. 1._--On Wednesday it will be, not counting
breaking-up day, two weeks, and oh! the Wednesday after we shall
say 'one week.' This month we break up! I dream of nothing, think
of nothing, but coming home. To-day we went with Mr. Walker (the
usher) to Chippenham, and saw where Lea and I used to go to sit on
the wooden bridge.... Not many more letters! not many more sums!"
How vividly, how acutely, I recollect that--in my passionate devotion to
my mother--I used, as the holidays approached, to conjure up the most
vivid mental pictures of my return to her, and appease my longing with
the thought of how she would rush out to meet me, of her ecstatic
delight, &c.; and then how terrible was the bathos of the reality, when
I drove up to the silent door of Lime, and nobody but Lea took any
notice of my coming; and of the awful chill of going into the
drawing-room and seeing my longed-for and pined-for mother sit still in
her chair by the fire till I went up and kissed her. To her, who had
been taught always to curtsey not only to her father, but even to her
father's chair, it was only natural; but I often sobbed myself to sleep
in a little-understood agony of anguish--an anguish that she could not
really care for me.
"Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!"[37]
In the winter of 1845-46, "Aunt Lucy" let Rockend to Lord Beverley, and
came to live at Lime for six months with her three children, a
governess, and two, sometimes three, servants. As she fancied herself
poor, and this plan was economical, it was frequently repeated
afterwards. On the whole, the arrangement was satisfactory to me, as
though Aunt Lucy was excessively unkind to me, and often did not speak a
single word to me for many weeks together, and though the children were
most tormenting, Aunt Esther--a far greater enemy--was at least kept at
bay, for Aunt Lucy detested her influence and going to the Rectory quite
as cordially as I did.
How often I remember my ever-impatient rebellion against the doctrine I
was always taught as fundamental--that my uncles and aunts must be
always right, and that to question the absolute wisdom and justice of
their every act--to me so utterly selfish--was typical of the meanest
and vilest nature. How odd it is that parents, and still more uncles and
aunts, never will understand, that whilst they are criticising and
scrutinising their children or nephews, the latter are also scrutinising
and criticising them. Yet so it is: investigation and judgment of
character is usually mutual. During this winter, however, I imagine that
the aunts were especially amiable, as in the child's play which I wrote,
and which we all acted--"The Hope of the Katzekoffs"--they, with my
mother, represented the three fairies--"Brigida, Rigida, and
Frigida"--Aunt Lucy, I need hardly say, being Frigida, and Aunt Esther
Rigida.
[Illustration: Augustus J. C. Hare
From a portrait by S. Lawrence.]
Being very ill with the measles kept me at home till the middle of
February. Aunt Lucy's three children also had the measles, and were very
ill; and it is well remembered as characteristic of Aunt Esther, that
she said when they were at the worst--"I am _very glad_ they are so ill:
it is a well-deserved punishment because their mother would not let
them go to church for fear they should catch it there." Church and a
love of church was the standard by which Aunt Esther measured
everything. In all things she had the inflexible cruelty of a Dominican.
She would willingly and proudly undergo martyrdom herself for her own
principles, but she would torture without remorse those who differed
from her.
When we were recovering, Aunt Lucy read "Guy Mannering" aloud to us. It
was enchanting. I had always longed beyond words to read Scott's novels,
but had never been allowed to do so--"they were too exciting for a boy!"
But usually, as Aunt Lucy and my mother sat together, their conversation
was almost entirely about the spiritual things in which their hearts,
their mental powers, their whole being were absorbed. The doctrine of
Pascal was always before their minds--"La vie humaine n'est qu'une
illusion perpetuelle," and their treasure was truly set in heavenly
places. They would talk of heaven in detail just as worldly people would
talk of the place where they were going for change of air. At this time,
I remember, they both wished--no, I suppose they only thought they
wished--to die: they talked of longing, pining for "the coming of the
kingdom," but when they grew really old, when the time which they had
wished for before was in all probability really near, and when they
were, I believe, far more really prepared for it, they ceased to wish
for it. "By-and-by" would do. I imagine it is always thus.
Aunt Lucy loved her second boy Theodore much the best of her three
children, and made the greatest possible difference between him and the
others. I remember this being very harshly criticised at the time; but
now it seems to me only natural that in any family there must be
favourites. It is with earthly parents as Dr. Foxe said in a sermon
about God, that "though he may love all his children, he must have an
especial feeling for his saints."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_March 13._--My dearest, dearest Mamma, to-day is my 12th
birthday. How well I remember many happy birthdays at Stoke, when
before breakfast I had a wreath of snowdrops, and at dinner a
little pudding with my name in plums.... I will try this new year
to throw away self and think less how to please it. Good-bye dear
Mamma."
In March the news that my dear (Mary) Lea was going to marry our
man-servant John Gidman was an awful shock to me. My mother might easily
have prevented this (most unequal) marriage, which, as far as Mrs.
Leycester was concerned, was an elopement. It was productive of great
trouble to us afterwards, and obliged me to endure John Gidman, to wear
him like a hair-shirt, for forty years. Certainly no ascetic torments
can be so severe as those which Providence occasionally ordains for us.
As for our dear Lea herself, her marriage brought her misery enough, but
her troubles always stayed in her heart and never filtered through. As I
once read in an American novel, "There ain't so much difference in the
troubles on this earth, as there is in the folks that have to bear
them."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_March 20._--O my very dearest Mamma. What news! what news! I
cannot believe it! and yet sometimes I have thought it might
happen, for one night a long time ago when I was sitting on Lea's
lap--O what shall I call her now? may I still call her Lea? Well,
one night a long time ago, I said that Lea would never marry, and
she asked why she shouldn't, and said something about--'Suppose I
marry John.' ... I was sure she could never leave us. I put your
letter away for some time till Mrs. Kilvert sent me upstairs for my
gloves. Then I opened it, and the first words I saw were
'Lea--married.' I was so surprised I could not speak or move....
How very odd it will be for Lea to be a bride. Why, John is not
half so old as Lea, is he?... Tell me all about the wedding--every
smallest weeest thing--What news! what news!"
MARY (LEA) GIDMAN _to_ A. J. C. H.
"_Stoke_, _March_ 29, 1846.--My darling child, a thousand thanks
for your dear little letter. I hope the step I have taken will not
displease you. If there is anything in it you don't like, I must
humbly beg your pardon. I will give you what account I can of the
wedding. Your dear Mamma has told you that she took me to
Goldstone. Then on Saturday morning a little after nine my mother's
carriage and a saddle-horse were brought to the gate to take us to
Cheswardine. My sister Hannah and her husband and George Bentley
went with me to church. I wished you had been with me so very much,
but I think it was better that your dear Mamma was not there, for
very likely it would have given her a bad headache and have made me
more nervous than I was, but I got through all of it better than I
expected I should. As soon as it was over the bells began to ring.
We came back to Goldstone, stayed about ten minutes, then went to
Drayton, took the coach for Whitmore, went by rail to Chelford, and
then we got a one-horse fly which took us to Thornycroft to John's
grandfather's, where we were received with much joy. We stayed
there till Wednesday, then went for one night to Macclesfield, and
came back to Goldstone on Thursday and stayed there till Friday
evening. Then we came back to Stoke. The servants received us very
joyfully, and your dear Mamma showed me such tender feelings and
kindness, it is more than I can tell you now. My dear child, I hope
you will always call me Lea. I cannot bear the thought of your
changing my name, for the love I have for you nothing can ever
change. My mother and Hannah wish you had been in the garden with
me gathering their flowers, there is such a quantity of them.... We
leave Stoke to-morrow, and on Friday reach your and our dear Lime.
I shall write to you as soon as we get back, and now goodbye, my
darling child, from your old affectionate nurse Lea."
[Illustration: REV. O. LEYCESTER'S GRAVE, STOKE CHURCHYARD.]
The great age of my dear Grandfather Leycester, ninety-five, had always
made his life seem to us to hang upon a thread, and very soon after I
returned home for my summer holidays, we were summoned to Stoke by the
news of his death. This was a great grief to me, not only because I was
truly attached to the kind old man, but because it involved the parting
with the happiest scenes of my childhood, the only home in which I had
ever been really happy. The dear Grandfather's funeral was very
different from that which I had attended last year, and I shed many
tears by his grave in the churchyard looking out upon the willows and
the shining Terne. Afterwards came many sad partings, last visits to
Hawkestone, Buntingsdale, Goldstone; last rambles to Helshore, Jackson's
Pool, and the Islands; and then we all came away--my Uncle Penrhyn
first, then Aunt Kitty, then my mother and Lea and I, and lastly
Grannie, who drove in her own carriage all the way to her house in New
Street, Spring Gardens, the posting journey, so often talked of,
actually taking place at last. Henceforward Stoke seemed to be
transferred to New Street, which was filled with relics of the old
Shropshire Rectory, and where Mrs. Cowbourne, Margaret Beeston, Anne
Tudor, and Richard the footman, with Rose the little red and white
spaniel, were household inmates as before.
I thought the house in New Street charming--the cool, old-fashioned,
bow-windowed rooms, which we should now think very scantily furnished,
and like those of many a country inn; the dining-room opening upon wide
leads, which Grannie soon turned into a garden; the drawing-room, which
had a view through the trees of the Admiralty Garden to the Tilting
Yard, with the Horse Guards and the towers of Westminster Abbey.
The grief of leaving Stoke made me miserably unwell, and a doctor was
sent for as soon as I arrived at the Stanleys' house, 38 Lower Brook
Street, who came to me straight from a patient ill with the scarlatina,
and gave me the disorder. For three weeks I was very seriously ill in
hot summer weather, in stifling rooms, looking on the little black
garden and chimney-pots at the back of the house. Mary and Kate Stanley
were sent away from the infection, and no one came near me except my
faithful friend Miss Clinton, who brought me eau-de-Cologne and flowers.
It was long foolishly concealed from me that I had the scarlatina, and
therefore, as I felt day after day of the precious holidays ebbing away,
while I was pining for coolness and fresh country air, my mental fever
added much to my bodily ailments, whereas, when once told that I was
seriously ill, I was quite contented to lie still. Before I quite
recovered, my dear nurse Lea became worn-out with attending to me, and
we had scarcely reached Lime before she became most dangerously ill with
a brain-fever. For many days and nights she lay on the brink of the
grave, and great was my agony while this precious life was in danger.
Aunt Esther, who on _great_ occasions generally behaved kindly, was very
good at this time, ceased to persecute me, and took a very active part
in the nursing.
At length our dear Lea was better, and as I was still very fragile, I
went with my mother and Anne Brooke, our cook, to Eastbourne--then a
single row of little old-fashioned houses by the sea--where we
inhabited, I should think, the very smallest and humblest lodging that
ever was seen. I have often been reminded of it since in reading the
account of Peggotty's cottage in "David Copperfield." It was a tiny
house built of flints, amongst the boats, at the then primitive end of
Eastbourne, towards the marshes, and its miniature rooms were filled
with Indian curiosities, brought to the poor widow to whom it belonged
by a sailor son. The Misses Thomas of Wratton came to see us here, and
could hardly suppress their astonishment at finding us in such a
place--and when the three tall smart ladies had once got into our room,
no one was able to move, and all had to go out in the order in which
they were nearest the door. But my mother always enjoyed exceedingly
these primitive places, and would sit for hours on the beach with her
Taylor's "Holy Living" or her "Christian Year," and had soon made many
friends amongst the neighbouring cottagers, whose houses were quite as
fine as her own, and who were certainly more cordial to the lady who had
not minded settling down as one of themselves, than they would have been
to a smart visitor in a carriage. The most remarkable of these people
was an excellent old woman called Deborah Pattenden, who lived in the
half of a boat turned upside down, and had had the most extraordinary
adventures. My first literary work was her biography, which told how she
had suffered the pains of drowning, burning (having been enveloped in
flames while struck by lightning), and how she had lain for twenty-one
days in a rigid trance (from "the plague," she described it) without
food or sign of life, and was near being buried alive. We found a
transition from our cottage life in frequent visits to Compton Place,
where Mrs. Cavendish, mother of the 7th Duke of Devonshire, lived then,
with her son Mr. Cavendish, afterwards Lord Richard. She was a charming
old lady, who always wore white, and had very simple and very timid
manners. But she was fond of my mother, who was quite adored by Lord
Richard, by whom we were kept supplied with the most beautiful fruits
and flowers of the Compton Gardens. He was very kind to me also, and
would sometimes take me to his bookcases and tell me to choose any book
I liked for my own. We seldom afterwards passed a summer without going
for a few days to Compton Place as long as Mrs. Cavendish lived there.
It was there that I made my first acquaintance with the existence of
many simple luxuries to which, in our primitive life, we were quite
unaccustomed, but which in great houses are considered almost as
necessaries. The Cavendishes treated us as distant relations, in
consequence of the marriage of my Grandmother's cousin, Georgiana
Spencer, with the 5th Duke of Devonshire.
When I returned to Harnish I was still wretchedly ill, and the constant
sickness under which I suffered, with the extreme and often unjust
severity of Mr. Kilvert, made the next half year a very miserable one.
In the three years and a half which I had spent at Harnish, I had been
taught next to nothing--all our time having been frittered in learning
Psalms by heart, and the Articles of the Church of England (I could say
the whole thirty-nine straight off when eleven years old), &c. Our
history was what Arrowsmith's Atlas used to describe Central Africa to
be--"a barren country only productive of dates." I could scarcely
construe even the easiest passages of C\xE6sar. Still less had I learned to
play at any ordinary boys' games; for, as we had no playground, we had
naturally never had a chance of any. I was glad of any change. It was
delightful to leave Harnish for good at Christmas, 1846, and the
prospect of Harrow was that of a voyage of adventure.
In January 1847 my mother took me to Harrow. Dr. Vaughan was then
headmaster, and Mr. Simpkinson, who had been long a curate of
Hurstmonceaux, and who had been consequently one of the most familiar
figures of my childhood, was a master under him, and, with his handsome,
good-humoured sister Louisa, kept the large house for boys beyond the
church, which is still called "The Grove." It was a wonderfully new life
upon which I entered; but though a public school was a very much rougher
thing then than it is now, and though the fagging for little boys was
almost ceaseless, it would not have been an unpleasant life if I had not
been so dreadfully weak and sickly, which sometimes unfitted me for
enduring the roughness to which I was subjected. As a general rule,
however, I looked upon what was intended for bullying as an additional
"adventure," which several of the big boys thought so comic, that they
were usually friendly to me and ready to help me: one who especially
stood my friend was a young giant--Twisleton, son of Lord Saye and Sele.
One who went to Harrow at the same time with me was my connection Harry
Adeane,[38] whose mother was Aunt Lucy's sister, Maude Stanley of
Alderley. I liked Harry very much, but though he was in the same house,
his room was so distant that we saw little of each other; besides, my
intense ignorance gave me a very low place in the school, in the Lower
Fourth Form. It was a great amusement to write to my mother all that
occurred. In reading it, people might imagine my narration was intended
for complaint, but it was nothing of the kind: indeed, had I wished to
complain, I should have known my mother far too well to complain to
_her_.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Harrow, Jan. 29, 1847._--When I left you, I went to school and
came back to pupil room, and in the afternoon had a solitary walk
to the skating pond covered with boys.... In the evening two big
boys rushed up, and seizing Buller (another new boy) and me,
dragged us into a room where a number of boys were assembled. I was
led into the midst. Bob Smith[39] whispered to me to do as I was
bid and I should not be hurt. On the other side of the room were
cold chickens, cake, fruit, &c., and in a corner were a number of
boys holding open little Dirom's mouth, and pouring something
horrible stirred up with a tallow-candle down his throat. A great
boy came up to me and told me to sing or to drink some of this
dreadful mixture. I did sing--at least I made a noise--and the boys
were pleased because I made no fuss, and loaded me with oranges and
cakes.
"This morning being what is _called_ a whole holiday, I have had to
stay in three hours more than many of the others because of my
slowness in making Latin verses. This evening Abel Smith sent for
me to his room, and asked me if I was comfortable, and all sorts of
things."
"_Jan. 21._--What do you think happened last night? Before prayers
I was desired to go into the fifth form room, as they were having
some game there. A boy met me at the door, ushered me in, and told
me to make my salaam to the Emperor of Morocco, who was seated
cross-legged in the middle of a large counterpane, surrounded by
twenty or more boys as his serving-men. I was directed to sit down
by the Emperor, and in the same way. He made me sing, and then
jumped off the counterpane, as he said, to get me some cake.
Instantly all the boys seized the counterpane and tossed away. Up
to the ceiling I went and down again, but they had no mercy, and it
was up and down, head over heels, topsy-turvy, till some one called
out 'Satus'--and I was let out, very sick and giddy at first, but
soon all right again.... I am not much bullied except by Davenport,
who sleeps in my room."
"_Jan. 22._--To-day it has snowed so hard that there has been
nothing but snow-balling, and as I was coming out of school, hit
by a shower of snowballs, I tumbled the whole way down the two
flights of stairs headlong from the top to the bottom."
"_Jan. 23._--Yesterday I was in my room, delighted to be alone for
once, and very much interested in the book I was reading, when D.
came in and found the fire out, so I got a good licking. He makes
me his fag to go errands, and do all he bids me, and if I don't do
it, he beats me, but I don't mind much. However, I have got some
friends, for when I refused to do my week-day lessons on a Sunday,
and was being very much laughed at for it, some one came in and
said, 'No, Hare, you're quite right; never mind being laughed at.'
However I am rather lonely still with no one to speak to or care
about me. Sometimes I take refuge in Burroughs' study, but I cannot
do that often, or he would soon get tired of me. I think I shall
like Waldegrave,[40] a new boy who has come, but all the others
hate him. Blomfield[41] is a nice boy, but his room is very far
away. Indeed, our room is so secluded, that it would be a very
delightful place if D. did not live in it. In playtime I go here,
there, and everywhere, but with no one and doing nothing. Yet I
like Harrow very much, though I am much teased even in my form by
one big boy, who takes me for a drum, and hammers on my two sides
all lesson-time with doubled fists. However, Miss Simmy says, if
you could see my roses you would be satisfied."
"_Jan. 30._--There are certain fellows here who read my last letter
to you, and gave me a great lecture for mentioning boys' names; but
you must never repeat what I say: it could only get me into
trouble. The other night I did a desperate thing. I appealed to the
other boys in the house against D. Stapleton was moved by my story,
and Hankey and other boys listened. Then a boy called Sturt was
very much enraged at D., and threatened him greatly, and finally
D., after heaping all the abuse he could think of upon me, got so
frightened that he begged me to be friends with him. I cannot tell
you how I have suffered and do suffer from my chilblains, which
have become so dreadfully bad from going out so early and in all
weathers."
"_Feb. 2._--To-day, after half-past one Bill, I went down the town
with Buller and met two boys called Bocket and Lory. Lory and I,
having made acquaintance, went for a walk. This is only the second
walk I have had since I came to Harrow. I am perpetually 'Boy in
the House.'"
"_Feb. 10._--To-day at 5 minutes to 11, we were all told to go into
the Speech-room (do you remember it?), a large room with raised
benches all round and a platform in the middle and places for the
monitors. I sat nearly at the top of one of these long ranges. Then
Dr. Vaughan made a speech about snow-balling at the Railway Station
(a forbidden place), where the engine-drivers and conductors had
been snow-balled, and he said that the next time, if he could not
find out the names of the guilty individuals, the whole school
should be punished. To-day the snow-balling, or rather ice-balling
(for the balls are so hard you can hardly cut them with a knife),
has been terrific: some fellows almost have their arms broken with
them."
"_Feb. 12._--I am in the hospital with dreadful pains in my
stomach. The hospital is a large room, very quiet, with a window
looking out into the garden, and two beds in it. Burroughs is in
the other bed, laid up with a bad leg.... Yesterday, contrary to
rule, Dr. Vaughan called Bill, and then told all the school to stay
in their places, and said that he had found the keyhole of the
cupboard in which the rods were kept stopped up, and that if he did
not find out before one o'clock who did it, he would daily give the
whole school, from the sixth form downwards, a new pun, of the
severest kind.... There never was anything like the waste of bread
here, whole bushels are thrown about every day, but the bits are
given to the poor people.... I like Valletort[42] very much, and I
like Twisleton,[43] who is one of the biggest boys in this house."
"_Feb. 20._--To-day I went to the Harrisites' steeplechase. Nearly
all the school were there, pouring over hedges and ditches in a
general rush. The Harrisites were distinguished by their white or
striped pink and white jackets and Scotch caps, and all bore
flags."
"_Feb. 21._--I have been out jumping and hare-and-hounds, but we
have hard work now to escape from the slave-drivers for
racket-fagging. Sometimes we do, by one fellow sacrificing himself
and shutting up the others head downwards in the turn-up bedsteads,
where they are quite hidden; and sometimes I get the old woman at
the church to hide me in the little room over the porch till the
slave-drivers have passed."
"_March 1._--I have just come back from Sheen, where I have had a
very happy Exeat. Uncle Norwich gave me five shillings, and Uncle
Penrhyn ten."
MRS. STANLEY _to_
HER SISTER MRS. A. HARE.
"_Sheen, March 1._--I never saw Augustus look anything like so
well--and it is the look of health, ruddy and firm, and his face
rounder. The only thing is that he stoops, as if there were
weakness in the back, but perhaps it is partly shyness, for I
observed he did it more at first. He did look very shy the first
day--hung his head like a snowdrop, crouched out of sight, and was
with difficulty drawn out; but I do not think it is at all because
he is cowed, and he talked more yesterday. The Bishop was very much
pleased with him, and thought him much improved.... He came without
either greatcoat or handkerchief, but did not appear to want the
one, and had lost the other. He said most decidedly that he was
happy, far happier than at Mr. Kilvert's, happier than he expected
to be; and, though I felt all the time what an uncongenial element
it must be, he could not be in it under better circumstances."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_March 4._--As you are ill, I will tell you my adventure of
yesterday to amuse you. I went out with a party of friends to play
at hare-and-hounds. I was hare, and ran away over hedges and
ditches. At last, just as I jumped over a hedge, Macphail caught
me, and we sat down to take breath. Just then Hoare ran up
breathless and panting, and threw himself into the hedge crying
out, 'We are pursued by navvies.' The next minute, before I could
climb back over the hedge, I found myself clutched by the arm, and
turning round, saw that a great fellow had seized me, and that
another had got Macphail and another Hodgson Junior. They dragged
us a good way, and then stopped and demanded our money, or they
would have us down and one should suffer for all. Macphail and
Hoare were so frightened that they gave up all their money at once,
but I would not give up mine. At last they grew perfectly furious
and declared they _would_ have our money to buy beer. I then gave
them a shilling, but hid the half-sovereign I had in my pocket, and
after we had declared we would not give them any more, they went
away.
"To cut the story short, I got Hodgson Junior (for the others were
afraid) to go with me to the farmer on whose land the men were
working, and told what had happened. He went straight to the field
where the navvies were and made them give up all our money, turned
one out of his service, and threatened the other two, and we came
back to Harrow quite safe, very glad to have got off so well.
"What do you think! the fever has broken out in Vaughan's, and if
any other house catches it, we are to go--home!"
"_March 9._--All the school is in an uproar, for all Vaughan's
house went down yesterday. Two boys have the fever, and if any one
else catches it, we shall all go home. What fun it will be. The
fever came straight from Eton with some velocipedes. Everybody now
thinks everybody else has the fever. I am shunned by all because I
have a sore throat, and half-a-yard is left on each side of me in
form. Boys suck camphor in school. Endless are the reports.
'Pember's got the fever.'--'No, he hasn't.'--'Yes, he has, for it's
broke out in Harris's.'--'Then we shall all go home. Hurrah!'--'No,
it's all a gull!'"
* * * * *
"My adventure with the navvies has been a very good thing for me,
as some fellows say 'that little Hare has really got some pluck.'"
"_March 10._--Hurrah! Vaughan has caught the fever. The Vaughanites
are all gone. Valletort is gone. Waldegrave is gone. But the great
news is we all go home the day after to-morrow. Now if you don't
write the instant you get this you will delay my return home. So
pray, Mamma, do--do--do--do. I cannot write much, for the school is
so hurry-scurry. There will be no Trial--oh hip! hip! Oh pray do
write directly! I shall see you soon. Hurrah!"
(After Easter holidays), "_April 14._--When I got here, I found
Davenport was gone and Dirom come into our room. The bells rang all
night for the return of the school. We are busy at our Trial, which
we do with our masters in form. We did Ovid this morning, and I
knew much more about it than many other fellows."
"_Saturday._--To-day has been a whole holiday, as it always is at
the end of Trial. I have got off very well, and learnt eighty lines
more than I need have done, for we need only have learnt fifty
lines, and I knew more of other things than many others.
"To-day was 'Election Day'--commonly called Squash Day (oh, how
glad I am it is over), the day most dreaded of all others by the
little boys, when they get squashed black and blue, and almost
turned inside out. But you won't understand this, so I will tell
you. Platt, horrid Platt, stands at one side of Vaughan's desk in
school, and Hewlett at the other, and read the names. As they are
read, you go up and say who you vote for as cricket-keeper, and as
you come out, the party you vote against squash you, while your
party try to rescue you. Sometimes this lasts a whole hour (without
exaggeration it's no fun), but to-day at breakfast the joyful news
came that the fourth form was let off squash. It was such a
delight. The fifth form were determined that we should have
something though, for as we came out of Bill, they tried to knock
our hats to pieces, and ourselves to pieces too."
"_April 24._--The boys have all begun to wear strawhats and to buy
insect-nets, for many are very fond of collecting insects, and to
my delight I found, when I came up, that they did not at all
despise picking primroses and violets."
"_April 28._--The other day, as Sturt was staying out, I had to fag
in his place. I had to go to that horrid Platt at Ben's. At the
door of Ben's was P----. I asked him which was Platt's room, and he
took me upstairs and pushed me into a little dark closet, and when
I got out of that, into a room where a number of fellows were at
tea, and then to another. At last I came to some stairs where two
boys were sitting cross-legged before a door. They were the
tea-fags. I went in, and there were Platt and his brother, very
angry at my being late, but at last they let me go, or rather I was
kicked out of the house.
"To-day we went to hear a man read the 'Merchant of Venice' in
Speech-room. Such fun: I liked it so much."
"_May 1._--Yesterday I was in a predicament. Hewlett, the head of
our house, sent me with a note to Sporling, the head of the school,
in Vaughan's new house. I asked a boy which was Sporling's. He told
me that I should find him upstairs, so I went up stairs after
stairs, and at the top were two monitors, and as I looked
bewildered by the long passages, they told me which was Sporling's
room. When I came out with an answer to the note, they called after
me, and ordered me to give Hewlett their compliments, and tell him
not to be in too great a hurry to get into Sporling's shoes. You
must obey a monitor's orders, and if you don't you get a wapping;
but I was pretty sure to get a wapping anyway--from the monitors if
I did not deliver the message, and from Hewlett for its
impertinence. I asked a great many boys, and they all said I must
tell Hewlett directly. At last I did: he was in a great rage, but
said I might go.
"I have 7s. 6d. owed me, for as soon as the boys have any money
they are almost obliged to lend it; at least you never have any
peace till it is all gone. Some of the boys keep rabbits in the
wells of their studies, but to-night Simmy has forbidden this."
"_June._--On Sunday in the middle of the Commandments it was so hot
in chapel that Kindersley fell down in a fit. He was seized head
and foot and carried out, struggling terribly, by Smith and Vernon
and others: and the boys say that in his fit he seized hold of Mr.
Middlemist's (the Mathematical Master's) nose and gave it a very
hard tweak; but how far this is true I cannot tell. However, the
whole chapel rose up in great consternation, some thinking one
thing and some another, and some not knowing what to think, while
others perhaps thought as I did, that the roof was coming down. Dr.
Vaughan went on reading the prayers, and Kindersley shrieking, but
at last all was quiet. Soon, however, there was another row, for
Miles fainted, and he was carried out, and then several others
followed his example. That night was so hot that many of the boys
slept on the bare floor, and had no bedclothes on, but the next day
it rained and got quite cold, and last night we were glad of
counterpanes and blankets again."
"_The Bishop's Holiday._--The cricket-fagging, the dreadful,
horrible cricket-fagging comes upon me to-day. I am Boy in the
House on the extra whole holiday, and shall have cricket-fagging in
the evening at the end of a hard day's other fagging."
"_Saturday._--I must write about the awful storm of last night. I
had been very ill all day, and was made to take a powder in
marmalade--Ah-h--bah!--and went to sleep about twelve with the
window wide open because of the heat. At half-past two I awoke
sick, when to my astonishment, it being quite dark, flash after
flash of lightning illuminated the room and showed how the rain was
pouring in floods through the open window. The wind raged so that
we thought it would blow the house down. We heard the boys
downstairs screaming out and running about, and Simmy and Hewlett
trying to keep order. I never saw such a storm. All of a sudden, a
long loud clap of thunder shook the house, and hail like great
stones mingled with the rain came crashing in at the skylights.
Another flash of lightning illuminated the room, and continued
there (I suppose it must have struck something) in one broad flame
of light, bursting out like flames behind the window: I called out
'Fire, fire, the window's on fire.' This woke Buller, who had been
sleeping soundly all this time, and he rushed to the window and
forced it down with the lightning full in his eyes. Again all was
darkness, and then another flash showed what a state the room was
in--the books literally washed off the table, and Forster and Dirom
armed with foot-pans of water. Then I threw myself on my bed in
agonies of sickness: not a drop of water was to be had to drink: at
last Buller found a little dirty rain-water, and in an instant I
was dreadfully sick.... You cannot think what the heat was, or what
agonies of sickness I was in."[44]
"_June 13._--I have cricket-fagged. Maude, my secret helper in
everything, came and told me what to do. But one ball came and I
missed it, then another, and I heard every one say, 'Now did you
see that fool; he let a ball pass. Look. Won't he get wapped!' I
had more than thirty balls and missed all but one--yet the
catapulta was not used. I had not to throw up to any monitors;
Platt did not come down for some time, and I had the easiest place
on the cricket-field, so it will be much worse next time. Oh, how
glad I was when half-past eight came! and when I went to take my
jacket up, though I found it wringing wet with dew.
"The next day was Speech-day, but, with my usual misfortune, I was
Boy in the House. However I got off after one o'clock. All the boys
were obliged to wear straw-coloured or lavender kid-gloves and to
be dressed very smart.... When the people came out of Speeches, I
looked in vain for Aunt Kitty, but Aunt Kitty never came; so, when
we had cheered everybody of consequence, I went back with the
others to eat up the remains of Simmy's fine luncheon, and you may
guess how we revelled in jellies and fruit.
"The boys in our house now play at cricket in the corridor."
"_June._--I have been cricket-fagging all evening, and it was
dreadful; Platt was down, the catapulta was used, and there were
very few fags, so I had very hard fagging.... Platt bellowed at me
for my stupidity, and Platt's word is an oracle, and Platt's nod
strikes terror into all around."
"_June 16._--I have been for my Exeat to Brook Street.... At
breakfast the Archbishop of Dublin came in. He is a very funny old
man[45] and says such funny things. He gave us proverbs, and
everybody a piece of good advice."
"_July._--I have found a beautiful old house called Essingham
standing in a moat full of clear water. It is said to have been
inhabited once by Cardinal Wolsey.
"Last night I cricket-fagged, very hard work, and I made Platt very
angry; but when I told him my name, he quite changed, and said I
must practise and learn to throw up better, and when the other
monitors said I ought to be wapped, Platt (!!) said, 'I will take
compassion upon him, because when I first came to Harrow I could do
no better.'"
If it had not been for constant sickness, the summer holidays of 1847
would have been very happy ones. I found my dear old Grandmother Mrs.
Oswald Leycester at Lime, which prevented our going to the Rectory, and
it was the greatest happiness to read to her, to lead her about, and in
every way to show my gratitude for past kindnesses at Stoke. When she
left us, we went for the rest of the holidays to the Palace at Norwich,
which was always enchanting to me--from the grand old library with its
secret room behind the bookcase, to the little room down a staircase of
its own, where the old nurse Mrs. Burgess lived--one of the thinnest and
dearest old women ever seen--surrounded by relics of her former charges.
Aunt Kitty was pleased with my improvement in drawing, and she and Kate
Stanley encouraged me very much in the endless sketches I made of the
old buildings in Norwich. "Honour the beginner, even if the follower
does better," is a good old Arabic proverb which they thoroughly
understood and practised. We spent the day with the Gurneys at Earlham,
where I saw the heavenly-minded Mrs. Catherine Gurney ("Aunt Catherine")
and also Mrs. Fry, in her long dark dress and close white cap, and we
went to visit the Palgraves at Yarmouth in a wonderful old house which
once belonged to Ireton the regicide. But a greater delight was a visit
of several days which we paid to the Barings at Cromer Hall, driving
the whole way with the Stanleys through Blickling and Aylsham, a journey
which Arthur Stanley made most charming by the books which he read to us
about the places we passed through. We lingered on the way with Miss
Anna Gurney, a little old lady, who was paralysed at a very early age,
yet had devoted her whole life to the good of those around her, and who,
while never free from suffering herself, seemed utterly unconscious of
her own trials in thinking of those of others. She lived in a beautiful
little cottage at Northrepps, full of fossils and other treasures, close
to the sea-coast.
Lord and Lady Shrewsbury[46] (the father and mother of the Princesses
Doria and Borghese) came to meet my mother at Cromer Hall, perfectly
full of the miraculous powers of "L'Estatica" and "L'Addolorata," which
they had witnessed in Italy, and of which they gave most extraordinary
accounts.
The kindness of "Uncle Norwich" caused me to love him as much as I
dreaded Uncle Julius. In his dealings with his diocese I have heard that
he was apt as a bishop to be tremendously impetuous; but my aunt knew
how to calm him, and managed him admirably. He wonderfully wakened up
clerical life in Norfolk. Well remembered is the sharpness with which he
said to Dean Pellew, who objected to a cross being erected on the
outside of the cathedral, "Never be ashamed of the cross, Mr. Dean,
never be ashamed of the cross." It was his custom to pay surprise visits
to all Norwich churches on Sunday afternoons. On one of these occasions,
an old clergyman--fellow of his college for forty years--who had lately
taken a small living in the town, was the preacher. High and dry was the
discourse. Going into the vestry afterwards, "A very old-fashioned
sermon, Mr. H.," said the Bishop. "A very good-fashioned sermon _I_
think, my lord," answered the vicar.
[Illustration: Edward Stanley
Bishop of Norwich.]
In those days a very primitive state of things prevailed in the Norwich
churches. A clergyman, newly ordained, provided for by a title at St.
George's, Colegate, was exercised by finding the large well-thumbed
folio Prayer-book in the church marked with certain hieroglyphics.
Amongst these O and OP frequently recurred. On the curate making inquiry
of the clerk if there were any instructions he ought to follow during
the service, he was informed that his active predecessor had established
a choir and had reopened an organ closed from time immemorial. He had
done this without any reference to the incumbent, who was so deaf that
he could hear neither organ nor choir. Thus it happened that when they
came to the "Venite," the incumbent read, as usual, the first verse.
From long usage and habit he knew, to a second, the moment when the
clerk would cease reading verse two, and then commenced reading the
third verse, the clerk below him making frantic signs with his hand,
which were quite incomprehensible: and it was not until the reading of
the fifth verse that he understood he had better be silent
altogether, and leave the field to the organ and choir, of whose
performances he had not heard one single sound. He was determined not to
be taken aback again, so, consulting with the clerk, he elicited when
the performances of the organ would take place, and marked these for his
guidance with a large O or OP--_organ plays_.
When the curate of whom I have spoken was first ordained, the incumbent
gave him instructions as to what he was to do. Afterwards he found him
visiting and over-zealous for the age, and said, "Now don't do too much
in the parish, and _never_ give anything away." The curate expressed
surprise, when he added, "If you _want_ to give, always come to me"--a
suggestion the curate never failed to carry out. The rector had a very
poor opinion of clergymen who wrote fresh sermons every week. "I've only
got two sermons for every Sunday in the year, and I preach them all
every year. I don't see why I should trouble myself to write any more,
for when I preach them, I find I don't recollect them myself, so it's
quite impossible the congregation should." As reminiscences of a type of
clergyman very common at this time, but nearly extinct now, these notes
seem worth recording.
Most of the Norfolk clergy were then old-fashioned conservatives of the
first water. One day at a clerical dinner-party at the Palace, the
Bishop, probably with the view of improving the taste of his guests,
said, "When I first came into this diocese, I found the clergy would
drink nothing but port. I used every means I could think of to alter a
taste I could not myself enter into. All failed. At last I hit upon
something which I thought was sure to be successful. I told my
wine-merchant to send me the best of all other wines and the nastiest of
port. But the clergy still insisted upon drinking the nasty port. So,
when I felt my plan had failed, I wrote to my wine-merchant again, and
told him to let them have it good."
The Bishop used to be greatly amused by an epitaph in Bergh Apton
Church, which said that the man commemorated was "very free of his
port," meaning that he was very hospitable (from _portcullis_), but the
common people always thought it meant that he drank a great deal of
port.
My dear old uncle was a capital bishop, and his clergy gradually learnt
to think him so. But it was a sailor he had wished to be. He had been
better fitted for that profession originally. Indeed, when he was a very
little child he had such a passion for the sea, that once when he was
missed from his cot, he was found asleep on the high shelf of a
wardrobe, having climbed up there because he thought it was like a
berth. Through life he was one of those men who never want presence of
mind, and this often stood him in good stead. One Advent Sunday it was
the Bishop's turn to preach in the cathedral, where the soldiers in the
barracks usually attend the service: but it was terrible weather, and,
with due regard to their pipe-clay, they were all absent that morning.
The Bishop had prepared his sermon especially for the soldiers he
expected to hear it, and he had no other. But he was quite equal to the
occasion, for, after he had given out the text, he began--"Now _this_ is
the sermon I should have preached if the soldiers had been here," and
went on, without concerning himself further about their absence.
On another occasion he fell fast asleep in the cathedral during the
sermon. At the end, when the choir broke out into the "Amen," he
suddenly awoke. In that moment he could not collect himself to remember
the words of the blessing, but, "Peace be with you" he exclaimed very
solemnly, and it did quite well.
"Uncle Norwich," with his snow-white hair and black eyebrows, and his
eager impetuous manner, was a somewhat startling figure to come upon
suddenly. There was a private door in the wall in a remote corner of the
palace-garden. A rather nervous clergyman who lived close by had passed
it for years, and had never seen it open. His curiosity was greatly
excited about it. One day when he was passing, he could not resist the
impulse, and looking up and down the road, and seeing neither the Bishop
nor any of the Stanley family about, though very shy, he stooped down to
peep in at the keyhole. At that moment the Bishop's key entered the lock
on the other side, the door flew open, and he found himself confronted
by the Bishop in person!
It was soon after we left Norwich that Jenny Lind, then at the height of
her fame, went to stay at the Palace, and great was the family
enthusiasm about her. My aunt conceived an affection for her which was
almost maternal. Arthur Stanley admired her exceedingly, in spite of his
hatred of music, but amused her when he said, "I think you would be
_most_ delightful if you had no voice."
At the end of August I returned to Harrow.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Harrow, Sept. 10._--Alas! our form is under Mr. Oxenham. He has
the power of flogging, and does flog very often for the least
fault, for he really enjoys it. He is such an old man, very old,
very sharp, very indolent, very preachy. Sometimes he falls asleep
when we are in form, and the boys stick curl-papers through his
hair, and he never finds it out. He always calls his boys 'stupid
little fools,' without meaning anything particular by it. This
morning he said to me, 'Stuff and nonsense, stupid little fool;
don't make yourself a stupider little fool than you are.' He is
always called 'Billy.'"
"_Sept._--I have been racket-fagging all afternoon. It is such
dismal work. You have to stand in one corner of the square court
and throw all the balls that come that way to the 'feeders,' who
throw them to the players when they are wanted. The great amusement
of P., one of those I fag for, is to hit the racket-balls with all
his might at the fags, and he tried to cut me off a great many
times, but missed. At last P. said, 'I'll go and get another fag
instead of that young beast Hare,' and he went, but he never came
back, or the fag either.
"One day our room bought a pipkin, saucepan, and frying-pan to cook
things in, but Mrs. Collins (the matron) took away the frying-pan,
and the others were bagged. But we got another pipkin, and one
night as we were cooking some potatoes, in little slices as we have
them at home, they made such a smell that Mrs. Collins came up, and
told Simmy, and he was very angry, and would not let us have fires
for a week, and _said_ we should all have extra pupil-room; but
fortunately he forgot about that."
A. P. STANLEY _to_ A. J. C. H.
"_University College, Oxford, Oct. 16._--The Goblin presents his
compliments to the Ghost, and will give him a leaf of a bay-tree
from Delphi, a piece of marble from Athens, and a bit of tin from
the Cassiterides, on condition that the Ghost can tell him where
those places are, and where the Goblin shall send these treasures."
A. J. C. H. _to_ A. P. STANLEY.
"Delphi is the capital of Phocis and the seat of the oracle in
Greece. Athens is capital of Attica in Greece, and the Cassiterides
are islands in the Western Ocean. The Ghost presents his
compliments to the Goblin, thanks him very much, tells him where
the places are, and begs him to send the things from those places
to the usual haunt of the Ghost. The Ghost has communicated the
Goblin's stories of the beautiful Hesketh and Mrs. Fox to the boys
at night. The Ghost flitted up Harrow church-steeple yesterday, and
was locked up inside. Farewell, Goblin, from your most grateful
cousin--the Ghost."
This letter reminds me how I used to tell stories to the boys in our
room after we had gone to bed: it was by them that I was first asked to
"tell stories."
The winter of 1847-48 was one of those which were rendered quite
miserable to me by the way in which I was driven to the Rectory, where
Aunt Esther made me more wretched than ever, and by being scarcely ever
permitted to remain in my own dear home. I fear that in later days I
should have acted a part, and pretended to _like_ going to the Rectory,
when it would instantly have been considered unnecessary, the one
thought in the mind of all the family being that it was a duty to force
me to do what I disliked; but at that time I was too ingenuous to
indulge in even the most innocent kinds of deception. My own brothers,
Francis and William, who were now at Eton, came to the Rectory for part
of their holidays, but their upbringing and their characters had so
little in common with my own, that we were never very intimate, though I
rather liked them than otherwise. They hated the Rectory, and got away
from it whenever they could.
Of all the miserable days in the year, Christmas was the worst. I
regarded it with loathing unutterable. The presents of the quintessence
of rubbish which I had to receive from my aunts with outward grace and
gratitude. The finding all my usual avocations and interests cleared
away. The having to sit for hours and hours pretending to be deeply
interested in the six huge volumes of Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," one of
which was always doled out for my mental sustenance. The being
compelled--usually with agonising chilblains--to walk twice to church,
eight miles through the snow or piercing marsh winds, and sit for hours
in mute anguish of congelation, with one of Uncle Julius's interminable
sermons in the afternoon, about which at that time I heartily agreed
with a poor woman, Philadelphia Isted, who declared that they were "the
biggest of nonsense." Then, far the worst of all, the Rectory and its
sneerings and snubbings in the evening.
My mother took little or no notice of all this--her thoughts, her heart,
were far away. To her Christmas was simply "the festival of the birth of
Christ." Her whole spiritual being was absorbed in it: earth did not
signify: she did not and could not understand why it was not always the
same with her little boy.
I was not allowed to have any holidays this year, and was obliged to do
lessons all morning with Mr. Venables, the curate.[47] At this I wonder
now, as every day my health was growing worse. I was constantly sick,
and grew so thin that I was almost a skeleton, which I really believe
now to have been entirely caused by the way in which the miseries of my
home life preyed upon my excessively sensitive nervous disposition.
And, instead of my mind being braced, I was continually talked to about
death and hell, and urged to meditate upon them. Towards the close of
the holidays I was so ill that at last my mother was alarmed, and took
me to a Mr. Bigg, who declared that I had distinct curvature of the
spine, and put my poor little back into a terrible iron frame, into
which my shoulders were fastened as into a vice. Of course, _with_ this,
I ought never to have been sent back to Harrow, but this was not
understood. Then, as hundreds of times afterwards, when I saw that my
mother was really unhappy about me, I bore any amount of suffering
without a word rather than add to her distress, and I see now that my
letters are full of allusions to the ease with which I was bearing "my
armour" at school, while my own recollection is one of intolerable
anguish, stooping being almost impossible.
That I got on tolerably well at Harrow, even with my "armour" on, is a
proof that I never was ill-treated there. I have often, however, with
Lord Eustace Cecil (who was at Harrow with me), recalled since how
terrible the bullying was in our time--of the constant cruelty at
"Harris's," where the little boys were always made to come down and box
in the evening for the delectation of the fifth form:--of how little
boys were constantly sent in the evening to Famish's--half-way to the
cricket-ground, to bring back porter under their greatcoats, certain to
be flogged by the head-master if they were caught, and to be "wapped" by
the sixth form boys if they did not go, and infinitely preferring the
former:--of how, if the boys did not "keep up" at football, they were
made to cut large thorn sticks out of the hedges, and flogged with them
till the blood poured down outside their jerseys. Indeed, what with
fagging and bullying, servility was as much inculcated at Harrow in
those days as if it was likely to be a desirable acquirement in after
life.
I may truly say that I never learnt anything useful at Harrow, and had
little chance of learning anything. Hours and hours were wasted daily on
useless Latin verses with sickening monotony. A boy's school education
at this time, except in the highest forms, was hopelessly inane.
In some ways, however, this "quarter" at Harrow was much pleasanter than
the preceding ones. I had a more established place in the school, and
was on more friendly terms with all the boys in my own house; also,
with my "armour," the hated racket-fagging was an impossibility. I had
many scrambles about the country with Buller[48] in search of eggs and
flowers, which we painted afterwards most carefully and perseveringly;
and, assisted by Buller, I got up a sort of private theatricals on a
very primitive scale, turning Grimm's fairy stories into little plays,
which were exceedingly popular with the house, but strictly forbidden by
the tutor, Mr. Simpkinson or "Simmy." Thus I was constantly in hot water
about them. One day when we had got up a magnificent scene, in which I,
as "Snowdrop," lay locked in a magic sleep in an imaginary cave, watched
by dwarfs and fairies, Simmy came in and stood quietly amongst the
spectators, and I was suddenly awakened from my trance by the _sauve qui
peut_ which followed the discovery. Great punishments were the result.
Yet, not long after, we could not resist a play on a grander
scale--something about the "Fairy Tilburina" out of the "Man in the
Moon," for which we learnt our parts and had regular dresses made. It
was to take place in the fifth form room on the ground-floor between the
two divisions of the house, and just as Tilburina (Buller) was
descending one staircase in full bridal attire, followed by her
bridesmaids, of whom I was one, Simmy himself suddenly appeared on the
opposite staircase and caught us.
These enormities now made my monthly "reports," when they were sent
home, anything but favourable; but I believe my mother was intensely
diverted by them: I am sure that the Stanleys were. A worse crime,
however, was our passion for cooking, in which we became exceedingly
expert. Very soon after a tremendous punishment for having been caught
for the second time frying potato chips, we formed the audacious project
of cooking a hare! The hare was bought, and the dreadful inside was
disposed of with much the same difficulty and secrecy, and in much the
same manner, in which the Richmond murderess disposed of her victims;
but we had never calculated how long the creature would take to roast
even with a good fire, much more by our wretched embers: and long before
it was accomplished, Mrs. Collins, the matron, was down upon us, and we
and the hare were taken into ignominious custody.
Another great amusement was making sulphur casts and electrotypes, and
we really made some very good ones.
My great love for anything of historic romance, however, rendered the
Louis Philippe revolution the overwhelming interest of this quarter, and
put everything else into the shade. In the preceding autumn the murder
of the Duchesse de Praslin had occupied every one, and we boys used to
lie on the floor for hours poring over the horrible map of the
murder-room which appeared in the "Illustrated," in which all the pools
of blood were indicated. But that was nothing to the enthusiastic
interest over the sack of the Tuileries and the escape of the Royal
Family: I have never known anything like it in after life.
I have often heard since much of the immoralities of a public-school
life, but I can truly say that when I was there, I saw nothing of them.
A very few boys, however, can change the whole character of a school,
especially in a wrong direction. "A little worm-wood can pollute a hive
of honey," was one of the wise sayings of Pius II. I do not think that
my morals were a bit the worse for Harrow, but from what I have heard
since of all that went on there even in my time, I can only conclude it
was because--at that time certainly--"je n'avais pas le go\xFBt du pech\xE9,"
as I once read in a French novel.
At Easter, 1848, I left Harrow for the holidays, little imagining that I
should never return there. I should have been very sorry had I known it.
On the whole, the pleasurable "adventures" of a public-school life had
always outweighed its disagreeables; though I was never in strong enough
health for any real benefit or enjoyment.
IV
LYNCOMBE
"Les longues maladies usent la douleur, et les longues esp\xE9rances
usent la joie."--MME. DE S\xC9VIGN\xC9.
"One adequate support
For the calamities of mortal life
Exists, one only--an assured belief
That the procession of our fate, however
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
Of infinite benevolence and power,
Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents, converting them to good."
--WORDSWORTH.
"Condemned to Hope's delusive mire,
As we toil on from day to day
By sudden stroke or slow decline
Our means of comfort drop away."
--JOHNSON.
"It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys
of fourteen who would not be ashamed of themselves at forty."
--JEROME K. JEROME.
Of all the unhappy summers of my boyhood, that of 1848 was the most
miserable. When I left Harrow at Easter, I was very really ill. The iron
frame which had been made for my back had seriously injured the spine
which it was intended to cure, and a bad fall down the school steps at
Harrow had increased the malady. When Sir Benjamin Brodie saw me, he
said that I must lie down for at least the greater part of many months,
and that a return to Harrow was quite out of the question. This,
however, was concealed from me at first, and when I knew it, I was too
ill to have any regrets. We went first to Torquay, stopping on the way
to visit Mrs. Alexander, a person who afterwards, for some years, bore a
large share in our life. In her youth, as Miss Mary Manning, she had
been a governess in the family of Sir John Malcolm, and, while living
with the Malcolms at Hyde Hall near Cambridge, had been the most
intimate early friend of my Uncle Julius. People generally thought that
he had been engaged to her, but this, I believe, was never the case. She
had married a Mr. Alexander, a physician at Edinburgh, who soon left her
a widow, and since that time she had possessed no settled home. She was
very tall, serene, and had a beautiful countenance, and her
old-fashioned dress was always wonderfully refined and in keeping with
her appearance. She seemed to have the power of imposing her own
personality upon her surroundings, and subduing the life and movement
around her into an intellectual as well as a physical calm. She had a
melodious low voice, a delicate Scotch accent, a perfectly
self-possessed manner, and a sweet and gentle dignity. In conversation
she was witty and genial, but never rude. With wonderful power of
narration, she had the art of throwing unspeakable interest and charm
over the most commonplace things: yet she never exaggerated. All the
clever men who came in contact with her were bound under her spell.
Whewell, Worsley, Landor, Bunsen, Sedgwick adored her, and did not
wonder at my uncle's adoration. Saint-Amand's description of Mme. de
Maintenon might have been written for her--"Elle garda, dans sa
vieillesse, cette sup\xE9riorit\xE9 de style et de langage, cette distinction
de mani\xE8res, ce tact exquis, cette finesse, cette douceur et cette
fermet\xE9 de caract\xE8re, ce charme et cette \xE9l\xE9vation d'esprit qui, \xE0
toutes les \xE9poques de son existence, lui valurent tant d'\xE9loges et lui
attir\xE8rent tant d'amiti\xE9."
This is one view of Mrs. Alexander, and, as far as it goes, it is
perfectly true. But scarcely any characters are all of one piece. She
was also boundlessly subtle, and when she had an object in view she
spared no means to attain it. For her own ends, with her sweetness
unruffled, she would remorselessly sacrifice her best friends. The most
egotistical woman in the world, she _expected_ every one to fall under
her spell, and calmly and gently but consistently hated any one who
escaped. Whilst she almost imperceptibly flattered her superiors in rank
and position, she ruthlessly and often heartlessly trampled upon those
whom she (sometimes wrongly) considered her inferiors. She demanded
sovereignty in every house she entered, and she could always find a way
to punish rebellion. She made herself friends that "men might receive
her into their houses," and when she had once entered them she never
relaxed her foothold.
There is a description in the Life of George Sand which might be well
applied to this view of Mrs. Alexander--"Elle \xE9tait une personne glac\xE9e
autant que glaciale.... Ce n'\xE9tait pas qu'elle ne fut aimable, elle
\xE9tait gracieuse \xE0 la surface, un grand savoir-vivre lui tenant lieu de
grace v\xE9ritable. Mais elle n'aimait r\xE9ellement personne et ne
s'int\xE9ressait \xE0 rien qu'\xE0 elle-m\xEAme."
When we first saw Mrs. Alexander, she was living in a small lodging at
Heavitree near Exeter. In the following year she came to Hurstmonceaux
Rectory for three days and stayed three weeks. The year after she came
for three weeks and stayed five years. From the first she was supreme at
the Rectory, ruling even Aunt Esther with unswerving and ever-increasing
power; but on the whole her presence was an advantage. Her education and
strong understanding enabled her to enter into all my uncle's pursuits
and interests as his wife could never have done, and to outsiders she
was usually suave, courteous, and full of agreeable conversation.
[Illustration: THE TOWER AT ROCKEND, TORQUAY.]
Uncle Julius and Aunt Esther visited Rockend when we were there, and as
my aunts when together generally acted as foils to each other, I should
have been at liberty to enjoy the really beautiful place--its delightful
gardens, storm-beaten rocks, and the tower where Aunt Lucy "made her
meditations"--if I had been well enough; but I had generally to spend
the greater part of the day lying upon the floor on a hard backboard and
in a state of great suffering. It was often an interest at this time to
listen to Uncle Julius as he read aloud in the family circle passages
connected with the French Revolution, Kingsley's "Saint's Tragedy,"
which had then recently appeared, or the papers which my uncle and his
friends were then contributing to the Magazine for the People which
Kingsley was getting up. No one read so well as Uncle Julius--a whole
whirlwind of tragedy, an unutterable depth of anguish and pathos could
be expressed in the mere tone of his voice; and it was not merely tone;
he really thus _felt_ what he read, and so carried away his listeners,
that all their actual surroundings were invisible or forgotten. Those
who never heard Julius Hare read the Communion Service can have no idea
of the depths of humility and passion in those sublime prayers.
In everything Uncle Julius was as unsuited to the nineteenth century as
he well could be. He used to declare that he never would read a book
which he knew would interest him, till the exact mood of his mind was
fitted for it, till the sun happened to be shining where it ought, and
till weather and time and situation all combined to suit the subject and
give its full effect, and he usually had numbers of books by him waiting
for this happy conjunction, but, when it arrived, he did the books full
justice.
I never saw any one so violent, so unmitigated in his likes and dislikes
as Uncle Julius, so furious in his approval or condemnation. "Il avait
une grande hardiesse, pour ne pas dire effronterie," as Bassompierre
wrote of the Duke of Buckingham. In his despotic imperiousness he had no
sympathy with the feelings and weaknesses of others, though
inexpressible pity for all their greater misfortunes or sorrows.
Another person of whom we saw much at this time was the really
saint-like Harry Grey, my mother's first cousin, who was living at
Babbicombe. He was heir to the Earldom of Stamford (to which his son
afterwards succeeded), but a clergyman, and very poor.
I was so ill when we returned home, almost everything I ate producing
violent sickness, that it is astonishing my health should not have been
considered a primary object. A few weeks of healthy life on moors or by
the sea-side, with freedom from the gnawing mental misery and depression
under which I suffered, would probably have restored me; a visit to
German baths might have cured me, and saved years of ill-health. Had the
family only had any practical common-sense! But, on religious grounds,
it was thought wrong to contend against "the wonderful leadings of God's
Providence"--pain was "sent" to be endured, sickness as a tractor to
draw its victims to heaven; and all simple and rational means of
restoration to a healthy and healthful life were disregarded. Sago with
brandy in it was provided instead of meat for my physical, and an
inexhaustible supply of tracts, hymns, and little sermons for my mental
digestion. Patient endurance of suffering, the following of the most
unpleasant path which duty could be thought to point out, and that
without hope of either reward or release, were the virtues which even my
mother most inculcated at this time.
Then a private tutor was sought for--not by knowledge, not by inquiry at
the Universities, not by careful investigation of attainments for
teaching, but by an advertisement. The inquiry as to all the letters
which answered it was whether they appeared to be "those of truly pious
men"--_i.e._, whether they were written in the peculiar phraseology then
supposed to denote such a character. At last one was accepted, and a
tutor arrived, who was--well, I will not describe him further than as
certainly the most unprepossessing of human beings: Nature had been so
terribly hard upon him.
With this truly unfortunate man I was shut up every morning in the hope
that he would teach me something, a task he was wholly unequal to; and
then I had to walk out with him. Naturally there were scenes and
recriminations on both sides, in which I was by no means blameless. But
daily my health grew worse, and scarcely a morning passed without my
having an agonising fit of suffocation, from contraction of the muscles
of the throat, gasping for breath in misery unutterable. The aunts said
it was all nervous. I have no doubt it was: I have had plenty of
experience of hysteria since, and it is the most dreadful disorder that
exists.
At last my sufferings were such, from the relaxing air of Hurstmonceaux,
that I was taken to Eastbourne, but an attempt was still made to chain
me down for six or eight hours a day in a stuffy lodging at lessons with
my tutor, who had not an idea of teaching and knew nothing to teach.
Poor man! he was at least quite as wretched as I was, and I know that he
thirsted quite as much for the fresh air of the downs. Aunt Esther came
over, and used cruelly to talk, in my presence, of the fatigue and
trouble which my ill-health caused my mother, and of the burden which
she had thus brought upon herself by adopting me. It is only by God's
mercy that I did not commit suicide. I was often on the point of
throwing myself over the cliffs, when all would have been over in an
instant, and was _only_ restrained by my intense love for my mother, and
the feeling that her apparently dormant affection would be awakened by
such a catastrophe, and that she would always be miserable in such an
event. Twenty-two years afterwards, when we were as closely united as it
was possible for any mother and son to be, my darling mother reverted of
her own accord to this terrible time: she could never die happy, she
said, unless she knew that her after love had quite effaced the
recollection of it.
[Illustration: WILMINGTON PRIORY.]
Yet, even in these wretched months at Eastbourne there were oases of
comfort--days when my "Aunt Kitty and Lou Clinton" came down, and, with
"le c\x9Cur haut plac\xE9" and sound common-sense, seemed to set everything
right; and other days when I made excursions alone with my mother to
Jevington in the Downs, or to Wilmington with its old ruin and yew-tree,
where we used to be kindly entertained by the primitive old Rector, Mr.
Cooper, and his wife.
When I went, in 1877, to visit Alfred Tennyson the poet, he asked me to
give him a subject for "A Domestic Village Tragedy." The story which I
told him occurred at Hurstmonceaux this summer. Mrs. Coleman, who kept
the "dame's school" at Flowers Green, had a niece, Caroline Crowhurst, a
very pretty girl, the belle of the parish, and as amiable and good as
she was pretty, so that every one was friends with her. She became
engaged, rather against the will of her family, to a commercial
traveller from a distance. He wrote to her, and she wrote to him,
maidenly letters, but full of deep affection. One day they had a little
quarrel, and the man, the fiend, took the most intimate, the most
caressing of these letters and nailed it up against the Brewery in the
centre of Gardner Street, where all the village might read it and scoff
at it. As the people knew Caroline, no one scoffed, and all pitied her.
But Caroline herself came to the village shop that afternoon; she saw
her letter hanging there, and it broke her heart. She said nothing about
it to any one, and she did not shed a tear, but she went home and kissed
her aunt and her mother more tenderly than usual; she gathered the
prettiest flowers in her little garden and put them in her bosom, and
then she opened the lid of the draw-well close to her home and let
herself in. The lid closed upon her.
[Illustration: FLOWERS GREEN, HURSTMONCEAUX.]
I remember the news coming to Lime one evening that Caroline Crowhurst
was missing, and the dreadful shock the next morning when we heard that
the poor girl had been found in the well. My mother, who had known her
from her birth, felt it very deeply, for at Hurstmonceaux we were on
the most intimate terms with the poor people, and Philadelphia Isted,
Mercy Butler, dear old Mrs. Piper the schoolmistress, Ansley Vine of the
shop, grumbling old Mrs. Holloway (who always said she should be so glad
when she was dead because then people would believe she had been ill),
the crippled Louisa Wood, the saint-like bedridden Mrs. Wisham, and
gentle Mrs. Medhurst, who lived amongst the primroses of "the lower
road"--all these, and many more, were as familiar to me as my own
nearest relations. To many of them, when well enough, I went regularly,
and to Mrs. Piper, who had lived in the time of the castle, and known my
father and his brothers from babyhood, almost every day. Her death was a
real affliction. My mother walked behind her coffin at her funeral. In
her will she left me a box which had belonged to my unhappy little
ancestress, Grace Naylor.
At the end of July my real mother, "Italima," with my sister, came to
stay at the Rectory. The visit was arranged to last a month, but
unhappily on the second day of her stay, Italima went out with Aunt
Esther. They came home walking on different sides of the road, and as
soon as she entered the house Italima sent for post-horses to her
carriage and drove away. I have never heard what happened, but Italima
never came to the Rectory again. Soon afterwards she fixed her residence
at Rome, in the Palazzo Parisani, which then occupied two sides of the
Piazza S. Claudio.
In August it was decided to send me away to a private tutor's, and my
mother and Uncle Julius went with me to Lyncombe, near Bath. My tutor
was the Rev. H. S. R., son of a well-known evangelical writer, but by no
means of the same spiritual grace: indeed I never could discover that he
had any grace whatever; neither had he any mental acquirements, or the
slightest power of teaching. He was "un homme absolument nul," and
though paid a very large salary, he grossly and systematically neglected
all his duties as a tutor. Uncle Julius must have been perfectly aware
how inefficient the education at Lyncombe would be, but he was probably
not to blame for sending me there. Because I did not "get on" (really
because I was never taught), he regarded me as the slave of
indolence--"putrescent indolence" he would have called it, like Mr.
Carlyle. He considered me, however, to be harmless, though fit for
nothing, and therefore one to be sent where I should probably get no
harm, though certainly no good either. It was the system he went upon
with my brothers also, and in their case he had all the responsibility,
being their guardian. But, indeed, Uncle Julius's view was always much
that of Rogers--"God sends sons, but the devil sends nephews," and he
shunted them accordingly.
"Les grands esprits, d'ailleurs tr\xE8s estimables,
Ont tr\xE8s peu de talent pour former leurs semblables."
I went to Lyncombe with the utmost curiosity. The house was a large
villa, oddly built upon arches in the hollow of a wooded valley about a
mile from Bath, behind the well-known Beechen Cliff. At the back of it
was a lawn with very steep wooded banks at the sides, and a fountain and
pool, showing that the place had once been of some importance, and
behind the lawn, meadows with steep banks led towards the heights of
Combe Down. We all had rooms to ourselves at Lyncombe, scantily
furnished, and with barely a strip of carpet, but we could decorate them
with pictures, &c., if we liked. We did our lessons, when we were
supposed to do them, at regular hours, in the dining-room, where we had
our meals, and after work was finished in the evening, and eight
o'clock tea, we were expected to sit with Mrs. R. in the drawing-room.
But we had an immense deal of time to ourselves--the whole afternoon we
were free to go where we liked; we were not expected to give any account
of what we did, and might get into as much mischief as we chose. Also,
we too frequently had whole holidays, which Mr. R.'s idle habits made
him only too glad to bestow, but which I often did not in the least know
what to do with.
Eagerly did I survey my new companions, who were much older than myself,
and with whom I was likely to live exclusively, with none of the chances
of making other friendships which a public school affords. Three of them
were quiet youths of no especial character: the fourth was Temple
Harris,[49] at once the friend, enlivener, and torment of the following
year.
On the whole, at first I was not unhappy at Lyncombe. I liked the almost
unlimited time for roaming over the country, and the fresh air did much
to strengthen me. But gradually, when I had seen all the places within
reach, this freedom palled, and I felt with disgust that, terribly
ignorant as I was, I was learning nothing, and that I had no chance of
learning anything except what I could teach myself. Whilst Temple Harris
stayed at Lyncombe, we spent a great deal of time in writing stories,
ballads, &c., for a MS. magazine which we used to produce once a week;
and this was not wholly useless, from the facility of composition which
it gave me. But after Temple Harris left, the utter waste of life at
Lyncombe palled upon me terribly, and I made, in desperation, great
efforts to instruct myself, which, with no books and with every possible
hindrance from without, was difficult enough. After a fashion, however,
I succeeded in teaching myself French, stumbling through an interesting
story-book with Grammar and Dictionary, till I had learnt to read with
ease; of the pronunciation I naturally knew nothing. Two miserable years
and a half of life were utterly wasted at Lyncombe, before Arthur
Stanley came to visit me there, and rescued me by his representation of
the utter neglect and stagnation in which I was living. It had been so
hammered into my mind by my aunts that I was a burden to my mother, and
that she was worn out with the trouble I had given her in finding my
first private tutor, that I should never of myself have ventured to try
to persuade her to look out for a second.
My earlier letters to my mother from Lyncombe are filled with nothing
but descriptions of the scenery round Bath, of which I formed a most
exaggerated estimate, as I had seen so little with which I could compare
it. Once a week at least I used to go into Bath itself, to dine with my
father's old friend Walter Savage Landor, who had been driven away from
his Florentine home by his wife's violent temper. Mr. Landor's rooms (in
Catherine Place, and afterwards at 2 Rivers Street) were entirely
covered with pictures, the frames fitting close to one another, leaving
not the smallest space of wall visible. One or two of these pictures
were real works of art, but as a rule he had bought them at Bath, quite
willing to imagine that the little shops of the Bath dealers could be
storehouses of Titians, Giorgiones, and Vandycks. The Bath
picture-dealers never had such a time; for some years almost all their
wares made their way to Mr. Landor's walls. Mr. Landor lived alone with
his beautiful white Spitz dog Pomero, which he allowed to do whatever it
liked, and frequently to sit in the oddest way on the bald top of his
head. He would talk to Pomero by the hour together, poetry, philosophy,
whatever he was thinking of, all of it imbued with his own powerful
personality, and would often roar with laughter till the whole house
seemed to shake. I have never heard a laugh like that of Mr.
Landor--"deep-mouthed Beotian Savage Landor," as Byron called him--such
a regular cannonade.[50] He was "the sanest madman and the maddest
reasonable man in the world," as Cervantes says of Don Quixote. In the
evenings he would sit for hours in impassioned contemplation: in the
mornings he wrote incessantly, to fling off sheet after sheet for the
_Examiner_, seldom looking them over afterwards. He scarcely ever read,
for he only possessed one shelf of books. If any one gave him a volume,
he mastered it and gave it away, and this he did because he believed
that if he knew he was to keep the book and be able to refer to it, he
should not be able to absorb its contents so as to retain them. When he
left Florence, he had made over all he possessed to his wife, retaining
only \xA3200 a year--afterwards increased to \xA3400--for himself, and this
sufficed for his simple needs. He never bought any new clothes, and a
chimney-sweep would have been ashamed to wear his coat, which was always
the same as long as I knew him, though it in no way detracted from his
majestic and lion-like appearance. But he was very particular about his
little dinners, and it was about these that his violent explosions of
passion usually took place. I have seen him take a pheasant up by the
legs when it was brought to table and throw it into the back of the fire
over the head of the servant in attendance. This was always a failing,
and, in later days, I have heard Mr. Browning describe how in his fury
at being kept waiting for dinner at Siena, he shouted: "I will not eat
it now, I will not eat it if it comes," and, when it came, threw it all
out of the window.
At the same time nothing could be more nobly courteous than his manner
to his guests, and this was as marked towards an ignorant schoolboy as
towards his most distinguished visitor; and his conversation, whilst
calculated to put all his visitors at their ease and draw out their best
points, was always wise, chivalrous, pure, and witty.
At one time Mr. Landor's son Walter came to stay with him, but he was an
ignorant rough youth, and never got on well with his father. I believe
Mr. Landor preferred me at this time to any of his own children, and
liked better to have me with him; yet he must often have been grievously
disappointed that I could so little reciprocate about the Latin verses
of which he so constantly talked to me, and that indeed I could seldom
understand them, though he was so generous and high-bred that he never
would allow me to feel mortified. Mrs. Lynn Linton, then Miss Lynn, was
by her almost filial attentions a great comfort to Landor during the
earlier years of his exile at Bath. Another person, whom he liked, was a
pretty young Bath lady, Miss Fray, who often came to dine with him when
I was there. After dinner Mr. Landor generally had a nap, and would say,
"Now, Augustus, I'm going to sleep, so make love to Miss Fray"--which
was rather awkward.[51]
These were the best friends of Lander's solitude; most of his other
visitors were sycophants and flatterers, and though he despised the
persons, he did not always dislike the flattery. Swift says truly--
"'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools;
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit."
Another resident of whom I saw much at Bath was my mother's cousin, Miss
Harriet Dumbleton (her mother was a Leycester)--an old maiden lady, who
lived in the most primitive manner, really scarcely allowing herself
enough to eat, because, like St. Elizabeth, though she had a very good
fortune, she had given everything she had to the poor. She would even
sell her furniture, books, and pictures, to give away the money they
realised. But she was a most agreeable, witty, lively person, and it was
always a great pleasure to go to her.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Lyncombe, Sept. 12._--I have been here four days, but only to-day
did Mr. R. _begin_ to attempt any lessons with me. He was very
impatient, and I got so puzzled and confused, I could scarcely do
anything at all; all my sums and everything else were wrong.
Warriner and Hebden were very kind, and did all they could to help
me. I like Warriner very much. To-day I have done much better, and
I really do try to do well, dearest Mamma."
"_Sept. 14._--Yesterday morning, as there was again no work
whatever to be done, I went off by myself to Charterhouse Hinton to
see the Abbey. I was told it was not shown, but insisted upon going
up to the house, where I rang the bell, and was allowed to look at
the ruin in the garden. There I found an old gentleman, to whom I
told who I was, where I was, and all about myself, and he told me
in return that he had been at school with Uncle Jule and knew the
Bath aunts, and not only showed me the best place to sketch the
Abbey from, but gave me a lesson in perspective. Then he took me
into the house and told me all the stories of the pictures there.
"Mr. Landor has been here, and, thinking to do me honour, called
upon the R.'s. Whilst Pomero danced about, he told numbers of
stories, beginning at once about the Dukes of Brandenburg and
Orleans, and in defence of the Danes. 'Hare may say what he likes,
but that King of Prussia is a regular old scoundrel.'
"Whenever we are _supposed_ to do any work, Mr. R. sits at the
small table in the dining-room while we are at the large one; but
no one takes any notice of him, and all talk slang and laugh as if
he was out of the room; and if Harris gets bored with his supposed
work, he rings for a plate and glass of water and paints."
"_Sept. 22._--You need not grudge my long walks and being away from
the others, for I should not be with them if at home, as Hebden
goes to play on the Abbey organ, and the rest have their own
occupations. To-day I went over hill and dale to Wellow, where
there is a noble old church, and a Holy Well of St. Julian, at
which a white lady used to appear on St. Julian's Eve, whenever any
misfortune was about to happen to the family of Hungerford, the
former possessors of the soil. As I was drawing the village, a
farmer came riding by, and, after looking at my sketch, went back
with me to show me his house, once a manor of the Hungerfords, with
a splendid old carved chimney-piece.
"These are very long dreary half-years. At Harrow I used to rejoice
that I should never more have to endure those horrible long
private-school half-years, yet here they are again. Oh! what would
I not give to be back with you, and able to take care of you when
you are poorly!"
"_Oct. 9._--Yesterday, as there were no lessons whatever again, I
made a great expedition to Farley Castle, but was very miserable
all the way in thinking that I had not been better to you all the
summer, dearest, dearest Mamma. I used to think, when I knew that I
should be at home such a long time, what a comfort I should be to
you, and that you would see how good I was grown; but instead of
that, how bad I was all the time! Oh! if I had only a little of it
over again! Well, it is a long walk, but at last I arrived at
Farley, a pretty ruin on a height, with four towers at the angles
and a chapel in the centre. I persuaded the woman to lock me in
here, and was in ecstasies. The walls are covered with armour of
the Hungerfords for centuries, and in a corner are Cromwell's boots
and saddle. At the other end is the ancient high altar with a Bible
of ages mouldering away beneath a carved crucifix and stained
window, and the surrounding walls are emblazoned with Hungerford
arms. Old banners wave from the ceiling, old furniture lines the
aisle, and in St. Anne's Chantry are two splendid altar-tombs, of
Lady Joanna Hungerford and her husband, and Sir Edward and his
wife.
"How am I to get any money to pay for having my hair cut, and for
some gloves, for mine are quite worn out?"
"_Oct. 20._--No work at all, so I have had a grand expedition to
the beautiful old deserted house of the Longs at South Wraxhall,
and have been writing ballads and stories about it ever since."
"_Oct. 26._--No lessons. Mr. R. will not have them. So we have all
been together to Farley, and went into the vault where the
Hungerfords lie in leaden coffins, melted to fit their bodies and
faces, their real features in deep relief. They look most
extraordinary, especially two babies, whom, at first sight, you
would take for a pair of shoes.... When I am alone with Harris, I
like him very much. He writes poetry and draws beautifully, and can
read French and Italian for his own amusement. I wish I could. Oh,
I am so tired of having nothing to do!"
My dear Grandmother, Mrs. Leycester, had been failing all the autumn,
and my mother was much with her at her house in New Street. Towards the
end of October she seemed better, and my mother returned to Lime, but on
the 3rd of November she was suddenly recalled. As so often happens in
serious cases, for the only time in her life she missed the train, and
when she arrived, after many hours' delay, she found that dear Grannie
had died an hour before, wishing and longing for her to the last. To my
intense thankfulness, I was allowed to go to my mother in New Street,
once more to behold the beloved aged features in the deep repose of
death, and to see the familiar inanimate objects connected with my
childhood, and the dear old servants. Grannie was buried in the vaults
of St. Martin's Church, Trafalgar Square, her coffin being laid upon
that of Uncle Hugh (Judge Leycester). The vaults were a very awful
place--coffins piled upon one another up to the ceiling, and often in a
very bad state of preservation,[52]--and the funeral was a very ghastly
one, all the ladies being enveloped in huge black hooded mantles, which
covered them from head to foot like pillars of crape. Grannie is one of
the few persons whose memory is always evergreen to me, and for whom I
have a most lasting affection. Everything connected with her has an
interest. Many pieces of furniture and other memorials of my
grandmother's house in New Street and, before that, of Stoke Rectory,
have been cherished by us at Hurstmonceaux and Holmhurst, and others it
has always been a pleasure to see again when I have visited my Penrhyn
cousins at Sheen--objects of still life which long survive those to whom
they were once important.
In the winter of 1848-49 I saw at St. Leonards the venerable Queen Marie
Am\xE9lie, and am always glad to have seen that noble and long-suffering
lady, the niece of Marie Antoinette.
During the autumn at Lyncombe I was almost constantly ill, and very
often ill in the winter at home, which the Marcus Hares all spent at
Lime. It was a miserable trial to me that, in her anxiety lest I should
miss an hour of a school where I was taught nothing, my mother sent me
back a week too early--and I was for that time alone in the prison of my
abomination, in unutterable dreariness, with nothing in the world to do.
This term, a most disagreeable vulgar boy called W---- was added to the
establishment at Lyncombe, who was my detested companion for the next
two years; and from this time in every way life at Lyncombe became
indescribably wretched--chiefly from the utter waste of time--and, as I
constantly wrote to my mother, I was always wishing that I were dead. My
only consolation, and that a most dismal and solitary one, was in the
long excursions which I made; but I look back upon these as times of
acute suffering from poverty and _hunger_, as I never had any allowance,
and was always sent back to my tutor's with only five shillings in my
pocket. Thus, though I walked sometimes twenty-four miles in a day, and
was out for eight or ten hours, I never had a penny with which to buy
even a bit of bread, and many a time sank down by the wayside from the
faintness of sheer starvation, often most gratefully accepting some of
their food from the common working people I met. If I went out with my
companions, the utmost mortification was added to the actual suffering
of hunger, because, when they went into the village inns to have a good
well-earned luncheon, I was always left starving outside, as I never had
the means of paying for any food. I believe my companions were very
sorry for me, but they never allowed their pity to be any expense to
them, and then "E meglio essere odiato che compatito" is an Italian
proverb which means a great deal, especially to a boy. After a time,
too, the food at Lyncombe itself became extremely stinted and of the
very worst quality--a suet dumpling filled with coarse odds and ends of
meat being our dinner on at least five days out of the seven, which of
course was very bad for an extremely delicate rapidly-growing
youth--and, if I was ill from want of food, which was frequently the
case, I was given nothing but rice.
What indescribably miserable years those were! I still feel, in passing
Bath by railway, sick at heart from the recollection, and I long in this
volume to hurry over a portion of life so filled with wretched
recollections, and which had scarcely a redeeming feature, except Mr.
Landor's constant kindness and friendship. It was also a terrible
disappointment that my mother never would consent to my going for a few
days to see "Italima" and my brothers, who were then living at Torquay,
and who vainly begged for it. My endless letters to my mother (for I
wrote several sheets daily) are so crushed and disconsolate that I find
little to select.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Easter Sunday, 1849._--Yesterday Mr. Landor asked me to dine with
him. First we went out to order the dinner, accompanied by Pomero
in high spirits. As we went through the streets, he held forth upon
their beauties, especially those of the Circus, to which he
declares that nothing in Rome or in the world was ever equal. We
stopped first at the fishmonger's, where, after much bargaining,
some turbot was procured; then, at the vegetable shop, we bought
broccoli, potatoes, and oranges; then some veal to roast; and
finally a currant-tart and biscuits. Mr. Landor generally orders
his own little dinners, but almost all this was for me, as he will
dine himself on a little fish. He has actually got a new hat, he
says because all the ladies declared they would never walk with him
again unless he had one, and he has a hideous pair of new brown
trousers. Pomero was put out of the room for jumping on them, but
when he was heard crying outside the door, Mr. Landor declared he
could not let his dear child be unhappy, and was obliged to let it
in; upon which the creature was so delighted, that it instantly
jumped on the top of its master's head, where it sate demurely,
looking out of the window.
"Harris has just written an account of my home life which he says
he believes to be exact, _i.e._, that I live with two maiden aunts,
'Gidman and Lear'--that they have a dog called 'Paul against the
Gentiles,' who runs after them, carrying muffins and apples to the
poor and destitute inhabitants of the parish of
Chalk-cum-Chilblains--that his kennel is inscribed with texts of
Scripture, and when a heretic is near he can smell him five miles
off--that his food consists of tracts, and that he drinks a
dilution of hymn-books and camphor-ice."
In my summer holidays of 1849 my mother took me for the second time to
Alton. It was very hot weather, and we lived entirely amongst the
affectionate primitive cottagers, going afterwards to stay with Lady
Gore at Wilcot House--an old haunted house, with a tower where a tailor
(I forget how he got there) committed suicide. With Mrs. Pile we drove
through the open Wiltshire country to her farmhouse home of Tufton,
where we spent several days very pleasantly, in a quiet place on the
glistening little river Teste, close to Hurstborne Park. On the day of
our leaving Tufton we visited Winchester, and as we were going thence to
Portsmouth by rail, we had an adventure which might have ended
seriously.
The train was already in motion, and my mother and I were alone in the
carriage, when three men came running along the platform and attempted
to enter it. Only one succeeded, for before the others could follow him,
the train had left the platform. In a minute we saw that the man who was
alone in the carriage with us was a maniac, and that those left behind
were his keepers. He uttered a shrill hoot and glared at us.
Fortunately, as the door banged to, the tassel of the window was thrown
up, and this attracted him, and he yelled with laughter. We sat
motionless at the other side of the carriage opposite each other. He
seized the tassel and kept throwing it up and down, hooting and roaring
with laughter. Once or twice we fancied he was about to pounce upon us,
but then the tassel attracted him again. After about eight minutes the
train stopped. His keepers had succeeded in getting upon the guard's box
as the train left the station, and hearing his shouts, stopped the
train, and he was removed by force.
We went to stay at Haslar with Sir Edward Parry, the Arctic voyager,
whose first wife had been my mother's early friend Bella Stanley. He was
now married again, and had three more children, and his wife had two
daughters by her first husband, Mr. Hoare. The three families lived
together, and in the most wonderful harmony. The eldest son, Edward,
afterwards Bishop of Dover, was several years older than I, yet not too
old for companionship. But I never could feel the slightest interest in
the dockyards or the ships at Spithead. My only pleasure was a happy
_tourette_ round the Isle of Wight--the mother, Lea, and I, in a little
carriage. During the latter part of our stay at Haslar, cholera broke
out in the hospital, and our departure was like a flight.
While I was at Lyncombe in the autumn, my step-grandmother Mrs. Hare
Naylor died, very soon after the marriage of her daughter Georgiana to
Mr. Frederick D. Maurice, whose first wife had been her intimate friend.
She was married during what was supposed to be her last illness, but was
so pleased with her nuptials that she recovered after the ceremony and
lived for nearly half a century afterwards.
My dear old uncle Edward Stanley had always said, while making his
summer tour in Scotland, that he should return to Norwich when the first
case of cholera appeared. He died at Brahan Castle, and his body was
brought back to Norwich just as the cholera appeared there. Tens of
thousands of people went to his funeral--for, in the wild Chartist times
of his episcopate, he had been a true "chevalier sans peur et sans
reproche," and had become beloved by people of every phase of creed and
character. My mother met Aunt Kitty in London as she came from Scotland,
and went with her to Norwich. It was perfect anguish to me not to see
once more the place which I had most delighted in, but that was not
permitted. Only two days after leaving her home in the old palace, my
aunt heard of the death of her youngest son, Captain Charles Edward
Stanley, at Hobart Town in Van Diemen's Land. He left a young widow,
who, in her desolation, derived her chief comfort from the thought of
joining her husband's eldest brother, Captain Owen Stanley, at Sydney,
and returning to England in his ship, the _Rattlesnake_. When she
reached the ship, she learned that he had been found dead in his cabin
only a few days after receiving the tidings of his father's death. The
news of this third loss reached Lime just after Aunt Kitty and Kate
Stanley had left it to take possession of their new London home--6
Grosvenor Crescent. I remember my mother's piercing shriek when she
opened the letter: it was the only time I ever heard her scream. It was
only a few months after this that Kate was married to Dr. Vaughan, her
brother's friend and my late head-master.
In 1850 I detested my life at Lyncombe more than ever. Mr. R. was
increasingly neglectful in teaching, and the food and everything else
was increasingly bad. Temple Harris and my other elder companions went
away, and their places were taken by a boy "with flaxen hair and
spectacles, like a young curate," but inoffensive, and "an atrociously
vulgar little snob;" while the ill-tempered rathunter, who had been at
Lyncombe with the old set, was the only one of them that remained. I was
now, however, more anxious than ever to learn something, and I made much
progress by myself. Most of the external consolations of this year came
from the residence in Bath of my maternal cousin Mrs. Russell
Barrington, a rather gay young widow, and an eccentric person, but very
kind to me at this time, incessant in her invitations, and really very
useful in her constant lectures upon "good manners." She might truly
have written to my mother in the words of Mme. de S\xE9vign\xE9--"Je me m\xEAle
d'apprendre \xE0 votre fils les man\xE8ges des conversations ordinaires, qu'il
est important de savoir; il y a des choses qu'il ne faut pas ignorer. Il
seroit ridicule de para\xEEtre \xE9tonn\xE9 de certaines nouvelles de quoi on
raisonne; je suis assez instruite de ces bagatelles."
Up to this time, as ever afterwards, no preparation for social life had
ever been thought of as far as I was concerned. I was never encouraged
to talk at home; indeed, if I ever spoke, I was instantly suppressed. I
knew nothing of any game; I was never taught to ride or swim, and
dancing was absolutely prohibited as an invention of the evil one. Other
boys must have thought me a terrible ass, but it was really not quite my
own fault. Oh! how heartily I agree with Archbishop Whately, who said
that "the God of the Calvinists is the devil with 'God' written on his
forehead."
There was another of my real relations with whom I made acquaintance
this year, and with whom I was afterwards very intimate--namely, Henry
Liddell, Rector of Easington, and one of the trustees of Bamborough
Castle, who was the brother of my great-uncle Lord Ravensworth, and had
married Charlotte Lyon of Hetton, daughter of the youngest brother of my
great-grandmother Lady Anne Simpson. Mr. Liddell was one of the kindest
of men, with all the genial courtesy of a race of country gentlemen now
almost extinct, and his wife was a beautiful old lady, with much that
was interesting to tell of past times and people. Their eldest son, who
was afterwards Dean of Christ Church at Oxford, was at this time
head-master of Westminster, and was a clever and cultivated person,
though inferior to his parents in natural charm of character. In the
summer my maternal grandfather, Sir John Paul, came to stay at a hotel
at Bath and I saw him frequently, but never found anything in common
with him, though he was an exceedingly clever artist. In my daily
letters to my mother, I see that I described his first reception of me
with "How do you do, sir"--just like any distant acquaintance. He was at
this time married to his third wife, who was a daughter of Bishop
Halifax, and presented a very youthful appearance. Her step-children,
who never liked her, declared that on the day after her marriage one of
her eyebrows fell off into her soup. But to me she was always very kind,
and I was fond of her, in spite of her many ancient frivolities. With
Lady Paul lived her sister Caroline Halifax, a very pretty pleasant old
lady, who adored her, and thought "my sister Bessy" the most beautiful,
illustrious, and cultivated woman in the world.
It was in April 1850 that a happy missing of his train at Bath produced
a visit at Lyncombe from Arthur Stanley, who was horrified at my
ignorance, and at the absence, which he discovered, of all pains in
teaching me. His representations to my mother at last induced her to
promise to remove me, for which I shall be eternally grateful to him in
recollection. Nevertheless I was unaccountably left at Lyncombe till
Christmas, nine wretched and utterly useless months; for when he knew I
was going to leave, after my return in the summer, Mr. R. dropped even
the pretence of attempting to teach me, so that I often remained in
total neglect, without any work whatever, for several weeks. In their
anger at the distant prospect of my escaping them, the R.'s now never
spoke to me, and my life was passed in _total_ and miserable silence,
even at meal-times. If it had not been for the neighbourhood of Bath, I
should often have been many weeks together without speaking a single
word. My mother in vain remonstrated over my sickeningly doleful
letters, and told me to "catch all the sunbeams within reach;" I could
only reply there were no sunbeams to catch--that "you would think at
meals that you were in the Inquisition from the cold, morose, joyless,
motionless faces around the table." Then Aunt Esther would make my
mother urge me to accept all these small trials, these "guidings," in a
more Christian spirit, which made me furious: I could not express
religious sentiments when such sentiments were quite unborn. Besides, I
might have answered that "when St. Paul said we were to put off the old
man, he did not mean we were to put on the old woman."[53] I also wrote
to my mother--
"We are in the last extremities as regards food. I will give you a
perfectly correct account of the last few days. Saturday, dinner,
boiled beef. Sunday, breakfast, ditto cold with bread and butter.
Luncheon, a very small portion of ditto with dry bread and part of
the rind of a decayed cheese. Dinner, a little of ditto with a
doughy plum-tart. Monday, breakfast, ditto with two very small
square pieces of bread. Luncheon, ditto with bread and ... butter!
Dinner, ditto and a rice-pudding. Tuesday, breakfast, ditto;
luncheon, a very small fragment of ditto and one potato apiece
doled round. Dinner, ditto. Wednesday, breakfast, scraps of ditto;
luncheon, fat and parings of ditto. We all have to sit and do our
work now by the light of a single bed-candle. Oh! I am more
thankful every day that you will at last let me leave this place.
Any change must be for the better, and I should not mind if it was
to the centre of the desert, if I could only feel I should learn
something, for I am learning _nothing_ here, and never have learnt
anything.... Would you very much mind giving me an umbrella, for I
have got wet through almost every day: on Sundays it is especially
inconvenient. Mr. R. asked me the other day how I liked the
thoughts of going away!--but I was very good, and only said 'I
should not _mind_ it very much!'"
My only reprieve from the misery of Lyncombe in 1850 was in a three
days' visit to my half-uncle Gustavus Hare at Exmouth. I describe to my
mother the extraordinary sermon which I heard there from the Dean of
Exeter, on the theory that the object of St. Paul's visit to Jerusalem,
as described in the Acts of the Apostles, was to attend the deathbed of
the "most blessed Virgin." I was greatly delighted with sketching the
then ruined sanctuary of St. John in the Wilderness--an old grey tower
covered with moss and lichen and a huge yew-tree, in a solitary opening
amid woods. Another day we saw Bradley Manor, near Newton, "with its
chapel used as a hen-roost and a peacock perched upon the altar," and
the second Mrs. Hare Naylor's grave at Highweek, "overlooking the
beautiful wooded hills and the still blue waters of Teignmouth harbour."
Whilst at my tutor's, I had saved up every penny I could--actually by
pennies--to go to Berkeley Castle, and at last, by going without food
the whole day (as I had no money for _that_), I accomplished the
excursion. To me, it was well worth all the suffering it cost, and I
wrote seven sheets to my mother about the great hall with its stained
windows, the terraces with peacocks sunning themselves on the carved
balustrades, the dark picture-hung staircase, the tapestried bedrooms,
and above all, the unspeakably ghastly chamber of Edward the Second's
murder, approached through the leads of the roof by a wooden bridge
between the towers--"dim and dark, with a floor of unplaned oak, and the
light falling from two stained windows upon a white head of Edward in a
niche, and an old bed with a sword lying upon it in the position in
which it was found after the murder." Then in the park were "the
descendants of the stags which were harnessed to the king's bier, and
which, for want of horses, drew him to his grave at Gloucester."
In the dreary solitude of my life at Lyncombe (as how often since!)
drawing was a great resource, and much practice gave me facility in
sketching. At this time I was very conceited about it, thought my
drawings beautiful, and, as an inevitable consequence, fell violently
into "the black stage," in which they were--abominable! In the
holidays, however, my pride was well taken down by my mother, who
herself drew with great taste and delicacy. She would look at my drawing
carefully, and then say, "And what does this line mean?"--"Oh, I thought
... it looked well."--"Then, if you do not know exactly what it means,
take it out at once." This was the best of all possible lessons.
The chief variety of our summer was spending two days in the little inn
at Penshurst--seeing and drawing the fine old house there and Hever
Castle, and a day at Winchelsea, where we slept at the primitive little
public-house, and sketched from breakfast to sunset.
[Illustration: THE RYE GATE, WINCHELSEA.]
In the autumn, at Mr. Landor's house, I first met Miss Carolina
Courtenay Boyle,[54] Queen Adelaide's ex-maid of honour, with whom,
partly through my love of drawing, I made a great friendship. Accustomed
as I was to the inferior twaddle which formed the conversation of the
Maurice sisters, or the harsh judgments of those who considered
everything pleasant to be sinful, Miss Boyle was a revelation to me. I
was as one mesmerised by her. Hitherto my acquaintance with women had
been chiefly with the kind who thought ample compensation for having
treated me with inordinate unkindness and selfishness to be contained in
the information that they would not fail to remember me in their
prayers. It was a new experience, not only that a beautiful and clever
lady should try to make herself agreeable, but that she should think it
worth while to make herself agreeable _to me_. No wonder I adored her.
She was then living with her mother Lady Boyle in the same house of
Millard's Hill, near Frome, in which my great-aunts Caroline and
Marianne Hare had lived before; and, to my great surprise and delight, I
was allowed to go by the coach to spend two days with her there. It was
on this occasion that I first wore a morning-coat instead of a jacket,
and very proud I was of it. Apropos of dress, at this time and for many
years afterwards, all young gentlemen wore straps to their trousers, not
only when riding, but always: it was considered the _ne plus ultra_ of
snobbism to appear without them. The said trousers also always had
stripes at the sides, which, beginning like those of soldiers, grew
broader and broader, till they recalled the parti-coloured hose of
Pinturicchio: then they disappeared altogether.
The house of Millard's Hill, when the Boyles inhabited it, was quite
enchanting, so filled with pictures, carvings, and china; and Miss Boyle
herself was a more beautiful picture than any of those upon her
walls--still wonderfully striking in appearance, with delicately
chiselled features and an unrivalled complexion, while her golden-grey
hair, brushed back and cut short like a boy's (owing to a _coup de
soleil_ long before), added a marvellous picturesqueness. A greater
contrast to the pinched and precise evangelical women whom alone I was
usually permitted to visit could at this time scarcely be imagined.
Wonderful were the stories which she had to tell me, and delighted to
tell me, of her past life and sufferings, "through which only God and
religion" had helped her, with the moral attached that since the few
whom she had idolised were taken away, she must now live for all. She
talked much also of her great anxiety about dear old Landor, "that God
would change and _rebuild_ his soul." Lady Boyle, a sweet and beautiful
old lady,[55] was now quite paralysed, and her daughter would sit for
hours at her feet, soothing her and holding her hands. I remember as
especially touching, that when Miss Boyle sang hymns to her mother, she
would purposely make a mistake, in order that her sick mother might have
"the pleasure of correcting her."
When we went out, Miss Boyle's dress--a large Marie Antoinette hat and
feathers and a scarlet cloak--at that time considered most
extraordinary--excited great sensation. With her I went to Longleat; to
Vallis, of which I have often been reminded in seeing Poussin's
pictures; and to Marston, where old Lord Cork was still living, with his
daughter-in-law Lady Dungarvan and her children. An immense number of
the Boyles--"the illustrious family" by whom, our Dr. Johnson said,
"almost every art had been encouraged or improved"--were at this time
residing at or around Marston, and none of them on terms with one
another, though they were all, individually, very kind to me. I now
first made acquaintance with Miss Boyle's younger sister Mary, whom I
knew better many years after, when I learned to value her wonderful
sympathy with all the pathos of life, as much as to admire her quick wit
and inimitable acting.[56] Landor used to say of her, "Mary Boyle is
more than clever, she is profound;" but it is her quickness that remains
by one. Of her lively answers it is difficult to give specimens, but I
remember how one day when she neglected something, Lady Marion Alford
said to her, "What a baby you are, Mary," and she answered, "Well, I
can't help it; _I was born so_."
Another day Sir Frederic Leighton had promised to go to her, and, after
keeping her waiting a long time, had disappointed her. She met him at
the Academy party that evening, and he made a feint of kneeling down to
beg her pardon--"Oh, pray rise up," she exclaimed; "people might think I
was forgiving you."
But to return to Millard's Hill. In the evenings Miss Boyle took a
guitar and played and sang--strange wild Spanish songs, which seemed
perfectly in accordance with her floating hair and inspired mien. King
William IV. desired her to play to him, which she dreaded so much, that
when she was sent to fetch her guitar, she cut every string and then
frizzled them up, and came back into the royal presence saying that her
guitar was quite broken and she could not play. To her terror, the King
sent for the guitar to see if it was true, but he was deceived. Queen
Adelaide's death had made a great change in Miss Boyle's life, but she
received the greatest kindness from the Queen's sister, Duchess Ida of
Saxe-Weimar. When I was with her, she was looking forward to a homeless
life after her mother's death, which could not be far distant, but was
trusting in the family motto--"God's providence is my inheritance."
Soon after my return from Millard's Hill, I went to my grandfather Sir
John Paul at the Hill House near Stroud--a much-dreaded visit, as I had
never before seen most of the near relations amongst whom I so suddenly
found myself.
From the Hill House I wrote to my mother--
"_Dec. 19, 1850._--Lyncombe is done with! my own Mother, and oh! I
cannot say how delightful it was, in parting with so many persons
terribly familiar through two years and a half of misery, to know
that I should never see them again.
"At Stroud Lady Paul's pony-carriage was waiting, and we drove
swiftly through some deep valleys, the old coachman, twenty-five
years in the family, telling me how he had seen and nursed me when
a baby, and how glad he was that I was come to see my grandfather.
We turned up by a house which he said was my 'Aunt Jane's,'[57]
through a steep lane overhung by magnificent beech-trees, and then
round a drive to this hill-set mansion, which has a fine view over
wood and valley on one side, and on the other a garden with
conservatories and fountains.
"As the bell rang, a good-natured, foreign-looking man came out to
welcome me, and told me he was my Uncle Wentworth,[58] introduced
me to his boy Johnnie, and took me into a large cheerful room
(like the chintz room at Eridge), where the bright-eyed old Sir
John was sitting with Lady Paul and my aunt Minnie Bankhead. Lady
Paul kissed me, and it was not half so formidable as I expected....
Aunt Minnie is very handsome, and amuses everybody with her
stories. She has just brought back His Excellency her husband from
Mexico, where she has had the most wonderful adventures."
V
SOUTHGATE
"Stern lawgiver, yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face."
--WORDSWORTH, _Ode to Duty_.
"Duties bring blessings with them."
--SOUTHEY, _Roderick_.
"In the acquisition of more or less useless knowledge, soon happily
to be forgotten, boyhood passes away. The schoolhouse fades from
view, and we turn into the world's high-road."--J. K. JEROME.
My new tutor, the Rev. Charles Bradley, was selected by Arthur Stanley,
who had been acquainted with his brother, afterwards Master of
University College at Oxford. I went over from Lime to see him at
Hastings, and at once felt certain that, though he was very eccentric,
his energy and vivacity were just what would be most helpful to me. His
house was an ugly brick villa standing a little way back from the road
in the pretty village of Southgate, about ten miles from London, and he
had so many pupils that going there was like returning to school. The
life at Southgate for the next two years was certainly the reverse of
luxurious, and I did not get on well with my tutor owing to his
extraordinary peculiarities, and probably to my many faults also; but I
feel that mentally I owe everything to Mr. Bradley. "Vita sine proposito
languida et vaga est"[59] was the first principle he inculcated. He was
the only person who ever taught me anything, and that he did not teach
me more than he did was entirely my own fault. He had a natural
enthusiasm for knowledge himself, and imparted it to his pupils; and the
energy and interest of the lessons at Southgate were perfectly
delightful--every hour filled, not a moment wasted, and a constant
excitement about examinations going on. I am sure that the manly vigour
of my surroundings soon began to tell on my character as much as my
mind, and at Southgate I soon learned to acquire more openness in
matters of feeling, and a complete indifference to foolish sneers. Mr.
R. for two years and a half had totally, systematically, and most
cruelly neglected me: Mr. Bradley fully did his duty by me--to a degree
of which I have only in after years learned the full value.
When we had a holiday at Southgate, it was the well-earned reward of
hard work on the part of the pupils, not the result of idleness on the
part of the tutor, and our holidays were intensely enjoyable. As he
found he could trust me, Mr. Bradley let me make long excursions on
these holidays--to Hatfield, St. Albans, Epping Forest, and often to
London, where my happy hunts after old buildings and historic
recollections laid the foundation of a work which I at that time little
looked forward to.[60] Sometimes also I went to the Stanleys', ever
becoming increasingly attracted by the charm, intelligence, and wisdom
of my "Aunt Kitty." She was very alarming with her
"Strong sovereign will, and some desire to chide."[61]
But the acuteness of her observation, the crispness of her conversation,
and the minute and inflexible justice of her daily conduct, ever showed
the most rare union of masculine vigour with feminine delicacy.
My aunt was very intimate with the Miss Berrys, who both died in 1852,
Agnes in January, Mary in November. Their celebrity began with their
great intimacy at Devonshire House and Lansdowne House: the old Duchess
of Devonshire was their great friend. I believe they were not clever in
themselves, but they had a peculiar power of drawing clever people
around them. They had both been engaged, Mary to the O'Hara, Agnes to
the Mr. Ferguson who married Lady Elgin. They were very kind-hearted,
and were, as it were, privileged to say rude things, which nobody
minded, at their parties. Often, when a fresh person arrived towards the
end of the evening, Miss Berry would say before all the other guests,
"You see I've been able to get no one to meet you--no one at all." She
would go out of the room whilst she was pouring out the tea, and call
out over the stairs, "Murrell, no more _women_, no more _women_;" and
Murrell, the butler, understood perfectly, and put out the lamp over the
door. A few very intimate friends would still come in, but, when they
saw the lamp was out, ladies generally drove away. Latterly, the Miss
Berrys tried to draw in a good deal. A sort of _jeu d'esprit_ went round
to their friends, thanking them for past favours, and asking for a
continuance on a smaller scale. It was never quite understood, but was
supposed to mean that they did not wish to see quite so many. The death
of Miss Agnes was like that of the wife. She had always been touching in
that she could never understand how any one could like her better than
her sister. She was the housekeeper, and she did what other housekeepers
seldom do--she had the soup brought up to her every day whilst she was
dressing, and tasted it, and would say, "There must be a little more
sugar," or "There is too much salt," so that it was always perfect and
always the same.
I think it must have been at this time also that I was taken to see the
venerable Lady Louisa Stuart, who died soon afterwards.[62] I am glad
that I can thus always retain a vivid recollection of the daughter of
the famous Lord Bute and grand-daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as
a very old lady of ninety-four, in a large cap, sitting in an
old-fashioned high-backed chair covered with white stuff, in a room of
extreme bareness.
Great was my excitement, on first going to Southgate. I stayed on the
way with the Stanleys, to see the Exhibition (of 1851) which was then
in full preparation, and the procession at the opening of Parliament.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_6 Grosvenor Crescent, Feb. 3, 1851._--The exterior of the Crystal
Palace is disappointing, I had imagined it so much higher, but the
interior is and looks gigantic. The most striking feature is the
great tree: it is wonderful to see its huge branches enclosed quite
to the topmost twigs, and the details of the building are
beautiful."
"_Feb. 4._--I went to the Bunsens' house to see the procession.
There was a crowd of people on the terrace when the great gun
announced that the Queen had left the palace, and already from
distant parts of the avenue cries of 'God save the Queen' and
'Hurrah!' The procession of Lifeguards in their panoply of
glittering helmets and breastplates was beautiful. Then came the
six gorgeous carriages with the household, and lastly the eight
cream-coloured horses drawing the great glass coach. Prince Albert
in his great boots sat on the side nearest to us, opposite the
Duchess of Sutherland in a diamond tiara; and on the other, the
Queen, in a crown and glistening dress of embroidered silver, kept
bowing to the shouts of her subjects--so much indeed that I heard a
poor Irish-woman exclaim--'Och indeed, and mustn't the poor thing
get tired of nodding her head about so.' ... There were forty
people at luncheon with the Bunsens afterwards."
"_Southgate, Feb. 8, 1851._--My own dearest mother, at last I am
writing from my own room at Southgate. I joined the omnibus at a
public-house at the bottom of Snow Hill,[63] and drove here through
the moonlight, arriving at 10 P.M. We stopped at a large gate in a
wall, which was opened by a stable-boy, who led the way across a
grass-plat with trees. Mr. Bradley met me in the hall, and took me
to see Mrs. Bradley, and then to my room, which at first seemed
most dreary, cold, and comfortless."
"_Feb. 9._--I have already seen enough of the life here to know a
good deal about it. Mr. Bradley is an excellent tutor, though I
could never like him as a man. He is much too familiar with his
pupils, pulls their hair or hits them on the toes with the poker
when they make mistakes: he will peer into their rooms, and if he
finds a coat, &c., lying about, will fine them a penny, and there
is a similar fine if you do not put the chair you have sat upon at
dinner close up against the wall when you have done with it. The
tradespeople are allowed to put in their bills, 'Pane of glass
broken by Portman or Brooke,' &c. When I asked him to lend me a
pen, he said, 'Oh, I don't provide my pupils with pens.' When he
wanted to send a parcel to Miss Jason, he told her brother he
should come upon him for the postage. The first thing he said to me
after I entered the house was--pointing to the sideboard--'Mind you
never take either of those two candles; those are Mrs. Bradley's
and mine' (we have sickly-smelling farthing dips in dirty japanned
candlesticks). These are instances to give you an idea of the man.
"If you have three indifferent marks from the mathematical master,
you have either to stay in all the next half-holiday, or to receive
three severe boxes on the ear!--a thing which I imagine would not
be borne at any other private tutor's, but Bradley seems to have
magic power. His inquisitiveness about trifles is boundless. If I
bring down a book--'What is that book? Was it a present? Who from?
Where was it bought? How much did it cost?'
"When I came down to prayers this morning (at eight, being Sunday),
I found all the pupils assembled. I am the smallest but one, and
look up at the gigantic Portman, who is only thirteen. Then we had
breakfast. Cold beef and ham were on the table, a huge loaf, and
two little glasses of butter. Mrs. Bradley poured out the tea,
while Bradley threw to each pupil an immense hunch off the loaf,
saying with mine, that I 'must not leave any, or any fat at dinner,
that was never allowed; and that I must always say first what I
wanted, much or little, fat or not.' After breakfast the pupils all
gathered round the fire and talked. Soon Bradley made us sit down
to work, myself at Greek Testament, till it was time to go to
church, whither we went, not quite in a schoolboy procession, but
very nearly. The church was 'Weld Chapel,' a barn-like building,
with round windows and high galleries. At dinner there was cold
roast and boiled beef, and plum and custard pudding, good and
plain, but with severe regulations. We did not have any time to
ourselves except three-quarters of an hour after afternoon church,
after which we went down to a sort of Scripture examination, with
such questions as, 'How do we know that Salome was the mother of
Zebedee's children?' I wrote what I thought an excellent set of
answers, but they proved sadly deficient, and I am afraid I _am_ a
dunce.... I am writing now after prayers, in forbidden time, and in
danger of having my fire put out for a month! Do not think from my
letter that I dislike being here. Oh, no! work, work, is the one
thing I need, and which I must and will have, and, if I have it,
all petty troubles will be forgotten. Good-night, my own dear
blessed mother."
"_Feb. 10._--Half my first work-day is over, and I have just washed
my hands, sooty with lighting my own fire, to write before dinner.
At half-past nine we all sat down to work at the long table in the
dining-room. I was directed to do Euripides while the 'schemes'
(tables of work) of the others were prepared, and we went on till
half-past twelve, when Bradley said, 'You've done enough.' Then
Campbell asked me to walk with him and Walker to the station....
All my companions seem very old."
"_Feb. 12._--On Wednesday afternoon I went a long walk with
Campbell. The country looks most dreary now, and mostly hidden by
London fog, still I think there are bits which I could draw....
When we came home I ached with cold and my fire was out. Mrs.
Bradley is certainly most good-natured; for happening to pass and
see my plight, she insisted on going down herself to get sticks,
laying it, and lighting it again. When I was going to bed, too, the
servant came up with a little bason of arrowroot, steaming hot, and
some biscuits, which 'Missis thought would do my cold good.'
"Bradley improves greatly on acquaintance, and is very kind to me,
though I am sorry to say he finds me far more backward and stupid
than he expected, especially in grammar. He has a wonderfully
pleasant way of teaching, and instead of only telling us we are
dunces and blockheads, like Mr. R., he helps us not to remain so.
"He was exceedingly indignant yesterday at receiving a letter from
Lord Portman to say that his son had complained of the dreadful
damp of the house, that his shirts put out at night were always wet
before morning. After expatiating for a long time upon the
unkindness and impropriety of Portman's conduct in writing to
complain instead of asking for a fire, he ended good-humouredly by
insisting on his going out into a laurel bush in the garden with
Forbes, to receive advice as to improved conduct for the future!
All this every pupil in the house was called down to witness:
indeed, if any one does wrong, it is Bradley's great delight to
make him a looking-glass to the others. Sometimes he holds up their
actual persons to be looked at. If they are awkward, he makes them
help the others at meals, &c., and all his little penances are made
as public as possible."
"_Feb. 14._--The days go quickly by in a succession of lessons, one
after the other. I am much happier already at Southgate than I
ever was anywhere else, for Bradley's whole aim, the whole thought
of his soul, is to teach us, and he makes his lessons as
interesting as Arthur (Stanley) himself would. I like all my
companions very much, but Walker best; and, though I am the
smallest, thinnest, weakest fellow here, I do not think they like
me the worse for it."
"_Feb. 16._--Yesterday, after work, I went by train to Hatfield
House, provided with a large piece of cake for luncheon by Mrs.
Bradley.... You may imagine my delight, as I expected something
like Penshurst at best, to see tower after tower, and pile after
pile of the most glorious old building, equally splendid in colour
and outline--far the most beautiful house I ever saw. It was a
perfect day, the sun lighting up the glorious building, and making
deep shadows upon it, and glinting through the old oaks in the park
upon the herds of deer.... The train was forty minutes late, and it
was quite dark when I got back, but Mrs. Bradley's good-nature gave
me a welcome and a hot meat tea, whereas with Mrs. R. there would
indeed have been cold behaviour and cold tea--if _any_.
"The only way of getting on with Bradley is the most entire
openness, and answering all his questions as shortly and simply as
possible.... After Cicero he always gives us a composition to
translate into Latin out of his own head, most extraordinary
sometimes, though in the style of what we have been reading. I am
already beginning to find Cicero quite easy, and am beginning at
last even to make some little sense of Euripides."
"_Feb. 21._--At half-past six I hear knocking without intermission
at my door, which it is generally a long time before I am
sufficiently awake to think other than a dream. Presently I jump
up, brush my own clothes, seize my Cicero, and look it over while I
dress, and at half-past seven rush downstairs to the dining-room.
For some minutes the stairs are in a continual clatter. Meantime I
retire into a window in agonies of agitation about my Cicero, till
Bradley comes in rubbing his hands, and sits down in an arm-chair
by the fire: I sit down by him, and Hill on the other side of me,
like a great long giant. I generally do this lesson very ill,
partly from want of presence of mind, partly from inattention, and
partly because I am scarcely awake: however, Bradley makes it not
only instructive but interesting, always giving us funny sentences
out of his own head to construe into the sort of Latin we are
doing. I quite enjoy my lessons with him, only he must think me
_such_ a dunce. After the lesson is construed, I sometimes have to
do it all through by myself, or the others do it and I correct them
(if I can). Sometimes the poker is held over their toes, when,
without exception, they do it worse than before, and down it comes.
Then we parse.
"Then a little bell tinkles. Portman cuts the bread, Bradley the
ham, and I help to set chairs in two rows from the fire, while the
others hang over it, very grim and cold. Two maidens and a
stable-boy come in, we sit in two rows confronting each other, and
Bradley in the oddest possible tone reads a chapter in 'Proverbs'
and a prayer. Then the chairs are put to the table: I sit next but
Hill to Mrs. Bradley, which means I am fourth eldest, Walker on
the other side of me, Forbes and Campbell opposite. At breakfast
every one talks of plans for the day, Forbes and Portman of hounds,
races, and steeplechases, Campbell of church windows; it is very
different from the silent meals at Lyncombe.
"We do not begin regular work again till half-past nine, though I
generally prepare mine, but sometimes Forbes persuades me to come
out and give them a chase, that is, to run away as hard as I can,
with all the others yelping like hounds at my heels; but the scene
of these chases is only a square walled garden and orchard, and
there are no places for concealment. We come in very dirty, and
Buchan is sometimes made to wear his dirty shoes round his neck, or
to have them under his nose all worktime.
"I work in my room till ten, when I come in with Walker for the
second Cicero lesson, which is even pleasanter than the other.
Afterwards we write Latin compositions out of our own heads! Then I
sometimes say Greek grammar, or else work in my own room again till
twelve, when I go down to the young Cambridge wrangler, who is
teaching some one all worktime, but with whom I do nothing except
for this half-hour. He looks very young and delicate and is
childish in manner, and generally gets into a fix over a fraction,
and so do I, but we fumble and whisper together over arithmetic
till half-past twelve. Meanwhile my letters have generally come,
books are clapped together, and I run upstairs to write to you.
"A dinner-bell rings at half-past one, and the others come in from
the drawing-room, whither they adjourn before dinner, with the
penalty of a penny if they lean against the mantelpiece, as they
might injure the ornaments. We have the same places at dinner, an
excellent dinner always--variety of food and abundance of it.
Afterwards I generally read, while the others play at quoits, and
at half-past two I go out walking with Campbell, coming in to begin
work at five. At half-past five Walker and I come in with
Euripides, which is the last repetition: then I work in my own room
till six, when we have tea, with bread and butter and cake. After
tea the drawing-room is open to the public till half-past seven,
when we all begin to prepare work for the next day, and write Latin
exercises till nine, when prayers are read. Afterwards the younger
ones generally go to bed, but some of us sit up talking or playing
chess, &c., till nearly eleven.
"I like the sort of life excessively--the hardly having a moment to
one's self, as the general working 'subject' takes up all leisure
time--the hardly having time even to make acquaintance with one's
companions from the succession of all that has to be done. No one
thinks it odd if you do any amount of work in your own room; of
course they laugh at you as 'a bookworm,' but what does that
signify?
"I have forgotten to tell you that between breakfast and the chase,
Hill and I are examined in three chapters of the Bible which we
prepare beforehand. Bradley asks the most capital questions, which
one would never think of, and we have to know the geography
perfectly. I am astonished to find how indescribably ignorant I
am."
"_Feb. 23._--I daily feel how much happier I am with the Bradleys
than I have ever been before. Compared to Lyncombe, Southgate is
absolute paradise, the meals are so merry and the little
congregations round the fire afterwards, and work is carried on
with such zest and made so interesting.
"Yesterday, after work, I went to Waltham Abbey--a long walk to
Edmonton, and then by rail to Waltham. I was very anxious to see
what a place so long thought of would be like--a tall white tower
rising above trees, a long rambling village street, and then the
moss-grown walls of the church. The inside is glorious, with
twisted Norman pillars, &c., but choked with pews and galleries.
The old man who showed it said he was 'quite tired of hearing of
church reform and restoration, though the pillars certainly did
want whitewashing again sadly.' ... There is an old gothic gateway
on the brink of the river Lea."
"_March 9, Harrow._--Having got through 'the subject'--Cicero and
Greek grammar--yesterday morning, with much trembling but
favourable results, I set off to come here. With a bundle like a
tramp, I passed through Colney Hatch, Finchley, and Hendon, keeping
Harrow steeple and hill well in view, and two miles from Harrow met
Kate in her carriage. This morning we have been to church, and I
have since been to Mrs. Brush, the Pauls' old servant, whom I knew
so well when at school here, and who came out exclaiming, 'O my
dear good little soul, how glad I be to see ye!'"
_"Southgate, March 14._--I must tell my mother of my birthday
yesterday. Mr. and Mrs. Bradley made me order the meals, and do
very much what I liked. The tutor, who can be as savage as a lion
during work, relapses into a sucking-lamb when it is over. My
health was drunk all round at dinner, and 'a truce' given
afterwards, which I employed in going with little Fitzherbert
Brooke to the old church at Chingford, close to Epping Forest--a
picturesque, deserted, ivy-covered building, looking down over the
flat country which I think so infinitely interesting, with the
churches and towers of London in the distance.
"To-day there has been a great fuss, and it will probably have some
dreadful ending. In the middle of work we were all suddenly called
down, and Bradley, with his gravest face, headed a procession into
the garden, where all across one of the flower-beds were seen
footmarks, evidently left by some one in the chases yesterday. The
gardener was called, and said he saw _one of the party_ run across
yesterday, but he was not allowed to say a word more. Then Bradley
said he should allow a day in which the culprit might come forward
and confess, in which case he would be forgiven and no one told his
name, otherwise the shoes of yesterday, which have been locked up,
would be measured with the footprints, and the offender sent away."
"_March 15._--The plan has quite answered. In the evening, Bradley
told me the offender had given himself up. No one knows who it is,
and all goes on as before. Some of the others are given a
tremendous punishment for running through some forbidden laurel
bushes--the whole of 'Southey's Life of Nelson' to get up with the
geography, and not to leave the house till it is done, no second
course, no beer, and ... to take a pill every night."
"_April 2._--The other day I was very careless in my work, and was
asked where my mind was, and as I could not tell, Campbell was sent
upstairs to fetch--my mind! and came down bearing two little pots
of wild anemones, which were moved about with me as my 'mind,' to
the great amusement of the others.... If I should ever _seem_ to
complain of anything here in my letters, mind you never allude to
it to the Bradleys, as there is only one thing which Bradley
_never_ forgives a pupil, and that is having caused him to write a
letter."
"_April 7._--Yesterday I went with Campbell and Edgecombe to
Hatfield, whence we ran all the way to St. Albans, an effort, but
quite worth while, though we had only an hour there."
"(After the Easter vacation), _April 27._--When I opened my eyes
this morning on the wintry wilderness here, what a change it was
from Lime--withered sooty evergreens, leafless trees, trampled
grass, and thick London fog--I think the angels driven out of
Paradise must have felt as I do, only I have a bad headache
besides.... All here is the same as when we left, to the drawling
sermon of Mr. Staunton about faith, grace, and redemption, sighing
and groaning and hugging the pulpit-cushion the while. It is
bitterly cold, but the law of the house allows no more fires....
Even Fausty's white hair, which still clings to my coat, has its
value now."
"_April 29._--Bradley has now taken a notion that I am dreadfully
self-conceited, so I am made to sit on a high chair before him at
lessons like a little school-boy, and yesterday, for mistakes in my
Latin exercise, I was made to wear my coat and waistcoat inside out
till dinner-time."
"_May 11._--Yesterday, I went by train to Broxbourne, and walked
thence by Hoddesdon across the bleak district called the Rye, till
I saw an oasis of poplars and willows by the river Lea, and a red
brick tower with terra-cotta ornaments, twisted chimney,
flag-staff, and a grey arched door below. I had not expected it, so
you may imagine how enchanted I was to find that it was the tower
of the Rye-House. In that road Charles and James were to have been
murdered on their return from Newmarket, and for the plot conceived
in that tower Algernon Sidney and William Lord Russell died!
"Bradley is now alternately very good-natured and very provoking.
He continually asks me if I do not think him the most annoying,
tiresome man I ever met, and I always say, 'Yes, I do think so.' In
return, he says that I am sapping his vitals and wearing him out by
my ingratitude and exaggerations, but he does not think so at
all."
"_May 18._--I have been to Harrow. Mr. Bradley lent me a horse, to
be sent back by the stable-boy after the first six miles, so I
easily got through the rest.... I had many hours with Kate, and
came away immediately after dinner, arriving at exactly ten minutes
to ten--the fatal limit; so Bradley was pleased, and welcomed me,
and I did _not_ go supperless to bed."
"_June 8, 1851._--Yesterday I walked to Dyrham Park near Barnet, to
pay a visit to the Trotters. It is a handsome place.... I wrote
upon my card, 'Will you see an unknown cousin?' and sending it in,
was admitted at once. I found Mrs. Trotter[64] in the garden. She
welcomed me very kindly, and seven of her nine children came
trooping up to see 'the unknown cousin.' Captain Trotter is
peculiar and peculiarly religious. I had not been there a minute
before he gathered some leaves to dilate to me upon 'the beauty of
the creation and the wonderful glory of the Creator,' with his
magnifying-glass. He builds churches, gives the fourth of his
income to the poor, and spends all his time in good works. I stayed
to tea with all the children. The gardens are lovely, and the
children have three houses in the shrubberies--one with a
fireplace, cooking apparatus, and oven, where they can bake;
another, a pretty thatched cottage with Robinson Crusoe's tree near
it, with steps cut in it to the top."
"_June 11._--The first day of our great examination is over, and I
have written seventy-three answers, some of them occupying a whole
sheet."
"_June 12._--To-day has been ten hours and a half of hard writing.
I was not plucked yesterday!"
"_June 15._--I reached Harrow by one, through the hot lanes peopled
with haymakers. I was delayed in returning, yet by tearing along
the lanes arrived at ten exactly by my watch, but by the hall-clock
it was half-past ten. Bradley was frigidly cold in consequence, and
has been ever since. To-day at breakfast he said, 'Forbes may
always be depended upon, but that is not the case with _every
one_.'"
"_June 20._--I have had an interesting day!--examinations all
morning--the finale of Virgil, and then, as a reward, and because
neither of my preceptors could attend to me, Bradley said I might
go where I liked; so I fixed on Hertford, and, having walked to
Ponder's End, took the train thither.... From Hertford, I walked to
Panshanger, Lord Cowper's, which is shown, and in the most
delightful way, as you are taken to the picture-gallery, supplied
with a catalogue, and left to your own devices. The pictures are
glorious and the gardens are quaint, in the old style. At Ware I
saw the great bed, but the owners would not let me draw it on any
account, because they were sure I was going to do it for the
Pantomime. The bed is twelve feet square and is said to have
belonged to Queen Elizabeth.
"In the Bible examination I am second, in spite of having said
that Ishmael married an Egyptian, and having left out 'They drank
of that rock which followed them' in answer to the question 'What
were the miracles ordained to supply the temporal wants of the
Israelites in the wilderness?'"
"_June 25._--I am enchanted--quite enchanted that we are really
going to Normandy.... I feel satisfied, now the end of the quarter
is come, that I never was happier anywhere in my life than I have
been here, and that I have done more, learned more, and thought
more in the few months at Southgate than in all the rest of my life
put together."
While I was away, my mother's life at Hurstmonceaux had flowed on in a
quiet routine between Lime and the Rectory. She had, however, been much
affected by the sudden death of Ralph Leycester, the young head of her
family,[65] and cheerful, genial owner of Toft, her old family home.
Chiefly, however, did she feel this from her share in the terrible
sorrow of Ralph's eldest sister, her sister-like cousin Charlotte
Leycester; and the hope of persuading her to have the change and of
benefiting her by it, proved an incentive to make a short tour in
Normandy--a plan with which I was intensely delighted. To go abroad was
positively enchanting. But _anything_ would have been better than
staying at Hurstmonceaux, so overrun was it with Maurices. I suppose
they sometimes meant well, but what appalling bores they were! "La bonne
intention n'est de rien en fait d'esprit."[66]
We crossed to Boulogne on a sea which was perfectly calm at starting,
but on the way there came on one of the most frightful thunderstorms I
ever remember, and the sea rose immediately as under a hurricane. A lady
who sate by us was dreadfully terrified, and I have no doubt remembers
now the way in which (as the waves swept the deck) my mother repeated to
her the hymn--"Oh, Jesus once rocked on the breast of the billow." I
have often seen in dreams since, our first entrance into a French
harbour, brilliant sunshine after the storm, perfectly still water after
the raging waves, and the fishwomen, in high white caps like towers
(universal then) and huge glittering golden earrings, lining the railing
of the pier.
We saw Amiens and had a rapid glimpse of Paris, where we were all
chiefly impressed by the Chapelle St. Ferdinand and the tomb of the Duke
of Orleans, about whom there was still much enthusiasm. During this
visit I also saw three phases of old Paris which I am especially glad
to remember, and which I should have had no other opportunity of seeing.
I saw houses still standing in the Place du Carrousel between the
Tuileries and the then unfinished Louvre: I saw the Fontaine des
Innocents in the middle of the market, uncovered as it then was: and I
saw the Tour de S. Jacques rising in the midst of a crowd of old houses,
which pressed close against it, and made it look much more picturesque
than it has done since it has been freed from its surroundings. On
leaving Paris, we spent delightful days at Rouen, and visited, at
Darnetal, the parents of M. Waddington, who became well known as
Minister of Foreign Affairs at Paris, and ambassador in England. From
Havre we went by sea to Caen, arriving full of the study of Norman
history and determined to find out, in her native place, all we could
about Gunnora, Duchess of Normandy (grandmother of William the
Conqueror), from whose second marriage both my mother and Charlotte
Leycester were directly descended.
Very delightful were the excursions we made from Caen--to Bayeux with
its grand cathedral and the strange strip of royal needlework known as
"the Bayeux Tapestry:" and to the quaint little church of Thaon and
Ch\xE2teau Fontaine Henri, a wonderfully preserved great house of other
days. Ever since I have had a strong sense of the charm of the wide
upland Normandy plains of golden corn, alive with ever-changing cloud
shadows, and of the sudden dips into wooded valleys, fresh with streams,
where some little village of thatched cottages has a noble church with a
great spire, and an area wide enough to contain all the people in the
village and all their houses too. The most beautiful of all the breaks
in the cornland occurs at Falaise, where the great castle of Robert the
Devil rises on a precipice above a wooded rift with river and watermills
and tanners' huts, in one of which Arlette, the mother of the Conqueror,
and daughter of the tanner Verpray, was born.
From Falaise we went to Lisieux, which was then one of the most
beautiful old towns in France, almost entirely of black and white timber
houses. It was only a few miles thence to Val Richer, where we spent the
afternoon with M. Guizot--"grave and austere, but brilliantly
intellectual," as Princess Lieven has described him. His ch\xE2teau was
full of relics of Louis Philippe and his court, and the garden set with
stately orange-trees in large tubs like those at the Tuileries. My
mother and cousin returned to England from hence, but I was left for
some weeks at Caen to study French at the house of M. Melun, a
Protestant pasteur, in a quiet side-street close to the great Abbaye aux
Dames, where Matilda of Flanders is buried.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Caen, July 26, 1851._--It was very desolate, my own mother, being
left alone in that square of Lisieux, and the old houses seemed to
lose their beauty, the trees and cathedral to grow colourless,
after you were all gone, so that I was glad when the diligence came
to take me away. It was a long drive, passing through 'Coupe
Gorge,' a ravine where Napoleon, hearing diligences were often
robbed there, made one man settle, saying that others would soon
follow, and now there is quite a village.
"I have a pleasant room here, with a clean wooden floor, and a view
of S. Pierre from the window. Its only drawback is opening into the
sitting-room where Mr. T., my fellow-pensionnaire, smokes his
pipes. He is a heavy young man, very anxious to impress me with the
honour and glory of his proficiency as a shot and cricketer, and of
the Frenchmen he has knocked down and 'rather surprised.' We had
prayers in Madame Melun's bedroom, she being dressed, but 'le
petit' snoring in bed. The whole family, including _les petits_,
have a great meat breakfast with wine, followed by bowls of sour
milk.... Such a touching funeral procession has just passed up the
Rue des Chanoines, a young girl carried on a bier by six of her
companions in white dresses and wreaths."
"_Sunday, July 27_.--Yesterday I went a walk with M. Melun to the
Prairie, where the races are going on. This morning he preached
about them and the evils of the world with the most violent action
I ever saw--stamping, kicking, spreading out his arms like the
wings of a bird, and jumping as if about to descend upon the altar,
which, in the _Temple_, is just under the pulpit. This afternoon I
have been again to the service, but there was no congregation; all
the world was gone to the races, and, M. Melun says, to perdition
also."
"_July 28._--It is such a burning day that I can hardly hold my
head up. Everything seems lifeless with heat, and not a breath of
air. I never missed a green tree so much: if you go out, except to
the Prairie, there is not one to be seen, and even the streets are
cool and refreshing compared with the barren country. Tens of
thousands of people collected in the Prairie this morning, half to
see the races, half the eclipse of the sun, for they both began at
the same moment, and the many coloured dresses and high Norman caps
were most picturesque."
"_July 30._--It is like the deadly motionless heat of 'The Ancient
Mariner;' I suppose the eclipse brings it ... the baking is
absolute pain.... It is tiresome that the whole Melun family think
it necessary to say 'bon jour' and to shake hands every time one
goes in and out of the house, a ceremony which it makes one hotter
to think of."
"_July 31._--The heat is still terrific, but thinking anything
better than the streets, I have been to Thaon--a scorching walk
across the shadeless cornfields. The church and valley were the
same, but seemed to have lost their charm since I last saw them
with my mother. I have my French lesson now in the little
carnation-garden on the other side of the street."
"_August 1._--I have been by the diligence to Notre Dame de la
Deliverande, a strange place, full of legends. In the little square
an image of the Virgin is said to have fallen down from heaven: it
was hidden for many years in the earth, and was at length
discovered by the scratching of a lamb. Placed in the church, the
Virgin every night returned to the place where she was disinterred,
and at last the people were obliged to build her a shrine upon the
spot. It is an old Norman chapel surrounded by booths of relics,
and shouts of 'Achetez donc une Sainte Vierge' resound on all
sides. Latterly, to please the fishermen, the worship of the Virgin
has been combined with that of St. Nicholas, and they appear on the
same medal, &c. When a crew is saved from shipwreck on this coast,
it instantly starts in procession, barefoot, to 'La Deliverande,'
and all the lame who visit the chapel are declared to go away
healed.... In a blaze of gold and silver tinsel, surrounded by the
bouquets of the faithful and the crutches of the healed, is the
image which 'fell down from heaven,'--its mouldering form is
arrayed in a silver robe, and, though very old, it looks unlikely
to last long. I went on with M. Melun to Berni\xE8res, where there is
a grand old church, to visit a poor Protestant family, the only one
in this ultra-Catholic neighbourhood. They had begged the minister
to come because one of the sisters was dead, and the whole party
collected while he prayed with them, and they wept bitterly.
Afterwards we asked where we could get some food. 'Chez nous, chez
nous,' they exclaimed, and lighting a fire in their little mud room
with some dried hemp, they boiled us some milk, and one of the
sisters, who was a baker, brought in a long hot roll of sour bread,
for which they persistently refused any payment.... I have had an
English invitation from Madame de Lignerole in these words--'Will
you be so very kind as to allow me to take the liberty of
entreating you to have the kindness to confer the favour upon me of
giving me the happiness of your company on Friday.'"
"_August 2._--We went to-day to see M. Laire, an old antiquary who
has lived all his life upon vegetables. His house is very
attractive; the court, full of flowers mixed with carvings and
Celtic remnants, borders on the willows which fringe the Odon, and
the rooms are crammed with curiosities and pictures relating to
Caen history. The old man himself is charming, and spends his life
in collecting and giving away. He gave me a medallion of
Malesherbes, and many other things."
"_August 2._--I have been to dine with the Consul, Mr. Barrow.
Under his garden is the quarry whence the stone was taken which
built Westminster Abbey. It undermines all the grounds, and once,
when a part fell in, the hot air which came out made it quite hot
in winter. Mr. Barrow has built a conservatory over the spot, which
needs no other heat, and plants flourish amazingly, though only
camellias and smooth-leaved plants will do, as others are too much
affected by the damp."
Want of money was still always the great trouble of my boyhood, as my
dear mother never could be persuaded to see the necessity of my having
any, and after she had made a minute calculation of the necessary
pennies that came into her head, always gave me just that sum and no
more, never allowing anything for the ever-recurring incidents and
exigencies of daily life. When I was sixteen she was persuaded to allow
me \xA310 a year, but out of this I was expected to buy all the smaller
articles of dress, boots, hats, gloves, &c., so, as may be imagined, my
annual allowance was almost nil; and my excursions at Southgate had been
only possible by starvation, and because the third-class ticket to
London cost only fourpence. When I was left at Caen, just the absolutely
needful sum for my return journey was given me, and no allowance made
for any personal expenses of my stay--for washer-woman, fees to
servants, or payments for the many purchases which my mother wrote to
desire me to make for her. Thus, when the time came for setting out
homewards, with the nine packages which were to be taken to my mother, I
was in the greatest embarrassment, and many were my adventures; yet my
dread of a sea-voyage still made me refuse altogether to go by Havre and
Southampton, and my longing to see a historical spot which I had long
read and heard of made me determine if possible--if I half died for it
on the way--to visit St. Denis, a place I had always had a special
longing after. The journey entailed a singular chapter of accidents.
During the whole of the first long day--twelve hours' diligence
journey--I had nothing whatever to eat but a brioche and some plums; but
at seventeen starvation is not one of the worst things in life, and when
I arrived at Evreux, the fair of St. Taurinus, the patron saint of the
place, was going on, and I was in ecstasies the next morning over the
costumes which it brought into the town, as well as over the old
Bishop's Palace and the beautiful cathedral with its lace-work
architecture.
From Evreux the diligence had to be taken again to Bonni\xE8res, where I
joined the railway to Paris, and in the evening reached St. Denis. I
had no money to go to a hotel, but spent the night in a wretched caf\xE9
which was open for carters under the walls of the cathedral, where I got
some sour bread and eggs, having had no food all day. At five in the
morning the doors of the Abbey were opened, and in my raptures over the
monuments of Dagobert, Francis I., &c., I forgot all my
miseries--especially in the crypt, full then of royal tombs and statues.
At half-past twelve, when I was ready to leave, I found that no more
trains for Boulogne would stop at St. Denis that day, and that I must
return to Paris. I went in the omnibus, but owing to my ignorance of
French, was carried far beyond my point, and had to be dropped, with all
my packages, in a strange street, whence with some difficulty I got a
porter to drag my things to the station, but arrived when the train was
just gone, and no other till half-past seven, and it was then two.
Hungry and forlorn, I made my way, losing it often, on foot, to the
Tuileries gardens, where I felt that the beauty of the flowers repaid me
for the immense walk, though I was disconcerted when I found that
sitting down on a chair cost the two sous I had saved to buy bread with.
In my return walk, ignorance and mistakes brought me to the railway for
Rouen (Gare S. Lazare), instead of that for Boulogne (Gare du Nord).
However, in time I reached the right place.
As we were half-way to the coast in the express, a strong smell of
burning was borne on the wind, and the carriage soon filled with smoke.
Looking out, we saw a line of screaming faces, and the roof of one of
the front carriages in flames. Pieces of burning stuff rushed flaming
past. A young lady in our carriage--"Gabrielle"--fell on her knees and
said her prayers to the Virgin. Suddenly we stopped, and heard the rush
of water above us. The engine-driver, to save the train, had, with
terrible risk to the passengers, pushed on at a frightful speed to the
_pompe d'incendie_ of Pontoise.
At half-past one in the morning we reached Boulogne. I was told that the
steamer for Folkestone would not start for an hour. An official in blue
with silver lace said that he would call for me then. At the time, but
rather late, he came. A cab was ready, and we were only just in time to
catch the steamer. The official, as I was going on board, desired that I
would pay my fare. I supposed it was all right, and gave up almost all
my few remaining shillings. I was assured the packet was the one for
Folkestone, and, though surprised at having no ticket, supposed it was
because most of the passengers had through tickets from Paris to London,
and because my going on was an afterthought.
The steamer started, but, before leaving the harbour, concussed with
another vessel, which broke one of the paddle-boxes and delayed us an
hour. Meantime it began to pour in torrents, the deck swam with water,
and before we got out to sea the wind had risen and the sea was very
rough. The vessel was fearfully crowded with three hundred and fifty
people going to the Hyde Park Exhibition, and more than half of them
were sea-sick.
At last day broke, and with it the English coast came in sight. But it
was very odd; it was not a coast I knew, and Dover Castle seemed to be
on the wrong side. Then a man came for the tickets, and said I must have
had one if I had paid: as I had not one, I could not have paid. It was
in vain that I protested I had paid already. "When I get to Folkestone,"
I said, "I should see some one who could prove my identity," &c. The man
grinned. "It will be a long time before _you_ get to Folkestone," he
said, and he went away. Then I saw Dover Castle fade away, and we still
coasted on, and I saw a little town which looked strangely like the
pictures of Deal. At last a man next to me, recovering from a paroxysm
of sea-sickness, said, "You think you're in the boat for Folkestone, but
you are in the boat for London!" I had been swindled at Boulogne by a
notorious rogue. Some weeks afterwards I saw in the papers that he had
been arrested, after a similar case.
I was in despair, not so much because of the long voyage, as because to
_pay_ for it was impossible. We were not to reach London till four in
the afternoon. I implored the captain to set me down, we were so near
the coast. "No," he said, "go to London you must."
At last, as we passed Margate, he said I might perhaps get out, but it
was rather too much to sacrifice the comfort of three hundred and fifty
passengers to one. However, the three hundred and fifty seemed very glad
of a break in the monotony of their voyage, and as there was another
passenger anxious to land, a boat was hailed and reached the vessel. All
my packages were thrown overboard and I after them, with injunctions to
sit perfectly still and hold fast, as it was so frightfully rough. The
injunctions were unnecessary, since, exhausted as I was, I very soon
became unconscious, as I have so often done since in a rough sea.
It was too rough to land at the pier, so we were landed on a ridge of
rocks at some distance from the shore. Seeing all my packages, the
coastguardsmen naturally took us for smugglers, and were soon on the
spot to seize our goods and carry them to the custom-house. Here I had
to pay away all that remained to me except sixpence.
With that sixpence I reached Ramsgate.
There were four hours to wait for a train, and I spent it in observing
the directions on the luggage of all arriving passengers, to see if
there was any one I could beg of. But no help came; so eventually I told
my story to the station-master, who kindly gave me a railway pass. At
Ashford I had four hours more to wait, and I lay almost unconscious
(from want of food) upon the floor of the waiting-room. Lying thus, I
looked up, and saw the astonished face of my cousin Mary Stanley gazing
in through the window at me. She was leaving in two minutes for France,
but had time to give me a sovereign; with that sovereign, late in the
night, I reached home in a gig from Hastings.
_To_ MY MOTHER (after returning to Southgate).
"_August 27, 1851._--I have just got your dear letter to refresh me
after the first morning's work. It is strange to have to give
oneself to Latin again after having thought of nothing but French
for so long."
"_August 28._--When I hear of all you are doing, I cannot but long
to be with you, and yet I am very happy here in finding it so much
less disagreeable than I expected, the Bradleys perfection, Walker
very nice, and Portman delightful."
"_Sept. 12, 1851._--I have just been to the old chapel in Ely Place
and to the Savoy.... One may study architecture just as well in
London as abroad: I had no idea before what beautiful bits are
there."
"_Oct. 18._--I have had an unfortunate trouble with Bradley lately.
I am sure I have done right, but it is very unfortunate indeed. I
will tell you all about it. In my Latin exercise I put 'quo velis'
for 'go your way,' meaning 'go where you like,' which I thought was
the meaning of that English sentence. Bradley scratched it out, and
I said, 'But "go your way" does mean go where you like.' He thought
I contradicted him and was very angry, and appealed to the opinion
of every one at the table. They said it meant 'go away.' He said I
was very obstinate, and wrote down, '"I have a bad headache, go
your way"--what does that mean?' I wrote, 'Go wherever you like.' I
thought no more was going to happen, but, to my astonishment,
heard him send for Mrs. Bradley, who wisely refused to come. Then,
in a voice in which he never spoke to me before, he ordered me to
go into the drawing-room. I did, and asked Mrs. Bradley her opinion
(not able to believe he could really mind being differed from). He
followed in a moment, very angry, and said, 'Walk up to your room,
if you please, Mr. Hare, this instant.' I prepared to obey, but he
posted himself in the doorway and pushed me back into a chair. He
then asked me again to explain the sentence. I said of course he
was the only judge about the Latin passage, but that in English 'go
your way' might certainly be taken to mean 'go where you like.' He
said, 'If you are going to differ from me in this way, I shall not
attempt to teach you any more.' All that day, morning, afternoon,
and evening, I laboured or twaddled at arithmetic with Mr. Howse.
Late in the evening Bradley took me for a whole hour by myself and
tried to persuade me to say 'go your way' _never_ meant 'go where
you like.' I said if I did, it would not be true, but that I was
very sorry to have differed from him, and had never meant in the
least to contradict him. But it is no use; he quotes from the
Bible--'"The house divided against itself falleth," therefore I
cannot teach you any more.' I went to him again and said 'if I had
seemed the least ill-tempered I begged his pardon.' He said I had
not seemed at all ill-tempered, I had only _differed from him_. You
need not be alarmed, however, for he will never send away for such
a trifle the pupil who loves him best in spite of all his
eccentricities: I have only told you all this in _case_ anything
more should happen. As I called on the B.'s to-day, I asked,
without explanation, what they thought 'go your way' meant. They
said at once, 'Go where you like.'"
"_Oct. 21._--Dearest mother, the dispute with Bradley has now
assumed so much more serious an aspect that I am afraid it cannot
end well. For two days he said nothing more about it, so I did not
volunteer anything: he was only very unpleasant in his manner to
and about me.
"This morning he called me into his dressing-room and talked. He
said that now he must write to you. But now he harps upon my
setting up my opinion, and having said in the first moment, 'I
always have thought so, and always shall think so.' In vain have I
acknowledged that this was a very improper speech, that I only said
such a thing hastily in a moment of annoyance, and in vain have I
begged his pardon repeatedly, and offered to do so, if he wished
it, before all his pupils. He says mine has been a successful
instance of open rebellion. I have in vain tried to convince him
how foolish a thing it will sound if I am sent away or go away
merely because my opinion has differed from his: he now says it
will be because I have 'rebelled against him'--though it would be
strange indeed if I had wished to 'rebel' against the only tutor I
have ever liked, from whom I have received so much kindness and
learnt so much. I did not think it would come to this, and even now
I cannot think I have done wrong, except in one hasty speech, which
I am very sorry for.
"I am so sorry you should be troubled by this, dear mother, and
even now I think Bradley will not be so infatuated--so really
_infatuated_ as to send away the only one of his pupils who likes
him much, or would be really sorry to go."
"_Oct. 22._--Only a few words, my own dear mother, to say we are
all going now very much as if nothing had happened. I thought
yesterday morning I should certainly have to go away, as Bradley
repeatedly declared he would never hear me another word again,
because I had differed from him before all his pupils. But at
Cicero time he called me down and asked, 'Why did you not come down
to your Cicero?' I said, 'Because I was packing up, as you said you
would never hear me another word again.' He said, 'Oh, you may put
whatever qualification on my words you like: _whatever you like_.'
So I came down, and he took no notice, and I have come down ever
since, and he treats me as if nothing had happened. He must have
thought better of it.
"Mrs. Bradley sent me a beautiful myrtle branch from the
nursery-garden, as a sign that all was right, I suppose: and I have
expressed all penitence that can possibly be expressed."
"_Nov. 13._--Yesterday I even let Bradley use his stick over the
Virgil to put him into a good humour, and then asked for leave to
go to the Temple Church ... and afterwards, brimful of the
descriptions in Knight's 'London,' I went to Crosby Hall and to St.
Helen's, Bishopsgate, full of delightful tombs. My coats are in
holes and my shoes have no soles, so will you please give me some
money to mend them?"
"_Nov. 23._--To-day I have seen Smithfield, and St. Bartholomew's,
and the Clerk's Well of Clerkenwell. I wonder if my 'kind good
Mama,' as Mrs. Barrington calls her in writing, will let me go to
see my cousins the Brymers at Wells before Christmas: old Mr.
Liddell has given me some money to take me there."
[Illustration: IN ST. HELEN'S, BISHOPSGATE.]
"_Harrow, Nov. 25, Sunday._--Yesterday I walked here with my
bundle, meeting Kate at the foot of the hill.... To-day we have
been to the Chapel Royal at St. James's, where Dr. Vaughan had to
preach a funeral sermon for the King of Hanover.[67] The old Duke
of Cambridge was there, and startled people by the cordiality of
his loud assent--'By all means!' to the invitation 'Let us pray.' I
must leave early to-morrow morning, as I have promised to be at
Southgate at 9 A.M."
"_Nov. 28._--We are in the depth of examinations. Some of the
fellows are so excited about them, that they do not go to bed at
all, only lie down on the rug at 5 A.M. for a short rest before
dawn. To-morrow is the 'great Napoleon stakes, when all the horses
are to run.' I think we shall have a pretty jumble, as we are to go
to sleep on Napoleon and wake on Charles V.--such a confusion of
campaigns (fifteen of Napoleon's) and places, and the passage and
flow of all the rivers the two heroes ever crossed."
"_Dec. 15._--On Thursday evening all the other fellows rushed up to
my room shouting 'Ichabod! Hare is plucked in Charles V.' They were
enchanted, because they thought it so conceited of me to take up
the additional subject; but their triumph was a short one, for it
was soon discovered that only half the marks had been added up.
"Friday was a very long examination in the Bible. Amongst the
questions were--'Give the size, population, and government of
Nineveh; the route of Jonah to Nineveh from Joppa; the religions of
the sailors; where you suppose Tarshish to be, and the reason of
your supposition; who were Tirshakeh, Adoram, &c.' It was a most
interesting examination to get up. Yesterday was Euclid. It was
much easier than I expected, and finished by twelve, so Bradley
sent me to London on a commission. I had also time to go to the
Bunsens, who were at luncheon, but when I sent in my card, they
sent for me into the dining-room. Several gentlemen were there: I
believe one of them was the Duke of Nassau. Madame Bunsen is always
most kind in her welcome."
My visit to Wells took place, and was most delightful. Mrs. Brymer was
the eldest granddaughter of John Lyon of Hetton, youngest brother of my
great-grandmother Lady Anne Simpson, and she and her husband Archdeacon
Brymer were most kind, genial, benevolent people, who had no children,
but lived very luxuriously in a charming house in "the Liberty" at
Wells. I had made their acquaintance at Bath when I was with Mrs.
Barrington. Though it was bitterly cold weather, I made many drawings of
Wells, which I have always thought the most perfectly beautiful
cathedral town in England, with its clear rushing water, old palace and
gateways, grand cathedral, and luxuriant surrounding orchards. It was a
visit I looked forward to repeating very often, but the kind Archdeacon
and his wife died--almost at the same time--very soon afterwards.
All through the year 1851 the P\xE8re La Vigne had been preaching
constantly at Rome at the Church of S. Luigi dei Francesi. "Italima"
had gone to hear him, with many other Protestant ladies. One evening she
said to her faithful Victoire that she wished to be dressed very early
the next morning--in black, with a veil, as if for the Sistine. Victoire
did her bidding, and she went out early, and returned in the course of
the morning, when she called Victoire to her, and said, embracing her,
"A pr\xE9sent nous sommes vraiment s\x9Curs; nous avons \xE9t\xE9 toujours
s\x9Curs; \xE0 pr\xE9sent nous le sommes doublement."--"Qu'est que cela veut
dire?" said Victoire to herself.--"Je suis devenue catholique,"
continued Italima; "je l'ai \xE9t\xE9 toujours au fond du c\x9Cur, \xE0 pr\xE9sent
je le suis en r\xE9alit\xE9." She then called F\xE9lix and took him by the
hand--"Victoire vous expliquera tout," she said. Lady Lothian had been
the "marraine," and, added to the influence of the P\xE8re La Vigne, had
been that of Manning, himself a recent convert to the Catholic Church.
That evening Italima said to Victoire, "Nous allons avoir la guerre dans
la maison," and so it was. My sister discovered (at a ball, I believe)
the next day what had happened, and she was quite furious--"en vraie
tigresse." "Il n'y avait pas de reproches qu'elle ne faisait \xE0 sa m\xE8re"
(records Victoire); "elle disait \xE0 sa m\xE8re qu'elle ne voulait plus de
elle. Elle se renferma avec sa tante. Cela dura plus que deux ans." To
Victoire herself she never spoke at all for several months.
For two whole years my sister deserted the drawing-room of Palazzo
Parisani, and lived shut up with her aunt in her boudoir. Their chief
occupation was drawing in charcoal, in which singular art they both
attained a great proficiency. Esmeralda never spoke to her mother unless
it was necessary. Italima must have led rather a dreary life at this
time, as other events had already weakened her connection with the
members of her own family and most of her old friends, and her change of
religion widened the breach for ever.
Lord and Lady Feilding[68] had been most active in urging and assisting
Italima's change of religion, and they now turned to my sister, leaving
no means untried by which they might make her dissatisfied with the
Protestant faith. As they left Rome, Lord Feilding put into her hand a
long controversial letter, imploring her to study it. That very spring
his own faith had been strengthened by a supposed miracle in his family.
Lady Feilding had long been ill, and had partly lost the use of her
limbs from sciatica. She had to be carried everywhere. All kinds of
baths and doctors had been tried in vain. The case was almost given up,
when Pope Pius IX. advised him to apply to a family of peasants living
in the mountains above Foligno, who possessed a miraculous gift of
healing. St. Peter, it was said, had passed by that way and had lodged
with them, and, on taking leave, had said that of silver and gold he had
none to give them, but that he left with them his miraculous gift of
healing, to be perpetuated amongst their descendants. A messenger was
despatched to this favoured family, and returned with a venerable old
peasant, respectably dressed, who went up to Lady Feilding, and, after
reciting the Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, and Apostles' Creed, said, "Per
l'intercessione dei Sti. Apostoli S. Pietro e S. Paolo siete guarita da
tutti i mali come speriamo." He passed his hand rapidly over her limbs,
and making the sign of the cross, said, "In nomine Patris et Filii et
Spiritus Sancti"--and added, "E finito." Then Lady Feilding felt her
limbs suddenly strengthened, and rising, walked upstairs like other
people, which she had not done for many months, and the same afternoon
went to St. Peter's to return thanks, walking all over that enormous
basilica without pain.[69][70] Her illness returned slightly, however,
in the following winter, and in the summer of 1853 she died of
consumption at Naples. Her death was a great grief to Italima.
It was in the Carnival of 1852, immediately after her mother's change of
religion, that my sister, after the then fashion of Roman ladies, was
seated in one of the carriages which in a long line were proceeding
slowly up the Corso, and whose inmates were employed in pelting those of
the carriages which met them with bouquets and bonbons. As she was
eagerly watching for her friends amongst those who passed, my sister
observed in one of the carriages, dressed in deep mourning among the gay
maskers, a lady who clasped her hands and looked at her fixedly. The
expression of the lady was so peculiar, that when her carriage reached
the end of the Corso and turned round at the Ripresa dei Barberi, my
sister watched carefully for her reappearance in the opposite line of
carriages which she was now again to meet. Again she saw the lady, who
again looked at her with an expression of anguish and then burst into
tears. The third time they met, the lady laid upon my sister's lap a
splendid nosegay of azaleas and camellias, &c., quite different from the
common bouquets which are usually thrown about in the Carnival.
When my sister went home, she told her little adventure to her aunt and
mother while they were at dinner, but it did not make any great
impression, as at Rome such little adventures are not uncommon, and do
not create the surprise they would in England.
The next morning at breakfast the family were again speaking of what had
happened, when the door opened, and F\xE9lix came in. He said that there
was a lady in the passage, a lady in deep mourning, who gave her name as
the Comtesse de Bolvilliers, who wished to speak to Italima at once on
important business. At that time there were a great many lady
_qu\xEAteuses_ going about for the different charities, and most of them
especially anxious to take advantage of the new convert to their Church.
Therefore Italima answered that she was unable to receive Madame de
Bolvilliers, and that she knew no such person. In a minute F\xE9lix
returned saying that Madame de Bolvilliers could not leave the house
without seeing Mrs. Hare, for that her errand involved a question of
life and death. She was then admitted.
The lady who came into the room at Palazzo Parisani was not the lady my
sister had seen in the Corso. She said she was come to tell a very sad
story, and besought Italima to have patience with her while she told it,
as she was the one person who had the power of assisting her. She said
that she had a sister-in-law, another Countess de Bolvilliers, who was
then living at the Palazzo Lovati in the Piazza del Popolo: that at the
beginning of the winter her sister-in-law had come to Rome accompanied
by her only daughter, in whom her whole life and love were bound up:
that her daughter was of the exact age and appearance of my sister, and
that she (the aunt) felt this so strongly, that it seemed to her, in
looking upon my sister, as if her own niece was present before her: that
soon after they came to Rome her niece had taken the Roman fever, and
died after a very short illness: that her sister-in-law had been almost
paralysed by grief, and had fallen into a state of mental apathy, from
which nothing seemed able to rouse her. At last fears were entertained
that, if her body recovered, her mind would never be roused again, and,
two days before, the doctors had advised resorting to the expedient of a
violent mental transition, and had urged that as Madame de Bolvilliers
had remained for several months in her room, in silence and darkness,
seeing no one, she should suddenly be taken out into the full blaze of
the Carnival, when the shock of the change might have the effect of
re-awakening her perceptions. At first the experiment had seemed to
succeed; she had taken notice and recovered a certain degree of
animation; but then, in the Carnival, she had seen what she believed to
be her daughter returned from the grave; upon her return home, she had
fallen into the most fearful state of anguish, and they had passed the
most terrible night, the unhappy mother declaring that her lost daughter
had returned to life, but was in the hands of others. The sister-in-law
implored that Italima would allow her daughter to return home with her
to the Palazzo Lovati, in order to prove that she was a living reality,
and not what she was believed to be.
My sister at once put on her bonnet and walked back with the second
Countess de Bolvilliers to the Palazzo Lovati, where the family rented
the small apartment at the back of the courtyard. When they entered her
room, the unhappy mother jumped up, and throwing her arms round my
sister, declared that she was her daughter, her lost daughter, come back
to her from the dead. Gradually, but very gradually, she was induced to
believe in my sister's separate identity. When she became convinced of
this, she declared her conviction that a person who so entirely
resembled her daughter in appearance and manners must resemble her in
character also; that she was herself very rich (her husband had been a
Russian), and that if my sister would only come to live with her and be
a daughter to her in the place of the one she had lost, she would devote
her whole life to making her happy, and leave all her fortune to her
when she died. My sister declared that this was impossible; that she had
a mother of her own, whom she could not leave; that it was impossible
for her to live with Madame de Bolvilliers. The Countess flung herself
upon her knees, and implored and besought that my sister would
reconsider her determination, but Esmeralda was inexorable. The
Countess then said that she was of a very jealous disposition; that it
was quite impossible that she could go on living in the world, and
feeling that her daughter's living representative was the child of
another,--that she should leave the world and go into a convent. My
sister, whose antagonism to Roman Catholicism was just then at its
height, besought her to reconsider this, urged the many opportunities
which were still left to her of being useful in the world, and the folly
of throwing away a life which might be devoted to the highest aims and
purposes. But Madame de Bolvilliers, on her part, was now firm in her
determination. Esmeralda then begged that she might sometimes be allowed
to hear from her, and said that she should be glad to write to her;
that, though she could not live with her and be her daughter, she could
never lose the interest she already felt about her. But Madame de
Bolvilliers said, "No! she could not have half love; she must either
have my sister altogether, or she must never hear from her; that would
try her and tantalise her too much." My sister then begged that she
might at any rate be allowed to hear of her once--of her well-being and
happiness, and, after much entreaty, Madame de Bolvilliers said, "Yes,
after a year has expired, if you inquire at a certain house in the Rue
S. Dominique at Paris, you shall hear of me, but not till then." She
then went into the next room, and she came back with a number of jewels
in her hands. "These," she said, "were the jewels my daughter wore when
she was with me. I must have one last pleasure--one last consolation in
this world, in fastening them upon the person of my daughter's living
representative upon earth." And so saying, she fastened the necklace,
bracelets, &c., upon my sister, who possessed these, the Bolvilliers
jewels, till the day of her death. More than a year elapsed and nothing
whatever was heard of the Countess.
[Illustration: LE TOMBEAU NAPOLEON.]
In 1854, Italima and my sister were passing through Paris. They drove to
see the Tombeau Napoleon, which was then newly erected at the Invalides.
As they returned, and as they were turning a corner, the name "Rue S.
Dominique" caught my sister's eyes. "Oh," she said, "the year has
expired, and this is the place where we were to inquire after the
Countess de Bolvilliers;" and in spite of her mother's assurance that it
was useless to look for her, she insisted upon driving to the number the
Countess had indicated; but the portress declared that she knew of no
such person as Madame de Bolvilliers. Upon this Italima said, "Well, now
you see how it is; I always told you she gave you a false direction,
because she did not wish you to find her out, and you will never
discover her." "But to find her I am perfectly determined," said my
sister, and she insisted on getting out of the carriage and knocking at
every door down the long extent of the Rue S. Dominique to make
inquiries, but without any result. Her mother followed in the carriage,
very angry, but quite vainly urging her to get in. Having done one side
of the street, Esmeralda insisted upon going up the other, and inquiring
at every door in the same way. Her mother stormed to no purpose. She
then insisted upon going back to the first house and inquiring who did
live there. "Oh," said the portress, "it is a convent of the Sacr\xE9
C\x9Cur." When my sister heard this, she asked for the Superior, and
said, "Is there any one here whose real name it may generally be thought
better to conceal, but who was once known in the world as the Countess
de Bolvilliers?" And the Superior said, "_You_ then are the lady who was
to come from Rome in a year's time: you are exactly the person who has
been described to me. Yes, Sister Marie Adela\xEFde was once known in the
world as Madame de Bolvilliers."
When my sister saw the Countess in her nun's dress, she found her
perfectly calm and satisfied. She no longer reproached my sister for not
having consented to live with her. She did not regret the step she had
taken; she was perfectly happy in her convent life with its regular
duties and occupations. She was also pleased that my sister should
frequently go again to see her. My sister went very often, and, while
visiting her, was introduced to the famous controversialist nun Madame
Davidoff, by whose teaching and arguments she was converted to the Roman
Catholic Church.
The last thing Italima wished was that her daughter should become a
Roman Catholic, for my sister was at that time a considerable heiress,
the whole of her aunt's fortune being settled upon her, as well as that
which Italima had derived from Lady Anne Simpson. And Italima knew that
if my sister changed her religion, her aunt, a vehement Protestant,
would at once disinherit her.
My sister said nothing to her mother of what was going on. It was
supposed that Madame de Bolvilliers was the only cause of her visits to
the Sacr\xE9 C\x9Cur. She also said nothing to her aunt, but her aunt
suspected that all was not right. My sister had abstained from going to
church on one pretext or another, for several Sundays. Easter was now
approaching. "You will go to church with me on Good Friday, won't you,
Esmeralda?" Aunt Eleanor kept saying.
At last Good Friday came. Aunt Eleanor, according to her habit, went in
early to see my sister before she was up. My sister was more
affectionate than usual. As soon as her aunt was gone, she got up and
dressed very quickly and went off with her maid to the Sacr\xE9 C\x9Cur.
In her room she left three letters--one to her mother, bidding her come
to the church of the convent on a particular day, if she wished to see
her received: one to her aunt, telling her that her determination was
irrevocable, but breaking it to her as gently as she could: and one to
her greatest friend, Marguerite Pole, begging her to go at once to her
aunt to comfort her and be like a daughter in her place. "When Miss Paul
read her letter," said Victoire, "her lips quivered and her face became
pale as ashes. But she said no word to any one: it was quite awful, she
was so terribly calm. She took up her bonnet from the place where it
lay, and she walked straight downstairs and out of the house. We were so
alarmed as to what she might do, that I followed her, but she walked
quite firmly through the streets of Paris, till she reached Sir Peter
Pole's house, and there she went in." Aunt Eleanor went straight up to
Sir Peter Pole, and told him what had happened. Sir Peter was a very
excitable man, and he immediately rang the bell and sent for his
daughter Marguerite. When she came he said, "Esmeralda Hare is about to
become a Roman Catholic; now remember that if you ever follow her
example, I will turn you out of doors then and there with the clothes
you have on, and will never either see you or hear of you again as long
as you live." The result of this was that within a week Marguerite Pole
had become a Roman Catholic. Of what happened at this time my sister has
left some notes:--
"It was Madame Davidoff who led Marguerite Pole across the
courtyard of the Sacr\xE9 C\x9Cur to the little room at the other side
of it, where the P\xE8re de Ravignan was waiting for her. As she
opened the door he looked up in an ecstasy. 'Voil\xE0 trois ans,' he
said, 'que je prie pour votre arriv\xE9e, et vous voil\xE0 enfin.' She
was quite overcome, and told him that for three years she had seen
a figure constantly beckoning her forward, she knew not whither.
The P\xE8re de Ravignan answered, 'I believe that you will see that
figure for the last time on the day of your premi\xE8re communion;'
and so it was: the figure stood by her then, and afterwards it
disappeared for ever.
"At the first Sir Peter had said that he would turn Marguerite out
of doors, and his fury knew no bounds. One evening Marguerite sent
her maid privately to me with a note saying, 'To-morrow morning I
shall declare myself: to-morrow my father will turn me out of
doors, and what _am_ I to do?' 'Oh,' I said, 'only have faith and
watch what will happen, for it will all come right.' And sure
enough, so it seemed at the time, for the next morning Sir Peter
sent for his housekeeper and said to her, 'I've changed my mind;
Miss Marguerite shall not go away; and I've changed my mind even so
much that I shall send to Mrs. Hare and ask her to take me with her
when she goes to see her daughter make her premi\xE8re communion.'
"It was quite a great function in the church of the Sacr\xE9 C\x9Cur.
I was terrified out of my wits when I saw the crowd in the church,
and in the chancel were the Bishop, the Papal Nuncio, and all the
principal clergy of Paris, for it was quite an event. Marguerite
and I were dressed in white, with white veils and wreaths of white
roses. As the Papal Nuncio came forward to place his hands on our
heads, in the very act of confirmation, there was a fearful crash,
and Sir Peter fell forward over the bench just behind us, and was
carried insensible out of the church. Mamma went with him, for she
thought he was dying. When he came to himself his first words
were--'Louisa, Louisa! I have seen Louisa.' He had seen Lady Louisa
Pole.
"When Lady Louisa was dying she said to Marguerite, 'My child,
there is one thing I regret; it is that I have had doubts about the
Roman Catholic Church, and that I have never examined.'"
Of this time are the following notes by Victoire:--
"When your sister first insisted upon going to the Sacr\xE9 C\x9Cur,
she said it was 'pour voir.' 'O comme c'est dr\xF4le,' I said to
Madame Hare. But your sister was always obstinate in her own
intentions. 'Je veux examiner la religion catholique au fond,' she
said, 'ainsi que la religion protestante.' She got all the books.
She read those on both sides. Then she went to the Sacr\xE9 C\x9Cur
again. Her maid went to her three times a day. One day she took her
a great many things. 'What is it you take to Mademoiselle?' I said.
'I take what she ordered me,' answered the maid, and I said no
more: but it was really the white dress, the veil, and all that was
required for the reception. The next day I had a note from
Mademoiselle asking me to come to her at eight o'clock. I showed it
to Madame. 'Eh bien, nous irons ensemble,' she said, and we went
together in the carriage. When we reached the Sacr\xE9 C\x9Cur, we
were shown at once to the chapel, and then I began to suspect. All
the nuns were assembled. At last a door opened and your sister came
in, all in white, with a long white veil on her head. She walked in
firm and erect, and knelt down at a _prie Dieu_ in the aisle. The
P\xE8re de Ravignan made a most touching discourse. He bade her, if
she still felt any doubts, to remember that there was still time;
he urged her not to come forward without true faith. At the end of
his discourse she walked firmly up to the altar and knelt on the
steps. She remained there while mass was said. After it was over
she was taken into the garden. There she embraced her mother and
me. A collation was then served.... Nothing was said about her
going away. 'Voulez vous amener votre fille?' said one of the nuns
at last to Madame Hare. 'Je la laisse parfaitement libre maintenant
et toujours,' she replied. 'Oh comme Mademoiselle \xE9tait belle ce
jour-l\xE0; elle \xE9tait fra\xEEche, elle allait si bien avec ce grand
voile blanc, et ses beaux cheveux noirs, et ses grands yeux: elle
avait du couleur, elle \xE9tait vraiment ravissante! elle \xE9tait
radieuse!... Dans ce temps-l\xE0 elle \xE9tait la reine de tous les
bals--\xE0 l'ambassade, \xE0 la cour, partout: mais elle n'\xE9tait jamais
plus ravissante de sa beaut\xE9 que ce jour-l\xE0 dans le couvent.'"
The Dowager Lady Lothian[71] once told me that in the letter of
condolence which Madame Davidoff wrote to my sister after her mother's
death she said, "The cross which you saw on the day of your first
communion has been very heavy, but it has never crushed you." On the day
of her first communion she saw a huge black cross between her and the
altar. She lay on the ground, and it advanced to crush her, only it
seemed as if an invisible power upheld it, and then she saw that the top
was wreathed with flowers. Oh, how prophetic was this vision of the
cross!
A few days after her reception, Sir Peter Pole fulfilled his word with
regard to his daughter Marguerite. He turned her out of his house, and
he never would allow her name to be mentioned again. Not only to her
father, but to my sister, and to her own sister, Alice Pole, every trace
of her was lost. How my sister met Marguerite Pole again, and of her
extraordinary history in after years, will be told later in these
volumes.
I have been anticipating greatly, but it seems impossible to break up a
connected story into the different years in which their events occurred.
Meantime, without any romantic excitement and far removed from religious
controversy, our quiet existence flowed on; though I was always fond of
my sister and deeply interested in the faint echoes which from time to
time reached me from her life.
Mrs. Alexander was now settled at the Rectory at Hurstmonceaux, and she
ruled as its queen. Uncle Julius consulted her even on the smallest
details; she ordered everything in the house, she took the leading part
with all the guests, everything gave way to her. And the odd thing was
that Mrs. Julius Hare (Aunt Esther), instead of being jealous,
worshipped with greater enthusiasm than any one else at the shrine of
the domestic idol. I have met many perfectly holy and egotistical women,
but Mrs. Alexander was the most characteristic specimen.
[Illustration: CANON STANLEY'S HOUSE, CANTERBURY.]
In the summer of 1851, Arthur Stanley had been appointed to a canonry at
Canterbury, which was a great delight to me as well as to him. "One of
my greatest pleasures in going to Canterbury is the thought of
Augustus's raptures over the place and the cathedral," he wrote to my
mother. And truly I did enjoy it, and so did he. The eight years he
spent at Canterbury were certainly the happiest of his life. We spent
part of my winter holidays there with him and his family. Mrs. Grote
used to describe Arthur truly as "like a sausage, packed so full of
information;" and, with many peculiarities, he was the most charming of
hosts, while his enthusiastic interest peopled every chapel, every
cloister, every garden, with historic memories. Arthur Stanley's was now
the most stimulating companionship possible. He had lost all the
excessive shyness which had characterised his youth, and talked on all
subjects that interested him (ignoring those which did not) with an
eloquence which "se moque de l'\xE9loquence," as Pascal says. His canonry
was situated in its own garden, reached by the narrow paved passage
called "the Brick Walk," which then intersected the buildings on the
north-east of the cathedral. Just behind was the Deanery, where the
venerable Dean Lyall used to be seen walking up and down daily in the
sun in the garden which contained the marvellous old mulberry tree, to
preserve the life of which a bullock was actually killed that the tree
might derive renewed youth from its blood. The fact that a huge bough
rent asunder[72] from this old tree had taken root, and become even more
flourishing than the parent stem, was adapted as an illustration by
Arthur Stanley in a lecture in which he likened the two trees to the
Churches of Rome and England.
Enchanting indeed were the many ancient surroundings of the mighty
cathedral--the Baptistery with its open arches and conical roof half
buried in ivy; the dark passage haunted by "Nell Cook;" the Norman
staircase, so beautiful in colour; the Pilgrim's Inn, down a narrow
entry from the street; the many tombs of the archbishops; and most of
all the different points through which one could follow Thomas \xE0 Becket
so vividly through his last hours from his palace to his martyrdom. I
made many drawings, chiefly in pencil and sepia, for my mother and aunt
deprecated colour. "Until you can draw perfectly you have no right to
it. Do one thing well, and not two badly," they said. Of course they
were right; and though often abashed and distressed by Aunt Kitty's
dictum--"Crude, coarse, harsh, and vulgar," after looking at my
sketches, I always felt the slight meed of praise just possible from her
lips a prize well worth striving for. I owe much to her (as to my
mother's) constant inquiry, after I had done a drawing I was conceitedly
proud of, as to what each line meant, and unless I could give a good
account of its intention, desiring me to rub it out; thus inculcating
the pursuit of _truth_, which she urged in drawing as in all else,
instead of striving after unattainable excellence.
[Illustration: SITE OF BECKET'S SHRINE, CANTERBURY.]
One great interest of this winter was going with Arthur Stanley
excursions to Bozledeane Wood and tracing out on the spot the curious
history of the so-called Sir William Courtenay, which is so strangely at
variance with the usually matter-of-fact character of the present
century. Briefly, the story is that of John Nichols Tom, son of a
maltster at Truro, who ran away from his wife, and, going to Canterbury,
announced himself as Sir William Courtenay, and laid claim to the title
and rights of the Earls of Devon. His dress was most extraordinary--a
scarlet robe with a crimson hanger. He was taken up, tried for perjury,
and confined in a lunatic asylum, but, while there, contrived to
interest Sir Edward Knatchbull in his behalf, and obtained his release
by Sir Edward's influence with Lord John Russell. On his return to
Canterbury in 1838, he gave out that he was not only Sir William
Courtenay, but Jesus Christ himself. It was not so much his dress, as
his long flowing hair, his beard, his perfect proportions, his beauty
and height, which lent themselves to his story, and his wonderful
resemblance to the well-known pictures of the Saviour. The rustics and
tradesmen welcomed him, and really believed in him. With forty of his
most devoted disciples he took up his abode in a village near
Canterbury. He was always preaching, and the chief part of his doctrine
was faith--faith in himself. He formed a plan of storming Canterbury and
seizing the cathedral on Whitsunday, when all the people were at the
service there. But this plan was frustrated and he lived in comparative
quietude till Michaelmas. Then a constable was sent to arrest him. The
constable found Courtenay with his forty disciples at breakfast at a
farmhouse near Bozledeane Wood, and when Courtenay saw him approach, he
went out, shot him, and leaving him writhing in agony upon the ground,
returned, perfectly unruffled, to finish his repast. After breakfast
"Sir William Courtenay" led his disciples down the path, which still
remains, into a hollow by a little stream in the heart of the wood. Here
his followers, under Colonel Armstrong, a fanatical leader from
Canterbury, threw up an earthwork, behind which they entrenched
themselves, and here they were surrounded by a body of troops sent out
in three bands to encompass them. Lieutenant Bennet, who was in command,
was sent forward to parley with the impostor. Courtenay, who stood under
a tree, waited till he came close up, and then shot him through the
heart! The troops then rushed forwards, but the fanatics, though greatly
astonished at the death of Courtenay, who, in spite of his professed
invulnerability, fell in the first onset, fought with fury, and defended
themselves with their bludgeons against the muskets of the soldiers. At
last seven of them were killed and the rest taken prisoners.
Mr. Curteis, the Principal of St. Augustine's College, who went with us
to Bozledeane Wood, described the scene after the battle, the pools of
blood, the trees riddled with shot, the bodies lying in the
public-house, and the beautiful hair of Courtenay being cut off and
distributed amongst the people. It was fourteen years afterwards that we
visited the spot. We went to the farmhouse where the last breakfast was
held and the gate where the constable was shot. The view was beautiful
over the Forest of Blean to the sea, with the line of the Isle of
Sheppey breaking the blue waters. A boy guided us down the tangled path
to the hollow where the battle took place by the little stream, said to
be now frequented by the white squirrel and badger. The "stool" of the
tree under which Courtenay stood had lately been grubbed up. The boy
described Courtenay and his forty men lying on a green mossy bank
talking, the evening before they were attacked, and his giving
"bull's-eyes" to all the children on the morning of the battle.
Courtenay had great powers of attracting all who came in contact with
him. A girl belonging to the farmhouse (who on a previous occasion had
knocked his arm aside when he would have shot a magistrate) rushed about
during the engagement to give water and help to the dying, perfectly
regardless of the bullets which were flying around her. And after his
death his wife turned up, "Mrs. Tom" from Truro, most deeply afflicted,
for "he was the best of husbands!"
I liked better being with the Stanleys at Canterbury than in London,
where they talked--as people in London do talk, and where my dearest
mother, who had lived only in the narrowest groove latterly, and
especially as to religious things, often felt it necessary to "testify
to her religious profession" in a way which was even more a
mortification than a pain to me. After we began to go abroad, and she
was removed from the "mutual admiration society" at Hurstmonceaux, she
took a wider view of everything,[73] and had a far better and more
general influence in consequence. But there was a time when my mother,
so infinitely tender and gentle in her own nature, almost seemed to have
lost her hold upon the liberality and gentleness of the Christian
gospel in her eager espousal of the doctrine of fire and worms beyond
the grave. I think it is St. Jerome who says, "Desire rather to act
Scripture than to write about it, to do rather than to say holy things."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Southgate, Feb. 10, 1852._--My own dearest mother, I am settled
here again after my most happy holidays, with the old faces round
me, and the old tiresome conversation about nothing but the
comparative virtues of ruff pigeons and carriers.... The last part
of the holidays at Canterbury was indeed perfectly delightful, and
I enjoyed it--oh! so much. I shall work very hard, and tell Arthur
I shall be quite ready for an examination on Pericles, Marathon,
and Arbela when I see him again. I am afraid Aunt Kitty thought me
awfully ignorant of Greek history, but I really never have had
anything to do with it.[74] I think of you and your walk through
the beautiful cloister when I plod through the muddy village to our
hideous chapel. It is very smoky and dirty and misty, but--I will
not be discontented."
"_Feb. 14._--And now I think of my dearest mother at home again,
sitting in the evening in her own arm-chair in Peace Corner, with
her little table and her Testament, and John and my Fausty[75]--all
white and clean--bringing in the supper, and, oh! how nice it must
be!"
[Illustration: STEPS AT LIME.]
It was very soon after her return from Canterbury that my mother, going
to visit a sick woman in the village, slipped down a turfy frostbound
bank near some steps in the garden at Lime. Unable to make any one hear
her cries for help, she contrived to crawl to the back part of the
house, whence she was carried to a sofa, and a doctor was sent for, who
found that her leg was broken. After very many weeks upon a sofa, all
lameness was cured, but the confinement, to one used to an active life,
told seriously upon her health, and my dearest mother was always liable
to serious illness from this time, though her precious life was
preserved to me for nineteen years to come. Henceforward I never left
her without misery, and when with her was perhaps over-anxious about
her. Mr. Bradley wisely sent me at once to her for a day that I might be
reassured, and I feel still an echo of the pang with which I first saw
her helpless--as I so often saw her afterwards. How I remember all the
sheltered spots in which Lea and I found primroses for her in the one
day I was at home in this bitterly early spring!
_To_ MY MOTHER (after returning to Southgate).
"_March 13, 1852._--Yesterday we had 'a truce,' so I hurried to see
Gerard's Hall in Bow Lane before its demolition. It has latterly
been an inn, with a statue of Gerard the Giant over the door. A
wooden staircase leads into the wine-cellar, once Gerard's Crypt,
possessing slender arches and pillars, most beautiful in colour,
and forming wonderful subjects for pictures, with pewter pots and
stone pitchers thrown about in confusion."
"_April 29._--I have been to see Mrs. Gayford, the nurse who
brought me over to England. She is very poor, and lives in an attic
in the New Wharf Road, but was enchanted to see me. I sate upon the
old seachest which has been often with her to India, and heard the
history of her going to Mannheim and meeting my father with his
'weak baby--very passionate, you know, but then it's in the nature
of such young gentlemen to be so.' And then she described the
journey and voyage, and my ingratitude to a lady who had been very
kind to me by slapping her in the face when she was sea-sick."
"_June 15._--We are in the midst of an examination in Thierry's
'Norman Conquest.' At nine we all assemble in the dining-room, and
the greatest anxiety is exhibited: the 'prophets' proclaim their
views on the issue of the day, and the 'hunters' speculate upon the
horses who are to 'run in the Thierry stakes.' Bradley comes in
with the papers and gives one to each, and from that time we are in
custody: no one can exchange a word, and two fellows may never go
up to the table together. When we have done that set of questions,
generally between one and three o'clock, we are at liberty till
five, and then we are in custody again till we have done the next,
at nine, ten, or eleven. Bradley is on guard all day, or, if he is
obliged to go out, Mrs. B. mounts guard for him. They cannot employ
themselves, as they have always to wander up and down the rows of
writers with their eyes.... I like the life during these
examinations, there is so much more excitement than over ordinary
work, and one never has time to get stupid, but the others do
nothing but bemoan themselves."
I think it must have been on leaving Southgate for the summer that I
paid a visit of one day to "Italima" and my sister in a house which had
been lent them in Grosvenor Square. It was then that my sister said,
"Mamma, Augustus is only with us for one day. We ought to take the
opportunity of telling him what may be of great importance to him: we
ought to tell him the story of the 'Family Spy.'" What I then heard was
as follows:--
For many years my sister had observed that she and her mother were
followed and watched by a particular person. Wherever they went, or
whatever they did, she was aware of the same tall thin man dressed in
grey, who seemed to take a silent interest in all that happened to them.
At last this surveillance became quite disagreeable and they tried to
escape it. One spring they pretended that they were going to leave Rome
on a particular day, announced it to their friends, and made secret
preparations for quitting Rome a week earlier. They arrived in safety
within a few miles of Florence, when, looking up at a tall tower by the
side of the road, my sister saw the face of the Family Spy watching
them from its battlements. Another time they heard that the Spy was ill
and confined to his bed, and they took the opportunity of moving at
once. As their vetturino carriage turned out of the piazza into the Via
S. Claudio, in order to attain the Corso, which must be passed before
reaching the gate of the city, the narrow street was almost blocked up
by another carriage, in which my sister saw the emaciated form of the
Family Spy propped on pillows and lying on a mattress, and which
immediately followed them. Constant inquiries had long since elicited
the fact that the Spy was a Sicilian Marquis who had been living at
Palermo when my parents were there, and whose four children were exactly
the same age as _their_ four children. Soon afterwards his wife and all
his children were swept away at one stroke by the cholera, and he was
left utterly desolate. With characteristic Sicilian romance, he
determined to create for himself a new family and a new interest in life
by adopting the other family, which was exactly parallel to his own, and
of which only the father had been removed--but adopting it by a
mysterious bond, in which the difficulty of a constant surveillance
should give entire occupation to his time and thought. When Italima
heard this, after making inquiries about him which proved satisfactory,
she sent to the Spy to say that she thought it much better this secret
surveillance should end, but that she should be happy to admit him as a
real friend, and allow him to see as much as he liked of the family in
which he took so deep an interest. But, though expressing great
gratitude for this proposal, the Spy utterly declined it. He said that
he had so long accustomed himself to the constant excitement of his
strange life, that it would be quite impossible for him to live without
it; that if ever an opportunity occurred of rendering any great service
to the family whose fortunes he followed, he would speak to them, but
not till then.
When I had been told this story, my sister and Italima took me out in
the afternoon to drive in the Park. As we were passing along the road by
the Serpentine, my sister suddenly exclaimed, "There, look! there is the
Family Spy," and, among those who walked by the water, I saw the tall
thin grey figure she had described. We passed him several times, and he
made such an impression upon me that I always knew him afterwards. My
sister said, "If you look out at ten o'clock to-night, you will see him
leaning against the railing of Grosvenor Square watching our
windows,"--and so it was; there was the tall thin figure with his face
uplifted in the moonlight.
In 1852 the extravagance of my two brothers Francis and William was
already causing great anxiety to their mother. Francis, who had lately
obtained his commission in the Life-Guards through old Lord Combermere,
had begun to borrow money upon the Gresford estate. William, who was in
the Blues, with scarcely any fortune at all, had plunged desperately
into the London season. When winter approached, their letters caused
even more anxiety on account of their health than their fortunes: both
complaining of cough and other ailments. One day, in the late autumn of
1852, my sister, coming into the diningroom of the Palazzo Parisani,
found her mother stretched insensible upon the hearth-rug, with a letter
open in her hand. The letter was from the new Sir John Paul, who had not
in the least got over his first anger at his sister's change of
religion, and who wrote in the cruellest and harshest terms. He said,
"Your eldest son is dying. It is quite impossible that you can arrive in
time to see him alive. Your second son is also in a rapid decline,
though if you set off at once and travel to England without stopping,
you may still be in time to receive his last words."
Palazzo Parisani was at once thrown into the utmost confusion, and all
its inmates occupied themselves in preparing for immediate departure.
Owing to the great number of things to be stowed away, it was, however,
utterly impossible that they should leave before the next morning.
Italima's state of anguish baffles description, for Francis was her
idol. In the afternoon my sister, hoping to give her quiet, persuaded
her to go out for an hour and walk in the gardens of the Villa Medici,
where she would not be likely to meet any one she knew. In the long
arcaded bay-walks of the villa she saw a familiar figure approaching. It
was the "Family Spy." He came up to her, and, to her amazement, he began
to address her--he, the silent follower of so many years! He said, "The
time has now come at which I can serve you, therefore I speak. This
morning you received a letter." Italima started. "You are surprised that
I know you have the letter, and yet I am going to tell you all that was
in that letter," and he repeated it word for word. He continued--"I not
only know all that was in your letter and the distress in which it has
placed you, but I know all the circumstances under which that letter was
written, and I know all that has happened to your sons since: I know
all about your sons. Your son Francis was taken ill on such a day: he
saw such and such doctors: he is already much better: there is no
danger: you may be quite easy about him. Your son William is not in
danger, but he is really much the more ill of the two. Dr. Fergusson has
seen him, and a foreign winter is prescribed. It will not do for you to
go to England yourself, but yet he is not well enough to travel alone.
You have an old servant, F\xE9lix, who came to you in such a year, and who
has been with you ever since. You must send him to fetch William, and
here is a paper on which I have written down all the trains and steamers
they are to travel by, both in going and returning." So saying, and
having given the paper to Italima and bowing very low, the Family Spy
retired. Italima went home. She acted entirely on the advice she had
received. She unpacked her things and remained in her palazzo at Rome.
She sent F\xE9lix, as the Spy had directed: he travelled according to the
written programme, and in a fortnight he returned to Rome bringing
William back with him. The Spy never spoke to any member of the family
again.
It is anticipating, but I may mention here that when we went to Rome in
1857, I wondered if we should see the Family Spy. I spoke of it to my
mother. As we passed through the Porta del Popolo, he was the first
person who met us. I saw him very often that winter, and again when I
was at Paris with my sister in October 1858. That winter my sister often
saw him at Rome. The next year was marked by our great family
misfortunes. My sister always expected that somehow or other he would
come to the rescue of the lost fortunes, but he never did. Some time
after she heard that he had died very suddenly about that time.
When I returned to my mother in the summer of 1852, she was at
Eastbourne with Charlotte Leycester and very ill. It was the earliest
phase of the strange hysteria with which I was afterwards so
familiar--sudden flushings with a deathly chill over her face, and
giddiness, sometimes followed by unconsciousness, occasionally by a
complete apparent suspension of life, a death-like trance without breath
or pulsation, lasting for hours, or even for many days together. It is a
very rare illness, but it is known to doctors, and I believe it is
called "Waking coma." In this summer I first began the anxious watchings
of first symptoms--the swelling of my mother's fingers around her rings,
and then by a kiss searched if the alarming chill had already taken
possession of her face. Happily, the heavenly state of mind in which she
always lived took away from her the terror of these illnesses; the
visions which beset her waking and sleeping were of all things good and
beautiful: the actual trances themselves were to her a translation into
heavenly places and to the companionship of the blessed, and, for those
who looked upon her, a transfiguration.
When my mother was able to move, it was decided that she must try
foreign air, which then and often afterwards completely restored her to
health for the time. It was settled that we should go to Heidelberg, and
as her cousin Charlotte Leycester was to travel with her, I was able to
precede her for a few days in the old Belgian towns, which, as I was
then in the first enthusiasm about foreign travel, I looked upon as
absolutely entrancing.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_St. Omer, July 15, 1852._--I shall never feel the day is properly
over till it has been shared with my own dear mother. I have only
left you a few hours, and yet, at an expense of one pound, how
great is the change!... We embarked at Dover at one, with a
cloudless sky and rippling waves, and an Irish lady near me was
most amusing, telling anecdotes first in French to her neighbour
on the other side and then in English to me. But half-way across
the Channel the thickest of fogs came on, we made no way, and cries
and whistles were kept up without cessation. Then it grew rough,
the Irish lady's jokes became less vivacious, and at last she
followed almost all the other passengers to the side of the vessel.
At five o'clock sea and fog subsided and we went on, but then the
tide had gone from the harbour, and when we were a mile and a half
from Calais, all the passengers were transferred to open boats. As
we were rowed in under the long pier, the beautiful fishing-nets
were being drawn up out of the calm waters, and the old French
faces with the high white caps and large gold earrings were looking
down as last year.... The railway journey was delicious through the
rich flat country, and the churches here, of the two missionary
saints, Bertin and Omer, are most interesting."
"_Bruges, July 17._--The heat is so intense that I am more inclined
to watch the perfectly motionless branches of the acacia under the
window than to do my duty by the sights. The old town and its
people all seem lulled to sleep by the oppression. Yet the Dyver
Canal is delightful, with its strange old towers and its poplar
trees, and the market on its bank filled with Dutch fishwives in
bright costumes.... My straw hat attracts much attention. 'Voil\xE0 le
costume anglais,' I hear the people say.... The _table d'h\xF4te_ was
very amusing, musicians playing the while on harp, guitar, and
flute. To-night there is to be a procession which has had no equal
for a hundred years.
"This morning I went to the B\xE9guinage, a little village with walls
of its own in the middle of the town. The sweet-faced B\xE9guine nuns
in long white veils were chanting the service in the church, ranged
in the stalls of the choir. They wore long trains, which they took
up when they came out of church. A priest was there, but the abbess
seemed to take his part in officiating.[76] ... The streets are
beautifully decorated for the procession, planted with living
fir-trees, half the height of the houses, which, as they are very
narrow, gives the effect of an avenue; but, behind, the houses are
hung with flags and tapestry. In some streets altars are raised,
surrounded with orange-trees and flowers.
"10 P.M.--The ceremonial was to celebrate 'the jubilee of the
Carmelite tonsure.' ... The streets were all hung with flowers and
tapestry, and garlands made a flower canopy across them, beneath
which streamed crowds of peasants from every town in Belgium. Each
pine-tree was a huge Christmas-tree with thousands of wax-lights
blazing in the motionless air. Many hundreds of clergy formed the
procession, and Capuchins and Carmelites and Franciscans, many with
bare feet and flowing beards. There were also hundreds of
torch-bearers and children swaying censers. Then came troops of
young girls, 'brides of Christ,' in white, with garlands: then a
beautiful little boy as St. John leading his lamb by a string;
then Jesus, Mary, and Joseph--Mary crowned with a veil covered
with golden stars, and endless winged cherubs in attendance; then
abbots and canons; and lastly, under a crimson canopy, in a violet
robe, the Bishop bearing the Host.
"The scene in the Grande Place was magnificent. Along the base of
the _halles_ burning torches rolled up their smoke around the
belfry and the brilliant banners, and the sea of faces was
motionless in expectation. It was a tremendous moment when the
immense mass of clergy had sung a hymn around the altar in the
square, and the Bishop took off his mitre and knelt upon the rushes
before the Sacrament. Then, as he lifted the Host in his hands, the
music ceased, and the whole multitude of people fell almost
prostrate in silent prayer."
After visiting Ghent, Malines, Antwerp, and Louvain, I joined my mother
and her companions at Brussels, and we proceeded by the Rhine and
Frankfort to Heidelberg, where we found a charming apartment almost at
the castle gate, at the back of a baker's shop, with a little
oleander-fringed garden high on the hill-top, overlooking the town and
river. Two sisters and their cousin waited upon us. The castle gardens
were like our own, and delicious in their shade and freshness and the
scent of their roses and lilacs; and the courtyards and towers were
full of inexhaustible interest. We were never weary here of studying the
history of the English Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and finding out her
connection with the different parts of the castle, and her little garden
with its triumphal arch was our favourite resort. We seldom went down
into the town except on Sundays, when the famous Dr. Schenkel preached
in St. Peter's Church at the foot of our hill. In the evenings we used
to walk along the edge of the hills, through flower-fringed lanes, to
the clear springs of Wolfsbrunnen, where there was a sort of nursery of
trout (_florellen_). The students shared the gardens with us, with their
ridiculous dress and faces scarred for life in the silly duels at the
Hirsch Gasse, which they looked upon as a distinction, and which
generally arose from quarrels about giving way to each other in the
street. They often, consequently, spent six hours a day in practising
the sword-exercise, to the ruin of their studies. When we were at
Heidelberg, all the clothes in the place used to be sent to be washed in
the village of Spiegelhausen, because there the water was softer, and
when its hills were covered with the linen of the whole town they
produced the oddest effect. A large Heidelberg family considered it a
great point of honour to have linen enough to last them six months, so
as only to send it to be washed twice in the year, when it went in a
great waggon to Spiegelhausen. A young lady always endeavoured to have
this quantity at her marriage.
Lodging in the castle itself was M. Meyer,[77] afterwards a kind of
secretary to the Empress Augusta of Germany, a most singular man, who
was then employed upon an enormous poem, which he believed would throw
Dante into the shade, though it has passed quite unnoticed. He delighted
to read us some of its endless cantos in the castle gardens, and we
tried to look as if we understood and appreciated. But he was really
very kind to us, and was a most amusing companion in the long walks
which he took us--to the Angel's Meadow, a small green space in the
forests high on the mountains beyond the river, and elsewhere. I shared
his admiration for Mrs. Hamilton (_n\xE9e_ Margaret Dillon, the maid of
honour), who was at that time in the zenith of her beauty and
attractiveness, and was living at Heidelberg with her husband and
children.
We spent a day at Schwetzingen, where at that time was living the Grand
Duchess Stephanie, the daughter of the Comte de Beauharnais and
great-niece of the Empress Josephine, who had been adopted by Napoleon,
and married against her will (1806) to the Prince of Baden. My aunt,
Mrs. Stanley, was very intimate with her, and had much that was
interesting to tell of her many trials.
It was during the latter part of our sojourn at Heidelberg that the
Stanleys (Aunt Kitty, Arthur, and Mary), with Emmie Penrhyn, came to
stay with us on their way to spend the winter at Rome, a journey which
at that time was looked upon as a great family event. With them I went
to Spires and its beautiful cathedral, and on the anniversary of my
adoption we all went over to Mannheim, and dined at the hotel where,
seventeen years before, I, being fourteen months old, was given away to
my aunt, who was also my godmother, to live with her for ever as if I
were her own child, and never to see my own parents, as such, any more.
I dwell upon this because one of the strangest coincidences of my
life--almost too strange for credence--happened that day at Mannheim.
When we returned to the station in the evening, we had a long time to
wait for the train. On the platform was a poor woman, crying very
bitterly, with a little child in her arms. Emmie Penrhyn, who was
tender-hearted, went up to her, and said she was afraid she was in some
great trouble. "Yes," she said, "it is about my little child. My little
child, who is only fourteen months old, is going away from me for ever
in the train which is coming. It is going away to be adopted by its
aunt, who is also its godmother, and I shall never, never have anything
to do with it any more."
It was of an adoption under _exactly_ the same circumstances that we had
been to Mannheim to keep the seventeenth anniversary!
After parting with the Stanleys, we left Heidelberg on the 26th of
August and made a little tour.
_To_ MRS. ALEXANDER.
"_Coblentz, Sept. 1._--Here we are again at Coblentz, in a room
looking on the friendly Rhine, with Ehrenbreitstein all new and
yellow on the other side the water, and the older houses of the
town below us.
"Our little tour has been most successful. We went first to Baden,
and spent the afternoon in driving up through the forest to the
Alte Schloss, coming down in a splendid sunset--the golden Rhine
gleaming in a red valley through the dark pines. The next morning,
as I was being shown over the Neue Schloss, I asked about the Grand
Duchess Stephanie and the Princess Wasa, when the guide rushed to a
window and said, 'Come quick, for the princesses are riding out of
the courtyard upon their asses, as they do every morning before
breakfast;' but I saw little more than their shadows flit across
the court as their donkeys clattered through the gate. I was shown
the circular opening through which prisoners bound in a chain used
to be let down into the _oubliettes_ and their subterranean
judgment-hall, and the place where they had to give the _baiser de
la Vierge_, when they fell through a trap-door upon wheels set
round with knives which cut them to pieces.
"Next day we went to Strasbourg--so hot it was!--and then to Metz,
where the cathedral is poor outside, but most glorious within--a
vista of solid round pillars terminating in a blaze of stained
glass. In one of the towers is 'Groggy,' a real dragon, dried.
"A diligence took us to Sierck on the Moselle, where we had a long
time to wait, and mother sate and drew whilst I rambled about. It
was evening before the churches of Treves appeared above the
river-bank. We stayed at the charming Rothes Haus, with the little
cross opposite commemorating the fiery vision of Constantine, which
is supposed to have taken place there. Treves has a wonderful round
of sights--the Roman baths, a beautiful ruin with tall brick
arches, brilliant still in colour: thence up the vine-clad hill to
where a gap between two ruined walls forms the entrance of the
amphitheatre: back by the Porta Nigra, noblest of Roman gateways,
with the hermitage whither S. Simeon was brought from Syracuse by
Archbishop Poppo, and where he spent the rest of his life: finally
to the cathedral, and the Liebfrauenkirche with lovely cloisters
filled with flowers.
"We made great friends with the old sacristan at the cathedral, who
gave us an extraordinary account of the last exhibition of its
great relic, the 'Heilige Rock,' or seamless coat of the Saviour,
when 30,000 persons passed through the church every day, weeping
and sobbing, singing and praying as they went. The coat is only
exhibited every twenty-five years, and awaits its next resurrection
entombed in a treble coffin before the high altar. It has certainly
done great things for Treves, as the cathedral has been restored, a
capital hospital built, and all the fortunes of the citizens made
by its exhibition. The sacristan was delighted to find that I also
was a 'Romische Burgher,' but hoped that in a few years I should
'want some more cloth putting into my coat.'"
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Namur, Sept. 2._--Here I am, alone and dreary in the world once
more.... It always seems as if I could have done a great deal more
for you, and been more gentle and loving when I am gone, but I am
sure my own darling mother will never really have thought me
wanting in gratitude to her."
* * * * *
"_Braine le Comte, Sept. 3._--I believe no one has such misfortunes
as I have. I was at the Namur station at six this morning, and
here by eight. Then the guard suggested my going into the
waiting-room, as there was half-an-hour to wait before the train
came up for Calais, for which I had a through ticket. I had no
summons to the train: it came up on the opposite side of the
station (concealed by another train) in five minutes, and I was
left behind, and there is no train again till past seven o'clock
this evening, and then only to Lille!--eleven hours to wait!"
"_Southgate, Sept. 4._--As the dreary hours at Braine le Comte
waned, two English families arrived from Namur, and with two
ladies, 'Alice and Sybil,' and the boys of Sybil, I sallied out to
see Braine le Comte, and then into the forest to pick bilberries
for the luncheon which I had no money to buy. Then I arrived in the
night at Lille, and being unable to find a hotel in the dark, and
indeed having no money to pay for going to one, wandered about till
at length I collapsed altogether on the doorstep of one of the
houses. Here I was found by some of the old market-women when they
arrived for the opening of the market at dawn, and they took me
into the _halles_, and made me share their early breakfast. This
was a kind of black broth in a huge wooden bowl, into which we all
dipped a great spoon in turns, but it was most welcome, and the old
women were very kind to me."
It was a great pleasure this autumn to pay a little visit to my mother's
old friend Miss Clinton, whose frequent visits to Lime had counted as
some of the happiest days of my childhood. She was essentially what the
French call "_bonne \xE0 vivre_," so good-humoured and cheerful, and so
indulgent to the faults of others. The crystal stream of her
common-sense had always seemed to stir up the stagnant quagmire of
religious inanities which the Maurice sisters had surrounded us with at
Hurstmonceaux.
"_Cokenach, Oct. 3._--I was so glad to come here for two days. The
dear old Stoke carriage with Lou Clinton[78] in it met me at
Royston. She took me first to see the antiquities--Lady Rohesia's
chapel and Roysie's Cave, which gave the place its name, and a
house where James I. stayed when he came hunting, in which his
bedroom is preserved with its old furniture: in the garden is the
first mulberry-tree planted in England. We reached Cokenach by the
field roads.
"I was taken up at once to Lady Louisa,[79] who sate, as years ago,
in her large chair by the blazing firelogs, with all her baskets of
papers round her, and her table covered with things."
As it was considered a settled point that I was to take Orders when I
was grown up (a point on which no single member of the family allowed
any discussion or difference of opinion), and that I was then to have
the rich family living of Hurstmonceaux, in the gift of my brother
Francis, my whole education up to this time had been with that
intention. My mother, therefore, was quite enchanted when my admiration
of the B\xE9guinages which I had seen in Belgium led me, in the autumn of
1852, to devote every spare moment to a sort of missionary work in the
low wretched districts of Southgate. I had read in St. Vincent de Paul:
"L'action bonne et parfaite est le v\xE9ritable caract\xE8re de l'amour de
Dieu ... c'est l'amour _effectif_ qu'il faut \xE0 Dieu," and I determined
to try to act upon it.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Sept. 29, 1852._--I have now regularly entered on my parochial
duties. There is a long strip of cottages in the village, yet out
of Southgate parish, and which the clergyman of their own parish
will have nothing to do with, as those of the inhabitants who go to
church go to Southgate, so that he gets no marriage fees. The
people would have been dreadfully neglected if Mrs. Bradley had not
taken care of them, and as it is, they are in a very bad state,
most of the men drunkards, and their wives and children starving.
As the houses look out upon an open drain, they teem with illness
for which there is no remedy. The children spend their days in
making mud-pies upon the road.... I have now got all these cottages
as my peculiar province.
"Most of the people cannot, or fancy they cannot, go to church, so
I offered to have a sort of 'cottage reading' every Tuesday in the
house of one of the better people--a Mrs. Perry. I was rather
alarmed, though glad, to see how many came.... I tried to make the
reading as interesting and easy as I could, and afterwards ventured
upon a little 'discourse.'
"It was strange to find this really heathen colony--for they know
_nothing_--close by, and I am glad to have a foretaste of what my
life's work will be like."
"_Southgate, October 12._--Mr. Bradley is in nothing so
extraordinary as in the education of his children. All the moral
lessons to his little daughter Jesse are taken from reminiscences
of his 'poor dear first wife,' who never existed. I am used to it
now, but was amazed when I first heard little Jesse ask something
about 'your poor dear first wife, papa,' and he took out a
handkerchief and covered over both their heads that no one might
see them cry, which the little girl did abundantly over the
touching story told her. Little Charlie's education was carried on
in a similar way, only the model held up to him was a son of Mrs.
Bradley's by an imaginary first husband, who 'died and is buried in
Oxfordshire.' Little Moses's mamma, 'Mrs. Jochebed Amram,' is also
held up as an effective example of Christian piety and patience,
but Moses himself never touches their feelings at all. I must send
you one of the allegories which I have heard Bradley tell his
children; it is such a characteristic specimen:--
"'Now I will tell you a story about Hare. When Hare was a little
child he lived at Rome: you know what we call it?--("Oh yes, papa,
Babylon.")--Well, he lived at Babylon, and he was a very good
little boy then, but he used to walk about dressed in scarlet, for
they all wore scarlet there. One day a man was seen in the streets,
very beautiful, a stranger with silver wings. And he said, "Are you
little Hare, and would you like to go with me and learn how to be
good?" for he was an angel. And little Hare said, "Oh yes, that is
what I always like to be and try to be, and I shall like very much
to go."
"'So the angel took little Hare up and carried him away on his
back: and his poor mother went up and down the streets of Babylon
crying and wringing her hands, for she did not know where her dear
boy was gone.
"'But the angel carried Hare to the Happy Island, where all manner
of little children were living--Ada and Angelina, and numbers of
others. All these little children came to Hare and asked why he
came there in his scarlet dress without getting it washed, because
they all wore white robes, and they told him he must get his robes
washed too. But he said he liked his scarlet clothes, and did not
wish to have white robes like theirs, and he was very sullen and
angry.
"'So then the angel and the children left him alone and took no
notice of him. But after a time he observed that all the other
children had little wings while he had none, and he felt sorry when
the great angel passed by every day and took no notice of him, and
at last he said, "How sorry I am to have spoken as I did, and how
much I should like to have my robes washed and made white like
those of the Happy Island children."
"'And the instant he said these words, his scarlet dress fell off,
and he had beautiful white robes given him, and he felt a strange
sensation in his shoulders, for little wings were growing there.
And all the little children came up and kissed him, and cried,
"Hosanna! hosanna! he is good; and he has got little wings like
us."
"'So Hare lived on in the island, till, one day, the angel said,
"Have you ever thought what your poor mother is doing now, and
would you not like to go back to her?" And Hare said, "But can I
always be good and have white robes and wings if I go back to
Babylon?" And the angel said, "No, but you can try," and he took
Hare on his back and flew off and off till he came to Babylon,
where he set Hare down in the streets: and all the people looked at
him, and when they saw his white robes and his wings, they said,
"Why, there is a little angel come!"
"'And Hare went to his mother when she was asleep, and when she
awoke she thought it was a dream, but he said, "No, mother, it is
no dream. I have been in the Happy Island all this time, and I have
come back good." Then his mother, when she saw his wings, said,
"Oh, go on being good, and then your wings will grow larger and
larger, till at last you will not only be able to go back yourself
to the Happy Isle, but to take me with you." And Hare wished to do
this, but nevertheless Babylon is a bad place, and as he went out
in the streets his dress became soiled with their mud, and he
mingled and played with its children till his wings grew smaller
and smaller, and at last they fell off altogether.
"'Still, if you were to examine Hare on the bare shoulders when he
is undressed, you would see the stumps where the wings were.'"
On the 17th of November I went up to London for the funeral of the Duke
of Wellington on the following day. Very late at night Arthur Stanley
arrived, having travelled day and night from Rome on purpose. We had to
set off at four o'clock next morning to reach our reserved seats in St.
Paul's, though I do not think the service began till twelve. We were
four hours in the long chain of carriages wending at a foot's pace
towards St. Paul's. A number of curious cases of robbery occurred then.
I remember one, of an old gentleman in a carriage before us, who was
leaning out of the carriage window with a pair of gold spectacles on his
nose. A well-dressed man approached him between the two lines of
carriages and said, "Sir, don't you know that you're very imprudent in
leaning out of the carriage window on this occasion with such a very
valuable pair of gold spectacles upon your nose? An _ill-disposed_
person might come up and whip off your spectacles like _this_"--and,
suiting the action to the word, he whipped them off, and escaped
between the opposite line of carriages, leaving the old gentleman
without any chance of redress.
The ceremony in St. Paul's was sublime beyond any power of words to
describe. I recollect as one of the most striking features the figure of
Dean Milman--bent almost double, with silver hair--who had been present
at the funeral of Nelson in 1806, when he "heard, or seemed to hear, the
low wail of the sailors who encircled their Admiral." My mother saw the
procession from the Bunsens' house at Carlton Terrace.
In the winter of 1852-53 I passed through one of those phases of
religious conviction which ultra-Evangelicals would call a
"conversion"--an awakening at a distinct time which I can remember
(January 11) of the strongest feeling of repentance for past sin and
desire for improvement. "O amare! O ire! O sibi perire! O ad Deum
pervenire," are words of St. Augustine which expressed my whole feeling
at the time. I have no doubt that this feeling--exaggerated and violent
as it was--was perfectly sincere at the time, and possibly in some way
may have had a wholesome influence on my life. But I am quite sure that
in other ways it had a very _unwholesome_ influence, and that the habit
of self-introspection and self-examination which I then felt a duty, and
which many clergymen inculcate, is most injurious, as destroying
simplicity of character, by leading an individual to dwell upon himself
and his own doings, and thus causing him to invest that self and those
doings with a most undue importance. I have always in later years, where
I have had any influence, done all I could to discourage and repress
these sudden religious "awakenings," producing unnatural mental
sufferings at the time, and usually lapsing into an undesirable rebound.
With an imaginary reality of conviction, young people are often led into
hypocrisy, from a sense of the meritoriousness of that very hypocrisy
itself in the eyes of many. I am quite sure that a simple Christian life
of active benevolence and exertion for others, of bearing and
forbearing, is the wholesome state--a life which is freed from all
thoughts of self-introspection, and from all frantic efforts (_really_
leading aside from simple faith in a Saviour) after self-salvation. I
dwell upon this here for a moment, though I dislike to do so, because no
narrative of my life could be true without it.
The last nine months of my stay at Southgate were less pleasant than the
preceding ones, as Mr. Bradley had ceased to like me, and, though he
fully did his duty by me in work-time, plainly showed, out of working
hours, that he would be very glad when the time came for our final
separation. This change arose entirely from my resistance, backed up by
Dr. Vaughan at Harrow, to many of his absurd punishments. I was now
nearly nineteen, and I offered to bear any amount of _rational_
punishment he chose, but utterly refused to wear my coat inside out, and
to run with a tin kettle tied to my coattail through the village, &c.,
which were the punishments he liked to impose.
But our final dispute came about in this way:--
My Latin prose was always the greatest stumbling-block in my work, and I
was most trying, and inveterately careless over it, making the same
mistake over and over again. At last Bradley decreed publicly, that for
each of my commonest blunders, one of my companions should--kiss me!
They thought it great fun, but I declared I would not submit. The decree
had a good effect so far, that, for a very long time--a most unusually
long time, the mistakes were evaded. At last, after about three weeks, a
morning came when one of the mistakes occurred again. The fellow
appointed to kiss me for this mistake was a big Scotchman named Buchan.
Immediately the whole room was in motion, and Buchan in hot pursuit. I
barricaded the way with chairs, jumped on the table, splashing right and
left from all the inkstands, but eventually I was caught and--kissed.
In a blind fury, scarcely knowing what I did, I knocked Buchan's head
against the sharp edge of the bookcase, and, seizing a great Liddell and
Scott Lexicon, rushed upon Bradley, who was seated unsuspecting in a low
chair by the fire, and, taking him unawares, banged him on the bald
scalp with the lexicon till I could bang no longer. Bradley, after this,
naturally said I must leave. I instantly fled over hedge and ditch
fourteen miles to Harrow, and took refuge with the Vaughans, and after a
day or two, Dr. Vaughan, by representing the fatal injury it would do me
to be left tutorless just when I was going up to Oxford, persuaded
Bradley to take me back and teach me as before. But this he consented to
do only on condition that he was never expected to speak to me out of
work-time, and he never did. My Southgate life henceforth was full of
(in many ways well-deserved) petty hardships, though they were made
endurable, because the time in which they had to be endured became every
day more limited.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Southgate, Feb. 6, 1853._--Bradley of course keeps aloof, but is
not unkind to me, and it seems nothing to come back here, with
Oxford as a bright guiding-star.... I now work all day as if it
were the last day of preparation, and Walker and I question each
other in the evening."
"_Feb. 12._--I have been in my Southgate district all afternoon.
The wretchedness and degradation of the people is such as only
sight can give an idea of. In the last house in the upper alley
live the Gudgeons, where two children were born a few days ago, and
died a few hours after. I found Mrs. Gudgeon downstairs, for she
had brought the thing she called a bed there, because, she said, if
she was upstairs the children banging the doors maddened her. Two
dirty shaggy children, never washed or combed since their mother
was taken ill, were tugging at her; the eldest daughter, in
tattered clothes and with dishevelled hair, was washing some rags,
the fumes of which filled the room, while the floor was deep in
dirt. Since the mother has been ill she has had the only blanket
the family possess, so that she says the children howl with cold
all night."
"_Feb. 13._--To-day I found six of the Gudgeon children sitting on
three-legged stools, huddled round a miserable fire, the door
locked to prevent their running out into the snow. The mother said
'the Almighty knew what was good when He took the two babies; He
knew I couldn't tell what in the world I was to do with
them--though they were pretty babies, they were, every bit like
little waxwork dolls. I sent for the doctor, but it was a cold
night, and I was a poor woman, so he wouldn't come; if he had come,
I should have known they wouldn't live, and should have had them
baptized, and then I should have been happier about them.' I asked
where the family all contrived to sleep. 'Why, sir,' she said, 'you
know we have but two beds, and I sleep in the middle of one with
Martha on one side and Polly on the other, and Lisa has her head
out at the bottom, and sleeps at our feet; and father sleeps in the
little bed, with Emma on one side and Tom on the other, and Georgie
he lies at their feet, and Lu she lies with her grandmother.'"
"In another cottage I found that a good woman, Mrs. Caius, had just
taken in a dwarf child who had been much ill-treated by the woman
that took care of it. It had been dashed to and fro with
convulsions for three hours, and now its limbs were quite rigid and
stiff. It had not been stripped or washed for days, and its face
was so begrimed with dirt that the features were scarcely
discernible."
"_February 19._--Aunt Kitty has done a most kind act in securing
Mr. Jowett's protection for me at Oxford. I have had a kind note
from him, in which his using my Christian name at once is very
reassuring, though the fact that the seventeenth word he ever
addressed to me is a Latin one looks rather formidable for future
conversations."
Unfortunately, when I was just prepared to go up to Oxford for
"Matriculation," I caught a violent chill while learning to skate, and,
just when I should have started, became most seriously ill with
inflammation of the lungs. As soon as I was able to be moved, I went to
the Vaughans at Harrow, where I soon recovered under kind care and
nursing. I always feel that I owe much in every way to the kindness and
hospitality of my cousin Kate during these years of my life. As the
authorities at the University were induced to give me a private
examination later, in place of the one I had missed, I only remained at
Southgate for a few days more.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_March 13._--My mother will like a letter on my nineteenth
birthday--so very old the _word_ makes it seem, and yet I feel just
as if I were the dear mother's little child still; only now every
year I may hope to be more of a comfort to her.
"Yesterday afternoon I went with Papillon to take leave of the
(Epping) Forest. It was a perfect day; such picturesque lights and
shades on the Edmonton levels. We went through Chingford
churchyard, and then through the muddy forest to the old Hunting
Lodge, which I had never reached before, and felt to be the one
thing I _must_ see. It is a small, gabled, weather-beaten house,
near a group of magnificent oaks on a hill-top. Inside is the
staircase up which Elizabeth _rode_ to dinner in her first ecstasy
over the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Afterwards, I suppose
because she found it easy, she had a block put at the top from
which she mounted to ride down again. To prove the tradition, a
pony is now kept in the house, on which you may ride up and down
the stairs in safety. The lodge is still inhabited by one of the
oldest families of forest-rangers, who have been there for
centuries: in a room upstairs are the portraits of their ancestors,
and one bedroom is surrounded with tapestry which they declare was
wrought by the Queen's own needle.
"And to-morrow I am going to Oxford--how exciting!"
VI
OXFORD LIFE
1853-1855
"When I recall my youth, what I was then,
What I am now, ye beloved ones all:
It seems as though these were the living men,
And we the coloured shadows on the wall."
--MONCKTON MILNES.
"You are not bound to follow vulgar examples, nor to succeed--Fais
ce que dois."--AMIEL.
"Study as if you would never reach the point you seek to attain,
and hold on to all you have learnt as if you feared to lose
it."--CONFUCIUS.
During a visit at Lime, Arthur Stanley had spent a whole evening in
entertaining us with a most delightful description of the adventures of
Messrs. Black, White, Blue, Green, and Yellow on their first arrival at
Oxford, so that I was not wholly unprepared for what I had to encounter
there. His kindness had also procured me a welcome from his most
eccentric, but kind-hearted, friend Jowett, then a Fellow and tutor of
Balliol,[80] which prevented any forlornness I might otherwise have
experienced; but indeed so great was my longing for change and a freer
life, that I had no need of consolation, even under the terrors of
"Matriculation." At nineteen, I was just beginning to feel something of
the self-confidence which boys usually experience at thirteen, and, as I
emancipated myself gradually from the oppressors of my boyhood, to yearn
with eager longings for and sudden inexplicable sympathies towards the
friendship and confidence of companions of my own age. There was also a
pleasure in feeling that henceforward, though I should always have to
economise, I must have _some_ money of my own, although a regular
allowance was never granted at Oxford, or at any other time. It was
partially the fact that I had no money to spend in my own way, and that
my bills were always overlooked and commented upon, and partly that I
had known no other young men except those whom I met at my private
tutor's, which made me still very peculiar in dress as in voice and
manner. I can see myself now--very shy and shrinking, arriving at Oxford
in a rough "bear greatcoat," with a broad stripe down my trousers, such
as was worn then, and can hear the shrill high tones in which I spoke.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Balliol College, Oxford, March 14, 1853._--I cannot help writing
to my own mother on this my first night in Oxford. I should not
seem to have got through the day without it.
"I left Southgate with all good wishes and in pouring rain. When
the domes and towers of Oxford rose over the levels, I was not much
agitated at seeing them, and was very much disappointed at the look
of them. A number of young men were at the station, but I jumped
into an omnibus, and, in a tone as unlike a Freshman's as I could
make it, exclaimed 'Balliol.' Dull streets brought us to an arched
gateway, where I was set down, and asked the way to Mr. Jowett's
rooms. Through one court with green grass and grey arches to
another modern one, and upstairs to a door with 'Mr. Jowett' upon
it. Having knocked some time in vain, I went in, and found two
empty rooms, an uncomfortable external one evidently for lectures,
and a pleasant inner sanctuary with books and prints and warm fire.
My mother's letter was on the table, so she was the first person to
welcome me to Oxford. Then Mr. Jowett came in, in cap and gown,
with a pile of papers in his hand, and immediately hurried me out
to visit a long succession of colleges and gardens, since which we
have had dinner in his rooms and a pleasant evening. I like him
thoroughly. It is a bright beginning of college life."
"_March 16._--It is a member of the University who writes to my own
mother.
"It was nervous work walking in the cold morning down the High
Street to University. Mr. Jowett's last advice had been, 'Don't
lose your presence of mind; it will be not only weak, but wrong.'
Thus stimulated, I knocked at the Dean's (Mr. Hedley's) door. He
took me to the Hall--a long hall, with long rows of men writing at
a long table, at the end of which I was set down with pens, ink,
and paper. Greek translation, Latin composition, and papers of
arithmetic and Euclid were given me to do, and we were all locked
in. I knew my work, and had done when we were let out, at half-past
one, for twenty minutes. At the end of that time Mr. Hedley took me
to the Master.[81] The old man sate in his study--very cold, very
stern, and _very_ tall. I thought the examination was over. Not a
bit of it. The Master asked what books I had ever done, and took
down the names on paper. Then he chose Herodotus. I knew with that
old man a mistake would be fatal, and I did not make it. Then he
asked me a number of odd questions--all the principal rivers in
France and Spain, the towns they pass through, and the points where
they enter the sea; all the prophecies in the Old Testament in
their order relating to the coming of Christ; all the relationships
of Abraham and all the places he lived in. These things fortunately
I _happened_ to know. Then the Master arose and solemnly made a
little speech--'You have not read so many books, Mr. Hare, not
nearly so many books as are generally required, but in
consideration of the satisfactory way in which you have passed
your general examination, and in which you have answered my
questions, you will be allowed to matriculate, and this, I hope,
will lead you,' &c. &c. But for me the moral lesson at the end is
lost in the essential, and the hitherto cold countenance of Mr.
Hedley now smiles pleasantly.
"Then a great book is brought out, and I am instructed to
write--'Augustus Joannes Cuthbertus Hare, Armigeri filius.' Then
there is a pause. The Master and Dean consult how 'born at Rome' is
to be written. The Dean suggests, the Master does not approve; the
Dean suggests again, the Master is irritated; the Dean consults a
great folio volume, and I am told to write 'de urbe Roma civitate
Itali\xE6.' When this is done, Mr. Hedley stands up, the Master looks
vacant, I bow, and we go out.
"At five o'clock, having got a cap and gown at the tailor's, I
return to Mr. Hedley, now very affable, who walks with me to
Worcester, to the Vice-Chancellor. The servant at the door says, 'A
gentleman is matriculating.' Mr. Hedley says he is going to
matriculate me. So we go in, and I write again in a great book and
sign the Articles. I swear to abjure the Pope and be devoted to the
Queen, and kiss a Testament upon it. Then the Vice-Chancellor says,
'Now attend diligently,' and makes a little speech in Latin about
obedience to the institutes of the University. Then I pay \xA33,
10_s._ and am free."
On my way back through London I went to my first evening party. It was
at Lambeth Palace. Well do I remember my Aunt Kitty (Mrs. Stanley)
looking me over before we set out, and then saying slowly, "Yes, you
will _do_." At Lambeth I first heard on this occasion the beautiful
singing of Mrs. Wilson, one of the three daughters of the Archbishop
(Sumner). His other daughters, Miss Sumner and Mrs. Thomas and her
children lived with him, and the household of united families dwelling
harmoniously together was like that of Sir Thomas More. Another evening
during this visit in London I made the acquaintance of the well-known
Miss Marsh, and went with her to visit a refuge for reclaimed thieves in
Westminster. As we were going over one of the rooms where they were at
work, she began to speak to them, and warmed with her subject into a
regular address, during which her bonnet fell off upon her shoulders,
and, with her sparkling eyes and rippled hair, she looked quite
inspired. It was on the same day--in the morning--that, under the
auspices of Lea, who was a friend of the steward, I first saw Apsley
House, where the sitting-room of the great Duke was then preserved just
as he left it the year before, the pen lying by the dusty inkstand, and
the litter of papers remaining as he had scattered them.
When I reached Southgate, Mr. Bradley received me with "How do, Hare?
Your troubles are ended. No, perhaps they are begun." That was all, yet
he had really been anxious about me. I was always so brimming with
exaggerated sentiment myself at this time, that I had expected quite a
demonstration of farewell from the poor people in the wretched Southgate
district, to whom--after a sentimental fashion--I had devoted much time
and trouble, and was greatly disappointed to receive little more than
"Oh! be you?" when I informed them that I was going to leave them for
ever. The parting with Mr. Bradley was also more than chilling, as his
manner was so repellent; yet in after life I look back to him as a man
to whom, with all his eccentricities, I am most deeply indebted.
[Illustration: LIME, APPROACH.]
During the greater part of the Easter vacation, my Uncle Penrhyn and his
daughter Emmie were with us,--still filled with the first sorrow caused
by Aunt Penrhyn's death a few weeks before. To me personally the death
of this aunt made little difference, though she had always been kind to
me--she had so long been ill, never recovering the birth of her immense
number of children, chiefly still-born, and wornout besides with asthma.
My uncle used to obtain for her a reprieve of sleep by mesmerising her,
but in this state, though immovable and taking rest, she could be talked
to, understood all that was said, and recollected it afterwards. I
remember on one occasion her describing her agony when, in a mesmeric
state, she knew a wasp had settled on her nose, and yet was unable to
move. It was partly distress for her sorrowing relations acting on one
in whom the mind so acutely affected the body, which made my dear mother
very ill this spring, with the usual trying symptoms of trembling,
confusion, giddiness, and sleeplessness. On such occasions I sincerely
believe I never had _any_ thought but for her. Not only for hours, but
for weeks I would sit constantly beside her, chafing her cold hands and
feet, watching every symptom, ready to read if she could bear it, or to
bring my thoughts and words into almost baby-language, if--as was
sometimes the case--she could bear nothing else. But when she was ill,
the dead silence at Lime or the uncongenial society from the Rectory was
certainly more than usually depressing, and I was glad when, as at this
Easter, her doctor sent her to Hastings. Here, in her rare better
moments, I had great enjoyment in beginning to colour from nature on
the rocks. On the day before I returned to Oxford, we received the
Sacrament kneeling by the sick-bed of Priscilla Maurice,[82] whose
sick-room, which she then never left, was facing the sea in White Rock
Place. At this time I had not only an _enthusiasm_ for religion, which
in itself was worth very little, but was just beginning to be filled
with a steady anxiety to fulfil all the nobler aims of life; and to
have a contempt for that life of much preaching and little practice in
which I had latterly lived at Southgate, teaching others while I made no
effort to improve myself. In going to Oxford, from the set I lived in,
the so-called moral temptations of Oxford life not only did not assail,
but were invisible to me. I believe the very fact that I was always
ready--far too ready--to speak my mind, made base men avoid me. My chief
difficulty was to do any work; not to see my acquaintance at all hours
of the day; not to shut up Sophocles in utter weariness of what I had so
often read before, that I might go out to talk and laugh with those I
liked. In fact, probably I should have done little or nothing at first,
if the Schools, like the sword of Damocles, had not been hanging over my
head--the Schools, which, as I wrote in my journal-book, had, for
hundreds of years, probably seen more continuous trouble and misery than
any other rooms in the world.
On my way to Oxford, I paid a first visit to Hugh Pearson,[83]
afterwards my very dear friend, at Sonning Rectory near Reading, and
also visited the old Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley of Alderley,[84] at
Holmwood. Old Lady Stanley was then, as always, most formidable; but
her daughters Rianette and Louisa were not afraid of her, and in the one
afternoon I was there they had a violent dispute and quarrel, with very
high words, over which of their dogs barked loudest.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_University College, Oxford, April 9, 1853._--It is from my own
rooms, 'No. 2, Kitchen Staircase,' that I write to my mother--in a
room long and narrow, with yellow beams across the ceiling, and a
tall window at one end admitting dingy light, with a view of
straight gravel-walks, and beds of cabbages and rhubarb in the
Master's kitchen-garden. Here, for \xA332, 16_s._ 6_d._ I have been
forced to become the owner of the last proprietor's
furniture--curtains which drip with dirt, a bed with a ragged
counterpane, a bleared mirror in a gilt frame, and some ugly
mahogany chairs and tables. 'Your rooms might be worse, but your
servant could not,' said Mr. Hedley when he brought me here.... How
shy I have just felt in Hall, sitting through a dinner with a whole
set of men I did not know and who never spoke to me."
"_March 10._--The chapel-clock is _in_ my bedroom, and woke me with
its vibration every time it struck the hour. However, I suppose I
shall get used to it. But I was up long before the scout came to
call me at seven, and was in such fear of being late for chapel,
that I was ten minutes too early, and had to walk about in the cold
and stare at the extraordinary stained windows--Jonah and the whale
swimming about side by side; Abraham dragging Isaac to the
sacrifice by his hair; Mary and Martha attending upon Christ, each
with a brass ladle in her hand, only that Mary holds hers
suspended, and Martha goes on dipping hers in the pot while He is
talking. At last the Master entered statelily, and the troop of
undergraduates in black gowns and scholars in white ones came
clattering in; and Mr. Hedley read the service, and we all
responded, and a scholar read the lessons; and then there was a
general rush into Quad, and a great shaking of hands, at which I,
having no hand to shake, felt very blank, and escaped to my rooms,
and afterwards to breakfast with Mr. Jowett.... I am to go to him
every night with a hundred lines of Sophocles, some Latin
composition, and a piece of Cicero by heart--a great addition to my
eighteen lectures a week, but the greatest advantage; and really he
could not have done a more true kindness: I do not know how to say
enough of it.
"I wish I knew some one in this college. It is most disagreeable
being stared at wherever one goes, and having no one to speak to,
and though the Hall, with its high roof and pictures, may seem
picturesque at first, solitude in society becomes a bore. Expenses
appear to be endless. This morning I held a lev\xE9e. First a sooty
man with a black face poked his head in at the door with 'Coalman's
fee, if you please, sir,--half-a-crown.' The buttery, represented
by a boy in a white apron, came up next, and then the college
porter and scouts, though as yet all these officials have done for
me--nothing! A man who declared himself sole agent of an important
magazine, and also a vendor of flannels and 'dressing-robes,' has
also just called--'supposed he had the honour of addressing Mr.
Hare, and would I for a moment favour him with my approval,' which
I declined to do, when he thanked me for 'my great condescension'
and departed."
"_March 17._--I have now been a whole week here. It seems a life to
look back upon, and I am becoming quite used to it. My first
visitor was a man called Troutbeck. This was our conversation:--
"'I suppose you're fond of boating: we must have you down to the
river and see what you're made of.'
"'But I don't boat: you would find me utterly inefficient.'
"'Then you ride?'
"'No.'
"'Do you sing, then?'
"'No, not at all.'
"'Do you play rackets?'
"'No, I neither boat, nor ride, nor sing, nor play rackets; so you
will never have been to call upon a more hopelessly stupid
Freshman.'
"However, I have made plenty of acquaintances already, and I do not
see much of either the temptations or difficulties of college life.
In some ways a college repeats a public school. For instance, I
have made rather friends with a Canadian called Hamilton, who all
dinner-time has to answer, and does answer most good-naturedly,
such questions as--'Pray, are you going to Canada for the
long?--When did you hear last from the Bishop of the Red River?'
&c."
"_April 23._--Having been induced, or rather compelled, to give a
two-guinea subscription to the cricket club, I have just been asked
to a great wine given to show that Coleridge the undergraduate is
not the same as Coleridge the cricket collector. I have now to
prepare Latin prose for the cynical Goldwin Smith, but my principal
lectures are with Mr. Shadforth, a man who has the character of
being universally beloved and having no authority at all. The
undergraduates knock at his door and walk in. He sits at a table in
the middle, they on cane-chairs all round the room, and his lecture
is a desultory conversation--questions addressed to each individual
in turn. But he dawdles and twaddles so much over details, we have
generally done very little before the hour ends, when he says, 'I
will not detain you any longer.' I doubt if there is much good in
any of the lectures one attends, or anything to be learnt from them
except what one teaches oneself; still they are part of the college
routine, and so have to be pottered through.
"There is a high Romanistic club here, called the Alfred, whose
members spend their time in passing ridiculous votes of censure on
different individuals. They are much tormented, but have a pleasant
imagination of martyrdom, and believe they are suffering for their
faith. When they met at Merton, the men of the college put slates
on the top of the chimney of the room where they were, and they
were almost suffocated with smoke. Here they met to pass a vote of
censure on--St. Augustine, and the whole time of their sitting in
conclave cayenne-pepper was burnt through the keyhole; and when it
was over, every window in the Quad along which they passed was
occupied by a man with a jug of water; so you may imagine they were
well soused before they got out.
"The Schools are going on now. They seem less alarming since I have
heard that the man passed satisfactorily who construed ??????
???????--Julius C\xE6sar, and also the man who, when asked why they
broke the legs of the two thieves, said he supposed it was to
prevent their running away. It was all put down to nervousness.
Christ Church walks are now green with chestnut buds, and a
pear-tree is putting out some blossoms in the Master's arid garden
under my windows."
"_May 1._--I am writing at half-past six A.M., for at four o'clock
I got up, roused Milligan[85] (now my chief friend and companion),
and we went off to Magdalen. A number of undergraduates were
already assembled, and when the door was opened, we were all let
through one by one, and up the steep winding staircase to the
platform amid the pinnacles on the top of the tower. Here stood the
choristers and chaplains in a space railed off, with bare heads,
and white surplices waving in the wind. It was a clear morning, and
every spire in Oxford stood out against the sky, the bright young
green of the trees mingling with them. Below was a vast crowd, but
in the high air the silence seemed unbroken, till the clock struck
five, and then, as every one took off their caps, the choristers
began to sing the Latin hymn, a few voices softly at first, and
then a full chorus bursting in. It was really beautiful, raised
above the world on that great height, in the clear atmosphere of
the sky. As the voices ceased, the bells began, and the tower
rocked so that you could _see_ it swaying backwards and forwards.
Milligan and I walked round Magdalen walks afterwards, and when my
scout found me dressed on coming to call me, he asked if I had been
'out a-Maying.' Yesterday afternoon I rowed with Milligan on the
river to Godstowe. It was so shallow, that if we had upset, which
was exceedingly probable, we could have walked to shore."
"_May 4._--I have now become a regular visitor at the lodging-house
of the Mendicity Society, which means taking my turn in going every
evening for a week to receive the beggars who come with tickets,
and reading prayers to them, besides giving them their supper, and
noting any remarkable cases which need help. It is a strange
congregation of wild haggard people, chiefly Irish, probably
meeting for that one evening only on earth, and one feels anxious
to do them some good.
"I went the other day with Troutbeck[86]--a friend of whom I see
much--to Bagley Wood, where he sang old ballads under the trees
upon a bank of bluebells and primroses. I have many friends now,
and I never was happier in my life."
"_May 22._--I am in the Schools to-morrow for Little-go, having
insisted on going in, in spite of my tutors. I do not feel as if I
minded much, but some of my friends are so alarmed about themselves
that they can scarcely eat."
"_May 23._--This morning the School-yard was full of men in white
ties and Masters in hoods, friends catching friends for last words
of advice, &c. Then the doors of the four Schools opened, and we
poured in. The room where I was was full of little tables, and we
each had one to ourselves. Then a Don walked about distributing the
long printed papers to be filled up--arithmetic, chiefly decimals.
At first I felt as if I understood nothing, and I saw several of my
neighbours wringing their hands in the same despair which
overwhelmed myself, but gradually ideas dawned upon me, and I wrote
as fast as any one, and had only one question unanswered when we
went out at twelve. In the afternoon was the Euclid school--very
horrid, but I am certainly not plucked by to-day's work."
"_May 30._--You will rejoice to hear I am safe. Just as I was
preparing to decamp this morning, to be out of the way of the
authorities, I was caught by the Dean's messenger, and was obliged
to go to him. He began by saying he could not allow me to go into
the Schools, both my friends and the college would suffer; but I so
entreated, and declared, and exclaimed that I must go in, that I
would be careful, &c., that at last, as his breakfast was getting
quite cold, he gave in.
"I had translations of Sophocles and Virgil to do on paper, but it
was not till the afternoon that 'Mr. Hare' was called for _viva
voce_. I really did pretty well, and as one of the examiners
considerately growled whenever I was turning down a wrong path, I
was able to catch up my faults. Mr. Jowett was present amongst my
friends, and as soon as all was over, carried me off to walk in New
College Gardens; and when we came back, it was he who went in to
ask my fate. He came back to me radiant with my _testamur_, and I
am very happy in the restful feeling of its being over, and no
other examination for so long.
"I have just been electro-biologised in the most marvellous manner
by the power of Troutbeck's left eye! by which he is able to
mesmerise friends far away in their own rooms, and can make a
fellow called Barrow[87] clairvoyant, in which state he travels to
Rugby, and other places where he has never been, and accurately
describes all that is going on there."
"_June 6._--Commemoration has been most amusing--concerts,
flower-shows, &c. The procession of boats was really a beautiful
sight--all the college boats, with their different flags and
uniforms, moving slowly up between the banks crowded with people,
and saluting the University barge by raising their oars and holding
them straight up in the air as they passed."
All through my first year at Oxford, Mr. Jowett (afterwards Master of
Balliol) continued to show me the utmost kindness, giving me extra work,
and allowing me to bring the result to him in the evening. I had been so
much neglected at Lyncombe, and so ill-grounded altogether in my
boyhood, that my passing all my examinations successfully was probably
owing to this generous action of his. Honours at Oxford, even in the
History School, I never thought of. My mother would only have wondered
what on earth I wanted them for, and, had I gained them, would have
lamented them as terribly ensnaring. I was profoundly grateful to Mr.
Jowett, but being constantly asked to breakfast alone with him was a
terrible ordeal. Sometimes he never spoke at all, and would only walk
round the room looking at me with unperceiving, absent eyes as I ate my
bread and butter, in a way that, for a very nervous boy, was utterly
terrific. Walking with this kind and silent friend was even worse: he
scarcely ever spoke, and if, in my shyness, I said something at one
milestone, he would make no response at all till we reached the next,
when he would say abruptly, "Your last observation was singularly
commonplace," and relapse into silence again. He was indeed truly
"intermittent," as Swinburne has called him. His quaint brevity of
speech was never more remarkable than when the Council, met in solemn
conclave, summoned "the little heretic," as he used to be called, into
its awful presence. Then, being asked, "Now, Mr. Jowett, answer the
truth; _can_ you sign the Thirty-nine Articles?" he dumbfoundered them
with--"If you've a little ink!" He could be very satirical. I remember,
in after years, when Jex Blake, afterwards Dean of Wells, had been
talking very prosily, he said, "I have long known that Law comes from
Lex, but I never knew till now that Jaw comes from Jex."
On looking back through the mists of years, I am often surprised at the
acquaintance whose society I sought during my first terms at Oxford, few
of whom, except my dear friends Willie Milligan and George
Sheffield,[88] have had any share in my after life. This was partly
owing to the fact that the men who were at University in my time for the
most part belonged to so entirely different a station in life, that our
after paths were not likely to cross; and partly to the fact that those
who had _any_ mental gifts--for most of my companions had none--were
repulsive or disagreeable in their habits.
Milligan was the first real friend I had ever had; before that, if I had
liked any one, they had never liked me, and _vice versa_. It was always
"l'un qui baisse, et l'autre qui tend la joue."
Very odd and far less satisfactory were others of my early Oxford
friendships. One was for a man who imposed upon those younger than
himself by a sort of apathetic high-handed manner of his own, and whom,
when he professed a great preference for me, I used to look up to as a
sort of divinity. Many were the almost volumes of sentimental twaddle I
wrote both to and about him, and I used to listen for his footstep on my
staircase as the great event of the evening. But all this soon wore off,
and when my idol was once dethroned from its pedestal, it became a
contemptible object.
An odder friendship still, made in my early Oxford life, was that for a
good-looking, sentimental, would-be poet. Of him I wrote home with
heartfelt enthusiasm, and at length, though I had never before asked
anything at home, took courage to persuade my mother to let me go abroad
with him to Bohemia for part of the long vacation. Before we set out he
came to stay with us at Hurstmonceaux, and greatly astonished my
relations must have been to find my charming young man so utterly
unlike what I had described him. But we had scarcely set out on our
travels before I found it out for myself--the first discovery being made
when he pronounced Cologne Cathedral "very pretty" and S. Aposteln "very
nice."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Andernach am Rhein, June 30, 1853._--I was delighted when we
rounded the corner of the river below Rheinach, and the old tower
of Andernach came in sight, with the cathedral, and the
vineyard-clad hills behind. The whole place is delightful. In the
evening we rambled up the rocks over carpets of thyme and
stonecrop, and saw the last tinge of yellow pass away from the sky
behind the cathedral and the light fade out of the river. All along
the road are stone niches with sculptures of the 'Sept Douleurs,'
and as we came in through the dark orchards a number of children
were chaunting with lighted tapers before a gaudy image of a saint
in a solitary place overshadowed by trees."
"_July 2._--This morning we went out at five, meeting crowds of
peasants coming in to market with their cheerful 'Guten Tag.' I
sate to draw at the Convent of St. Thomas in a rose-garden, while
A. read Hallam. At twelve, we drove through the volcanic hills,
covered with the loveliest flowers--blue larkspur, marigolds,
asphodels, campanulas, and great tufts of crimson pinks--to the
Laacher See, a deep blue lake, once the crater of a volcano, in a
wooded basin of the hills. It still sends forth such noxious
vapours that no bird can fly across it and live, and dead bodies of
small animals are constantly found along its shores. At one end of
the lake, Kloster Laach rises out of the woods, with a little inn
nestling in an orchard close under the walls of the church. The
exterior of that old Norman church is most beautiful, mellowed with
every tint of age, but internally it is disfigured by whitewash;
only the canopied tomb of the Phaltzgraf Henry II. is very curious.
We were so delighted with the place, that we sent away the carriage
and spent the evening by the lake, which was all alive with
fireflies, darting in and out with their little burdens of light
amongst the trees. In the morning we walked back to Andernach,
which was quite possible, as I had no luggage but a comb and a pair
of scissors."
"_Limbourg on Lahn, July 3._--What a tiresome diligence-drive we
have had from Coblentz here through endless forests, but we were
well repaid as we descended upon Limbourg. Our apathetic German
fellow-travellers were roused to 'wundersch\xF6n,' 'wunderliebliche,'
and even A. gave one glance and faintly emitted the word 'pretty.'
The view from the bridge is glorious. A precipitous rock rises out
of the flats, with the Lahn rushing beneath, and all up one side
the picturesque old black and white houses of the town, while
growing out of the bare rock, its front almost on the precipice,
like Durham, towers the magnificent cathedral, one of the oldest in
Germany, abounding in all those depths and contrasts of colour
which make the old German churches so picturesque--each window
having its different moulding of blue, yellow, and red stone: and
reflected in the clear water beneath. In the evening we walked to
the neighbouring village of Dietz--a long rambling street of old
houses, with the castle of Oranienstein overhanging them; and a
wonderful ruined bridge, with the river dashing triumphantly
through broken arches and over towers which have fallen into the
stream."
"_Marbourg, July 6._--We came in the diligence from Limbourg with
an emigrant family returning home from America, and words cannot
describe their ecstasies as we drew near Weilbourg and they
recognised every place as a scene of childhood. 'Oh, look! there is
the school! there is the hedge under which we used to have our
breakfast!' The noble old castle of Weilbourg, on a precipice above
the grey bridge over the Lahn, is very striking. The German waiter
at the inn asked with great gravity if we admired it more than 'the
castled crag of Drachenfels.' The endless forest scenery afterwards
was only varied by the huge castle of Braunfels, till a long avenue
brought us into the town of Wetzlar, which has a great red
sandstone and golden-lichened cathedral, with a grim and grand
Norman door called the Heidenthurm. At Giessen we joined the
railway for Marbourg, and the clock which is now striking nine A.M.
is that of St. Elizabeth![89]
"The Church of St. Elizabeth is almost out of the town; a rambling
street of old timber houses reaches down to it, but its golden-grey
spires have nothing between them and the dark forest. Inside, the
grove of red sandstone pillars is quite unspoilt by images or
altars: one beautiful figure of St. Elizabeth stands in a niche
against a pillar of the nave, and that is all. In the transept is
the 'heilige Mausoleum.' Its red steps are worn away by the
pilgrims: the tomb is covered with faded gold and vermilion; on its
canopy are remains of fresco-painting, and within is a beautiful
sleeping figure of Elizabeth. All around are grey monuments of the
Landgraves, her predecessors, standing upright against the walls.
The choir opens into the sacristy, where is the golden shrine of
the saint. As we reached it, a pilgrim was just emerging, deeply
solemnised by a _t\xEAte-\xE0-t\xEAte_ with her bones. In her daughter's
tomb the face is quite worn away by the hands of the pilgrims. The
tomb of Conrad, her confessor, is there also. The sacristan
unlocked a great chest to show us Bible tapestry worked by the
hands of the saint. Some of the old pictures in the church
portrayed the flight from the Wartburg, and St. Elizabeth washing
the feet of the lepers: all reminded me of the stories you used to
read to me as a very little child out of the great book at the
Rectory.
"We went from the grave of St. Elizabeth to her palace--the great
castle of Marbourg, seen far and wide over the country and
overhanging the town, with a vast view over the blue-green billows
of Thuringian pine-forest. The castle is divided into two parts,
and you may imagine its size on hearing that 276 soldiers are now
quartered in one of them. A guide, who knew nothing of either
Luther or St. Elizabeth, except that they were both 'ganz heilige,'
let us into the chapel where Luther preached, and the Ritter Saale,
an old vaulted chamber where he met Zwingli and discussed
Transubstantiation."
"_Erfurth, July 8._--It is a delightful walk to the Wartburg from
Eisenach. A winding path through a fir-wood leads to an opening
whence you look across a valley to a hill crowned with a worn
gateway, something like one of the gates of Winchelsea. In the
intervening hollow some stone steps lead to a dark gap in the wood,
where is the fountain of St. Elizabeth under a grey archway with
sculptured pillars and overgrown with ferns. The water here is
excluded from the public as too holy for common use, but a little
is let out for the people into a stone basin below. By the side is
a stone seat, where it is said that Elizabeth used to wash herself.
"Again a narrow path edged with blue campanulas, and then the grey
arch of the castle-gateway. You look down at the side, and half-way
down the gorge you see a little plot of ground called 'Luther's
Garden.'
"The Wartburg is much like an English farmhouse. If Priest's
Hawse[90] was perched on the top of a mountain, it would resemble
it. It has an irregular court, of which rugged rock is the
pavement, surrounded with scattered buildings, some black and
white, and some castellated. The latter, which have two rows of
Norman arches and pillars and a kind of keep-tower at the end, were
the palace of the Landgraves and Elizabeth. The whole was full of
women and guides, geese, chickens, and dogs. We had some time to
wait in a room, where we were refreshed with 'lemonade' made of
raspberries, before we were shown over the castle--the most
interesting points being the chapel with Luther's pulpit, and the
room of his conflict with the devil, full of old pictures and
furniture, but with nothing which can be relied upon as
contemporary except his table and a stone which he used as a
foot-stool. When he threw the inkstand at the devil, the ink made a
tremendous splash upon the wall, but there is no trace of it now:
the relic collectors have scraped the wall away down to the bare
stones.
"At the last moment at Eisenach I could not resist rushing out to
sketch 'Conrad Cotta's House,' where you have so often described
how Ursula Cotta first found the little Martin Luther singing
hymns.
"The heat here at Erfurth is so great that I have been in a state
of perpetual dissolution. It is a dull town with a great cathedral,
and another church raised high above the market-place and
approached by long flights of steps. The Waisenhaus is an orphan
institution occupying the Augustinian convent where Luther lived as
a monk. All there is the same as in his time--the floors he used to
sweep, the doors he had to open, and the courtyard filled with
flowers and surrounded by wooden galleries. A passage lined with
pictures from the Dance of Death leads to the cells. Luther's cell
is a tiny chamber with a window full of octagonal glass, and walls
covered with texts: two sides were written by himself. The
furniture is the same, and even the inkstand from which I had to
write my name, while the woman who showed me the place mentioned
that the pens were not the same, for Luther's pens were worn out
long ago! There is a portrait by Cranach and writing of the three
friends, Luther, Bugenhagen, and Melancthon.
"A. cannot speak a word of German, and never knows what to do on
the simplest occasion, loses everything, is always late for the
train, cannot pack his things up, will not learn the money, and has
left every necessary of life at home and brought the most
preposterous things with him."
"_Dresden, July 11._--We have seen a number of places on the way
here. In the old cathedral of Naumbourg is a fine Cranach picture
of St. Elizabeth, with the Wartbourg above her head and the
Marbourg church at her feet. In the cathedral of Mersebourg is a
most extraordinary picture of the Electoral family of
Saxe-Mersebourg receiving the dead Christ and bearing him to the
sepulchre. The family became extinct in 1738, and they all lie in
the crypt under the church in the order in which they lived, in
coffins covered with vermilion and gold, the little children in
front and the grown people behind. Above, is the tomb of the
Emperor Rudolph of Swabia, and in the sacristy they put into my
hand a thing which I thought was a hand carved in oak, but found it
was his own real hand, cut off in 1080!
"Dresden announces itself by four black-looking domes and towers
above the flat horizon and then by the many arches of the long Elbe
bridge. It is very like a little--a very little Paris; the same
rows of tall white houses with green shutters: the same orange and
lime trees filling the air with their sweetness: only the river is
different, so gigantic and so bright. A broad flight of steps took
us to the stately Bruhl terrace above the river--golden in the
sunset. At the end an odd-looking building with a dome turned out
to be a Jewish synagogue, and we went in. One old Jew _in_ his hat
dropped in after another, till at last one of them put on a white
muslin shawl, and going up to a desk where the altar should be,
began bobbing his head up and down and quacking like a duck. Then
another in a corner, standing with his face close to the wall,
quacked also at intervals, and then all the rest chimed in, till it
was exactly like a farmyard. But no words can say how ridiculous it
eventually became, when they all burst out into choruses which
sounded like 'Cack a lack-lack-lack. Oh Jeremiah! Jeremiah! Oh
Noah's ark, Noah's ark! Cack a lack-lack-lack, lack, lack: loo,
loo, loo.' All the little black Wellington boots stamping on the
floor together, and all the long white beards bobbing up and down,
and giving an audible thump on the table at every bob.... And not
the least absurd part was that they seemed to think our presence a
compliment, at least they all bowed when we went out."
"_Schona on Elbe, July 16._--We left Dresden by the steamer--the
last view of the town very striking, with the broad flood of the
Elbe sweeping through a line of palaces. At Pirna we left the
boat, and a long walk through hot fields brought us to the entrance
of the Ottowalder Gr\xFCnd. A flight of steps leads into a chasm, with
high rocks towering all round and the most brilliant and varied
greens beneath. In one place the narrow path is crossed by a
natural arch; then it winds up again through masses of forest and
deep rocky glens, till it emerges on the top of the Bastei.
"I was disappointed with the Bastei, which is like a scene on the
Wye rather exaggerated. You look over a precipice of seven hundred
feet, and see all around rocks equally high shooting straight up
skywards in every conceivable and inconceivable form--pillars,
pyramids, cones: and up all of them fir-trees cling and scramble,
and bright tufts of bilberries hang where no human hand can ever
gather their fruit. There are bridges between some of the rocks,
and they support fragments of castles of the robbers who used to
infest the Elbe, and, beyond the river, all the distant hills rise
in columnar masses of equal irregularity. After dining at the
little inn, we walked on to K\xF6nigstein, a fortress which has never
been taken, large enough to hold the whole population of Dresden.
Here a tremendous thunderstorm rolled with grand effect around the
mountain. There is a terrible parapet overhanging the precipice,
where a page fell asleep, and was awakened by one of the Electors
firing a pistol close to his ear to break him of the habit. A long
path through bilberry thickets brought us to the station, and we
took the train to Schandau, where we slept--very glad to go to bed
at ten, having been on foot since 4 A.M.
"This morning we took a carriage for the first eight miles up the
valley of the Raven's Crag, and walked on to the Kuhl-stuhl. In the
very top of the hill the rock has made a huge natural arch, which
leads to an otherwise inaccessible platform overhanging the
valleys. The peasants drove their cattle here for protection in the
Thirty Years' War, whence the name of Kuhl-stuhl, and hither the
Bohemian Protestants fled for refuge. There is a natural slit in
the rock, with a staircase to an upper platform, which was the
refuge of the women, but only a _thin_ woman could reach this place
of safety.
"Forest again, ever deeper and darker--and no human life but a few
women gathering faggots with bare arms and legs, till we reached
the Jagd-Haus on the promontory of the Lesser Winterberg, where
Schiller's name is cut, with others, in the mossy stone. Forest and
bilberries again to the hotel on the Greater Winterberg, where we
dined on mountain _florellen_ and strawberries and cranberries.
Forest, ever the same, to the Prebischthor, a natural arch
projecting over an abyss, splendid in light and shadow, and
altogether the finest scene in the Saxon Switzerland ... then a
descent to Schona. We found it easy to accomplish in a day and a
half that for which Murray allots four days."
"_Prague, July 17._--All through the night we travelled in a
railway carriage with twenty-two windows and eighty inmates. Dawn
broke on a flat country near the Moldau. At last a line of white
wall crowned a distant hill. Then, while an Austrian official was
collecting passports, railway and river alike made a turn, and a
chain of towers, domes, and minarets appeared above the waving
cornfields, one larger than the others--the citadel of Prague!
"What a poem the town is!--the old square of the Grosse Ring, where
the beautiful delicately-sculptured Rathhaus and church look down
upon a red marble fountain, ever surrounded by women with pitchers,
in tall white caps: the streets of Bohemian palaces, with gigantic
stone figures guarding the doors: the bridge, with statues of
saints bending inwards from every pier, and the huge Hradschin
palace on the hill beyond, with the cathedral in its midst: the
gloomy precipice from which the Amazonian Queen Libessa hurled down
her lovers one by one as she got tired of them: the glorious view
from the terrace of the Hradschin, recalling pictures of the view
from the Pincio at Rome: the wonderful tombs of the Bohemian kings,
and the silver chandeliers and red lights before the shrine of St.
John Nepomuck in the cathedral."
"_July 18._--On Sunday afternoon we were at the Jewish synagogue,
the oldest building here--older than Prague itself, and now only
used on the Day of Atonement and other great occasions. It is quite
in the midst of the Jews' quarter, which is entirely given up to
them, and inside it is black with age, its gothic pillars looming
out of a coating of soot and smoke, never allowed to be cleared
away. The centre was spread with draperies of cloth of gold and
silver. On the platform within them was the chief Rabbi, a
venerable man with a white beard which swept over his brown robe as
far as his waist. 'He is wonderfully learned,' whispered my
neighbour to me. 'He understands every language in the whole world,
and as for English he speaks it as well as an Englishman.' At last
there was a bustle in the crowd, and a young woman made her way
through, enveloped in a very curious ancient hood of worked gold,
and several very smart ladies crowded up after her: we followed.
Then the priest shouted in Hebrew so that the little building rang
again, and the Rabbi took a little silver cup of oil and--I
think--anointed the lady, and a service followed in which all the
people responded electrically as if a bell were struck; but it was
not till we came out that I found the lady in the golden hood had
been--married.
"We went afterwards to the Jewish burial-ground--a wide rambling
expanse in the heart of the town, literally crammed with
tombstones, falling one over the other, and, between them, old
gnarled elder-trees growing fantastically. The cemetery has been
twice emptied!--and filled again. On one of the graves a young
Jewess was lying, evidently very ill. 'You see,' said the old woman
who let us into the cemetery, 'that the Rabbi who is buried there
was so good when he was alive, that when all the other people were
rooted up, they left him and his wife alone; and his good works
live on so much, that sick persons are often brought here to lie
upon his grave, in the hope of their being cured.'
"One of a knot of palaces in the Kleinsite was Wallenstein's. Here,
one room is hung with artificial stalactites: in another are
portraits of Wallenstein and his second wife, and the charger which
was shot under him at L\xFCtzen, stuffed--but only the body remains
of the original horse, the head and legs have been eaten up by
moths and renewed! The garden is charming, with an aviary of
peacocks.
"A. has been twice threatened with arrest for persisting in wearing
a wide-awake in the streets, for at present it is a revolutionary
emblem! At first he insisted on putting it on again, but the second
attack has been too much for his fortitude. Just now I was roused
by his shrieks, and reached his room just in time to see a large
black sheep emerge from under his bed!--it had walked in from the
market by the open galleries and had taken refuge there."
"_Bamberg, July 23._--We came here by Dresden and Saxe-Altenberg,
with its charming old castle. Near Hof the engine burst, doing us
no harm, but keeping us for hours sitting on the grassy railway
bank till another engine arrived, so that we did not get here till
3 A.M. The cathedral is glorious. Only imagine my having found
Baron and Baroness von Usedom in the hotel, and the next morning
Lady Malcolm and her two daughters arrived--most kind, most
amusing--and Madame von Usedom most extraordinary. She received me
with 'You're wonderfully like your sister, and she is very
beautiful,' so that's a compliment!"
"_July 28._--We have had another vision of loveliness at Nuremberg.
One became quite weary of saying, 'Oh! how beautiful! how
beautiful!' But no letter can give an idea of what Nuremberg
is--'The German Venice' Madame d'Usedom called it. And Albert
D\xFCrer is a part of the place: whenever I see his woodcuts again at
the Rectory, they will bring back the town to me--where his house
is, and his pictures, his statue, and most of all his grave, in a
cemetery full of hollyhocks and lilies."
We came home by Augsburg, Ulm, and Heidelberg, and then through France
_via_ Chalons and Rheims. In thinking of present expenses (1895), I
often marvel at the cheapness of the long tour we had made. We had seen
the greater part of Germany and much of France, had travelled for six
weeks, and travelled in comfort, and, including journeys to and from the
coast of England, we _could_ each have spent only \xA325, for we had no
more to spend. I joined my mother at Ashburton Vicarage, near Dartmoor,
whence we saw "Wistman's Wood"--that wonderful stunted grove of
immemorial oak-trees in the midst of the moors. On our way home we went
to stay with Miss Boyle[91] at Portishead. It was my mother's first
sight of her, and she was much struck by that extraordinary person, for
whom at that time I had an almost passionate devotion, and who had
unfortunately just become notorious through her appearance--being
subp\x9Cnaed on the wrong side--at the trial of the false Sir Hugh
Smith, the claimant of Ashton Court. This trial created a tremendous
excitement at the time, and the decision was nearly given in favour of
the claimant. His wife, a daughter of De Wint the artist, had already
ordered the carriage in which she was to make a triumphal entry, when
the cause suddenly collapsed through the evidence of a jeweller who had
been employed to forge a brooch upon which much of importance depended.
The Bishop of St. David's, Thirlwall, was staying at the Rectory when I
was at home. Excellent as he was, I was horribly afraid of him, for a
more repellent, freezing manner than his I never saw. I hated the
Rectory now more than ever, but was more than ever devoted to Lime. What
a vision I have now of its quietude in those hot summer days, only the
wind whispering in the old abele-trees and rippling the waves upon the
pool, and of the fresh morning smell of the pinks and roses and syringa,
bowed down by the heavy dew. Our intensely quiet life would have suited
few young men, but when my dear mother was well, and the Rectory not
too aggressive, I was always happy. Each day was a routine. Called by
our fat John at seven, when Fausty's black nose was poked in my face, I
woke to see the sun shining on the little pictures on the wall and the
old-fashioned china ornaments, and to hear Joe Cornford whetting his
scythe on the lawn under the windows. I was downstairs before my mother
appeared in her lilac dress to breakfast and prayers. Then we walked on
the terrace. I read--first aloud to her, then to myself--then went with
her round the field and to the girls' school. At one was dinner; at
half-past two we drove out--Fausty with us. Then my mother lay on the
sofa and I read: then came our tea-supper, and I read aloud again, and
mother sang such old songs as "Hohenlinden," "Lord Ullin's Daughter,"
"Auld Robin Gray," or the Russian "Pojalite." Then, after prayers, I
helped her upstairs, and, at her little round table, she would say a
little short prayer with or for me out of her own heart, and I came down
to write till the melancholy sound of the mice in the wainscot drove me
to bed also. On my return to Oxford in October, I published in "The
Penny Post" my first story--"The Good Landgravine," about Elizabeth of
Thuringia--quite as important to me then as the publication of one of
my large books is now--and I obtained ten shillings for it with great
pride! I had much pleasure in a visit from Arthur Stanley this term, and
Mr. Jowett--"the great Balliol tutor"--continued his kindness and his
voluntary lessons to me, though I must often sorely have tried his
patience. I was, no doubt, a terrible little prig, and I have just
found, amongst old letters, a very kind one from him, written in the
vacation, urging me to make an effort to conquer "my conceit, which was
not vanity, but a constant restlessness about myself."[92] Jowett
was--tiresome perhaps, in some ways, but--one of the most unselfish
persons I have ever known. By his own life, as in his sermons, he
constantly inculcated disinterestedness, sympathy, and the love of God.
The Christian doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, &c., he
utterly ignored, out of the pulpit as in it, and I believe Arthur
Stanley quite agreed with him in his heart, though he had not quite "the
courage of his opinions."
"Reading men" used to congratulate me upon my intimacy with Jowett,
little knowing of how admonitory a nature were all his conversations
with me. Amongst the freshmen of the term were two with whom I became
great friends afterwards. One was Frederick Forsyth Grant,[93] whom we
always called "Kyrie," because when he went to spend the long vacation
at Athens (of all places in the world), he was called from his
generosity "Kyrie Dora"--the lord of gifts. The other was a peculiarly
boyish-looking fellow, with a remarkably lithe, graceful figure, and a
little Skye-terrier to which he was devoted. I remember the shy longing
I had to make friends with him, and my first visit after dinner--finding
him drinking coffee with his little dog by his side: it was George
Sheffield, my constant friend afterwards for very many years.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_University College, Nov. 18, 1853._--This morning I was asked to
breakfast with the Master, whose courteous placidity is such that
he looks as if turmoil, contradiction, and reform could never
approach him. He received us kindly but very solemnly, with an old
Miss Plumptre in a rich satin gown by his side. There was an awful
pause at first, while we stood in a row, and the Master and his
sister addressed an observation in turn to each of us, never going
out of the regular line. At breakfast I thought they talked
pleasantly, though the others pronounced it '_very_ flat.' When he
considered we had stayed long enough, the Master[94] pulled out his
watch and said, holding it in his hand, 'Good-bye, Mr. Gregson,'
when Mr. Gregson felt he must get up and walk out, and we all
followed. The Masters of colleges are really almost nonentities,
but have an absurd idea of their own dignity. The Provost of Oriel
the other day wrote--'The Provost of Oriel[95] presents his
compliments to the Dean of Christ Church,[96] and wishes to know
what time the examination will be;' and in answer was snubbed by
'Alexander the Great presents his compliments to Alexander the
Coppersmith, and informs him that he knows nothing about it.'
"I breakfasted the other day at Wadham with a most extraordinary
man called R., whose arms and legs all straggle away from his body,
and who holds up his hands like a kangaroo. His oddities are a
great amusement to his friends, who nevertheless esteem him. One
day a man said to him, 'How do you do, R.?' and he answered, 'Quite
well, thank you.' Imagine the man's astonishment at receiving next
day a note--'Dear Sir, I am sorry to tell you that I have been
acting a deceptive part. When I told you yesterday that I was quite
well, I had really a headache: this has been upon my conscience
ever since.' The man was extremely amused, and showed the letter to
a friend, who, knowing R.'s frailties, said to him, 'Oh R., how
could you act so wrongly as to call Mr. Burton "Dear Sir"--thereby
giving him the impression that you liked him, when you know that
you dislike him extremely?' So poor R. was sadly distressed, and a
few days later Mr. Burton received the following:--'Burton, I am
sorry to trouble you again, but I have been shown that, under the
mask of friendship, I have been for the second time deceiving you:
by calling you dear sir, I may have led you to suppose I liked you,
which I never did, and never can do. I am, Burton, yours &c.!'"
The winter of 1853 was a very sad one. I found my dearest mother very
feeble and tottering, and it was a constant grief to me to see the
patient, worn look of illness in her forehead as she leant back in her
chair. She would occupy herself, however, as usual in cutting out
clothes for the poor, saying that her own sufferings from the cold
forbade her not trying to prevent theirs. I scarcely ever ventured to
leave her for a moment as long as we stayed at home, always inventing an
excuse to walk behind her whenever she went upstairs, for fear she
should suddenly fall. On the 20th of December, the Stanleys being absent
at Canterbury, we went up to their empty house in Grosvenor Crescent.
Here the winter was much preferable to that at Lime, and on the whole my
mother suffered less; but my life was that of a constant sicknurse,
scarcely ever away from her. When I was, I generally went in the dusk to
the National Gallery--too late to see the pictures, but I liked to
wander about in the almost empty rooms, and to feel that they were
there, and knowing no one in London myself, to make imaginary histories
about the one or two figures which still lingered, finding the same odd
refuge as myself from the turmoil of the town. In reading my journal of
this winter, I can recall the days of intense anguish I went through,
seeing before me, as I thought, the realisation of Dr. Chapman's verdict
that softening of the brain had definitely set in for my dearest mother.
As the year closed in gloom, I looked forward with terror to what the
next would bring, to the probability of not having another year to
_surround_ her with my love, to ward off every sorrow. Whilst conscious
that my character had certainly expanded under the happier life I had
been leading at Oxford, and that the interests of my friends there had
become as near my heart as my own, I realised that all I could be and do
for my own mother was no mere duty, it was the outpouring of my whole
soul; for I did not entertain an angel _unawares_. At the New Year my
mother's attacks increased; often she was unable to see and became
almost unconscious. Yet by the 21st of January she had rallied so much
that I was able to return in tolerable comfort to Oxford.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_University College, Jan. 22, 1854._--My dearest mother will often
have thought of her child in his college home: and _how_ often have
I thought of my own mother, and longed to be by her to watch and
take care of her still. I feel the blank on the staircase, now my
hand has nothing to do in helping you. It is a comfort that you
have plenty of nurses to take care of you; but the great comfort of
all is that you now no longer _want_ me.
"I have new rooms now in the 'New Buildings.' They are not very
large, but the sitting-room has the charm of a beautiful oriel
window overhanging the High Street, with a cushioned seat all round
and a small writing-table in the middle: and the view is
delightful."
I think it was during the Easter vacation of this year that a day of
national humiliation was appointed on the outbreak of the Crimean War.
Severely indeed was the fast-day observed at Hurstmonceaux. At Lime we
had nothing to eat but bread, and for dinner some boiled sea-kale, a
vegetable which I have ever since associated with that time; and I have
a vivid remembrance of the serio-comic face of our butler, John Gidman,
when we were ushered into the dining-room, with the table laid out as
usual, and, when the covers were taken off, only that amount of food was
displayed. In theory Aunt Esther was always urging the duty not only of
a saintly, but of an ascetic life, and it was not her fault that the
only cell where she could herself carry out in practice her austere
views was an orange-scented library lined with rare folios or precious
works of art.
This, the second year of my Oxford life, was very enjoyable. Not
intending to read for honours, for which I had no ambition (as my
mother, unlike many parents, would have had no pleasure whatever in my
obtaining them, but, on the contrary, would have regarded them as a most
undesirable "snare"), I had plenty of time for other things, and pursued
those studies of French, Italian, History, and Arch\xE6ology which have
been far more really useful to me than any amount of Latin and Greek. My
devotion to George Sheffield showed itself, amongst other ways, in
writing a story every week, which was presented to him on Sunday. Many
of these stories, though I forget them, must, I now believe, have been
rather interesting. Lady Sheffield used to keep them, and, as they all
referred to things and people long past, George and I used to make
schemes of publishing them some day in a black cover adorned with a
white skull and cross-bones, under the title of "Dead Dust,"--an idea
which, I am thankful to say, was never carried out. With Troutbeck and
Duckworth I used to attend and make copious notes of the lectures of
Professor Philips on Geology, which sometimes assumed a peripatetic
form.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Oxford, June 9, 1854._--At half-past ten yesterday, Troutbeck,
Duckworth, Bowden, and I, met the Professor and twenty-eight
fellow-geologists at the station. The Professor was dressed in a
queer old brown suit, and we were all armed with hammers, and
baskets to carry provisions and bring back fossils. We took the
train to Handbro', on the outskirts of Blenheim Park, and no sooner
arrived there than the Professor, followed by his whole lecture,
rushed up the railway bank, where he delivered a thrilling
discourse on _terrebratul\xE6_, which are found in that place, and for
which we all grubbed successfully immediately afterwards. And in
that extraordinary manner we perambulated the country all
day--getting on a few yards, and then stopping to hear a lecture on
some stone the Professor had spied in the hedge, or which one of
the party had picked up in the road. Greatly did we astonish the
villages we passed through. 'What _be's_ you all come
professionising about, zur?' said one old man to me. We had
luncheon in the remains of a Roman villa with mosaics."
"In the evening we went to the Professor's 'Soiree.' Here I found
it much more amusing to listen to his sister's discourse about
'poor dear Buckland--my friends Whewell and Sedgwick--my dear
friend Faraday--my very celebrated uncle, and my also celebrated
brother,' than to attend to the Professor himself, who was
exhibiting photographs of the scenery and geology of the moon."
Amongst the remarkable persons whom I frequently saw in my earlier
Oxford life was the venerable Dr. (Martin Joseph) Routh, President of
Magdalen, born 1755, who died in 1854, in his hundredth year. He would
describe his mother as having known a lady who had met Charles II.
walking round the parks at Oxford with his dogs. He had himself seen
Dr. Johnson "scrambling up the steps of University." In him I myself saw
a man of the type of Dr. Johnson, and of much the same dress, and even
ponderous manner of speaking. I remember Goldwin Smith once asking him
how he did, and his replying, "I am suffering, sir, from a catarrhal
cold, which, however, sir, I take to be a kind provision of Nature to
relieve the peccant humours of the system." His recollections of old
Oxford extended naturally over the most immense period. Sir George
Dasent has told me that the President once asked him, "Did you ever
hear, sir, of Gownsman's Gallows?"--"No, Mr. President."--"What, sir, do
you tell me, sir, that you never heard of Gownsman's Gallows? Why, I
tell you, sir, that I have seen two undergraduates hanged on Gownsman's
Gallows in Holywell--hanged, sir, for highway robbery."
A few years before the President's death, when he was at Ewelme, his
living in the country, his butler became insane and had to be sent away.
When he was leaving, he begged to see the President once more, "to ask
his blessing," as he said. The President received him in the garden,
where the man, stooping as if to kiss his hand, bit it--bit a piece out
of it. "How did you feel, Mr. President," said Sir G. Dasent
afterwards, "when the man bit your hand?"--"Why, at first, sir," said
the President, "I felt considerably alarmed; for I was unaware, sir,
what proportion of human virus might have been communicated by the bite;
but in the interval of reaching the house, I was convinced that the
proportion of virus must have been very small indeed: then I was at
rest, but, sir, I had the bite cauterised." It was often observed of Dr.
Routh that he never appeared on any occasion without his canonicals,
which he wore constantly. Some ill-disposed undergraduates formed a plan
which should force him to break this habit, and going under his window
at midnight, they shouted "Fire." The President appeared _immediately_
and in the most terrible state of alarm, but in full canonicals.
It was only forty-eight hours before Dr. Routh died that his powers
began to fail. He ordered his servants to prepare rooms for a Mr. and
Mrs. Cholmondeley, who had been long since dead, and then they felt sure
the end was come. They tried to get him upstairs to bed, but he
struggled with the banisters as with an imaginary enemy. He then spoke
of pedigrees, and remarked that a Mr. Edwards was descended from two
royal families: he just murmured something about the American war, and
then he expired. He left his widow very ill provided for, but the
college gave her a handsome income.
On reaching home in the summer of 1854, all the anxieties of the
previous winter about my mother's health were renewed. She was utterly
incapable of either any physical or any mental effort, and my every
minute was occupied in an agony of watchfulness over her. I felt then,
as so often since, that the only chance of her restoration was from the
elasticity of foreign air, and then, as so often since, was my misery
and anxiety increased by the cruel taunts of my aunts, who protested
that I was only trying to drag her away from home, at a sacrifice to her
comfort, from a most selfish desire for my own amusement. However, when
a short stay at Southborough and Eastbourne seemed rather to increase
than cure the malady, the absolute decision of her doctor caused the
talked-of journey to be accomplished, and we set out for Switzerland,
accompanied by Charlotte Leycester,--my mother, as usual, being quite
delighted to go abroad, and saying, "I have no doubt as soon as I reach
Boulogne I shall be quite well,"--a result which was very nearly
obtained. We lingered first at Fontainebleau, with its pompous but then
desolate ch\xE2teau, and gardens brilliant with blue larkspurs and white
feverfew--the commonest plants producing an effect I have seldom seen
elsewhere. A pet trout, certainly of enormous age, and having its scales
covered with a kind of fungus, was alive then, and came up for biscuit:
it was said to have belonged to Marie Antoinette. At Chalons we took the
steamer down the Sa\xF4ne, and a picture that dwells with me through life
is that of the glorious effect, as we entered Lyons, of the sun suddenly
bursting through the dark thunderclouds and lighting up every projection
of roof and window in the tall houses which lined the quay and the
bright figures beneath. I have often been at Lyons since, but have never
cared for it as I did then, when we stayed long enough to enjoy S.
Martin d'Ainay, and the picturesque ascent to the Fouvi\xE8res and noble
view from its terrace, and to marvel at the vast collection of votive
offerings, memorials of those who prayed to the Virgin in danger and
were protected by her, while we wondered where the memorials of those
were who invoked her and whose prayers were _not_ answered. My mother
went straight from Lyons to Aix-les-Bains by _voiturier_, but I
lingered to see the beauties of Vienne, and followed by steamer up the
Rhone and Lac de Bourget with my Southgate friend Walter Portman.[97] We
found Aix terribly hot, and generally spent the evenings by or on the
lake, where one day my mother, Lea, and I were in some danger, being
caught in a tremendous _burrasco_. Thence a most wearisome journey
_voiturier_ took us from Aix to Geneva, a place for which I conceived
the most intense aversion, from its hot baking situation, and the
illiberal and presumptuous "religion" of its inhabitants. While there,
in a hotel facing the lake, I was called up in the middle of the night
to Lea, who was very alarmingly ill, and while attending to and trying
to calm her, was roused by shrieks of "Fire" in the street, and saw the
opposite house burst into flame. Alarm-bells rang, engines were
summoned, crowds arrived, and only a change in the wind saved us from
destruction or flight. We moved afterwards to the H\xF4tel des Etrangers, a
house in a damp garden near the lake. Here we were seated almost alone
at the little _table-d'h\xF4te_ when we heard the most extraordinary
hissing and rushing sound, like a clock being wound up, and a very
little lady entered, who seemed to be impelled into the room, followed
by her husband. On reaching her chair, several loud clicks resulted in
her being lifted into it as by invisible power! It was Mrs. Archer
Clive, the then celebrated authoress of "Paul Ferroll," who had no legs,
and moved by clock-work.
While at Geneva, I saw many of its peculiar celebrities, especially M.
Gaussen and M. Merle d'Aubign\xE9, the historian of the Reformation, whose
real name was only Merle, the sequence having been adopted from his
former residence. He had a very striking appearance, his hair being
quite grey, but his shaggy eyebrows deep black, with a fine forehead and
expression. Another person we saw was M. Berthollet, with an enormous
head. It was with difficulty that any of these persons could be
convinced that our sole object in coming to Geneva was not to see a
certain pasteur, of whom we had never even heard. We visited Ferney,
which thrives upon the unpleasant memory of Voltaire, who had a villa
there, in which we saw the tomb of--his heart! The inn has as its sign a
portrait of him in his French wig.
We spent a pleasant afternoon at Colonel Tronchin's lovely villa. He was
a most excellent man, and one could not help seeing how nobly and
unostentatiously he employed his large fortune for the good of others.
Yet one could not help seeing also how many of his followers put up
their religious scruples like an umbrella to ward off whatever was not
quite to their liking--how "No, I could not think of it; it would be
against my conscience," became at Geneva, as elsewhere, very liable to
be said in pure selfishness.
My mother's sufferings from the heat led to our going from Geneva to
Chamounix. On the way we slept at St. Martin. As I was drawing there
upon the bridge, a little girl came to beg, but beggars were so common
that I paid no attention to her entreaties, till her queer expression
attracted me, and a boy who came up at the same time described her as an
"abandonn\xE9e," for her father was in prison, her sister dead, and her
mother had deserted her and gone off to Paris. The child, who had
scarcely an apology for being clothed, verified this in a touching and
at the same time an elf-like way--grinning and bemoaning her sorrows in
the same breath. Charlotte Leycester gave her four sous, with which she
was so enchanted that she rushed away, throwing her hands into the air
and making every demonstration of delight, and we thought we should see
no more of her. However, in going home, we found her under a wall on
the other side of the bridge, where she showed us with rapture the bread
she had been able to buy with the money which had been given her. An old
woman standing by told us about her--how wonderfully little the child
lived on, sleeping from door to door, and how extraordinary her spirits
still were. It was so odd a case, and there was something so interesting
in the child, that we determined to follow her, and see where she really
would go to sleep. To our surprise, instead of guiding us through the
village, she took her way straight up the woods on the mountain-side, by
a path which she assured us was frequented by wolves. It was very dark,
and the place she led us to was most desolate--some ch\xE2lets standing by
themselves in the woods, almost at the foot of the mountain; the glass
gone from the windows, which were filled up with straw and bits of wood.
Meantime we had made out from the child that her name was Toinette,
daughter of Fran\xE7ois Bernard, and that she once lived in the
neighbouring village of Passy, where her home had been burnt to the
ground, a scene which she described with marvellous gesticulations. She
seemed to have conceived the greatest affection for Charlotte. When
asked if she knew that it was wrong to lie and steal, she said, "Rather
than steal, I would have my head cut off, like the people in the
prisons. I pray every day, and my prayer shall be always for you,
Madame."
A great dog flew out of the cottage at us, but Toinette drove it away,
and called out a woman who was standing in the doorway. The woman said
she knew nothing of Toinette, but that she had implored to sleep there
about three weeks before, and that she had slept there ever since; and
then the child, caressing her and stroking her cheeks, begged to be
allowed to do the same again. The woman offered to go with us to another
house, where the people knew the child better. On arriving, we heard the
inmates at prayers inside, singing a simple litany in responses.
Afterwards they came out to speak to us. They said it was but for a very
small matter Fran\xE7ois Bernard was imprisoned, as he had only stolen some
bread when he was starving, but that, if he came back, he could do
nothing for Toinette, and as her uncles were idiots, there was nobody to
take care of her: if we wished to do anything for her, we had better
speak to the Syndic, who lived higher up the mountain; so thither we
proceeded, with Toinette and all her female friends in our train.
It was a strange walk, by starlight through the woods, and a queer
companionship of rough kind-hearted people. Toinette, only seven years
old, laughed and skipped over the stones, holding Charlotte's gown, and
declaring she would never leave her. We had expected to find the
magistrate living in a better house than the others, but it was like its
neighbours--a little brown ch\xE2let by the side of a torrent. The Syndic
was already in bed, but Madame, his wife, speedily got him up, and we
held a parley with him on the wooden staircase, all the other people
standing below. He said that there were no workhouses, no orphan
asylums, and that though it was a bad case, the commune had no funds;
school did not open till October, and even if Toinette got work there
was no lodging for her at night. However, when Charlotte promised to
clothe her, he was so much enchanted with the "grandeur de sa charit\xE9,"
that he said he would consult with the commune about Toinette. Meantime,
in the morning Charlotte bought her some clothes, and settled something
for her future; but before we left we saw that she must not be too much
indulged, as she asked Charlotte, who had given her a frock, shoes, and
hat, to give her also some bonbons and a parasol!
We heard of Toinette Bernard for some years afterwards, and Charlotte
Leycester sent annual remittances for her; but eventually she absconded,
and utterly disappeared like a waif.
On the 1st of August I left my companions at Chamounix to make the
circuit of Mont Blanc, but the weather was horrible, and most of the
time the mountain-tops were hidden in swirl and mists; the paths were
watercourses, and the ch\xE2lets where I slept with my guide, Edouard
Carrier, were piercingly cold and miserable--especially that of Motets,
where there was nothing to eat but potatoes; no furniture whatever,
nothing but some rotten straw to lie upon; no glass and no shutter to
the window, through which an icy blast blew all night from the glacier,
though the air of the filthy room was quite dense with fleas. Travelling
in these parts is quite different now, but I have a most wretched
recollection of the long walks in the cold mist, no sound but the cry of
the marmots--yet one always had a wish to go on, not back.
Delightful was the change as we descended upon Courmayeur, with its
valleys of chestnut-trees and its noble view of Mont Blanc, and Aosta
with its Roman ruins. In returning, I was overtaken by a tremendous
snowstorm at the top of the St. Bernard, and detained the whole of a
most tedious day in the company of the kind priests (monks they are not)
and their dogs. During this time sixty travellers arrived in turn and
took refuge. We all dined together, and saw the hospice and the Morgue,
which is a very awful sight: the snow has so perfectly embalmed the
bodies, that they retain all their features, though quite black; the
hair also remains. In one corner was a woman hugging her baby to her
breast as the death silence overtook her. We all went down through the
snow in a regular caravan, and I joined my mother at Villeneuve and went
with her to Clarens.
Railways make travelling in Switzerland, as elsewhere, so easy now, that
it is difficult to realise how long and tedious the journey to Visp was
when I next left my mother to go to Zermatt. On my way I visited the old
mountain-perched cathedral of Sion, then one of the most entirely
beautiful and romantic churches in the world, now utterly destroyed by a
"restoration," from which one might have hoped its precipitous situation
would have preserved it. I walked in one day from Visp to Zermatt, and
thence made all the excursions, and always alone. The Gorner Grat is
much the finest view, all the others being only bits of the same. It is
a bleak rock, bare of vegetation, far from humanity. Thence you look
down, first by a great precipice upon a wilderness of glaciers, and
beyond, upon a still greater wilderness of mountains all covered with
snow. They tell you one is Monte Rosa, another the Weiss Horn, and so
on, but they all look very much alike, except the great awful
Matterhorn, tossing back the clouds from its twisted peak. It is a grand
view, but I could never care for it. The snow hides the forms of the
mountains altogether, and none of them especially strike you except the
Matterhorn. There is no beauty, as at Chamounix or Courmayeur: all is
awful, bleak desolation. In memory I fully echo the sentiment I find in
my journal--"I am very glad to have seen it, but, if I can help it,
nothing shall ever induce me to see it again."
It was a long walk from the Riffel Berg to Visp (34 miles), whence I
proceeded to the Baths of Leuk, where the immense tanks, in which a
crowd of people, men, women, and children, lead an every-day life like
ducks, up to their chins in water, were a most ridiculous sight.
Sometimes you might find a sick and solitary old lady sitting alone in
the water on a bench in the corner, with her hands and feet stretched
out before her; but for the most part the patients were full of
activity, laughter, and conversation. They held _in_ the water the sort
of society which once characterised the pump-room at Bath: the old
people gossipped in groups, the young people flirted across their little
tables. Each person possessed a tiny floating table, on which he or she
placed handkerchief, gloves, flowers, smelling-bottle, newspaper, or
breakfast. In one of the tanks some nuns were devoutly responding to a
priest who was reciting the litany; but generally all the people were
mingled together during their eight hours of daily simmering--sallow
priests, fat young ladies, old men with grey beards, and young officers
with jaunty little velvet caps stuck on the back of their heads.
Generally they sate quite still, but sometimes there was a commotion as
a whole family migrated to the other side of the bath, pushing their
little tables before them; and sometimes introductions took place, and
there was a great bowing and curtseying. The advent of strangers was a
matter of great excitement, and you saw whole rows of heads in
different head-dresses all uniformly staring at the new-comer: but woe
betide him if he came upon the causeways between the tanks with his hat
on his head. I had been warned of this, however, by the _conducteur_ of
the omnibus. "Oh! qu'ils crient! qu'ils crient! qu'ils crient!"
I left Leuk on the 18th of August to cross the Gemmi Pass, with a boy
carrying my knapsack. It was very early morning. The Gemmi is a grass
mountain with a perpendicular wall of rock overhanging it, up which the
narrow path winds like a corkscrew, without railing or parapet--at least
it had none then--and an appalling precipice below. On this path it is
most unnecessary to take a false step, but a false step must be fatal.
It was an exquisitely clear, beautiful morning, and high up on the
mountain-side a large party might be seen descending towards us. I did
not see them, but I believe the boy did. We had just reached the top of
the grassy hill and were at the foot of the precipice when there was a
prolonged shouting. The whole mountain seemed to have broken out into
screams, which were echoed from the hills on every side. I said, "Is it
a hunt?"--"Nein, nein," said the boy with great excitement, "es ist ein
Pferd--ein Pferd muss \xFCbergefallen sein." But then, in a moment, came
one long, bitter, appalling, agonising shriek, which could be uttered
for no fall of a horse--there was a sudden flash--not more--of
_something_ between the light and the precipice, and a crash amid the
stones and bushes beside us--and "Oh, ein Mensch--ein Mensch!" cried the
boy, as he sank fainting on the ground.
Another moment, and a French gentleman rushed wildly past, his face
white as a sheet, his expression fixed in voiceless horror. I eagerly
asked what had happened (though I knew too well), but he rushed on as
before. And directly afterwards came a number of peasants--guides
probably. The two first looked bloodless, stricken aghast: it is the
only time I ever saw a person's hair stand on end, but then _I did_,
though they neither cried nor spoke. Then came one who sobbed, and
another who wrung his hands, but who only said as he passed, "Ein
Mensch--ein Mensch!" One of the peasants threw a cloak over the remains,
and two guides cried bitterly over it. Strange to say, the body was that
of a "gar\xE7on des bains" serving as a guide: he had jumped over a little
stone in his descent, had jumped a little too far, and fallen over. For
one awful moment he clung to the only fir-tree in the way--the moment
of the screams--then the tree gave way, and all was ended.
I knew that if I did not go on at once the news would arrive at Thun
before me and terrify my mother; but it was terrible, with the
death-shriek ringing in one's ears, to follow the narrow unprotected
path, and to pass the place where trampled turf and the broken fir-tree
bore witness to the last struggle. An old German professor and his wife
had left Leuk before us, and had heard nothing of what had happened.
When I told them at the top of the mountain, they knelt on the grass,
and touchingly and solemnly returned thanks for their safety. Then I met
Theodora de Bunsen with Sir Fowell and Lady Buxton going down, and was
obliged to tell them also. Awfully in sympathy with our sensations is
the ghastly scenery at the top of the Gemmi--the black lake, which is
frozen all the year round, and the dismal, miserable inn beside it,
which is the scene of Werther's horrible tragedy, of which I have so
often since told the foundation-story.
My Uncle Penrhyn paid us a visit at Thun, with his daughter Emmie and a
cousin, and I afterwards joined them at Lucerne, and was their guest in
a most happy excursion to Andermatt. Afterwards I went alone to
Engelberg, the village and great Benedictine convent in the green Alps
under the Tetlis mountains. Thence I made my way to Stanz, and
penetrated into the valleys connected with the strange story of the
Swiss pilgrim-saint, Nicholas von der Flue, ending in the great church
of Sachselen, which contained his hideous skeleton, with diamond eyes
and jewel-hung bones. Thence it was a very long walk over the Brunig
(there was then no carriage-road) to Meyringen, and thence, the same
day, over the Scheideck to Gr\xFCndelwald; for my mother was expecting me
there, and if I did not appear by the promised day, she might have been
anxious; and in those days I was far too poor to have a mule: if I had
money enough to pay for some luncheon, my utmost ambition was fulfilled.
In returning to England, we went to Freiburg in Breisgau, and visited
the Bunsens at Heidelberg, greatly delighting in their beautifully
situated villa of Charlottenberg, and the view of the castle and bridge
from their terrace, with its oleanders and pomegranates. Afterwards we
saw Meaux and its relics of Bossuet.
[Illustration: ARCHDEACON HARE'S STUDY, HURSTMONCEAUX RECTORY.]
Uncle Julius, whose health was rapidly declining, received my mother
with many tears on our return. I have a vivid recollection of that first
evening. My mother read "Bless the Lord, O my soul," at evening prayers,
and said she always read that after a journey, with "He healeth all thy
diseases"--so true of her. We went to Hastings for Uncle Julius's Charge
to the clergy, which produced much enthusiasm amongst them, very
different from his lengthy sermons in Hurstmonceaux, under which the
whole congregation used quietly to compose themselves to sleep, probably
well aware that they would not understand a word, if they tried to
attend. The effect was sometimes most ridiculous of the chancel filled
with nodding heads, or of heads which had long since done nodding, and
were resting on their elbows locked in fastest slumber. I believe Mrs.
Sherwood describes a similar scene in one of her stories. Aunt Esther
and the curate would try in vain to keep themselves awake with strong
lavender lozenges during Uncle Julius's endless discourses. And then
"There's Mrs. Hare asleep on one side of the Archdeacon and the curate
on the other," the people would say, and he would go droning on with a
sermon preached fifty times before. There were, however, days on which
Uncle Julius would emerge from the vestry with clenched hands and his
face full of pale enthusiasm, and then I would whisper to my mother:
"Look, Uncle Julius is going to do Lady Macbeth!" There were no slumbers
then, but rapt attention, as Uncle Julius in his most thrilling (and
they were _thrilling_) tones went through the whole of the sleep-walking
scene, wrung his hands over the pulpit-cushion, unable to wash out the
"accursed spot" of sin. This was generally about once a year. Though
Hurstmonceaux did not comprehend them, there are, however, many
fragments, especially similes, in Uncle Julius's ordinary parish sermons
which will always have an effect, especially that of grief at a
death--the heavy plunge when the person goes down, and the circles
vividly apparent at first, then gradually widening, till they are lost
and disappear altogether. And though they did not understand him, his
parishioners loved Uncle Julius, for he always acted up to his own
answer to a question as to the value of a living--"Heaven or hell,
according as the occupier does his duty."
Uncle Julius had published a versified edition of the Psalms. He thought
his Psalter would be adopted by the whole Church, and it was never used
in a single church except Hurstmonceaux. During the service, he had the
oddest way of turning over the pages with his nose. "The sixteenth
morning of the month," he gave out one day. "No, 'tain't," called the
voice of Martin the clerk from below, "'tis the seventeenth." "Oh, the
seventeenth morning of the month."
[Illustration: Julius Charles Hare
From a portrait by G Richmond]
There certainly was a curious absence of ritual in the services at
Hurstmonceaux. Yet one felt that Uncle Julius's whole heart was in the
way he read the prayers. What was wanting arose from his personal
characteristics, the same which made him always hopelessly unpunctual,
which caused him to waste his mornings in hopeless dawdling just when
there was most to be done, which so often sent him off for his afternoon
walk just as the dinner-bell rang.
I was more than usually tried during the weeks spent at home this autumn
by the way in which Mrs. Alexander was set up on a pinnacle of worship
by Uncle Julius and Aunt Esther--everything and everybody, especially my
mother, being expected to give way to her. My journal, however, has many
touching reminiscences of quiet evenings in our home life at this
time--when I read aloud to my dearest mother, and she played and sang
"Comfort ye," I sitting on the little sofa by her side, the light from
the candles falling upon "the Reading Magdalen" over the pianoforte--and
of her simple, earnest prayers aloud by the little round table in her
own room that "the pleasures given us in this world might not draw us
out of the simple way of God." Especially touching to me is the
remembrance of our last evening together this summer, for it was then
almost first that she began to allow the part my life bore in hers. "O
God," she prayed, "be with us at our parting: and oh! prepare us to
meet when parting will be at an end." As I kissed her afterwards she
said, "You are a dear good child to me, darling. I may blame you
sometimes, and find fault with your opinions, but you are a dear, good,
dutiful child to me."
As I was returning to Oxford I paid a visit to Hugh Pearson at Sonning.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Sonning, Oct. 21, 1854._--The thought that my mother is well now
and does not need me enables me to bear having only
paper-conversation again for a little while. But how I long to know
each hour of the day what my dear mother is doing, and wish that
she could see me--very happy here in this peaceful little spot.
"H. P. was dressing when I arrived, but came to my room to welcome
me, most warmly, as he always does. There was a party at dinner,
but they left early, and I had a long talk afterwards with my host
over the fire. There is really no one I like so much. He gave an
amusing description of his church-restoration, very gradual, not to
shock people's prejudices. At last, when he put up a statuette of
the patron saint--St. Andrew--over the entrance, Bishop Wilberforce
came in high delight--'No other man in my diocese would have dared
to do such a thing.'[98] Bishop Blomfield rather admired his stone
pulpit, but said, 'I don't usually like a stone pulpit; I _usually_
prefer a wooden one, something more suited to the preacher
inside.'
"After breakfast we went out to pick up apples to feed H. P.'s pet
donkey with. What a pretty place Sonning is! The river winding
round, with old willows and a weir; the site of the palace of the
Bishop of Sarum marked by an old ash-tree; and the church--'all as
like naughty Rome as it dares,' says H. P., but very beautiful
within.... 'What a rate you do write at, child,' he says as he is
working tortoise-pace at his sermon by my side."
My mother was never given to being alarmed about me at any time, but I
think she must have had some anxieties this autumn; Oxford was so
dreadfully unhealthy--suffering from a perfect "wave of cholera," while
typhus fever and small-pox were raging in the lower parts of the town.
But the excitement of Aunt Kitty and Arthur about Mary Stanley, who had
taken great part in preparing nurses for the victims of the Crimean War,
and who eventually went out to Scutari herself as the unwelcomed
assistant of Miss Nightingale, kept the family heart fixed in the East
all through the autumn and winter.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Oxford, Oct. 23, 1854._--There was a special cholera service last
night. It is very bad still, and the cases very rapid. Those taken
ill at five die at seven, and for fear of infection are buried at
seven the next morning."
"_Oct. 24._--Typhus fever has broken out in the lower town in
addition to everything else, and there are 1000 cases of small-pox,
besides cholera. This morning I met two men at breakfast at Mr.
Jowett's. There was nothing to eat but cold mutton and some heavy
bread called 'Balliol bricks,' but Mr. Jowett was in his best
humour, and though he would not utter a word himself, he assisted
us into uttering a good many. He is certainly at once the terror
and the admiration of those he wishes to be kind to: as for myself,
I love him, though I often feel I would go round three streets any
day to avoid him."
"_Nov. 1._--The usual Oxford rain is now varied by a yellow fog and
stifling closeness, the consequence of which is that cholera has
returned in all its force to the lower town, and in the upper
almost every one is ill in one way or other. Duckworth and I walked
to Headington Common yesterday, and thinking that such a high open
place was sure to be free from illness, asked if there had been any
cholera there, in a cottage where we often go to buy fossils.
'Yes,' said the young woman of the house, 'father died of it, and
baby, and seven other people in this cottage and those joining--all
those who seemed the healthiest and strongest. I saw them all
seized with it in the morning, and before night they were all
gone.'--'What,' I said, 'did you nurse them all?' The young woman
turned away, but an old woman who came up and heard me said, 'Yes,
she _were_ a good creature. There were no one took but she went to
them. She were afeard of nothing. I used to think as God wouldna'
let the cholera come to her because she werena' afeard, and no
more He did.'"
"_Dec. 2._--Mrs. Parker[99] has just been telling me the beautiful
story of 'Sister Marion's' labours in the cholera. Her real name
was Miss Hughes. Mrs. P. was walking with her one day, when their
notice was attracted by Greenford, the landlord of the Maidenhead
inn, putting his beautiful little child on his great horse, while
the child was laughing and shouting for joy. Next day they heard
that the child was ill. Sister Marion went at once and nursed it
till it died, and it was buried the same evening. Then came the
rush of cholera. When any one was seized, they sent for Sister
Marion--she rubbed them, watched them, prayed with them; no cases
were too dreadful for her. She often had to put them in their
coffins herself. When all were panic-stricken, she remembered
everything. Mrs. Parker described one deathbed, where it required
two men to hold a woman down in her agonies, and her shrieks and
oaths were appalling. Little Miss Hughes came in, and taking both
her hands, knelt down quietly by the side of the bed, and, though
the doctors and others were standing round, began to pray aloud.
Gradually the face of the woman relaxed, and her oaths ceased,
though her groans were still fearful. At last Sister Marion said,
'Now your mind is easier, so you have more strength, and we can try
to help your body;' and when she began the rubbings, &c., the
woman took it quietly, and though she died that night, it was quite
peacefully.
"Then the cholera camp was made. There was one house for the
malignant cases, another for the convalescents, a third for the
children of those taken or for those in whom there was reason to
expect the disease to appear. Almost every nurse had to be
dismissed for drunkenness; the people were almost alone, and the
whole town seemed to depend on Sister Marion. Nine-tenths of those
who took the cholera died. Mrs. P. took it herself, and was saved
by constantly swallowing ice.
"I have just been to dine with the Master--a large party of
undergraduates and very dull, the Master every now and then giving
utterance to a solemn little proposition apropos of nothing at
all--such as 'A beech-tree is a very remarkable tree, Mr.
Hare'--'It is a very pleasant thing to ride in a fly, Mr.
Bowden'--which no one attempted to contradict."
"_Dec. 11._--Yesterday I went to the service at St. Thomas's, where
three-fourths of the congregation were in mourning owing to the
cholera. The sermon began with three strange propositions--1. That
the reading of the Scriptures is not necessary to salvation. 2.
That the Gospel consists not in the written Word, but in certain
facts laid down and elucidated by the Church. 3. That the
Scriptures ought not to be used as a means of converting the
heathen. I suppose the sermon was directed against the Bible
Society."
I insert a few paragraphs from my written winter-journal. They scarcely
give an idea of the stagnation of our Hurstmonceaux life.
"_Dec. 14._--A solemn tea-drinking of parish ladies at the Rectory.
My mother very ailing with trembling, and almost deaf."
"_Dec. 15._--A bitter drive to Hailsham through the bleak ugly
lanes. Mother very poorly, and unable to show interest in or
comprehension of anything. Entirely thrown on my own resources."
"_Dec. 16._--Intense cold and misery at church. Ill with this, and
felt the great usual Sunday want of anything to do, as I did not
like even to open any book which might offend mother; but at last,
finding 'Arnold's Life' would not be taken ill, settled to that.
Mother not able to speak or hear; felt the great solitariness of
loneliness _not alone_, and longed to have some friend who would
enter into my odd little trials--surely singular at twenty--but I
never have one."
"_Dec. 17._--Bitter cold and a great gale. Siberia can scarcely be
colder than Hurstmonceaux. Went by mother's wish to collect
'Missionary Pence' from the poor. No words can say how I hate this
begging system, especially from the poor, who loathe it, but do not
dare to refuse when 'the lady sends for their penny.' Sate a long
time with Widow Hunnisett, and wondered how I shall ever endure it
when I am in Orders, and have to sit daily in the cottages boring
the people and myself."
At the end of December, partly probably in consequence of the cold to
which I was constantly exposed, I became very ill with an agonising
internal abscess, and though this eventually gave way to application of
foxglove leaves (digitalis), just when a severe surgical operation was
intended, I was long in entirely recovering. My mother's feeble powers,
however, soon urged me to rouse myself, and, as soon as I could bring it
about, to remove her to London, as Uncle Julius was failing daily, and I
knew even then by experience how easily an invalid can bear a great
sorrow which is unseen, while a great sorrow witnessed in all its
harrowing incidents and details is often fatal to them.
JOURNAL.
"_Jan. 1, 1855._--With mother to the Rectory this afternoon,
wrapped up in the carriage. I went to Uncle Julius in his room. He
does seem now most really ill: I have never seen him more so. He
bemoaned his never being able to do anything now. Looking at his
mother's picture[100] hanging opposite, he said what a treasure it
was to him. His face quite lighted up when he saw my mother, but
(naturally perhaps) he had not the slightest pleasure in seeing me,
and his tone instantly altered as he turned to me from wishing her
good-bye."
"_Jan. 2._--Mother and I walked towards the school, but clouds
gathering over the downs and level warned us home again. In the
afternoon I was too ill to go out in the damp, but the crimson
sunset cast beautiful gleams of light into the room, and mother
went out to enjoy it in the garden."
"_Jan. 3._--We accomplished a visit to the new school-mistress in
the midst of her duties. A bright sunny spring morning, every
little leaf looking up in gladness, and just that soft sighing
breeze in the garden, with a freshness of newly-watered earth and
dewy flowers, which is always associated with Lime in my mind. How
beautiful--how peaceful--is our little home! Circumstances often
prevent my enjoying it now, but if I left it, with what an
intensity of longing love should I look back upon days spent here.
In the afternoon I was very impatient of incessant small
contradictions, and in the evening felt as if I had not been quite
as loving or devoted to my mother as I might have been for the last
few days--not throwing myself sufficiently into every little
trivial interest of hers. Yet this I wish to do with all my heart;
and as for her wishes, they ought to be not only fulfilled, but
anticipated by me.... What I was reading in 'North and South'
perhaps made me more sensitive, and caused me to watch my mother
more intently this evening, and it struck me for the first time
that she suffered when her cheek was so flushed and her eyes shut,
and her hand moved nervously upwards. Perhaps it was only some
painful thought, but it has often made me turn from my book to
watch her anxiously when she was not looking."
"_Jan. 4._--We drove along the Ninfield road, fresh and open, with
the wind whistling through the oaktrees on the height, and then
went to the Rectory. Mother went to Uncle Julius first, and then
wished me to go. It was very difficult to find anything to say, for
his illness had made him even more impatient than usual, at any
word of mine, whatever it might be about."
When we went to the Stanleys' empty house in Grosvenor Crescent, we left
Uncle Julius very feeble and ill at Hurstmonceaux. As soon as we reached
London, my mother was attacked by severe bronchitis, and with this came
one of her alarming phases of seeing endless processions passing before
her, and addressing the individuals. Sometimes in the morning she was
more worn than in the evening, having been what she called "maintaining
conversation" all night long. In the hurry of after years, I have often
looked back with surprise upon the stagnant _lull_ of life in these
winters, in which I scarcely ever left my mother, and, beyond chafing
her limbs, reading to her, preparing remedies for all phases of her
strange malady, scarcely _did_ anything; yet always felt _numb_ with
fatigue when evening came, from the constant tension of an undivided
anxiety. It was very severe weather, and if I was ever able to go out,
it was for a rush up Piccadilly and Regent Street, where I always
enjoyed even the sight of human movement amongst the shivering bluenosed
people after the intensity of my solitude; for of visitors we had none
except Lady Frances Higginson and her daughter Adelaide,[101] who came
every morning to see my mother. At this time Henry Alford, afterwards
Dean of Canterbury, was preaching at Quebec Chapel, and I used to go to
hear him on Sundays.
JOURNAL.
"_6 Grosvenor Crescent, Jan. 21._--The mother had fever again in
the night, and told Lea in the morning that she had been in the
Revelations, and she seemed indeed to have seen all that is there
described. She has talked much since of the Holy City and the
golden palace as of something she had looked upon. 'What a comfort
it is,' she said, 'that my visions do not take me to Hurstmonceaux:
I do not know how I could bear that.' It is indeed a comfort. She
seems always only to see things most beautiful, and more of heaven
than of earth.
"'After you left me last night,' she said, 'I heard on one side of
my bed the most beautiful music. Oh, it was most beautiful! most
grand!--a sort of military march it seemed--ebbing and rising and
then dying softly and gently away. Then, on the other side of my
bed, I saw an open cloister, and presently I saw that it was lined
with charity-school children. By-and-by Charlotte came out amongst
them. Now, I thought, I can see, by watching her, whether this is a
picture or whether it is a reality: but, as my eyes followed her,
she took out her handkerchief and did everything so exactly as
Charlotte really does, that I felt sure it was a reality.'
"This morning, as I have been sitting by my mother, I have
listened. As she lay dozing, she spoke in pauses--'I see the
sea--It is a very misty morning, a _very_ misty morning--There is a
white boat tossing in the distance--It is getting black, it is so
very misty--There is something coming--It is a great ship--They
have put up a sail--It is very misty--Now I can scarcely see
anything--Now it is all black.'"
"_Jan. 23, 1855._--Before I was up, John came and said he thought
there was a worse account from Hurstmonceaux. Soon Lea came, and I
asked eagerly what it was. 'It is over. He is gone. The Archdeacon
is dead!' One had always fancied one expected this, but the reality
is a different thing--that he who had always in one way or another
influenced daily thoughts and occupations had utterly passed out of
one's life--would never influence it again.
"My mother was very calm. She had taken it quite quietly and laid
down again to rest. When I went down, she cried, and also when
Charlotte came, but she was calm beyond our hopes. It was a long
painful day, in which it seemed almost sacrilegious to go about the
ordinary work of life. Personally, however, I have only the regret
for Uncle Julius which one feels for a familiar and honoured figure
passing out of life. It is only 'a grief without a pang.'"[102]
"_Jan. 29._--We reached home by midday. Mrs. Alexander came in the
afternoon, and described his last words as 'Upwards--upwards.' In
the evening Arthur Stanley and George Bunsen arrived."
"_Jan. 30._--I went to the Rectory with Arthur at eleven.... In the
midst of the library, amongst Uncle Julius's own books and papers,
all that was mortal of him was once more present. It lay in a black
coffin inscribed--'Julius Charles Hare. Born at Bologna. Died at
Hurstmonceaux.' But his spirit?--how I wondered if it was present
and saw us as we stood there.
"Through the open door of the drawing-room I saw all the bearers
come in, in their white smock-frocks and crape bands, and go out
again, carrying him for the last time over his own threshold. On,
on they passed, into the snowy drive, with the full sunshine
falling upon the pall, while the wind caught its white edges and
waved them to and fro. Then some one called us, and I followed with
Uncle Gustavus Hare immediately behind the coffin, six clergy who
had been especially valued by Uncle Julius carrying the pall, and
Arthur Stanley, Orby Shipley,[103] the Bishop of St. David's, and
a number of other friends following, and then a long
procession--clergy, schools, parishioners.
"On, down the shrubbery, with the snow still glittering on the
evergreen leaves, to the gate, where many more people fell into the
ranks behind. The wind was shrill and piercing, and, fresh from a
sick-room, I felt numbed with the cold and fatigue. At Gardner
Street all the shutters were shut, and the inmates of every house
stood at their doors ready to join the procession. Amongst those
waiting in front of the blacksmith's was old Edward Burchett.
Strange to think that he should have known my great-grandfather,
and lived in Hurstmonceaux Castle (where he was 'clock-winder') in
its palmy days, and that he should be living still to see the last
Hare 'of Hurstmonceaux' carried to his grave.
"More crowds of people joined from Windmill Hill and Lime Cross; it
was as if by simultaneous movement the whole parish came forward to
do honour to one who had certainly been as its father for
twenty-two years. As the procession halted to change bearers at the
bend of the road, I knew that my mother was looking out and could
see it from her window. An immense body of clergy joined us at
Hurstmonceaux Place, and many very old and familiar people--old
Judith Coleman led by a little girl, old Pinnock on his crutches,
and others. At the foot of the church hill three black-veiled
figures--Aunt Esther and her sisters--were waiting.
"The effect was beautiful of passing through the churchyard with a
pure covering of untrodden snow into the church lighted by full
sunshine, and looking back and seeing the hill and the winding
road filled with people as far as the eye could reach.
"The coffin was laid before the altar; the clergy and people
thronged the church. I seemed to hear nothing but the voice of
Arthur Stanley repeating the responses at my side.
[Illustration: HURSTMONCEAUX CHURCH.]
"Then we went out to the grave. There, around the foot of the
yew-tree, by the cross over the grave of Uncle Marcus, were grouped
all the oldest people in the parish. Mr. Simpkinson read, the
clergy standing around the open grave responded; and, as with one
voice, all repeated the Lord's Prayer, which, broken as it was by
sobs, had a peculiar solemnity, the words 'Thy will be done'
bringing their own especial significance to many hearts."
The weeks which succeeded my uncle's funeral were occupied by hard work
at the Rectory for his widow, chiefly making a catalogue of the fourteen
thousand volumes in the library, which she gave for the most part to
Trinity College. Uncle Julius had intended them as a provision for her,
to whom he had very little money to bequeath; but she chose thus to
dispose of them, and it was useless to contend with her. In the same way
she decided upon giving away all the familiar pictures and sculptures,
the former to the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. My mother felt
parting as I did with all these beautiful inanimate witnesses of our
past lives--the first works of art I had known, the only ones which I
then knew intimately. They have not been much valued at Cambridge, where
the authorship of most of the pictures has been questioned; but whoever
they were by, to us, who lived with them so much, they were always
delightful.
JOURNAL.
"_Feb. 14, 1855._--Mother and I were standing on the steps of the
Rectory greenhouse when the carriage came to take me away (to
return to Oxford). I shall always remember that last moment. The
warm air fragrant with the flowers: the orange-trees laden with
golden fruit: the long last look at the Roman senator and his wife
sitting in their niche: at the Raffaelle, the Luini, the
Giorgione--and then the place which had been the occasional
interest and the constant misery of my childhood existed for me no
longer."
_To_ MY MOTHER (from Oxford).
"_March 13._--Your letter was the first thing to greet the opening
of my twenty-first year. Being of age is a great thing, I am told,
but really it makes no difference to me. Only I hope that each year
will help me to be more of a comfort and companion to you, and then
there will be some good in growing old. In the evening my birthday
was celebrated here by a 'wine,' at which there was a good deal of
squabbling as to who should propose my health--the senior
collegian, the senior scholar, or an old Harrovian; but it ended in
the whole company doing it together, with great cheering and
hurrahing, and then Coleridge proposed that they should give 'He's
a jolly good fellow,' with musical honours--and a fine uproar there
was. I had a number of charming presents from college
friends--books, prints, and old china."
I was so anxious about my next public examination--"Moderations"--that,
as my mother seemed then tolerably well, I had begged to be allowed to
pass most of the Easter vacation in Oxford, studying uninterruptedly in
the empty college. This examination was always the most alarming of all
to me, as I had been so ill-grounded, owing to Mr. R.'s neglect, and
grammar was the great requirement. Indeed, at more than double the age I
was then, the tension and anxiety I was in often repeated itself to me
in sleep, and I woke in an agony thinking that "Moderations" were coming
on, and that I was not a bit prepared! One day, in the midst of our
work, I went in a canoe down Godstowe river, accompanied by a friend
(who had also "stayed up") in another canoe, as far as the ruin, and we
dined at the little inn. The spring sun was peculiarly hot, and I
remember feeling much oppressed with the smell of the weeds in the
river, being very unwell at the inn, and reaching college with
difficulty. Next day I was too ill to leave my bed, and when the doctor
came he said I had the measles, which soon developed themselves (for the
second time) with all violence. I was so ill, and so covered with
measles, that the doctor said--the ground being deep in snow--that it
was as much as my life was worth to get up or risk any exposure to cold.
Ten minutes afterwards a telegram from Lime was given to me. It came
from Mrs. Stanley (evidently already summoned), and bade me come
directly--my mother was seriously ill.
My decision was made at once. If I exposed myself to the cold, I should
_perhaps_ die; but if I stayed still in the agony of anxiety I was in, I
should _certainly_ die. I sent for a friend, who helped me to dress and
pack, summoned a fly and gave double fare to catch the next train. It
was a dreadful journey. I remember how faint I was, but that I always
sate bolt upright and determined not to give in.
I recollected that my mother had once said that if she were very ill,
her cousin Charlotte Leycester must not be prevented coming to her. So
as I passed through London I called for her, and we went on together. It
was intensely cold, and my measles were all driven in; they never came
out again--there was not time. There was too much to think of; I could
not attend to myself, however ill I felt. I could only feel that my
precious mother was in danger. John met me at the door of Lime--"You are
still in time." Then Aunt Kitty and Lea came down, Lea very much
overcome at seeing me--"I can bear anything now you are here."
My mother lay in still, deep stupor. She had not been well during the
last days which Aunt Esther spent at the Rectory, feeling too acutely
for her. When Aunt Esther left the Rectory finally and moved to Lime
with Mrs. Alexander, my mother was ready to welcome them. But it was a
last effort. An hour after they arrived she collapsed. From that time
she had lain rigid for sixty hours: she seemed only to have an inner
consciousness, all outward sense was gone. We knew afterwards that she
would have spoken if she could--she would have screamed if she could,
but she could not. Still Dr. Hale said, "Whilst that inner consciousness
appears to last there is hope."
When I went to her, she lay quite still. Her face was drawn and much
altered. There was no speculation in her eyes, which were glassy and
fixed like stone. One cheek alone was flushed and red as vermilion. I
went up. She did not notice me. There was no gleam, no significance, no
movement, but when they asked if she knew I was come, she articulated
"Yes."
I could not sleep at night and listened through the dressing-room wall.
Suddenly I heard her cry out, and John Gidman stood by my bedside
sobbing violently--"You must be told she is worse." I went into the
room. She was in violent delirium. Aunt Kitty was trying to calm her
with texts of Scripture; Lea was kneeling in her dressing-gown at the
foot of the bed. I was determined she should not die. I felt as if I
were wrestling for her life. I _could_ not have spared her then. But God
had mercy upon my agony. She became calmer. Suddenly, in the morning, as
I was sitting by her, she said, "Augustus, fetch me a piece of bread." I
did. She ate it. From that time gradually--very gradually--she dawned
back into life from her sixty hours' trance, whilst I was watching over
her every minute. Four days afterwards came Easter Eve. When I went in
that morning, she was quite herself. "What a beautiful quiet morning,"
she said; "it is just such a day as Easter Eve ought to be. To me this
is the most solemn day of all the year, for on it my Saviour was neither
on earth nor in heaven, at least in his bodily form.... I am so glad
that I learnt Wesley's hymn ("All blessing, glory, honour, praise")
before I was ill: I can say it now." I see in my journal that on that
afternoon of my darling mother's restoration I walked to the Rectory,
and the garden was bright and smiling as ever, in the oak-walks it
seemed as if the shadow of him who paced it so often must sometimes be
walking still. There was no furniture left in the house except
bookcases, and I was astonished then to realise for the first time how
bare walls cannot speak to one; it is the objects which they have
enclosed that have the human interest.
JOURNAL.
"_April 8, 1855._--The mother has greeted me with 'A blessed Easter
to you, darling--Christ is risen.' Last night tears came into her
eyes as she remembered that Uncle Julius would never say those
words to her again, but to-day she is bright and smiling, and the
sunshine outside seems reflected from her. The others have been to
church, so I have been alone most of the day in her sick-room."
"_April 9._--In my mother's room most of the day. My Oxford work is
sadly hindered; but that is not my first duty."
"_April 14._--The dear mother came downstairs for the first time
since her illness, and was delighted with the flowers--the heaths
and cinerarias in the window recesses, and the masses of violets in
the garden. There was much to be told that was new to her, of all
that had happened since she went upstairs, but which had to be told
very cautiously, for fear of over-excitement. Arthur Stanley, who
has been here some days, examined me in my work, and in the
afternoon we had a delightful walk through the woods to the
farmhouse of the Hole."
[Illustration: LIME, FROM THE GARDEN.]
"_April 15._--Arthur preached in the church on the spies bringing
back to the Israelites the fruits of the promised land--going on to
describe how the fruits of _our_ promised land were given us in the
lives of those who were gone before--that these were the fruits of
the Spirit spoken of in three verses of the Bible--verses better
known perhaps and more loved than any others by the people of
Hurstmonceaux. The first was written on the distant grave of one
whom many of them had never seen, but whom all of them had heard
of--Augustus, whose fruit was 'gentleness, and meekness, and long
suffering.' The second was the verse inscribed on the older of the
crosses under their own yew-tree: 'righteousness and truth' were
the especial points which Marcus bore. The third was written on the
latest and most loved cross: it told of 'wisdom'--that was Julius's
fruit."
"_April 16._--I left my darling mother to return to my work at
Oxford. I remained with her till John tapped at the door to say the
carriage was there. 'God bless you, my own darling--God bless you,
dearest'--and I was gone, leaving my sweetest one looking after me
with a smile upon her face. Oh, what a blessing it has been to
leave her thus! How different this leaving Lime might have been,
with no sense of home remaining, except in the shadow of the
yew-tree and by the crosses in the churchyard!"
I might write of my mother as Chalmers of the Duchesse de Broglie: "Her
prayers poured forth in her domestic circle, falling upon my ears like
the music of Paradise, leave their fragrance behind them, and sweet is
their remembrance."
On my way back to Oxford, I first saw the beautiful Empress Eugenie on
her passage through London to Windsor with the Emperor Napoleon III.
They had a most enthusiastic reception, the streets were thronged
everywhere, and it was a very fine sight. Almost immediately after
reaching college I was "in the Schools" for "Moderations," but did very
well, as I had employed every available moment in preparing myself.
Nevertheless, I was too anxious to go to fetch my own _testamur_, and
vividly recall the feeling of ecstasy with which, from my high oriel
window, I saw my friend Milligan come waving it round the corner of the
High Street. A delightful feature of this term, which I always remember
with pleasure, was an excursion by rail to Evesham and its abbey, just
when the apple-orchards, with which the whole vale is filled, were in
bloom like a great garden. As summer approached, we were frequently on
the river. George Sheffield generally "punted" me, and Milligan floated
alongside in a canoe. Another expedition of very great interest to me
was that to Chalfont St. Giles in Buckinghamshire, where I saw the
Vatche, the home of my great-great-grandfather, Bishop Hare, who married
its heiress, a very attractive and charming place, which was sold by my
great-grandfather. The "Hare Mausoleum," a hideous brick building, was
then standing, attached to the church, and there Bishop Hare and many of
his descendants were buried, the last funeral having been that (in 1820)
of Anna-Maria Bulkeley, daughter of my grandfather's sister. The minute
descriptions, with which I was familiar, in the letters of Bishop Hare
and his widow, gave quite a historic charm to the scenes at
Chalfont--the window where Mary Hare sate "in her great house, much too
big and good for her, with as few servants as she could make shift
with," and watched her "deare lord carried to church"--the steep lane
down which the stately procession, in which "there were no bishops for
pall-bearers because it was too cold for them to come into the country,"
passed with such difficulty--the manor pew, where Mary Margaret Hare
complained over "Laurentia and all the troublesome little children"--the
almshouses, built and endowed by the Robert Hare who married Miss
Selman.
The installation of Lord Derby as Chancellor and the reception of
Disraeli (then still a dandy in ringlets, velvet waistcoat, and
prominent gold chains) made the "Commemoration" of this year especially
exciting; though my pleasure in it was damped by the sudden news of the
failure of Sir John Paul's[104] bank in the Strand, and fear for its
effect upon my "real mother" and sister, who lost about two thousand a
year by this catastrophe, though it was not this cause which involved
them in the irretrievable ruin that afterwards befell them.
The longer I lived at Oxford, the more I learnt how little I could
believe anything I heard there. Connected with a college of which many
of the members belonged to the _lower_ upper classes of society, I had
peculiar opportunities for observing how often young men thought it
worth while to pretend to a position and acquaintances which did not
belong to them. One instance of this is too extraordinary to be omitted.
From the very beginning of February, certain men in Hall (the great
place for gossip and scandal) had spoken constantly of a certain Mrs.
Fortescue, who had come to reside in Oxford, an exceedingly clever
person and very highly connected. The subject did not interest me in the
least, but still I heard of her so often, that I could not help being
familiar with her name. Gradually her acquaintance seem to extend; men
said, "I don't _exactly_ know Mrs. Fortescue, but my family do"--or "my
friend so and so means to introduce me," and so on. Mrs. Fortescue's
witty sayings also were frequently repeated and commented upon. After
some months it was said that Mrs. Fortescue was going to give a ball,
for which there was anxiety to procure invitations--some men "had them,
but did not mean to go,"--others were "sure to have them." As I did not
wish to go, the subject was of very slight importance to me.
Within a week of the alleged date of Mrs. Fortescue's ball, my friend P.
came late at night to see me. He said, "I have a dreadful thing to tell
you. I have a secret to reveal at which you will be aghast.... _I am
Mrs. Fortescue!_" Early in the year, observing how apt men were to
assume intimacies which they did not possess, he and one or two other
friends had agreed to talk incessantly of one person, a wholly imaginary
person, and, while "making her the fashion," see if, very soon, a number
of men would not pretend to be intimate with her. Dozens fell into the
trap. In a certain class of men, every one was afraid of being behind
his neighbour in boasting of an intimacy, &c., with one who was praised
so highly. They even pretended to have received invitations to the
imaginary ball. But the trick had assumed much greater dimensions than
ever was intended at first; many people had been duped whose fury at
the discovery would be a serious matter; many Oxford ladies had been
asked to the ball, and, in fact, there was nothing to be done _now_ but
to go through with the whole drama to the end--the ball must take place!
P. was quite prepared for the emergency of having to represent Mrs.
Fortescue, but positively refused to go through it alone. His object was
to implore me to help him out by appearing in some assumed character.
This I for a long time refused, but at length assented to get up all the
statistics of the neighbouring great house of Nuneham, and to arrive as
Miss Harcourt, an imaginary niece of Lady Waldegrave, just come from
thence. I was well acquainted with the best Oxford dressmaker, with whom
one of my friends lodged, and she undertook to make my dress; while
various styles of hair were tried by another person, who undertook that
department, to see which produced the most complete disguise.
When the evening of the ball arrived, I took care to reach "Wyatt's
Rooms" very early. Only a number of men and a very few ladies were
there, when "Miss Harcourt--Miss Amy Leighton" were shouted up the
staircase, and I sailed up (with another undergraduate, who represented
my somewhat elderly companion) in a white tulle dress trimmed with a
little gold lace and looped up with blue cornflowers, a wreath (wreaths
were worn then) of the same, and a blue opera-cloak. Mrs. Fortescue, an
elderly handsome woman, quite on the _retour_, dressed in crimson satin,
came forward to meet me and kissed me on both cheeks, and I was
introduced to a lady--a _real_ lady--by whom I sate down. It is
impossible to detail all the absurdities of the situation, all the
awkward positions we were thrown into (Mrs. Fortescue had engaged her
servants, being then in morning toilette, days before). Suffice it to
say that the guests assembled, and the ball and the supper afterwards
went off perfectly, and gave boundless satisfaction. I only refused to
dance, pretending to have sprained my ankle in coming down in the train
some days before; but I limped round the room on the arm of my own
doctor (who never discovered me) between the dances, and examined the
pictures on the walls. Mrs. Fortescue was inimitable. The trick was
never discovered at the time, and would still be a secret, but that a
friend, to whom I had revealed the story on promise of _strict secrecy_,
repeated it long afterwards to P.'s elder brother. In June my mother
visited me at Oxford, on her way to West Malvern, where we had
delightful rooms overlooking the Herefordshire plains, in the house of
"Ph\x9Cbe Gale," who had long been a valued servant in the family. We
much enjoyed delightful drives with the Leycesters in the neighbourhood;
also frequently we went to see the Miss Ragsters, two remnants of one of
the oldest families in Worcestershire, who, in a great age, were living,
very poor, in a primitive farmhouse, with their one servant Betty--"the
girl" they always called her, who still wore a pinafore, though she had
been in their service forty-seven years. Their life had never varied:
they had never seen a railway, and had never even been to Little
Malvern. They gave a curious account of the poet Wordsworth coming to
luncheon with them.
From Malvern I went to the Wye with Willie Milligan. "Never," as I wrote
to my mother, "was there a companion so delightful, so amusing, so
charming and good-natured under all circumstances--and his circumstances
were certainly none of the most brilliant, as he lost all his luggage at
the outset, and had to perform the whole journey with nothing of his own
but a comb and a tooth-brush." Wherever we went, he made friends,
retailing all the local information gained from one person to the next
he met, in the most entertaining way. Especially do I remember one
occasion at Chepstow. I was drawing the castle, surrounded by about a
hundred little children, and he made himself so charming to them, and
was so indescribably entertaining, that one after the other of the
little things succumbed, till at last the whole party were rolling on
the ground in fits of uncontrollable laughter. On this visit to Chepstow
I remember the touching incident of our walking in the churchyard late
at night, and seeing a woman bring a number of glow-worms to put upon
her child's grave, that she might still see it from the window of her
cottage. We saw Tintern, Raglan, Goodrich (the great collection of
"Meyrick's Ancient Armour" was there then), and Ross, with its old
market-house, still standing, owing to the recent defence of the
market-women, who had positively refused to enter a new one which had
been built for them. A shorter expedition from Malvern was one which I
made with Emma Leycester to Worcester, which resulted in a story I
published in a magazine years afterwards--"The Shadows of Old
Worcester." In one of the passages of the china manufactory we saw a
figure of "Tragedy"--a magnificently handsome woman with a wreath of
laurel on her head. Was it Mrs. Siddons? "No," said the guide, "it was
modelled from a poor girl who used to work here, and who was murdered by
her lover _last night_."
From Malvern we drove through the rose-fringed lanes by Ledbury to
Hereford, and then went to stay at Tickwood, in Shropshire, with my
uncle's old friend Mr. Hull, and Mrs. Butler, my mother's early
instructress, who lived there to take care of his only child by his
second wife (Miss Rowe)--Rowna--whose great wealth was her only fault in
her father's eyes. Afterwards we went to meet our old friends, the
Tayleurs of Buntingsdale, at the quaint old Raven Inn at Shrewsbury, and
thence proceeded to Llangollen and Valle Crucis. Plas Newydd, the house
of "the ladies of Llangollen,"[105] was still in existence--a very
ridiculous little place; and "the ladies" had had successors, Miss
Andrews and Miss Lolly!--of whom Miss Lolly still survived. A beautiful
varied drive by Corwen and Bettwys y Coed took us to the Penrhyn Arms
at Capel Curig, where my mother had often been in her childhood, and
where, at the bottom of the garden, is the noble view of Snowdon across
lake and moorland, so well known from pictures innumerable. From
Llanberis I ascended Snowdon, which in my recollection is--from its
innate picturesqueness, not its views--the only mountain in Europe worth
ascending, except Soracte. Afterwards we went to the William
Stanleys[106] at Penrh\xF4s in Anglesea, and it was a very pleasant visit,
as Mrs. William Stanley was a most kind and amusing person, good-natured
to young people, and exceedingly pleased with my delight over all she
showed me, especially over the rocks--so glorious in colour--near the
South Stack lighthouse. It recalls oddly the extreme poverty as to
pocket-money in which I spent my youth, when I remember that the sum of
\xA32 which my Aunt Lucy gave me at Penrh\xF4s was at twenty-one the largest
present in money that I had ever yet received in my life. I spent it in
the purchase of Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art."
After visiting Penrhyn Castle, we went to take lodgings near the Albert
Ways at Conway, of which I recollect nothing remarkable except the
exemplification of "cast not your pearls before swine" in the frantic
eagerness the pigs at Towen showed to get at the mussels from which the
tiny pearls found there (and sold at two shillings an ounce) were being
extracted by the pearl-fishers. Our next visit was to Bodelwyddelan, the
fine place of Sir John and Lady Sarah Williams. We went afterwards to
Alton Towers, Ham in Dovedale, Matlock, and Rowsley--whence I saw
Chatsworth and spent several days in drawing the old courts of Haddon
Hall.
All through the past winter the Crimean War had been an absorbing
interest, people had sobbed in the churches when the prayer for time of
war was read, and even those not immediately concerned had waited in
agonised expectation for the news from the Alma, Inkermann, the Redan.
While we were at Lichfield came the news of the capture of Sebastopol,
announced by the bells of the cathedral, followed by all the churches,
and every town and village became gay with flags from every window.
In returning home this year, I felt even more anxious than before to
improve and educate myself, and always got up for the purpose as early
as I could, recollecting how Chevalier Bunsen, by always getting up four
hours before other people, made his year into sixteen months instead of
twelve. Beginning to think of colour in sketching now tended to make me
even more observant than I had been of the wonderfully artistic elements
of the scenery around our home--the long lines of the levels with their
fleeting shadows, the delicate softness of the distant downs, the trees
embossed in their dark green against the burnt-up grass of the old
deer-park.
JOURNAL.
"_Sept. 24, 1855._--We have had a visit from Miss Rosam, the last
of the old Sussex family who once lived at Lime. She said when she
was here as a little child the old convent was still standing. She
remembered the deep massive Saxon (?) archway at the entrance and
the large dark hall into which it led.
"'Were there any stories about the place?' I asked.
"'Nothing but about the fish; of course you know that?'
"'No, I don't; do tell me.'
"'Well, I don't say that it's true, but certainly it is very
generally believed that the whole of the great fish-ponds were once
entirely filled with gold and silver fish, and the night my
grandfather died all the fish died too. And then perhaps you do not
know about the horse. My grandfather had a very beautiful horse,
which he was very fond of, and though it was so old and infirm that
it could scarcely drag its legs along, he would not have it made an
end of, and it still remained in the field. But the night my
grandfather died, a man saw the horse suddenly spring up and race
at full gallop over the field, and at the moment my grandfather
died the horse fell down and died too.'
"Just now we have a full moon, and the reflections in the pond are
so clear that you can see the fish dance in the moonbeams. The
mother says, 'It is difficult to realise that this same moon, ever
serene and peaceful, is looking down upon all the troubles and
quarrels of the earth.'"
"_Sept. 29._--We came in the morning to Eastbourne, which is much
altered and enlarged, only a few of the old familiar features left
as landmarks--Sergeant Bruce's house, No. 13--O _how_ I suffered
there!--Miss Holland's, outside which I used to wait in my agonies
of grief and rage--the beach where as a little child I played at
building houses."
"_Oct. 4._--In spite of threatening clouds, we drove to Wilmington,
whence I walked with Mr. Cooper to Alfriston, a most wild
out-of-the-way place, just suited for the beautiful 'effects' of
Copley Fielding. The cruciform church, with its battered shingled
spire, stands on a little hill, and, with a few wind-stricken
trees around it, is backed by a hazy distance of downs, where the
softest grey melts into the green. When we were there, all the
clouds were tossed into wild forms, with only a gleam of frightened
sunshine struggling through here and there."
[Illustration: ALFRISTON.]
"_Oct. 7._--I fear I rather distressed mother to-day by reverting
to the Rectory miseries, the recollection of which was aroused by
finding an old journal. I will never do it again. My darling mother
has been given back to me from the brink of the grave to love and
to cherish, and, whatever it costs me, can I ever say anything to
cause her even one flush of pain? My will is strong, I know, and it
shall be exercised in always ignoring my own troubles and
prejudices, and never forgetting to anticipate each thought, each
wish of hers. Henceforward I am determined to have no separate
identity, and to be only her reflection."
"_Oct. 25._--Went to see old Mrs. Pinnock. She was lying on her
rag-bed in her wretched garret, sadly changed now from the old
woman who, two years ago, would go in the spring-time to Lime Wood
that she might see the bluebells and listen to the nightingales.
Now her old husband sate by, pointing at her worn, dying form, and
exclaiming,'Poor cratur! poor cratur!' She fumbled her poor
shrunken hands over the bedclothes and murmured, 'God bless you,
sir; may God bless you.' They are probably the last words I shall
ever hear from her, and she has always been an object of interest.
As I read 'Shadows' this last evening to the mother, I could not
help feeling how like some of them my own home reminiscences must
some day become, so sad and so softened. But it is no use to think
about the future, for which only God can arrange. 'Good-night,
darling, comfort and blessing of my life,' mother said to me
to-night. 'I will try not to be too anxious. May you be preserved,
and may I have faith. Good-night, my own Birdie.'"
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Chartwell_ (Mr. Colquhoun's), _Oct. 18, 1855._--This is a
beautiful neighbourhood.... How every hour of the day have I
thought of my sweetest mother, and longed to know what she was
doing. We have been so much together this vacation, and so
uncloudedly happy, that it is unnatural to be separate; but my
darling mother and I are never away from one another in heart,
though we so often are in body. And what a blessing it is for me to
have left my mother so well, and to feel that she can still take so
much interest and be so happy in the old home, and that I may go on
cheerily with my Oxford work."
"_Harrow, Oct. 11, 1855._--No one is here (with the Vaughans)
except Mr. Munro, whom I find to be the author of 'Basil the
Schoolboy,' which he declares to be a true picture of Harrow life
in his time. A Mr. Gordon has called, who gave a most curious
account of his adventures after having been at school here three
days, and how his companions, having stoned their master's lapdog
to death, forced him to eat it uncooked!"[107]
"_Portishead, Nov. 10._--How often I have thought of my mother when
sitting here in the little bow-window, surrounded by the quaint
pictures and china, and the old furniture. Miss Boyle[108] is in
her great chair, her white hair brushed back over her forehead. The
Channel is a dull lead-colour, and the Welsh mountains are half
shrouded in clouds, but every now and then comes out one of those
long gleams and lines of light which are so characteristic of this
place. The day I arrived, a worn-out clockmaker and a retired
architect came to spend the evening and read Shakspeare, and Miss
Boyle made herself quite as charming to them as she has doubtless
been all summer to the archduchesses and princesses with whom she
has been staying in Germany. The next day we went to Clevedon, and
saw the old cruciform church above the sea, celebrated in 'In
Memoriam,' where Arthur Hallam and his brothers and sisters are
buried. From the knoll above was a lovely view of the
church--immediately below was a precipice with the white breakers
at the bottom, which beyond the church ripple up into two little
sandy bays: in the distance, the Welsh mountains, instead of blue,
were the most delicate green. We returned by Clapton, where, beside
an ancient manor-house, is a little church upon a hill, with a
group of old yew-trees."
"_Oxford, Nov. 15._--On Monday, Miss Boyle came in my fly to
Bristol, her mission being to break a man she had met with of
drunkenness, having made a promise to his wife that she would save
him. She said that she had shut herself up for hours in prayer
about it, and that, though she did not know in the least how it was
to be done, she was on her way to Bristol to _do_ it. One day, as
we were walking, we met a woman who knew that she had seen her in a
drunken state. 'You will never speak to me again, ma'am,' said the
woman; 'I can never dare see you again.'--'God forbid,' answered
Miss Boyle. 'I've been as great a sinner myself in my time, and I
can never forsake you because you've done wrong: it is more reason
why I should try to lead you to do right.' I had an interesting
day at Bath with dear old Mr. Landor, who sent his best
remembrances to you--'the best and kindest creature he ever knew.'"
"_Oxford, Nov. 21._--I have been dining at New College and drinking
out of a silver cup inscribed--'Ex dono Socii Augustus Hare.'
"Yesterday I went to luncheon at Iffley with Miss Sydney Warburton,
authoress of 'Letters to my Unknown Friends,' and sister of the
Rector--a most remarkable and interesting person. She had been
speaking of the study of life, when the door opened and a young
lady entered. Miss Warburton had just time to whisper 'Watch
her--_she_ is a study indeed.' It was Mrs. Eliot Warburton,
uninteresting in her first aspect, but marvellously original and
powerful in all she said."
"_Nov. 26._--I have been a long drive to Boarstall Tower, which is
like an old Border castle, with a moat and bridge. It was defended
during the Civil Wars by a Royalist lady, who, when starved out
after some months' siege, made her escape by a subterranean
passage, carrying off everything with her. Afterwards it was always
in the hands of the Aubreys, till, in the last century, Sir Edward
Aubrey accidentally poisoned his only and idolised son there. The
old nurse imagined that no one knew what had happened but herself,
and she spent her whole life in trying to prevent Sir Edward from
finding out what he had done, and succeeded so well, that it was
years before he discovered it. At last, at a contested election, a
man in the opposition called out, 'Who murdered his own son?' which
led to inquiries, and when Sir Edward found out the truth, he died
of the shock.
"Mrs. Eliot Warburton and her sister-in-law have just been to
luncheon with me in college, and I am as much charmed with them as
before."
"_Dec. 3._--I have been to spend Sunday at Iffley with the
Warburtons."
I have inserted these notices of my first acquaintance with the
Warburtons, because for some years after this they bore so large a share
in all my interests and thoughts. Mrs. Eliot Warburton at that time
chiefly lived at Oxford or Iffley with her two little boys. Her brother,
Dr. Cradock, was Principal of Brazenose, and had married Miss Lister,
the maid of honour, with whom I became very intimate, scarcely passing a
day without going to Dr. Cradock's house. Miss Warburton died not long
afterwards, but Mrs. Eliot Warburton became one of my dearest friends,
and not mine only, but that of my college circle; for she lived with us
in singular, probably unique intimacy, as if she had been an
undergraduate herself. Scarcely a morning passed without her coming to
our rooms, scarcely an afternoon without our walking with her or going
with her on the river. It was a friendship of the very best kind, with a
constant interchange of the best and highest thoughts, and her one
object was to stimulate us onwards to the noblest aims and ambitions,
though I believe she overrated us, and was mistaken in her great desire
that her two boys should grow up like Sheffield and me. We gave her a
little dog, which she called "Sheffie" after him. We often went to a
distant wood together, where we spent whole hours amongst the primroses
and bluebells or wandered amongst "the warm green muffled Cumnor hills,"
as Matthew Arnold calls them; in the evenings we frequently acted
charades in Mrs. Cradock's house. Our intimacy was never broken while I
stayed at Oxford. But I never saw my dear friend afterwards. In 1857 I
heard with a shock of what it is strange that I had never for an instant
anticipated--her engagement to make a second marriage. She wrote to tell
me of it herself, but I never heard from her again. She had other
children, girls, and a few years afterwards she died. Her death was the
first great sorrow I had ever felt from death out of my own family. Her
memory will always be a possession to me. I often saw her husband
afterwards in London, but as I had never seen him with her, it is
difficult for me to associate him with her in my mind.
JOURNAL.
"_Lime, Dec. 23, 1855._--I have found such a true observation in
'Heartsease'--'One must humble oneself in the dust and _crawl_
under the archway before one can enter the beautiful palace.' This
is exactly what I feel now in waiting upon my mother. When sensible
of being more attentive and lovingly careful than usual, I am, of
course, conscious that I must be deficient at other times, and so
that, while I fancy I do all that could be done, I frequently fall
short. A greater effort is necessary to prevent my mind being even
preoccupied when it is possible that she may want sympathy or
interest, even though it may be in the very merest trifles.
"The dear mother says her great wish is that I should study--drink
deep, as she calls it--in Latin and Greek, for the strengthening of
my mind. It is quite in vain to try to convince her that college
lectures only improve one for the worse, and that I might do myself
and the world more good by devoting myself to English literature
and diction, the one only thing in which it is ever possible that I
might ever distinguish myself. Oh, how I wish I could become an
author! I begin so now to thirst after distinction of some kind,
and of that kind above all others: but I know my mind must receive
quite a new tone first, and that my scattered fragments of sense
would have to be called into an unanimous action to which they are
quite unaccustomed.
"The Talmud says 'that there are four kinds of pupils--the sponge
and the funnel, the strainer and the sieve; the sponge is he who
spongeth up everything; and the funnel is he that taketh in at this
ear and letteth out at that: the strainer is he that letteth go the
wine and retaineth the dross; the sieve is he that letteth go the
bran and retaineth the fine flour.' I think I have begun at least
to _wish_ to belong to the last.
"It has been fearfully cold lately, and it has told sadly upon the
mother and has aged her years in a week. But she is most sweet and
gentle--smiling and trying to find amusement and interest even in
her ailments, and with a loving smile and look for the least thing
done for her."
Soon after this was written we went to London, and the rest of the
winter was spent between the house of Mrs. Stanley, 6 Grosvenor
Crescent, and that of my Uncle Penrhyn at Sheen. At Grosvenor Crescent I
often had the opportunity of seeing people of more or less interest, for
my Aunt Kitty was a capital talker, as well as a very wise and clever
thinker. She had "le bon sens \xE0 jet continu," as Victor Hugo said of
Voltaire. She also understood the art of showing off others to the best
advantage, and in society she never failed to practise it, which always
made her popular; at home, except when Arthur was present, she kept all
the conversation to herself, which was also for the best. Macaulay often
dined with her, and talked to a degree which made those who heard him
sympathise with Sydney Smith, who called him "that talking machine,"
talked of his "flumen sermonis," and declared that, when ill, he dreamt
he was chained to a rock and being talked to death by Macaulay or
Harriet Martineau. This year also I met Mrs. Stowe, whose book "Uncle
Tom's Cabin" made at the time a more profound impression in England than
any other book I ever remember. She was very entertaining in describing
her Scotch visits. Inverary she had liked, but she declared with
vehemence that she would "rather be smashed into triangles than go to
Dunrobin again."
END OF VOL. I.
_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_Edinburgh and London_
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
VOL. II
[Illustration: Maria Hare.
From a portrait by Canaveri]
THE STORY OF
MY LIFE
BY
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
AUTHOR OF "MEMORIALS OF A QUIET LIFE,"
"THE STORY OF TWO NOBLE LIVES,"
ETC. ETC.
VOLUME II
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1896
[_All rights reserved_]
_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_At the Ballantyne Press_
CONTENTS
PAGE
OXFORD LIFE 1
FOREIGN LIFE 32
WORK IN SOUTHERN COUNTIES 130
WORK IN NORTHERN COUNTIES 259
HOME LIFE WITH THE MOTHER 367
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. II
MARIA HARE. _From G. Canevari._ (_Photogravure_) _Frontispiece_
PAGE
DRAWING-ROOM, LIME 15
FROM THE DEAN'S GARDEN, CANTERBURY 24
LA MADONNA DEI. SASSO, LOCARNO 45
IN S. APOLLINARE NUOVO, RAVENNA 48
LORETO 51
MACERATA 53
CIVITA CASTELLANA 55
VALMONTONE 77
ROCCA JANULA, ABOVE SAN GERMANO 79
CAPRI 82
P\xC6STUM 83
VALLOMBROSA 85
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. _From G. Canevari._
(_Photogravure_) _To face_ 96
PONTE ALLA MADDALENA, LUCCA 96
PIETRA SANTA 102
IL VALENTINO, TURIN 107
VILLAR, IN THE VAUDOIS 110
NOTRE DAME, PARIS 117
THE PONT NEUF, PARIS 124
PORT ROYAL 126
CATHERINE STANLEY. _From E. U. Eddis._
(_Photogravure_) _To face_ 132
CANON STANLEY'S HOUSE, OXFORD 136
HODNET CHURCH 159
GIBSIDE 181
OLD BEECHES, HURSTMONCEAUX PARK 227
THE ABELES, LIME 245
MENTONE 248
GRIMALDI 251
DOLCEACQUA 254
PEGLIONE 255
VENTIMIGLIA 257
AT DURHAM 262
ON ALLEN WATER, RIDLEY HALL 273
FORD CASTLE, THE TERRACE 281
VIEW FROM HOLMHURST. (_Full-page woodcut_) _To face_ 286
ENTRANCE TO HOLMHURST: "HUZ AND BUZ" 287
ALDERLEY CHURCH AND RECTORY 293
WARKWORTH, FROM THE COQUET 352
WINTON CASTLE 355
THE CHEVIOTS, FROM FORD 361
CARROZZA 371
ROMAN THEATRE, ARLES 378
H\xD4TEL DU MAUROY, TROYES 379
THE KING OF BOHEMIA'S CROSS, CRECY 380
S. FLAVIANO, MONTEFIASCONE 386
OSTIA 391
THEATRE OF TUSCULUM 392
AMALFI 397
COURMAYEUR 410
ANNE F. M. L. HARE. _From G. Canevari._
(_Photogravure_) _To face_ 416
ARS 421
TOURS 465
AT ANGOUL\xCAME 467
PAU 471
B\xC9THARRAM 481
BIARRITZ 489
THE PAS DE ROLAND 491
S. EMILION CATHEDRAL DOOR 494
AMBOISE 496
VII
OXFORD LIFE
"A few souls brought together as it were by chance, for a short
friendship and mutual dependence in this little ship of earth, so
soon to land her passengers and break up the company for ever."--C.
KINSGLEY.
"To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
--SHAKSPEARE, _Polonius to Laertes_.
"If you would escape vexation, reprove yourself liberally and others
sparingly."--CONFUCIUS.
It was the third year of our Oxford life, and Milligan and I were now
the "senior men" resident in college; we sat at one of the higher tables
in hall, and occupied stalls in chapel. We generally attended lectures
together, and many are the amusing tricks I recall which Milligan used
to play--one especially, on a freshman named Dry--a pious youth in green
spectacles, and with the general aspect of "Verdant Green." An
undergraduate's gown is always adorned with two long strings behind;
these strings of Dry, Milligan adroitly fastened to mine, and, inventing
one excuse after another, for slipping round the room to open the door,
shut a window, &c., he eventually had connected the whole lecture in one
continuous chain; finally, he fastened himself to Dry _on the other
side_; and then, with loud outcries of "Don't, Dry,--don't, Dry," pulled
himself away, the result being that Dry and his chair were overturned,
and that the whole lecture, one after another, came crashing on the top
of him! Milligan would have got into a serious scrape on this occasion,
but that he was equally popular with the tutors and his companions, so
that every possible excuse was made for him, while I laughed in such
convulsions at the absurdity of the scene, that I was eventually
expelled from the lecture, and served as a scapegoat.
I think we were liked in college--Milligan much better than I. Though we
never had the same sort of popularity as boating-men and cricketers
often acquire, we afforded plenty of amusement. When the college gates
were closed at night, I often used to rush down into Quad and act "Hare"
all over the queer passages and dark corners of the college, pursued by
a pack of hounds who were more in unison with the general idea of Harrow
than of Oxford. One night I had been keeping ahead of my pursuers so
long, that, as one was apt to be rather roughly handled when caught
after a very long chase, I thought it was as well to make good my escape
to my own rooms in the New Buildings, and to "sport my oak." Yet, after
some time, beginning to feel my solitude rather flat after so much
excitement, I longed to regain the quadrangle, but knew that the
staircase was well guarded by a troop of my pursuers. By a vigorous
_coup d'\xE9tat_, however, I threw open my "oak," and seizing the handrail
of the bannisters, slipped _on_ it through the midst of them, and
reached the foot of the staircase in safety. Between me and the
quadrangle a long cloistered passage still remained to be traversed, and
here I saw the way blocked up by a figure approaching in the moonlight.
Of course it must be an enemy! There was nothing for it but desperation.
I rushed at him like a bolt from a catapult, and by taking him unawares,
butting him in the stomach, and then flinging myself on his neck,
overturned him into the coal-hole, and escaped into Quad. My pursuers,
seeing _some one_ struggling in the coal-hole, thought it was I, and
flung all their sharp-edged college caps at him, under which he was
speedily buried, but emerged in time to exhibit himself as--John
Conington, Professor of Latin!
Meantime, I had discovered the depth of my iniquity, and fled to the
rooms of Duckworth, a scholar, to whom I recounted my adventure, and
with whom I stayed. Late in the evening a note was brought in for
Duckworth, who said, "It is a note from John Conington," and read--"Dear
Duckworth, having been the victim of a cruel outrage on the part of some
undergraduates of the college, I trust to your friendship for me to
assist me in finding out the perpetrators," &c. Duckworth urged that I
should give myself up--that John Conington was very good-natured--in
fact, that I had better confess the whole truth, &c. So I immediately
sat down and wrote the whole story to Professor Conington, and not till
I had _sent_ it, and it was safe in his hands, did Duckworth confess
that the note he had received was a forgery, that he had contrived to
slip out of the room and write it to himself--and that I had made my
confession unnecessarily. However, he went off with the story and its
latest additions to the Professor, and no more was said.
If Milligan was my constant companion in college, George Sheffield and I
were inseparable out of doors, though I often wondered at his caring so
much to be with me, as he was a capital rider, shot, oarsman--in fact,
everything which I was not. I believe we exactly at this time, and for
some years after, supplied each other's vacancies. It was the most
wholesome, best kind of devotion, and, if we needed any ennobling
influence, we always had it at hand in Mrs. Eliot Warburton, who
sympathised in all we did, and who, except his mother, was the only
woman whom I ever knew George Sheffield have any regard for. It was
about this time that the Bill was before Parliament for destroying the
privileges of Founder's kin. While it was in progress, we discovered
that George was distinctly "Founder's kin" to Thomas Teesdale, the
founder of Pembroke, and half because our ideas were conservative, half
because we delighted in an adventure of any kind, we determined to take
advantage of the privilege. Dr. Jeune, afterwards Bishop of
Peterborough, was Master of Pembroke then, and was perfectly furious at
our audacity, which was generally laughed at at the time, and treated as
the mere whim of two foolish schoolboys; but we would not be daunted,
and went on our own way. Day after day I studied with George the
subjects of his examination, goading him on. Day after day I walked down
with him to the place of examination, doing my best to screw up his
courage to meet the inquisitors. We went against the Heads of Houses
with the enthusiasm of martyrs in a much greater cause, and we were
victorious. George Sheffield was forcibly elected to a Founder's-kin
Scholarship at Pembroke, and was the last so elected. Dr. Jeune was
grievously annoyed, but, with the generosity which was always
characteristic of him, he at once accorded us his friendship, and
remained my most warm and honoured friend till his death about ten years
afterwards. He was remarkable at Oxford for dogmatically repealing the
law which obliged undergraduates to receive the Sacrament on certain
days in the year. "In future," he announced in chapel, "no member of
this college will be compelled to eat and drink his own damnation."
In urging George Sheffield to become a scholar of Pembroke, I was
certainly disinterested; without him University lost half its charms,
and Oxford was never the same to me without "Giorgione"--the George of
Georges. But our last summer together was uncloudedly happy. We used to
engage a little pony-carriage at the Maidenhead, with a pony called
Tommy, which was certainly the most wonderful beast for bearing fatigue,
and as soon as ever the college gates were opened, we were "over the
hills and far away." Sometimes we would arrive in time for breakfast at
Thame, a quaint old town quite on the Oxfordshire boundary, where John
Hampden was at school. Then we would mount the Chiltern Hills with our
pony, and when we reached the top, look down upon the great
Buckinghamshire plains, with their rich woods; and when we saw the
different gentlemen's places scattered about in the distance, we used to
say, "There we will go to luncheon"--"There we will go to dinner," and
the little programmes we made we always carried out; for having each a
good many relations and friends, we seldom found we had _no_ link with
any of the places we came to. Sometimes Albert Rutson would ride by the
side of our carriage, but I do not think that either then or afterwards
we quite liked having anybody with us, we were so perfectly contented
with each other, and had always so much to say to each other. Our most
delightful day of all was that on which we had luncheon at Great Hampden
with Mr. and Lady Vere Cameron and their daughters, who were slightly
known to my mother; and dined at the wonderful old house of Chequers,
filled with relics of the Cromwells, the owner, Lady Frankland Russell,
being a cousin of Lady Sheffield's. Most enchanting was the late return
from these long excursions through the lanes hung with honeysuckle and
clematis, satiated as we were, but not wearied with happiness, and full
of interest and enthusiasm in each other and in our mutual lives, both
past and present. One of the results of our frequent visits to the
scenes of John Hampden's life was a lecture which I was induced to
deliver in the town-hall at Oxford, during the last year of my Oxford
life, upon John Hampden--a lecture which was sadly too short, because at
that time I had no experience to guide me as to how long such things
would take.
It was during this spring that my mother was greatly distressed by the
long-deferred declaration of Mary Stanley that she had become a Roman
Catholic.[109] A burst of family indignation followed, during which I
constituted myself Mary's defender, utterly refused to make any
difference with her, as well as preventing my mother from doing so; and
many were the battles I fought for her.
A little episode in my life at this time was the publication of my first
book--a very small one, "Epitaphs for Country Churchyards." It was
published by John Henry Parker, who was exceedingly good-natured in
undertaking it, for it is needless to say it was not remunerative to
either of us. The ever-kind Landor praised the preface very much, and
delighted my mother by his grandiloquent announcement that it was "quite
worthy of Addison!"
At this time also my distant cousin Henry Liddell was appointed to the
Deanery of Christ Church. He had previously been Headmaster of
Westminster, and during his residence there had become celebrated by his
Lexicon. One day he told the boys in his class that they must write an
English epigram. Some of them said it was impossible. He said it was not
impossible at all; they might each choose their own subject, but an
epigram they must write. One boy wrote--
"Two men wrote a Lexicon,
Liddell and Scott;
One half was clever,
And one half was not.
Give me the answer, boys,
Quick to this riddle,
Which was by Scott
And which was by Liddell?"
Dr. Liddell, when it was shown up, only said, "I think you are rather
severe."
As to education, I did not receive much more at Oxford this year than I
had done before. The college lectures were the merest rubbish; and of
what was learnt to pass the University examinations, nothing has since
been of use to me, except the History for the final Schools. About
fourteen years of life and above \xA34000 I consider to have been wasted on
my education of nothingness. At Oxford, however, I was not idle, and the
History, French, and Italian, which I taught myself, have always been
useful.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Oxford, Feb. 19, 1856._--Your news about dear Mary (Stanley) is
very sad. She will find out too late the mistake she has made:
that, because she cannot agree with everything in the Church of
England, she should think it necessary to join another, where, if
she receives anything, she will be obliged to receive everything. I
am sorry that the person chosen to argue with her was not one whose
views were more consistent with her own than Dr. Vaughan's. It is
seldom acknowledged, but I believe that, by their tolerance, Mr.
Liddell and Mr. Bennett[110] keep as many people from Rome as other
people drive there. I am very sorry for Aunt Kitty, and hope that
no one who loves her will add to her sorrow by estranging
themselves from Mary--above all, that _you_ will not consider her
religion a barrier. When people see how nobly all her life is given
to good, and how she has even made this great step, at sacrifice to
herself, because she believes that good may better be carried out
in another Church, they may pity her delusion, but no person of
right feeling can possibly be angry with her. And, after all, she
has not changed her religion. It is, as your own beloved John
Wesley said, on hearing that his nephew had become a Papist--'He
has changed his opinions and mode of worship, but has not changed
his religion: that is quite another thing.'"
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
"_Lime, March 30, 1856._--My mother and I have had a very happy
Easter together--more than blessed when I look back at the anxiety
of last Easter. Once when her bell rang in the night, I started up
and rushed out into the passage in an agony of alarm, for every
unusual sound at home has terrified me since her illness; but it
was nothing. I have been full of my work, chiefly Aristotle's
Politics, for 'Greats'--too full, I fear, to enter as I ought into
all her little thoughts and plans as usual: but she is ever loving
and gentle, and had interest and sympathy even when I was
preoccupied. She thinks that knowledge may teach humility even in a
spiritual sense. She says, 'In knowledge the feeling is the same
which one has in ascending mountains--that, the higher one gets,
the _farther_ one is from heaven.' To-day, as we were walking
amongst the flowers, she said, 'I suppose every one's impressions
of heaven are according to the feeling they have for earthly
things: I always feel that a garden is my impression--the _garden_
of Paradise.' 'People generally love themselves first, their
friends next, and God last,' she said one day. 'Well, I do not
think that is the case with me,' I replied; 'I really believe I do
put you first and self next.' 'Yes, I really think you do,' she
said."
When I returned to Oxford after Easter, 1856, my pleasant time in
college rooms was over, and I moved to lodgings over Wheeler's bookshop
and facing Dr. Cradock's house, so that I was able to see more than ever
of Mrs. Eliot Warburton. I was almost immediately in the "Schools," for
the classical and divinity part of my final examination, which I got
through very comfortably. While in the Schools at this time, I remember
a man being asked what John the Baptist was beheaded for--and the
answer, "Dancing with Herodias's daughter!" Once through these Schools,
I was free for some time, and charades were our chief amusement, Mrs.
Warburton, the Misses Elliot,[111] Sheffield, and I being the principal
actors. The proclamation of peace after the Crimean War was
celebrated--Oxford fashion--by tremendous riots in the town, and
smashing of windows in all directions.
At Whitsuntide, I had a little tour in Warwickshire with Albert Rutson
as my companion. We enjoyed a stay at Edgehill, at the charming little
inn called "The Sun Rising," which overlooks the battlefield, having the
great sycamore by its side under which Charles I. breakfasted before the
battle, and a number of Cavalier arms inside, with the hangings of the
bed in which Lord Lindsey died. From Edgehill I saw the wonderful old
house of the Comptons at Compton-Whinyates, with its endless secret
staircases and trap-doors, and its rooms of unplaned oak, evidently
arranged with no other purpose than defence or escape. We went on to
Stratford-on-Avon, with Shakspeare's tomb, his house in Henley Street,
and the pretty old thatched cottage where he wooed his wife--Anne
Hathaway. Also we went to visit Mrs. Lucy (sister of Mrs. William
Stanley) at Charlecote, a most entertaining person, with the family
characteristic of fun and goodhumour; and to Combe Abbey, full of relics
of Elizabeth of Bohemia and her daughters, who lived there with Lord
Craven. Many of the portraits were painted by her daughter Louisa. A few
weeks later I went up to the Stanleys in London for the Peace
illuminations--"very neat, but all alike," as I heard a voice in the
crowd say. I saw them from the house of Lady Mildred Hope, who had a
party for them like the one in Scripture, not the rich and great, but
the "poor, maimed, halt, and blind;" as, except Aldersons and Stanleys,
she arranged that there should not be a single person "in society"
there.
JOURNAL.
"_Lime, June 8, 1856._--I had found the dear mother in a sadly
fragile state, so infirm and tottering that it is not safe to leave
her alone for a minute, and she is so well aware of it, that she
does not wish to be left. She cannot now even cross the room alone,
and never thinks of moving anywhere without a stick. Every breath,
even of the summer wind, she feels most intensely. '"The Lord
establish, _strengthen_ you," that must be my verse,' she says."
"_June 15._--I am afraid I cannot help being tired of the mental
solitude at home, as the dear mother, without being ill enough to
create any anxiety, has not been well enough to take any interest,
or have any share in my doings. Sometimes I am almost sick with the
silence, and, as I can never go far enough from her to allow of my
leaving the garden, I know not only every cabbage, but every leaf
upon every cabbage."
[Illustration: DRAWING-ROOM, LIME.]
"_June 29._--We have been for a week with the Stanleys at
Canterbury, and it was very pleasant to be with Arthur, who was his
most charming self."
Early in July, I preceded my mother northwards, made a little sketching
tour in Lincolnshire, where arriving with little luggage, and drawing
hard all day, I excited great commiseration amongst the people as a poor
travelling artist. "Eh, I shouldn't like to have such hard work as
_that_ on. Measter, I zay, I should'na like to be you."
At Lincoln I joined my mother, and we went on together to Yorkshire,
where my friend Rutson lent us a charming old manor-house, Nunnington
Hall near Helmsley, the centre of an interesting country, in which we
visited the principal ruined abbeys of Yorkshire. My mother entirely
recovered here, and was full of enjoyment. On our way to Harrogate, a
Quakeress with whom we travelled persecuted me with "The Enquiring
Parishioner on the Way to Salvation," and then, after looking at my
sketches, hoped that "one so gifted was not being led away by Dr.
Pusey!" At Bolton we stayed several days at the Farfield Farm, and
thence drove through Swale Dale to Richmond. On our way farther north, I
paid my first visit to my cousins at Ravensworth, and very alarming I
thought it; rejoining my mother at Warkworth, a place I have always
delighted in, and where Mrs. Clutterbuck[112] and her daughters were
very kind to us. More charming still were the next few days spent with
my kind old cousin Henry Liddell (brother-in-law of my Aunt Ravensworth)
in Bamborough Castle.
We visited Dryburgh and Jedburgh, and the vulgar commonplace villa, with
small ill-proportioned rooms looking out upon nothing at all, out of
which Sir Walter Scott created the Abbotsford of his imagination.
Charlotte Leycester having joined us, I left my mother at the Bridge of
Allan for a little tour, in the first hour of which I, Italian-fashion,
made a friendship with one with whom till her death I continued to be
most intimate.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Tillycoultry House, August 12, 1856._--My mother will be
surprised that, instead of writing from an inn, I should date from
one of the most beautiful places in the Ochils, and that I should
be staying with people whom, though we met for the first time a few
hours ago, I already seem to know intimately.
"When I left my mother and entered the train at Stirling, two
ladies got in after me; one old, yellow, and withered; the other,
though elderly, still handsome, and with a very sweet interesting
expression. She immediately began to talk. 'Was I a
sportsman?'--'No, only a tourist.'--'Then did I know that on the
old bridge we were passing, the Bishop of Glasgow long ago was hung
in full canonicals?' And with such histories the younger of the two
sisters, in a very sweet Scottish accent, animated the whole way to
Alloa. Having arrived there, she said, 'If we part now, we shall
probably never meet again: there is no time for discussion, but be
assured that my husband, Mr. Dalzell, will be glad to see you.
Change your ticket at once, and come home with me to Tillycoultry.'
And ... I obeyed; and here I am in a great, old, half-desolate
house, by the side of a torrent and a ruined churchyard, under a
rocky part of the Ochils.
"Mr. Dalzell met us in the avenue. He is a rigid maintainer of the
Free Kirk, upon which Mrs. Huggan (the old sister) says he spends
all his money--about \xA318,000 a year--and he is very odd, and passes
three-fourths of the day quite alone, in meditation and prayer. He
has much sweetness of manner in speaking, but seems quite hazy
about things of earth, and entirely rapt in prophecies and thoughts
either of the second coming of Christ or of the trials of the Kirk
part of his Church on earth.
"Mrs. Dalzell is quite different, truly, beautifully, practically
holy. She 'feels,' as I heard her say to her sister to-night, 'all
things are wrapt up in Christ.' The evening was very long, as we
dined at four, but was varied by music and Scotch songs.
"The old Catholic priest who once lived here cursed the place, in
consequence of which it is believed that there are--no little
birds!"
"_Dunfermline, August 13._--This morning I walked with Mr. Dalzell
to Castle Campbell--an old ruined tower, on a precipitous rock in a
lovely situation surrounded by mountains, the lower parts of which
are clothed with birch woods. Inside the castle is a ruined court,
where John Knox administered his first Sacrament. On the way we
passed the little burial-ground of the Taits, surrounded by a high
wall, only open on one side, towards the river Devon."
"_Falkland, August 14._--After drawing in beautiful ruined
Dunfermline, I drove to Kinross, and embarked in the 'Abbot' for
the castle of Loch Leven, which rises on its dark island against a
most delicate distance of low mountains.... There is a charming
oldfashioned inn here, and a beautiful old castle, in one of the
rooms of which the young Duke of Rothesay was starved to death by
his uncle."
"_St. Andrews, August 15._--This is a glorious place, a rocky
promontory washed by the sea on both sides, crowned by Cardinal
Beaton's castle, and backed by a perfect crowd of ecclesiastical
ruins. The cathedral was the finest in Scotland, but destroyed in
one day by a mob instigated by John Knox, who ought to have been
flayed for it. Close by its ruins is a grand old tower, built by
St. Regulus, who 'came with two ships' from Patras, and died in one
of the natural caves in the cliff under the castle. In the castle
itself is Cardinal Beaton's dungeon, where a Lord Airlie was
imprisoned, and whence he was rescued by his sister, who dressed
him up in her clothes."
"_Brechin, August 17._--The ruin of Arbroath (Aberbrothock) is most
interesting. William the Lion is buried before the high altar, and
in the chapter-house is the lid of his coffin in Scottish marble,
with his headless figure, the only existing effigy of a Scottish
king. In the chapter-house a man puts into your hand what looks
like a lump of decayed ebony, and you are told it is the 'blood,
gums, and intestines' of the king. You also see the skull of the
Queen, the thigh-bone of her brother, and other such relics of
royalty. Most beautiful are the cliffs of Arbroath, a scene of
Scott's 'Antiquary.' From a natural terrace you look down into deep
tiny gulfs of blue water in the rich red sandstone rock, with every
variety of tiny islet, dark cave, and perpendicular pillar; and,
far in the distance, is the Inchcape Rock, where the Danish pirate
stole the warning bell, and was afterwards lost himself; which gave
rise to the ballad of 'Sir Patrick Spens.' The Pictish tower here
is most curious, but its character injured by the cathedral being
built too near."
I have an ever-vivid recollection of a most piteous Sunday spent in the
wretched town of Brechin, with nothing whatever to do, as in those days
it would have made my mother too miserable if I had travelled at all on
a Sunday--the wretched folly of Sabbatarianism (against which our
Saviour so especially preached when on earth) being then rife in our
family, to such a degree, that I regard with loathing the recollection
of every seventh day of my life until I was about eight-and-twenty.[113]
After leaving Brechin, I saw the noble castle of Dunottar, and joined my
mother at Braemar, where we stayed at the inn, and Charlotte Leycester
at a tiny lodging in a cottage thatched with peat. I disliked Braemar
extremely, and never could see the beauty of that much-admired valley,
with its featureless hills, half-dry river, and the ugly castellated
house of Balmoral. Dean Alford and his family were at Braemar, and their
being run away with in a carriage, our coming up to them, our servant
John stopping their horses, the wife and daughters being taken into our
carriage, and my walking back with the Dean, first led to my becoming
intimate with him. I remember, during this walk, the description he
gave me of the "Apostles' Club" at Cambridge, of which Henry Hallam was
the nucleus and centre, and of which Tennyson was a member, but from
which he was turned out because he was too lazy to write the necessary
essay. Hallam, who died at twenty-two, had "grasped the whole of
literature before he was nineteen." The Alfords were travelling without
any luggage, and could consequently _walk_ their journeys anywhere--that
is, each lady had only a very small hand-bag, and the Dean had a
walking-stick, which unscrewed and displayed the materials of a
dressing-case, a pocket inkstand, and a candlestick.
On our way southwards I first saw Glamis. I did not care about the
places on the inland Scottish lakes, except Killin, where our cousin
Fanny Tatton and her friend Miss Heygarth joined us, and where we spent
some pleasant week-days and a most abominable Sunday. We afterwards
lingered at Arrochar on Loch Long, whither Aunt Kitty and Arthur Stanley
came to us from Inverary. We returned to Glasgow by the Gareloch, which
allowed me to visit at Paisley the tomb of my royal ancestress, Marjory
Bruce. At Glasgow, though we were most uncomfortable in a noisy and very
expensive hotel, my mother insisted upon spending a wretched day,
because of--Sunday! We afterwards paid pleasant visits at Foxhow and
Toft, whence I went on alone to Peatswood in Shropshire (Mr. Twemlow's),
and paid from thence a most affecting visit to our old home at Stoke,
and to Goldstone Farm, the home of my dear Nurse Lea. Hence I returned
with Archdeacon and Mrs. Moore to Lichfield, and being there when the
grave of St. Chad was opened, was presented with a fragment of his
_body_--a treasure inestimable to Roman Catholics, which I possess
still.
During the remaining weeks of autumn, before I returned to Oxford, we
had many visitors at Lime, including my new friend Mrs. Dalzell, whose
goodness and simplicity perfectly charmed my mother.
[Illustration: FROM THE DEAN'S GARDEN, CANTERBURY.]
We passed the latter part of the winter between the Penrhyns' house at
Sheen, Aunt Kitty's house of 6 Grosvenor Crescent, and Arthur Stanley's
Canonry at Canterbury. With Arthur I dined at the house of Mr. Woodhall,
a Canterbury clergyman, now a Roman Catholic priest, having been
specially invited to meet (at a huge horseshoe table) "the middle
classes"--a very large party of chemists, nurserymen, &c., and their
wives, and very pleasant people they were. I used to think Canterbury
perfectly enchanting, and Arthur was most kind and charming to me. While
there, I remember his examining a school at St. Stephen's, and asking
the meaning of bearing false witness against one's neighbour--"When
nobody does nothing to nobody," answered a child, "and somebody goes
and tells."
In returning to Oxford in 1857, I terribly missed my constant companions
hitherto--Milligan and Sheffield, who had both left, and, except perhaps
Forsyth Grant, I had no real friends left, though many pleasant
acquaintances, amongst whom I had an especial regard for Tom Brassey,
the simple, honest, hardworking son of the great contractor and
millionaire--afterwards my near neighbour in Sussex, whom I have watched
grow rapidly up from nothing to a peerage, with only boundless money and
common-sense as his aides-de-camp. The men I now saw most of were those
who called themselves the ??????--generally reputed "the fast men" of
the college, but a manly high-minded set of fellows. Most of my time was
spent in learning Italian with Count Saffi, who, a member of the
well-known Roman triumvirate, was at that time residing at Oxford with
his wife, _n\xE9e_ Nina Crauford of Portincross.[114] I was great friends
with this remarkable man, of a much-tried and ever-patient countenance,
and afterwards went to visit him at Forli. I may mention Godfrey
Lushington (then of All Souls) as an acquaintance of whom I saw much at
this time, and whom I have always liked and respected exceedingly,
though our paths in life have not brought us often together since. It
was very difficult to distinguish him from his twinbrother Vernon;
indeed, it would have been impossible to know them apart, if Vernon had
not, fortunately for their friends, shot off some of his fingers.
In March (1857) I was proud to receive my aunt, Mrs. Stanley, with all
her children, Mrs. Grote, and several others, at a luncheon in my rooms
in honour of Arthur Stanley's inaugural lecture as Professor of
Ecclesiastical History, in which capacity his lectures, as indeed all
else concerning him, were subjects of the greatest interest to me, my
affection for him being that of a devoted younger brother.
I was enchanted with Mrs. Grote, whom De Tocqueville pronounced "the
cleverest woman of his acquaintance," though her exterior--with a short
waist, brown mantle of stamped velvet, and huge bonnet, full of
fullblown red roses--was certainly not captivating. Sydney Smith always
called her "Grota," and said she was the origin of the word grotesque.
Mrs. Grote was celebrated for having never felt shy. She had a passion
for discordant colours, and had her petticoats always arranged to
display her feet and ankles, of which she was excessively proud. At her
own home of Burnham she would drive out with a man's hat and a
coachman's cloak of many capes. She had an invalid friend in that
neighbourhood, who had been very seriously ill, and was still intensely
weak. When Mrs. Grote proposed coming to take her for a drive, she was
pleased, but was horrified when she saw Mrs. Grote arrive in a very high
dogcart, herself driving it. With great pain and labour she climbed up
beside Mrs. Grote, and they set off. For some time she was too exhausted
to speak, then she said something almost in a whisper. "Good God! don't
speak so loud," said Mrs. Grote, "or you'll frighten the horse: if he
runs away, God only knows when he'll stop."
On the occasion of this visit at Oxford, Mrs. Grote sat with one leg
over the other, both high in the air, and talked for two hours, turning
with equal facility to Saffi on Italian Literature, Max M\xFCller on Epic
Poetry, and Arthur on Ecclesiastical History, and then plunged into a
discourse on the best manure for turnips and the best way of forcing
Cotswold mutton, with an interlude first upon the "harmony of shadow"
in watercolour drawing, and then upon rat-hunts at Jemmy Shawe's--a low
public-house in Westminster. Upon all these subjects she was equally
vigorous, and gave all her decisions with the manner and tone of one
laying down the laws of Athens. She admired Arthur excessively, but was
a capital friend for him, because she was not afraid of laughing--as all
his own family were--at his morbid passion for impossible analogies. In
his second lecture Arthur made a capital allusion to Mr. Grote, while
his eyes were fixed upon the spouse of the historian, and when she heard
it, she thumped with both fists upon her knees, and exclaimed loudly,
"Good God! how good!" I did not often meet Mrs. Grote in after life, but
when I did, was always on very cordial terms with her. She was, to the
last, one of the most original women in England, shrewd, generous, and
excessively vain. I remember hearing that when she published her Life of
her husband, Mr. Murray was obliged to insist upon her suppressing one
sentence, indescribably comic to those who were familiar with her
uncouth aspect. It was--"When George Grote and I were young, we were
equally distinguished by the beauty of our persons and the vivacity of
our conversation!" Her own true vocation she always declared was that of
an opera-dancer.
Arthur Stanley made his home with me during this visit to Oxford, but
one day I dined with him at Oriel, where we had "Herodotus pudding"--a
dish peculiar to that college.
JOURNAL.
"_Lime, Easter Sunday, April 12, 1857._--I have been spending a
happy fortnight at home. The burst of spring has been
beautiful--such a golden carpet of primroses on the bank,
interspersed with tufts of still more golden daffodils, hazels
putting forth their fresh green, and birds singing. My sweet mother
is more than usually patient under the trial of failure of
sight--glad to be read to for hours, but contented to be left
alone, only saying sometimes--'Now, darling, come and talk to me a
little.' On going to church this morning, we found that poor
Margaret Coleman, the carpenter's wife, had, as always on this day,
covered Uncle Julius's grave with flowers. He is wonderfully missed
by the people, though they seldom saw him except in church; for, as
Mrs. Jasper Harmer said to me the other day, 'We didn't often see
him, but then we knew he was always _studying_ us--now wasn't he?'"
A subject of intense interest after my return to Oxford was hearing
Thackeray deliver his lectures on the Georges. That which spoke of the
blindness of George III., with his glorious intonation, was
indescribably pathetic. It was a great delight to have George Sheffield
back and to resume our excursions, one of which was to see the May Cross
of Charlton-on-Ottmoor, on which I published a very feeble story in a
magazine; and another to Abingdon, where we had luncheon with the
Head-master of the Grammar School, who, as soon as it was over,
apologised for leaving us because he had got "to wallop so many boys."
All our visits to Abingdon ended in visits to the extraordinary old
brothers Smith, cobblers, who always sat cross-legged on a counter, and
always lived upon raw meat. We had heard of their possession of an
extraordinary old house which no one had entered, and we used to try to
persuade them to take us there; but when we asked one he said, "I would,
but my brother Tom is so eccentric, it would be as much as my life is
worth--I really couldn't;" and when we asked the other he said, "I
would, but you've no idea what an extraordinary man my brother John is;
he would never consent." However, one day we captured both the old men
together and over-persuaded them (no one ever could resist George), and
we went to the old house, a dismal tumble-down building, with shuttered
windows, outside the town. Inside it was a place of past ages--old
chairs and cupboards of the sixteenth century, old tapestries, and old
china, but all deep, deep in dust and dirt, which was never cleaned
away. It was like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty after the hundred
years' sleep. I have several pieces of china out of that old house
now--"Gris de Flandres ware."
In June I made a little tour, partly of visits, and from Mrs. Vaughan's
house at Leicester had an enchanting expedition to Bradgate, the ruined
home of Lady Jane Grey, in a glen full of oaks and beeches of immense
age.
In my final (History and Law) Schools I had passed with great ease, and
had for some time been residing at Oxford as a Bachelor, having taken my
degree. But as one friend after another departed, the interest of Oxford
had faded. I left it on the 13th of June 1857, and without regret.
VIII
FOREIGN LIFE
"Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,
I drew it in as simply as my breath."--ROSSETTI.
"A good mental condition includes just as much culture as is
necessary to the development of the faculties, but not any burden
of erudition heavy enough to diminish (as erudition so often does)
the promptitude or elasticity of the mind."--HAMERTON, _French and
English_.
"Who thinks the story is all told at twenty? Let them live on and
try."--_Hitherto._
In June 1857 we left Lime for a long residence abroad. My mother's
doctors had declared that being thoroughly imbued with heat in a warm
climate was the only way in which her health could be permanently
benefited. It was a journey so long prepared for by historical studies,
that I imagine few people have gone to Italy with a more thorough
knowledge of what they would find there than we possessed.
We took our two old servants, Lea and John (Gidman), abroad with us, and
Charlotte Leycester accompanied us to Lucerne, where the family was
established for the hot summer months at the Pension Faller, which
stands at the end of a long green terrace behind the cathedral
cloisters, with a glorious view of Mont Pilate and all the range of
mountains on the other side of the lake. George Sheffield came out to
Lucerne to accompany me thence to Austria; but as he was very young at
the time, and his college examinations were not over, we had to gain his
parents' consent to this project by consenting to his having a tutor,
and chose for this purpose our common acquaintance Robinson Duckworth,
afterwards tutor to Prince Leopold. The arrangement did not answer,
though it must be confessed that we treated Duckworth very ill, and were
always playing him tricks. One night at Linz, for instance, we were
greatly annoyed by finding he would have to sleep in our room, which was
a very large one. He went out to listen to the band in the evening, and
we spent the time of his absence in drawing the third bed into the
middle of the room, and arranging it like a kind of catafalque, with
lighted candles at the four corners. We then went to bed ourselves and
pretended to be deep in slumber. When Duckworth came in, though two
people could just manage to move the heavy bed to its pedestal, it was
quite impossible for him alone to move it back again, and he was obliged
to go to bed upon it--and most absurd he looked in the morning. I do not
think he ever quite forgave us for this trick.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Constance, July 24._--The Falls of Schaffhausen, with the dashing
and roaring emerald water, were quite glorious. We came here from
thence by steamer--the entrance to Constance very lovely, and the
distant Alps lighted with the most delicate pink hues of sunset.
The inn is close to the lake-pier and to the old Council-house. We
have walked to the field at Bruhl where Huss was burnt, and since
then Duckworth has been serenading the nuns of a Franciscan convent
under their windows with airs out of 'Don Giovanni.'"
"_July 26._--We were called at four, and my companions went out
fishing, and returned dragging an immense pike which they had
caught. Meanwhile I had seen the Minster and drawn the Kauf-haus,
and was ready to leave with them at nine. We had a delicious
journey across the still lake, Sheffield and I sitting quite down
in the bow of the boat, where we had nothing before us but the soft
blue lake and distant snows, and where we cut through air and water
at the same time."
"_July 29._--Yesterday we embarked at Donauw\xF6rth on the Danube
steamer--crowded, filthy, and ceaselessly vibrating--the river the
colour of pea-soup, with sandbanks on which we stuck every five
minutes. There was no relief to the hideous monotony of the nine
hours' voyage, the blackened swamps only changing into barren
sandhills, on which a few ragged hops were vainly struggling for
existence. But to-day in grand old Ratisbon has made up for
yesterday's sufferings. Sheffield and I had great fun in making an
expedition to the palace of the Prince of Thurm and Taxis. Numbers
of people were out, and we discovered it was to greet the two young
princes, who were to return that day from their travels: so we
represented them, bowed to the right and left all through the
street, and finally being set down at the palace, escaped into the
garden and out the other way: what became of the real princes we
have not heard. After all our audacity and impertinence in pushing
through the Prince's courtyard and intruding upon his garden, we
were rather touched by coming upon a placard inscribed--'The
possessor of this garden, who has nothing nearer his heart than the
promotion of universal pleasure, bids you--_welcome!_'"
"_August 1._--In early morning we were on board the Danube steamer.
Immediately after, three very common-looking men came on board by a
boat, and descended at once to the cabin. Soon a neighbour
whispered that one of them was the Archduke Albrecht, Governor of
Hungary,--and behold, in a few minutes the three strangers emerged,
dressed in gorgeous uniforms and glittering with orders.... All
along the shore were crowds of bowing and curtseying people. At the
hotel at Linz the Archduchess and her two daughters were waiting
for the Archduke on the balcony of the inn; and their presence
brought a splendid band under the window in the evening. This
morning the whole family came on board, amid guns firing and crowds
of people, to whom we thought the Archduchess would have bowed her
head off. The presence of royalties gave us a better steamer, and
before reaching Vienna the scenery of the Danube improved,
especially at the rocks and castle of D\xFCrnstein, where Richard
C\x9Cur-de-Lion was imprisoned."
"_August 4._--Vienna would be delightful if it were not for the
heat, but the grass is all burnt brown, and the trees almost black.
Sheffield and I have driven to the old convent called
Klosterneuburg, and in returning saw at Nussdorf the arrival of the
Archduke Maximilian and his lovely wife,[115] radiant, unaffected,
captivating all who saw her."
"_August 6._--We have been to the country-palace of Laxenburg--a
terrible drive in a sirocco, which made both Sheffield and me as
ill as a sea-voyage. Laxenburg was the palace of Maria Theresa, and
has an English park, only the grounds are full of gothic temples,
&c., and an imitation dungeon fortress, with an imitation prisoner
in it, who lifts his hands beseechingly and rattles his chains as
you approach. Princess Charlotte was to have her first meeting with
all the imperial family in the afternoon, and we waited for the
public appearance of the royalties after dinner. We saw them emerge
from the palace, and then ran down to the lake to see them embark.
The imperial party arrived in carriages at the water's edge, and
were set down under some old plane-trees, where their barges were
ready, with rowers in sailors' dresses. First came the Empress,
looking very lovely and charming, bowing her way to her own boat,
which was distinguished by its blue cloth linings. Then came the
Emperor, _running_ as hard as he could, to be in time to hand her
in: then sweet-looking Princess Charlotte, with a radiantly happy
and not at all a shy expression; the mother of the Empress;
Princess Marguerite; the Queen of Saxony; and the Archduchess
Albrecht. All these entered the imperial boat, which was followed
by another with three old countesses, and then all the court ladies
in other boats. The Emperor and the Archdukes Leopold and Heinrich
rowed themselves. There could hardly be a prettier scene--no crowd,
no staring, and sunset on the water as the little fleet glided in
among the cypress-covered islets. The last I saw of them was one of
the princesses seizing hold of the old countesses' boat, and
rocking it violently to give them a good fright.
"Throughout our travels we have perpetually fallen in with two
solitary ladies. Yesterday one of them said to Duckworth, 'I beg
your pardon, perhaps I ought not to ask, but the melancholy
gentleman (meaning me) must have had a very severe disappointment;
was it recent?--he seems to take on very much. Well, my idea is one
must always be crossed three times before love runs smooth.'
Duckworth asked where they were going. 'Oh, where is it?' said the
younger lady; 'I quite forget the name of the place; something very
long, I know.'--'Oh, Constantinople, my dear, that's the name, and
then we go to a place they call Smyrna, and then to Algeria; for
you see we've been to Rome and Naples, and if you don't mind
travelling, it's just the same thing whether you go to one place or
another.'"
"_Aussee in Styria, August 8._--The last thing Sheffield and I did
together was to go to the Capuchin vault, where all the sovereigns
of the House of Hapsburg lie in gorgeous sarcophagi and coffins:
amongst them Maria Theresa, and the husband by whose grave she came
to pray every Friday in this dark vault. In one corner was the
little Archduchess Sophia, only dead two months, her coffin heaped
still with the white garlands deposited by her father and mother,
who--are out of mourning for her.
"After parting with my companions, I went by train to Modling, and
drove through the Wienerwald to Heiligenkreutz,[116] a gigantic
monastery on the edge of a perfectly desolate moor, but in itself
magnificent, with a quadrangle larger than 'Tom Quad' at Oxford.
Daylight was waning, and I hastened to get the Sacristan to show me
the 'Heilige Partikel,' which is kept in a venerable old leather
case, and set in a huge golden cross covered with jewels. There are
beautiful cloisters, and several chapels of the fourteenth
century, and in one of them a fountain, so large that its sound is
that of a waterfall. From Baden I crossed the Simmering pass to
Bruck-an-der-Mur. Here all the travellers who descended from the
train drew diligence tickets by turns, and as mine was only No. 11,
I came in for the rickety board by the driver! What a road it was,
in which the heavy wheels alternately sank into quagmires of deep
mud, or jolted over the piles of stones which were thrown down to
fill them up. The dank marshy plain was covered with driving white
fog, from which one could only take refuge in the fumes of bad
tobacco around one.
"When at length it was my turn to change, it was into an old car
with leathern curtains, and horses so feeble that the passengers
were obliged to get out and plod through the thick mud at every
incline. I had a German companion, who smoked all night in my face.
"All through the night a succession of these cars was kept up, the
company being turned out every two hours in some filthy village
street, while another wretched old carriage was searched for and
brought out. The taverns at which we stopped were most miserable.
In the only one I entered the old landlady came out in her
nightgown, and seizing my straw hat from my head, placed it on the
top of her own top-knot, exclaiming, 'Sch\xF6ne Strohhut.' Not till
midday did we arrive here, and then found the inn full and the
hills shrouded in mist--the 'Mountains of the Dead,' as the
surroundings of this lonely lake are called, appalling in their
white winding-sheets."
"_Salzburg, August 14._--During my first days in the Salzkammergut,
I might have been inside a kitchen boiler, so thick and white was
the steam. But the landlord at Ischl said it was not likely to
clear, and, wearied of waiting and longing to see _something_, I
went off to the Traunsee, where, to my surprise, the mist suddenly
gave way, the sun appeared, and in a few minutes the heavy veil
rolled back, and the beautiful blue lake and high forest-clad
mountains were disclosed as if by magic. In a few minutes after
shivering, we were all complaining of heat again, and then
luxuriating in the cool breeze as we steamed slowly under the great
purple Traunstein. At Gm\xFCnden[117] we dined at the little inn,
served by ladies in gold helmets, with great silver chains round
their necks. I drove on to the fall in an _Einspanner_. It is a
miniature Schaffhausen, and the colour of the water most beautiful.
On the following day an old Colonel Woodruffe and his wife took me
with them to Hallstadt, where we were rowed by women in crimson
petticoats down the lovely lake to the village. The scenery is
magnificent--jagged mountains melting into beautiful chestnut woods
which reach to the water's edge, and at the end of the lake the
little town, with its picturesque wooden houses and beautiful
gothic chapel. The population consists of nine hundred Roman
Catholics and nine hundred Protestants, who live together most
amicably. No vehicle can enter the town, for the streets are narrow
gullies, with staircases from one house to another.
"My new friends left me at Hallstadt, and early next morning I was
up, and in the forest, to see the Wildbach waterfall, an exquisite
walk, through green glades carpeted with cyclamen and columbines,
with great masses of moss-grown rock tossed about amongst the
trees, and high mountains rising all around. The goats were just
getting up and coming out of their sheds, ringing their little
bells as they skipped about amongst the rocks, and the flowers were
all glistening with dew--no human being moving, except the
goatherds directing their flocks up the mountain paths. I reached
the waterfall, in its wild amphitheatre of rock, before the sun,
and saw the first rolling away of the morning mist, and the clear
mountain torrent foaming forth in its place; while far beyond was
the great snowy Dachstein.
"At nine, a little boat took me to the Gosauswang at the other end
of the lake, and while I was waiting there for an _Einspanner_,
four travellers came up, one of whom--a pleasant-looking
clergyman--introduced himself as Mr. Clements, the Rector of Upton
St. Leonards, and informed me that his companions were his brother,
just returned from Australia, and the two young Akers of Prinknash.
"As soon as they were gone off in their boat, my little carriage
came, and I had a glorious drive, up the banks of the torrent
Gosau, to open mountain pastures, backed by a magnificent range of
bare rocky peaks. There is only a footpath from the 'Schmidt' to
the Vorder See, set in the loveliest of forests, and backed by
noble rugged peaks and snowy glaciers. The colour of the lake was
indescribable, but oftenest like a rainbow seen through a
prism--the purple, green, and clear blue melting into each other,
and the whole transparent as crystal, showing all the bright stones
and pebbles in the immense depths and reflecting all the snow-peaks
beyond. When I returned to the inn, the Clements' party had
arrived, and finding they were going the same way, I engaged to
travel with them to Innsbruck.
"On Friday we all went again to the Vorder See, and then, taking a
woodcutter as guide, scrambled on for two hours through woods and
rocks to the Hinter See,[118] which is like a turquoise set in the
mountains.
"We returned together to Ischl, and left in a carriage next day. At
the end of St. Wolfgang Lake we engaged a boat and crossed to the
curious old gothic church which contains the shrine of St.
Wolfgang, and his rocky bed projecting through the pavement of a
chapel, upon which the peasants throw kreutzers through a grating.
We did not arrive at Salzburg till dark. What a fine old town it
is!--but what most interested me was seeing here an old lady in
black walking to church with a lady behind her. It was the Kaiserin
Caroline, widow of the Emperor Francis I., grand-daughter-in-law of
Maria Theresa, niece of Marie Antoinette, sister-in-law of Marie
Louise!"
"_Reichenhall, August 26._--From Salzburg we visited the mines of
Hallein, into which we descended in full miner's costume--thick
white trousers, smock-frock, cap, and a leathern apron _behind_.
The guide gave us each a light, and marshalled us in single file
through the narrow dark passages. On the summit of the first
descent, we were all made to sit down upon our leathern aprons, to
put our legs round each others' heads, hold a rope, and then slide
off like a train into the dark abyss--alarming at first, and then
very amusing. After three slides, we reached a black lake like the
Styx, with lamps glittering like stars on faraway rocks. Here a
boat moved by invisible hands came soundlessly gliding towards us:
we stepped in, and in death-like silence, without oars or rowers,
floated across the ghastly waters. On the opposite bank a wooden
horse was waiting, on which we were made to sit, each behind the
other, and, when we were mounted, rushed away with the speed of a
whirlwind through the dark unearthly passages. At last, what looked
like a twinkling star appeared in the distance, and it gradually
increased till we emerged in open daylight. It is a most
extraordinary expedition, but as the salt is all black, there is no
beauty. We went on to Berchtesgaden and the K\xF6nigsee and Obersee,
but the wet weather only cleared enough to show us the beauties of
the myrtle-green water."
It was a most wearisome journey then--two days of twelve hours in a
carriage--to Innsbruck, where I parted with my companions. Hence a
terrible long diligence journey of seventeen hours brought me to Botzen.
The driver beguiled the way by telling me the history of his life--how
when quite young he had given up smoking, and constantly put by all the
money he should have spent on tobacco, in the hope of using it in
revisiting Naples and the Island of Ischia, where he had been in boyhood
as a soldier; but that two years before these designs had been cut
short, because one day, when he returned with his diligence from Verona,
he found his house burnt to the ground, and nothing saved except six
silver spoons which his wife had carried off in her apron.
From Botzen I went to Meran and Trafoi, whence I walked across the
Stelvio to the Baths of Bormio; but this part of the tour was not
enjoyable, as my sufferings were always so great from bad weather, and
hunger owing to want of money. Still less pleasant were the immense
journeys afterwards by Finstermuntz and the Great Arlberg, along
horrible roads and in wretched diligences, which, in these days of
luxurious railway travelling, we should think perfectly unendurable. At
Wesen, on the Lake of Wallenstadt, I had the happiest of meetings with
my dear mother and her old servants, and vividly does the impression
come back to me of the luxurious sense of rest in the first evening, and
of freedom from discomfort, privation, and want.
[Illustration: LA MADONNA DEL SASSO, LOCARNO.[119]]
We crossed the Bernardino to Locarno, where we were joined by mother's
widowed niece, Mrs. Charles Stanley, and by her friend Miss Cole. There
were many circumstances which made me see the whole of North Italy
through jaundiced eyes at this time, so that Milan, Venice, and even
beautiful Verona, became more associated in my mind with mental and
bodily fatigue than with any pleasure. One of the happiest
recollections which comes back to me is an excursion alone with my sweet
mother to the old deserted convent of Chiaravalle near Milan, and the
grave of the enthusiast Wilhelmina. At Venice we had much pleasure in
sight-seeing with Miss Louisa Cole, and her cousins Mr. and Miss Warre,
the latter of whom afterwards married Froude the historian.
At Padua we engaged two _vetturino_ carriages, in one of which our
companions travelled, and in the other my mother and I with our two old
servants. The first day's journey, through the rich plain of the vintage
in October, was very pleasant, meeting the immense wains and waggons
laden with grapes, and the merry peasants, who delighted to give us
large ripe bunches as we passed. But we had a perilous passage of the
swollen Po, on which our carriage was embarked in a large boat, towed
with ropes by numbers of men in smaller boats. In our long journey in
our roomy excellent carriage--our home for about three weeks--we were
provided with a perfect library of books, for my mother was quite of the
opinion of Montaigne when he said, "Je ne voyage sans livres, n'y en
paix, n'y en guerre. C'est la meilleure munition j'aye trouv\xE9 \xE0 cet
humain voyage." So we studied the whole of Arnold, Gibbon, Ranke, and
Milman at this time. The slower the mode of travel, the greater its
variety. In the middle of the day the _vetturini_ rested often in some
picturesque town, where there were churches, convents, and pictures to
sketch or visit; sometimes in quiet country inns, near which we wandered
in country lanes, and collected the wild-flowers of the district. How
vividly the recollections of these quiet weeks come back to me--of the
charm of our studies and the weekly examination upon them: of the novel
which my mother and I used afterwards to tell each other alternately, in
which the good characters lived at a place called "Holmhurst," but
somehow contrived to have always some link with the scenes through which
we were travelling: of our early luncheon of bread and preserved
apricots: of our arrival in the evenings at rooms which had always a
wholesome barn-like smell, from the fresh straw under the carpets: of
the children, who scampered along by the sides of the carriage calling
out "T\xE0-t\xE0"--as short for Carit\xE0: of my mother screaming at Ferrara as
she ran away from a white spectral figure, with eyes gleaming out of
holes in a peaked hood and rattling a money-box--a figure to which we
became well accustomed afterwards as a _Frate della Misericordia_: of
the great castle of Ferrara, whose picturesque outlines seemed so
strangely familiar till I recollected where I had seen them--at the
bottom of willow-patterned washing-basins.
[Illustration: IN S. APOLLINARE NUOVO, RAVENNA.[120]]
Ravenna was at this time reached by a wearisome journey through marshy
flats overgrown by a dark-berried plant much used in the making of dye:
we afterwards imported it to Hurstmonceaux. The Stanleys, whom we seldom
contradicted, had greatly opposed our going thither, so that our journey
to Ravenna had the charm of eating forbidden fruit; but I was able to
silence their angry reproaches afterwards for having "taken my mother
into so unhealthy a climate" by finding in Gibbon the remark that
Ravenna, though situated in the midst of f\x9Ctid marshes, possesses one
of the most salubrious climates in Italy! My mother was even more
enchanted with the wonderful old city than myself, especially with the
peerage of martyrs in the long palm-bearing procession in the mosaics of
S. Apollinare Nuovo, and with the exquisite and ever-varied loveliness
of the Pineta.
Deeply interesting was the historical journey afterwards along the
shores of the Adriatic--the sunset on the Metaurus--the proud ruins of
Roman Rimini, where also we went to see the soft lustrous picture known
as "the winking Virgin," and accidentally met the father of the painter
in the church--the Rubicon and Pesaro; Sinigaglia and Fano; and the
exquisitely beautiful approach to Ancona, with the town climbing up the
steep headland crowned by the cathedral, and the blue sea covered with
shipping. In many ways Ancona has always seemed to me more beautiful
than Naples. I have seen much of all these towns since, but there is
nothing now like the halcyon days of _vetturino_ travelling, with the
abundant time for seeing and digesting everything, and the quiet regular
progression, without fuss or fatigue, or anything to mar mental
impressions.
From Ancona we went to Loreto, a lovely drive then, through ranges of
hills, sweeping one behind another like files of an advancing army, and
crested sometimes by the picturesque roofs, domes, and towers of an old
town; sometimes clothed to their summits with olives and pines,
vineyards and mulberry-gardens. Here and there a decayed villa stood by
the roadside in its overgrown garden, huge aloes and tall cypresses
rising from its tangled grass and periwinkles. Very lovely was the
ascent to Osimo, thronged with the students of the old university town
in their black cloaks, amongst whom was the Cardinal-bishop, going for a
walk in crimson stockings, sash, and gloves, with two footmen in cocked
hats strutting behind him.
[Illustration: LORETO.[121]]
Nothing can be grander than the situation of Loreto, and the views from
it over the surrounding country--the walls overlooking a wide sea-view
as well. A building like a huge castle, with massive semicircular
towers, dominates the town, and is the fortress which guards the holy of
holies--the Santa Casa. We were called at five to go to the church. It
was still pitch dark, but many pilgrims had already arrived, and waited
with us in a corridor till the doors were opened. The scene inside was
most singular--the huge expanse quite dark, except where a blaze of
light under the dome illuminated the marble casing of the Santa Casa, or
where a solitary lamp permitted a picture or an image to loom out of
the chaos. The great mass of pilgrims knelt together before the shrine,
but here and there a desolate figure, with arms outstretched in
agonising prayer, threw a long weird shadow down the pavement of the
nave, while others were crawling on hands and knees round the side walls
of the house, occasionally licking up the sacred dust with their
tongues, which left a bloody trail upon the floor. At either door of the
House, the lamplight flashed upon the drawn sword of a soldier, keeping
guard to prevent too many people pressing in together, as they
ceaselessly passed in single file upon their knees, to gaze for a few
seconds upon the rugged walls of unplastered brick, blackened with soot,
which they believed to be the veritable walls of the cottage at
Nazareth. Here, in strange contrast, the negress statue, attributed to
St. Luke, gleams in a mass of diamonds. At the west end of the House was
the window by which the angel entered! The collection of jewels and
robes in the sacristy was enormous, though the priests lamented bitterly
to us over the ravages of the Revolution, and that now the Virgin had
only wardrobe sufficient to allow of her changing her dress _once_
instead of three times every day of the year.
[Illustration: MACERATA.[122]]
We travelled afterwards through a country seldom visited now--by
hill-set Macerata and Recanati, and picturesque Tolentino with its
relics of S. Nicolas, into the central Apennines, where Sabbatarianism
doomed us to spend a most miserable Sunday at the unspeakably wretched
inn of La Muccia. From Foligno we made an excursion to Assisi, then
filled with troops of stately Franciscan monks--all "_possidenti_;" and
by the Clitumnus temple, Spoleto, and Narni to Terni. At Civita
Castellana the famous robber chief Gesparoni was imprisoned at this
time, this year being the thirty-third of his imprisonment. Miss Cole
and I obtained an order to visit him and his band, tall gaunt forms in a
large room in the castle. The chieftain had a long white beard: we
bought a little knitted cap of his workmanship. There was a ghastly
sensation in being alone for a few minutes with this gang of men, who
had all been murderers, and mostly murderers of many.
Breathlessly interesting was the first approach to Rome--the
characteristic scenery of the Campagna, with its tufa quarries, and its
crumbling towers and tombs rising amidst the withered thistles and
asphodels; its strange herds of buffaloes; then the faint grey dome
rising over the low hills, and the unspoken knowledge about it, which
was almost too much for words; lastly, the miserable suburb and the
great Piazza del Popolo.
I never shall forget the ecstasy of awaking the next morning in the
H\xF4tel d'Angleterre, and feeling that the longed-for desire of many years
was realised. We engaged apartments in the upper floor of the Palazzo
Lovati in the Piazza del Popolo--cold dreary rooms enough, but from my
mother's bedroom there was a lovely view to St. Peter's across the
meadows of S. Angelo.
[Illustration: CIVITA CASTELLANA.[123]]
Naturally one of my first visits was to Mrs. Hare and my sister, whom I
found established in the first floor of the Palazzo Parisani, which
occupies two sides of the little Piazza S. Claudio, a dismal little
square, but which my sister regarded with idolatry, asserting that there
was no house half so delightful as the Palazzo Parisani, no view which
could be compared in interest to that of the Piazza S. Claudio. Making
acquaintance with my sister at this time was to me like the perpetual
reading of an engrossing romance, for nobody ever was more amusing, no
one ever had more power of throwing an interest into the commonest
things of life. She did not colour her descriptions, but she saw life
through a prism, and imparted its rays to others. Her manner, her dress,
all her surroundings were poetical. If one went to dine with her, the
dinner was much the same as we had at home, but some picturesquely hung
grapes, or a stalk of _finocchio_, or some half-opened pomegranates,
gave the table an _air_ which made it all seem quite different.
"Italima" liked my coming and going, and was very angry if I did not
come, though she never professed any maternal affection for me. I often
found myself in difficulties between my two mothers. My adopted mother
would sometimes take an alarm that I was going too often to Italima, and
would demand my presence just on the particular occasion when "Italima"
had counted upon it; in which case I always gave way to her. And indeed,
as a rule, I always spent _all_ my time with my mother, except about two
evenings in the week, when I went to Italima and the Palazzo Parisani.
On rare occasions, also, I went out "into the world" with Italima and
my sister, to balls at the Palazzo Borghese, and at the Palazzo di
Spagna, where old Queen Christina of Spain was then living, an
interesting historic figure to me as the sister of the Duchesse de Berri
and great-niece of Marie Antoinette. She was very hospitable, and her
parties, approached through an avenue of silver candelabra representing
palm-trees--spoils from the Spanish convents--were exceedingly
magnificent. At her suppers on Fridays, one side of the room was laid
for "_maigre_," the other for "_gras_," and when the doors were opened,
there was a general scrimmage to reach the delicious viands on the
"_maigre_" table. After each of her receptions, it was the rule that
five cards should be left by each guest--for herself, for her husband
the Duc de Rianzares (who had been a common soldier), for her master of
the household, for her equerry, and for her lady-in-waiting. The
principal balls were those given by Princess Borghese, at which many
cardinals were present, but would sit down to whist in a room apart from
the dancers. A great feature of the Borghese parties at this time was
the Princess-mother, who always sat in a conspicuous place in the
anteroom, and to whom all the guests were expected to pay their court.
By birth she was Ad\xE8le de la Rochefoucauld, and she was the mother of
three princes--Marc-Antonio Borghese, Aldobrandini, and Salviati. She
was "sage, souple, et avide des biens," as Voltaire says of Mazarin, and
it was she who--probably most unjustly--had then the reputation of
having poisoned the beautiful Princess Guendolina, first wife of
Marc-Antonio, with all her sons, in order that her own son might marry
her niece, Th\xE9r\xE8se[124] de la Rochefoucauld, which he afterwards did. A
conspicuous figure was the beautiful young Princess del Drago, one of
the daughters of Queen Christina's second marriage, whose husband had a
most fiendish face. I often saw the blind Duke of Sermoneta, celebrated
for his knowledge of Dante, and his witty canonical brother, Don Filippo
Cai\xEBtani, generally known as "Don Pippo." The then Duchess of Sermoneta
was "Margherita," _n\xE9e_ Miss Knight, a most ghastly and solemn woman to
outsiders, but much beloved by those who knew her intimately.
The Prince of Piombino, who lived in exile or seclusion after the change
of government in Rome, was then flourishing in his immense palace in the
Corso, and his children, then young married people, were the life of
all the parties. Of these, Rudolfo, Duke of Sora, had married the
saint-like Agnese, only surviving child of Donna Guendolina Borghese,
who was supposed only by absence to have escaped the fate of her mother
and brothers. Of his sisters, Donna Carolina was the clever, brilliant
Princess Pallavicini, and Donna Giulia had married the Duke of Fiano,
who lived in the neighbouring palace, and by marrying her had broken the
heart of Mademoiselle Judith Falconnet.[125]
One of the Romans whom I saw most frequently was the Princess Santa
Croce, living in the old historical palace which has the reputation of
being the only haunted house in Rome, where two statues of cardinals
come down from their pedestals and rattle their marble trains up and
down the long galleries. The Princess was one of the daughters of Mr.
Scully in Ireland. He had three, of whom two were beautiful, clever, and
brilliant, but the third was uninteresting. The two elder Miss Scullys
went out into the world, and were greatly admired and much made of; but
the youngest stayed at home like Cinderella, and was never known at all
except as "the Miss Scullys' younger sister." Many people wished to
marry the elder Miss Scullys; but they said "No, for we have a
presentiment that we are to marry dukes, and therefore we will wait."
But no dukes came forward, and at length old Mr. Scully died, leaving
his daughters three great fortunes; and being Roman Catholics, without
any particular call or claim, they determined to visit Rome before they
settled in life. They took many introductions with them, and on their
arrival the good looks, cleverness, and wealth of the elder sisters
created quite a sensation; but people asked them, Roman-fashion, "what
was their vocation," for in Rome all Catholic ladies are expected to
have decided this. Then they said they had never thought of it, and they
went to spend a week in the convent of the Trinit\xE0 de' Monti to consider
it. When the day came on which the three Miss Scullys were to declare
their vocation, all Rome was interested, and the "great world" thronged
the parlours of the Trinit\xE0 de' Monti to hear it; but the expectants
were petrified when the two elder Miss Scullys came out, for they had
found their vocation, and it was a convent! No doubt whatever was felt
about the youngest--"of course she would follow her sisters." But no;
she had found her vocation, and it was marriage! and the youngest Miss
Scully, additionally enriched by half the fortunes of her two elder
sisters, went out into the world, and in three weeks she had accepted
the great Roman Prince of Santa Croce, who claims descent from Valerius
Publicola. I often used to watch with interest the Princess Santa Croce,
who went to confess and pray at the convent of the Villa Lante (which
Roman princesses are wont to frequent), for the two portresses who
opened the doors were her two elder sisters, the proud Miss Scullys: it
was the story of Cinderella in real life. I was at Rome years afterwards
(1864) when the Princess Santa Croce died. All the princesses lie in
state after death, but by old custom, the higher their rank, the lower
they must lie, and the Princess Santa Croce was of such excessively high
rank, that she lay upon the bare boards.
I think that it was towards the middle of our stay in Rome that I
received a summons to a private audience of Pius IX. Italima and my
sister went with me. We went in evening dress to the Vatican in the
middle of the day, and were shown into a gallery where a number of
Monsignori were standing. Amongst them was Monsignore Talbot, who asked
me if I did not feel very much agitated. I said "No," and he answered,
"But every one must be agitated when they are about to stand in the
presence of the Vicar of Christ"--and at that moment he drew aside a
porti\xE8re, and we found ourselves at one end of a long hall, at the other
end of which a sturdy figure with a beneficent face, in what looked like
a white dressing-gown, was standing leaning his hand upon a table: it
was Pius IX. We had been told beforehand that, as we had asked for a
_private_ audience, we must perform all the genuflections, three at the
doorway, three in the middle of the room, and three at the feet of the
Pope, and the same in returning; and Italima had declared that the
thought of this made her so nervous that we must do all the talking. But
Italima had often been to the Pope before, and she was so active and
agile, that by the time my sister and I got up from the third
genuflection in the doorway, she was already curvetting in the centre of
the hall, and we heard the beautiful voice of the Pope, like a silver
bell, say, "E come sta la figlia mia--e come sta la cara figlia mia,"
and by the time we were in the middle of the apartment she was already
at the feet of the Pope. Eventually my sister and I arrived, and flung
ourselves down, one on each side of Italima, at the feet of the Pope,
who gave us his ring to kiss, and his foot, or rather a great raised
gold cross upon his white slipper. "E questa la figlia?" he said,
pointing to my sister. "Si, Sua Santit\xE0," said Italima. "Ed e questo il
figlio?" he said, turning to me. "Si, Sua Santit\xE0," said Italima. Then
my sister, who thought it was a golden opportunity which she would never
have again, and which was not to be lost, broke through all the rules of
etiquette, and called out from the other side of the da\xEFs, clasping her
hands, "Ma, Sua Santit\xE0, il mio fratello e stato Protestant."
Then the Pope turned to me and spoke of the great privilege and blessing
of being a Catholic, but said that from what he had heard of me he felt
that I did not deserve that privilege, and that therefore he could not
wish that I should enjoy its blessings. He said much more, and then
that, before I left, I should make him a "piccolo piccolino promessino"
(the least little bit of a promise in the world), and that I should
remember all my life that I had made it at the feet of Pius IX. I said
that I should wish to do whatever Sua Santit\xE0 desired, but that before I
engaged to make a promise I should like to know what the promise was to
be about. "Oh," said the Pope, smiling, "it is nothing so very
difficult; it is only something which a priest in your own Church might
ask: it is that you will say the Lord's Prayer every morning and
evening." "Yes," I replied, "I shall be delighted to make Sua Santit\xE0
the promise; but perhaps Sua Santit\xE0 is not aware that the practice is
not unusual in the Church of England." Then, almost severely for one so
gentle, the Pope said, "You seem to think the promise a light one; I
think it a very serious one; in fact, I think it so serious, that I will
only ask you to promise to use one petition--'Fiat voluntas tua, O Deus,
in terris ut in c\x9Clo,' and remember that you have promised that at
the feet of Pius IX." Then he blended his farewell very touchingly into
a beautiful prayer and blessing; he blessed the things--rosaries,
&c.--which my sister had brought with her; he again gave us his ring and
the cross on his foot to kiss, and while he rang the little bell at his
side, we found our way out backwards--quite a geometrical problem with
nine genuflections to be made on the way.
I was often in the convent of the Trinit\xE0 when I was at Rome in 1857,
for visitors are allowed there at certain hours, and a great friend of
my sister's, Ad\xE8le, Madame Davidoff, was then in the convent, having
been sent to Rome on an especial mission to the Pope on matters
connected with the French convents of the Sacr\xE9 C\x9Cur. Madame Davidoff
("Madame" only "in religion," as "a spouse of Christ") was daughter of
the Mar\xE9chale Sebastiani, the stepmother of the murdered Duchesse de
Praslin, and was grand-daughter of the Duchesse de Grammont, who founded
the Sacr\xE9 C\x9Cur. Her own life had been very romantic. One winter there
was a very handsome young Count Schouvaloff in Rome, whom my sister knew
very well. She had been one day in the convent, and Madame Davidoff had
accompanied her to the outer door, and was standing engrossed with last
words, leaning against the green baize door leading into the church.
Suddenly a man appeared, coming through the inner door of the convent,
evidently from visiting the Abbess. "Mais c'est le Comte Schouvaloff!"
said Madame Davidoff to my sister, and pushing the baize door behind
her, suddenly disappeared into the church, while Schouvaloff, seeing her
suddenly vanish, rushed forward to my sister exclaiming, "Oh, c'est
elle--c'est elle! Oh, mon Ad\xE8le, mon Ad\xE8le!" He had been on the eve of
marriage with her, when she had thought herself suddenly seized by a
conventual vocation, had taken the veil, and he had never seen her
since. The next day Count Schouvaloff left Rome. He went into retreat
for some time at the Certosa of Pavia, where total silence is the rule
of daily life. He took orders, and in a few years, having a wonderful
gift for preaching, was sent on a mission to Paris; but the shock of
returning to the scenes of his old life was too much for him, and in a
few days after reaching Paris he died.
When I knew Madame Davidoff, she still possessed an extraordinary charm
of conversation and manner, and the most exuberant eloquence of any
person I have ever seen. Her one object was conversion to the Roman
Catholic faith, and into that she threw all her energies, all her charm
and wit, and even her affections. Her memory was as prodigious as that
of Macaulay, and she knew all the controversial portions of the great
Catholic writers by heart. What was more extraordinary still was, that
having many "cases" going on at the same time (for people used to go to
visit her and sit round her anteroom like patients at a fashionable
dentist's), she never confounded one with another in her mind, never
lost time, and always went on exactly where she left off. But her love
of ruling made Madame Davidoff less popular within the walls of her
convent than with the outside world; and after her return to Paris, the
means which she often took to attain the ends to which she devoted her
life brought such trouble to the convent of the Sacr\xE9 C\x9Cur, that the
nuns refused to keep her amongst them, and she afterwards lived in the
world, giving frequent anxiety to her sister, the Marquise de Gabriac,
and to Lord Tankerville and Lady Malmesbury, her cousins. During my
first visit at Rome, I saw Madame Davidoff often, and, after a courteous
expression of regret that I was sure to be eternally damned, she would
do her best to convert me. I believe my dear mother underwent great
qualms on my visits to her. But her religious unscrupulousness soon
alienated me, and I had a final rupture with her upon her urging me to
become a Roman Catholic secretly, and to conceal it from my adopted
mother as long as she lived. Other Roman Catholics who made a vehement
effort for my perversion were Monsignor Talbot and Monsignor Howard, the
latter of whom I had known as a very handsome dashing young guardsman a
few years before, but who afterwards became a Cardinal. There was a
most ridiculous scene when they came to the Palazzo Lovati, where
Monsignor Howard made so violent a harangue against Protestantism that
Monsignor Talbot was obliged to apologise for him. Roman Catholics with
whom we were intimate from circumstances were the ex-Jew Mr. Goldsmid
and his wife. Mr. Goldsmid had been converted by the P\xE8re Ratisbon,
whose own conversion was attributed partially to the image of the Virgin
in the Church of Andrea delle Fratte, and partly to the prayers of M. de
la Ferronays, which are believed to have endowed the image with speech.
A really excellent Roman Catholic priest of whom I saw much was
Monsignor Pellerin, Bishop in Cochin-China. His conversation was liberal
and beautiful, and he had the simplicity of a medi\xE6val saint. He was at
that time about to return to China, with a great probability of
martyrdom. On his last day in Rome he celebrated mass in the Catacombs
in the Chapel of Santa Cecilia, a most touching sight even to those who
were not of his faith. On taking leave, he gave me a small silver
crucifix, which I treasured for a long time, then it disappeared: I
always thought that Lea made away with it, in the fear that it might
make me a Roman Catholic. I heard of the close of Monsignor Pellerin's
self-sacrificing life in China several years later.
Amongst the English we had many pleasant friends, especially the George
Cavendishes and the Greene Wilkinsons, who had a great fortune left to
them for opening a pew-door to an old gentleman: it used to be said that
they ought to take "Pro Pudor" as their motto.
But no notice of our familiar society at Rome can be complete which does
not speak of "Auntie"--Miss Paul--the sister of "Italima," who lived her
own life apart in two rooms in a corner of the Parisani Palace, where
she saw and observed everything, and was very ready to make her quaint
original remarks upon what she had observed when she joined the rest of
the family, which was only in the evenings. I never saw "Auntie"
otherwise than desperately busy, sometimes with immense rolls of
embroidery, sometimes with charcoal-drawing, often with extraordinary
and most incomprehensible schemes for recovering the very large fortune
she had once possessed, and which she had lost in "the Paul Bankruptcy."
Italima was not at all kind to her, but this did not affect her in the
least: she went her own way, and when she was most soundly abused, it
only seemed to amuse her. My sister she absolutely adored, and then and
afterwards used to think it perfect happiness to sit and watch her for
hours, not being able to hear a word she said on account of her
deafness. I was exceedingly fond of "Auntie," and used to delight to
escape from the ungenial atmosphere of Italima's great drawing-room to
the busy little den in the corner of the palace, where I was always a
welcome visitor, and always found something amusing going on.
When we arrived in Rome, my sister Esmeralda was supposed to be
partially engaged to Don Emilio Rignano, eldest son of the Duke Massimo,
whom she had known well from childhood. Emilio at one time passed every
evening at the Palazzo Parisani; but during this winter Donna Teresa
Doria appeared in the world, and the old Duchess Massimo, who hated
Anglo-Roman alliances, by a clever scheme soon compelled her son to
consent to an engagement with her. Having learnt this, Esmeralda refused
ever to receive Emilio again. On the day before his marriage, however,
he found her in the Church of S. Claudio, and tried to make her marry
him at once by the easy Roman form, "Ecco il mio marito--Ecco la mia
moglie," but she would not listen to him. Then, when she drove to the
Villa Borghese, he pursued the carriage, regardless of the people in the
street. His hat fell off, but he would not stop: he seemed to have lost
his senses.
At a marriage in high life in Rome, the guests are often asked, not to
the actual ceremony, but to St. Peter's afterwards, to see the bridal
pair kiss the foot of the famous statue. When the Duke and Duchess
Rignano entered St. Peter's, they were piteous to see: they would not
look at each other. Old Lady Rolle was there, standing by the statue,
and when they came near she said audibly, "What a wicked scene! what a
sinful marriage!" And Emilio heard her, gave her one look of agony, and
flung himself down on the pavement in front of the statue.
As Duchess Rignano, Teresa Doria was wretched. We saw her afterwards at
Genoa, in the old Doria Palace, with her mother, whose death was
hastened by the sight of her daughter's woe and her own disappointed
ambition. Before long the Duchess Teresa was separated from her husband.
Her tragical fate was a good thing for her sisters: the second sister,
Guendolina, made a happy marriage with the Conte di Somaglia in the
Marchi, and the youngest, Olimpia, was allowed to remain long unmarried.
This last daughter of the house of Doria was described by her mother as
so very small when she was born, that they swathed her in flannel and
laid her in the sun, in the hope that it would make her grow like a
plant. I was one day at the house of Mrs. de Selby, cousin of Princess
Doria, when her servant threw open the door and announced in a
stentorian voice, _allo Romano_--"La sua Eccellenza l'illustrissima
Principessina la Donna Olimpia di Doria,"--and there marched in a
stately little maiden of eight years old!
Cardinal Antonelli obtained an order for my sister and me to visit the
Madre Makrina, the sole survivor of the Polish nuns who were martyred
for their faith in the terrible persecution at Minsk. The nuns were
starved, flogged to death, buried alive, subjected to the most horrible
cruelties. Three escaped and reached Vienna, where two of them
disappeared and never were heard of again. After a series of
unparalleled adventures and escapes, the Abbess, the Madre Makrina,
arrived in Rome. Pope Gregory XVI. received her kindly, but made her
tell her whole story once for all in the presence of sixty witnesses,
who all wrote it down at once to ensure accuracy, and then he shut her
up, for fear she should be turned into a saint and object of pilgrimage.
It was not generally known what had become of the Madre Makrina--it was
a mystery in Rome--but we were able to trace her to the tiny convent of
the Monacche Polacche, which has since been destroyed by the Sardinian
Government, but which then stood near the Arch of Gallienus, nearly
opposite the Church of S. Eusebio. Italima wished to go with us, but we
could only obtain an order for two. When we rang the convent bell and
had shown our permit through the grille, a portress from within drew a
bolt which admitted us to a little room--den rather--barred with iron,
and with an iron cage at one side, behind which the portress, a very fat
old woman, reappearing, asked us many questions about ourselves, the
Pope, the state of Rome generally. At last we got tired and said, "But
shall we not soon see the Madre Makrina?"--"_Io_ sono la Madre Makrina,"
said the old woman, laughing. Then we said, "Oh, do tell us the story of
Minsk."--"No," she replied, "I promised at the feet of Pope Gregory XVI.
that I would never tell that story again: the story is written down,
you can read it, but I cannot break my promise."--"How dreadfully you
must have suffered at Minsk," we said. "Yes," she answered, and, going
backwards, she pulled up her petticoats and showed us her legs, which
were enormously fat, yet, a short distance above the ankles, were quite
eaten away, so that you could see the bones. "This," she said, "was
caused by the chains I wore at Minsk." The Madre Makrina, when we took
leave, said, "I am filled with wonder as to how you got admittance. I
have never seen any one before since I came here, and I do not suppose I
shall ever see any one again, so I will give you a little memorial of
your visit!" and she gave me a tiny crucifix and medal off her chain. I
have it still.
When the Emperor Nicholas came to Rome, he went to pay his respects to
the Pope, who received him very coldly. "You are a great king," said
Pius IX. "You are one of the mightiest monarchs in the world, and I am a
feeble old man, the servant of servants; but I cite you to meet me
again, to meet me before the throne of the Judge of the world, and to
answer _there_ for your treatment of the nuns at Minsk."
But of the gathering up of reminiscences of Roman life there is no end,
and, after all, my normal life was a quiet one with my mother, driving
with her, sketching with her, sitting with her in the studio of the
venerable Canevari,[126] who was doing her portrait, spending afternoons
with her in the Medici gardens, in the beautiful Villa Wolkonski, or in
the quiet valley near the grove and grotto of Egeria.
In the mornings we generally walked on the Pincio, and there often
noticed a family of father, mother, and daughter working on the terrace,
as the custom then was, at rope-making. One day a carriage passed and
re-passed with a solitary gentleman in it, who at last, as if he could
no longer restrain himself, jumped out and rushed towards the group
exclaiming, "C'est elle! c'est elle!" Then he became embarrassed,
retired, and eventually sent his servant to beg that the mother would
bring some of her cord to his house the next morning. She obeyed, and on
entering his apartment was struck at once by a portrait on the wall.
"That is the picture of my daughter," she said. "No," he replied, "that
is the portrait of my dead wife." He then proceeded to say that he must
from that time consider himself affianced to her daughter, for that in
her he seemed to see again his lost wife, and he insisted on
establishing the old woman and her daughter in comfortable lodgings,
and hiring all kinds of masters for the latter, saying that he would go
away and leave her to her studies, and that in a year he should come
back to marry her, which he did. In England this would be a very
extraordinary story, but it was not thought much of at Rome.
[Illustration: VALMONTONE.[127]]
I have always found that the interests of Rome have a more adhesive
power than those of any other place, and that it is more difficult to
detach oneself from them; and even in this first winter, which was the
least pleasant I have spent there--the conflicting requirements of my
two mothers causing no small difficulty--I was greatly distressed when
my mother, in her terror of Madame Davidoff and Co., decided that we
must leave for Naples on the twenty-third of February. What an
unpleasant companion I was as we drove out of the Porta S. Giovanni in
the large carriage of the _vetturino_ Constantino, with--after the
custom of that time--a black Spitz sitting on the luggage behind to
guard it, which he did most efficaciously. I remember with a mental
shiver how piteously the wind howled over the parched Campagna, and how
the ruins looked almost frightful in the drab light of a sunless winter
morning. But though the cold was most intense, for the season really
was too early for such a journey, our spirits were revived by the
extreme picturesqueness of the old towns we passed through. In
Valmontone, where the huge Doria palace is, we met a ghastly funeral, an
old woman carried by the Frati della Misericordia on an open bier, her
withered head nodding to and fro with the motion, and priests--as Lea
said--"gibbering before her." Here, from the broad deserted terrace in
front of the palace, we looked over the mountains, with mists drifting
across them in the wind; all was the essence of picturesqueness,
raggedness, ignorance, and filth. By Frosinone and Ceprano--then the
dreary scene of the Neapolitan custom-house--we reached San Germano,
where the inn was in those days most wretched. In our rooms we were not
only exposed to every wind that blew, but to the invasions of little
Marianina, Joannina, and Nicolina, who darted in every minute to look at
us, and to the hens, who walked about and laid their eggs under the bed
and table. Most intensely, however, did we delight in the beauties of
the glorious ascent to Monte Cassino and in all that we saw there.
How well I remember the extreme wretchedness of our mid-day
halting-places in the after journey to Capua, and wonder how the
pampered Italian travellers of the present day would put up with them;
but in those days we did not mind, and till it was time to go on again,
we drew the line of old crones sitting miserably against the inn-wall,
rocking themselves to and fro in their coloured hoods, and cursing us in
a chorus of--
"Ah, vi pigli un accidente
Voi che non date niente,"
if we did not give them anything.
[Illustration: ROCCA JANULA, ABOVE SAN GERMANO.[128]]
While we were at Naples, every one was full of the terrible earthquake
which in December had been devastating the Basilicata. Whole towns were
destroyed. It was as after a deep snow in England, which covers fields
and hedges alike; you could not tell in the mass of d\xE9bris whether you
were walking over houses or streets. The inhabitants who escaped were
utterly paralysed, and sat like Indian Brahmins with their elbows on
their knees, staring in vacant despair. Hundreds were buried alive, who
might have been extricated if sufficient energy had been left in the
survivors. Others, buried to the middle, had the upper part of their
bodies burnt off by the fire which spread from the ruined houses, and
from which they were unable to escape. Thousands died afterwards from
the hunger and exposure.
Whilst we were at Naples my mother lost her gold watch. We believed it
to have been stolen as we were entering the Museo Borbonico, and gave
notice to the police. They said they could do nothing unless we went to
the King of the Thieves, who could easily get it back for us: it would
be necessary to make terms with him. So a _ragazaccio_[129] was sent to
guide us through one of the labyrinthian alleys on the hill of St. Elmo
to a house where we were presented to the King of Thieves. He mentioned
his terms, which we agreed to, and he then said, "If the watch has been
stolen anywhere within twelve miles round Naples, you shall have it in
twenty-four hours." Meanwhile the watch was found by one of the custodes
of the Museo at the bottom of that bronze vase in which you are supposed
to hear the roaring of the sea; my mother had been stooping down to
listen, and the watch had fallen in. But the story is worth mentioning,
as the subserviency of the police to the King of the Thieves was
characteristic of public justice under Ferdinand II.
_To_ MY SISTER.
"_Sorrento, March 7, 1858._--Some people say Sorrento is the most
beautiful place in the world, and I believe that even my
town-loving sister, if she could gaze over the golden woods in the
sunset of this evening, and see the crimson smoke float over dark
Vesuvius and then drift far over the blue sea, would allow it to be
more inspiring than the Piazza S. Claudio! Then to-day the mother
and her three companions have been riding on donkeys to the lovely
Vigna Sersale through a fringe of coronilla and myrtle, anemones
and violets.... It is a comfort here to be free from the begging
atmosphere of Naples, for in Sorrento people do not beg; they only
propose 'mangiare maccaroni alla sua salute.'"
"_April 4._--We have had a charming cruise in the 'Centaur'--the
sea like glass, the view clear. Captain Clifford sent his boat to
fetch us, and we sat on deck in arm-chairs, as if on land. In tiny
fishing-boats, lying flat on our backs, we entered the Grotta
Azurra (of Capri), like a magical cavern peopled with phantoms,
each face looking livid as the boats floated over the deep blue
water. Then we scrambled up to the fortress-palace of Tiberius, our
ascent being enlivened by a tremendous battle between the
midshipmen and the donkey-women, who finally drew their stilettos!
"Amalfi is most romantic and lovely. We were there ten days, and
spent the mornings in drawing amongst the purple rocks and sandy
bays, and the afternoons in riding up the mountain staircases to
the Saracenic rock-built castles and desolate towns.
"The mother thinks I have grown dreadfully worldly under your
influence, and that my love for wild-flowers is the only hopeful
sign remaining!"
[Illustration: CAPRI.[130]]
[Illustration: P\xC6STUM.[131]]
From Salerno we made a glorious expedition to P\xE6stum, but on our return
found our servant, John Gidman, alarmingly ill in consequence of a
sunstroke while fallen asleep on the balcony at Amalfi. His sufferings
were dreadful, and he remained between life and death for a long time,
and I believe was only eventually saved by the violent bleedings (so
often inveighed against) of an Italian doctor. This delayed us long at
the dull Salerno, and afterwards at La Cava, where I comforted myself
by much drawing at Salvator Rosa's grotto in the valley below the old
Benedictine convent.
In May our companions returned to England, and having no one but
ourselves to consider, we planned to make our own northern _vetturino_
journey as interesting as possible. I think it was a description in
"Dennis" which made us take the route by Viterbo and Orvieto, but we
went there and saw it with enthusiasm, as afterwards Perugia--to which
we zigzagged back across the Apennines, and Cortona, where the hill was
redolent with great wild yellow roses, and where I drew the tomb of S.
Margherita in the monastery, to the great delight of the monks, who
regaled us with snuff and wine.
Whilst we were at Florence, living in the Casa Iandelli, I made a
delightful excursion to Vallombrosa, driving in a little carriage to
Pelago, and thence riding on a cart-horse up the forest-clothed mountain
by the rough track which emerges on a bright green lawn, then covered
with masses of lilies and columbine, and other spring flowers of every
description. All around the dark forests swept down from the mountains
towards the convent, where the hospitable monks entertained me with a
most excellent dinner, and the abbot showed the manuscripts.
[Illustration: VALLOMBROSA.]
On my return, I found my mother so convulsed with laughter that it was
long before she was able to explain the cause of it. At last she showed
me a letter in her hand, which was a violent declaration of love and
proposal of marriage from one Giorgio
Rovert--"bello--possidente--avocato"--who was even then waiting at
Siena to know if his "fiamme d'amore" was responded to, and if he might
hasten to Florence to throw himself at the feet of the object of his
adoration. For some time we were utterly bewildered, but at length
recollected that at Rome a young man had constantly followed the cousin
who was with us, had lifted the heavy curtains for her at the entrance
of the churches, found her places in a mass-book, &c., and we concluded
that he must have tracked her to the Palazzo Lovati, inquired of the
porter who lived there, and hearing it was "Mrs. Hare," had followed
_us_ to Florence. Lady Anne S. Giorgio coming in soon after to see us,
undertook to answer the letter, and did so most capitally; but Giorgio
Rovert did not break his heart, and within three weeks we heard of him
as proposing to old Lady Dillon!
The Lady Anne S. Giorgio I have mentioned began at this time to fill a
great part in our life. She was a Roman Catholic, and used to say that
she had become so (at sixteen) on account of the poor apology which she
found made for Protestantism in Robertson's "Charles V.," which she had
been reading. After she was a widow, she became a member of a Tertiary
Order which binds its votaries to forsake the vanities of the world, to
wear a cross, and be dressed in black. She used to be very anxious for
my conversion, and have special prayers to that intent on St.
Augustine's Day. She read through Madame de S\xE9vign\xE9 every year, and her
library of books excited the astonishment of her poorer neighbours, who
said, "O la Contessa e tanto buona; legge sempre; prega sempre; e tanto
buona," for they cannot understand any one reading anything but
religious books.
Lady Anne was one of the daughters of that beautiful Lady Oxford whose
offspring were named "the Harleian Miscellany." Lady Oxford lived at
Genoa with her daughters, leaving Lord Oxford in England, and during her
Italian life had many strange adventures, and one of a most terrible
kind, the story of which was related to me by Dr. Wellesley, who was
present at the time, but I will omit it. Of the weird stories of the
other sisters I will say nothing, but Lady Anne in her youth was engaged
to a young Italian, who, with the ugly name of Boggi, was yet of a very
good family. However, before they could be married, Boggi died, and the
Harleys returned to England. While there, Lady Anne wished to marry her
music-master, but her family would not hear of it, and by the harshness
of their opposition made her life miserable. Having striven vainly for
some years to win the consent of her family, Lady Anne wrote to Madame
Boggi, the mother of her late betrothed, with whom she had always kept
up a communication, to say that she was in wretched health and spirits,
that she required change terribly, and that she was very unhappy because
her family violently opposed her marriage with a very excellent young
Italian--but she did not say who he was. Madame Boggi replied by saying
that nothing could give her greater happiness than having her dearest
Annie with her, and imploring her to come out to her at once. The Harley
family consented, thinking that the change might cure Lady Anne's
heartache, and she went out to Madame Boggi, who had always said that
she looked upon her as a daughter because she was once engaged to her
dead son.
While Lady Anne was with Madame Boggi, she heard that her Italian lover
had returned to Italy to join his friends, but that he had been stopped
by illness at some place in the north of Italy, and was lying in a very
critical condition. I cannot say how Lady Anne persuaded Madame Boggi,
but she did persuade her to consent to her going off to nurse her lover,
and, unmarried girl as she was, she nursed him through all his illness.
He died, but his brother, who came to him when he was dying, was so
touched by Lady Anne's devotion, that he afterwards proposed to her, and
she married him.
The husband of Lady Anne was only a "cavaliere." They were dreadfully
poor, and lived at a little farm somewhere in the hills above Spezia,
where two boys and a girl were born. But Lady Anne did not mind poverty;
she fattened her chickens and pigs for market, she studied botany and
all the ologies by herself, and she taught her children. After she
became a widow, she heard one day that her father, Lord Oxford, from
whom she had been separated from childhood, was passing through Italy,
and she threw herself in his way upon the staircase in the inn at
Sarzana. When he found who she was, he was delighted both with her and
her children. He said, "I have done nothing for you hitherto, and I can
do nothing for you after my death, for my affairs are arranged and they
cannot be altered; but whatever you ask me to do _now_ shall be
granted." "Then," said Lady Anne, "you have always looked down upon me
and despised me, because my husband was a simple 'cavaliere.' You are
going to Rome: get me created a Countess in my own right, and then you
will despise me no more." And Lord Oxford went to Rome, and, by his
personal influence with the Pope, to whom he had great opportunities of
being useful, his daughter Anne was created a Countess in her own right,
and her sons became titular Counts and her daughter a Countess.
It was in this summer of 1858, while we were at Florence, that Lady Anne
came to "Italima" (for she had known my father intimately in her palmy
days) and said, "You know how I have lived like a hermit in my
'_tenuto_,' and meanwhile here is Carolina grown up, and Carolina must
marry somebody, and that somebody you must find, for you are almost the
only person I know." And, to her surprise, Italima was able to answer,
"It is really very odd, but Mrs. de Selby, the cousin of the Princesses
Doria and Borghese, was here this morning, and she said, 'Here is
Roberto, and I want to find somebody for him to marry. I do not want a
fortune, we have plenty of money, but it must be a girl of good family,
and if she is partly English so much the better.'"
We went to the betrothal dinner of Robert Selby and Carolina di S.
Giorgio, and afterwards we ran about the Torrigiani gardens in the still
summer evening, and made round our straw hats wreaths of the fireflies,
which, when they are once fixed, seldom fly away. Carolina was
afterwards a great friend of ours, and most entertaining and clever. She
could imitate an old priest scolding and taking snuff so exactly, that
if you shut your eyes you thought one must be in the room; and she used
to create for herself little dramas and tragedies, in which she was as
pathetic as she was at other times comic. As a mother she was most
unfortunate. Several of her children were poisoned by eating "fungi" at
a trattoria outside the Porta del Popolo, and she herself nearly died
from the same cause. After Robert Selby's death she married again, and
went to live at Leghorn.
I was very sorry afterwards that during this visit we never saw Mrs.
Browning, who died in 1861, before we were at Florence again. We used to
hear much of her--of her peculiar appearance, with her long curls, and
(from illness) her head always on one side; of the infinite charm of her
conversation; of her interest in spiritualism; how she would endeavour
to assert her belief in it in her little feeble voice, upon which
Browning would descend in his loud tones; but they were perfectly
devoted to each other.
Another person whom we often saw at Florence was the foolish wife of our
dear old Landor, who never ceased to describe with fury his passionate
altercations with her, chiefly caused apparently by jealousy. Landor was
still living at Bath at this time.
In the Cascine at Florence we found the same old flower-woman who had
been there when I was a baby in the Prato, where I was taught to walk.
She used to drive to the Cascine with her flowers in a smart carriage
with a pair of horses, and would smile and kiss her hands to us as we
passed. It was contrary to good Florentine manners not to accept the
flowers which she offered to every one she saw when she arrived where
the carriages were waiting, but they were never paid for at the time;
only a present was sent occasionally, or given by foreigners when they
left Florence, and she came to the station to see them off and present a
farewell bouquet. I merely mention these customs because they are
probably dying out, perhaps are already extinct.
My cousin Lady Normanby was at this time resident in her beautiful
Florentine villa, with its lovely garden of roses and view over
Florence, and she was very kind to us.
We were at Florence this year during the festival of Corpus Domini, and
saw that curious procession, chiefly consisting of little boys in white
dominos, and brown monks and brothers of the Misericordia; but,
following the Archbishop under his canopy, came the Grand Duke on foot,
with all the male members of the Corsini and Guicciardini families, and
the young Archdukes in white satin trains.
We saw also the Foundling Hospital, where all the children were brought
up and nursed by goats, and where, when the children cried, the goats
ran and gave them suck.
About the 10th of June we settled at Lucca baths, in the pleasant little
Casa Bertini, a primitive house more like a farm-house than a villa, on
the steep hillside above the Grand Duke's palace, possessing a charming
little garden of oleanders and apple-trees at the back, with views down
into the gorge of the river, and up into the hilly cornfields, which
were always open to us. Very delightful were the early mornings, when
the mother, with book and camp-stool, wandered up the hill-path,
fringed with flowers, to the Bagni Caldi. Charming too the evenings,
when, after "_merenda_" at four o'clock in the garden, we used to go
forth, with all the little society, in carriages or on horseback, till
the heavy dews fell, and drove us in by the light of the fireflies. A
most pleasant circle surrounded us. Close by, in a large cool villa with
a fountain, was the gentle invalid Mrs. Greville (_n\xE9e_ Locke), singing
and composing music, with her pleasant companion Miss Rowland. Just
below, in the hotel of the villa, "Auntie" was living with the George
Cavendishes, and in the street by the river the pretty widow, Mrs.
Francis Colegrave, with her children, Howard and Florence, and her
sister Miss Chichester.
An amusing member of the society at the Bagni, living in a cottage full
of curiosities, was Mrs. Stisted, the original of Mrs. Ricketts in "The
Daltons." She had set her heart upon converting the Duke of Parma to
Protestantism, and he often condescended to controversy with her. One
day she thought she had really succeeded, but driving into Lucca town
next day, to her horror she met him walking bare-headed in a procession
with a lighted candle in his hand. Then and there she stopped her
carriage and began to upbraid him. When he returned to the Bagni, he
went to see her and to reprove her. "There cannot," he said, "be two
sovereigns at Lucca; either I must be Duke or you must be Queen," and
ever after she was called the Queen of the Bagni. Colonel Stisted had a
number of curious autographs, the most interesting being the MS. of the
"Lines to an Indian air"--"I rise from dreams of thee"--found in the
pocket of Shelley after he was drowned.
Living beneath us all this summer were the Grand Ducal family, and we
saw them constantly. They were greatly beloved, but the Grand
Duchess-Dowager, who was a Sardinian princess, was more popular than the
reigning Grand Duchess, who was a Neapolitan Bourbon, and ultimately
brought about the ruin of the family by her influence. The Grand
Duchess-Dowager was the step-mother of the Grand Duke, and also his
sister-in-law, having been sister-in-law of his first wife. The
Hereditary Grand Duke was married to her niece, a lovely Saxon princess,
who died soon afterwards: it was said that he treated her very ill, and
that his younger brother protected her. We were at a very pretty ball
which was given on the festa of S. Anna, her patroness. The Grand Ducal
family generally went out at the same hour as ourselves. In the middle
of the day nothing stirred except the scorpions, which were a constant
terror. One was found in my bath in the morning, and all that day we
were in fearful expectation, as the creatures never go about singly; but
in the evening we met the companion coming upstairs. There were also
quantities of serpents, which in the evening used frequently to be seen
crossing the road in a body going down to the river to drink.
[Illustration: PONTE ALLA MADDALENA, LUCCA.][132]
[Illustration: Augustus J. C. Hare.
From a portrait by Canevari.]
Every Friday afternoon we had a reception in our hill-set garden, and
our maid Quintilia set out tea and fruit, &c., in the summer-house.
At the gate a basket was held, into which every one dropped a story as
they entered, and they were all read aloud after tea. One day, one of
these stories, a squib on Ultra-Protestants written by the younger Miss
Cavendish, led to a great fracas with the George Cavendishes, Admiral
and Mrs. Cavendish being perfectly furious with my gentle mother, who of
all people was the most innocent, as she could not have an idea of what
was in the stories till they were read aloud. Well do I remember coming
round the corner of the villa, and finding the Admiral storming at her
as she sat upon her donkey, with "My daughters shall never enter your
house again--they shall never enter it again!" and her sweet smile as
she replied, "Then, Admiral Cavendish, I have only to thank you so very
much for having so often allowed them to come to me hitherto,"--and the
Admiral's subdued look afterwards.
There was a little school established by the Grand Duchess just below
us, whither my mother sometimes went in the mornings. The children were
taught Scripture dialogues. One little girl would say to another, "Oh,
cara mia, cara amica mia, I have such a wonderful thing to tell you,"
and then would narrate how a babe was born in Bethlehem, &c., upon
which the hearer would exclaim, "O Gran Dio" in her amazement, and on
one occasion, with a cry of "O cielo!" pretended to faint away with
astonishment in the most natural way imaginable.
A long excursion from Lucca was that to Galicano, where a hermit with a
reputation of great sanctity was living under an overhanging cliff in
the mountains. He hid himself on our approach, but our large party
hunted him, and eventually unearthed him--an old dirty man in a brown
gown, with a chain of huge beads at his girdle. We wanted to see the
miraculous image of which he was guardian, but he would not show it
unless we were Catholics, and was much puzzled by my protesting that we
were, and my mother that we were not. However, at last he consented to
exhibit it, on condition that we all knelt, and that the ladies took off
their bonnets. We returned home much later than was expected, and so, as
we found afterwards, escaped seven bandits, who had been lying in wait
for us, and at last gave us up. The whole of the road from Lucca to
Galicano had then black crosses at intervals, commemorating the murders
committed there.
This summer at Lucca was altogether the greatest halt in my life I have
ever known. We seemed so removed from the world, and I was more free
from family snubbings than I had ever been before. But, all through the
time we were there, I had been far from well, and the doctor who was
consulted declared that I could not survive the severities of an English
winter. In spite of this, my mother never flinched in her determination
to return, for having once taken the impression (without the remotest
reason) that I had a tendency to Roman Catholicism, she had a far
greater terror of what she considered as danger to my soul than of any
danger to my body.
When we left the Bagni di Lucca on the 2nd of August, I left it in
despair. Behind us was a quiet, peaceful, and a far from useless life,
encircled by troops of friends, and supplying the literary and artistic
occupations in which I began to feel that I might possibly in time be
able to distinguish myself. Before me was the weary monotony of
Hurstmonceaux, only broken by visits from or to relations, by most of
whom I was disliked and slighted, if not positively ill-treated. I also
felt sure that all the influence of my aunts would be used with my
easily guided mother to force upon me the most uncongenial of
employments, which she was only too certain to allow them to advocate
as "especially desirable for Augustus, because they _were_ uncongenial!"
I was at this time also in more than usual disgrace, because disgust at
the sham Christians, sham Evangelicals, sham Protestants, with whom for
years I had been thrown, had induced me to avow my horror of Ordination.
In every way I felt myself unfitted for it. I wrote at this time--"'Some
fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith
they sprung up, because they had no depth of earth: and when the sun was
up, they were scorched; and, because they had no root, they withered
away.' If you want to know about my past religious 'impressions,' that
is just my story." Still the declaration of my determination not to take
Orders, dreaded and put off for years, cost me acutest suffering from
the pain and disappointment which I knew it inflicted upon my mother.
When we left Casa Bertini and descended the steep hill to our carriages,
we found that the whole society had been amusing themselves by dressing
in mourning, and were waiting to sing "a dirge" of their own
composition, as we drove away. But we had one or two more happy days. On
the morning after our arrival at Lucca town, we were astonished by
sounds of loud singing in the passage, and going out, found all those we
had so recently parted from at the Bagni singing in chorus some more
verses which they had composed as "a serenade," and bringing for us a
picture of the Ponte alla Maddalena, painted on a stone out of the
river. We quickly determined to spend the day in going with them to
Pisa, and making an excursion to the Gombo, where the Pisan pines end in
the sands by the seashore--and we did not return till midnight. It was
the custom at Lucca for those who drew to make little sketches in the
travellers' book at the hotel, and I had amused myself by doing one the
day before, and inscribing it "View from the Walls of Lucca," though it
was a wretched performance. When we came back, we found a most lovely
drawing opposite, inscribed--"View from the Walls of Lucca as it really
is." The Grand Duke's artist had been at the hotel in the interval.
[Illustration: PIETRA SANTA.[133]]
We travelled then with delicious slowness, only rolling onwards through
the most glorious scenery in the cool mornings and evenings, and resting
in the heat of mid-day, while, as at this time we only took our carriage
from place to place, we had no scruple in halting for days at Pietra
Santa, with its glorious views over the mountains, and old convents
embosomed in olives and cypresses; in making excursions to Serravezza
and to dismal Carrara; in lingering at La Spezia, where the avenue of
oleanders was in full blaze of bloom, and driving thence to Porto Venere
with its marble church and wonderful views along the cliffs--blue,
green, yellow, and coral-red, descending abruptly into the sea.
_To_ MY AUNT ELEANOR PAUL.
"_Lucca, August 3, 1858._--Once upon a time there was a lady
advanced in years, who had an only child. They were sick and
sorrowful, and the tempests of the world beat upon them. Driven
from home, they wandered hither and thither, seeking rest and
finding none, till at length one day they arrived, wearied and
wayworn, at the entrance of a mountain valley. 'Alas!' they
whispered, 'what place is this?'--'Take courage,' answered the
trees and fountains; 'rejoice,' shouted the flowers, 'for this is
the Happy Valley, where those who enter rest from all sickness and
trouble: this is the place where people may have a halt in life,
and where care and anxiety do not exist.' And when they heard these
words, the countenances of the weary lady and her son were glad,
and the flowers and the trees and the fountains laughed and shouted
for joy in the ceaseless golden sunshine. For two months the
strangers rested in the Happy Valley, and then once more the
tempest howled to receive them, and the voices of the unseen
sternly bade them depart; and slowly and sadly they arose, and went
out again into the wilderness, where every solitary flower, every
mountain and stream, seemed only an echo from a lost and beautiful
past.
"Oh, my auntie, do you know who the mother and son were, and what
was the Happy Valley to which they looked back with so much loving
regret?"
"_La Spezia, August_ 8.--We have been to Carrara. Do you know, my
auntie, that once upon a time there lived in the mountains of
Carrara a race of funny little people called Fanticelle? They were
the hobgoblins of the marble rocks, and were very merry, very
useful, and highly respected by every one. Each marble had its own
Fante; one was dressed in red, another in yellow, and others in
stripes of various colours; but the Fante of the white marble wore
only a simple dress as white as snow, and was greatly despised in
consequence by her companions, who were so fashionably attired.
Daily the poor white Fante was snubbed and insulted, and at last,
when the ancient Romans came to make quarries, and cut and hacked
her to pieces, and carried her remains away in carts, all the other
Fanti smiled in their cold satire and said, 'It only served the
vulgar creature right, for she did not even know how to dress
herself, and sitting upon the mountain with nothing on but her
night-dress was really quite indecorous.'
"But when some years had passed, the great guardian spirit came to
the mountains, and, stretching forth his wings, he gathered all the
Fanti beneath them, and said, 'Now, my children, you shall go forth
to see the world, and, when you return, you shall each say what is
most highly esteemed by the lovers of art, and what it is that the
children of men consider most beautiful and best.'
"Thus the Fanti of Carrara flew forth to see the world! They
alighted first in the square at Genoa. All around were huge and
stately palaces, and in the centre the statue of a hero, with the
world lying captive at his feet. But what the Fanti remarked most
was that in the most magnificent chambers of every palace, and
even upon the statue of the great Columbus himself, sat the
semblance of their despised sister the white Fante, as if enshrined
and honoured. 'Alas!' exclaimed the Fanti, 'what degraded notions
have these Genoese; let us examine places better worth our notice.'
So they came to Spain, and visited the Alhambra, but in every
court, and even on the Fountain of Lions itself, they found the
image of the white Fante seated before them. Thence they passed on
to London, to Paris, to Berlin, to Vienna, but it was ever the
same. In every gallery of statues, over the hearth of every palace,
upon the altar of every church, it seemed as if the white Fante was
reigning. 'Ah,' they exclaimed, 'can _all_ men be thus degraded?
can _all_ good taste be banished from the earth? Let us see one
more city nearer home, and from that let us form our judgment, for
the inhabitants of these northern cities are not worthy to be
ranked with mankind.'
"So the Fanti came to Milan, and beneath the wings of the great
guardian spirit, rejoicing in their approaching triumph, they
entered its vast square. And behold the spirit drew back his wings,
and they beheld a mighty and an awful vision! Before them stood
their sister, the Fante of the milk-white rocks, but no longer
humble, no longer to be restrained even within the bounds of the
greatest palace upon earth. Majestic in beauty, invincible in
power, she raised her mighty wings to heaven in the aisles of a
vast cathedral, and mounted higher and higher as by an a\xEBrial
staircase, till, far above all human things, she flung her
snow-white tresses into the azure sky!
"Then the Fanti of the coloured robes bowed their heads and
trembled, and acknowledged in penitence and humility--'Truly the
Fante of the white rocks is the most beautiful thing in the world!'
"Who can go to Carrara, my auntie, and not feel this?"
We were for a few days at Turin. The society there was then, as it is
still, the very climax of stagnation. One of its most admired ornaments
was a beautiful young Contessa la Marmora. She did nothing all day,
absolutely nothing, but sit looking pretty, with her chin leaning on her
hand. Her mother-in-law was rather more energetic than herself, and
hoping to rouse her, left a new "Journal des Modes" upon her table. Some
days after, she asked what she thought of it. "Alas!" said the young
Countess, with her beautiful head still leaning upon her hand, "I have
been so much occupied, that I never have found time to look into it." In
all my acquaintance since with Italian ladies, I have always found the
same, that they are all intensely occupied, but that it is in
doing--nothing!
Since the dreadful epidemic at court, which swept away at once the
Queen, the Queen-Dowager, and the Duke of Genoa, the King had never
received, and as his eldest daughter, Madame Clotilde, was not old
enough to do so, there were no court parties. At the opera all the young
ladies sat facing the stage, and the old ladies away from it; but when
the ballet began there was a general change; the old ladies moved to the
front, and the young ones went behind.
[Illustration: IL VALENTINO, TURIN.[134]]
A great contrast to the Italians at Turin was Mr. Ruskin, whom we saw
constantly. He was sitting all day upon a scaffold in the gallery,
copying bits of the great picture by Paul Veronese. My mother was very
proud of my drawings at this time, and gave them to him to look at. He
examined them all very carefully and said nothing for some time. At last
he pointed out one of the cathedral at Perugia as "the least bad of a
very poor collection." One day in the gallery, I asked him to give me
some advice. He said, "Watch me." He then looked at the flounce in the
dress of a maid of honour of the Queen of Sheba for five minutes, and
then he painted one thread: he looked for another five minutes, and then
he painted another thread.[135] At the rate at which he was working he
might hope to paint the whole dress in ten years: but it was a lesson as
to examining what one drew well before drawing it. I said to him, "Do
you admire all Paul Veronese's works as you do this?" He answered, "I
merely think that Paul Veronese was ordained by Almighty God to be an
archangel, neither more nor less; for it was not only that he knew how
to cover yards of canvas with noble figures and exquisite colouring, it
was that it was all _right_. If you look at other pictures in this
gallery, or any gallery, you will find mistakes, corrected perhaps, but
mistakes of every form and kind; but Paul Veronese had such perfect
knowledge, he _never_ made mistakes."
The Charles Bunsens were at Turin, and we dined with them. With Mrs. C.
Bunsen was her brother, whom we thought a very dull, heavy young man.
Long afterwards he became very well known as the French Ambassador,
Waddington.
We saw Mr. Ruskin again several times in the Vaudois, whither we went
from Turin, and stayed for several days at La Tour, riding on donkeys to
the wild scene of the Waldensian battle in the valley of Angrogna, and
jolting in a carriage to the beautiful villages of Villar and
Bobbio--"une vraie penitence," as our driver expressed it, though the
scenery is lovely. My mother was charmed to find an old woman at La Tour
who had known Oberlin very well and had lived in his parish.
[Illustration: VILLAR, IN THE VAUDOIS.[136]]
Amongst the endless little out-of-the-way excursions which my mother,
Lea, and I have made together in little _chars-\xE0-banc_, one of those I
remember with greatest pleasure is that from Vergogna up the Val
Anzasca. The scenery was magnificent: such a deep gorge, with purple
rocks breaking through the rich woods, and range upon range of distant
mountains, with the snows of Monte Rosa closing them in. We stayed at a
charming little mountain inn at Ponte Grande, where everything was
extraordinarily cheap, and wandered in the meadows filled with
globe-ranunculus and over-shadowed by huge chestnut-trees. In the
evening the charcoal-burners came down from the mountains, where we had
watched the smoke of the fires all day amongst the woods, and serenaded
us under our windows, singing in parts, with magnificent voices, most
effective in the still night. We were afterwards at Domo d'Ossola for a
Sunday for the extraordinary f\xEAte of the imaginary Santa Filomena--kept
all day with frantic enthusiasm, cannons firing, bells ringing, and
processions of girls in white, chaunting as they walked, pouring in from
all the country parishes in the neighbourhood.
_To_ MRS. HARE (ITALIMA).
"_Lausanne, Sept. 3, 1858._--At Martigny we found _Galignani_,
which we had not seen for some days, and you will imagine my
distress at the sad news about Mr. Landor with which they were
filled.[137] Dear Mr. Landor! I had always hoped and intended to be
near him and watch over the last years of this old, old friend. I
feel certain that there is much, which the world does not know, to
be said on his side. I have known Mrs. Y. for years ... and always
prophesied that she would be the ruin of Mr. Landor some day. For
the poems, no excuse can be offered except that he was so imbued
with the spirit of the classical authors, that when he wished to
write against Mrs. Y., he thought, 'How would Horace have written
this?' and wrote accordingly, only that Horace would have said
things a great deal worse.
'Some thought far worse of him, and judged him wrong;
But verse was what he had been wedded to,
And his own mind did like a tempest strong
Come to him thus, and drove the weary wight along.'[138]
Whatever his faults are, I am sure you will feel that we who have
known him well must draw a veil for ourselves over the failings of
his old age, and remember only the many kind words of the dear old
man, so tender in heart and so fastidious in taste, the many good
and generous acts of his long life, and how many they are.
"How much we have been struck with the _pale_ blue of the Swiss
lakes compared with the deep blue of those of Italy."
_To_ MY AUNT, ELEANOR PAUL.
"_Dijon, Sept. 12, 1858._--We found Fribourg quite up to our
expectations, quite worth coming all the way round by Switzerland
to visit. And the organ, how magnificent it is! We went in the
evening to hear it, when all the beautiful gothic church was
wrapped in darkness, except the solitary gleam of light in the
organ-loft, and we all sat long in breathless expectation. When the
music came, it was like a story. One seemed to be sitting far up
the nave of some great cathedral, and to hear from the distant
choir the choristers chaunting a litany, answering one another,
and then swelling and joining in a universal chorus. Then, while
they were singing, it was as if a great storm arose, the hail
rattled and the rain splashed against the windows, the thunder
crashed overhead, and the wind howled around. And then a mighty
earthquake convulsed and shook the church to its very foundations.
But always, in the pauses of the storm, the sweet silvery voices of
the choristers were heard above the roaring of the elements, and
when the storm subsided, they joined in thanksgiving, which died
away in the faint echoes of the surrounding hills. And all this was
the organ!
"We came by Morat to Neuch\xE2tel. It is a pretty, though not a
striking place; but the view of the vast mass of Mont Blanc and of
all the Oberland Alps in the rose-coloured glow is magnificent. The
mother made inquiries after many old acquaintances,[139] to find
most of them dead, and those who were still living old, old ladies
of ninety and of one hundred.
"Did you ever hear of Doubs? We came through it yesterday, and it
certainly seemed to us the most melancholy, ill-fated village we
had ever seen. Some time ago there lived there a boy, whose
stepmother was very cruel to him--so cruel that his whole aim and
object in life was to obtain money enough to set up for himself and
escape from her tyranny. At last he succeeded, and leaving his
father's house with his heart full of bitterness, he invested his
savings in a partnership with the owner of the village caf\xE9, where
he kept the accounts. One day his partner accused him of not
giving him a fair share of the profits. This made him perfectly
frantic--so furious that he determined to avenge himself by nothing
less than the total destruction of his native place! He began by
setting fire to his caf\xE9, but the alarm was scarcely given when it
was discovered that almost every other house was in flames. The
inhabitants hurried from their beds, and were barely able to save
themselves, their houses, cattle, and goods perishing at one blow.
Only a few houses and the church escaped, in which the fugitives
took refuge, and were beginning to collect their energies, when,
after ten days, the fire broke out again in the night, and the rest
of the village was consumed with all it contained, including a
child of four years old. Between the two fires cholera had broken
out, so that numbers perished from pestilence as well as exposure.
The author of all the misery was taken and transported, but the
town is only now beginning to rise again from its ruins, and the
people to raise their spirits."
On reaching Paris, we found Italima and my sister at the H\xF4tel d'Oxford
et Cambridge. Greatly to my relief, my mother decided that, as she was
in perfect health and well supplied with visitors, it was an admirable
opportunity for my remaining abroad to learn French: this I was only too
thankful for, as it put off the evil day of my return to England, and
encountering the family wrath about my refusal to take Orders. With my
sister I spent an amusing day at Versailles on a visit to the Marquis
and Marquise du Pr\xE2t, the latter a daughter of the Duc de Grammont, and
a very pretty, lively person. They lived in an ideal house of the
_ancienne r\xE9gime_, where the chairs, picture-frames, carpets, even the
antimacassars, were carved or worked with the shields, crests, and
mottoes of the family.
After my sister left, the intrigues of Madame Davidoff, whom, in
compliance with my mother's wishes, I had refused to visit, brought
about my acquaintance with the Vicomte de Costa le Cerda, a
Franco-Spaniard and ardent Catholic, who constituted himself my
cicerone, and amongst other places took me to _s\xE9ances_ of the Acad\xE9mie
de France, of which he was a member; and I should have been much
interested in seeing all the celebrated philosophers, politicians,
physicians, geologists, &c., if I had not been so ignorant of French
literature that I had scarcely heard of any one of them before. The
Marquis de Gabriac[140] (I forget how his office entitled him to do so)
sent me a medal which enabled me to visit all profane, and the
Archbishop of Paris a permission to enter all religious, institutions.
Using the latter, I went with De Costa to the Benedictines, Ursulines,
Carmelites, Petites S\x9Curs des Pauvres, and the \x8Cuvre de la
Compassion for bringing up little homeless boys. On Sundays I heard P\xE8re
F\xE9lix, the philosophic Bourdaloue of the nineteenth century, preach with
his musical voice to vast enthralled audiences in N\xF4tre Dame.[141]
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME, PARIS.[142]]
Capital were the French lessons I received from the excellent M. Nyon,
to whom I have always felt indebted. After Italima left Paris, I lodged
with a Madame Barraud, who rented a small apartment at the back of a
court in the Rue des Saints-P\xE8res. Here my wretched little room looked
out upon a blank wall, and was as thoroughly uncomfortable as it was
possible to be. The weather soon became bitterly cold, and, to prevent
being starved, I had to sit almost all day in the one poor uncarpeted
sitting-room with old Madame Barraud herself, who was a most
extraordinary character. Without the slightest apparent reason, a sudden
suspicion would seize her, and she would rush off to the kitchen. In
another minute she would return, wringing her hands, and would fling
herself down in a chair with--"Oh, que je suis malheureuse! Oh, que je
suis malheureuse! C'est une fille abominable cette Marie--cette tortue!
elle ne sait pas le service du tout," and then, before she had time to
take breath, she would run off to investigate the causes of a fresh
noise in the kitchen. You were never safe from her. Every moment that
old woman would dart in like a whirlwind, just to wipe off one speck of
dust she had discovered on the mirror, or to smooth some crease she
suspected in the tablecloth; and almost before you could look up she
was vanishing with her eternal refrain of "que je suis mis\xE9rable! que je
suis malheureuse!"
The one subject of discussion till twelve o'clock was the d\xE9je\xFBner, from
twelve to six the dinner, and after that the d\xE9je\xFBner of the next
morning. Matters, however, were rather improved when Mademoiselle
Barraud was at home--a thoroughly sensible, sterling person, who was
generally absent on professional duties, being one of the first
music-mistresses of the day. Sometimes Madame and Mademoiselle had
friends in the evening, when it was amusing to see specimens of the
better sort of third-class Parisians.
I made very few friends at Paris, but the persons I saw oftenest were
the Marquise du Pregnier and her old mother, who remembered the Reign of
Terror and had lost both her parents by the guillotine. Occasionally I
went in the evening to the salon of Madame Mohl, wife of Julius Mohl,
the great Orientalist, but herself an Englishwoman, who had in early
life been intimate with Chateaubriand and present at his touching last
hours, when his friend Madame Recamier, beautiful to the end, sat
watching him with her blind eyes. Madame Mohl was a most
extraordinary-looking person, like a poodle, with frizzled hair hanging
down over her face and very short skirts. Her salon, at 120 Rue de Bac,
especially on Friday evenings, was at that time quite one of the social
features of Paris. One savant used to drop in after the other and sit
round her talking in a circle, and with a _finesse d'esprit_ all her
own, she would address each in turn in her quick sharp voice, always
saying something pungent or clever. Politics were the chief topic, and
though I remember Madame Mohl once saying that "political society was
not what could be called a _nourishing_ occupation," there were no
refreshments, however late the company stayed, but tea and biscuits. She
had always had a sort of salon, even when, as Miss Clarke, she lived
with her old mother in a very small apartment in the Abbaye-aux-Bois.
Ticknor speaks of her there as keeping a little _bureau d'esprit_ all
her own, _\xE0 la fran\xE7aise_.
One night when I was shown into her salon, I found, to my horror, that I
was not only the first to arrive, but that the old lady was so engrossed
in administering a violent scolding to her husband, that she was
promenading the drawing-room half undressed, with her strange locks
still in curl-papers. It was a most ridiculous scene, and my premature
appearance not a little embarrassing to them both. I retreated into the
passage till Madame Mohl was "done up," though that operation was not
accomplished till many other guests had arrived.
M. Julius Mohl was the greatest contrast to his quicksilver wife. He
used to be called "_le bourru bienfaisant_," from his rough exterior and
genuine kindness of heart. He was really ten years younger than his
wife, though she considered sixty-eight the right age for a woman to
attain to, and never to her last day allowed that she had passed that
limit.
Madame Mohl was fond of describing how, when she was at Paris in her
childhood, her elder sister, Mrs. Frewen, was taken by their mother and
grandmother to the chapel royal at the Tuileries, where Marie Antoinette
was then living in a kind of half-captivity. She was a very little girl,
and a gendarme thought she would be crushed, and lifted her upon his
shoulders, on which she was just opposite the King and Queen. She
remembered, as in a picture, how on one side of them were first Madame
Royale, then Madame Elizabeth, then the little Dauphin.
The cause which led to Mrs. Frewen seeing Marie Antoinette at that time
was in itself very curious. She was returning from the south with her
mother (Mrs. Clarke) and her grandmother. They reached Bordeaux, where
they were to embark for England in a "smack." Their luggage was already
on board; but, on the night before starting, the grandmother had a vivid
dream that the smack was lost with all on board. In the morning she
declared that nothing on earth should induce her to go in it. The
daughter remonstrated vigorously about expense, but the old lady stood
firm. They were able to take off their smaller things, but all their
larger luggage had to be left. The smack went down on the Goodwin Sands
and all was lost; so the family came to Paris.[143]
Of all the evenings I spent at Paris, the most interesting was one with
the Archbishop, who kindly invited me to his old country ch\xE2teau of
Issy, once a palace of the Prince de Cond\xE9, and very magnificent. The
Archbishop, however, only inhabited the porter's lodge, and all the rest
was left deserted. The Archbishop was playing at bagatelle with his
chaplains when we entered, upon which he seated himself opposite to us
(De Costa went with me) in an arm-chair. He was a fine old man with grey
hair, dressed in cardinal's robes and crimson stockings, with the chain
of a Grand Almoner of France round his neck. There was only one light
in the high dark room, a lamp close to his shoulder, which threw a most
picturesque light over him, like a Rembrandt portrait. He inquired about
my visits to the different "religious" in Paris, and spoke regretfully
of the difficulties encountered by the Petites S\x9Curs des Pauvres.
Then he talked to De Costa about his medical studies and about
phrenology. This led him to the great Napoleon, of whose habits he gave
a very curious account. He said that he believed his strange
phrenological development was caused by his extraordinary way of
feeding--that he never was known to take a regular meal, but that he had
a spit on which a chicken was always roasting at a slow fire, and that
whenever he felt inclined he took a slice. When demolished, the chicken
was instantly replaced. It was the same with sleep: he never went to bed
at regular hours, only when he felt sleepy. We had been warned that the
Archbishop himself went to bed at nine, as he always rose at four; so at
nine I got up and kissed his ring, as we always did then to the
cardinals at Rome, but the kind old man insisted on coming out after us
into the passage, and seeing that we were well wrapped up in our
greatcoats.
In October, Aunt Kitty (Mrs. Stanley) came for a few days to Paris, and
going about with Arthur Stanley was a great pleasure.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Paris, Oct. 19, 1858._--I have been much disturbed by my dearest
mother's writing twice to Aunt Kitty to urge upon me the duty of
instantly deciding upon some situation. It seems so useless to make
oneself miserable in the interval because situations and
professions do not drop from the clouds whenever one chooses to
call for them. You know how I have dreaded the return to England,
simply because I knew how wearing the family onslaught would be
directly I arrived, and that all peace would be at an end, and it
certainly was not likely to mend matters to write to complain to
the Stanleys of how grievously I had disappointed you, and that
therefore I must decide instantly! If my mother will consider, she
will see that it is no question of exerting oneself. I know exactly
what there is to be had and what there is not, and we both know how
extremely improbable it is that I could get _anything_ without some
knowledge of modern languages, at least of French. This therefore
is evidently the first point, and whilst one is employed all day
long in struggling and striving to attain it, is it not rather hard
to see letters from England about waste of time, want of effort,
&c.?
"Were I to take an office in London _now_, the pay might possibly
be as much as \xA360 a year, without any vacation, or any hope of
advance in life, and even in the most miserable lodgings it would
be difficult to live in London under \xA3200 a year. However, if my
mother hears of anything which she wishes me to take, I will
certainly take it.
[Illustration: THE PONT NEUF, PARIS.[144]]
"Aunt Kitty has been very kind, and I have enjoyed going about with
Arthur. Yesterday we went to the Conciergerie, where, by help of
the Archbishop's letter and an order from the Pr\xE9fecture of Police,
we contrived to gain admittance. It is in the centre of Louis the
Ninth's palace, of which it was once the dungeon, and has been very
little altered. The room in which Marie Antoinette was confined for
two months before her execution has scarcely been changed at all.
There are still the heavy barred doors, the brick floor, the cold
damp smell, the crucifix which hung before the window and kneeling
before which she received the viaticum, the place where the bed
stood, upon which the Queen could not lie down without being
watched by the guards--who never took their eyes off--from the
wicket opposite. Opening out of the Queen's prison is the small
narrow chamber in which Robespierre was confined for one day, but
where he never slept--brought there at eight, tried at eleven,
executed at four. This opens into a large room, now the chapel,
once the prison of Madame Elizabeth, and afterwards the place in
which the Girondists held their last dreadful banquet before
execution, when they sang the Marseillaise around the dead man on
the table, and are said to have composed 'Mourir pour la Patrie.'
"To-day Arthur and I went by rail to Versailles, and took a little
carriage thence to Port Royal. The country was lovely, the forest
red and golden with autumnal tints. In a wooded valley, with a
green lawn winding through it like a river, watered by a little
brooklet, are the remains of Port Royal, the farmhouse where Racine
and Pascal lived and wrote, the dovecot and fountain of M\xE8re
Ang\xE9lique, the ruins of the church, the cemetery and cross, and
'the Solitude' where the nuns sat in solemn council around a
crucifix in the middle of the woods. In the house is a collection
of old pictures of the celebrities connected with the place.
Arthur, of course, peopled the whole place in imagination and
description with the figures of the past, and insisted on our
'walking in procession' (of two) down the ruined church.
"We went on to Dampierre, a fine old ch\xE2teau of the Duc de Luynes,
with green drives and avenues; and then to Chevreuse, where we
climbed up the hill to the ruined castle with machicolated towers
and a wide view over the orange-coloured woods, where the famous
Madame de Chevreuse lived."
[Illustration: PORT ROYAL.[145]]
"_Nov. 8._--The cold is almost insupportable! Parisians are so
accustomed to their horrible climate, that Madame Barraud cannot
understand my feeling it, and I have great difficulty in getting
even the one little fire we have, and am occupied all day in
shutting the doors, which every one else makes a point of leaving
open. Madame Barraud describes her own character exactly when she
stands in the middle of the room and says with a tragic voice, 'Je
suis juste, Monsieur, je suis bonne; mais, Monsieur, je suis
_s\xE9v\xE8re_!' She is excellent and generous on all great occasions,
but I never knew any one who had such a power of making people
uncomfortable by petty grievances and incessant fidgetting. Though
she will give me fifty times more food than I wish, nothing on
earth would induce her to light the fire in my bedroom, even in the
most ferocious weather, because it is not '_son habitude_'. 'La
bonne Providence m'a donn\xE9 un caract\xE8re,' she said the other day,
recounting her history. 'Avec ce caract\xE8re j'ai fait un mariage de
convenance avec M. Barraud: avec ce caract\xE8re, \xE9tant veuve, j'ai
pris ma petite fille de douze ans, et je suis venue \xE0 Paris pour
faire jouer son talent: avec ce caract\xE8re, quand les fils de mon
mari m'ont fait des mauvaises tourn\xE9es, je n'ai rien dit, mais je
les ai quitt\xE9s pour toujours, parceque je n'ai pas voulu voir le
nom de mon mari para\xEEtre dans des querelles: je suis bonne,
Monsieur, je suis juste, c'est ma nature; mais, Monsieur, je suis
_s\xE9v\xE8re_; et je ne les reverrais _jamais_.' Just now she is
possessed with the idea--solely based upon her having a new pair of
shoes--that Marie, the maid, certainly has a lover concealed
somewhere, and she constantly goes to look for him under the
kitchen-table, in the cupboard, &c. She hangs up the chicken or
goose for the next day's dinner in the little passage leading to my
room, and in the middle of the night I hear stealthy footsteps, and
a murmur of 'Oh, qu'il est gras! Oh, qu'il sera d\xE9licieux!' as she
pats it and feels it all over."
At the end of November I returned to England. Two years after, when we
were in Paris on our way to Italy, I went to the Rue des Saints-P\xE8res.
Madame Barraud was dead then, and her daughter, left alone, was
lamenting her so bitterly that she was quite unable to attend to her
work, and sat all day in tears. She never rallied. When I inquired, as
we returned through Paris, Mademoiselle Barraud had followed her mother
to the grave; constantly as she had been scolded by her, wearisome as
her life seemed to have been made, the grief for her loss had literally
broken her heart.
During the winter we were absent at Rome, our house of Lime was lent to
Aunt Esther (Mrs. Julius Hare) and Mrs. Alexander. Two cabinets
contained all our family MSS., which Aunt Esther knew that I valued
beyond everything else. Therefore, she forced both the cabinets open and
destroyed the whole--all Lady Jones's journals and letters from India,
all Bishop Shipley's letters--every letter, in fact, relating to any
member of the Hare family. She replaced the letters to my adopted mother
from the members of her own family in the front of the cabinets, and
thus the fact they had nothing behind them was never discovered till we
left Hurstmonceaux, two years after. When asked about it, Aunt Esther
only said, "Yes, I did it: I saw fit to destroy them." It was a strange
and lasting legacy of injustice to bequeath, and I think I cannot be
harsh in saying that only a very peculiar temperament could construe
such an act into "right-doing."
IX
WORK IN SOUTHERN COUNTIES
"How can a man learn to know himself? By reflection never, only by
action. In the measure in which thou seekest to do thy duty shalt
thou know what is in thee. But what is one's duty? The demand of
the hour."--GOETHE.
"Il est donn\xE9, de nos jours, \xE0 un bien petit nombre, m\xEAme parmi les
plus d\xE9licats et ceux qui les appr\xE9cient le mieux, de recueillir,
d'ordonner sa vie selon ses admirations et selon ses go\xFBts, avec
suite, avec noblesse."--SAINTE-BEUVE.
"Every man has a separate calling, an end peculiar to
himself."--FREDERICK SCHLEGEL.
"The old lord-treasurer Burleigh, if any one came to the Lords of
the Council for a licence to travel, he would first examine him of
England: if he found him ignorant, he would bid him stay at home
and know his own country first."--HENRY PEACHAM, 1622, _The
Compleat Gentleman_.
Upon returning to England in the winter of 1858, I felt more bitterly
that ever the want of sympathy which had formerly oppressed me. Though I
had the most idolatrous love for my dearest mother, and the most
over-anxious wish to please her, there was then none of the perfect
friendship between us, the easy interchange of every thought, which
there was in later years; for she was still so entirely governed by her
sisters-in-law as scarcely to have any individuality of her own. Often,
often, did she pain me bitterly by suspecting my motives and questioning
my actions, even when I was most desirous of doing right; and from the
long habit of being _told_ that I was idle and ignorant, that I cared
for nothing useful, and that I frittered away my life, she had grown to
believe it, and constantly assumed that it was so. Thus all my studies
were embittered to me. I was quite sure that nothing I did would be
appreciated, so that it never seemed worth while to do anything, and I
became utterly deficient in that cheerfulness of disposition which is
the most important element in all private success.
As I write this, and remember the number of delightful intimates by whom
my after years have been surrounded, I find it difficult to realise that
I had at this time _no_ friends who, by mutual confidence, could help or
cheer me. The best of them, Milligan, was now settled in London, being
in full work in the Ecclesiastical Commission Office, and though always
very kind to me, he had now fallen into a new set of acquaintances and
surroundings, and had no time to bestow upon me individually. George
Sheffield I seldom saw; and I had no other friends worth speaking of.
At this time all the intellectual impetus I received, and without which
I should have fallen into a state of stagnation, came from the house of
my aunt, Mrs. Stanley. Her grace, ease, and tact in society were
unrivalled. At her house, and there alone, I met people of original
ideas and liberal conversation. In this conversation, however, I was at
that time far too shy to join, and I was so dreadfully afraid of my
aunt, who, with the kindest intentions, had a very cold unsympathetic
manner in private, that--while I always appreciated her--I was unable to
reap much benefit from her society. Perhaps my chief friend was my
cousin Arthur Stanley, whom I was not the least afraid of, and whom I
believe to have been really fond of me at this time; also, though he had
a very poor opinion of my present powers and abilities, he did not seem,
like other people, utterly to despair of my future.
[Illustration: Catherine Stanley]
By my mother's desire, Archdeacon Moore (an old friend of the Hare
family) had written to Sir Antonio Panizzi,[146] then the
autocratic ruler of the British Museum Library, with a view to my
standing for a clerkship there. But this idea was afterwards abandoned,
and it was owing to the kindness of my cousin Arthur and that of Albert
Way (our connection by his marriage with Emmeline Stanley) that I
obtained from John Murray, the publisher, the employment of my next two
years--the "Handbook of Berks, Bucks, and Oxfordshire."
The commission to undertake this Handbook was one which I hailed with
rapture. The work was in every respect welcome to me. I had an inner
consciousness that I could do it well, and that while I was doing it I
should be acquiring information and advancing my own neglected
education. Besides, the people with whom the work would necessarily
bring me in contact were just those who were most congenial. My
principal residence would be Oxford, associated with some of my
happiest days, and where it was now a real pleasure to be near Arthur
Stanley; while, if my mother were ill or needed me in any way, there was
nothing in my work which would prevent my returning to her, and
continuing it at home. Above all, the fact of my having the work to do
would silence the ceaseless insinuations to my mother as to my desire
for an idle life of self-indulgence. I knew nothing then of the
mercantile value of my labour. I did not know (and I had no one to
inform me) that I was giving away the earnest work of two years for a
pitiful sum,[147] which was not a tenth of its value, and which was
utterly insufficient to meet its expenses.
How well I remember my first sight of John Murray, when he came to dine
at the Stanleys' house in Grosvenor Crescent--his hard, dry questions,
his sharp, concise note afterwards, in which he announced the terms of
our hardly-driven bargain, received by me as if it had been the greatest
of favours. Perhaps, however, the very character of the man I had to
deal with, and the rules he enjoined as to my work, were a corrective I
was much the better for at this time. The style of my writing was to be
as hard, dry, and incisive as my taskmaster. It was to be a mere
catalogue of facts and dates, mingled with measurements of buildings,
and irritating details as to the "E. E.," "Dec.," or "Perp."
architecture even of the most insignificant churches, this being the
peculiar hobby of the publisher. No sentiment, no expression of opinion
were ever to be allowed; all description was to be reduced to its barest
bones, dusty, dead, and colourless. In fact, I was to produce a book
which I knew to be utterly unreadable, though correct and useful for
reference. Many a paper struggle did I have with John Murray the
third--for there has been a dynasty of John Murrays in Albemarle
Street--as to the retention of paragraphs I had written. I remember how
this was especially the case as to my description of Redesdale, which
was one of the best things I have ever done. Murray, however, was never
averse to a contribution from one whose name was _already_ distinguished
either by rank or literature, and when Arthur Stanley contributed
passages with his signature to my account of Oxford, they were gladly
accepted, though antagonistic to all his rules.
[Illustration: CANON STANLEY'S HOUSE, OXFORD.]
Arthur Stanley had been made Professor of Ecclesiastical History at
Oxford before we had gone abroad, and, while we were absent, a Canonry
at Christ Church, attached to the professorship, had fallen in to him.
The Canon's house was just inside the Peckwater Gate leading into Tom
Quad, and had a stiff narrow walled garden behind, planted with
apple-trees, in the centre of which Arthur made a fountain. It had been
a trouble to the Canon that it was almost impossible in his position to
make the acquaintance he wished with the young men around him, and in
this I was able to be a help to him, and in some way to return the
kindness which often gave me a second home in his house for many months
together. His helpless untidiness, and utter inability to look after
himself, were also troubles which I could at least ameliorate. I rapidly
made acquaintances in Christ Church, several of which developed into
friendships, and I was only too glad to accede to Arthur's wish that I
should invite them to his house, where they became his acquaintances
also. Of Christ Church men at this time I became most familiar with
Brownlow,[148] Le Strange,[149] Edward Stanhope,[150] Stopford,[151]
Addie Hay,[152] and my second cousin, Victor Williamson.[153] A little
later, at the house of Mrs. Cradock, I was introduced to "Charlie
Wood."[154] I did not think that I should like him at first; but we
became intimate over an excursion to Watlington and Sherborne Castle,
and he has ever since been the best and dearest of my friends. Very soon
in constant companionship, we drew together in the Bodleian and Christ
Church libraries, we read together at home, and many were the delightful
excursions we made in home scenes, forerunners of after excursions in
more striking scenes abroad. We also often shared in the little feasts
in Mrs. Cradock's[155] garden, where we used to amuse ourselves and
others by composing and reciting verses.
I frequently left Christ Church for a week or two upon exploring raids
into the counties on which I was employed, and used to bring back
materials to work up in Oxford, with the help of the Bodleian and other
libraries. Very early, in this time of excursions, I received an
invitation (often repeated) from Jane, Viscountess Barrington, a first
cousin of my real mother, to visit her at Beckett near Shrivenham. I had
seen so little then of any members of my real family, that I went to
Beckett with more shyness and misgivings than I have ever taken to any
other place; but I soon became deeply attached to my dear cousin Lady
Barrington, who began from the first to show an interest in me, which
was more that of a tenderly affectionate aunt than of any more distant
relation. Lord Barrington, the very type of a courteous English
nobleman, was also most kind. Of their daughters, two were
unmarried--Augusta, who was exceedingly handsome, brimful of very
accurate information, and rather alarming on first acquaintance; and
Adelaide, who was of a much brighter, gentler nature. I thought at this
time, however, that Lina, Lady Somerton, was more engaging than either
of her sisters. I often found her at Beckett with her children, of whom
the little Nina--afterwards Countess of Clarendon--used to be put into a
large china pot upon the staircase when she was naughty. Beckett was a
very large luxurious house in the Tudor style, with a great hall, built
by Thomas Liddell, Lady Barrington's brother. The park was rather flat,
but had a pretty piece of water with swans, and a picturesque
summer-house built by Inigo Jones. Much of the family fortune came from
Lord Barrington's uncle, Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham, who used to
say he was the only licensed poacher in England--"I Shute, by the grace
of God," &c. This old bishop, when his nephew brought his bride to visit
him--a wedding visit--at Mongewell, filled all the trees with rare
cockatoos and parrots, in the hope that when she heard them scream, she
would think they were the native birds of that district. Lord and Lady
Barrington took me, amongst other places, to see Mr. Aitkens of Kingston
Lyle--"the Squire" in Tom Hughes's "Scouring of the White Horse," and
also to see the creature itself, which is far more like a weasel than a
horse. The kindness of Lord Barrington also secured my favourable
reception at every other house in the county, and many were the visits I
paid in Berkshire at places described in my Handbook.
Much kindness was also shown me by old Lady Stanley of Alderley,[156]
who was often very violent, indeed quite furious, about her own
opinions; but full of the most sincere interest and kindness towards me
for my mother's sake. Holmwood, near Henley, whither I went several
times to visit her, was an enchanting place, with luxuriant lawn and
flowers, fine trees, and beautiful distant views. A succession of
grandchildren always filled the house, and found it most enjoyable, the
two unmarried aunts--Rianette (Maria Margaret) and Louisa--being, as one
of them (Lady Airlie) has often told me, "the good fairies of their
childhood." Like most Stanleys, they were peculiarly subject to what
that family calls "fits of righteous indignation" with all who differed
from them; but nobody minded. Having had the most interesting youth
themselves, during which their uncle (afterwards Bishop Stanley) and
other relations were always inventing something for their amusement,
they had a special gift for interesting others, so that those who went
to visit them always felt that though they received many and often
unmerited scoldings, their visit could never be dull. How well I
remember still Louisa Stanley's graphic imitation of many people of her
long-ago--especially of old Mr. Holland, the Knutsford doctor,[157] who
would come in saying, "Well, Miss Louisa, and how are we to-day? We must
take a little more rubbub and magnesia; and I would eat a leetle plain
pudden with a leetle shugger over it!" and then, ringing the bell,
"Would you send round my hearse, if you please?"
Lady Stanley herself had been the pupil of Gibbon at Lausanne, and had
much to tell of past days; and the pertinacity with which she maintained
her own opinions about them and everything else, rendered her
recollections very vivid and amusing. All the family, including my
mother, were so dreadfully afraid of Lady Stanley, that a visit to her
always partook of the nature of an adventure; but it generally turned
out to be a very charming adventure, and I always look back to her with
affectionate gratitude, and feel that there was a great charm in the
singleness, sincerity, and freshness of her character. When I was at
Holmwood, I used to engage a little carriage and go out for long
excursions of eight or ten hours into the country; and when I returned
just before dinner, Lady Stanley was so anxious to hear my adventures,
that she would not wait till I came down, but would insist upon the
whole history through the bedroom door as I was dressing.
If people were not afraid of her, Lady Stanley liked them the better for
it, and she always heartily enjoyed a joke. I remember hearing how one
day at Alderley she raged and stormed because the gentlemen sat longer
after dinner than she liked. Old Mr. Davenport was the first to come
into the drawing-room. "Well now, what _have_ you been doing?" she
exclaimed; "what _can_ you have found to talk about to keep you so
long?"--"Would you really like to know what we've been talking about,
my lady?" said Mr. Davenport. "Yes indeed," she stormed. "Well," said
Mr. Davenport very deliberately, "we talked first about the depression
in the salt (mines), and that led us on inadvertently to pepper, and
that led us to cayenne, and that, my lady, led us ... to yourself,"--and
she was vastly amused. One day her maid told her that there was a
regular uproar downstairs about precedence, as to which of the maids was
to come in first to prayers. "Oh, _that_ is very easily settled," said
Lady Stanley; "the ugliest woman in the house must always, of course,
have the precedence," and she heard no more about it.
Another house which I was frequently invited to use as a centre for my
excursions was that of my father's first cousin, Penelope, Mrs. Warren,
who was living in the old home of Lady Jones at Worting, near
Basingstoke. It was in a most dreary, cold, wind-stricken district, and
was especially selected on that account by Lady Jones, because of its
extreme contrast to the India which she abominated. Internally, however,
the old red-brick house was very comfortable and charming, and Mrs.
Warren herself a very sweet and lovable old lady, tenderly cared for by
her sons and daughters, many of whom were always about her, though only
one of the latter, Anna, was unmarried. Mrs. Warren had been the eldest
of the daughters of Dean Shipley, and the only one who never gave her
family any trouble, and who was invariably loved and honoured by its
other members. Her character through life had been that of a peacemaker,
and in her old age she seemed almost glorified by the effulgence of the
love which had emanated from her, no single member of the family having
a recollection of her which was not connected with some kindly word or
unselfish action.[158] That Lady Jones should bequeath Worting to her
was felt by all the other nephews and nieces to have been most natural.
"Who should it have been to, if not to Penelope?" She liked to talk of
old times, and her reminiscences were most interesting. She was also
very proud of her family, especially of the Mordaunts, and of our direct
descent, through the Shipleys, from the youngest son of Edward I. It was
on one of my early visits at Worting that I first made acquaintance with
my cousin Harriet, Mrs. Thornton, niece of Mrs. Warren, and one of the
daughters of Bishop Heber.[159] She described the second marriage of
her mother to Count Valsamachi in the Greek church at Venice, and the
fun she and her sister thought it to walk round the altar with huge
wedding favours in their hands. She was full of amusing stories of
India, from which she was just returned: would tell how one day she was
sitting next a Rajah who was carving a pie, and when he lifted the crust
a whole flock of little birds flew out--"Whir-r-r-r!" said the Rajah as
they flew all over the room; how, one day, being surprised that an
expected ham was not brought in to dinner, she went out and found it
lying in the court, with all the native servants round it in a circle
spitting at it; and how one day at the Cape she was told that a woman
was bitten by a venomous snake, and going out, found her eating a toad
as a remedy. One of Mrs. Thornton's stories, which I have often repeated
since, is so curious as to deserve insertion here.
"M. de Sartines had been brought up by an old friend of his family
who lived in Picardy. The ch\xE2teau of his old friend was the home of
his youth, and the only place where he felt sure that all his
failings would be overlooked and all his fancies and wishes would
be considered.
"While he was absent from France on diplomatic service, M. de
Sartines heard with great grief that his old friend was dead. In
losing him, he lost not only the friend who had been as a second
father, but the only home which remained to him in France. He felt
his loss very much--so much, indeed, that for many years he did not
return to France at all, but spent his time of leave in travelling
in Italy and elsewhere.
"Some years after, M. de Sartines, finding himself in Paris,
received a letter from the nephew of his old friend, who had
succeeded to the Picardy property. It was a very nice letter
indeed, saying how much he and his wife wished to keep up old
family ties and connections, and that though he was well aware that
it would cost M. de Sartines much to revisit the ch\xE2teau so
tenderly connected with memories of the dead, still, if he could
make that effort, no guest would be more affectionately welcomed,
and that he and his wife would do their utmost to make him feel
that the friendship which had been held had not passed away, but
was continued to another generation. It was so nice a letter that
M. de Sartines felt that he ought not to reject the hand of
friendship stretched out in so considerate and touching a manner,
and though it certainly cost him a great effort, he went down to
the ch\xE2teau in Picardy.
"His old friend's nephew and his wife received him on the doorstep.
Everything was prepared to welcome him. They had inquired of former
servants which room he had occupied and how he liked it arranged,
and all was ready accordingly. They had even inquired about and
provided his favourite dishes at dinner. Nothing was wanting which
the most disinterested solicitude could effect.
"When M. de Sartines retired to his room for the night, he was
filled with conflicting emotions. The blank which he felt in the
loss of his old friend was mingled with a grateful sense of the
kindness he had received from the nephew. He felt he could not
sleep, or would be long in doing so; but having made up a large
fire, for it was very cold weather, he went to bed.
"In process of time, as he lay wakefully with his head upon the
pillow, he became aware of the figure of a little wizened old man
hirpling towards the fire. He thought he must be dreaming, but, as
he listened, the old man spoke--'Il y a longtemps que je n'ai vu un
feu, il faut que je me chauffe.'
"The blood of M. de Sartines ran cold within him as the figure
turned slowly round towards the bed and continued in trembling
accents--'Il y a longtemps que je n'ai vu un lit, il faut que je me
couche.'
"But every fibre in M. de Sartines' body froze as the old man, on
reaching the bed, drew the curtains, and seeing him, exclaimed--'Il
y a longtemps que je n'ai vu M. de Sartines, il faut que je
l'embrasse.'
"M. de Sartines almost died of fright. But fortunately he did not
quite die. He lived to know that it was his old friend himself. The
nephew had got tired of waiting for the inheritance; he had
imprisoned his uncle in the cellar, and had given out his death,
and had a false funeral of a coffin filled with stones. The
invitation to his uncle's friend was a _coup de th\xE9\xE2tre_: if any
suspicions had existed, they must have been lulled for ever by the
presence of such a guest in the ch\xE2teau. But on the very day on
which M. de Sartines had arrived, the old gentleman had contrived
to escape from his cell, and wandering half imbecile about the
house, made his way to the room where he remembered having so often
been with his friend, and found there his friend himself.
"M. de Sartines saw the rightful owner of the castle reinstated,
and the villainy of the wicked nephew exposed; but the old man died
soon afterwards."
Here is another story which Mrs. Thornton told, apropos of the benefits
of cousinship:--
"Frederick the Great was one day travelling incognito, when he met
a student on his way to Berlin, and asked him what he was going to
do there. 'Oh,' said the student, 'I am going to Berlin to look for
a cousin, for I have heard of so many people who have found cousins
in Berlin, and who have risen through their influence to rank and
power, that I am going to try if I cannot find one too.' Frederick
had much further conversation with him, and on parting said, 'Well,
if you trust to me, I believe that I shall be able to find a cousin
for you before you arrive at Berlin.' The student thanked his
unknown friend, and they parted.
"Soon after he reached Berlin, an officer of the court came to the
student, and said that he was his cousin, and that he had already
used influence for him with the King, who had desired that he
should preach before him on the following Sunday, but that he
should use the text which the King himself should send him, and no
other.
"The student was anxious to have the text, that he might consider
his sermon, but one day after another of the week passed, and at
last Sunday came and no text was sent. The time for going to church
came, and no text had arrived. The King and the court were seated,
and the unhappy student proceeded with the service, but still no
text was given. At last, just as he was going up into the pulpit, a
sealed paper was given to him. After the prayer he opened it, and
it was ... blank! He turned at once to the congregation, and
showing them the two sides of the paper, said, '_Here_ is nothing,
and _there_ is nothing, and out of nothing God made the world'--and
he preached the most striking sermon the court had ever heard."
Mrs. Thornton described how old Mr. Thornton had been staying in
Somersetshire with Sir Thomas Acland, when he heard two countrymen
talking together. One of them said to the other, who was trying to
persuade him to do something, "Wal, noo, as they say, 'shake an ass and
go.'" Mr. Thornton came back and said to Sir Thomas, "What very
extraordinary proverbial expressions they have in these parts. Just now
I heard a man say 'shake an ass and go'--such a _very_ extraordinary
proverbial expression." "Well," said Sir Thomas, "the fact is there are
a great many French expressions lingering in this neighbourhood: that
meant 'Chacun \xE0 son go\xFBt!'"
Of the new acquaintances I made in Oxfordshire, those of whose
hospitality I oftenest availed myself were the Cottrell Dormers, who
lived at the curious old house of Rousham, above the Cherwell, near
Heythrop. It is a beautiful place, with long evergreen shrubberies,
green lawns with quaint old statues, and a long walk shaded by yews,
with a clear stream running down a stone channel in the midst. Within,
the house is full of old family portraits, and has a wonderful
collection of MSS., and the pedigree of the family from Noah! Mr. and
Mrs. Dormer were quaint characters: he always insisting that he was a
Roman Catholic in disguise, chiefly to plague his wife, and always
reading the whole of Pope's works, in the large quarto edition, through
once a year; she full of kind-heartedness, riding by herself about the
property to manage the estate and cottagers, always welcoming you with a
hearty "Well, to be sure, and how do _you_ do?" She was a _ma\xEEtresse
femme_, who ruled the house with a sunshiny success which utterly set at
nought the old proverb--
"La maison est mis\xE9rable et m\xE9chante
O\xF9 la Poule plus haut que le Coq chante."
Mrs. Dormer was somehow descended from one of the daughters of Sir
Thomas More, and at Cokethorpe, the place of her brother, Mr.
Strickland, was one of the three great pictures by Holbein of the family
of Sir Thomas More, which was long in the possession of the
Lenthalls.[160] Another place in the neighbourhood of Rousham which I
visited was Fritwell Manor, a most picturesque old house, rented by the
father of my college friend Forsyth Grant--"Kyrie." Fritwell is a
haunted house, and was inhabited by two families. When the Edwardes
lived there in the summer, no figure was seen, but stains of fresh blood
were constantly found on the staircase. When the Grants lived there, for
hunting, in the winter, there was no blood, but the servants who went
down first in the morning would meet on the staircase an old man in a
grey dressing-gown, bleeding from an open wound in the throat. It is
said that Sir Baldwin Wake, a former proprietor, quarrelled with his
brother about a lady of whom they were both enamoured, and, giving out
that he was insane, imprisoned him till real madness ensued. His prison
was at the top of the house, where a sort of large human dog-kennel
still exists, to which the unfortunate man is said to have been
chained.
I made a delightful excursion with "Kyrie" to Wroxton Abbey and
Broughton Castle--Lord Saye and Sele's--where we were invited to
luncheon by Mr. Fiennes and Lady Augusta, in the former of whom I most
unexpectedly found 'Twisleton'[161]--an old hero boy-friend of my Harrow
school-days, whom I regarded then much as David Copperfield did
Steerforth. The old castle is very picturesque, and the church full of
curious monuments.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Christ Church, Oxford, April 25, 1859._--Arthur and I dined last
night at Canon Jelf's. He was for thirteen years tutor to the King
of Hanover, and while at the court fell in love with Countess
Schlippenbach, the Queen's lady-in-waiting, who married him.... Dr.
Jelf told a great deal that was interesting about the King: how, as
Prince George, he would insist upon playing at being his Eton fag,
brush his clothes, make his toast, &c.: that he was with the Prince
at the time of the fatal accident which caused his blindness, when,
in the garden at Kew, having just given half-a-crown to a beggar,
he was whisking his purse round and round, when the ring at the end
went into his eye. A fortnight's anxiety followed, and then came
the great grief of his dear Prince one day saying to him when out
shooting, 'Will you give me your arm, sir? I don't see quite so
well as I ought to do. I think we had better go home.' Afterwards,
instead of murmuring, the Prince only said, 'Those who will not
obey must suffer: you told me not to whisk my things about in that
way, and I disobeyed: it is right that I should suffer for it.'
"He gave many beautiful pictures of the King's after life: how the
dear blind King, who bears no outward mark of his misfortune,
always turns to the sun, as if seeking the light: of his marriage
with his cousin of Saxe-Altenbourg, a true love-match: that he, the
old tutor, was never forgotten, and that on his last birthday, when
he least expected it, a royal telegram announced--'The King, the
Queen, and the royal children of Hanover wish Dr. Jelf many happy
new years.' The King always writes to Dr. and Mrs. Jelf on their
wedding-day, which even their own family do not always remember,
and on their silver-wedding he sent them a beautiful portrait of
himself.
"Arthur, I imagine, rather likes having me here, though no
outsiders would imagine so; but he finds me useful after a fashion,
and is much annoyed if I allude to ever going into lodgings. He
certainly does _exactly_ what he likes when I am there, and is
quite as unreserved in his ways as if nobody whatever was present.
I am generally down first. He comes in pre-engrossed, and there is
seldom any morning salutation. At breakfast I sit (he wills it so)
at the end of the table, pour out his excessively weak tea, and put
the heavy buttered buns which he loves within his easy reach. When
we are alone, I eat my own bread and butter in silence; but if
undergraduates breakfast with us, it is my duty, if I know
anything about it, so to turn the conversation that he may learn
what their 'lines' are, and converse accordingly. Certainly the
merry nonsense and childlike buoyancy which cause his breakfast
parties to be so delightful, make the contrast of his silent
irresponsiveness rather trying when we are alone--it is such a
complete 'you are not worth talking to.' However, I have learnt to
enjoy the first, and to take no notice of the other; indeed, if I
can do so quite effectually, it generally ends in his becoming
pleasanter. In amiable moments he will sometimes glance at my MSS.,
and give them a sanction like that of Cardinal Richelieu--'Accepi,
legi, probavi.' After breakfast, he often has something for me to
do for him, great plans, maps, or drawings for his lectures, on
huge sheets of paper, which take a good deal of time, but which he
never notices except when the moment comes for using them. All
morning he stands at his desk by the study window (where I see him
sometimes from the garden, which he expects me to look after), and
he writes sheet after sheet, which he sometimes tears up and flings
to rejoin the letters of the morning, which cover the carpet in all
directions.[162] It would never do for him to marry, a wife would
be so annoyed at his hopelessly untidy ways; at his tearing every
new book to pieces, for instance, because he is too impatient to
cut it open (though I now do a good deal in this way). Meantime, as
Goethe says, 'it is the errors of men that make them amiable,' and
I believe he is all the better loved for his peculiarities.
Towards the middle of the day, I sometimes have an indication that
he has no one to walk with him, and would wish me to go, and he
likes me to be in the way then, in case I am wanted, but I am never
to expect to be talked to during the walk. If not required, I amuse
myself, or go on with my own work, and indeed I seldom see Arthur
till the evening, when, if any one dines for whom he thinks it
worth while to come out of himself, he is very pleasant, and
sometimes very entertaining."
My mother spent a great part of the spring of 1859 at Clifton, whither I
went to visit her, afterwards making a _tourette_ by myself to
Salisbury, Southampton, Beaulieu, and Winchester.
"_Salisbury, April 12, 1859._--At 8-1/2 I was out on bleak
Salisbury Plain, where, as the driver of my gig observed, 'it is a
whole coat colder than in the valley.' What an immense desert it
is! The day, so intensely grey, with great black clouds sweeping
across the sky, was quite in character with the long lines of
desolate country. At last we turned off the road over the turf, and
in the distance rose the gigantic temple, with the sun shining
through the apertures in the stones. It was most majestic and
impressive, not a creature in sight, except a quantity of rabbits
scampering about, and a distant shepherd."
The latter part of June 1859 I spent most happily in a pony-carriage
tour in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire with my friend George Sheffield,
who had just passed his examination at the Foreign Office. It was on
this occasion that, as we were driving under a park wall in
Buckinghamshire, I said to George, "Inside that park is a very fine old
house, and inside the house is a very fine old sundial. We will go to
see the house, and we will take away the sundial;" and we _did_, though
at that moment I did not even know the name of the people who lived
there. The old house was the Vatche, which had belonged to my
great-great-grandfather, Bishop Hare, who married its heiress in the
reign of George II., and I had heard of the sundial from the
churchwarden of Chalfont, with whom I had had some correspondence about
my ancestor's tomb. It was made on the marriage of Bishop Hare with Miss
Alston and bore his arms. The family of Allen, then living at the
Vatche, allowed us to see the house, and my enthusiasm at sight of the
sundial, which was lying neglected in a corner, so worked upon the
feelings of Mrs. Allen, that she gave it me. It is now in the garden at
Holmhurst.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_June 16._--I have enjoyed a visit to the Henry Leycesters at
White Place, which lies low in the meadows, but has the charm of a
little creek full of luxuriant water-plants, down which Henry
Leycester punts his guests into the Thames opposite Clifden; and
how picturesque are the old yew-trees and winding walks of that
beautiful place. Henry Leycester, to look upon, is like one of the
magnificent Vandykes in the Brignole Palace at Genoa. Little Mrs.
Leycester is a timid shrinking creature, who daily becomes terribly
afraid of the domestic ghost (a lady carrying her head) as evening
comes on. 'Imagine my feelings, Mr. Hare,' she says, 'my awful
position as a wife and a mother, when my husband is away, and I am
left alone in the long evenings with _her_.'"
"_June 17, Christ Church._--Last week the Dean, with much
imprudence, punished two Christ Church men most severely for the
same offence, but _one more than the other_. The next night the
Deanery garden was broken into, the rose-trees torn up and
flower-beds destroyed, the children's swing cut down, and the name
of the injured man cut in large letters in the turf. It has created
great indignation.
"My chief work, now I am at Oxford, is in the Bodleian, where I
have much to look out and refer to, and where everything is made
delightful by Mr. Coxe, the librarian,[163] who is not only the
most accurate and learned person in the world, but also the most
sympathetic, lively, and lovable. 'Never mind, dear boy,' he
always says, the more trouble I give him. Anything more unlike the
cut-and-dried type of Oxford Dons cannot be imagined. He has given
me a plant (Linaria purpurea) from the tomb of Cicero.
"I should like to take my Master's degree, but the fees will be
about \xA320. I could then vote at the election. I should certainly
vote against Gladstone, though Arthur says he should vote for him
'with both hands and both feet.' ... I have great satisfaction in
being here now, in feeling that I can be useful to Arthur, in
preparing drawings for his lectures, &c., also that he really
prefers my presence to my absence."
"_July 4._--I sate up till twelve last night preparing 'the bidding
prayer' for Arthur (who was to preach the 'Act Sermon to-day at St.
Mary's)--immensely long, as the _whole_ of the founders and
benefactors have to be mentioned. Imagine my horror when, after the
service, the Vice-Chancellor came up to Arthur and demanded to know
why _he_ had not been prayed for! I had actually omitted his name
of all others! Arthur said it was all the fault of 'Silvanus.' In
his sermon on Deborah, Arthur described how the long vacation,
'like the ancient river, the river Kishon,' was about to form a
barrier, and might wash away all the past and supply a
halting-place from which to begin a new life: that the bondage
caused by concealment of faults or debts might now be broken: that
now, when undergraduates were literally 'going to their father,'
they might apply the story of the Prodigal Son, and obtain that
freedom which is truth."
[Illustration: HODNET CHURCH.]
In July I paid a first visit to my cousins, the Heber Percys, at Hodnet
Hall, in order to meet Countess Valsamachi (Mrs. Heber Percy's
mother).[164] The old Hodnet Hall was a long low two-storied house, like
an immense cottage, or rather like a beehive, from the abundant family
life which overcrowded it. The low dining-room was full of curious
pictures of the Vernons, whose heiress married one of the Hebers, but
when the pictures had been sent up to London to be cleaned, the cleaner
had cut all their legs off. At this time a debt of \xA340,000 existed upon
the Hodnet estate. Mr. Percy's father, the Bishop of Carlisle, had
promised to pay it off when certain fees came in. At last the fees were
paid, and the papers were in the house, only awaiting the signature of
the Bishop. That day he fell down dead. When it was told to his
children, they only said, "It is the will of God; we must not complain."
I had much conversation with Lady Valsamachi. Talking of religion, she
spoke of an atheist who once grumbled at the dispensation of a gourd
having such a slender stem, while an acorn was supported by an oak.
"When he had done speaking, the acorn fell upon his nose; had it been
the gourd, his nose would have been no more!"
We walked to where Stoke had been, so tenderly connected with past days.
All was altered, except the Terne flowing through reedy meadows. It was
less painful to me to see it than on my last visit, but cost me many
pangs.
I joined my mother at Toft, where our dear cousin Charlotte Leycester
was acting as mistress of the house, and gave us a cordial welcome to
the old family home. Greatly did my mother enjoy being there, and the
sight of familiar things and people. Especially was she welcomed by an
old woman named Betty Strongitharm; I remember how this old woman said,
"When I am alone, I think, and think, and think, and the end of all my
thinking is that Christ is all in all ... but I do not want to go to
heaven alone; I want to take a many others along with me."
JOURNAL.
"When we left Toft, we went to our cousins at Thornycroft. At
Thornycroft was a labourer named Rathbone. One winter day, when his
wife was in her confinement, she was in great want of something
from Macclesfield, which her husband undertook to get for her when
he went to his work in the town, but he said that he must take his
little girl of ten years old with him, that she might bring it back
to her mother. The woman entreated him not to take the child, as
the snow was very deep, and she feared that she might not find her
way home again. However, the father insisted, and set off, taking
his little girl with him. The purchase was made and the child set
off to return home with it, but she--never arrived.
"When Rathbone reached home in the evening, and found that his
child had not appeared, he was in an agony of terror, and set off
at once to search for her. He traced her to Monk's Heath. People
had seen her there, and directed her back to Henbury, but she
seemed to have lost her way again. Rathbone next traced her to a
farmhouse at Peover, where the people had had the barbarity to turn
her out at night and direct her back to Henbury. Then all trace of
her was lost.
"At last Rathbone was persuaded by his friends and neighbours to
apply to a woman whom they called 'the White Witch' at Manchester,
and to her he went. She told him to look into a glass and tell her
what he saw there. He looked into the glass and said, 'I see a man
holding up his hat.' 'Well,' she said, 'then go on with your
search, and when you meet a man holding up his hat, he will tell
you where your child is.' So he returned and went again to search,
taking another man with him. At length, as they were going down a
lane, Rathbone exclaimed, 'There he is!'--'Who?' said the
companion, for he only saw a man running and holding up his hat.
That man told them that he had just found the body of a child under
a tree, and there, near a pond, frozen to death, lay Rathbone's
little girl.
"When we were at Thornycroft, Rathbone was still overwhelmed with
contrition for what he considered the sin of having consulted the
witch."
From Cheshire we went to the English Lakes. The curious old King's Arms
Inn at Lancaster, described by Dickens, was then in existence, and it
was a pleasure to sleep there, and walk in the morning upon the high
terrace in front of the church and castle. From Ambleside, we spent a
delightful day in making the round by Dungeon Ghyll and Blea Tarn, where
we drew the soft grey peaks of Langdale Pikes, framed in dark
heather-covered rocks, and in the foreground the blue tarn sleeping amid
the pastures. From Keswick I ascended Skiddaw, and had a glorious view
across the billows of mountains to the sea and the faint outlines of the
Isle of Man. Another delightful day was spent with the mother and Lea in
Borrowdale. One of the most beautiful effects I have ever seen was in
crossing to Buttermere by Borrowdale Hawse, a tremendous wild mountain
chasm, into which the setting sun was pouring floods of crimson light as
we descended, smiting into blood the waters of the little torrent which
was struggling down beside us through the rocks. We arrived at
Buttermere very late, and found not a single room unoccupied in the
village, so had to return in the dark night to Keswick.
We were much interested in Dumfries, in many ways one of the most
foreign-looking towns in Britain, where we remained several days,
making excursions to the exquisitely graceful ruins of Lincluden Abbey;
to New Abbey (glorious in colour), founded by Devorgilda to contain the
heart of John Baliol; to the Irongray Church, where Helen Walker, the
original of Jeannie Deans, is buried, and where, on a rocky knoll under
some old oaks, is a desolate Covenanter's grave; to Ellisland, the
primitive cottage-home of Burns, overlooking the purple hills and clear
rushing Nith; and to the great desolate castle of Caerlaverock near
Solway Firth. The old churchyard of Dumfries reminded us of P\xE8re la
Chaise in its forest of tombs, but was far more picturesque. Burns is
buried there, with all his family. The exaggerated worship which follows
Burns in Scotland rather sets one against him, and shows how many a
saint got into the Calendar; for there are many there whose private
lives would as little bear inspection as his. His son, formerly a clerk
in Somerset House, had long been living at Dumfries upon a pension, and
died there three years before our visit. Many are the old red sandstone
gravestones in Dumfries and its neighbourhood bearing inscriptions to
Covenanters, telling how they were "martyrs for adhering to the word of
God, Christ's kingly government in his house, and the covenanted work
of Reformation against tyrannie, perjury, and prelacie."
Amongst our Roman friends had been Mrs. Fotheringham of Fotheringham,
whom we visited at the so-called Fotheringham Castle, a comfortable
modern house, in Forfarshire. We went with her to spend a day with the
charming old Thomas Erskine,[165] author of the "Essays," and since well
known from his "Letters." With him lived his two beautiful and venerable
old sisters, Mrs. Stirling and Mrs. Paterson, and their home of
Linlathen contained many noble Italian pictures. Another excursion was
to visit Miss Stirling Graham at Duntrune, a beautiful place overlooking
the blue firth and bay of St. Andrews. Miss Graham was the authoress and
heroine of "Mystifications," intimately bound up with all the literary
associations of Edinburgh in the first half of the nineteenth century.
She was also the nearest surviving relation of Claverhouse, and Duntrune
was filled with relics of him.[166] She was a great bee-fancier and
bee-friend, and would allow the bees to settle all over her. "My dear,
where can you have lived all your life not to know about bees?" she said
to a young lady who asked her some simple questions about them. At
Fotheringham, the principal relic is a portrait of "the Flower of
Yarrow" (said by Sir Walter Scott to have been such an ugly old woman at
seventy), singing from a piece of music. The last cannibals in Scotland
lived in a glen near Fotheringham, where carters and ploughmen were
perpetually disappearing. The glen was known to be the abode of robbers,
and at last a strong force was sent against them, and they were all
killed, except one little girl of ten years old, whom it was thought a
shame to destroy. She had not been with her preservers many days before
she said, "Why do you never eat man's flesh? for if you once ate that,
you would never wish to eat anything else again." My mother made an
excursion from Fotheringham to see Panmure, where the housekeeper said
to her that her Lord[167] was "very bad, for he had not killed a single
_beast_ that year."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_August 22._--I went early by rail to Stonehaven, and walked to
Dunottar. The sea was of the softest Mediterranean blue, and the
walk along the edge of the cliffs, through the cornfields, looking
down first on the old town and then on the different little coves
with their curiously twisted and richly coloured rocks, most
delightful. The castle is hidden by the uplands at first, but
crowns the ridge of a magnificent rock, which runs far out into the
sea, with a line of battered towers. In the depths are reefs
covered with seaweed, between which the sea flows up in deep green
pools.
"A narrow ledge of rock, of which you can scarcely make out whether
it is natural or artificial, connects the castle with the mainland,
and here through an arch in the wall you look down into a second
bay, where the precipices, crested by a huge red fragment of tower,
descend direct upon the water. High up in one of the turrets lives
the keeper, a girl, who said that she was so used to climbing, that
she could go anywhere where there was the least rest for the sole
of her foot; that she did not care to have anything to hold on by,
and had never known what it was to be giddy. The 'Whigs' Vault' is
shown, in which a hundred and twenty Covenanters were chained, and,
beneath it, the awfully close stifling dungeon in which forty-eight
were confined, and many of them suffocated. The place still remains
where they were let down from the more airy vault above, and also
the hole through which their food was transmitted to them. On one
side of the dungeon is the well of brackish water which is said (as
in the prison of St. Peter) to have sprung up in one night to
quench their thirst; on the other, the hole which, in their
agonised desperation, they scratched with their hands through the
wall, and by which five-and-twenty tried to escape, but were all
dashed to pieces against the rocks or taken, except two; while, if
the dark night had only allowed them to see it, there is a little
footpath near, by which they might all have passed in safety. In
the castle also are the chamber in which the Regalia of Scotland
were concealed, and the well once supplied by pipes, the cutting of
which by Cromwell caused the surrender of the garrison."
"_August 23, Eccles Greig, Montrose._--This is a charming place
belonging to Kyrie's[168] father, and of which he is the heir. Miss
Grant drove me to-day to Denfenella, a beautiful ravine of
tremendous depth, where a lovely burn dashes over a precipice, and
then rushes away to the sea through depths of rock and fern, amid
which it makes a succession of deep shadowy pools. Endless are the
Scottish stories about this place:
"That Queen Fenella--the fairy queen--first washed her clothes in
the bright shining Morne, and then walked on the tops of the trees,
by which means she escaped.
"That Queen Fenella, having murdered her husband, fled to
Denfenella, where she flung herself over the rocks to escape
justice.
"That Queen Fenella, widow of Kenneth III., after the death of her
husband and her own escape from the Castle of Kincardine, fled to
Denfenella, where she was taken and put to death.
"That Queen Fenella loved a beautiful youth, but that her enemies
tried to force her to marry another; and that, rather than do so,
she fled from her father's castle, which is at an immense distance
from this, but, on reaching Denfenella, she felt that farther
escape was hopeless, and let herself float down the stream and be
carried away over the waterfall into the sea.
"All the stories, however, agree in one fact, that at midnight the
beautiful Fenella still always walks in the braes where she died,
and still washes her clothes in the bright shining Morne.
"We went on to the 'Came of Mathers,' a wild cove on the seashore
with a ruined castle on the farthest point of an inaccessible
precipice, beneath which the green waves rush through deep rifts of
the rock, which is worn into caves and arches. The Sheriff of these
parts was once very unpopular, and the lairds complained to King
James, who said in a joke that it would be a very good thing if the
Sheriff were boiled and cut up and made into browse. When the
lairds heard this, they beguiled the Sheriff to Gavoch, where they
had a huge caldron prepared, into which they immediately popped
him, and boiled him, and cut him up. Then, literally to carry out
the King's words, they each ate a part of him. Having done this,
they were all so dreadfully afraid of King James, that they sought
every possible means of escape, and the Laird of Arbuthnot, who had
been one of the most forward in boiling the Sheriff, built this
impregnable castle, where he lived in defiance of the King.
"Beneath the castle is a deep cleft in the rock, which seems
endless. It is said to continue in a subterranean passage to
Lauriston. The drummer of Lauriston once went up it, and tried to
work his way through, but he never was seen again; and at night, it
is said, that the drummer of Lauriston is still heard beating his
drum in the cavern beneath."
Upon leaving Eccles Greig, I joined my mother, and went with her to St.
Andrews, which I had always greatly desired that she should see. Even
more than the wonderful charm of the place at this time was that of
seeing much of the genial, witty, eccentric Provost, Sir Hugh Lyon
Playfair. He first came up to me when I was drawing--an old man in a
cloak--and invited me into his garden, whither we returned several
times. That garden was the most extraordinary place, representing all
the important facts of the history of the world, from chaos and the
creation of the sun down to the Reform Bill, "whence," said Sir Hugh,
"you may date the decline of the British Empire." On the same chart were
marked the lengths of all the principal ships, while representations of
the planets indicated their distance from the sun! No verbal
description, however, can recall the genial oddity of the garden's
owner. On Saturdays he used to open his garden to the public, and follow
in the crowd to hear their opinion of himself. He said they would often
say, "Ah! the poor Provost, he has more money than brains; he is sadly
deficient here," pointing to the forehead. Once some of the people said
to him, "We do so want to see the Provost; how _would_ it be possible to
see Sir Hugh?"--"Oh," he answered, "I think you had better go and look
in at the windows, and you will be sure to see him." So they all crowded
to the windows, but there was no one to be seen. "Oh," he said, "I'll
tell you why that is: that is because he is under the table. It is a way
Sir Hugh has. He is so dreadfully shy, that whenever he hears any one
coming, he always goes under the table directly." Presently, on going
out, they met an official, who, coming up, touched his hat and said, "If
you please, Sir Hugh, I've spoken to that policeman, as you ordered me,"
and the horrified people discovered their mistake, to Sir Hugh's intense
amusement.
JOURNAL.
"_August 30._--A stormy day, but I went by train to Tynehead for
Crichton. Two old ladies of ninety got into the carriage after me.
An old gentleman opposite made a civil speech to one of them, upon
which she tartly replied, 'I don't hear a word, for I thank
Almighty God for all His mercies, and most of all that He has made
me quite deaf, for if I heard I should be obliged to speak to
_you_, and I don't _want_ to speak to you.'
"Crichton is a red ruined castle on a hill, with a distance of
purple moorland, and inside is the courtyard so exactly described
in 'Marmion.' With storm raging round it, it was awfully desolate.
Close by is an old stumpy-towered thoroughly Scotch church."
After a visit to the Dalzels at North Berwick, my mother went south from
Durham. I turned backwards to pay my first visit to Mrs. Davidson--the
"Cousin Susan" with whom I was afterwards most intimate. "The beautiful
Lord Strathmore," my great-grandmother's brother, so often painted by
Angelica Kauffmann, who married "the Unhappy Countess," had two
daughters, Maria and Anna. After Lady Strathmore was released from her
brutal second husband, the one thing she had the greatest horror of for
her daughters was matrimony, and she did all she could to prevent their
seeing any one. But Lady Anna Bowes, while her mother was living in
Fludyer Street, made the acquaintance of a young lawyer who lived on the
other side the way, and performed the extraordinary acrobatic feat of
walking across a plank suspended across the street to his rooms,[169]
where she was married to him. The marriage was an unhappy one, but Mr.
Jessop did not survive long, and left Lady Anna with two young
daughters, of whom one died early: the other was "Cousin Susan." Lady
Anna was given a home (in a house adjoining the park at Gibside) by her
brother, John, Lord Strathmore, and her daughters were brought up in
sister-like intimacy with his (illegitimate) son, John Bowes. Susan
Jessop afterwards married Mr. Davidson of Otterburn, who, being a very
rich man, to please her, bought and endowed her with the old Ridley
property--Ridley Hall on South Tyne.
Cousin Susan was an active, bright little woman, always beautifully
dressed, and with the most perfect figure imaginable. No one except Mr.
Bowes knew how old she was, and he would not tell, but she liked to be
thought very young, and still danced at Newcastle balls. She was a
capital manager of her large estate, entered into all business questions
herself, and would walk for hours about her woods, marking timber,
planning bridges or summer-houses, and contriving walks and staircases
in the most difficult and apparently inaccessible places.
Ridley Hall was the most intense source of pride to Cousin Susan, and
though the house was very ugly, the place was indeed most beautiful. The
house stood on a grassy hill above the South Tyne Railway, with a large
flower-garden on the other side, where, through the whole summer, three
hundred and sixty-five flower-beds were bright with every colour of the
rainbow. I never saw such a use of annuals as at Ridley Hall--there were
perfect sheets of Colinsia, Nemophila, and other common things, from
which, in the seed-time, Cousin Susan would gather what she called her
harvest, which it took her whole evenings to thresh out and arrange. A
tiny inner garden, concealed by trees and rockwork, would have been
quite charming to children, with a miniature thatched cottage, filled
with the smallest furniture that could be put into use, bookcases, and
pictures, &c. Beyond the garden was a lovely view towards the moors,
ever varied by the blue shadows of clouds fleeting across them. Thence
an avenue, high above the river, led to the kitchen-garden, just where
the rushing Allen Water, seen through a succession of green arches, was
hurrying to its junction with the Tyne. Here one entered upon the wood
walks, which wound for five miles up and down hill, through every
exquisite variety of scenery--to Bilberry Hill Moss House, with its
views, across the woods, up the gorge of the Allen to the old tower of
Staward Peel--to the Raven's Crag, the great yellow sandstone cliff
crowned with old yew-trees, which overhangs the river--and across the
delicately swung chain-bridge by the Birkie Brae to a lonely tarn in the
hills, returning by the Swiss Cottage and the Craggy Pass, a steep
staircase under a tremendous overhanging rock.
During my first visits at Ridley Hall, words would fail to express my
enjoyment of the natural beauties of the place, and I passed many
delightful hours reading in the mossy walks, or sketching amongst the
huge rocks in the bed of the shallow river; but at Ridley more than
anywhere else I have learnt how insufficient mere beauty is to fill
one's life; and in later years, when poor Cousin Susan's age and
infirmities increased, I felt terribly the desolation of the place, the
miles and miles of walks kept up for no one else to enjoy them--the
hours, and days, and weeks in which one might wander for ever and never
meet a human being.
During my earlier visits, however, Cousin Susan would fill her house in
the summer, especially in the shooting season. There was nothing
particularly intellectual in the people, but a large party in a
beautiful place generally finds sources of enjoyment: which were always
sought on foot, for there was only one road near Ridley Hall, that along
the Tyne valley, which led to Hexham on the east and Haltwhistle on the
west. Constant guests and great friends of Cousin Susan were the two old
Miss Coulsons--Mary and Arabella--of Blenkinsop, primitive, pleasant old
ladies, and two of the most kind-hearted people I have ever known.
Cousin Susan delighted in her denomination of "the Great Lady of the
Tyne," and, in these earlier years of our intimacy, was adored by her
tenantry and the people of the neighbouring villages, who several times,
when she appeared at a public gathering, insisted on taking out her
horses and drawing her home. With her neighbours of a higher class,
Cousin Susan was always very exacting of attention, and very apt to take
offence.
But no account of Ridley Hall can be complete without alluding to the
dogs, of which there were great numbers, treated quite as human beings
and part of the family. An extra dog was never considered an infliction;
thus, when Cousin Susan engaged a new servant, he or she was always
told that a dog would be especially annexed to them, and considered to
belong to them. When the footman came in to put on the coals, his dog
came in with him; when you met the housemaid in the passage, she was
accompanied by her dog. On the first day of my arrival, Cousin Susan
said at dessert, "John, now bring in the boys," and when I was expecting
the advent of a number of unknown young cousins, the footman threw open
the door, and volleys of little dogs rushed into the room, but all white
Spitzes except the Chowdy-Tow, a most comical Japanese. Church service
at Ridley Hall was held at the Beltingham Chapel, where Cousin Susan was
supreme. The miserable little clergyman, who used to pray for
"Queen-Victori-[=a]," was never allowed to begin till she had entered
the church and taken her place in a sort of tribune on a level with the
altar. Many of the dogs went to church too, with the servants to whom
they were annexed. This was so completely considered a matter of course,
that I never observed it as anything absurd till one day when my
connections the Scotts (daughters of Alethea Stanley) came to the chapel
from Sir Edward Blackett's, and were received into Cousin Susan's pew.
In the Confession, one Miss Scott after another became overwhelmed with
uncontrollable fits of laughter. When I looked up, I saw the black noses
and white ears of a row of little Spitz dogs, one over each of the
prayer-books in the opposite seat. Cousin Susan was furiously angry, and
declared that the Scotts should never come to Ridley Hall again: it was
not because they had laughed in church, but because they had laughed at
the dogs!
Upon leaving Ridley Hall, I paid another visit, which I then thought
scarcely less interesting. My grandmother's first cousin, John, Earl of
Strathmore (who left \xA310,000 to my grandfather), was a very agreeable
and popular man, but by no means a moral character. Living near his
castle of Streatlam was a beautiful girl named Mary Milner, daughter of
a market-gardener at Staindrop. With this girl he went through a false
ceremony of marriage, after which, in all innocence, she lived with him
as his wife. Their only boy, John Bowes, was sent to Eton as Lord
Glamis. On his deathbed Lord Strathmore confessed to Mary Milner that
their marriage was false and that she was not really his wife. She said,
"I understand that you mean to marry me now, but that will not do: there
must be no more secret marriages!" and, ill as he was, she had every
one within reach summoned to attend the ceremony, and she had him
carried to church and was married to him before all the world. Lord
Strathmore died soon after he re-entered the house, but he left her
Countess of Strathmore. It was too late to legitimatise John Bowes.
Lady Strathmore always behaved well. As soon as she was a widow, she
said to all the people whom she had known as her husband's relations and
friends, that if they liked to keep up her acquaintance, she should be
very grateful to them, and always glad to see them when they came to
her, but that she should never enter any house on a visit again: and she
never did. My grandmother, and, in later years, "Italima," had always
appreciated Lady Strathmore, and so had Mrs. Davidson, and the kindness
they showed her was met with unbounded gratitude. Lady Strathmore
therefore received with the greatest effusion my proposal of a visit to
Gibside. She was a stately woman, still beautiful, and she had educated
herself since her youth, but, from her quiet life (full of
unostentatious charity), she had become very eccentric. One of her
oddities was that her only measurement of time was one thousand years.
"Is it long since you have seen Mrs. Davidson?" I said. "Yes, one
thousand years!"--"Have you had your dog a long time?"--"A thousand
years."--"That must be a very old picture."--"Yes, a thousand years
old."
Seeing no one but Mr. Hutt, the agreeable tutor of her son, Lady
Strathmore had married him, and by her wealth and influence he became
member for Gateshead. He was rather a prim man, but could make himself
very agreeable, and he was vastly civil to me. I think he rather
tyrannised over Lady Strathmore, but he was very well behaved to her in
public. Soon after her death[170] he married again.
[Illustration: GIBSIDE.]
Gibside was a beautiful place. The long many-orielled battlemented house
was reached through exquisite woods feathering down to the Derwent. A
tall column in the park commemorates the victory of George Bowes (the
father of the unhappy 9th Lady Strathmore, who married a Blakiston, the
heiress of Gibside) over Sir Robert Walpole at a Newcastle election.
There was a charming panelled drawing-room, full of old furniture and
pictures. The house had two ghosts, one "in a silk dress," being that
Lady Tyrconnel who died in the house while living there on somewhat too
intimate terms with John, Earl of Strathmore. He gave her a funeral
which almost ruined the estate. Her face was painted like the most
brilliant life. He dressed her head himself! and then, having decked her
out in all her jewels, and covered her with Brussels lace from head to
foot, he sent her up to London, causing her to lie in state at every
town upon the road, and finally to be buried in Westminster Abbey!
At the end of the garden was the chapel, beneath which many of my
Strathmore ancestors are buried--a beautiful building externally, but
hideous within, with the pulpit in the centre. During the service on
Sundays a most extraordinary effect was produced by the clerk not only
giving out the hymns, but singing them entirely through afterwards by
himself, in a harsh nasal twang, without the very slightest help from
any member of the congregation.
* * * * *
After we parted at Paris in the autumn of 1858, Mrs. Hare and my sister,
as usual, spent the winter at Rome, returning northwards by the seat of
the war in Lombardy. Thence Esmeralda wrote:--
"_Turin, May 25, 1859._--Instead of a _dolce far niente_ at
Frascati or Albano, we have been listening to the roaring of
cannon. The Austrians are said to be fourteen miles off, but there
is no apparent excitement in the town. The juggler attracts a crowd
around him as usual in the piazza, the ladies walk about with their
fans and smelling-bottles, the men sing _vivas_. The town is
guarded by the _guardia civile_; all the regular troops have left
for the battlefield. The nobility are either shut up or walk about
in the streets, for all their carriage and riding horses have been
taken from them for the use of the army. Bulletins are published
twice a day, and give a short account of the engagements. The
Piedmontese are confident of ultimate success: fresh French troops
are pouring in every day. The lancers came in this morning with
flying colours, splendidly mounted, and were received with
thundering applause, the people shouting and clapping their hands,
waving their handkerchiefs, and decorating them with bouquets and
wreaths of flowers. I hear the Emperor has been waiting for the
arrival of this regiment to begin war in earnest, and a great
battle is expected on Monday.... We left Genoa at night, and came
on by the ten o'clock train to the seat of war. The French were
mounting guard in Alessandria,--the Zouaves and Turcos in their
African dress lounging at the railway station. The Austrians had
been repulsed the day before in trying to cross the river; the
cannon had been rolling all day, but the officers were chatting as
gaily as if nothing had happened, and were looking into the railway
carriages for amusement. I longed to stop at Alessandria and go to
see the camp, but Mama would not hear of it. There were troops
encamped at distances all along the line.... We have had no
difficulty in coming by land, though people tried to frighten us.
We proceeded by _vetturino_ to Siena: everything was quiet, and we
met troops of volunteers singing 'Viva l'Italia'--so radiant, they
seemed to be starting for a festival. Five hundred volunteers went
with us in the same train, and when we arrived at Pisa, more
volunteers were parading the streets amid the acclamations of the
people. At Genoa, hundreds of French soldiers were walking about
the town, looking in at the shop-windows. Prince Napoleon
Bonaparte was walking about the Via Balbi with his hands in his
pockets, followed by great crowds.
"We packed up everything before leaving Palazzo Parisani, in case
we should not be able to return there next winter. I will not think
of the misery of being kept out of Rome; it would be too great.
Perhaps you will see us in England this year, but it is not at all
probable."
* * * * *
Alas! my sister did not return to Rome that year, or for many years
after. "L'homme s'agite et Dieu le m\xEAne."[171] Parisani was never again
really her home. A terrible cloud of misfortune was gathering over her,
accompanied by a series of adventures the most mysterious and the most
incredible. I should not believe all that happened myself, unless I had
followed it day by day; therefore I cannot expect others to believe it.
As Lucas Malet says, "English people distrust everything that does not
carry ballast in the shape of obvious dulness," and they are not likely,
therefore, to believe what follows. But it is _true_ nevertheless. In
narrating what occurred, I shall confine myself to a simple narrative of
facts: as to the source of the extraordinary powers possessed by the
lady who for some time exercised a great influence upon the fortunes of
our family, I can offer no suggestion.
When Mrs. Hare and my sister arrived at Geneva in June 1859, though
their fortunes had suffered very considerably by the Paul bankruptcy,
they were still in possession of a large income, and of every luxury of
life. To save the trouble of taking a villa, they engaged an excellent
suite of apartments in the H\xF4tel de la Metropole, where they intended
remaining for the greater part of the summer.
Soon after her arrival, Italima (Mrs. Hare) wrote to her banker for
money, and was much astonished to hear from him that she had overdrawn
her account by \xA3150. Knowing that she ought at that season to have
plenty of money in the bank, she wrote to her attorney, Mr. B. (who had
the whole management of her affairs), to desire that he would pay the
rest of the money due into Coutts', and that he would send her \xA3100
immediately. She had no answer from Mr. B., and she wrote again and
again, without any answer. She was not alarmed, because Mr. B. was
always in the habit of going abroad in the summer, and she supposed that
her letters did not reach him because he was away. Still, as she really
wanted the money, it was very inconvenient.
One day, when she came down to the table-d'h\xF4te, the place next to her
was occupied by an elderly lady, who immediately attempted to enter into
conversation with her. Italima, who always looked coldly upon strangers,
answered shortly, and turned away. "Je vois, Madame," said the lady,
with a most peculiar intonation, "que vous aimez les princesses et les
grandeurs." "Yes," said Italima, who was never otherwise than perfectly
truthful, "you are quite right; I do." And after that--it was so very
singular--a sort of conversation became inevitable. But the lady soon
turned to my sister and said, "_You_ are very much interested about the
war in Italy: _you_ have friends in the Italian army: _you_ are longing
to know how things are going on. I _see_ it all: to-morrow there will be
a great battle, and if you come to my room to-morrow morning, you will
hear of it, for I shall be _there_."--"Yes," said Esmeralda, but she
went away thinking the lady was perfectly mad--quite raving.
The next morning, as my sister was going down the passage of the hotel,
she heard a strange sound in one of the bedrooms. The door was ajar, she
pushed it rather wider open, and there, upon two chairs, lay the lady,
quite rigid, her eyes distended, speaking very rapidly. Esmeralda
fetched her mother, and there they both remained transfixed from 10 A.M.
to 3 P.M. The lady was evidently at a great battle: she described the
movements of the troops: she echoed the commands: she shuddered at the
firing and the slaughter, and she never ceased speaking. At 3 P.M. she
grew calm, her voice ceased, her muscles became flexible, she was soon
quite herself. My sister spoke to her of what had taken place: she
seemed to have scarcely any remembrance of it. At 6 P.M. they went down
to dinner. Suddenly the lady startled the table-d'h\xF4te by dropping her
knife and fork and exclaiming, "Oh, l'Empereur! l'Empereur! il est en
danger." She described a flight, a confusion, clouds of dust arising--in
fact, all the final act of the battle of Solferino. That night the
telegrams of Solferino came to Geneva, and for days afterwards the
details kept arriving. Everything was what the lady described. It was at
the battle of Solferino that she had been.
When my sister questioned the landlord, she learnt that the lady was
known as Madame de Trafford, that she had been _n\xE9e_ Mademoiselle
Martine Larmignac (de l'Armagnac?), and that she was possessed of what
were supposed to be supernatural powers. Esmeralda herself describes
the next incident in her acquaintance with Madame de Trafford.
* * * * *
"One day when we were sitting in our room at Geneva, a lady came
in, a very pleasing-looking person, perfectly _gracieuse_, even
_distingu\xE9e_. She sat down, and then said that the object of her
visit was to ask assistance for a charity; that Madame de Trafford,
who was living below us, had given her sixty francs, and that she
hoped we should not refuse to give her something also. Then she
told us a story of a banker's family at Paris who had been totally
ruined, and who were reduced to the utmost penury, and living in
the greatest destitution at Lausanne. She entered into the details
of the story, dwelling upon the beauty of the children, their
efforts at self-help, and various other details. When she had
ended, Mama said she regretted that she was unable to give her more
than ten francs, but that she should be glad to contribute so much,
and I was quite affected by the story, which was most beautifully
told.
"Meantime, Madame de Trafford, by her secondsight, knew that she
was going to be robbed, yet she would not forego her usual custom
of keeping a large sum of money by her. She wrapped up a parcel of
bank-notes and some napoleons in a piece of newspaper, and threw it
upon the top of a wardrobe in which her dresses were hung. She told
me of this, and said she had hidden the money so well that it was
unlikely that any one could find it.
"In a few days, the lady came again to tell us of the improvement
in the poor family, and she also went to see Madame de Trafford.
She was alone with her, and Madame de Trafford told her about her
money, and showed her the place where she had put it, asking her if
she did not think it well concealed.
"Some days after, when we came up from dinner, we found the same
lady, the _qu\xEAteuse_, walking up and down the gallery fanning
herself. She said she had been waiting for Madame de Trafford, but
had found her apartment so hot, she had left it to walk about the
passage. We all went into the public sitting-room together, but
Mama and I stayed to read the papers, whilst the lady passed on
with Madame de Trafford to her room beyond, as she said she wished
to speak to her. Soon she returned alone, and began talking to us,
when ... the door opened, and in came Madame de Trafford,
dreadfully agitated, looking perfectly livid, and exclaiming in a
voice of thunder, 'On m'a vol\xE9,' and then, turning to the lady, 'Et
voil\xE0 la voleuse.' Then, becoming quite calm, she said coldly,
'Madame, vous \xE9tiez seule pendant que nous \xE9tions \xE0 table; je vous
prie donc de vous ... d\xE9shabiller.'--'Mais, Madame, c'est inoui de
me soup\xE7onner,' said the lady, 'mais ... enfin ... Madame....' But
she was compelled to pass before Madame de Trafford into the
bedroom and to undo her dress. In her purse were ten napoleons, but
of these no notice was taken; she might have had them before. Then
Madame de Trafford gave the lady five minutes to drop the notes she
had taken, and came out to us--'Car c'est elle!' she said. In five
minutes the lady came out of the room and passed us, saying,
'Vraiment cette Madame de Trafford c'est une personne tr\xE8s
exalt\xE9e,' and went out. Then Madame de Trafford called us. 'Venez,
Madame Hare,' she said. We went into the bedroom, and in the corner
of the floor lay a bundle of bank-notes. 'Elle les a jet\xE9,' said
Madame de Trafford."
* * * * *
Of the same week my sister narrates the following:--
"One Sunday morning, the heat was so great, I had been almost
roasted in going to church. In the afternoon Madame de Trafford
came in. 'Venez, ma ch\xE8re, venez avec moi \xE0 v\xEApres,' she said. 'Oh,
non, il y a trop de soleil, c'est impossible, et je vous conseille
de vous garder aussi d'un coup de soleil.'--'Moi, je vais \xE0
l'\xE9glise,' she answered, 'et aussi je vais \xE0 pied, parceque je ne
veux pas payer une voiture, et personne ne me menera pour rien; il
n'y a pas de charit\xE9 dans ce monde.' And she _went_.
"When she came back she said, 'Eh bien, ma ch\xE8re, je suis all\xE9 \xE0
v\xEApres, mais je ne suis pas all\xE9 \xE0 pied. Je n'\xE9tais que sorti de
l'h\xF4tel, quand je voyais tous ces cochers avec leurs voitures en
face de moi. "Et que feras tu donc, si tu trouveras la charit\xE9 en
chemin?" me disait la voix. "Je lui donnerai un napol\xE9on." Eh bien,
un de ces cochers, je le sentais, me menerait pour la charit\xE9: je
le sentais, mais j'avan\xE7ais toujours; et voil\xE0 que Pierre, qui nous
avait amen\xE9 avec sa voiture l'autre journ\xE9e, me poursuivit avec sa
voiture en criant, "Mais, madame, o\xF9 allez vous donc: venez,
montez, je ne veux pas vous voir vous promener comme cela; je vous
menerai pour rien."--"Mais, Pierre, que voulez vous donc," je dis.
"Mais montez, madame, montez; je vous menerai pour rien," il
repetait, et je montais. Pierre m'emmenait \xE0 l'\xE9glise, et voila la
voix qui me dit, "Et ton napol\xE9on," parceque j'avais dit que si je
trouvais la charit\xE9 en chemin, je lui donnerais un napol\xE9on. Mais
je n'ai pas voulu lui donner le napol\xE9on de suite, parceque cela
pouvait lui faire tourner la t\xEAte, et j'ai dit, "Venez, Pierre,
venez me voir demain au soir. Vous avez fait un acte de la charit\xE9:
Dieu vous recompensera."'
"Madame de Trafford always wore a miniature of the Emperor Napoleon
in a ring which she had: the ring opened, and inside was the
miniature. The next morning she showed it to me, and asked me to
get it out of the ring, as she was going to send the ring to a
jeweller to be repaired. I got scissors, &c., and poked, and
thumped, and pulled at the picture, but I could not get it out of
the ring: I could not move it in the least.
"In the morning Mama was with Madame de Trafford when Pierre came.
I was not there. Pierre was a dull stupid Swiss lout of a _cocher_.
'Madame m'a command\xE9 de venir,' he said, and he could say nothing
else.
"Then Madame de Trafford held out a napoleon, saying, 'Tenez,
Pierre, voil\xE0 un napol\xE9on pour vous, parceque vous avez voulu faire
un acte de la charit\xE9, et ordinairement il n'y a pas de charit\xE9
dans ce monde.' ... But as Madame de Trafford stretched forth her
hand, the ring flew open and the portrait vanished. It did not slip
out of the ring, it did not fall--it vanished! it ceased to exist!
'Oh, le portrait, le portrait!' cried Madame de Trafford. She
screamed: she was perfectly frantic. 'Quel portrait?' said Pierre,
for he had seen none: he was stupefied: he could not think what it
all meant. As for Mama, she was so terrified, she rushed out of the
room. She locked her door, she declared nothing should induce her
to remain in the same room with Madame de Trafford again.
"I went down to Madame de Trafford. She offered a napoleon to any
one who would find the portrait. She was wild. I never saw her in
such a state, never. Of course every one hunted, _gar\xE7ons_,
_filles-de-chambre_, every one, but not a trace of the portrait
could any one find. At last Madame de Trafford became quite calm;
she said, 'Je sens que dans une semaine j'aurai mon portrait, et je
vois que ce sera un des braves du grand Napol\xE9on qui me le
rapportera.'
"I thought this very extraordinary, and really I did not remember
that there was any soldier of the old Napoleon in the house. I was
so accustomed to F\xE9lix as our old servant, it never would have
occurred to me to think of him. The week passed. 'C'est la fin de
la semaine,' said Madame de Trafford, 'et demain j'aurai mon
portrait.'
"We had never told Victoire about the portrait, for she was so
superstitious, we thought she might refuse to stay in the house
with Madame de Trafford if we told her. But the next morning she
came to Mama and said that a child who was playing in a garret at
the top of the house had found there, amongst some straw, the
smallest portrait ever seen, and had given it to F\xE9lix, and F\xE9lix
had shown it to her, saying, 'Voila c'est bien fait \xE7\xE0; \xE7\xE0 n'est
pas un bagatelle; \xE7\xE0 n'est pas un joujoux \xE7\xE0!' and he had put it
away. 'Why, it is the lost portrait,' said Mama. 'What portrait?'
said Victoire. Then Mama told Victoire how Madame de Trafford had
lost the portrait out of her ring, and F\xE9lix took it back to her.
It was when F\xE9lix took back the portrait that I first remembered he
had been a soldier of the old Napoleon, and was even then in
receipt of a pension for his services in the Moscow campaign.
"F\xE9lix refused the napoleon Madame de Trafford had offered as a
reward; but she insisted on his having it, so he took it, and wears
it on his watchchain always: he almost looks upon it as a
talisman."
* * * * *
As Italima and Esmeralda saw more of Madame de Trafford, they learned
that she was the second wife of Mr. Trafford of Wroxham in Norfolk. He
did not live with her, because he said that when he married her he
intended to marry Mademoiselle Martine Larmignac, but he did not intend
to marry "Maricot," as she called the spirit--the "voice"--which spoke
through her lips, and live with Maricot he would not. He showed his wife
every possible attention, and placed implicit confidence in her. He left
her entire control of her fortune. He constantly visited her, and always
came to take leave of her when she set off on any of her journeys; but
he could not live with her.
One day Italima received a letter from her eldest son Francis, who said
that he knew she would not believe him, but that Mr. B. was a penniless
bankrupt, and that she would receive no more money from him. She did not
believe Francis a bit, still the letter made her anxious and
uncomfortable: no money had come in answer to her repeated letters, and
there were many things at Geneva to be paid for. That day she came down
to the table-d'h\xF4te looking very much harassed. Madame de Trafford said
to my sister, "Your mother looks very much agitated: what is it?"
Esmeralda felt that, whether she told her or not, Madame de Trafford
would know what had happened, and she told her the simple truth. Madame
de Trafford said, "Now, do not be surprised at what I am going to say;
don't be grateful to me; it's my vocation in life. Here is \xA380: take it
at once. That is the sum you owe in Geneva, and you have no money. I
knew that you wanted that sum, and I brought it down to dinner with me.
Now I know all that is going to happen: it is written before me like an
open book,--and I know how important it is that you should go to England
at once. I have prepared for that, and I am going with you. In an hour
you must start for England." And such was the confidence that Italima
and Esmeralda now had in Madame de Trafford, such was her wonderful
power and influence, that they did all she told them: they paid their
bills at Geneva with the money she gave, they left F\xE9lix and Victoire to
pack up and to follow them to Paris, and they started by the night-train
the same evening with Madame de Trafford.
That was an awful night. My sister never lost the horror of it. "Madame
de Trafford had told me that extraordinary things often happened to her
between two and four in the morning," said Esmeralda. "When we went with
her through the night in the coup\xE9 of the railway-carriage, she was very
anxious that I should sleep. Mama slept the whole time. 'Mais dormez
donc, ma ch\xE8re,' she said, 'dormez donc.'--'Oh, je dormirai bient\xF4t,' I
always replied, but I was quite determined to keep awake. It was very
dreadful, I thought, but if anything _did_ happen, I would see what it
was. As it drew near two o'clock I felt the most awful sensation of
horror come over me. Then a cold perspiration broke out all over me.
Then I heard--oh, I cannot describe it! a most awful sound--a voice--a
sort of squeak. It spoke, it was a language; but it was a language I
did not understand,[172] and then something came out of the mouth of
Madame de Trafford--bur-r-r-r! It passed in front of me, black but
misty. I rushed at it. Madame de Trafford seized me and forced me back
upon the seat. I felt as if I should faint. Her expression was quite
awful. No one knows it but Mama. Some time after, Mr. Trafford spoke to
me of a hunchback in Moli\xE8re, who had a voice speaking inside him, over
which he had no control, and then he said, 'What my wife has is like
that.'"
As they drew near Paris, Madame de Trafford began to describe her
apartments to my sister. It was like a description of Aladdin's palace,
and Esmeralda did not believe it. When they reached the station, Madame
de Trafford said, "I have one peculiarity in my house: I have no
servants. I used to have them, but I did not like them; so now, when I
am at Paris, I never have them: therefore, on our way from the station,
we will stop as we pass through the Rue St. Honor\xE9, and buy the bread,
and milk, and candles--in fact, all the things we want." And so they
did.
The carriage stopped before a _porte coch\xE8re_ in the Champs Elys\xE9es,
where Madame de Trafford got a key from the concierge, and preceded her
guests up a staircase. When she unlocked the door of the apartment, it
was quite dark, and hot and stuffy, as closed rooms are, but when the
shutters were opened, all that Madame de Trafford had said as to the
magnificence of the furniture, &c., was more than realised--only there
were no servants. Madame de Trafford herself brought down mattresses
from the attics, she aired and made the beds, and she lighted the fire
and boiled the kettle for supper and breakfast.
Of that evening my sister wrote:--
"I shall never forget a scene with Madame de Trafford. I had gone
to rest in my room, but I did not venture to stay long. She also
had been up all night, but that was nothing to her--_paresse_ was
what she could never endure. When I went into her room, she had the
concierge with her, but she was greatly excited. She was even then
contending with her spirit. 'Taisez-vous, Maricot,' she was
exclaiming. 'Voulez vous vous taire: taisez-vous, Maricot.' I saw
that the concierge was getting very angry, quite boiling with
indignation, for there was no one else present, and she thought
Madame de Trafford was talking to her. 'Mais, madame, madame, je ne
parle pas,' she said. But Madame de Trafford went on, 'Va-t'en,
Maricot: va-t'en donc.'--'Mais, madame, je suis toute pr\xEAte,' said
the concierge, and she went out, banging the door behind her."[173]
* * * * *
Madame de Trafford told my sister in Paris that her extraordinary power
had first come to her, as it then existed, many years before in the
Church of S. Roch. She had gone there, not to pray, but to look about
her, and, as she was walking round the ambulatory, there suddenly came
to her the extraordinary sensation that she _knew_ all that those
kneeling around her were thinking, feeling, and wishing. Her own
impression was one of horror, and an idea that the power came from evil;
but kneeling down then and there before the altar, she made a solemn
dedication of herself; she prayed that such strange knowledge might be
taken away, but, if that were not to be, made a vow to turn the evil
against itself, by using it always for good.
People suddenly ruined--whom Madame de Trafford called "the poor
rich"--she considered to be her peculiar vocation, because in her
younger life she had twice been utterly ruined herself. Once it was in
England. She had only a shilling left in the world, and, in her quaint
way of narrating things, she said, "Having only a shilling left in the
world, I thought what I had better do, and I thought that, as I had only
a shilling left in the world, I had better go out and take a walk. I
went out, and I met a man, and the man said to me, 'Give me something,
for I have nothing left in the world,' and I gave him sixpence, and I
went on. And I met a woman, and the woman said to me, 'Give me
something, for I have nothing whatever left in the world.' And I said,
'I cannot give you anything, for I have only sixpence left in the world,
so I cannot give you anything.' And the woman said, 'But you are much
richer than I, for you are well dressed; you have a good bonnet, a gown,
and shawl, while I am clothed in rags, and so you must give me
something.' And I thought, 'Well, that is true,' so I gave her the
sixpence, and I went on. At the corner of the street I found a sovereign
lying in the street. With that sovereign I paid for food and lodging.
The next day I had remittances from an uncle I had long supposed to be
dead, and who expressed the wish that I should come to him. He died and
left me his heiress: money has since then always flowed in, and I go
about to look for the poor rich." A presentiment would come to Madame de
Trafford, or the voice of Maricot would tell her, where she would be
needed, and she would set out. Thus she went to Geneva to help some one
unknown. She moved from hotel to hotel until she found the right one;
and she sat by person after person at the table-d'h\xF4te, till she felt
she was sitting by the right one; then she waited quietly till the
moment came when she divined what was wanted.
The morning after their arrival in Paris, Madame de Trafford stood by my
sister's bedside when she awoke, ready dressed, and having already put
away most of the things in the apartment. As soon as breakfast was over,
a carriage came to take them to the station, and they set off for
Boulogne, where Madame de Trafford set her guests afloat for England
with \xA340 in their pockets. Thus they arrived on the scene of action.
Straight from London Bridge Station they drove to Mr. B.'s office. He
was there, and apparently delighted to see them. "Well, Mr. B., and pray
why have you sent me no money?" asked Italima. "Why, I've sent you
quantities of money," said Mr. B., without a change of countenance. "If
you write to Messrs. O. & L., the bankers at Geneva, you will find it's
all there. I have sent you money several times," and he said this with
such perfect _sangfroid_ that they believed him. Italima then said,
"Well now, Mr. B., I should wish to see the mortgages," because from
time to time he had persuaded her to transfer \xA346,000 of her own fortune
from other securities to mortgages on a Mr. Howell's estate in Cornwall.
Mr. B. replied, "Do you know, when you say that, it would almost seem as
if you did not quite trust me."--"That I cannot help," said Italima,
"but I should wish to see the mortgages."--"There is no difficulty
whatever," said Mr. B.; "you could have seen them last year if you had
wished: to-day you cannot see them because they are in the Bank, and the
Bank is closed, but you can fix any other day you like for seeing
them,"--and they fixed the following Wednesday. Afterwards Mr. B. said,
"Well, Mrs. Hare, you do not seem to have trusted me as I deserve, still
I think it my duty to give you the pleasant news that you will be richer
this year than you have ever been in your life. A great deal of money is
recovered from the Paul bankruptcy, which you never expected to see
again; all your other investments are prospering, and your income will
certainly be larger than it has ever been before." Italima was perfectly
satisfied. That evening she made my sister write to Mrs. Julius Hare and
say, "We are convinced that Mr. B. is the best friend we have in the
world. Augustus was always talking against him, and we have been brought
to England by a raving mad Frenchwoman who warned us against him; but we
will never doubt or mistrust him any more."
When the Wednesday came on which they were to see the mortgages, Italima
was not well, and she said to my sister, "I am quite glad I am not well,
because it will be an excuse for you to go and fetch the mortgages, when
we can look them over quietly together." My sister went off to Lincoln's
Inn, but before going to Mr. B., she called at the house of another
lawyer, whom she knew very well, to ask if he had heard any reports
about Mr. B. "I pray to God, Miss Hare, that you are safe from that
man," was all he said. She rushed on to the office. Mr. B. was gone: the
whole place was _sotto-sopra_: everything was gone: there were no
mortgages: there was no Mr. Howell's estate: there was no money: \xA360,000
was gone: there was absolutely nothing left whatever.
Never was ruin more complete! Italima and Esmeralda had _nothing_ left:
not a loaf of bread, not a penny to buy one--nothing. My sister said she
prayed within herself as to how she could possibly go back and tell her
mother, and it seemed to her as if a voice said, "Go back, go back, tell
her at once," and she went. When she reached the door of Ellison's
hotel, where they were staying, the waiter said a gentleman was sitting
with her mother, but it seemed as if the voice said, "Go up, go up, tell
her at once." When she went in, her mother was sitting on the sofa, and
a strange gentleman was talking to her. She went up to her mother and
said, "Mama, we are totally ruined: Mr. B. has taken flight: we have
lost everything we have in the world, and we never can hope to have
anything any more." The strange gentleman came in like a special
intervention of Providence. He was a Mr. Touchet, who had known Italima
well when she was quite a girl, who had never seen her since, and who
had come that day for the first time to renew his acquaintance. He was
full of commiseration and sympathy with them over what he heard; he at
once devoted himself to their service, and begged them to make use of
him: the mere accident of his presence just broke the first shock.
Lady Normanby was at Sydenham when the catastrophe occurred; she at once
came up to London and helped her cousins for the moment. Then Lady
Shelley, the daughter-in-law of Italima's old friend Mrs. Shelley (see
chap. i.), fetched them home to her at Boscombe near Bournemouth, and
was unboundedly kind to them. Sir Percy Shelley offered them a cottage
rent-free in his pine-woods, but they only remained there three weeks,
and then went to Lady Williamson at Whitburn Hall near Sunderland, where
I first saw them.
Everything had happened exactly as Madame de Trafford had predicted. My
sister wrote to me:--
"The most dreadful news. We are _ruined_. Mr. B. has bolted, and is
a fraudulent bankrupt. Nobody knows where he is. We are nearly
wild. God help us. I hardly know what I am writing. What is to
become of Francis and William? We hardly know what we have lost. I
fear B. has seized on Mama's mortgages. Pray for us."
We received this letter when we were staying at Fotheringham. We were
very much shocked, but we said that when my sister talked of absolute
ruin, it was only a figure of speech. She and her mother might be very
much poorer than they had been, but there was a considerable marriage
settlement; that, we imagined, B. could not have possessed himself of.
But it was too true; he had taken everything. The marriage settlement
was in favour of younger children, I being one of the three who would
have benefited. Some years before, Mr. B. had been to Italima and
persuaded her to give up \xA32000 of my brother William's portion, during
her life, in order to pay his debts. On her assenting to this, Mr. B.
had subtly entered the whole sum mentioned in the settlement, instead of
\xA32000, in the deed of release, and the two trustees had signed without a
question, so implicit was their faith in Mr. B., who passed not only for
a very honourable, but for a very religious man. Mr. B. had used the
\xA32000 to pay William's debts, and had taken all the rest of the money
for himself. About Italima's own fortune he had been even less
scrupulous. Mr. Howell's estate in Cornwall had never existed at all.
Mr. B. had taken the \xA346,000 for himself; there had been no mortgages,
but he had paid the interest as usual, and the robbery had passed
undetected. He had kept Italima from coming upon him during the last
summer by cutting off her supplies, and all might have gone on as usual
if Madame de Trafford had not brought his victims to England, and
Italima had not insisted upon seeing the mortgages.
The next details we received were from my aunt Eleanor Paul.
"_Sept._ 1, 1859.--B. is bankrupt and has absconded. They think he
is gone to Sweden. The first day there were bills filed against him
for \xA3100,000, the second day for \xA3100,000 more, all money that he
swindled people out of. I have not suffered personally, as the
instant I heard there was anything against him, I went to his
house, demanded my securities, put them in my pocket, and walked
away with them. But I fear B. has made away with all the mortgages
your mother and sister were supposed to have, or that they never
existed, as they are not forthcoming. It is supposed that he has
also made away with all the trust-money, besides the \xA35000 left to
your sister by her aunt. At this moment they are penniless.... Your
mother went to B. as soon as she arrived and desired to have the
mortgages. He promised to have them ready in a few days, and
meantime he talked her over, and made her believe he was a most
honourable man. Before the day came he had bolted...."
I went from Gibside to Whitburn to be there when Italima arrived. Her
despair and misery were terrible to witness. She did nothing all day
but lament and wail over her fate, and was most violent to my sister,
who bore her own loss with the utmost calmness and patience. Nothing
could exceed Lady Williamson's kindness to them. She pressed them to
stay on with her, and cared for them with unwearied generosity during
the first ten months of their destitution. Many other friends offered
help, and the Liddell cousins promised an annual subscription for their
maintenance; but the generosity which most came home to their hearts was
that of their old Roman friend Mr. William Palmer, who out of his very
small income pressed upon them a cheque for \xA3150. In this, as in all
other cases of the kind, those who had least gave most. One idea was to
obtain admission for them to St. Catherine's Almshouses for ladies of
good family, but this was unwisely, though generously, opposed by my
Aunt Eleanor.
"I am inclined to quarrel with you for ever mentioning the word
'Almshouse.' I have lived with my sister during her richer days,
and certainly do not mean to desert her in her distress. I only
wish she could think as I do. We can live in a smaller domain very
happily, and if the worst come to the worst, I have \xA3300 a year,
and if the Liddell family allow \xA3150, that, with the colliery
shares, would make up \xA3500 a year between us: and I have every
prospect of recovering at least a portion of my fortune, and if I
do, shall have \xA3200, perhaps \xA3300 a year more, making \xA3800. Knowing
this, I think it wrong to make oneself miserable. Francis and
William must work: they have had their share of the fortune. I am
only waiting till something is settled with regard to my affairs,
but desertion has never for a moment entered my brain, and I hope
you never gave me credit for anything so barbarous."[174]
_To_ MY MOTHER (before seeing Italima).
"_Whitburn Hall_, _Sept._ 13.--Nothing can exceed Lady Williamson's
kindness about Italima. Though she can ill afford it, she at once
sent them \xA3110 for present necessities.... She does not think it
possible they can ever return to Rome, but having to part with
F\xE9lix and Victoire is the greatest of their immediate trials. In
addition to her invalid husband and son, Lady Williamson, the good
angel of the whole family, has since her father's death taken the
entire charge of his old sister, Mrs. Richmond--'Aunt Titchie.'
Victor and I have just been paying a visit in her bedroom to this
extraordinary old lady, who was rolled up in petticoats, with a
little dog under a shawl by way of muff. She is passionately fond
of eating, and dilated upon the goodness of the cook--'Her tripe
and onions are de-licious!'--'I like a green gosling, and plenty of
sage and stuffing, that's what _I_ like.'
"She is a complete Mrs. Malaprop. 'I was educated, my dear,' she
said, 'at a cemetery for young ladies;' but this is only a
specimen. She is also used to _very_ strong language, and till she
became blind, she used to hunt all over the country in top-boots
and leathern breeches, like a man. When her husband died, she went
up from Mrs. Villiers' house at Grove Mill to prove his will.
Adolphus Liddell met her at the station, and helped her to do it,
and then took her to the 'Ship and Turtle' and gave her real
turtle--in fact, a most excellent luncheon. He afterwards saw her
off at Euston. She is blind, you know, and took no notice of there
being other passengers in the carriage, and greatly astonished they
must have been, as he was taking leave of her, to hear the old lady
say in her deliberate tones, 'Capital turtle! de-e-licious punch!
Why, lor bless ye! I'd prove my husband's will once a week to get
such a blow-out as that.'
"I thought this place hideous at first, but it improves on
acquaintance, and has its availabilities, like everything else:
there is a fine sea with beautiful sands, and the flower-garden is
radiant."
"_Sept. 15._--I long for you to know Lady Williamson. Of all people
I have ever known, she has the most _truly_ Christian power of
seeing the virtues of every one and passing over their faults. She
also has to perfection the not-hearing, not-seeing knack, which is
the most convenient thing possible in such a mixed family circle.
"Charlie Williamson arrived yesterday, and, with the most jovial
entertaining manner, has all his mother's delicacy of feeling and
excessive kindness of heart. When he heard of the B. catastrophe,
he went up at once from Aldershot to see Italima in London. 'Your
mother was quite crushed,' he says, 'but as for your dear sister,
there isn't a girl in England has the pluck she shows. She never
was down for a moment, not she: no, she was as cheery as possible,
and said, "Mama, it is done, and it is not our fault, so we must
learn to make the best of it." People may say what they like, but
she is real downright good, and no mistake about it.'
"I have been with Victor to Seaton Delaval--the 'lordly Seaton
Delaval' of 'Marmion,' scene of many of the iniquities of the last
Lord Delaval. It is a magnificent house, but the centre is now a
ruin, having been burnt about eighty years ago, by the connivance,
it is said, of its then owner, Sir Jacob Astley. There is a Norman
chapel, full of black effigies of knights, which look as if they
were carved out of coal, and in one of the wings is a number of
pictures, including Lord Delaval's four beautiful daughters, one of
whom married the village baker, while another was that Lady
Tyrconnel who died at Gibside.
"I hope I shall know all these cousins better some day. At present,
from their having quite a different set of friends and
associations, I always feel as if I had not a single thing to say
to them, and I am sure they all think I am dreadfully stupid....
But I am enchanted with Charlie Williamson, his tremendous spirits
and amusing ways."
"_Sept. 17._--At 8-1/2, as we were sitting at tea, Lady Williamson
put her head in at the drawing-room door and said, 'Come down with
me; they are arriving.' So we went to the hall-door just as the
carriage drove up, and Italima got out and flung herself into Lady
Williamson's arms.... Both she and Esmeralda looked utterly
worn-out, and their account was truly awful.... Lady Normanby came
at once to their assistance--but what touched them most was the
kindness of dear good Charlie Williamson, who came up directly from
Aldershot, bringing them all he had--\xA350."
"_Sept. 18._--It has now come out that Mr. B. was the person who
had Francis arrested, and he kept him in prison while he plundered
his estate of \xA317,000. It has also transpired that when, on a
former occasion, Sir J. Paul gave Mr. B. \xA31000 to pay Francis's
debts, he never paid them, but appropriated the money. B. has
robbed Italima of the whole of her own fortune besides her marriage
settlement. Two years ago he arranged with the trustees and Italima
to sell \xA32000 of the settlement fund to pay William's debts, and
presented to the trustees, as they supposed, papers to sign for
this purpose. They trusted to B. and did not examine the papers,
which they now find empowered him to take possession not only of
the \xA32000, but of the whole fund!"
"_Sept. 19._--Italima's state is the most hopeless I ever saw,
because she absolutely refuses to find hope or comfort or pleasure
in anything, and as absolutely refuses to take any interest or
bestir herself in any measures for the recovery of her lost
fortune.... When any one tries to elicit what she recollects about
the mortgages, she will begin the story, and then bury herself in
the sofa-cushions, and say we are killing her by asking her
questions, and that if we do not want her to die, she must be
quiet. She is furious with me because I will not see that the case
is quite hopeless, and quite acts up to her promise of never
regarding me with the slightest affection.... The state of Italima
is appalling, but my sister is perfectly calm. Lady Williamson is
kindness itself; and as for Charlie, I never knew his equal for
goodness, consideration, and generosity.
"I wish you could hear Lady Williamson sing; even when she was a
little girl, Catalani said that her voice was better than her own,
and that if it were necessary for her to sing publicly, she would
be the first singer in Europe."
"_Sept. 21._--Italima is daily more entirely woe-begone, and her
way of receiving her misfortunes more bitter.... It seems a trouble
to her even to see her cousins so prosperous, while she ...! The
Normanbys are here and most kind, though much out of patience with
her.... Old Mrs. Richmond, who has been very kind throughout, sent
for my sister the other day to her room, and gave her five pounds
to buy winter clothes, and has sent for patterns to Edinburgh for a
warm dress for her."
"_Sandhutton Hall, Sept. 24._--I left Whitburn yesterday, very
sorry to part with the dear kind cousins, with whom I had a tender
leave-taking--not so with Italima, who took no more notice of my
departure than she had done of my visit."
The only event of our home-autumn was the death of the Rector of
Hurstmonceaux, who had succeeded my uncle, and the appointment of the
charming old Dr. Wellesley[175] in his place. In November I was at
Harrow with the Vaughans, meeting there for the first time two sets of
cousins, Lord and Lady Spencer,[176] and Sir John Shaw-Lefevre,[177]
with two of his daughters. With the latter cousins I made a great
friendship. Then I returned to Oxford.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Christ Church, Dec. 6, 1859._-My whole visit here this time has
been enjoyable. Arthur is always so very good and kind, so
_knowing_ in what will give one pleasure: which I especially feel
in his cordiality to all my friends when they come here. Then it is
so interesting and delightful being perpetually examined by him in
different parts of history, and charming to feel that I can in a
small way be useful to him in looking out or copying things for his
lectures, &c. Victor Williamson and Charlie Wood come in and out
constantly.
"Mr. Richmond the artist is here. I quite long to be Arthur, going
to sit to him: he is so perfectly delightful: no wonder his
portraits are always smiling."
In the winter of 1859-60 I made a much-appreciated acquaintance with Sir
George Grey, author of "Polynesian Mythology."
JOURNAL.
"_Dec. 15, 1859._--At the Haringtons' I met Sir George and Lady
Grey. I was very anxious to make acquaintance, but much afraid that
I should not have an opportunity of doing so, as I was never
introduced. As they were going away, I expressed regret at having
missed them before, and he hoped that we should meet another time.
I suppose I looked very really sorry for not seeing more of him,
for, after a consultation in the passage, he came back, and asked
if I would walk part of the way with him. I walked with him all the
way to Windmill Hill, where he was staying: he walked home with me:
I walked home with him; and he home with me for the third time,
when I was truly sorry to take leave, so very interesting was he,
and so easy to talk to. We began about Polynesian Mythology--then
poetry--then Murray, who, he said, had just paid Dr. Livingstone
\xA310,000 as _his_ share of the profits on his book--then of Lord
Dillon, who, he said, had led them the most jovial rollicking life
when he went to Ditchley to look over MSS., so that he had done
nothing.
"Then he talked of the Church in the Colonies. He said that High
Churchism had penetrated to the Cape to the greatest extent, and
that the two or three churches where it was carried out were
thronged as fashionable: that one of the views preached was, that
religion was a belief in whatever you fancied was for your good, so
that if you fancied that, our Lord being one with God, it would be
well for you to have a mediator between yourself and Him, you ought
then to believe in that mediator, and to invoke your guardian angel
as the mediator most natural. Another tenet was that prayer was
only 'a tracter' to draw down the blessings of God--that, as there
were three kinds of prayer, so there were three kinds of
tracters--that individual prayer would draw down a blessing on the
individual, family prayer on a family, but that public prayer, as
proceeding from the mouth of a priest, could draw down a blessing
on the whole state. Sir George had heard a sermon on 'It is needful
for you that I go away from you,' &c., proving that it _was_
needful, because if not, Christ would have to have remained as an
earthly king, have had to negotiate with other kings, meddle in
affairs of state, &c.--also because he would have been made 'a
lion' of--perhaps have become an object of pilgrimage, &c.
"Sir George said that the Wesleyan Methodists lived a holier, more
spiritual life in the Colonies, but then it was because religion
was there so easy to them; in London it would not be so; that
London, the place in the world most unsuited to Christianity, lived
on a great world of gambling-houses, brothels, &c., as if there
were no God; no one seemed to care. He said what a grand thing it
would be if, in one of the great public services in St. Paul's or
Westminster Abbey, the preacher were to shout out as his awful
text--'Where art thou, Adam?'--and show how the Lord would look in
vain for _His_ in most parts of London--where, _where_ had they
hidden themselves?
"Sir George told me an anecdote of a dog in New Zealand--that two
officers were walking by the shore, and that one of them said, 'You
declare your dog will do everything. I'll bet you he does not fetch
that if you tell him,' and he threw his walking-stick into a canoe
lying out at some distance in the shallow water, where the natives
wade up to their waists to get into them, and where they are
secured by strong hempen cords. The dog, when told, instantly swam
out, but, as the man who made the bet had foreseen, whenever he
tried to scramble into the canoe to get the stick, it almost upset,
and at length, after repeated struggles, he was obliged to swim to
shore again and lie down to rest. Once rested, however, without a
second bidding, he swam out again, and this time gnawed through the
cord, pulled the canoe on shore, and then got the stick out, and
brought it to his master."[178]
I told Arthur Stanley much of this conversation with Sir George Grey.
Some time after, he was very anxious that I should go to hear Dr.
Vaughan preach in a great public service under the dome of St. Paul's. I
went, and was startled by the text--"Where art thou, Adam?"
In January 1860 I paid a delightful visit to Sir John Shaw-Lefevre at
Sutton Place, near Guildford, a beautiful old brick house with
terra-cotta ornaments, which once belonged to Sir Francis Weston, Anne
Boleyn's reputed lover. Besides the large pleasant family of the house,
Lord Eversley and his daughter were there, and Sophia, daughter of Henry
Lefevre, with Mr. Wickham, whom she soon afterwards married.
JOURNAL.
"_Sutton Place, Jan. 8._--Lord Eversley has been talking of
Bramshill, the old home of Prince Henry, where Archbishop Abbott
shot a keeper by accident, in consequence of which it became a
question whether consecration rites received at his hands were
valid. Lord Eversley did not believe that the oak in the park, from
which the arrow glanced (with the same effect as in the case of
Rufus), was the real tree, because it was _too_ old: oaks beyond a
certain age, after the bark has ceased to be smooth, do not allow
an arrow to glance and rebound.
"The Buxtons sent me a ticket for Lord Macaulay's funeral, but I
would not leave Sutton to go. Sir John went, and described that, as
often in the case of funerals and other sad ceremonies, people, by
a rebound, became remarkably merry and amusing, and that they had
occupied the time of waiting by telling a number of uncommonly good
stories. The sight of Lady Holland[179] and her daughters amongst
the mourners had reproduced the bon-mot of Mrs. Grote, who, when
asked how this Lady Holland was to be distinguished from the
original person of the name, said, 'Oh, this is New Holland, and
her capital is Sydney.'
"Apropos of Macaulay, Sir John remarked how extraordinary it was in
growing age to see a person pass away whose birth, education,
public career, and death were all within your memory.
"He said how unreadable 'Roderick Random' and 'Tom Jones' were now.
A lady had asked to borrow 'Pamela' from his library, saying she
well remembered the pleasure of it in her youth; but she returned
it the next day, saying she was quite ashamed of having asked for
anything so improper.
"Yesterday was Sunday, and I groped my way through the dark
passages to the evening service in the Catholic chapel, which has
always been attached to the house. An old priest, seated on the
steps of the altar, preached a kind of catechetical sermon upon
Transubstantiation--'My flesh is meat _indeed_'--'and the poor
Protestants have this in their Bibles, and yet they throw away the
benefit of the _indeed_.' The sight was most picturesque--the dark
old-fashioned roof, only seen by the light of the candles on the
richly decorated altar, and the poor English peasants grouped upon
the benches. It carried one back to the time before the
Reformation. In his discourse, the old priest described his
childhood, when he sat in the east wing of the house learning his
catechism, and when there were only two Catholics in Guildford; and
'what would these two solitary ones say now if they had seen the
crowd in St. Joseph's Chapel at Guildford this morning? Yes, what
would old Jem Savin say if he could rise up and see us now, poor
man?'"
_To_ MY MOTHER (after I had returned to my Handbook explorations).
"_Aldermaston Hall, Berks, Jan. 14, 1860._--I came here from
Newbury. The weather was so horrible, and the prospect of a damp
lonely Sunday in an inn so uninviting, that I thought over all
possible and impossible houses in the neighbourhood, and finally
decided upon Aldermaston as the best, and have taken it by storm.
"It was the dampest and dreariest of mornings as I came from the
station, but this place looked beautiful in spite of it--a wild
picturesque park, and a large house, full of colour inside, like a
restored French ch\xE2teau. Mrs. Higford Burr (who seems to live more
in Italy than here) wears a sort of Greek dress with a girdle and a
broad gold hem.... I was at once, as I rather expected, invited to
stay _per l'amore d'Italia_, and my luggage sent for. This
afternoon Mrs. Burr, who is a most tremendous walker, has taken me
to Upton Court, the home of Arabella Fermor (Pope's Belinda), a
charming old house with a ghost, which the farm-people described as
'coming a clinkerin upstairs right upon un loike.'"
"_Christ Church, Feb. 4._--I have had a terribly cold tour to
Drayton-Beauchamp, Ashridge, Aylesbury, &c. The pleasantest feature
was a warm welcome from Mrs. Barnard, wife of the great
yeoman-farmer at Creslow Pastures, the royal feeding-grounds from
the time of Elizabeth to Charles II., with a lovely and interesting
old house overlooking Christ Low (the Christ's Meadow) and Heaven's
Low (Heaven's Meadow). Thence I went to North Marston, where was
the shrine of Sir John Shorne, a sainted rector, who preserved his
congregation from sin by 'conjuring the devil into his boot.'
Buckinghamshire is full of these quaint stories.
"Arthur has just been making great sensation by a splendid sermon
at St. Mary's, given in his most animated manner, his energies
gradually kindling till his whole being was on fire. It was on,
'Why stand ye here idle all the day long?--the first shall be last
and the last first.' 'Why stand ye here idle, listless, in the
quadrangle, in your own rooms, doing nothing; so that in the years
to come you will never be able to look back and say, "In such a
year, in such a term, I learnt this or that--that idea, that book,
that thought _then_ first struck me"? Perhaps this may be a voice
to the winds, perhaps those to whom it would most apply are even
now in their places of resort, standing idle: probably even those
who are here would answer to my question, "Because no man hath
hired us."'
"Then he described the powers, objects, and advantages of Oxford.
Then the persons who had passed away within the year, leaving gaps
to be filled up--the seven great masters of the English
language,[180] the German poets and philosophers,[181] the French
philosopher[182]--'and their praise shall go forth from generation
to generation.' Then he dwelt on the different duties of the coming
life to be prepared for, and he described the model
country-clergyman (Pearson), the model teacher (Jowett), the model
country-gentleman. Then came a beautiful and pictorial passage
about the eleventh hour and the foreboding of the awful twelfth.
The congregation was immense, and listened with breathless
interest. When the signatures were being collected for the Jowett
appeal, Arthur was hard at work upon them on Sunday when Mr. Jowett
came in. Arthur said, 'You need not mind my being at work to-day,
for I can assure you it is quite a Sunday occupation, a work of
justice, if not of mercy.'--'Yes,' said Jowett, 'I see how it is:
an ass has fallen into a pit, and you think it right to pull him
out on the Sabbath-day.'"
Arthur Stanley used to see a great deal of Mr. Jowett during this
year--far too much, my mother thought when she was staying with him at
Oxford; for Jowett--kind and unselfish as a saint--was only "Christian"
in so far that he believed the central light of Christianity to spring
from the life of Christ. He occasionally preached, but his sermons were
only illustrative of practical duties, or the lessons to be learnt from
holy and unselfish lives. It was during this year, too, that the English
Church recognised with surprise that it was being shaken to its
foundations by the volume of--mostly feeble and dull--"Essays and
Reviews." But to turn to a very different religious phase.
JOURNAL.
"_Wantage, Feb. 21, 1860._--I came here yesterday over dreary
snow-sprinkled downs. Wantage is a curious little town surrounding
a great cruciform church in the midst of a desert. The Vicar (Rev.
W. J. Butler[183]) welcomed me at the door of the gothic vicarage,
and almost immediately a clerical procession, consisting of three
curates, schoolmaster, organist, and scripture-reader, filed in (as
they do every day) to dinner, and were introduced one by one. The
tall agreeable Vicar did the honours just as a schoolmaster would
to his boys. There was such a look of daily service, chanting, and
_discipline_ over the whole party, that I quite felt as if Mrs.
Butler ought also to be a clergyman, and as if the two little girls
would have been more appropriately attired in black coats and
bands.
"After dinner, in raging snow and biting east wind, we sallied out
to survey the numerous religious institutions, which have been
almost entirely founded by the energy and perseverance of this
Vicar in the thirteen years he has been at Wantage. The church is
magnificent. There is an old grammar-school in honour of Alfred
(who was born here), a National School painted with Scripture
frescoes by Pollen, Burgon, &c., a training school under the charge
of Mrs. Trevelyan, a cemetery with a beautiful chapel, and St.
Mary's Home for penitents. At seven o'clock all the curates
dispersed to various evening services, Mr. Butler went to St.
Mary's Home, and Mrs. Butler and I to the church, where we sat in
the dark, and heard a choir chant a service out of what looked like
a gorgeous illumination.
"I was aghast to hear breakfast was at half-past seven, but as I
could not sleep from the piercing cold, it did not signify. At
seven a bell rang, and we all hurried to a little domestic chapel
in the house, hung with red and carpeted with red, but containing
nothing else except a cross with flowers at one end of the room,
before which knelt Mr. Butler. We all flung ourselves down upon the
red carpet, and Mr. Butler, with his face to the wall, intoned to
us, and Mrs. Butler and the servants intoned to him, and all the
little children intoned too, with their faces to the ground.
"Now there is to be full church service again, and then--oh! how
glad I shall be to get away."[184]
The society of Mrs. Gaskell the authoress was a great pleasure during
this term at Oxford. I made great friends with her, and we kept up a
correspondence for some time afterwards. Everybody liked Mrs
Gaskell.[185] I remember that one of the points which struck me most
about her at first was not only her kindness, but her extreme courtesy
and deference to her own daughters. While she was at Oxford, the subject
of ghosts was brought forward for a debate at the Union; she wished to
have spoken from the gallery, and if she had, would probably have
carried the motion in favour of ghosts at once. Here is one of her
personal experiences:--
"Mrs. Gaskell was staying with some cousins at Stratford-on-Avon,
who took her over to see Compton Whinyates. On their return she
stayed to tea at Eddington with her cousins--cousins who were
Quakers. Compton Whinyates naturally led to the subject of spirits,
and Mrs. Gaskell asked the son of the house whether there were any
stories of the kind about their neighbourhood; upon which the
father, who was a very stiff, stern old man, reproved them for vain
and light talking.
"After tea Mrs. Gaskell and her cousins went out to walk about the
place with the younger Quaker, when the subject of the supernatural
was renewed, and he said that their attention had lately been
called to it in a very singular manner. That a woman who was a
native of the place had many years ago gone as a lady's-maid to
London, leaving her lover, who was a carter, behind her. While in
London, she forgot her carter and married some one else, but after
some years her husband died, leaving her a large competence, and
she came back to spend the rest of her life in her native village.
There she renewed her acquaintance with the carter, to whom, after
a fortnight's renewal of courtship, she was married. After they had
been married a few weeks, she said she must go up to London to sell
all the property she had there, and come down to settle finally in
the country. She wished her husband to go with her, and urgently
entreated him to do so; but he, like many countrymen in that part,
had a horror of London, fancied it was the seat of all wickedness,
and that those who went there never could come back safe: so the
woman went alone, but she did not return. Some time after her
husband heard that she had been found in the streets of
London--dead.
"A few weeks after this the carter husband was observed to have
become unaccountably pale, ill, and anxious, and on being asked
what was the matter with him, he complained bitterly, and said that
it was because his wife would not let him rest at nights. He did
not seem to be frightened, but lamented that his case was a very
hard one, for that he had to work all day, and, when he wanted
rest, his wife came and sat by his bedside, moaning and lamenting
and wringing her hands all the night long, so that he could not
sleep.
"Mrs. Gaskell naturally expressed a wish to see the man and to hear
the story from his own lips. The Quaker said that nothing could be
easier, as he lived in a cottage close by; to which she went,
together with five other persons. It was like a Cheshire cottage,
with a window on each side of the door, and a little enclosure,
half-court, half-garden, in front. It was six o'clock in broad
summer daylight when they arrived. The door was locked and the
Quaker went round to try the back entrance, leaving Mrs. Gaskell
and her friends in the enclosure in front. They all, while there,
distinctly saw a woman, of hard features, dressed in a common lilac
print gown, come up to the latticed window close by them on the
inside and look out. They then saw her pass on and appear again at
the window on the other side of the door, after which she went away
altogether.
"When the Quaker appeared, unsuccessful in opening the back-door,
they said, 'But there is some one who could have let you in, for
there is a woman in the house.' They tried unsuccessfully, however,
to make her hear. Then they went to the adjoining cottage, where
the people assured them that the man was gone out for the day, and
that there could not possibly be any one in the house. 'Oh,' said
Mrs. Gaskell, 'but we have _seen_ a woman in the house in a lilac
print gown.' 'Then,' they answered, 'you have seen the ghost: there
is no _woman_ in the house; but that is _she_.'"
[Illustration: OLD BEECHES, HURSTMONCEAUX PARK.]
It was when I was at Beckett, just before Easter 1860, that I was first
told that we should have to leave our dear home at Hurstmonceaux. Many
years before, there had been an alarm, and my mother would then have
bought the Lime property, but that the price asked was so greatly above
its value, and no other purchasers came forward. So she was satisfied to
go on renting Lime and the surrounding fields for a small sum,
especially as she had a promise from those who had charge of the sale
that no other offer should be accepted without giving her the
preference. In the spring of 1860, however, Mr. Arkcoll, a rich old
Hurstmonceaux farmer and churchwarden, died, leaving a large fortune to
his nephew and a considerable sum of ready money to buy a house near his
property. Lime had long been as Naboth's vineyard in the younger Mr.
Arkcoll's eyes, and before we knew that the uncle was dead, we heard
that the nephew was the purchaser of Lime, the promise to us having been
broken.
My mother immediately offered Mr. Arkcoll a much larger sum than he had
paid to save Lime, but not unnaturally he was inexorable.
Thus it was inevitable that at Michaelmas we must leave our dear home,
and, though I had suffered much at Hurstmonceaux, and though our
position there as a ruined family was often a dismal one, yet we felt
that nothing could ever replace what Lime itself was, where every plant
was familiar, and every tree had its own little personal reminiscence.
And there was also the great difficulty of finding a new home within
our small means, and yet large enough to house our many books and
pictures.
I met my mother at Bournemouth to talk over plans and possibilities for
the future, and we went on to Weymouth, where we remained some weeks. It
was bitterly cold weather, but I always liked Weymouth, and the pleasant
walks in Sandyfoot Bay, and excursions to Bow and Arrow Castle, Corfe
Castle, Abbotsbury, and Lyme Regis. In April I was again at Beckett.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Beckett, April 8, 1860._--Yesterday I went with Lady Barrington
and Lady Somerton to Ashdowne (Lord Craven's). It is a most awfully
desolate place, standing high up on the bare downs. Four avenues
approach the house from the four sides. It was built by a Craven
who was Lord Mayor of London, and who, flying from the great
plague, rode fiercely on and on, till upon this bleak down he saw a
desolate farmhouse, where he thought that the plague could not
penetrate, and there he rested, and there he eventually built. The
four avenues, and the windows on every side, were intended to let
the plague out in one direction if it came in at the other. Inside
the house are great stag's horns which Elizabeth of Bohemia brought
with her from Germany, and portraits of her, Prince Rupert, Prince
Maurice, and the four princesses her daughters, painted by one of
them. The young Ladies Craven showed us the house amid shouts of
laughter at their own ignorance about it, which certainly was most
dense.
"We went on by roads, which were never meant for a carriage, to a
point whence Lady Barrington and I walked across the down to
'Wayland Smith's Cave,' a very small cromlech, in which Wayland
could hardly have stood upright when he used it for a forge."
"_Hendred House, April 15._--It is a proof how necessary it is for
the writer of a Handbook to see himself all that he writes about,
that I found East Hendred, of which I had heard nothing, to be one
of the most romantic villages I ever saw--groups of ancient
gable-ended houses, black and white or black and red, with turreted
chimneys--a ruined moss-grown chapel dedicated to 'Jesus of
Bethlehem'--a fine old grey church in a glen--and a beautiful
Catholic chapel attached to this quaint old house, which contains a
great Holbein of Sir Thomas More and his family, his cup, a
portrait of Cardinal Pole, and the staff upon which Bishop Fisher
leant upon the scaffold!"
My next visit was to Dr. Hawtrey, the Provost of Eton, to whom I became
much attached. Being in the house with him was a constant intellectual
feast, he was so accomplished as well as learned. Beautiful and
interesting books were produced to illustrate all he said, and it would
be hard to say how much Latin or Italian poetry he daily read or
repeated to me. It was impossible not to be perfectly at home with him,
he was so easy and natural. Of the two old sisters who had resided with
him, and who were known by Eton boys as Elephantina and Rhinocerina,
only one was still living, in a gentle and touching state of
childishness, keeping up all her old-fashioned habits of courtesy and
politeness; the mind now and then taking in an idea like a flash of
light, and immediately losing it again. The Provost's attention to this
old sister was quite beautiful, and her affection for him. When she was
going to bed she would "pack up" and carry off all the things upon the
table--books, envelope-boxes, &c., which were soon sent downstairs
again.
I went with the Provost to dine at New Lodge (Mr. Van de Weyer, the
Belgian Minister's), and found there the Dean of St. Paul's and Mrs.
Milman, he most bright and animated, she "icily bland and coldly amiable
as ever." I was quite delighted with the Van de Weyers, especially the
second son Albert (who afterwards died young). M. Sylvain Van de Weyer,
through life the trusted friend and representative of Leopold I. of
Belgium, had the expensive hobby of books, collecting rare editions and
the earliest printed classics, a taste inherited from his father, who
kept a circulating library at Louvain. When he showed us two shelves of
books in his library he said, "I have read all these whilst waiting for
dinner. I am always down punctually, and my guests are always late. From
my library I see them arrive, and never join them till a good many are
come: thus I have got through all these." Madame Van de Weyer was
immensely fat. She had lately been with her husband to a concert at
Windsor, and been much jostled, at which she was very indignant. "Why,
they take us for pages," she said to her husband. "No, my dear," he
replied; "they take me for a page, but they take you for a volume."
On the last occasion on which I saw the Provost Hawtrey before his
death, he said to me that he knew I collected curious stories, and that
there was one story, intimately connected with his own life, which he
wished that I should write down from his lips, and read to him when I
had written it, that he might see that it was perfectly correct.
Here is the story as he gave it:--
"In the time of my youth one of the cleverest and most agreeable
women in Europe was Madame de Salis--the Countess de Salis--who had
been in her youth a Miss Foster, daughter of the Irish Bishop of
Kilmore. As a girl she had been most beautiful and the darling of
her parents' hearts, but she married against their will with the
Count de Salis. He was a Swiss Count, but he took her, not to
Switzerland, but to Florence, where he hired a villa at
Bellosguardo. There the life of Madame de Salis was a most
miserable one: she had many children, but her husband, who cut her
off from all communication with her friends, was exceedingly unkind
to her. She was married to him for several years, and then she was
mercifully released by his death. It was impossible for her to
pretend to be sorry, and she did not pretend it: she hailed it as
the greatest mercy that could have befallen her.[186]
"Madame de Salis went back to Ireland, where her parents, the old
Bishop of Kilmore and Mrs. Foster, were still alive, and welcomed
her with rapture. But she had left them a radiant, beautiful,
animated girl; she returned to them a haggard, weird, worn woman,
with that fixed look of anguish which only the most chronic
suffering can leave. And what was worst was that her health had
completely given way: she never slept, she never seemed able to
rest, she had no repose day or night: she became seriously ill.
"All the best advice that could be procured was hers. There was a
great consultation of doctors upon her case, and after it had taken
place, the doctors came to the Bishop and said, 'The case of Madame
de Salis is an extraordinary one; it is a most peculiar, but still
a known form of hypochondria. She cannot rest because she always
sees before her--not the horrible phantom which made her married
life so miserable, but the room which was the scene of her
suffering. And she never will rest; the image is, as it were,
branded into her brain, and cannot be eradicated. There is only one
remedy, and it is a very desperate one. It will probably kill her,
she will probably sink under it, but it may have happy results.
However, it is the only chance of saving her. It is that she should
see the real room again. She can never get rid of its image: it is
engraven upon her brain for life. The only chance is for her to
connect it with something else.' When Madame de Salis was told
this, she said that her returning to Florence was impossible,
absolutely impossible. 'At any rate,' she said, 'I could not go
unless my younger sister, Miss Foster, might go with me; then
possibly I might think of it.' But to this Dr. and Mrs. Foster
would not consent. The happiness of their lives seemed to have been
extinguished when their elder daughter married Count de Salis, and
if their beautiful younger daughter went abroad, perhaps she also
would marry a foreigner, and then what good would their lives do
them? However, Madame de Salis grew daily worse; her life was
evidently at stake, and at last her parents said, 'Well, if you
will make us a solemn promise that you will never, under any
circumstances whatever, consent to your sister's marrying a
foreigner, she shall go with you;' and she went.
"Madame de Salis and Miss Foster went to Florence. They rented the
villa at Bellosguardo which had been the scene of the terrible
tragedy of Madame de Salis's married life. As they entered the
fatal room, Madame de Salis fell down insensible upon the
threshold. When she came to herself, she passed from one terrible
convulsion into another: she had a brain fever: she struggled for
weeks between life and death. But nature is strong, and when she
did rally, the opinion of the Irish doctors was justified. Instead
of the terrible companion of her former life and the constant dread
in which she lived, she had the companionship of her beautiful,
gentle, affectionate sister, who watched over her with unspeakable
tenderness, who anticipated her every wish.... The room was
associated with something else! Gradually, very gradually, Madame
de Salis dawned back into active life. She began to feel her former
interest in art; in time she was able to go and paint in the
galleries, and in time, when her recovery became known, many of
those who had never dared to show their sympathy with her during
her earlier sojourn at Florence, but who had pitied her intensely,
hastened to visit her; and gradually, as with returning health her
brilliant conversational powers came back, and her extraordinary
gift of repartee was restored, her salon became the most
_recherch\xE9_ and the most attractive in Florence.
"Chief of all its attractions was the lovely Miss Foster. When,
however, Madame de Salis saw that any one especially was paying her
sister attentions, she took an opportunity of alienating them, or,
if there seemed to be anything really serious, she expressed to the
individual her regret that she was unable to receive him any more.
But at last there was an occasion on which Madame de Salis felt
that more stringent action was called for. When a young Count
Mastai, in the Guardia Nobile, not only felt, but showed the most
unbounded devotion to Miss Foster, Madame de Salis did more than
express to him her regret that untoward family circumstances
prevented her having the pleasure of seeing him again; she let her
villa at Bellosguardo, she packed up her things, and she took her
sister with her to Rome.
"The reputation of the two sisters had preceded them, and when it
became known that the Madame de Salis who had had so romantic a
history was come to Rome with her beautiful younger sister, all
that was most intellectual and all that was most remarkable in the
old Papal capital gathered around them. But now the scene had
changed. It was no longer Madame de Salis who was the invalid. Miss
Foster grew pale and languid and unable to occupy herself, and
gradually she became so pale and so changed, and the cause of it
was so evident, that Madame de Salis felt that she must choose
between two alternatives: she must either break her word to her
parents and save the life of her sister, or she must keep her
promise to her parents and see her sister sink into the grave.
"And she decided on the former course. She wrote two letters--one
letter to Count Mastai, telling him that he might come back and see
her sister again, and the other letter to the Bishop of Kilmore and
Mrs. Foster. She said to her parents that she knew they measured a
foreign marriage by her own dreadful life with Count de Salis: that
in Count Mastai they must imagine the exact opposite of Count de
Salis: that he was honourable, noble, chivalrous, generous,
disinterested--in fact, that had she to seek through the whole
world the person to whom with the greatest confidence she could
commit her sister's happiness, she could not do otherwise than
choose Count Mastai. This letter she sent too late to have the
refusal which she knew it would bring. Count Mastai flew to the
feet of the beautiful Miss Foster, and was accepted at once. The
wedding-day was fixed, the wedding-dress was made, the
wedding-feast was prepared.[187]
"When the day came, all the friends of Madame de Salis collected in
the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, where the marriage was to
take place. According to the custom of brides in Rome, Miss Foster,
accompanied by Madame de Salis, came first to the altar and waited
for the bridegroom. He never came--he never came at all--he never,
never, never was heard of again. And that is the end of the first
part of the story.
* * * * *
"The second part of the story is quite different. It was the time
of the great famine and pestilence in the Basilicata. The misery
was most intense, hundreds perished daily everywhere. Every one who
could get away did; those who could went to Switzerland, others
went to Sicily; bishops abandoned their dioceses, priests abandoned
their flocks: there was a general stampede.
"But in that terrible time, as in all seasons of great national
suffering, there were instances of extraordinary devotion and
heroism. There was one young bishop of a Neapolitan diocese, who
was absent in Switzerland at the time, who came back like San Carlo
Borromeo over the Alps, who sold his library for the poor, who sold
his carriages, who sold at last even his episcopal ring, who walked
day and night in the hospitals, and by whose personal devotion many
lives were saved, while thousands were cheered and encouraged by
his example. The consequence was, that when the famine and the
pestilence in the Basilicata passed away, at an early age--at a
much earlier age than is usual--that young bishop was made a
cardinal.
* * * * *
"The third part of the story is again quite different. It was when
Pope Gregory XVI. lay upon his deathbed. There was the greatest
possible difficulty about who should be his successor; one member
of the Sacred College was too old, another was too young, another
was too much bound up with the princely families: there seemed to
be no one. The person who was of most influence at that time was
Count Rossi, the French Ambassador, and he was very anxious for a
liberal Pope, for some one who would carry out his own liberal
views. One day as he was walking pensively, filled with anxieties,
down the Corso, there passed by in a carriage that young bishop of
the Basilicata, once Bishop of Imola, now Archbishop of Spoleto,
who had been so distinguished during the famine. And when Count
Rossi saw him, he felt _that_ is the man--_that_ is the man who
would further my ideas and carry out my views. And by the wonderful
influence of Count Rossi on separate individuals, and by his
extraordinary powers of combination in bringing the mind of one
person to bear upon another, that person was chosen Pope. And on
the day on which he mounted the Papal throne as Pius IX., he
revealed that he was the person who, as Count Mastai Ferretti in
the Guardia Nobile, had been engaged to be married to the beautiful
Miss Foster. He had belonged to a Jesuit family: he had been
summoned on a Jesuit mission from which no one can shrink: his
value to the Church had been estimated: he was sent off to the West
Indies: letters were intercepted, and he was induced to believe
that Miss Foster had ceased to care about him: he was persuaded to
take Orders; he became bishop in the Basilicata, Bishop of Imola,
Archbishop of Spoleto, Pope of Rome--and Miss Foster lived to know
it.
* * * * *
"'Now,' said Dr. Hawtrey, 'if you ever tell that story, recollect
to say that it is no mere story I have heard; it is part of my own
life. Madame de Salis and her sister were my relations, and I was
most intimate with them. I was there when Madame de Salis made her
miserable marriage; I was there when she came back so terribly
changed. I shared in the consultations as to whether her sister
should go with her: I was with Dr. and Mrs. Foster when they
received the letter about Count Mastai: I was there when they heard
of the disappearance of the mysterious bridegroom: and I have lived
to think of him as Pope.'"
I am surprised to find no letters recording the long and happy visit
which I made during the latter part of April 1860 to Chequers, the
beautiful old house of Lady Frankland Russell, to whom I had been
introduced by Lady Sheffield, who was her cousin. With this most
interesting old lady I made great friends and received the greatest
kindness from her. Owing to the marriage of Sir John Russell of Chequers
with Mrs. Rich, youngest daughter of Cromwell, the house was perfectly
full of Cromwell relics, and in its grand old gallery hung portraits of
the Protector, his mother, brother, his four daughters, two sons-in-law,
secretary, &c. Here, also, enclosed in a cabinet, was a very awful mask
taken from Cromwell's face after death, which Lady Frankland used to
uncover with great solemnity. In the garden was a wonderful wych elm,
said to have been planted by King Stephen, and behind rose the Chiltern
Hills, the most beautiful point of which--Velvet Lawn, covered with
indigenous box--was in the immediate neighbourhood.
All through the summer of 1860 we were occupied in considering our new
home. We sent for all the London agents' lists of places to be let or
sold south of the Humber, and many of these, in Kent, Surrey, Berks,
Bucks, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, I went to see, either with
or without my mother. If she were not with me, I wrote to her long
accounts, always concluding with saying, "They are not like Holmhurst,
not in the least like Holmhurst,"--Holmhurst being the ideal place in
the unwritten novels which my mother and I had been accustomed to
narrate to each other in our long journeys abroad. My being difficult to
satisfy gave the aunts an unusual handle for abuse, and plentifully did
they bestow it upon me. "What can it signify whether you have a view or
not? No one but you would care to waste your time in always looking out
of the window," &c., &c. Especially was indignation roused by my
refusing to consider an old house which the Stanleys were determined
upon our taking in Oxfordshire,[188] and which was to be had very cheap
because no servants could be persuaded to stay there on account of a
frightful apparition which was supposed to haunt it. At last we almost
despaired of finding any place to suit us, and determined to take the
farm of Belhurst at Hurstmonceaux to put our furniture in, and to go
abroad till quite a different set of places were to be disposed of. Just
then a neighbour sent us a Hastings paper with a very humble
advertisement marked, "At Ore, a house, with thirty-six acres of land,
to be let or sold." "What a horrible place this must be," I said, "for
which they cannot find one word of description;" for the very ugliest
places we had seen had often been described in the advertisements as
"picturesque manorial residences," "beautiful villas with hanging
woods," &c. But my mother rightly thought that the very simple
description was perhaps in itself a reason why we should see it, and
after breakfast we set off in the little carriage. It was a drive of
about fourteen miles. Long before we could arrive at Ore, we passed
under a grey wall overhung by trees. "It looks almost as if there might
be a Holmhurst inside that wall," I said. Then we reached a gate between
two clipped yew-trees, and a board announced, "This house is to be let
or sold." We drove in. It was a lovely day. An arched gateway was open
towards the garden, showing a terrace, vases of scarlet geraniums, and a
background of blue sea. My mother and I clasped each other's hands and
simultaneously exclaimed--"This is Holmhurst!"
The house was let then, and we were refused permission to see the
inside, but my mother bought the property at once: she was as sure as I
was that we should never like any other place as well.
We found that the name of the place was Little Ridge. There were six
places called Ridge in the neighbourhood, and it was very desirable to
change the name, to prevent confusion at the post-office and elsewhere.
Could we call it anything but Holmhurst? Afterwards we discovered that
Holmhurst meant an ilex wood, and our great tree is an ilex.
On September 24 my mother left Lime. The day before was Sunday, and very
sad--so many tearful farewells, so many poor women crying in the
churchyard as we passed through. I stayed at Lime to pack up and arrange
everything. On October 6, in the gloaming of the autumn evening, while
the sunlight was streaming through the diminishing leaves of the old
abele trees, and throwing long shadows upon the green lawn and bright
flower-beds, we took a last farewell of our dear Hurstmonceaux home.
Lea delivered up the keys, and we walked away (to the Rectory) up the
drive, our drive no longer.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Holmhurst, Oct. 8, 1860._--This morning we left Hurstmonceaux
Rectory directly after breakfast, good old Dr. Wellesley quite
affected, and Harriet Duly, and even begging Mrs. Havendon, crying
bitterly on taking leave of Lea. We met a smart carriage with two
white horses going to fetch the Arkcolls, who made a triumphal
entry to Lime just after our departure. Winchester drove us, in
order to bring back the horse--John and Romo (the dog) on the box:
Lea and I with Julietta (the cat) and her kitten inside, and no end
of provisions under the seats. We stopped first at Mrs. Taylor's
farm, and she gave Lea a new loaf and some cheese to begin
housekeeping with, and me some excellent cakes. Lea thought the
drive charming. I walked up all the hills and we arrived about one
o'clock. It was impossible to enter the gates on account of the
waggons of the outgoing tenants, but Joe and Margaret Cornford from
the lodge hailed us with the joyful news that they had themselves
departed a few hours before."
"_Oct. 9._--We began work at six, a lovely morning, and the view
exquisite as I opened my window, the oak-trees with which the
meadows are studded casting long shadows on the grass, the little
pond glittering in the sun, and the grey castle rising against the
softest blue sea beyond. John is awed by the magnitude of the
grounds.... Julietta cries to go home, and would certainly set off,
if it were not for little black pussy. I think the winding walks
and obscure paths are enchanting, and the fir-woods are really
large enough for you to 'inhale the turpentine air' as at
Bournemouth."
[Illustration: THE ABELES, LIME.]
My mother came to Holmhurst in about ten days, but not to stay, as we
had arranged to break the transition between our two homes by spending
the winter at Mentone. We took the route to the south by Orleans (whence
I made a most interesting excursion to Notre Dame de Clery), Bourges,
and then lingered at Oranges, Avignon, &c. I have always looked back
upon the earlier part of this journey with remorse, as one in which I
took my mother a longer way, in cold weather, simply to gratify my own
wishes.
The dear mother, however, was very well, and this winter was therefore
perhaps the happiest of the many we have spent abroad. Mentone consisted
then only of the old town on a promontory above the sea, ending in a
little island-tower, and clambering up the sides of the hill to the
castle and cemetery. On either side were a very few villas scattered
amid the olive and orange groves. In one of these,[189] above the
terrace which led from the eastern gate of the town to the little chapel
of St. Anne, we rented the first floor. On the ground floor lived our
worthy landlord, M. Trenca, and his Swiss wife, with whom we made much
acquaintance. In the neighbouring villas also we had many friends, and
often gave little parties,--for the tiny society was most simple and
easily pleased. We all enjoyed Mentone, where we had no winter, and
breakfasted with windows wide open at Christmas. Our old servants, Lea
and John, amused themselves by collecting roots of anemones and other
plants; I drew, and sought materials for my little book "A Winter at
Mentone;" and my mother was always gay and happy, betaking herself every
morning with her camp-stool to draw in some sheltered nook, and
returning proud of having discovered some new pathlet, or some fresh
bank of rare flowers in the olive groves; and in the afternoons often
going to sit with and read or sing to some of the invalid visitors.
[Illustration: MENTONE.[190]]
JOURNAL.
"_Dec. 1860._--Our apartment has a bright salon looking towards the
garden, with glass doors opening on a balcony. All the rooms except
one overlook a vast expanse of blue sea, above groves of
magnificent olivetrees, and from the garden a fresh scent of
flowers is wafted up, even in December. From this garden the peaks
of the Berceau are seen rising above the thickets of oranges and
lemons, and beyond is a chain of rosecoloured rocks descending in
an abrupt precipice to the blue waters of the bay, while on the
farthest promontory Bordighera gleams white in the sunshine. Twice
a day a lovely fairy vision salutes us; first, when, in the
sunrise, Corsica reveals itself across the sapphire water,
appearing so distinctly that you can count every ravine and
indentation of its jagged mountains, and feel as if a boat would
easily take you to it in an hour; and again in the evening, when,
as a white ghost, scarcely distinguishable from the clouds around
it, and looking inconceivably distant, it looms forth dimly in the
pink haze of sunset.
"We were here a very little while before several donkey-women
presented themselves to secure our custom. We engaged ourselves to
a wild Meg Merrilies figure in a broad white hat, with a red
handkerchief tied underneath, and a bunch of flowers stuck jauntily
in the side of her hair, who rejoices in the name of Teresina
Ravellina Muratori de Buffa! With her we have made many excursions.
It is impossible for anything to be more beautiful than the variety
of green in the valleys: the blue-green of the gigantic euphorbias,
which fringe the rocks by the wayside, the grey-green of the
olives, the dark green of the old gnarled carouba trees, and the
yellow-green of the canes and the autumnal vineyards. The walls are
beautiful with their fringe of mesembryanthemum--'Miss Emily
Anthem' as the servants call it. Most of the paths are a constant
'excelsior,' and beginning with the steep yellow tufa rocks behind
the town, gradually enter the pine-woods, and ascend towards the
blue peaks of Sant' Agnese, which are always visible through the
red stems of the pine-trees, and across the rich foreground of
heath and myrtle. The trees are full of linnets, which the natives
call 'trenta-cinque' from the sound of their note, and the air
resounds with the cries of the donkey-drivers--'Ulla'--go on, and
'Isa'--for shame."
"_Jan. 11, 1861._--We have been climbing up to Grimaldi, whose
broad sunny terrace is as Italian a scene as any on the Riviera,
for it is crossed by a dark archway, and lined on one side with
bright houses, upon whose walls yellow gourds hang in the sun, with
a little church, painted pink and yellow, while the other side is
overshadowed by old olive-trees, beneath which is seen the broad
expanse of sea, here deep blue, there gleaming silver white in the
hot sunshine. Children in bright handkerchiefs and aprons were
playing about, and singing 'Tanta di gioja, tanto di contento,'
while we were drawing.
"Beyond Grimaldi the path becomes intensely steep, but we were
repaid for going on when we reached to the top of the hills, as the
scenery there is almost Alpine in its bold rocky foregrounds,
beneath which yawns the deep black chasm of St. Louis, with a huge
cliff towering above. On the scorched rock is Ciotti Superiore, a
quaint cluster of houses, while the church, quite separated from
the village, stands farther off, on the highest ridge of the
mountain. Behind the church, the sea view is magnificent, embracing
the coast, with its numerous bays, as far as the Estrelles, which
turn golden and pink in the sunset; the grand mountain barriers,
with all the orange-clad valleys running up into them; and S.
Agnese rising out of the blue mist on its perpendicular cliff....
And, even in this high situation, lovely narcissus and pink
carnations were blooming in January.
"People here are unconventional. When it began to rain on Tuesday,
as we were going to a picnic, the coachman said 'Ah! le bon Dieu a
oubli\xE9 que c'est un jour de f\xEAtes.'"
[Illustration: GRIMALDI.][191]
It was a great delight during our winter at Mentone that Lady Mary Wood
and her family were spending the winter at Nice with old Lady Grey, so
that my friend Charlie and I often met, and became greater friends than
ever, entirely sympathising in all we did and saw. I went to Nice to
spend some days with the Woods, and they came to Mentone for Easter,
when we saw the Mentonais assemble to "grind Judas's bones," and many
other of their strange ceremonies.
"_Good Friday, 1861._--When Charlie and I went to S. Michele at
eight o'clock in the evening, we found the church crowded from end
to end with people chanting the Miserere, and radiant with a
thousand waxlights. In the choir, under a canopy, upon a raised
bier surrounded by a treble row of tall tapers, lay the body of
Christ, for which the whole service was a funeral celebration. Soon
after we arrived, a sudden hush in the crowd showed that something
important was going to happen, and a huge friar's lanthorn carried
in by a boy preceded the celebrated 'Pilgrim Preacher of the
Riviera,' a Capuchin monk with a long white beard, who exercises
his wonderful gift of preaching all along the Riviera during Lent.
His sermon was short, but very graphic and striking. He began by
describing a dreadful murder which people had committed upon the
person of their kindest friend, with the horror it excited; and
then, pointing to the white corpse which lay before him amid the
blazing candles, he declared that those around him were themselves
the perpetrators of the crime, and that the object of it was no
other than their Saviour, whose image they saw there pale and
bleeding before their eyes. Then, snatching the crucifix from the
support by his side, he held it aloft to urge repentance by the
sufferings there portrayed. As he concluded, soldiers filed into
the church, and, amid rolling of drums and blowing of trumpets
which intermingled with the chanting, the body was taken up and
carried three times round the church by the Black Penitents,
Mentonais nobles supporting a canopy over the bier."
With Charlie Wood, also, I went to Dolceacqua, which will always come
back to me as one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, with
its forest-clad mountains, its tall bridge, its blue river Nervia, and
the palatial castle of the Dorias on a cliff, with sunlight streaming
through its long lines of glassless windows. Almost equally picturesque
were Peglia and Peglione, the latter on the top of a conical rock, with
tremendous precipices and extraordinary mountain forms all around.
[Illustration: DOLCEACQUA.][192]
In the spring we went for a few days to S. Remo, accompanied by several
friends. With them, when my mother returned to Mentone, I travelled
farther along the Riviera, an excursion which was most amusing, as we
bargained for a little carriage from place to place, giving ridiculously
small sums, and living entirely like Italians. We went on to
many-towered Albenga, to Savona, and eventually to Genoa, making all
the excursions belonging to each place. From Genoa we joined Mr. and
Mrs. Strettel in an excursion to Porto Fino. When we returned, it was
too late to reach Mentone before Sunday, and my companions refused to
travel on that day, so we employed the interval in going to Piacenza,
Parma, and Modena! Thence we were obliged to telegraph to Mr. Strettel
(then chaplain at Genoa) to send us some money to get home with, which
we did in a series of little carriages as we had come, but travelling
all day and night, driving in the moonlight along the Riviera roads, or
often walking for miles at night upon the sands by the sea.
[Illustration: PEGLIONE.][193]
[Illustration: VENTIMIGLIA.[194]]
Mr. Petit, the famous ecclesiologist,[195] spent some time at Mentone
afterwards, and was very kind in taking me sketching excursions, as a
fourth in the carriage with his sister, Miss Emma Petit, and his niece,
Miss Salt. Mr. Petit was extraordinarily clever, especially as an
artist, but most eccentric. He covered the backs of his pictures with
caricatures of goblins, &c., representing the events of each day on
which the pictures were done. When they travelled, this extraordinary
family used to keep what they called "the Petit count:" if they met a
cat, it counted for so much--a black goat for so much more, and so on:
but if they met a royal prince, it annihilated the whole of the Petit
count, and the party would consequently go a whole day's journey out of
their way to evade a royal prince. Mr. Petit was most striking in
appearance, with a great deal of colour and snow-white hair and beard. I
remember the start which our donkey-boy Fran\xE7ois gave when he first saw
him, and his exclaiming, "Je crois, Monsieur, que c'est le fr\xE8re du P\xE8re
Eternel!" One day I had gone with Mr. Petit and Miss Salt to
Ventimiglia, and we were returning at a most alarming speed (with their
horses, from Toulon, unaccustomed to the road) along the edge of an
almost unguarded and perpendicular precipice. Suddenly the horses made a
great dash, and I _felt_, rather than saw, that they were leaving the
road. I threw myself out instantly over the side of the carriage. As I
picked myself up, I had the horror of seeing the horses _over_, hanging
in the branches of an olive-tree which overhung the sea at a tremendous
height, and on the tiny plateau on which it grew. The carriage was
swaying to and fro on the wall, which it had broken down, and which was
rapidly giving way altogether. "Uncle, shall I get out?" said Miss Salt,
as coolly as if nothing was going on. "Yes," he said--and they both got
out. A crowd of men came and rescued the horses with ropes from their
perilous position, and we walked home.
As usual, in our return to England, we lingered much by the way. The
railway then only reached as far as Aix in Provence, and we joined it
there after a long _vetturino_ journey; then, after visiting the
wonderful deserted town of Les Baux near Arles and Vaucluse near
Avignon, we went to S. Laurent du Pont and the Grande Chartreuse,
greatly enjoying the beauty of the spring flowers there, as well as the
scenery.
X
WORK IN NORTHERN COUNTIES
"Al ogni uccello suo nido par bello."
--_Italian Proverb._
"O my life! have we not had seasons
That only said, Live and rejoice?
That asked not for causes or reasons,
But made us all feeling and voice."
--LOWELL.
On our arrival in England, we were delighted with our little Holmhurst,
which we arranged to be as much like Lime as possible, while many of the
plants and shrubs we had brought with us, were, in the garden, a
perpetual reminder of our old home. To my mother, however, our return
was greatly clouded by the loss of her only brother, my Uncle Penrhyn,
who died at Sheen while we were at Mentone, passing away most
peacefully, surrounded by his family. This uncle is one of the few
figures connected with my childhood with whom I have no associations but
those of unvarying kindness, and in later years we had been brought
nearer to him in our long winter visits at Sheen, and we missed him
greatly.
My Handbook (nominally Murray's) of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and
Berkshire had been published during our winter absence: my little book
"A Winter at Mentone" appeared soon after our return. With Murray's
Handbook I had taken as much pains as if it were to appear in my own
name, and felt as strongly the responsibility of what Miss Edgeworth
calls "irremediable words," once past the press. The "Winter at Mentone"
fell perfectly flat, but Murray was so pleased with the laudatory
notices which followed the appearance of the Handbook, that he asked me
to select any other counties I liked. I chose Durham and Northumberland,
and after the middle of July went there for three months. In undertaking
these counties, I again assented to an arrangement by which I was never
repaid for my work; but the work was one which I liked extremely,
bringing me in contact with endless interesting persons, enabling me to
be much with "Cousin Susan," who gave me a second home at Ridley Hall,
and opening a field of historic study of the most interesting kind. On
the way north I went to the Vaughans at Doncaster, of which Dr. Vaughan
had lately become Vicar.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Doncaster, July 24, 1861._--The people here are a perpetual
amusement to Kate, they are so quaint and original. She spoke to
one old woman the other day about her sinful ways and the necessity
for amendment. 'Na, na, Mrs. Vaughan,' she replied, 'I be got too
old for Mr. Satan noo; he canna hurt I noo.' Another old woman who
was brought into the hospital swore dreadfully all night long, to
the great annoyance of her neighbours; but when they complained she
said, 'Wal, I niver did it afore I coomed here, but I be gettin'
old, and I canna help it--and it's the will o' God, and I canna
help it.'
"Kate said to an old man, 'What are you so low about, my man?'
'Why,' he said, 'what wi' faith, and gas, and balloons, and
steam-ingines a-booming and a-fizzling through t' warld, and what
wi't' arth a going round once in twenty-four hours, I'm fairly
muzzled and stagnated.'
"I have been to call on the daughters of 'Presence-of-mind Smith,'
who was Dean of Christ Church, and to the close of his life used to
tell this story of himself. 'In my life,' he said, 'there has been
one most fortunate incident. A friend of mine persuaded me to go
out with him in a boat upon a lake. I did not wish to go, but he
persuaded me, and I went. By the intervention of Providence, I took
my umbrella with me. We had not been long on the lake when the
violence of the waves threw my friend out of the boat drowning, and
he sank. Soon, as is the case with drowning persons, he came up
again, and clutched hold of the side of the boat. Then such,
providentially, was my presence of mind, that I seized my umbrella
and rapped him violently on the knuckles till he let go. He sank,
and I was saved.'"
[Illustration: AT DURHAM.]
When I arrived at Durham, I presented myself at once to my cousins the
George Liddells, who lived at a dingy brick house in the suburb called
Old Elvet. They had never seen me before, but welcomed me with the
utmost kindness and hospitality, making me quite at home with them. I
took a little lodging close by, but they made me dine with them almost
every day, and I went constant expeditions with them, staying to dinner
at the neighbouring houses, Elemore, Aldin Grange, &c. Durham itself I
always found charming. The smoke only gave a picturesqueness of its own,
and on Sunday there was a Sabbath of nature, for when the chimneys
ceased smoking, the birds began to sing, the flowers to bloom, and the
sky to be blue. Sunday, however, was a severe day with the George
Liddells, almost entirely spent in going to church, reading prayers, and
listening to long sermons at home. Even on ordinary days, _after_ long
morning prayers, we were expected to read all the Psalms and Lessons for
the day, verse by verse, before we went out. But with all this, George
Liddell was the very dearest and kindest of old men, and I was very fond
too of his wife--"Cousin Louise"--who was most amusing and original.
Other cousins, who were intensely good to me at this time, were old
Henry Liddell, brother of my great-uncle Lord Ravensworth, and his wife,
who was daughter of Thomas Lyon of Hetton, my great-grandmother's
youngest brother. I had known them first at Bath many years before,
where they were kind to me when I had very few friends. With them lived
their daughters Charlotte and Amelia, and their youngest son William, a
very tall, very excellent, and very shy clergyman, who was his father's
curate at Easington. Here I paid my first visit to them. It is an ugly
village in the Black Country, but the Liddells' house was most
comfortable, having the sea close by, with delightful sands and rocks,
and many wooded "denes" running down to it, of which Castle Eden is
especially beautiful.
I remember one day, after returning from Easington, dining with Dr.
Phillpotts, the celebrated Bishop of Exeter, who had a Canonry at
Durham. He was very old, and was obliged to have a glass of wine given
to him to obtain strength to go in to dinner, and every one wished him
good-night when he left the dinner-table. He was good enough also to
send for me alone to wish success to my book, &c. It was my only sight
of this kindly old man, though I knew his daughter well, and valued her
many good qualities. They both died shortly afterwards. Amongst the
company at the Bishop's were Mr. and Mrs. Johnson of Akeley Heads, whom
I also visited at their own beautiful place, which is on a high terrace
overlooking Durham. It came to them in a curious way. Mr. Johnson was
at school at Durham, and went out with his two elder brothers to spend
the day with a rich old uncle who lived there. The eldest brother was
his uncle's heir. They were sent to play in the garden, and seeing there
a beautiful ripe peach upon the wall, they were unable to resist it, and
ate it up. Soon the uncle came into the garden to look for that
identical peach. "Where is my peach gone?" he said. The three boys were
dreadfully frightened, and the two eldest denied knowing anything about
it, but the youngest said, "We picked it and ate it up." The old man
said nothing, but went home and altered his will that very afternoon,
and when he was killed by an accident three weeks afterwards, his
youngest nephew was found to be the heir of Akeley Heads.
I was frequently invited by Dean Waddington, who was a man of stately
presence, "grand seigneur, fastueux, homme du monde," and had a great
reputation for learning and cleverness; but in my acquaintance with him
he seemed to care for nothing but his dinner, and his chief topic of
conversation was his sherry of 1815, for which he gave \xA312 a dozen.
"What with _diner \xE0 la Russe_, crinoline, and pale sherry," he said one
day, "England is fast going to the dogs."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Dilston, August 28._--The Greys gave me a warm welcome to
Dilston--Mr. Grey being agent for the Greenwich Hospital Estates
there, and a great agriculturist. Dilston is lovely. The house
stands on a terraced height, covered with hanging woods, beneath
which flows the Devil's Water, the most beautiful of Northumbrian
rivers, with trout dancing about in its transparent brown currents,
and floating away over its crumpled-looking rocks. On the hilltop
is the ruined castle of the Earl of Derwentwater, with his nursery,
now overgrown by huge elder-trees, and the little chapel beneath
which he was buried at night beside his ancestors. Below is the old
grey pointed bridge, upon which, as he rode over, he repented of
his rebellion and turned back to the castle, when his wife threw
her fan at him, and calling him a coward, drove him forth to his
destruction."
"_Ridley Hall, Sept. 1._--'How happily the days of Thalaba roll by'
might be applied to all the dwellers at Ridley Hall; for 'Cousin
Susan' is so truly genial to her many guests, that they cannot fail
to enjoy being with her."
"_Chillingham Castle, Sept. 6._--I went with Cousin Susan to spend
two days at Matfen, Sir Edward Blackett's, a large modern Tudor
house with a church beside it, looking into a great park, and
entered through a stately gothic hall. Sir Edward and Lady
Blackett have not been married many years, but four of his
daughters by his first wife are now out. Lady Blackett also had
another Northumbrian husband, Mr. Orde of Whitfield, and, as
daughter of Sir Charles Lorraine, was once thought a great beauty.
Sir Edward drove me to see Aydon, a curious old castle which
belongs to him.
"Yesterday I came to Chillingham from Belford, a beautiful drive,
over hills first, and then descending into moorland, purple with
heather, and bounded by the Cheviots, which rose deep blue against
the sunset sky. The castle, which is partly as old as King John, is
built round a great courtyard, from which flights of stone steps go
up to the principal apartments. On the stairs I found Lord
Tankerville, a handsome middle-aged man, with grey hair, romping
with his children. He is quite charming, so merry and so courteous.
He took me at once to my room, which is high up in one of the old
towers, and at eight we dined. Lady Tankerville is sister of the
Duke of Manchester, very pretty, and looks quite a girl, though her
three boys must be eight, nine, and ten years old."
"_Chillingham, Sept. 8._--This park is quite as beautiful in its
way as any scenery abroad, and much more so, I think, than any in
Scotland. It is backed by the Cheviot Hills, and often broken into
deep dells, with little streamlets rushing down them, and weird old
oaks whose withered branches are never cut off, sheltering herds of
deer. Great herds too of wild cattle, which are milk-white, and
have lived here undisturbed from time immemorial, come rushing
every now and then down the hillsides like an army, to seek better
pasture in the valley. Deer of every kind are to be seen upon the
hills, and Lady Tankerville hunts them furiously, tiring out twelve
horses in succession, placed to await her at different points in
the park. Nothing can be more lovely than the evening effects each
day I have been here, the setting sun pouring streams of golden
light into the great grey mysterious basins of the Cheviots, amid
which Marmion died and Paulinus baptized the ancient Northumbrians.
"If the place is charming, the people are even more so. The family
is the happiest and most united I have ever seen. Lord Tankerville
is the best and kindest of human beings. Lady Tankerville, whose
spirits are so exuberant she scarcely knows how to get rid of them,
dotes on her 'Hossinun,' plays with her children, gallops on her
horses, hunts her deer, and manages her household, with equal
vivacity. She is the most amusing person possible, is never ill,
laughs fine-ladyism to scorn, and scrambles about the park,
regardless of colds and crinolines, in all states of the weather.
The three little boys, Charlie, Georgie, and Peddie, are all quite
as engaging in their different ways, and the two little girls are
lovely little creatures.
"The prettiest story of an acceptance I ever heard of is that of
Lord Tankerville. He was playing at billiards with Lady Olivia
Montagu when he proposed, but she gave no definite answer. At last
she said, 'I think we must go into the drawing-room now; we have
been away long enough.'--'But what may I think, what may I say?' he
asked in agitation. 'Say that we have played our game, and that
you have won,' she answered.
"Yesterday, as soon as luncheon was over, Lady Tankerville and I
set off for a regular good sketching, in which she soon outstripped
me, for her drawings are first-rate. In some she has been helped by
Landseer, who is often here, and who has added beautiful misty
backgrounds, and put herds of deer into her fern.
"In the park is a beautiful old Peel tower, the home of the
Hepburns."
"_Chillingham, Sept. 10._--Lord Tankerville says, 'I do not see why
any one should ever go away from a place as long as he can make
himself happy there.' On that principle I should certainly never
leave Chillingham, which is the pleasantest place I ever was at. I
feel as if I had known Lord and Lady Tankerville all my life, his
kindness and her fun make one so entirely at home; and as for
Charlie, Georgie, and Peddie, there never were such little boys.
"Yesterday I was awakened by the servant saying that an order had
just come out to have breakfast ready in twenty minutes, as we were
all going to Dunstanborough for the day. So we hurried down, and as
soon as we had eaten our breakfast, set off in two little
basket-carriages across the park and up the steep hills to the
moors. At the top we found a larger carriage, packed with luncheon,
and with plenty of wraps, for the day was most unpromising; but
Lady Tankerville had quite made up her mind that it _should_ be
fine, and that we _would_ enjoy ourselves; and so we most
certainly did. The drive across the moorlands was charming, such
sweeps of purple heather, with blue mountain distance. Then, after
twelve miles, we descended through the cornland to Dunstanborough,
and walked through the sandhills covered with rye-grass and bloody
cranesbill to the castle, on a reef of basaltic rocks overhanging
the sea, which in one place roars up beneath in a strange cavern,
known as the Rumbling Churn. Lady Tankerville and I drew Queen
Margaret's Tower, where she was concealed after the battle of
Hexham, and then we picnicked and rambled about. Coming home we
told stories. A tremendous shower came on, and then the sky cleared
for a golden sunset over the mountains, and a splendid descent into
the old deer-park."
"_Bamborough Castle, Sept. 12._--Yesterday, at four, we set off on
a gipsy picnic from Chillingham--little 'Co' (Corisande) on a pony,
with the tea-things in panniers; Lady Tankerville, a fat Mr.
Athelstane from Portugal, Charlie, Georgie, Peddie, and I walking.
The pouring morning turned into a beautiful afternoon, and we had a
delightful scramble through the ferny glades of the park, and up
the steep craggy hills to the moorlands. Here Lady Tankerville went
off through the heather to look after her little girl, and I told
the three boys the story of Littlecot Hall, till the Shetland pony,
'Piccolomini,' arrived by the longer path. Then we lighted a fire
between two rocks, and Lady Tankerville and her children boiled a
kettle and cooked omelets over a fire of heather and fern, and
beautiful grapes, greengages, jam, and cakes unfitted us for the
eight-o'clock dinner. Then we came down like bushrangers, breaking
a path through the bracken, a great deal taller than ourselves, and
seeing in the distance the herds of wild white bulls. One or two
people came to dinner, but it was just the same simple merry meal
as usual.
"The Tankervilles sent me here to-day--twelve miles--in their
carriage."
"_Bamborough Castle, Sept._ 13.--It is very pleasant, as you will
imagine, to be here again, and I have much enjoyed the delightful
sands and the splendid green waves which came rolling in all
yesterday afternoon. It was a lovely evening, warm enough to enjoy
sitting out on the seat amongst the tall bent-grass, and to watch
Holy Island quite distinct in the sunset, with all the little fleet
of red-sailed herring-boats coming round from North Sunderland. Old
Mrs. Liddell sits as usual in her deep window and looks through the
telescope. Amelia wanders about with her black spaniel, and
Charlotte rides furiously on the sands when out, and talks
incessantly, though pleasantly, when in."
"_Bamborough, Sept. 16._--Yesterday I set off at 8 A.M. in a
dogcart for Holy Island, one of the castle cart-horses being
harnessed for the purpose, and the castle joiner going with me to
find old wood for repairs. It was a wild morning, but gleams of
light made the country picturesque, and Waren Bay looked very
striking, backed by its angular purple hills, and strewn with
pieces of wreck, over which sea-birds were swooping. Only one bit
of sand was visible when we reached the ford, but the horse plunged
gallantly in. Then we had a very rough crossing of a quarter of an
hour in a boat through the great green waves to the island, where
we landed on the yellow rocks. Close by, on the green hill, stand
the ruins, so well described in 'Marmion,' of St. Cuthbert's Abbey,
the old cathedral of Lindisfarne--rather small after descriptions,
but beautiful in colour, and its massive round pillars, with
patterns upon them, almost unique in England. Beyond, was the still
blue harbour filled with fishing-boats, and the shore was lined
with men and women packing herrings in barrels of salt. At one
corner of the bay rises the castle on a conical hill like a
miniature Mont St. Michel, and Bamborough and Dunstanborough are
blue in the hazy distance."
"_Sept. 17._--Stephen Denison is here (my cousin by his marriage
with Miss Fellowes[196]), and I have been with him to pay a long
visit to Grace Darling's[197] old father, an interesting man, with
as much information as it is possible for any one to have who has
lived since he was one year old on a desolate island rock tending a
lighthouse. He lent us his diary to read, which is very curious,
and an awful record of wrecks and misery."
[Illustration: ON ALLEN WATER, RIDLEY HALL.]
"_Ridley Hall, Sept. 19._--Cousin Susan and her old friend Miss
Coulson, with 'the boys' (the dogs), were waiting to welcome me in
the avenue, when I got out at the private station here. The house
is quite full of people, to whom it is amusing to help to do the
honours. Great is the autumnal beauty of the place. I have been
with Cousin Susan up the Birky Brae, and down by the Craggy Pass
and the Hawk's Nest--streams of sunlight falling upon the rocks and
river, and lighting up the yellow and red leaves which now mingle
with the green. The dogs walked with us to church to-day--Tarlie
was allowed to enter with the family, and Bloomer with the maids,
but Perette, Bianca, Fritz, and the Chowdy-Tow were sent back from
the door!
"We have had a remarkable visit from an old Miss Clayton, an
eccentric, strangely-attired, old, very old lady, who had travelled
all the way from Chesters, on North Tyne, to see Staward Peel, and
then had rambled on foot hither down the rocks by the Allen. Both
she and her friend had fallen into the river in crossing the
stepping-stones above the wood, and arrived, carrying a large
reticule basket, and dripping with wet and mud, about five o'clock;
yet, as soon as she had been dried and fed, she insisted on setting
off again on foot to visit Haltwhistle and Bellister Castle before
going home at night!"
"_Streatlam Castle, Sept. 25._--I came with Cousin Susan to this
curious place, to which our cousin Mr. Bowes[198] has welcomed us
very cordially. The house is in a hollow--an enormous building of
the last century, enclosing a medi\xE6val castle. I sleep in the
ghost-room, looking most grim and weird from its black oak with red
hangings, and containing a tall bed with a red canopy. Here the
only existing local Handbook says that 'the unfortunate Mary Queen
of Scots expired in captivity.' I am afraid the next Handbook will
be obliged to confess that she was beheaded at Fotheringay.
"The long galleries are full of family portraits--Hyltons,
Blakistons, and Bowes's--one of whom, Miss Bowes of Streatlam, was
Mrs. John Knox! More interesting to me is the great picture of
Mary Eleanor, the unhappy Countess of Strathmore,[199] walking in
the gardens of Pauls-Walden. This house was the scene of her most
terrible sufferings."
"_Streatlam Castle, Sept. 27._--This is the oddest house I ever was
in! Everything is arranged for you, from the moment you get up till
the moment you go to bed, and you are never allowed to deviate from
the rules laid down: I even write this in time stolen from the
half-hour for dressing. We are called at eight, and at ten march in
to breakfast with the same procession as at dinner, only at this
meal 'Madame Bowes' does not appear, for she is then reclining in a
bath of coal-black acid, which 'refreshes her system,' but leaves
her nails _black_. After breakfast we are all set down to
employments appointed for the morning. At twelve Madame appears,
having painted the under-lids of her jet-black eyes with
belladonna. At two the bell rings for luncheon, and we are fetched
if not punctual to an instant. At three we are all sent out driving
(the coachman having exact orders where to take us) immense drives
(twenty-four miles to-day) in an open barouche and pair. At seven
we dine in great splendour, and afterwards we sit in the oak
drawing-room and talk about our ancestors!
"The town of Barnard Castle is most picturesque, with a ruined
castle of the Baliols. Dickens, in early life, used frequently to
come down and stay there with some young artist friends of his. The
idea of 'Humphrey's Clock' first sprung from Humphrey, the
watchmaker in the town, and the picture in the beginning of the
book is of the clock over the door of his shop. While at Barnard
Castle, Dickens heard of the school at Bowes which he afterwards
worked up as Dotheboys Hall. Many of these schools, at \xA315 and \xA320
a year, existed at that time in the neighbourhood, and were
principally used for the sons of London tradesmen, who, provided
their sons got a moderate education, cared little or nothing what
became of them in the meantime. Dickens went over to see the school
at Bowes, and was carefully shown over it, for they mistook him for
a parent coming to survey it, with a view of sending his son there.
Afterwards the school was totally ruined. At one of Mr. Bowes's
elections, the Nicholas Nickleby or former usher of the school, who
was then in want of a place, wrote to him to say in what poverty he
was. He 'had formerly been living with Mr. Shawe at Bowes, and they
had been happy and prosperous, when Mr. Dickens's misguided volume,
sweeping like a whirlwind over the schools of the North, caused Mr.
Shawe to become a victim to paralysis, and brought Mrs. Shawe to an
untimely grave.'"
_"Morpeth Rectory, Oct. 8._--My present host is Mr. Francis Grey,
an old likeness of his nephew, Charlie Wood: his wife, _n\xE9e_ Lady
Elizabeth Howard, is as sweet-looking as she is charming.
"Friday morning was pouring, with a thick sea-fog hiding the
country. Nevertheless Mr. Grey did not think it too bad for a long
expedition, and drove me in his little pony-carriage a dreary
twelve miles to Wallington, where we arrived about half-past
twelve. Wallington is a huge house of the elder branch of the
Trevelyans, represented in the North by Sir Walter, who is at the
head of teetotallers and Low Churchmen, while his wife is a great
friend of Ruskin, Rossetti, and all the Pre-Raphaelites. It is like
a French ch\xE2teau, with tall roofs and chimneys, enclosing a hall,
once a court, which Lady Trevelyan and her artists have covered in
and painted with beautiful fresco studies of Northumbrian birds,
flowers, and insects, while the intervening spaces are filled with
a series of large pictures of the chief events in Northumbrian
history--very curious indeed.
"Lady Trevelyan[200] is a little, bright, black-eyed woman, who was
charmed to see us, and more to see my drawings, which Mr. Grey had
brought. Any good opinion of me, however, which they led her to
entertain was quelched by my want of admiration for some wretched
little scraps by Ruskin--very scratchy sketches, after his manner.
After luncheon, which was as peculiar as everything else (Lady
Trevelyan and her artists feeding solely on artichokes and
cauliflowers), we went to the upper galleries to look at more
pictures.
"Yesterday morning we went to the fine old Morpeth Church, which
has been 'restored,' one of the stained windows having been put in
by a poor old woman in the village. We saw her afterwards in her
garden gathering cabbages, and I told her I had seen the window.
'Eh, hinnie,' she said, 'and ain't it bonnie? and I be going to
case it i' marble afore I dee, to mak it bonnier.' And then she
said, 'And noo come ben, hinnie, my dear, and see me hoose;' and
she showed me her cottage.
"The Greys are one of the families who have a sort of language of
their own. A bad cold the Greys always call a _Shelley_, because of
a famous cold old Lady Shelley had when she came to stay with them.
This was the Lady Shelley who, when her carriage, full of people,
upset, and there was a great entanglement of legs, called out to
the footman, who came to extricate them, 'John, the black ones are
mine--the black ones are mine.'"
"_Warkworth, Oct. 6._--It is very pleasant being here with my kind
Clutterbuck cousins,[201] and this old-fashioned house, though
small, is most refined and comfortable, with its pervading smell of
roseleaves and lavender."
"_The Rock, Alnwick, Oct. 10._--I am now staying with the father of
a college friend, Charles Bosanquet, in a pleasant old-fashioned
house, an enlarged 'Peel tower.' The family are very united, genial
and kind; are friends of the Arnolds, Gaskells, &c., and related to
Mr. Erskine of Linlathen. I like Charlie Bosanquet so much in his
own home, that I am quite ashamed of not having tried to cultivate
him more when at Oxford. Yesterday he drove me to Craster Tower,
the old castellated house of the Crasters, a very ancient
Northumbrian family, now well represented by the old Squire and his
wife, their three tall daughters, and seven stalwart sons, one of
whom was at college with me. After luncheon we went over the tower,
its vaulted cellars and thickly walled rooms, and then walked to
the wild heights of Dunstanborough, with its ruins overhanging the
waves, and large white gulls floating up from the 'caverned shore'
of 'Marmion.' Then we went to Embleton to see one of the curious
fortified rectories of the North--fortified against the Scots."
"_Ford Castle, Oct. 15._--I enjoyed my visit at Rock increasingly,
and we made interesting excursions to Falloden and Howick. At the
former we dined with Sir George and Lady Grey. On Sunday the
beautiful little Norman chapel at Rock was filled from end to end
with the whole population of the village, all responding, all
singing, and forty-three (in that tiny place) remaining to the
Sacrament. Mrs. Bosanquet says they are truly a God-fearing people.
They live (as all over Northumbria) bound by the year like serfs,
close around the large farms. At Rock the people seem perfectly
devoted to the Bosanquets, who are certainly quite devoted to them.
'My Missis herself can't feel it more than I do,' said the
gamekeeper when he heard the sailor son was coming home.
"Yesterday morning I set off directly after breakfast with Charles
Bosanquet, in the sociable, on a long expedition. It was a really
lovely day, and the drive over the wild moorlands, with the pink
and blue Cheviot distances, was quite beautiful. At one we reached
Hedgeley, where we had been asked to luncheon at the fine old house
of the Carrs, looking up a mountain ravine, but a soldier-son first
took us up to Crawley Tower, a neighbouring ruined Peel. At three
we came on to Roddam, where an uncle and aunt of Charlie
Bosanquet's live--a beautiful place, with a terraced garden almost
overhanging the moorlands, and a dene stretching up into the
Cheviots. I had ordered a gig to meet me and take me to Ford, where
I arrived about half-past six, seeming to be driving into a sort of
gothic castle of Otranto, as we passed under the portcullis in the
bright moonlight. I found Lady Waterford sitting with her charming
old mother, Lady Stuart de Rothesay.... Her drawings are
indescribably lovely, and her singing most beautiful and pathetic.
Several people appeared at dinner, amongst them Lord Waterford (the
brother-in-law), who sat at the end of the table, a jovial
white-headed young-old man."
"_Ford Castle, Oct. 17._--Being here has been most pleasant, there
is so much to do and see both indoors and out. Lady Waterford is
perfectly charming.... She is now occupied in putting the whole
architecture of the castle back two centuries. Painting is her
great employment, and all evening she makes studies for larger
drawings, which she works upon in the mornings. She is going to
make a 'Marmion gallery' in the castle to illustrate the poem.
[Illustration: FORD CASTLE, THE TERRACE.]
"Yesterday we went to Palinsburn, where Paulinus baptized, and on
to Branxton to see Mr. Jones, who is the great authority about the
battle of Flodden, which he described to us till all the dull
ploughed fields seemed alive with heroes and armies. He is coming
to-night to talk about it again, for Flodden seems to be the great
topic here, the windows of the castle looking out upon the
battle-field. The position of the different armies and the site of
Sybil's Well are discussed ten times a day, and Lady Waterford
herself is still sufficiently a stranger here to be full of her
first interest about it.
"To-day the pony-carriage took me part of the way to the Rowting
Lynn, a curious cleft and waterfall in the moorland, with a
'Written Rock,' supposed to have been the work of ancient Britons.
Thence I walked by a wild path along the hills to Nesbitt, where I
had heard that there was a chapel of St. Cuthbert, of which I found
no vestiges, and on to Doddington, where there is a Border castle.
If you look on the map, you will see that this was doing a great
deal, and I was very glad to get back at five to hot tea and a talk
with Lady Stuart."
"_Roddam, Oct. 20._--I had not promised to return here, and I was
received almost rapturously, so welcome is any stray guest in this
desolate place.... Sunday here was a curious contrast to that at
Rock, for though there is a population of nine hundred, the Rector
waited for us to begin afternoon service, as no one else came!"
"_Roddam, Oct. 22._--Yesterday was terribly dark and cold, but we
went a long expedition across the moorland to the Raven's Burn, a
wild tumbling rivulet in a chaos of grey rocks, and thence by the
farm of 'Blaw Weary'--picturesquely perched upon rocks which were
covered with white goats, like a bit of Roman Campagna--to the
'Raven's Rock' in a rugged cleft of the moorland. To-day I have
been to Linhope Spout, a waterfall at the end of a gorge, and
to-morrow we go to the Three Stone Burn, where there are Druidical
remains."
"_Ripley Castle, Yorkshire, Oct. 25._--Lady Ingilby (who is sister
of Mr. Bosanquet of Rock) kindly pressed my coming here on my way
south, and here I am. It is a fine old castle added to, about four
miles from Harrogate, with beautiful gardens and a lovely
neighbourhood. At the head of the stairs is the portrait of a Nun,
who is said to descend from her picture at night and tap at the
bedroom doors, when, if any one says, 'Come in'--in she comes.
Eugene Aram was the gardener here, and the Ingilbys have all his
letters. Cromwell insisted on taking the castle, but the then Lady
Ingilby, a staunch Royalist known as 'Trooper Jane,' would not let
him have either food or rest there, and sat opposite him all the
night through with two loaded pistols in her girdle."
"_Hickledon Hall, Yorkshire, Oct. 27._--Sir Charles Wood's carriage
was waiting at Doncaster for me and a very nice young Seymour.[202]
Charlie seems delighted to have me here, and I think Sir Charles
quite charming, not a bit as if he had the government of all India
upon his shoulders."
Many of the visits which I paid in 1861 laid the foundation of after
friendships, but chiefly that to Ford, whither I went again and again
afterwards, and where I have passed some of the happiest days of my
life. Lord and Lady Tankerville, after a few years, passed out of my
horizon--I never have quite known how or why. The Liddells, Mrs.
Clutterbuck and her daughters, and the saintly Lady Ingilby, added much
to my enjoyment for several years. This was especially happy for me, as
I see by my journals of the time how in the following winter I felt more
than ever depressed by the constant snubbing I received from different
members of my immediate family. Such snubs are trifling in themselves,
but, like constant dropping of water in one place, they wear away the
spirit at last. All this time my sister was bravely exerting herself in
cheering her mother and aunt, as well as in a clever (and eventually
successful) scheme for the improvement of their fortunes. Miss Hughan
(afterwards Lady John Manners) showed her at this time an unwearied
kindness which I can never forget.
_To_ MY SISTER.
"_Holmhurst, Dec. 18, 1861._--I went to-day to see three ladies
take the veil in the convent at Hastings. I had to get up in the
cold early morning and be in the chapel by half-past eight. At nine
the Bishop of Brighton arrived in a gold robe and mitre, and took
his place with his back to the altar, leaning against it. Then a
side door opened, and a procession came in singing--some nuns, and
the three brides of Christ dressed in white watered silk, lace
veils, and orange flowers. There were six little bridesmaids also
in white veils and wreaths. The brides looked ghastly livid, and
one of them would have fallen if a nun had not rushed forward to
support her. The Bishop then made them an address, the point of
which was that they were not going into a convent for their own
benefit or that of the world, but for 'the consolation of
Christ'--_that_ was to be their work and duty through life--'the
consolation of Christ for the sins of the world.' Then he fixed his
eyes upon them like a basilisk and cried, 'Venite.' They tottered,
quivered, but scarcely moved; again in a louder voice he called
'Venite;' they trembled and advanced a few steps. Once more
'VENITE,' and they all three fell down prostrate at his feet.
"Then the most solemn music was played, the most agonising wailing
dirges were sung, and the nuns coming behind with a great black
pall, spread it over the prostrate figures. It was as if they were
dead. The bridesmaids strewed flowers, rosemary and laurestinus, as
they sang out of their books: the spectators cried and sobbed till
they were almost hysterical; but nothing was to be seen but the
sunlight streaming in upon a great black pall.
"Then all the saints of the monastic orders were invoked and
responded to, and then the nuns closed in, so that no one could see
how the three novices were hurried away, only to reappear in their
nun's dress. Then they received the Sacrament.
"It is impossible to say how well this little Holmhurst seems
suited to the mother. There is still a lingering of autumnal leaves
and flowers, and the grey castle rises against a gleaming sea.
Thinking of her, and of our home view as it is now, one cannot help
recalling Keble's lines:--
'How quiet shows the woodland scene,
Each flower and tree, its duty done,
Reposing in decay serene,
Like weary men when age is won,
Such calm old age as conscience pure
And self-commanding heart ensure,
Waiting their summons to the sky,
Content to live, but not afraid to die.'"
[Illustration: VIEW FROM HOLMHURST.]
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO HOLMHURST: "HUZ AND BUZ."]
JOURNAL.
"_Holmhurst, Dec. 27._--It was on Monday, the 16th, that I was
sitting in my study in the twilight, when the mother came in
suddenly. She had been down to Hastings with Mrs. Colegrave and
Miss Chichester to see Florence Colegrave at the convent, and there
first heard the dreadful news of the event of Saturday. Seeing her
so much agitated terrified me to the last degree. I thought that it
was Arthur who was dead, and when I heard that it was the Prince
Consort, the shock was almost as great. It seems impossible to
realise that one will not be able to say 'the Queen and Prince
Albert' any more: it is a personal affliction to every one, and the
feeling of sympathy for the Queen is overpowering. The Prince sank
from the time he read the letter about the deaths of the King and
Princes of Portugal. Then they tried to persuade him not to see
the messengers who returned from taking the letters of condolence:
he insisted upon doing so, and never rallied.... From the first the
Prince thought that he should not live, and from the Wednesday Sir
Henry Holland thought so too, and wrote in the first bulletin,
'_Hitherto_ no unfavourable symptoms,' to prepare the public mind;
but the Queen came into the anteroom, saw the bulletin, and
scratched out the 'hitherto:' she would entertain no idea of danger
till the last[203].... When the Prince was dying, he repeated the
hymn 'Rock of Ages.' ... A letter from Windsor Castle to Mr. P.
describes the consternation and difficulty as to how the Queen was
to be told of the danger: no one would tell her. At last Princess
Alice relieved them all by saying, 'I will tell her,' and took her
out for a drive. During the drive she told the Queen that the
Prince could not recover. When he died, the Queen gave one
piercing, heart-rending scream, which echoed all over the castle,
and which those who stood by said they could never forget, and
threw herself upon the body. Then she rose and collected her
children and spoke to them, telling them that they must rally round
her, and that, next to God, she should henceforth look to them for
support.
"C. W. sends an odd story about the King of Portugal. After his
death, Princess Alice made a drawing of him lying dead, and, at the
top of the drawing, the gates of heaven, with Queen Stephanie
waiting to receive the spirit of her husband. A little while after,
M. Lavradio sent the Queen a long account of the King's illness, in
which it was said that when the King lay dying he fell into a deep
sleep, and woke up after some little time saying that he had
dreamt, and wished he could have gone on dreaming, that he lay
dead, and that his spirit was going up to heaven, and that at the
gates he saw 'Stephanie' waiting to welcome him in. Everything
fresh that one hears of Prince Albert makes one realise, 'Le prince
\xE9tait grand, l'homme l'\xE9tait davantage.'"[204]
In the course of the winter I was at Miss Leycester's house in Wilton
Crescent, and saw there Miss Marsh and Sir Culling Eardley, both of whom
told me much that was curious. I remember Sir Culling Eardley's saying,
"I feel sure that the destruction of the temporal power will be the end
of the Papacy, and I am also sure that there is one person who agrees
with me, and that is Pio Nono!" He also told me that--
"One morning Mrs. Pitcairn at Torquay told her husband that she had
been very much disturbed by a dream. She said she had seen her
little boy of four years old carried into the house dreadfully
crushed and hurt, and that all the principal doctors in the
town--Madden, Mackintosh, &c.--had come in one after the other to
see him.
"Her husband laughed at her fears, but said, 'Whatever you do,
don't tell this to the boy; it would only frighten him
unnecessarily.' However, Mrs. Pitcairn did not promise, and when
her husband was gone out, she called her little boy to her, and
taking him on her knee, spoke to him very seriously, saying, 'If
anything happened to you now, where would you be?' &c.
"That afternoon, the little boy went with his elder brother to see
some new houses his father was building. In crossing the highest
floor, the ill-fastened boards gave way, and he fell, passing
through all the floors, into the cellar. Half-an-hour afterwards
his mother saw him carried into the house, and all the doctors
come in to see him, one after another, in the exact order of her
dream.
"The little boy recovered; but four years after, his elder brother,
playing on the shore at Babbicombe, pulled down some rocks upon
himself, and was killed upon the spot."
In March 1862 an event occurred which caused a great blank in our
circle, and which perhaps made more change in my life than any other
death outside my own home could have done--that of my aunt Mrs. Stanley.
JOURNAL.
"_Holmhurst, March 23, 1862._--In March last year dear Uncle
Penrhyn died. Aunt Kitty was with him, and felt it deeply. Now she
also, on the same day of the same week, the first anniversary of
his death, has passed away from us--and oh! what a blank she has
left! She was long our chief link with all the interest of the
outside world, writing almost daily, and for years keeping a little
slate always hanging to her davenport, on which, as each visitor
went out, she noted down, from their conversation, anything she
thought my mother might like to hear.
"Five weeks ago Arthur went to join the Prince of Wales at
Alexandria. He was very unwilling to leave his mother, but he took
the appointment by her especial request, and she was delighted with
it. He took leave of her in the early morning, receiving farewells
and blessings as she lay on the same bed, from whence she was
unable afterwards to speak one word to her other children. When he
went, my mother was very ill with bronchitis. Aunt Kitty also
caught it, but wrote frequently, saying that 'her illness did not
signify, she was only anxious about my mother.' It did signify,
however. She became rapidly weaker. Congestion of the lungs
followed, and she gradually sank. The Vaughans were sent for, and
Mary was with her. We were ready to have gone at any moment, if she
had been the least bit better, but she would not have been able to
have spoken to the mother, perhaps not have known her, so that I am
thankful for my sweet mother's sake that she should have been here
in her quiet peaceful home.
"There were none of the ordinary features of an illness. Aunt Kitty
suffered no pain at all: it was a mere passing out of one gentle
sleep into another, till the end.
"Kate wrote--'What a solemn hour was that when we were sitting in
silence round her bed, watching the gradual cessation of
breathing--the gradual but sure approach of the end! Not a sound
was heard but the sad wailing of the wind as her soul was passing
away. She lay quite still: you would hardly have known who it was,
the expression was so changed--Oh no, you would never have known it
was the dear, dear face we had loved so fondly. And then, when all
ceased, and there was stillness, and we thought it had been the
last breath, came a deep sigh, then a pause--then a succession of
deep sighs at long intervals, and it was only when no more came
that we knew she was gone. Charles then knelt down and prayed for
us, "especially for our dear absent brother, that he might be
comforted"--and then we rose up and took our last look of that
revered countenance.'
"When people are dead, how they are glorified in one's mind! I was
almost as much grieved as my mother herself, and I also felt a
desolation. Yet, on looking back, how few words of tenderness can I
remember receiving from Aunt Kitty--some marigolds picked for me in
the palace garden when I was ill at Norwich--a few acknowledgments
of my later devotion to my mother in illness--an occasional
interest in my drawing: this is almost all. What really makes it a
personal sorrow is, that in the recollection of my oppressed and
desolate boyhood, the figure of Aunt Kitty always looms forth as
that of _Justice_. She was invariably just. Whatever others might
say, she never allowed herself to be biassed against me, or indeed
against any one else, contrary to her own convictions.
"I went with Mary and Kate to the funeral in Alderley churchyard.
We all assembled there in the inner school-room, close to the
Rectory, which had been the home of my aunt's happiest days, in the
centre of which lay the coffin covered with a pall, but garlanded
with long green wreaths, while bunches of snowdrops and white
crocuses fell tenderly over the sides. 'I know that my Redeemer
liveth' was sung as we passed out of the church to the churchyard,
where it poured with rain. The crowds of poor people present,
however, liked this, for 'blessed,' they said, 'is the corpse that
the rain falls on.'"
[Illustration: ALDERLEY CHURCH AND RECTORY.]
During this sad winter it was a great pleasure to us to have our
faithful old friend the Baroness von Bunsen at St. Leonards, with two of
her daughters--Frances and Matilda. She had been near my mother at the
time of her greatest sorrow at Rome, and her society was very congenial
at this time. We were quite hoping that she would have made St.
Leonards her permanent winter-home, when she was recalled to live in
Germany by the death of the darling daughter of her heart--Theodora von
Ungern-Sternberg--soon after giving birth, at Carlsruhe, to her fifth
child.
In this winter I went to stay at Hurstmonceaux Rectory with Dr.
Wellesley, who was never fitted to be a country clergyman, but who never
failed to be the most agreeable of hosts and of men. In person he was
very like the Duke of Wellington, with black eyes, shaggy eyebrows, and
snow-white hair. His courtesy and kindness were unfailing, especially to
women, be their rank what it might. A perfect linguist, he had the most
extraordinary power of imitating Italians in their own peculiar
dialects. Most diverting was his account of a sermon which he heard
preached in the Coliseum. I can only give the words--the tone, the
gestures are required to give it life. It was on the day on which the
old Duke of Torlonia died. He had been the great enemy of the monks and
nuns, and of course they hated him. On that day, being a Friday, the
Confraternit\xE0 della Misericordia met, as usual, at four o'clock, in SS.
Cosmo and Damiano in the Forum, and went chanting in procession to the
Coliseum. Those who remember those days will recall in imagination the
strong nasal twang of "Sant' Bartolome, ora pro nobis; Santa Agata, ora
pro nobis; Sant' Silvestro, ora pro nobis," &c. Arrived at the Coliseum,
the monk ascended the pulpit, and began in the familiar style of those
days, in which sermons were usually opened with "How do you do?" and
some remarks about the weather.
"Buon giorno, cari fratelli miei. Buon giorno, care sorelle--come
state tutti? State bene? Oh, mi fa piacere, mi fa molto piacere! Fa
bell' tempo stasera, non e vero? un tempo piacevole--cielo sereno.
Oh ma piacevole di molto!
"Ebbene, cari fratelli miei--Ebbene, care sorelle--sapete cosa c' \xE8
di nuovo--sapete che cos' \xE8 successo stammattina in citt\xE0? Non lo
sapete--maraviglia! Oh, non vi disturbate--n\xF2--n\xF2--n\xF2--non vi
disturbate affatto--ve lo dir\xF2, io ve lo spieghier\xF2 tutto.
"Stammattina stessa in citt\xE0 \xE8 morto qualcheduno. Fu un uomo--un
uomo ben inteso--ma che specie d' uomo? Fu un uomo grande--fu un
uomo ricco--fu un uomo potente--fu un uomo grandissimo,
ricchissimo, potentissimo, magnificentissimo, ma mor\xEC!--mor\xEC, cari
fratelli miei, quell' uomo cos\xEC grande, cos\xEC ricco, cos\xEC
potente--mor\xEC!--cos\xEC passiamo tutti--cos\xEC finisce il
mondo--moriamo.
"E che fu quell' uomo cos\xEC importante che \xE8 morto? Fu un Duca! un
Duca, cari fratelli miei! E, quando mor\xEC, cosa fece? \xC8 montato
sopra, montato sopra su alla porta del Paradiso, dove sta San
Pietro, colle sue sante chiavi. Picchia il Duca.... 'Chi \xE8 l\xE0,'
disse San Pietro. 'Il Duca di Torlonia!'--'Ah, il Duca di
Torlonia,' disse San Pietro, 'quel nome \xE8 ben conosciuto, ben
conosciuto davvero.' Quindi si volt\xF2 San Pietro all' angelo custode
che teneva il libro della vita, e disse, 'Angelo mio, cercate un p\xF2
se trovate quel nome del Duca di Torlonia.' Dunque l'angelo cerc\xF2,
cerc\xF2 con tanta pena, con tanta inquietudine, volt\xF2 tante pagine in
quel libro cos\xEC grande della vita, ma disse infine, 'Caro Signor
San Pietro mio, mi rincresce tanto, ma quel nome l\xEC non mi riesce
di trovarlo.'
"Allora si volt\xF2 San Pietro, e disse, 'Caro Signor Duca mio, mi
rincresce tanto, ma il suo nome non si trova nel libro della vita.'
Rise il Duca, e disse, 'Ma che sciocchezza! cercate poi il titolo
minore, cercate pure il titolo maggiore della famiglia, cercate il
Principe di Bracciano, e lo troverete sicuramente.' Dunque l'angelo
cerc\xF2 di nuovo, cerc\xF2 con sollecitudine, volt\xF2 tante tante pagine
in quel libro cos\xEC immenso--ma alla fine disse, 'Caro Signor San
Pietro mio, mi rincresce tanto--ma quei nomi non si trovan qui, n\xE8
l'uno, n\xE8 l'altro.' Allora disse San Pietro, 'Mi dispiace tanto,
Signor Duca mio--ma bisogna scendere pi\xF9 gi\xF9--bisogna scendere pi\xF9
gi\xF9.'
"Scese dunque il Duca--poco contento--anzi mortificato di
molto--scese gi\xF9 alla porta del Purgatorio. Picchia il Duca. 'Chi \xE8
l\xE0,' disse il guardiano. 'Il Duca di Torlonia' (_piano_). 'Ah, il
Duca di Torlonia,' disse il guardiano. 'Anche qui, quel nome \xE8 ben
conosciuto, molto ben conosciuto--ma bisogna scendere pi\xF9
gi\xF9--bisogna scendere pi\xF9 gi\xF9.'
"Scese dunque il Duca. Ahim\xE8! quant' era miserabile! come gridava,
quanto piangeva, ma--gridando, piangendo--scendeva--scendeva
gi\xF9--alla porta dell' Inferno, dove sta il Diavolo. Picchia il
Duca. 'Chi \xE8 l\xE0,' disse il Diavolo. 'Il Duca di Torlonia'
(_pianissimo_). 'Ah, il Duca di Torlonia,' disse il Diavolo, 'oh
siete il benvenuto, entrate qui, caro amico mio, oh quanto tempo
siete aspettato, entrate qui, e restate per sempre.' Ecco cari
fratelli miei, ecco care sorelle, quel ch' \xE8 success\xF2 quest' oggi,
stammattina, in citt\xE0, a quel povero Duca di Torloni-a!" &c.
I narrated this story afterwards to Mrs. F. Dawkins and her daughters,
and they told me that some friends of theirs were at Rome on August 10,
St. Laurence's Day--which fell on a Friday that year--and St. Laurence,
as all know, was roasted on a gridiron. That day, the monk began as
usual--
"Buon giorno, cari fratelli miei--buon giorno, care sorelle (sniff,
sniff, sniff)--ma sento qualche cosa (sniff, sniff)--che cosa sento
io (sniff)--sento un odore. E l'odore de che? (sniff, sniff,
sniff)--\xE8 l'odore di carne (sniff). Chi specie di carne pu\xF2 essere?
E l'odore di carne bollito? (sniff). N\xF2, n\xF2, n\xF2, non e bollito
(sniff, sniff, sniff). Ah, lo vedo, \xE8 l'odore di carne arrosto, \xE8
l'odore di carne arrostito--\xE8 l'odore d'un santo arrostito--\xE8
l'odore di San Lorenzo."
Lady Marian Alford used to tell a similar story. Lord Brownlow was at S.
Agostino, when a monk, who was walking about, preaching, in the great
pulpit there, said, "Che odore sento io? E l'odore di montone?--n\xF2! \xC8
l'odore di presciutto?--n\xF2! \xC8 l'odore delle anime che friggono nell'
inferno."
I cannot remember whether it was in this or the preceding winter that I
spent an evening with Dr. Lushington, the famous judge, who, having been
born in the beginning of 1782, and preserving evergreen all the
recollections of his long life, was one of the most delightful of men. I
remember his describing how all the places ending in _s_ in England take
their names from people who have lived there. Leeds is so called from an
old person called Leed or Lloyd, of whom the great city is now the only
memorial. Levens is from Leofwin.
He said that "the Duchesse d'Angoul\xEAme never forgave the Court of Rome
for not canonising her father." She always regarded Louis XVI. as a
saint. Of her mother she spoke with less confidence--"she had faults,"
she said, "but they were terribly expiated."
Dr. Lushington said that when he was a very little child travelling
alone with his father, the carriage stopped near a public-house, and
the footman and coachman, with the license of those times, went in to
drink. He was himself asleep in the corner of the carriage, when a
pistol, directed at his father, came crashing in at the window, with a
demand for money. Dr. Lushington distinctly remembered his father
drawing out a long green silk purse, in which were one hundred guineas,
and deliberately counting out twelve guineas into the man's hand, and
saying, "There, take that, that is enough." "Well," said the man, "but I
must have your watch."--"No," said his father, "it is an old family
watch, and I cannot give it to you." Upon this the man said, "Well, God
bless you," and went away. Immediately after the servants came out of
the inn, and hearing what had happened, said they were armed, they could
pursue the highwayman, and they could easily take him. "No," said Dr.
Lushington's father, "let him go. The man God-blessed _me_, and I'll be
damned if I hang _him_."
At this time I took the opportunity of persuading Dr. Lushington to tell
me himself the most celebrated of his stories, which I had already heard
from his son Godfrey and from Arthur Stanley. I wrote it down at the
time, and here it is, in the very words of the old judge.
"There was once, within my memory, an old gentleman who lived in
Kent, and whose name, for very obvious reasons, I cannot mention,
but he lived in _Kent_. He was a very remarkable old man, and
chiefly because in the whole course of his very, very long
life--for he was extremely old--he had never been known on any
single occasion to want presence of mind; he had always done
exactly the right thing, and he had always said exactly the right
word, at exactly the right moment. The old gentleman lived alone.
That is to say, he had never married, and he had no brother or
sister or other relation living with him, but he had a very old
housekeeper, a very old butler, a very old gardener--in fact, all
the old-fashioned retinue of a very old-fashioned household, and,
bound together by mutual respect and affection, the household was a
very harmonious one.
"Now I must describe what the old gentleman's house was like.
Upstairs, there was a very long passage, which ended in a blank
wall. At the end of the passage, on the left, was a dressing-room,
and on the right was a bedroom, the room in which the old gentleman
himself slept. The bedroom was entered by a very heavy swing-door,
which could only be opened from the inside--that is to say, the old
gentleman carried the key upon his watch-chain, and let himself in
and out. When he wished housemaids or other persons to go in or
out, he left the door open; but when he was inside and shut the
door, no one could come in unless he opened the door to them.
People may say 'it was very eccentric;' it _was_ very eccentric:
but the old gentleman was very peculiar; it was the way he chose
to live: at any rate, it was a fact. Through the bedroom, opposite
the door into the passage, was another door which led into the
plate-room. This was also a very heavy swing-door, which could only
be opened from the _outside_, and very often in summer the old
gentleman would set it open at night, because he thought it gave
more air to the bedroom. Everything depends upon your attending to
and understanding the geography of these rooms. You see they were
all _en suite_ cross-wise. If you stood in the plate-room, and all
the doors were open, you would see the dressing-room, and _vice
vers\xE2_.
"One morning when the old gentleman came down to breakfast, he
found upon his plate a note. He opened it, and it contained these
words--'Beware, you are in the hands of thieves and robbers.' He
was very much surprised, but he had such presence of mind that he
threw the note into the fire and went on buttering his toast,
having his breakfast. Inwardly he kept a sharp look-out upon all
that was going on. But there was nothing special going on whatever.
It was very hot summer weather; the old gardener was mowing the
lawn, the old housekeeper cooked the dinner, the old butler brought
it in: no, there was nothing whatever especial going on.
"That night, when the old gentleman went to bed, he took particular
care to examine his room, and to see that his heavy swing-door was
well fastened, so that no one could come in to disturb him. And
when he had done this, he went to bed and fell asleep, and slept
very well till the next morning, for nothing happened, nothing
whatever.
"When the next morning came, he rang his bell for his hot water as
usual, but nobody came. He rang, and rang, and rang again, but
still nobody came. At last he opened his bedroom door, and went out
down the passage to the head of the staircase, and called to the
butler over the banisters. The butler answered. 'Why did you not
attend to my bell?' said the old gentleman. 'Because no bell rang,'
answered the butler. 'Oh, but I have rung very often,' said the old
gentleman; 'go downstairs again, and I will pull the bell again;
watch if it rings.' So the butler went downstairs, and the old man
pulled the bell, but no bell rang. 'Then,' said the old gentleman,
'you must send for the bell-hanger at once; one cannot live with
broken bells; that sort of thing cannot be allowed to go on in the
house,'--and he dressed and went down to breakfast.
"While he was eating his breakfast, the old gentleman found he had
forgotten his pocket-handkerchief, and went up to his room to get
it. And such was the promptitude of that old-fashioned household,
that the village being close to the house, and the bell-hanger
living in the village, the master's orders had already been obeyed,
and the bell-hanger was already in the room, standing on a ladder,
arranging the new wire of the bell. In old-fashioned houses, you
know, the bell wires come through the wall and go round the top of
the room, so that you can see them, and so it was in this house in
Kent. You do not generally perhaps observe how many wires there are
in your room, but it so happened that, as he lay in bed, the old
gentleman had observed those in his, and there were three wires.
Now he looked, and there were four wires. Yes, there was no doubt
there were four wires going round his room. '_Now_,' he said,
'_now_ I know exactly what is going to happen,' but he gave no
outward sign of having discovered anything, and he went down and
finished his breakfast.
"All that day everything went on as usual. It was a dreadfully hot
day in July--very sultry indeed. The old gentleman was subject to
bad nervous headaches, and in the afternoon he pretended to be not
quite so well. When dinner-time came, he was very suffering indeed.
He spoke of it to the butler. He said, 'It is only one of my usual
attacks; I have no doubt it is the weather. I shall be better
to-morrow; but I will go to bed early.' And towards half-past nine
he went upstairs. He left the door of the bedroom ajar, so that any
one could come in; he set the door of the plate-room wide open, for
the sake of more air to the bedroom, and he went to bed. When he
was in bed, he rang the bell, the new bell that the bell-hanger had
put up that morning. The butler came. The old gentleman gave some
orders about horses for the next day, and then said, 'Do not
disturb me in the morning. I had better sleep off my headache; I
will ring when I want to get up. You can draw the curtains round
the bed, and then shut the door.' So the butler drew the curtains
round the bed, and went out, shutting the door after him.
"As soon as the old gentleman heard the footsteps of the butler die
away down the passage, he dressed himself completely from head to
foot; he took two loaded pistols and a blunderbuss. He stealthily
opened the heavy swing-door of the bedroom. He let himself out
into the dark passage. He shut to the bedroom door behind him. It
fastened with a click; he could not go in himself any more, and he
crossed the passage, and stood in the dark dressing-room with the
door open.
"It was still very early, and eleven o'clock came, and nothing
happened; and twelve came and nothing happened; and one o'clock
came and nothing happened. And the old gentleman--for he was
already very old--began to feel very much exhausted, and he began
to say to himself, 'Perhaps after all I was wrong! Perhaps after
all it is a hallucination; but I will wait till two o'clock.'
"At half-past one o'clock there was a sound of stealthy footsteps
down the passage, and three figures passed in front of him and
stood opposite the bedroom door. They were so near that he could
have shot them every one; but he said to himself, 'No, I'll wait,
I'll wait and see what is going to happen.' And as he waited, the
light from the dark lantern which the first man carried fell upon
their faces, and he recognised them. And the first figure was the
butler, and the second figure was the bell-hanger, and the third
figure, from having been long a magistrate on a London bench, he
recognised as the most notorious ruffian of a well-known London
gang. He heard the ruffian say to the butler, 'I say, it's no use
mincing this kind of thing: no use doing this kind of thing by
halves: better put him out of the way at once, and go on to the
plate afterwards.'--'Oh no,' said the butler, 'he has been a good
master to me; I'll never consent to that. Take all he has; he'll
never wake, not he; but you can't do him any harm; I'll never
consent to that.' And they wrangled about it for some time, but at
last the butler seemed to get the better, and the ruffian had to
consent to his terms.
"Then exactly what the old gentleman had expected happened. The
butler, standing on tiptoe, could just reach the four wires of the
bells, which came through into the low passage above the bedroom
door. As the butler reached the lowest of the wires, and by leaning
his weight upon it, pulled it downwards, it was seen that the wire
was connected with the bolt of the door on the inside; the bolt
rolled up, and the heavy swing-door of the bedroom, of which the
hinges were well oiled for the occasion, rolled open. 'There,' said
the butler, as they passed into the room, 'master always sleeps
like that. Curtains drawn all round the bed. He'll not hear
anything, not he.' And they all passed in through the open door of
the plate-room. The old man waited till they were entirely occupied
with the plate-chest, and then he slipped off his slippers, and,
with a hop, skip, and a jump, he darted across the room, and--bang!
they were all caught in a trap. He banged to the heavy swing-door
of the plate-room, which could only be opened from the outside.
"Having done that--people may believe it or not, but I maintain
that it is true--the old man had such presence of mind, that he
undressed, went to bed, and slept soundly till the next morning.
Even if this were not so, till the next morning he did not send for
the police, and the consequence was that when he did send for the
police, and the door was opened, the following horrible scene
revealed itself: The ruffian had tried to make a way of escape
through the roof, had stuck fast, and was dreadfully mangled in the
attempt: the bell-hanger had hung himself from the ceiling: and the
butler was a drivelling idiot in the corner, from the horror of the
night he had gone through."
Dr. Lushington had been employed in the inquiry which ensued, and had
personal knowledge of all he narrated. I must record one more story
which he told me--in his words:--
"I had a great-uncle, and as I am a very old man, you may imagine
that my great-uncle was alive a very long time ago. He was a very
eccentric man, and his peculiar hobby when in London was to go
about to dine at all sorts of odd places of entertainment, to amuse
himself with the odd characters he fell in with. One day he was
dining at a tavern near St. Bride's in Fleet Street, and at the
table opposite to him sat a man who interested him exceedingly, who
was unusually amusing, and quaint, and agreeable. At the end of
dinner the stranger said, 'Perhaps, sir, you are not aware that you
have been dining with a notorious highwayman?'--'No, indeed,' said
my great-uncle, not the least discomposed. 'What an unexpected
pleasure! But I am quite sure, sir, that you cannot always have
been a highwayman, and that your story must be a very remarkable
one. Can I not persuade you to do me the honour of telling it to
me?'--'Well,' said the stranger, 'we have had a very pleasant
dinner, and I like your acquaintance, and I don't mind if I do
tell you my story. You are quite right in thinking that I was in
early life as free as you are, or indeed, for that matter, as I
myself am now. But one day, as I was riding over Hounslow Heath, I
was surrounded by highwaymen. They dragged me from my horse, and
then said, "We don't want your money, and we don't want your life,
but we want _you_, and you we must have. A great many of us have
been taken, and we want recruits; you must go with us." I protested
in vain; I said it was impossible I could go with them; I was a
respectable member of society, it was quite impossible that I could
become a highwayman. "Then," they said, "you must die; you cannot
be allowed to live, to go out into the world, and tell what has
been proposed to you." I was in a terrible strait, and eventually I
was obliged to promise to go with them. I was obliged to promise,
but I made such difficulties that I was able to exact two
conditions. One was that at the end of seven years I should be
allowed to go free, and that I should never be recognised or taken
by them again. The other was that in the seven years I was with
them, no deed of actual cruelty should ever be committed in my
presence.
"'So I rode with the highwaymen, and many strange things happened.
I saw many people robbed and pillaged, and I helped to rob and
pillage them, but no deed of actual cruelty was ever committed in
my presence. One day, after I had been with the band four years, we
were riding in Windsor Forest. I saw a carriage approaching down
the long avenue. It was sure to have ladies in it; there was likely
to be a disagreeable scene; it was not necessary that I should be
present, so I lingered behind in the forest. Presently, however, I
was roused by so dreadful a scream from the carriage that I could
no longer resist riding forward, and I spurred on my horse. In the
carriage sat a lady, magnificently dressed, evidently just come
from Windsor Castle, and the highwaymen had torn the bracelets from
her arms and the necklace from her neck, and were just about to cut
off her little finger, because there was a very valuable diamond
ring upon it, which they could not otherwise get off. The lady
implored me to have pity upon her, to intercede for her, and I did.
I represented that the highwaymen had made me a solemn promise that
no deed of personal cruelty should ever be committed in my
presence, that on that condition only I was with them, and I called
upon them to keep their promise. They disputed and were very angry,
but eventually they gave in, and rode off with the rest of their
booty, leaving me alone with the lady.
"'The lady then said she owed me everything. She certainly owed me
her life, for she was quite sure that she should never, never, have
survived the loss of her little finger. She was quite sure, she
said, that I could not like being a highwayman, and she entreated
me to abandon the road and reform my life. "I can get you a
pardon," she said, "I can set you up in life--in fact, I can do
anything for you." Then I told her my story. I told her how the
highwaymen had made a promise to me, and they had kept it; and I
told her how I had made a promise to them, and I must keep it also.
I had promised to go with them for seven years, and I had only been
with them four; I must go with them for three years more. "Then,"
said the lady, "I know what will happen; I know what stringent
measures are going to be enforced for the suppression of
highwaymen. I am certain you cannot escape for three years: you
will be taken, and you will be condemned to death. When this
happens, send for me, and I will save your life. I am Mrs. Masham."
"'It was indeed Mrs. Masham, the great favourite of Queen Anne.
"'Before the expiration of the three years I was taken, I was
tried, and I was condemned to death. While I was lying in Newgate
under sentence of death, I sent to Mrs. Masham, and Mrs. Masham
flung herself at the feet of Queen Anne, and the Queen spared my
life.'"
This was the story of Dr. Lushington's great-uncle's friend.
* * * * *
In April I returned to my work in the North. My first visit worth
recording was one to the old house of Mainsforth in Durham, the home of
Mrs. Surtees, widow of the genial and delightful historian, who was the
intimate friend of Sir Walter Scott, though he offended him when it was
discovered that he had himself written the glorious ballads which he had
imposed upon Sir Walter as originals.[205] He was also the author of
many ballads of a simpler and more touching character, which have never
attained to the position in English poetry which they surely deserve.
* * * * *
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Mainsforth, April 26, 1862._--This has been a most interesting
visit, both the old ladies of the house so amusing, and so full of
stories of the past, in which they are still living, having shut
out the present ever since the death of Mr. Surtees, twenty years
ago. Miss Robinson has lived with 'my Sister Surtees' for the last
fifteen years, and thinks there is no place in the world like
Mainsforth: and indeed it is a most pleasant old house, thoroughly
unpretending, but roomy and comfortable, close to the road on one
side, but a very quiet road, with a fringe of ancient trees and a
rookery, and on the other looking out on the wide green lawn and
broad terrace-walk, bordered by clumps of hyacinths and tall
turncap lilies. My room has two low windows, which slide back like
doors, and look down through glades of hollies, like a picture, to
the silvery windings of the Skene. It is quiet, and stillness
itself; no sound but the cawing of the rooks, and the ticking of
the clock on the broad old staircase.
"Ever since an accident five years ago, 'my Sister Surtees' has sat
on a sofa in a sitting-room covered with fine old prints pasted on
the walls, with a large tapestry screen on one side of her, and
during the three days I have been here, I have never seen her move
from this place, to which she appears to be glued. 'My Sister Mary'
does all the hospitalities of the house, in the heartiest, most
cordial way, and both always keep open house at Mainsforth for
every one who likes to come. University students from Durham are
constantly here, and the house is a second home to all the poor
clergy of the neighbourhood, who come whenever they want a good
dinner, or ready interest and kindly sympathy. A new curate was
appointed to the neighbouring church of Bishop Middleham, and was
asked to stay here while he looked out for lodgings: he stayed on
and on, till he never went away again: he stayed here three years!
The students of Durham University have just put up two stained
glass windows in the church here, in token of gratitude for the
kindness they have received at Mainsforth. Imagine the students of
Oxford doing such a thing!
"On Thursday I went by the early train to Darlington, and, after
seeing the town, set off in a gig on a long round of country
villages. I saw the 'Hell Kettles,' three pools which are supposed
to be fathomless, and into which, if a sheep falls, it is believed
to be always 'a going' to the end of all time: and at one o'clock
came to Sockburne, a lovely peninsula on the Tees, where an old
ruined chapel stands on the edge of the green lawn above the
rushing river, and beside it 'the Wishing-Tree,' a chestnut 1100
years old, where everything wished for comes true. I had an
introduction to Mrs. Blackett, the owner, who lives in a beautiful
modern house with terraces above the river, and when I was shown
in, I found with her, in three young ladies spinning, three
friends of last year, daughters of Sir Edward Blackett of Matfen.
After luncheon, though it rained, they all walked with me three
miles along the lovely hanging woods by the Tees to 'the Leper's
Bath.'
"Yesterday I went off again, before the family breakfast, to
Stockton-on-Tees, a manufacturing town, celebrated for possessing
the widest street in England. I dined at Greatham Hospital with Mr.
Tristram, the Master. It seemed a most melancholy place morally, no
one speaking to anybody else, every one quarrelling about their
rights of way, the keys of their church, even about their interest
in the poor old men of the Hospital. The country is now all
blackened with coal-pits, and it is curious to hear my present
hostesses describe it all trees and verdure, as it was in their
youth. But the natives are still wonderfully simple and full of
kind-heartedness. At Billingham a poor woman having spent
half-an-hour in trying to find the keys of the church for me, said,
when I begged her to give it up, 'Na, na, I'll try once again, if
only to show a willin'.'"
JOURNAL.
"_Mainsforth, April 24, 1862._--Sitting alone with Miss Robinson
just now, she talked much of Sir Walter Scott.
"'I knew Sir Walter Scott very well: to hear him talk was like
hearing history with all the disagreeable parts weeded out. I often
dined with him in Edinburgh. I went with my Sister Surtees to his
house just after his first paralytic seizure. We went to take him
a book, and, not knowing of his illness, my Sister Surtees asked if
he was at home. The servant said he did not know; so my sister told
him just to give Sir Walter the book and say it was left by Mrs.
Surtees of Mainsforth. But Sir Walter, who was sitting in his
study, heard my sister's voice, and said, "I am sure that is Mrs.
Surtees of Mainsforth," and sent to desire us to come in. We found
him dreadfully altered, and he described to us all that had
happened. "I was sitting with Sophy, when I was taken," he said
(she is dead--they are all dead now), "and I could not speak; so I
ran upstairs into the drawing-room, where there were several ladies
in the room, and there I soon became insensible and could not be
roused. I remember it as if it were to-day," he said; "they all
began to beel, and they made such a tiran, you can scarcely imagine
it. I did not wish to frighten them more, so I did not say what I
felt, but I'll tell you what it was, Mrs. Surtees--_I shook hands
with death_."
"'Lady Scott was brought up in France. She was a very frivolous
person--very exceedingly. The first time I dined with them, I sat
next to her, and she wore a brocaded silk gown which she told me
cost two hundred guineas. "Dear me, Lady Scott," I said, "but is
not that a very large price?"--"Yes," she replied, "but that's what
my dressmaker charges _me_." People never knew what present to give
to Sir Walter; so, when they wished to make a present, they gave
ornaments to Lady Scott, and she would come down to a common dinner
with her arm quite covered with bracelets. What more she could have
worn if she went to court, I cannot imagine. She never entered
into Sir Walter's pursuits at all.
"'Donald was the old piper, and a very fine-looking person he was.
He used to walk about the gallery outside playing the pibroch on
the bagpipes. He could not have done it in the room, it was so
deafening. Even from outside, the noise was tremendous, but Sir
Walter liked it because it was national.'"
"_April 25._--I have had a long talk with Mrs. Surtees. I wish I
could put down half she said about the Ettrick Shepherd.
"'Once we wanted to go to the Highlands. There were my sister and
two other ladies: we were a party of four. Surtees would not go
with us because he said we should be such a trouble to him; but he
said, "What I advise you to do is, to go to Mr. Blackwood when you
get to Edinburgh, and ask him to give you a tour." So when we got
to Edinburgh, we went to Mr. Blackwood, and told him what Surtees
said. "Oh dear, Mrs. Surtees," said Mr. Blackwood, "what a pity you
were not here a minute ago, for Mr. Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, has
only just gone out of the shop, and he would have been the very
person to have told you all you wanted to know." Now you must know
that Surtees had been very kind to Hogg, and I was very anxious to
see him, so I said, "Oh dear, but can we not still see
him?"--"Well," said Mr. Blackwood, "he is going out of town now,
but he will be back in a short time, and if you like to leave your
address, he will come and call upon you." So I was just going to
write my name on a card, when who should come in again but the
Ettrick Shepherd. "Oh, sir," said Mr. Blackwood, "I'm so glad to
see you back, for this is Mrs. Surtees, and she wants you to give
her a tour in the Highlands."--"Eh!" said the Shepherd, "coom awa
then wi' me into th' backshop, and I'll do't."
"'So we went into the backshop, and he told me where to go, and
showed me all the route on a large map that was there; and when he
had done he said, "Weel, Mrs. Surtees, an noo I've shown ye the
route, I'd jist like to go wi' ye."--"Well," I said, "Mr. Hogg, we
are only four ladies, but we would do all we could to make it
agreeable to you, if you liked to go."--"Eh," said the Shepherd,
"but I could'na just leave the lammies."
"'So then he said, "Eh, Mrs. Surtees, but my wife's here, and I'm
just a going to choose her a silk gown: will ye coom awa along wi'
us an' help to choose it?" So I went with them (a very nice-looking
woman too Mrs. Hogg was) and helped to choose the gown.
"'Once I met them at dinner at Sir Walter's. Sir Walter treated
Mrs. Hogg very well, and thought her (as the poet's wife, you know)
every bit as good as Lady Scott; but Lady Scott thought her very
different, and she did not carry it off very well.
"'We were at Abbotsford when Washington Irving was there. When
people went away, Sir Walter used to conduct all those he
especially liked over the hill as far as a particular little
wicket. When Mr. Irving went, he said, "Now I'll take you as far as
the wicket." I walked with them, and when they parted, I so well
remember Mr. Irving saying what a pleasant visit he had had, and
all that kind of thing--and then Sir Walter's hearty, earnest "Coom
again."'
"Mrs. Surtees had also much to say of Mrs. Siddons.
"'I used often to meet Mrs. Siddons at the house of the Barringtons
when they lived at Sedgefield. She was always acting. I remember as
if it were yesterday her sitting by me at dinner and asking George
Barrington how Chinamen eat their rice with chopsticks. "Well, but
I pray you, and how do they do it?" she said in a theatrical tone;
and then, turning to the footman, she said, "Give me a glass of
water, I pray you; I am athirst to-day." After dinner, Lord
Barrington would say, "Well now, Mrs. Siddons, will you give us
some reading?"
"'Her daughter was with her, who was miserably ill-educated. She
could not even sew. The Miss Barringtons took her in hand and tried
to teach her, but they could make nothing of her.'"
"_April 26._--Miss Robinson has been telling me, 'When we were in
London, we went to a chapel in Bedford Place where Sydney Smith
often used to preach, and we were shown into a pew; for, you know,
in London you do not sit where you like, but they show you into
pews--the women people that keep the church do. There was a strange
lady in the seat, and I have never seen her before or since. It was
not I that sat next to her--my Sister Surtees was the person. The
service was got through very well, and when the preacher got up, it
was Sydney Smith. I remember the sermon as if it were to-day. It
was from the 106th Psalm. He described the end of man--the "portals
of mortality." "Over those portals," he said, "are written Death!
Plague! Famine! Pestilence!" &c., and he was most violent. I am
sure the poor man that had read the service and was sitting
underneath would rather have been at the portals of mortality than
where he was just then, for Sydney Smith thumped the cushion till
it almost touched his head, and he must have thought the whole
thing was coming down upon him. The lady in the pew was quite
frightened, and she whispered to my Sister Surtees, "This is Sir
Sydney Smith, who has been so long in the wars, and that is what
makes him so violent."--"Oh dear, no," said my Sister Surtees, "you
are under a great mistake," &c.
"Miss Robinson described her youth at Houghton-le-Spring, now
almost the blackest place in Durham.
"'Houghton-le-Spring was a lovely rustic village. There was not a
pit in the neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood was the best that
was known in England. Sixteen or seventeen carriages waited at the
church-gate every Sunday. My father lived at Herrington Hall, and
our family were buried in Bernard Gilpin's tomb, because they were
related.
"'The Lyons[206] of Hetton were a beautiful family, but Mrs.
Fellowes was the loveliest. Jane and Elizabeth died each of a rapid
decline. Mrs. Lyon embarked \xA360,000 in the pit at Hetton, lost it,
and died of a broken heart. People used to say, 'Do you know where
Mrs. Lyon's heart is? At the bottom of Hetton coal-pit.'"
After a visit to the George Liddells at Durham, I went on to
Northumberland.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Westgate Street, Newcastle, May 6, 1862._--Yesterday afternoon I
came here, to the old square dark red brick house of the Claytons,
who are like merchant-princes in Newcastle, so enormous is their
wealth, but who still live in the utmost simplicity in the
old-fashioned family house in this retired shady street. The family
are all remarkable. First comes Mr. John Clayton of Chesters, the
well-known antiquary of North Tyne, a grand, sturdy old man, with a
head which might be studied for a bust of Jupiter;[207] then there
is his brother Matthew, a thin tall lawyer, full of jokes and queer
sayings; then the venerable and beautiful old sister, Mrs. Anne
Clayton (beloved far and wide by the poor, amongst whom she spends
her days, and who are all devoted to 'Mrs. Nancy Claytoun'), is the
gentlest and kindest of old ladies. And besides these, there is the
nephew, George Nathaniel, a college friend of mine, and his wife,
Isabel Ogle, whom we have often met abroad.
"Last night, Dr. Bruce[208] dined, the leader of the 'Romanist'
antiquarians in the county, in opposition to Dr. Charlton and the
'Medi\xE6valists.'"
"_May 7._--How amused my mother would be with this quaintest of
families, who live here in the most primitive fashion, always
treating each other as if they were acquaintances of the day, and
addressing one another by their full titles, as 'Miss Anne Clayton,
will you have the goodness to make the tea?'--'Mr. Town-Clerk of
Newcastle, will you have the kindness to hand me the toast?' &c.
Miss Anne is a venerable lady with snow-white hair, but her brother
Matthew, who is rather older, is convinced that she is one of the
most harum-scarum young girls in the world, and is continually
pulling her up with 'Miss Anne Clayton, you are very
inaccurate,'--'Miss Anne Clayton, be careful what you say,'--'Miss
Anne Clayton, another inaccuracy,'--while the poor old sister goes
on her own way without minding a bit.
"This afternoon we have been to Tynemouth, and most refreshing was
the sea-air upon the cliffs, and the sight of that enchanting old
ruin standing on its rocky height. The journey was very curious
through the pit, glass, and alkali country.
"This evening old Mr. Matthew has been unusually extraordinary, and
very fatiguing--talking for exactly two hours about his bootmakers,
Messrs. Hoby & Humby, whence they came, what they had done, and how
utterly unrivalled they were. 'Miss Anne Clayton,' he said at the
end, 'I hope you understand all I've been saying. Now wait before
you give an opinion, but above all things, Miss Anne Clayton,
don't, don't be inaccurate.'"
"_Dilston Hall, May 8, 1862._--I left Westgate Street this morning
directly after breakfast, and getting out of the train at Blaydon,
walked by Stella and Ryton to Wylam. Ryton was very interesting to
me, because the church is full of monuments of my Simpson
relations, including that of old Mrs. Simpson, the mother-in-law of
Lady Anne, of whom we have a picture, and of her father, Mr.
Andersen,[209] from whom the property came. As I was going through
the churchyard, the sexton poked up his head from an open grave to
stare at me. 'Where can I get the church keys?' I said. 'Why, I'll
tell you wherefrom you'll get them; you'll just get them out of my
coat-pocket,' he answered, and so I did. It was a beautiful church,
with rich stained windows, oak stalls, and tombs, and outside it
lovely green haughs sloping down to the Tyne.
"Thence I walked on to see Bradley,[210] the home of my
great-grandmother Lady Anne Simpson. It is a charming place, with
deep wooded glens filled with what Northumbrians call rowan and
gane trees, and carpeted with primroses and cowslips.
"I arrived at Dilston by tea-time, and afterwards we went out along
the terraced heights, and I longed for you to see the view--the
rich hanging woods steeped in gold by the setting sun, while behind
rose the deep blue moorlands, and from below the splash of the
Devil's Water came through the gnarled oaks and yellow broom."
"_Old Elvet, Durham, May 4._--On Friday I drew in the lovely woods
by the Devil's Water, and then walked, overtaken by a dreadful
storm on the way, to Queen Margaret's cave in Deepden, where she
met the robber. Yesterday a wild moorland drive took me to
Blanchland,[211] a curious place, with a monastic church and
gateway, and a village surrounding a square, in the deep ravine of
the Derwent. Then a still wilder drive brought me to Stanhope,
whence I came here by rail to the kind Liddell cousins.
"George Liddell has been telling me how, when they lived out of the
town at Burnopside, a poor woman lived near them at a place called
'Standfast Hill,' who used to have periodical washings, and put out
all the things to dry afterwards on the bank by the side of the
road. One day a tramp came by and carried them all off: when the
daughter came out to take the things in, they were all gone, and
she rushed back to her mother in despair, saying that they were all
ruined, the things were all gone, &c.
"The Liddells went up to see that poor woman afterwards and to tell
her how sorry they were; but she said, 'Yes, there's my poor Mary,
she goes blearing about like a mad bull; but I say to her, "Dinna'
fash yersel, but pray to the Lord to have mercy on them that took
the things, for they've paid far dearer than I ever paid for
them."'"
In June I was at Chartwell in Kent, when Mr. Colquhoun (who was one of
the most perfect types of a truly Christian _gentleman_ I have ever
known), told me the following story, from personal knowledge both of the
facts and persons:--
"On awaking one morning, Mr. Rutherford of Egerton (in
Roxburghshire) found his wife dreadfully agitated, and asked her
what was the matter. 'Oh,' she said, 'it is something I really
cannot tell you, because you could not possibly sympathise with
it.'--'But I insist upon knowing,' he said. 'Well,' she answered,
'if you insist upon knowing, I am agitated because I have had a
dream which has distressed me very much. I dreamt that my aunt,
Lady Leslie, who brought me up, is going to be murdered; and not
only that, but in my dream I have seen the person who is going to
murder her:--I have seen him so distinctly, that if I met him in
any town of Europe, I should know him again.'--'What bombastical
nonsense!' said Mr. Rutherford; 'you really become more and more
foolish every day.'--'Well, my dear,' said his wife, 'I told you
that it was a thing in which you could not sympathise, and I did
not wish to tell you my dream.'
"Coming suddenly into her sitting-room during the morning, Mr.
Rutherford found his wife still very much agitated and distressed,
and being of choleric disposition, he said sharply, 'Now do let us
have an end once for all of this nonsense. Go down into Fife and
see your aunt, Lady Leslie, and then, when you have found her
alive and quite well, perhaps you will give up having these foolish
imaginations for the future.' Mrs. Rutherford wished no better; she
put a few things into a hand-bag, she went to Edinburgh, she
crossed the Firth of Forth, and that afternoon at four o'clock she
drove up to Lady Leslie's door. The door was opened by a strange
servant. It was the man she had seen in her dream.
"She found Lady Leslie well, sitting with her two grown-up sons.
She was exceedingly surprised to see her niece, but Mrs. Rutherford
said that having that one day free, and not being able to come
again for some time, she had seized the opportunity of coming for
one night; and her aunt was too glad to see her to ask many
questions. In the course of the evening Mrs. Rutherford said,
'Aunt, when I lived at home with you, whenever I was to have an
especial treat, it was that I might sleep in your room. Now I am
only here for one night; do let me have my old child's treat over
again: I have a special fancy for it;' and Lady Leslie was rather
pleased than otherwise. Before they went to bed, Mrs. Rutherford
had an opportunity of speaking to her two cousins alone. She said,
'You will be excessively surprised at what I ask, but I shall
measure your affection for me entirely by whether you grant it: it
is that you will sit up to-night in the room next to your mother's,
and that you will tell no one.' They promised, but they were very
much surprised.
"As they were going to bed, Mrs. Rutherford said to Lady Leslie,
'Aunt, shall I lock the door?' and Lady Leslie laughed at her and
said, 'No, my dear; I am much too old-fashioned a person for
that,' and forbade it. But as soon as Mrs. Rutherford saw that Lady
Leslie was asleep, she slipped out of bed and turned the lock of
the door. Then, leaning against the pillow, she watched, and
watched the handle of the door.
"The reflection of the fire scintillated on the round brass handle
of the door, and, as she watched, it almost seemed to mesmerise
her, but she watched still. Suddenly the speck of light seemed to
appear on the _other_ side; some one was evidently turning the
handle of the door. Mrs. Rutherford rang the bell violently, her
cousins rushed out of the next room, and she herself threw the door
wide open, and there, at the door, stood the strange servant, the
man she had seen in her dream, with a covered coal-scuttle in his
hand. The cousins demanded why he was there. He said he thought he
heard Lady Leslie's bell ring. They said, 'But you do not answer
Lady Leslie's bell at this time in the night,' and they insisted
upon opening the coal-scuttle. In it was a large knife.
"Then, as by sudden impulse, the man confessed. He knew Lady Leslie
had received a large sum for her rents the day before, that she
kept it in her room, and that it could not be sent away till the
next day. 'The devil tempted me,' he said, 'the devil walked with
me down the passage, and unless God had intervened, the devil would
have forced me to cut Lady Leslie's throat.'
"The man was partially mad--but God had intervened."
JOURNAL (The Green Book).
"_Holmhurst, July 27, 1862._--A gorgeous beautiful summer day at
length, and it is our last here. To-morrow we go north. It has been
a pleasant summer, and it will be a very bright one to look back
upon. I have had the great delight of having Charlie Wood here for
four days--days of endless conversations, outpourings of old griefs
and joys, of little present thoughts and anxieties, of hopes and
aspirations for the future, which I should not venture upon with
any one else. And besides, we have had a succession of visitors,
each of whom has enjoyed our home, whilst our little Holmhurst
daily twines itself more and more round our own hearts. Sometimes I
have a sort of inward trembling in thinking that I trace an
additional or increasing degree of feebleness or age in my sweetest
mother, but I do not think her ill now, and may go to the North
with a confident feeling that it will be at the time which will
suit her best, as she will have other friends with her with whom
she would rather be alone. My sweet darling! what should I do
without her? and how blank and black the whole world would seem!
Yet even then I should bless God that this place, now consecrated
by memories of her, would still be my home, and, in fulfilling her
wishes, her designs, I should try to link the desolate present to
the sunny past. I cannot be grateful enough for her power of
bearing and rallying from great blows. The loss of Aunt Kitty in
the spring, the impending loss of Aunt Esther, are furrows which
God permits, but which He too smooths over. I have even the comfort
of feeling that it would be thus in case of my own death, dreadful
as that would be to her at the time."
Early in August I went with my mother for a long visit to Buntingsdale
in Shropshire, the old pleasant friendly home of the Tayleurs. The
master of the house, William Tayleur, had come very late into his
property, after a long period of almost cruel repression during the life
of his eccentric father; but, unlike most people, the late attainment of
great wealth only made him full of anxiety that as many as possible
should benefit by it, and he was the very soul of courtesy, hospitality,
and generosity. With him lived his two delightful old sisters (already
mentioned in the account of my childhood), emancipated when past fifty
from a thraldom like that of the schoolroom. Of these, my mother's great
friend, Harriet, was the younger--a most bright, animated, clever, and
thoroughly excellent person, exceedingly popular in Shropshire society.
The elder, Mary, was very delicate in health, but a very pretty, gentle
old lady, who always wore an immense bonnet, ending in a long shade of
the kind called "an ugly," so that people used to call her "the old lady
down the telescope." Buntingsdale is one of the finest houses in
Shropshire, a large red brick mansion, with very handsome stone
mouldings and pillars, and a most splendid flower-garden, bordered by a
high terrace overlooking the little shining river Terne and its pretty
watermeadows. I have seldom known my mother happier than during this
visit. It touched her so much to find how she was considered by these
faithful old friends--how, after many years' absence, all the people she
wished to see were asked to meet her, yet all arranged with thoughtful
care, so as to cause her the least possible amount of fatigue and
emotion.
We went to Stoke to visit my grandfather's grave, and any of his old
parishioners who wished to see my mother were bidden to meet her in the
churchyard. There we found fourteen poor women and three old men
waiting. To the changed Rectory she never looked. Then we were for some
days at Hodnet, where Lady Valsamachi[212] was staying, and both at
Hodnet and Hawkestone my mother was warmly welcomed by old friends. I
was glad to have the opportunity of walking with her in the beautiful
fields consecrated to her by recollections of her happy life long ago in
intimacy with the Hebers. From Hodnet we went to spend a few days with
Henry de Bunsen at Lilleshall Rectory, which had a charming garden,
where all his parishioners were invited to walk on Sunday afternoons.
Thence my mother returned home, and I went towards my northern work.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Weeping Cross, Stafford, August 21, 1862._--Miss Sarah Salt met
me at the Stafford station, and drove me here--a moderate-sized
house, simply furnished, but with the luxury of a cedar-wood
ceiling, which smells delicious. Out of a window-seat in the low
comfortable library rose the thin angular figure of Harriet Salt,
speaking in the subdued powerless way of old. She had a huge cat
with her, and an aunt--rather a pretty old lady. 'What is your
aunt's name?' I said afterwards to Miss Sarah. 'Oh, Aunt
Emma.'--'Yes, but what is her other name? what am I to call
her?'--'Oh, call her Aunt Emma; she would never know herself by any
other name.'--'And what do you do when your Aunt Emma Petit is here
too?'-'Oh, she is only Aunt Emma, and this is the other Aunt Emma;
so when Aunt Emma from Lichfield is here, and we want this one, we
say, "Other Aunt Emma, will you come here?"'
"After luncheon, we went out round the domain--paddocks with round
plantations, and a good deal of garden. Miss Salt rode a white
pony, we walked. Then the aunt mounted the pony, and she and Miss
Sarah and I went a longer round, Miss Sarah breaking down the
fences and pulling the pony through after her. 'Will not the
farmers be angry?' I said. 'Oh, no; I threatened to have them up
before the magistrates for stopping up a road, so we compromised;
they are to have their road, and I am to break down their fences
and go wherever I like, whether there is a road or not.'
"At seven the clergyman and his wife came to dinner. I took in the
aunt, a timid old lady, who seldom ventured a remark, and then in
the most diffident manner. This was her first--'I think I may say,
in fact I believe it has been often remarked, that Holland is a
very flat country. I went there once, and it struck me that the
observation was correct.' In the evening Miss Sarah looked at my
drawings, and said, 'Well, on the whole, considering that they are
totally unlike nature, I don't dislike them quite so much as I
expected.'
"We breakfasted this morning at half-past seven, summoned by a
gong; Miss Sarah having said, 'At whatever hour of the day or night
you hear that gong sound, you will know that you are expected to
appear _somewhere_.' She presided at the breakfast-table with a
huge tabby-cat seated on her shoulder. 'Does not that cat often
tear your dress?' I asked. 'No,' she replied, 'but it very often
tears my face,' and went on pouring out the tea."
"_August 22._--Yesterday was hot and steamy, without a breath of
air. Miss Sarah drove me and the clergyman's wife to Cannock Chase,
a wild heathy upland, with groups of old firs and oaks, extending
unenclosed for fifteen miles, and surrounded by noblemen's houses
and parks. Here we joined a picnic party of fifty people. English
fashion, scarcely anybody spoke to anybody else, and the families
sat together in groups. Afterwards the public played at 'Aunt
Sally,' and I walked with Miss Salt and her friends Misses
Anastasia and Theodosia Royd far over the moorlands. A ridiculous
old gentleman went with us, who talked of 'mists, while they
enhanced the merits of nature, obscuring the accuracy of vision.'
He also assured us that whenever he saw a snake, he shut his eyes
and cried 'Murder!' We mounted another hill for kettle-boiling and
tea, and then danced country-dances to the sound of a fiddle. It
was seven o'clock and the mists were rolling up from the hollows
when we turned to go home. Mr. Salt was heard blowing a horn in the
distance, which his daughter answered by a blast on her whistle,
and so we found the carriage."
I am sorry not to find any letters recording the visit I paid after this
to Mr. Petit, the ecclesiologist. He lived at Lichfield in a house built
by Miss Porter, Dr. Johnson's step-daughter. With him resided his three
sisters and seven cats, who appeared at all meals as part of the family,
and rejoiced in the names of "Bug, Woodlouse, Nebuchadnezzar, Ezekiel,
Bezor, Rabshakeh, and Eva--'the mother of all the cats.'" Mr. Petit was
most extraordinary, but a very interesting companion. I had a capital
sight of the cathedral with him, beautiful still, though sadly
"jemmyfied" by Scott, who has added some immense statues in the choir
which put everything out of proportion, and has put up a bastard-gothic
metal screen. At the end of an aisle is Chantrey's monument of the two
Robinson children. One of them was burnt to death in reaching to get
from the chimney-piece the snowdrops represented in her hand; the other
died of consumption caused by too much rowing. When I was at Lichfield
their mother was still living there with her third husband.
We went up Borrow Copp, a charming mound near the town, crowned by a
chapel-like summer-house. Here the three Saxon kings are supposed to be
buried whose bodies are represented in the arms of Lichfield.
The Petits are Petits des Etampes, and were refugees from Caen. They had
a valuable miniature of Mary Queen of Scots by Bernard Lens, from their
family connection with the Guises. Far more extraordinary than any other
house I have ever seen was their country place of--"Bumblekite Hall!"
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Ripley Castle, August 28, 1862._--In coming down to dinner, I
found a tall distinguished-looking lady upon the staircase, with
whom I made friends at once as Charlie Wood's aunt, Lady Georgiana
Grey. This afternoon I went with her and Miss Ingilby to
Knaresborough, a town with stone roofs on a height above the Nid,
crowned by the ruins of the castle which contains the vaulted
dungeon where the murderers of Thomas \xE0 Becket were confined. Below
the castle is the public-house called 'Mother Shipton,' bearing her
picture and the inscription--
'Near to this petrifying well
I first drew breath, as records tell.'
Through the inn--kept "by one 'Almeda Burgess'--is a walk by the
wooded bank of the river to the petrifying well, which is highly
picturesque. The water falls from an overhanging umbrella-like
cliff into a deep basin. A chain of stuffed birds is hung up for
petrifaction, taking from twelve to fifteen months to turn into
stone: bird's-nests take twelve months.
"Also in the valley of the Nid, on the east of the town, is St.
Robert's Cave, excavated, as the guide told us, by St. Robert, 'a
gentleman who wished to live very retired.' This was the place
where the body of Clarke was discovered, which led to the execution
of Eugene Aram. It is a most curious story.
"Eugene was the son of Peter Aram, who was head-gardener at Ripley
Castle, and very respectable. But, together with two others,
Housman and Clarke, Eugene arranged a curious scheme of robbery.
They gave out that they were going to give a grand supper, and
borrowed a quantity of plate, which they made away with, and on the
night of the supposed supper Eugene and Housman murdered Clarke,
that it might be supposed, when he was not forthcoming, that he
alone was the robber. Afterwards Eugene went at night to Housman's
house and talked over what was to be done. Before they left he
said, 'If your wife is in bed upstairs, she must have heard us; we
must make this secure,' and they went up intending to murder her if
she was awake, but they passed the candle before her eyes, and she
bore it without flinching. Then they went down again and burnt the
clothes of the murdered man. Only the buttons fell uninjured
amongst the cinders, and were found next morning by the wife.
Afterwards, whenever she had a quarrel with her husband, she
frightened him by saying, 'How about those buttons?'
"Housman and Aram buried the body in St. Robert's Cave, which was
then filled with earth. Brushwood and briars grew over it, and no
trace was left; but the murderers had a perpetual dread that some
day the Nid would rise and lay the body bare, and whenever there
was a very high wind, Housman for years used to go to see that it
was not uncovered.
"Eugene Aram went away to Norfolk, where he prospered exceedingly,
and 'visited with the best families.' But fourteen years after the
murder, some workmen digging in St. Robert's Cave found a skeleton.
'I shouldn't wonder if this were Clarke,' said one of them. 'No, it
is not,' said one of his companions, and this led to his arrest.
It was Housman. He then confessed to the murder, and said that
Eugene Aram was his accomplice; but Eugene Aram was gone.
"It happened, however, that a Knaresborough pedlar, in his walks
through Norfolk, accidentally recognised Eugene Aram in a garden.
On his return home, he gave notice to the constables, who went to
Norfolk and fetched him away, and he was executed. The murder took
place in 1745, the execution in 1759. It is said that after the
murder Eugene never gave his right hand to any one. After he was
executed, the 'finger of scorn pointed at his family,' and they
went to America. The mother of the old woman who showed us the cave
knew Clarke's widow intimately.
"A letter of Eugene Aram is preserved at Ripley Castle.[213] There
were many letters there from Peter Aram, his father, but they were
destroyed by the late Lady Ingilby, because they were 'so wicked
and blasphemous.' The chief point against Eugene Aram was that,
when he was discovered, a defence was found which he had written
twelve years before: this is made use of in Bulwer's novel.
"In the evening something was said about many ghost-stories being
the result of a practical joke. Lady Georgiana Grey, who had been
sitting quietly, suddenly rose--awful almost with her white face
and long black velvet dress--and exclaimed, 'If any one ever
_dared_ to play a practical joke upon me, _all_ my fortune, _all_
my energies, my whole _life_ would be insufficient to work my
revenge.' And she swept out of the room. They say it is because of
the Grey story about a head. Lady Georgiana first saw the head,
when she was in bed in Hanover Square, in the autumn of 1823. She
rushed for refuge to her mother's room, where she remained all
night. Lady Grey desired her on no account to mention what she had
seen to her father. But a fortnight later Lord Grey came into the
room where Lady Georgiana was sitting with her mother and sister,
much agitated, saying that he had just seen a head roll towards
him."
"_Ripley Castle, August 30._--The old Ladies Ruthven and Belhaven
came to-day. They appear to have spent their lives in an atmosphere
of dukes, but are very simple great ladies, chiefly interested by
art and artists, and draw well themselves. Lady Belhaven is allowed
by her husband to be with her sister now because of the odd illness
of the latter, an invincible sleeplessness, which makes her very
peculiar, and gives her a habit of talking to herself in a low
murmur, however many people are around her. Rather to my alarm, I
had to take her in to dinner, and as she is very deaf, to talk to
her the whole time at the pitch of my voice; but we got on very
well notwithstanding, so well indeed, that before the fish had been
taken away she had asked me to come to stay with her at her castle
in Scotland. As soon as dinner was over she made me bring my
portfolio and sit the whole evening talking to her about my
drawings. However, I was very glad of it, as, when she went to
bed, she said, 'I have been so very happy this evening.'
"_September 1._--Saturday was a dismally wet day. We sat in the oak
parlour, drew, and told stories. Lady Ruthven has lived many years
at Athens, and four years--winter and summer--at Rome, and in
summer used to study 'Roma Adombrata,' which taught her how to walk
in the shade. On Sundays she invited all the artists, who never
went to church, to her house, and 'read them a sermon, poor things,
for the good of their souls.'
"She used when at Rome to go to 'La toilette des pieds' of Pauline
Borghese. Regular invitations were issued for it. When the guests
arrived, they found the Princess--supremely lovely--with her
beautiful little white feet exposed upon a velvet cushion. Then two
or three maids came in, and touched the feet with a sponge and
dusted them with a little powder--'\xE7'\xE9tait la toilette des pieds.'
The Duke of Hamilton used to take up one of the little feet and put
it inside his waistcoat 'like a little bird.' ... Lady Ruthven and
all her household are still wearing mourning for Lord Ruthven, who
died seven years ago.
"The people here are full of quaint character, especially two
brothers 'Johnny and Jacky.' Said Johnny to Jacky the other day,
'I've found a saxpence.'--'That's moine,' said Jacky, 'for I've
lost un.'--'Had thoine a haule in it?' said Johnny.--'Ees,' said
Jacky.--'Then this ain't thoine,' said Johnny, 'for there's na
haule in't.'
"Mrs. Ingilby herself is perfection--so refined and agreeable. No
one would believe, when they see how admirably and unaffectedly she
manages the castle and \xA320,000 a year, that seven years ago she and
her husband lived in a Lincolnshire cottage with only \xA3300 a year
of income.
"Lady Georgiana Grey told me a curious story of some friends of
hers.
"Lady Pennyman and her daughters took a house at Lille. The day
after they arrived they went to order some things from a warehouse
in the town, and gave their address. 'What,' said the man, 'are you
living there, ma'am? Did I not misunderstand you?'--'Yes,' said
Lady Pennyman, 'that is where I live. Is there anything against the
place?'
"'Oh dear, no, ma'am,' said the warehouseman; 'only the house has
been for a long time without being let, because they say it's
haunted.' Going home, Lady Pennyman laughed to her daughters, and
said, 'Well, we shall see if the ghost will frighten _us_ away.'
"But the next morning Lady Pennyman's maid came to her and said,
'If you please, ma'am, Mrs. Crowder and me must change our rooms.
We can't remain where we are, ma'am; it's quite impossible. The
ghost, he makes such a noise over our heads, we can get no sleep at
all.'--'Well, you can change your room,' said Lady Pennyman; 'but
what is there over your room where you sleep? I will go and see;'
and she found a very long gallery, quite empty except for a huge
iron cage, in which it was evident that a human being had been
confined.
"A few days after, a friend, a lady living in Lille, came to dine
with them. She was a very strong-minded person, and when she heard
of the servants' alarm, she said, 'Oh, Lady Pennyman, do let me
sleep in that room; I shall not be frightened, and if I sleep
there, perhaps the ghost will be laid.' So she sent away her
carriage and stayed; but the next morning she came down quite pale
and haggard, and said certainly she had seen the figure of a young
man in a dressing-gown standing opposite her bed, and yet the door
was locked, and there could have been no real person there. A few
days afterwards, towards evening, Lady Pennyman said to her
daughter, 'Bessie, just go up and fetch the shawl which I left in
my room.' Bessie went, and came down saying that as she went up she
saw the figure of a young man in a dressing-gown standing on the
flight of stairs opposite to her.
"One more attempt at explanation was made. A sailor son, just come
from sea, was put to sleep in the room. When he came down in the
morning, he was quite angry, and said, 'What did you think I was
going to be up to, mother, that you had me watched? Why did you
send that fellow in the dressing-gown to look after me?' The next
day the Pennymans left the house.
"Lady Georgiana also told me:--
"There was once a Bishop Thomas.[214] His mother one day awoke,
having dreamt that her husband had fought a duel and was killed.
She was much frightened by her dream, and, having great influence
over her husband, she persuaded him not to go out that day as
usual, but to stay at home with her. They lived in Spring Gardens,
and having stayed in all day, towards four o'clock Mr. Thomas began
to repine, and to wish to go out and walk in the Park. Mrs. Thomas
assented on condition of going with him, and they walked in the
Park and enjoyed it very much. While they were out, they met an old
Indian friend of Mr. Thomas, whom he had not seen for years, and
was delighted to meet. They talked over old times and scenes with
great avidity, and at last Mr. Thomas said that he would see his
old friend back to his hotel. Mrs. Thomas, being tired, begged to
be left at her own house on the way.
"Mrs. Thomas waited long for her husband's return. At last she
heard a sound of many footsteps coming down the street, and a voice
asking which was Mrs. Thomas's house. She rushed down saying, 'You
need not tell me; I know what has happened,' and she found her
dream realised. Mr. Thomas had gone back to the hotel with his
friend. According to the custom of that time, they drank a good
deal together: they quarrelled over their wine, they fought, and
Mr. Thomas was killed. The child that was born afterwards was
Bishop Thomas."
"_Middleton in Teesdale, Sept. 3._--Yesterday I went with the party
at Ripley to Brimham Rocks, a most curious place--the rocks
clustered in groups of enormous and fantastic forms on the very top
of the Yorkshire range, and with a splendid view over the country,
even York Minster appearing in the hazy distance.
"I slept at Barnard Castle last night, and set out at eight this
morning for the Fells. It was gloomy and dismal, with mists
gathering black over the distance, and constant rain falling; but
there was no alternative. The valley of Upper Teesdale is in some
ways like a valley in the Alps, the glaringly white farmhouses
scattered thinly over the brilliantly green meadows, the hedgerows
and trees replaced by low rugged stone walls, 'the Grass of
Parnassus' springing up by the side of all the clear streams. The
people are all 'kin' to one another, and are singularly honest and
truthful. 'They are all sincere men in these parts,' said the
guide, 'and if they tell you a tale, you may know it's because
they're deceived.' We met a man on a horse. 'What a long cloak that
man has,' I said. 'Yes,' answered the driver, 'but he's a good man
and a just, and he fears God rather than men.'
"The High Force is a truly grand waterfall, where the whole river
tosses over a huge precipice in the black basaltic cliff. We left
the gig at a little inn at Langdon Beck, whence we set out on a
weary foot-pilgrimage--a most fatiguing walk of ten miles, over
broken edges of scars, along the torrent-bed, through rushes and
bogs and heather, and across loose slippery shale--all this too in
ceaseless rain and wind, and with the burden of a thick Scotch
cloak. But Cauldron Snout is a very curious waterfall, quite out in
the desolate moorlands, with the Westmorland Fells looming behind
it. I was completely wet through before we got there, and came back
plunging from tuft to tuft of rushes in the boggy moorlands. At
one time we took refuge in a shepherd's hut, where an old shepherd,
with flowing white hair and horn spectacles, was reading the Bible
to his grandchildren--a group like many pictures one has seen. Here
my socks were dipped in hot water and put on again, the
mountaineer's remedy against cold."
"_Ridley Hall, Sept. 7._--Yesterday Cousin Susan sent me to
Bonnyrigg, Sir Edward Blackett's place in the moors--an enchanting
drive, out of the inhabited country into the purple heather-land,
where the desolate blue Northumbrian lakes lie at the foot of their
huge precipitous crags. Bonnyrigg itself is embosomed in woods, yet
surrounded on all sides by rock and moorland, and with a delightful
view of Greenlea Lough. The Scotts were staying there, and I walked
with the General[215] along the Roman Wall, high on the cliffs and
running from crag to crag, as perfect in its 1600th year as in its
first."
"_Chesters, Hexham, Sept. 10._--I came here yesterday. My aged
hostess, the eldest sister of the Newcastle Clayton family, is of a
most tall, weird figure, and speaks in an abrupt, energetic,
startling manner, but she is the most perfect _lady_ imaginable,
both in feeling and manners, and her kindness and thoughtfulness
and consideration for others make her beloved far and wide.
Chesters is famous for its liberal unostentatious hospitality, and
Miss Clayton always lives here, though it is her brother's place,
and he resides at Newcastle. She reads everything, and is ready to
talk on any subject, but her great hobby is Roman antiquities, and
she is one of the best antiquarians in the North, which is only as
it should be, as Cilurnum, one of the finest of the Roman stations,
is here in the garden, where there is also a museum of Roman
relics. This house is about the size of Hurstmonceaux Place,[216]
and most thoroughly comfortable, with wide well-lighted galleries
on each storey, filled with water-colour drawings by Richardson,
with Roman antiquities, and curiosities of all kinds.
"This morning we were called at six, breakfasted at seven, and at
half-past seven in the bright cold morning Miss Clayton herself
drove me down to the train at Chollerford. A delightful journey
brought me to Kielder, where, under the heather-clad hills, close
to the Scottish Border, is the Duke of Northumberland's favourite
castle and the scene of the beautiful ballad of the 'Cout of
Kielder.' I wandered through the valley:--
"Up to 'the bonny brae, the green,
Yet sacred to the brave;
Where still, of ancient size, is seen
Gigantic Kielder's grave.
'Where weeps the birch with branches green
Without the holy ground,
Between two old grey stones is seen
The warrior's ridgy mound.'
Coming back, I left the train at Bellingham, and walked to
Hesleyside, the fine place of the Roman Catholic Charltons, where
the celebrated Charlton spur is preserved, which the lady of the
house, in time of Border raids, used to serve up at dinner whenever
she wished to indicate that her larder needed replenishing."
"_Chesters, Sept. 13._--On Thursday Miss Clayton drove me in her
Irish car up North Tyne to Chipchase Castle, a noble old Jacobean
house on a height, with a Norman tower, and afterwards to Simonburn
and Tecket Lynn--a most picturesque waterfall through fern-fringed
rocks; a very artistic 'subject,' too little known. Mr. John
Clayton and Dr. Bruce arrived in the evening, and Roman antiquities
became the order of the next day. We set off in a hurricane of cold
wind, in the Irish car, along the Roman Wall, and spent the whole
day amongst Roman remains, lunching at Hotbank Farm, where the
Armstrongs live--last relics of the great mosstrooping
family--inspiring a sort of clannish attachment still, as, when the
last farmer died in 1859, two hundred mounted Borderers escorted
him across the moorland to his grave.
"The great Roman station of Housesteads (Borcovicus) is a perfect
English Pompeii of excavated houses and streets. Hence we clambered
across stone walls and bogs for several miles to Sewing Shields,
where Arthur and Guinevere and all their knights lie asleep in a
basaltic cavern.... The Claytons are indescribably kind, and spare
no pains to amuse, interest, and instruct me, and their horses seem
as untirable."
"_Chesters, Sept. 15._--I am becoming increasingly attached to
'Aunt Saily,' who is always finding out all the good she can in her
neighbours and guests, and doing everything possible to make the
world bright and pleasant to them: being really so loving and
gentle herself, she influences all around her. On Saturday she took
me to Houghton Castle, one of the most perfect inhabited feudal
fortresses in the county; and to-day to Fallowfield, where there is
a Roman inscription on a grey rock--'the Written Rock'--in the
moorland."
"_Otterburn, Sept. 18._--I left the train at Bellingham, where I
found no further means of locomotion except a huge chariot with two
horses. So, after going on a vain search for a cart to all the
neighbouring farmhouses, I was obliged to engage it; but then there
was another difficulty, for the key of the coach-house was lost,
and I had to wait an hour till a smith could be brought to break it
open. At length I set off in the great lumbering vehicle across the
roughest moorland road imaginable--mere blocks of stone, scarcely
chipped at all, with gates at every turn, over hideous barren
moorland, no heather, only dead moss and blackened rushes and fern.
It was like the drive in 'Rob Roy.' At last, in the gloaming, we
drove over a rude bridge and up to this gothic castle, with
terraces in front sloping down to the sullen Reedwater and barren
deserted Fells. My host, Mr. James, has nine sons, of whom the two
youngest, Charlie and Christie, are here now, and scamper on two
little ponies all over the country. The whole family are inclined
to abundant rude hospitality, and delight to entice visitors into
these deserts. They have taken me to Elsdon, a curious desolate
village in the hills, where the Baillies are rectors, and live in a
dismal old castle, built to fortify the rector in mosstrooping
times. It is a place quite out of the world, so very high up, that
the coming of any chance stranger is quite an event: its people
live entirely by keeping sheep and rearing geese in large flocks."
"_Matfen, Sept. 20._--We had a very long excursion from Otterburn
on Thursday. In these high moorlands, thirty-five miles is thought
nothing extraordinary, and we drove in a brilliant morning all up
the course of the Reedwater, through rocky valleys and relics of
ancient forest, and by the Roman station of High Rochester to the
Scottish border, upon the famous Reedswire. Here we carried our
baskets up the hills and picnicked just inside Scotland, looking
over the Lammermoor Hills and the valley of Jedburgh to Edinburgh
far in the hazy distance. I long for my mother in all these
moorland scenes--such feasts of beauty to mind and eye. The next
morning we walked to Troughend, the grim haunted house of the
Border hero Percy Reed.[217] Then I went with 'Christie' to Percy's
Cross, where Percy fell in the battle of Chevy Chase, and
Witherington fought upon his stumps.[218] Altogether it is an
enchanting neighbourhood, full of ballads and traditions.... I much
enjoy, however, the comparative rest at Matfen, nine or ten hours
being the least time I was out any day at Chesters or Otterburn.
Lady Blackett has been telling me a very curious story--from her
personal knowledge.
"Mrs. Bulman went up from Northumberland to London, taking her
little child with her. The evening after she arrived at her London
house, she had occasion to go downstairs, and at the foot of the
stairs passed a man talking to her maid; at that time she happened
to have a bank-note in her hand. Afterwards she went upstairs
again, and put her child to bed. In a little while she went up to
see if it was comfortable. When she went into the room, the child
was in bed, but appeared to be in rather an excited state, and
said, 'Mama, I feel quite sure that there is somebody under the
bed.' Mrs. Bulman said, 'Nonsense, my dear; there is nothing of the
kind: only you are over-tired; so go to sleep, and do not think of
anything else foolish;' and she went downstairs.
"I don't know what the child did then, but when Mrs. Bulman went up
again, there was no one under the bed, but the window was open, and
the lock of the desk on the table had been tried.
"Many years afterwards, Mrs. Bulman had occasion to visit a London
prison. When she was going away, the governor came to her and said
that there was a man there who was under sentence of death, and
that he could not account for it, but, having seen Mrs. Bulman pass
as she went into the prison, he was exceedingly importunate to be
allowed to speak to her, if it were only for a moment. 'Well,' said
Mrs. Bulman, 'if it will be any comfort to the poor man, I am sure
I shall be very glad to speak to him,' and she went to his cell.
She did not recollect ever having seen the man before, but he said
that as he was so soon to go into another world, it could not
matter to him what he confessed now, and that he thought it might
be some satisfaction to her to know what a very narrow escape she
had once had of her life.
"He said he was in the house talking to her maid, having gone in to
visit one of her servants, when she came downstairs with the
bank-note in her hand, and that he could not say what tempted him,
but that he had seized a knife and hidden himself behind a door
till she passed on her way upstairs again. Then he found his way to
her room and concealed himself under her bed. There he had heard
her come in and put the child to bed and leave it, and then, amazed
at the strangeness of his situation, he turned round. She came
back, and he heard the child tell her that there was a man under
the bed, and if at that moment she had looked under, he should have
sprung out and murdered her. She did not, and afterwards hearing a
noise downstairs, he thought it was better to make his escape,
which he did by the window, leaving it open behind him."
"_Wallington, Sept. 24._--On the way here I stopped to see Belsay,
the finest of the Border fortresses, a grand old gothic tower,
standing in a beautiful garden and amongst fine trees.
"Opening from the enclosed courtyard, which now forms a great
frescoed hall in the centre of this house of Wallington, are
endless suites of huge rooms, only partly carpeted and thinly
furnished with ugly last-century furniture, partly covered with
faded tapestry. The last of these is 'the ghost-room,' and
Wallington is still a haunted house: awful noises are heard all
through the night; footsteps rush up and down the untrodden
passages; wings flap and beat against the windows; bodiless people
unpack and put away their things all night long, and invisible
beings are felt to breathe over you as you lie in bed. I think my
room quite horrid, and it opens into a long suite of desolate rooms
by a door which has no fastening, so I have pushed the heavy
dressing-table with its weighty mirror, &c., against it to keep out
all the nasty things that might try to come in. Old Lady Trevelyan
was a very wicked woman and a miser: she lived here for many years,
and is believed to wander here still: her son, Sir Walter, has
never been known to laugh.
"Sir Walter is a strange-looking being, with long hair and
moustache, and an odd careless dress. He also has the reputation of
being a miser.[219] He is a great teetotaller, and inveighs
everywhere against wine and beer: I trembled as I ran the gauntlet
of public opinion yesterday in accepting a glass of sherry. Lady
Trevelyan is a great artist. She is a pleasant, bright little
woman, with sparkling black eyes, who paints beautifully, is
intimately acquainted with all the principal artists, imports
baskets from Madeira and lace from Honiton, and sells them in
Northumberland, and always sits upon the rug by preference.
"There is another strange being in the house. It is Mr. Wooster,
who came to arrange the collection of shells four years ago, and
has never gone away. He looks like a church-brass incarnated, and
turns up his eyes when he speaks to you, till you see nothing but
the whites. He also has a long trailing moustache, and in all
things imitates, but caricatures, Sir Walter. What he does here
nobody seems to know; the Trevelyans say he puts the shells to
rights, but the shells cannot take four years to dust."
"_Sept. 26._--Such a curious place this is! and such curious
people! I get on better with them now, and even Sir Walter is
gruffly kind and grumpily amiable. As to information, he is a
perfect mine, and he knows every book and ballad that ever was
written, every story of local interest that ever was told, and
every flower and fossil that ever was found--besides the
great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers of everybody dead or
alive. His conversation is so curious that I follow him about
everywhere, and take notes under his nose, which he does not seem
to mind in the least, but only says something more quaint and
astonishing the next minute. Lady Trevelyan is equally unusual. She
is abrupt to a degree, and contradicts everything. Her little black
eyes twinkle with mirth all day long, though she says she is ill
and has 'the most extraordinary _feels_;' she is 'sure no one ever
had such extraordinary feels as she has.' She never appears to
attend to her house a bit, which is like the great desert with one
or two little oases in it, where by good management you may
possibly make yourself comfortable. She paints foxgloves in fresco
and makes little sketches \xE0 la Ruskin in the tiniest of
books--chiefly of pollard willows, which she declares are the most
beautiful things in nature. To see pollard willows in perfection
she spent six weeks last spring in the flattest parts of Holland,
and thought it lovely--'the willows so fine and the boat-life so
healthy.' 'Well, you _will_ go to the bad,' she said to me
yesterday, because I did not admire a miserable little drawing of
Ruskin: my own sketches she thinks quite monstrous.
"We went the day before yesterday to Capheaton, the home of the
Swinburnes, a very curious old house, and Sir John Swinburne, a
very pleasing young miser, is coming to dinner to-day. Yesterday we
went through fog and rain to Camphoe, Kirk Whelpington, and Little
Harle, a fine inhabited castle. Sir Walter made me wade through the
Wansbeck as we came back!"
"_Sept. 28._--The more one knows Sir Walter and Lady Trevelyan, the
more one finds how, through all their peculiarities, they are to be
liked and respected. Everything either of them says is worth
hearing, and they are so full of information of every kind, that
the time here has been all too short for hearing them talk.[220] On
Thursday, Miss Ogle, the authoress of that charming novel 'A Lost
Love,' came. She has lived here a great deal, and says the
Wallington ghost is a lady with her head under her arm, who walks
about at night. She has heard all the extraordinary rappings very
often, and says they cannot be accounted for in any way, but she
has never seen the lady.
"The library here is delightful, full of old topographical books
and pamphlets; and sleek Mr. Wooster, with whites of his eyes
turned up to the skies, is always at hand to find for you anything
you want.
"On Friday Sir Walter took me a long drive through the beautiful
forest-land called the Trench, and by Rothley Crags to
Netherwitton, where the Raleigh Trevelyans live. Mrs. Raleigh
Trevelyan, a stately and beautiful old lady, is the direct
descendant of the Witherington who fought upon his stumps. She has
pictures of Lord Derwentwater and his brother, and one of her
ancestors concealed Simon, Lord Lovat, in his house for months: the
closet where he was hidden is still to be seen, and very curious.
Then we went to Long Witton, to Mrs. Spencer Trevelyan, a great
botanist and eccentric person, who breakfasts at six, dines at
twelve, teas at four, and goes to bed at seven o'clock.
"Yesterday Miss Ogle and I went to Harnham, where Mrs. Catherine
Babington, a famous Puritan lady who was excommunicated, is buried
in the rock; to Shortflat Tower, the old peel castle of the Dents;
and to the Poind and his Man, Druidical antiquities, and Shaftoe
Crag, a beautiful wild cliff overgrown with heather. The country
round this is singularly interesting--the view from the church
(Cambo), where we have just been, quite beautiful over the endless
waves of distant hill."
[Illustration: WARKWORTH, FROM THE COQUET.]
"_Warkworth, Oct. 2._--My mother will like to think of me with the
Clutterbucks in this charming sunny old house, the most perfect
contrast to Wellington; but if Sir Walter saw his house papered and
furnished like those of other people's, he would certainly pine
away from excess of luxury. I have spent two days with the Ogles,
whom we have often met abroad, with their dark handsome
daughters--dark, people say, because their grandmother was a
Spaniard. They are proud of their supposed Spanish blood, and when
Isabel Ogle married George Clayton, all her sisters followed in
long _black_ lace veils. Near their modern house is the old moated
family castle of Ogle."
"_St. Michael's Vicarage, Alnwick, Oct. 4._--I have been kindly
received here by the Court Granvilles: he is a fiery, impetuous
little man; she (Lady Charlotte) a sister of the Duke of Athole.
The Duke of Northumberland sent for me to his hot room at the
castle, where he sits almost immovable, fingers and toes swollen
with gout, and talked a great deal about the importance of my work,
the difficulty of getting accurate information, &c.; but I do not
think he heard a word that I said in reply, for when he has the
gout he is almost quite deaf. Then he sent for the Duchess, who
good-naturedly knotted her pocket-handkerchief round her throat,
and went through all the rooms to show me the pictures. We went
again to dinner--only Sir Cresswell Cresswell, the famous judge,
there, and Lady Alvanley, sister of the Duke of Cleveland. Sir
Cresswell was most amusing in describing how, when a lady was being
conveyed in a sedan-chair to a party at Northumberland House, the
bottom fell out, and, as she shouted in vain to make her bearers
hear, she was obliged to run as fast as she could all the way
through the mire inside the shell of the chair."
"_Blenkinsopp Castle, Oct. 11._--This is the castellated house of
the Coulsons, in the upper part of South Tyne Valley--very large
and comfortable. The owner, Colonel Coulson, is a great invalid,
and his daughter-in-law, a daughter of Lord Byron, does the
honours. We have made pleasant excursions to Gilsland Spa, and to
Llanercost and Naworth, the latter--externally a magnificent feudal
castle--the home of Belted Will Howard in mosstrooping times."
"_Bamborough Castle, Oct. 17._--How enchanting it is in this grand
old castle looking out on the sea, with all the Farne Islands
stretched out as on a map. I think even the Mediterranean is
scarcely such a beautiful sea as this, the waves are so enormous
and have such gorgeous colouring. I have had delightful walks with
the dear old cousin on the sands, and to Spindleston, where the
famous dragon lived."
"_Winton Castle, Tranent, Oct. 17, Evening._--As my mother will
see, I have come here for holidays, and shall be glad of a day or
two in which the mind is not kept in perpetual tension. I heard
from Lady Ruthven that I was to meet Lord Belhaven at Prestonpans
station, and had no doubt which was he--an old gentleman in a white
hat with white hair and hooked nose. We drove here together, and
very pleasant it was to exchange the pouring rain without for the
large, low, old-fashioned drawing-room, with a splendid ceiling and
sculptured chimney, thick Indian carpets, and fine old pictures and
china. Soon Lady Ruthven and Lady Belhaven came in, calling out
'welcome' as they entered the room. The other guests are Lady
Arthur Lennox and her youngest daughter, who looks, as Lady Ruthven
says, 'just like a Watteau;' also Lord Leven, cousin of our
hostess, and Miss Fletcher of Saltoun."
[Illustration: WINTON CASTLE.]
"_Winton Castle, Oct. 20._--When I awoke on Saturday, I was
surprised to see a fine old tower opposite my windows, with high
turrets and richly-carved chimneys and windows; but the castle has
been miserably added to. Lady Ruthven is most original, with a
wonderfully poetical mind, and is very different from her
regal-looking sister, Lady Belhaven, who, still very handsome,
sweeps about the long rooms, and for whom 'gracious' is the only
befitting expression. All the guests are pushed together by Lady
Ruthven in a way which makes it impossible that they should not be
intimate. For instance, as we went in to breakfast on Saturday, she
said, 'Now, Mr. Hare, you are to sit next to Lord Leven, for you
will not see any more of him; so mind you devote yourselves to one
another all breakfast time.'
"On Saturday we all went to luncheon at Saltoun, the great place of
the neighbourhood, where Mr. Fletcher lives, whose wife, Lady
Charlotte, is one of Lady Ruthven's nieces. It is a large, stately,
modern castle, containing a fine library and curious MSS. The
tables were loaded with 'loot' from the Summer Palace in China.
"Yesterday we all went at twelve o'clock to the Presbyterian church
at Pencaitland, one of the oldest in Scotland. The singing was
beautiful, and we had an admirable sermon from the minister, Mr.
Rioch, who came in the evening and made a very long 'exposition' to
the servants."
"_Oct. 21._--The Mount-Edgecumbes and I went to-day with Lady
Ruthven to Gosford--her nephew Lord Wemyss's place, near the sea. I
walked for some time in the shrubberies with Lady Mount-Edgecumbe,
till we were sent for into the house. There we found old Lady
Wemyss with her daughter, Lady Louisa Wells, and her
daughter-in-law, Lady Elcho. The last is a celebrated beauty, and
has been celebrated also for fulfilling the part of 'Justice' in a
famous tableau. In ordinary life she is perfectly statuesque, with
a frigid manner. She was very kind, however, and took us over the
house, full of works of art, of which we had not time to see a
tenth part, but there is a grand Pordenone."
"_North Berwick, Oct. 23._--It has been charming to be here again
with dear Mrs. Dalzel.... What a quaint place it is. Formerly every
one who lived in North Berwick was a Dalrymple: there were nine
families of Dalrymples, and seventeen Miss Dalrymples, old maids:
the only street in the town was Quality Street, and all its houses
were occupied by Dalrymples. North Berwick supported itself
formerly upon its herring-fishery, and it is sadly conducive to
strict Sabbatarianism that the herrings have totally disappeared,
and the place become poverty-stricken, since an occasion in the
spring when the fishers went out on a Sunday."
"_Kings Meadows, Oct. 25._--This comfortable house of kind old Sir
Adam Hay is close to Peebles. 'As quiet as Peebles or the grave,'
is a proverb. The Baillie, however, does not think so. He went to
Paris, and when he came back, all his neighbours were longing to
know his impressions. 'Eh, it's just a grand place, but Peebles for
pleasure,' he said. Ultra-Sabbatarianism reigns supreme. An old
woman's son whistled on a Sunday. 'Eh, I could just put up wi' a
wee swearing, but I canna thole whistling on the Sabbath,' she
lamented. Another woman, being invited to have some more at a
dinner given to some of the poor, answered, 'No, thank ye, mum, I
won't have any more, mum; the sufficiency that I have had is enough
for me.'"
"_Wishaw House, Motherwell, Oct. 27._--When I came here, I found
Lord and Lady Belhaven alone, but a large party arrived soon
afterwards, who have since been admirably shaken together by their
hostess. The place is almost in the Black Country, but is charming
nevertheless. A rushing river, the Calder, dashes through the rocky
glen below the castle, under a tall ivy-covered bridge, and through
woods now perfectly gorgeous with the crimson and golden tints of
autumn. Above, on either side, are hanging walks, and in the depth
of the glen an old-fashioned garden with a stone fountain, clipped
yew-trees, and long straight grass walks.
"We have been taken to Brainscleugh, a wonderful little place
belonging to Lady Ruthven--a sort of Louis XIV. villa, overhanging
the river Avon by a series of quaint terraces, with moss-grown
staircases and fountains--more like something at Albano than in
Scotland. Miss Melita Ponsonby, Sir Charles Cuffe, and I walked on
hence to the old Hamilton Chase, full of oaks which have stood
there since the Conquest, and part of the forest which once
extended across Scotland from one sea to the other. It poured with
rain, but we reached the place where the eighty wild milk-white
cattle were feeding together. Then we pursued the rest of the party
to Hamilton Palace, which is like a monster London house--Belgrave
Square covered in and brought into the country. There are endless
pictures, amongst them an awful representation of Daniel in an
agony of prayer in the lions' den. 'It is no wonder the lions were
afraid of him,' the Duchess of Hamilton overheard one of the crowd
say as they were being shown round. In the park is a huge domed
edifice something like the tomb of Theodoric at Ravenna. It was
erected by the last Duke for himself, his son, grandson, and his
nine predecessors. 'What a grand sight it will be,' he said, 'when
twelve Dukes of Hamilton rise together here at the Resurrection!'
He lies himself just under the dome, upon a pavement of coloured
marbles and inside the sarcophagus of an Egyptian queen, with _her_
image painted and sculptured outside. He had this sarcophagus
brought from Thebes, and used frequently to lie down in it to see
how it fitted. It is made of Egyptian syenite, the hardest of all
stones, and could not be altered; but when dying he was so haunted
by the idea that his body might be too long to go inside the queen,
that his last words were, 'Double me up! double me up!' The last
drive he took had been to buy spices for his own embalming. After
he was dead, no amount of doubling could get him into the
mummy-case, and they had to cut off his feet to do it![221] The
mausoleum is a most strange place, and as you enter mysterious
voices seem to be whispering and clamouring together in the height
of the dome; and when the door bangs, it is as if all the demons in
the Inferno were let loose, and the shriekings and screamings
around you are perfectly terrific. Beneath lie all the house of
Hamilton in their crimson coffins, which you survey by the light of
a single tallow candle.
"Yesterday I went to Dalzell, the old fortified house of the
Hamiltons, and we have also been taken to the Falls of the Clyde at
Stonebyres, which were magnificent, the river tossing wildly
through woods which now have all the gorgeous colouring of an
Indian autumn."
"_Ford Cottage, Nov. 5._--This is a charming little house, nestling
at the foot of the castle-hill, and it has been an amusement to
Lady Waterford to fit it up temporarily with the most interesting
contents of the castle. The walls are hung with beautiful pictures
and the rooms furnished with ivory and ebony cabinets, quantities
of old china, tall glasses piled with ferns and flowers,
old-fashioned tables and deep velvet arm-chairs. She will be here
for another year probably, and thoroughly enjoys the life, saying
that she never knew what it was to have a garden before.
"Dear old Lady Stuart is here in her deep mourning, and Lady
Waterford, now her only remaining child, has been more closely
united to her mother than ever since Lady Canning's death.[222]
"Lady Waterford is indeed perfectly delightful--brimming with
originality and enthusiasm, and with the power--which so few people
have--of putting all her wonderfully poetical thoughts into words,
and so letting others have the benefit of them. Sometimes she will
sit down to the pianoforte and sing in the most thrilling
way--Handel or Beethoven, or old Spanish ballads--without having
the music or words before her. At others she will draw, suddenly
and at once, the beautiful inspirations which come to her. Last
night it was a lovely child crowned and sporting with flowers, and
four other sweet little maidens dancing round her with garlands; it
was from the childhood of Mary Queen of Scots and her four Maries.
She is never tired of hearing of _people_; she says she sees so few
and knows so little of them now--_places_ she does not care to hear
about.
[Illustration: THE CHEVIOTS, FROM FORD.[223]]
"In the afternoon we went up to the castle, which is entirely
changed since I saw it last, having gone back from a gingerbread
gothic house to the appearance of an ancient building. The
drawing-room is beautiful, with its ceiling and ornaments copied
from that at Winton. Lord Durham was drilling his volunteer corps
before the castle, and a mock siege was got up, with a storming of
the new bridge over the dene. Then we walked to a new lodge which
is building. All around are improvements--church restored, schools
built, cottages renewed, gardens made, and then the castle."
"_Nov. 5_ (_Evening_).--The hard frost last night preluded a bright
beautiful day. Lady Waterford let me have the pony-carriage with
two white ponies to go where I liked, and I went to a ruined peel
at Howtell Grange, and then through hollows in the Cheviots to
Kirk-Newton, where Paulinus baptized his Northumbrian converts.
'Oh! if my Lady were only here, for it is quite lovely!' exclaimed
the coachman, as we turned the corner of the mountains. He told me
about Lord Waterford's death, how he was riding by his side over
the mountain when his horse stumbled. He got up safely, and then
somehow overbalanced himself and fell from the saddle upon his
head. They could not believe that he was hurt at first, for he lay
in his hunting-coat quite unbruised and beautiful; but when they
raised him up, his head fell down, for his neck was broken and he
was dead. 'Then there was an awful wail,' said the man, 'though we
could none of us believe it. Dr. Jephson rode on to break it to my
Lady, and he met her driving her two white ponies up to the door,
all gay and happy, and told her at first that my Lord had broken
his thigh-bone and was very much hurt; but she saw by his face that
it was worse than that, and said so, and he could not speak to her.
Then she went away to her own room and locked herself in. When my
Lord had been brought home and night came on, she ordered every one
away from her, and she looked on his face once more, but what my
Lady did that night we none of us knew.'
"She cannot bear a horse now: she has only this little
pony-carriage.
"This afternoon I have been with her to her school. She is covering
it with large pictures which have the effect of frescoes. All the
subjects are Bible stories from the lives of good children. In the
first, of Cain and Abel, the devout Abel is earnestly offering his
sacrifice of the lamb; while careless Cain, attracted by the flight
of some pigeons, looks away and lets his apples fall from the
altar. All the children are portraits, and it was interesting to
see the originals sitting beneath the frescoes, slates and pencils
in hand.
"It seems to me as if Lady Waterford had become strangely
spiritualised this year since Lady Canning's death. She is just
what she herself describes Miss Boyle to have become, 'A calm
seeker after good, in whatever way she may find it.'"
"_Falloden, Nov. 7, 1862._--I have been most kindly received by Sir
George and Lady Grey.... He has the reputation of being the most
agreeable 'gentleman' in England, and certainly is charming, so
cordial and kind and winning in manner.... We have been this
evening to Dunstanborough--most lovely, the tall tower in the
evening light rising rosy-pink against a blue sea."
"_Roddam, Nov. 13._--I have been with Mrs. Roddam at Eslington, a
large grey stone house on a terrace, with a French garden and fine
trees. Hedworth Liddell received us, and then his many sisters came
trooping in to luncheon from walking and driving. 'We are sure this
is our cousin Augustus Hare: we saw you through the window, and
were sure it was you, you are so like your sister.' ... They were
much amused at my delight over the portraits of our ancestors."
"_Chillingham, Nov. 14._--There is a large party here, including
Captain and Mrs. Northcote, a very handsome, distinguished-looking
young couple, and my hitherto unknown cousins, Lord and Lady
Durham.[224] He has a morose look, which does him great injustice;
she is one of Lord Abercorn's charming daughters--excessively
pretty, natural, and winning."
"_Nov. 15._--Each evening we have had impromptu charades, in which
Lord Durham acts capitally. Yesterday we went to a review of his
volunteer corps on Millfield Plain, and afterwards to tea at
Copeland Castle, an old Border fortress on the Till, which the
Durhams are renting. You would be quite fascinated by Lady
Durham--'the little Countess,' as Lady Tankerville calls her. Lord
Durham does not look a bit older than I, though he has seven
children. They have given me a very cordial invitation to stay with
them."
"_Morpeth, Nov. 16._--We dispersed yesterday evening. Lord
Tankerville wished me to have stayed, and it was very pleasant at
the end of an enchanting visit to have one's host say, 'I am so
very sorry you are going; and, though the Greys are very nice
people, I quite hate them for taking you away from us.' They sent
me in one carriage, and my luggage in another, to meet the coach at
Lilburn. I had three-quarters of an hour to wait, and took refuge
in a shepherd's hut, where the wife was very busy washing all her
little golden-haired children in tubs, and putting them to sleep in
box-beds."
"_Morpeth, Nov. 19._--On Monday I got up in pitch darkness and went
off at half-past seven by coach to Rothbury, a lonely little town
amid moorland hills with sweeping blue distance. There I got a gig,
and went far up Coquetdale to Harbottle, a most interesting
country, full of peel towers and wild rocky valleys. Coming back, I
stopped at Holystone, where a tall cross and an old statue near a
basin of transparent water mark the place where Paulinus baptized
three thousand Northumbrians. Then, in the gloaming, I saw the fine
old Abbey of Brinkburn, close upon the shore of Coquet, celebrated
in many old angling songs.
"To-day I have been with the Greys to Cresswell, the largest modern
house in the county, with an old peel tower where an ancestress of
the family starved herself to death after seeing her three brothers
murder her Danish lover upon the shore."
Several more visits brought me home at the end of November, with an
immense stock of new material, which I arranged in the next few months
in "Murray's Handbook of Durham and Northumberland"--work for which
neither Murray nor any one else gave me much credit, but which cost me
great labour, and into which I put my whole heart.
XI
HOME LIFE WITH THE MOTHER
"Golden years
Of service and of hope swept over us
Most sweetly. Brighter grew our home, more dear
Our daily life together. And as time went by,
God daily joined our hearts more perfectly."
--B. M.
"Look at a pious person, man or woman, one in whom the spirit sways
the senses; look at them when they are praying or have risen from
their knees, and see with how bright a ray of divine beauty their
faces are illuminated: you will see the beauty of God shine on
their faces: you will see the beauty of an angel. All those who in
adoring humility partake of the Holy Sacraments are so united to
God that the presence of the divine light is manifest upon their
faces."--SAVONAROLA, _Sermons_.
"God's in his heaven--
All's right with the world."
--BROWNING, _Pippa Passes_.
When I returned from the North in the winter of 1862-63, I was shocked
to find how much a failure of power, which I had faintly traced in the
summer, had increased in my dearest mother. But I cannot describe the
unspeakable thankfulness I felt that the work which had taken me so
much away from her during her four years of health was ended just when
she needed me; that it would never be absolutely necessary for me to
leave her again; and I inwardly vowed never again to undertake anything
which should separate me from her. Some work which might be done at home
would doubtless turn up, and meanwhile I had constant employment in the
service and watchings which scarcely ever permitted me to be away from
her side.
Meanwhile all the sympathy which I had to spare from the sick-room at
home was called forth by the suffering of my sister, who had struggled
bravely under the depression of her mother's ceaseless despair and
wilful refusal to be comforted, but upon whom that struggle was
beginning to tell most severely. My mother allowed me to have her at
Holmhurst a great deal this winter, and she was no trouble, but, on the
contrary, a constant source of interest to my mother, who, while
deprecating the fact of her Roman Catholicism, became full of respect
for her simple faith, large-hearted charity, and reality of true
religion--so different from that of most perverts from the national
faith of England. In her changed fortunes, accustomed to every luxury as
she had been, she would only see the silver linings of all her clouds,
truly and simply responding to Thackeray's advice--
"Come wealth or want, come good or ill,
Let young and old accept their part,
And bow before the Awful Will,
And bear it with an honest heart."
At Christmas my mother suffered terribly, and was so liable to a sudden
numbness which closely threatened paralysis, that by day and night
remedies had always to be prepared and at hand. In the last days of
January she was moved to London, and immediately felt benefited; but the
doctors who then saw my mother agreed with our old friend Dr. Hale at
St. Leonards that it was absolutely necessary that she should go abroad.
This gave rise to terrible anxiety. I remember how then, as on many
other occasions when I was longing to stay at home, but felt certain the
path of duty lay abroad, all my difficulties were enormously added to by
different members of the family insisting that my mother ought to stay
at home, and that I knew it, but "dragged her abroad for my own pleasure
and convenience." This tenfold increased my fatigue when I was already
at the last gasp, by compelling me to argue persistently to misinformed
persons in favour of my convictions, _against_ my wishes. On February
16 we left home, and went by slow stages to Hy\xE8res, whence we proceeded
to Nice.
_To_ MY SISTER.
"_Pension Rivoir, Nice, March 16, 1863._--We stayed at Hy\xE8res ten
days, but did not like the place at all, though it has a tropical
vegetation, and there are pretty corkwoods behind it. The town is a
prolonged village, clouded with dust and reeking with evil
odours.... We took a _vetturino_ from Les Arcs to Cannes, but found
prices there so enormously raised, that we decided on coming on
here. This place also is very full, but we like our tiny apartment,
which has the sea on one side, and a beautiful view across
orange-groves to the snow mountains on the other. The mother
already seems not only better but--quite well! We have found a
great many friends here, including Sir Adam Hay and all his family,
and Lord and Lady Charles Clinton, the latter charming and most
affectionately attentive to the mother."
[Illustration: CARROZZA.[225]]
The spring we spent at Nice is one of those I look back upon with the
greatest pleasure--my mother recovered so rapidly and entirely, and was
so pleased herself with her own recovery. The weather was beautiful, and
as I was already in heart looking forward to drawing as the one
lucrative employment which would not separate me from my mother, I
devoted myself to it most enthusiastically, inwardly determined to
struggle to get a power of colour which should distinguish me from the
herd of sketchers and washers, and I made real progress in knowledge and
delicacy. It was the greatest help to me in this, as it was the greatest
pleasure in everything else, to have our dear old friend Lady Grey with
her niece Miss Des V\x9Cux settled close by us, and I constantly drew
and made excursions with them, dining with them afterwards: my only
difficulty being that my mother was then often left alone longer than I
liked, with only Lea as a companion. During the close of our stay I had
some really adventurous expeditions with Miss Des V\x9Cux, Mrs. Robert
Ellice, and Miss Ellice along the bed of the Var and up Mount Chauve and
to Aspromonte; with Miss Des V\x9Cux and the Stepneys to Carrozza and Le
Broc, proceeding with the carriage as far as it would go, and then on
chairs lashed upon a bullock-cart--the scenery most magnificent; and
with a larger party to the glorious Peglione.
Addie Hay was often the companion of our excursions, and deeply attached
himself to the mother, sitting by us for hours while we drew at
Villeneuve or other mountain villages. His sister Ida did the honours at
splendid parties which were given by Mr. Peabody the philanthropist, so
I was invited to them. Mr. George Peabody--"Uncle George," as Americans
used to call him--was one of the dullest men in the world: he had
positively no gift except that of making money, and when he was making
it, he never parted with a penny until he had made hundreds of
thousands, and then he gave vast sums away in charity. When he had thus
become quite celebrated, he went back to America, and visited his native
place of Danbury, which is now called Peabody. Here some of his
relations, who were quite poor people, wishing to do him honour,
borrowed a silver tea service from a neighbour. He partook of their
feast, and, when it was over, he looked round and said, "I am agreeably
surprised to find that you are in such very good circumstances as to
want nothing that I could do for you,"--and he did nothing for them.
There was, however, at least one very interesting story connected with
George Peabody's life. He was going to Berlin for some important
financial meeting, in which he was to take a prominent part. On the way
his carriage broke down, and he was in despair as to how he was to get
on, when a solitary traveller passed in a carriage and offered to take
him up. Soon they began to converse. "I had a remarkably good dinner
to-night," said George Peabody; "guess what it was."--"Well, I guess a
good turkey."--"Better than that," said Peabody, slapping his companion
on the knee. "Well, a piece of Welsh mutton."--"Better than that," with
another slap; "why, I've had a prime haunch of venison from a Scotch
forest." Soon they were approaching Berlin, and every one saluted the
carriage as it passed. "May I ask to whom I am so much indebted for my
drive?" said Peabody. "Well, guess," said his companion, as they were
passing some soldiers who saluted. "Well, I guess you're a captain in
the army."--"Better than that," said the stranger, slapping Peabody on
the knee. "Well, perhaps you're a general."--"Better than that," with
another slap. "Well, sir, I am--the Crown Prince of Prussia."
At Mr. Peabody's parties I always used to see the old King Louis of
Bavaria, then a dirty dissipated old man, though Munich will ever bear
witness to the great intelligence he showed in early life.
At dinner at Lady Grey's I used to meet Dr. Pantaleone, who was then
practising at Nice as a Roman exile. Here are some fragments of his
ever-amusing conversation:--
"What is gout, Dr. Pantaleone?"
"Why, the Clerici Canonici do say it is the divil, and the doctors
do say it is the nerves, and the statesmen do say it is Lord
Palmerston or Lord John Russell, as the case may be!"
"Have you studied the subject much?"
"Ah, yes! oh, it is beautiful to follow the gout. But I have felt
it too, for my grandfather he did eat up all his fortune and leave
us the gout, and that is what I do call cheating his heirs!"
"I have never had gout, but I have had rheumatism."
"Ah, yes; rheumatism is gout's brother."
* * *
"Why is Mr. B. in love with Miss M.?"
"Why, you see it is an ugly picture, but is beautiful _encadr\xE9_.
She has \xA31500 a year--that is the _cadre_, and the husband will
just step into the frame and throw the old picture into the shade?"
* * *
"They seem to be giving up the Bishops in Piedmont."
"Yes, but they must not do it: it is no longer wise. With us all is
habit. We have now even been excommunicated for three years, and as
we find we do as well or rather better than before, we do not mind
a bit."
* * *
"I have often been miserable when I have lost a patient, and then I
have cursed myself for wasting my time and sympathy when I have
seen that the relations did not mind. It is always thus. Thus it
was in that dreadful time when the Borghese lost his wife and three
children. I was so grieved I could not go near the Prince. Some
days afterwards I met him in the garden. 'Oh, M. le Prince,' I
said, 'how I have felt for you!'--'Dr. Pantaleone,' he replied, 'if
I could have them back again now I would not, for it was the will
of God, and now I know that they are happy.' Then I did curse
myself. 'Ah, yes, you are quite right, M. le Prince,' I said, and I
did go away, and I never did offer condolences any more."
* * *
"Do you know Courmayeur?"
"Yes, that is where our King (Victor Emmanuel) goes when he wants
to hunt. And when Azeglio wants the King back, he writes to his
ministers, 'The tyrant wants to amuse himself,'--because his
enemies do call him the tyrant."
* * *
"It is a dreadful thing not to remember. I had a friend once who
married an Italian lady. One day they were at a party, and he went
out in the course of the evening. Nothing was thought of it at the
time; Italians often do go out. At last his wife became
excited--agitated. They tried to calm her, but she thought he had
pos\xE9d her there and gone away and left her for ever. She flew home,
and there he was comfortably seated by his fireside. 'Oh, Tommaso,
Tommaso!' she exclaimed. 'Che, che!' he said. 'Oh, why did you
leave me?' she cried. 'Oh,' said he, striking his forehead, 'I did
forget that I was married!'"[226]
* * *
"There was a poor woman whose son was dreadfully ill, and she
wanted to get him a doctor; but somehow, instead of going for the
doctor, she fell asleep, and _dreamt_ that her son was ill, and
that she was going for the doctor. She went first (in her dream) to
the house of the first physician in the town, but, when she
arrived, the door was crowded with a number of pale beings, who
were congregating round it, and calling out to those within. So the
woman asked them what they were, and they said, 'We are the
spirits of those who have been killed by the treatment of this
doctor, and we are come to make him our reproaches.' So the woman
was horrified, and hurried away to the house of another doctor, but
there she found even more souls than before; and at each house she
went to, there were more and more souls who complained of the
doctors who had killed them. At last she came to the house of a
very poor little doctor who lived in a cottage in a very narrow
dirty street, and there there were only two souls lamenting. 'Ah!'
she said, 'this is the doctor for me; for while the others have
killed so many, this good man in all the course of his experience
has only sent two souls out of the world.' So she went in and said,
'Sir, I have come to you because of your experience, because of
your great and just reputation, to ask you to heal my son.' As she
talked of his great reputation the doctor looked rather surprised,
and at last he said, 'Well, madam, it is very flattering, but it is
odd that you should have heard so much of me, for I have only been
a doctor _a week_.' Ah! then you may imagine what the horror of the
woman was--he had only been a doctor a week, and yet he had killed
two persons!... So she awoke, and she did not go for a doctor at
all, and her son got perfectly well."
[Illustration: ROMAN THEATRE, ARLES.[227]]
In May we went to spend a week at Mentone, seeing old haunts and old
friends; thence also I went for three days with Lady Grey to S. Remo,
where we drew a great deal, but I did not then greatly admire S. Remo.
We stayed a few days at Arles, where M. and Madame Pinus, the landlord
of the H\xF4tel du Nord and his wife, had become quite intimate friends by
dint of repeated visits. Each time we stayed at Arles we made some
delightful excursion: this time we went to S. Gilles. Then by a
lingering journey, after our fashion of the mother's well-days,
loitering to see Valence and Rochemaure, we reached Geneva, where we
had much kindly hospitality from the family of the Swiss pasteur
Vaucher, with whose charming daughter we had become great friends at
Mentone two years before. We were afterwards very happy for a fortnight
in the pleasant Pension Baumgarten at Thun, and went in _einspanners_
in glorious weather to Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald. On our way north,
we lingered at Troyes, and I also made a most interesting excursion from
Abbeville to St. Riquier and the battlefield of Crecy, where the old
tower from which Edward III. watched the battle still stood,[229] and
the cross where the blind King of Bohemia fell amid the corn-lands.
[Illustration: H\xD4TEL DU MAUROY, TROYES.[228]]
[Illustration: THE KING OF BOHEMIA'S CROSS, CRECY.[230]]
It was the 9th of June when we reached Holmhurst, and on the 15th I went
to Arthur Stanley's house at Oxford for the Commemoration, at which the
lately married Prince and Princess of Wales were present, she charming
all who met her as much by her simplicity as by her grace and
loveliness. "No more fascinating and lovely creature," said Arthur,
"ever appeared in a fairy-story." Mrs. Gladstone was at the Canonry and
made herself very pleasant to everybody. "Your Princess is so lovely, it
is quite a pleasure to be in the room with her," I heard her say to the
Prince of Wales. "Yes, she really is _very_ pretty," he replied.
Afterwards I went to stay with Miss Boyle, who had lately been
"revived," and it was a most curious visit. Beautiful still, but very
odd, she often made one think of old Lady Stuart de Rothesay's
description of her--"Fille de V\xE9nus et de Polichinelle."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Portishead, June 27, 1863._--Miss Boyle is quite brimming with
religion, and, as I expected, entirely engrossed by her works. She
preaches now almost every night. She began a sort of convertive
talking instantly. She asked at once, 'Are you saved?' &c. She
seems to have in everything 'une grande libert\xE9 avec Dieu,' as
Madame de Glapion said to Madame de Maintenon. She thinks Arthur an
infidel, and said that there had been a meeting of six thousand
people at Bristol to pray that his influence at Court may be
counteracted. Speaking of this, on the spur of the moment she had
up the servants and prayed for 'our poor Queen, who is in
ignorance of all these things.' Then, at great length, for me, 'Thy
child and servant who is just come into this house.' She said she
had put off her meeting for the next day on my account, but I
begged that she would hold it, even though the bills were not sent
out.
"On Friday she did not appear till one. We dined at three, and then
an 'Evangelist' came in, who also asked at once 'if I was saved?'
and then knelt down and made a long prayer, 'O God, I thank Thee
that I am a saved sinner,' with a sort of litany of 'Yes, bless the
Lord,' from Miss Boyle. Then I was prayed for again: it felt very
odd.
"Then we went off in a fly, with one of the maids and another
Evangelist called Mr. Grub, a long drive through a series of
country lanes to solitary farmhouses amongst the hills. It was like
the description in 'The Minister's Wooing.' At one of the houses a
young woman came out and said to me that she 'hoped we were one in
Christ.'
"From a turn of the road I walked down to Pill, the rude town on
the Avon where Miss Boyle preaches almost every evening to the
wharfingers and sailors, nearly two hundred at a time. I saw her
pulpit in the open air close to the river, with the broad reaches
of the Channel and ships sailing in behind it. When she preaches
there it must be a very striking scene. Numbers of people crowded
round to ask--'Isna Lady Boyle a cooming down?'--and all the little
children, 'Is Lady Boyle a cooming? Tell us, Mister, where's Lady
Boyle?'
"When we returned to the other village, St. George's, Miss Boyle
and her maid were sitting on a well in an old farmhouse garden,
singing beautiful revival hymns to a troop of mothers and little
children, who listened with delight. As the crowd gathered, she
came down, and standing with her back against the fly, beneath some
old trees in the little market-place, addressed the people. Then
Miss Boyle prayed; then the Evangelist preached. Then came some
revival hymns from Dick Weaver's hymn-book. The people joined
eagerly, and the singing was lovely--wild, picturesque choruses,
constantly swelled by new groups dropping in. People came up the
little lanes and alleys, listening and singing. Great waggons and
luggage-vans passing on the highroad kept stopping, and the carters
and drivers joined in the song. At last Miss Boyle herself
preached--most strikingly, and her voice, like a clarion, must have
been audible all over the village. She preached on the ten lepers,
and words never seemed to fail her, but she poured out an unceasing
stream of eloquence, entreating, warning, exhorting, comforting,
and illustrating by anecdotes she had heard and from the
experiences of her own life. The people listened in rapt attention,
but towards the end of her discourse a quantity of guns and
crackers were let off close by by agents of a hostile clergyman
(Vicar of Portbury), and a fiddle interrupted the soft cadences of
the singing. On this she prayed aloud for 'the poor unconverted
clergyman, that God would forgive him,' but when she had done, the
people sang one of Weaver's hymns, 'He is hurrying--he is
hurrying--he is hurrying down to hell.' Some of the clergy uphold
her, others oppose. She has had a regular fight with this one. The
meeting was not over till past nine; sometimes it lasts till
eleven. The people did not seem a bit tired: I was, and very cold."
I seldom after this saw my old friend, Miss Boyle. I could not press her
coming to Holmhurst, because she forewarned me that, if she came, she
_must_ hold meetings in the village. A sister of John Bright declared,
"I always agree with my old gardener, who says 'I canna abide a crowing
hen';" and latterly I have been of much the same opinion.
We left home again for Italy on the 26th of October. In those days there
was no railway across the Mont Cenis, but my mother enjoyed the
_vetturino_ journey along the roads fringed with barberries. Beyond
this, travelling became difficult, owing to the floods. At Piacenza we
were all ejected from the train, and forced to walk along the line for a
great distance, and then to cross a ford, which made me most thankful
that my mother was tolerably well at the time.
JOURNAL.
"_Nov. 7, 1863._--We left Bologna at 5 A.M. In the journey to
Vergato the colouring was beautiful, the amber and ruby tints of
autumn melting into a sapphire distance. At Vergato we engaged the
coup\xE9 of the diligence, and had a pleasant passage over the
Apennines, sometimes with four, sometimes with seven horses in the
ascent. The richness of the autumnal glory was beyond
description--a tossing torrent, rocky moss-grown forests of old
oaks and chestnuts, their leaves golden in death: here and there
thickets of holly and box: an old castle on a rock: a lonely old
town (La Porretta) in a misty hollow: and then a grand view from
the top of the pass over purple billowy mountains. The scenery
becomes suddenly Italian--perfectly Italian--in the descent,
cypresses and stone-pines, villas and towers, cutting the sky and
relieved upon the delicate distance: and in the depth Pistoia,
lying like a map, with dome and towers like a miniature Florence."
At the station of Ficulle near Orvieto, where the railway to the south
came to an end altogether at that time, the floods were out all over the
country, and there were no carriages--everything being quite
disorganised. We arrived at a miserable little station, scarcely better
than a small open shed, in torrents of rain, at twelve o'clock in the
day, and had to wait till the same hour of the day following, when
carriages would arrive from Orvieto. After some time my mother was
conveyed to a wretched little inn, but it was necessary for some one to
remain to guard the luggage, and knowing what a fearful hardship it
would be considered by our cross-grained man-servant, John Gidman, I
remained sitting upon it, without any food except a few biscuits, in
pitch darkness at night, and with the swelching rain beating upon my
miserable shed, for twenty-four hours. It was a very unpleasant
experience.
[Illustration: S. FLAVIANO, MONTEFIASCONE.[231]]
When at length we got away, we had to take the road by Montefiascone and
Viterbo, which was then almost untravelled, and the postboys took
advantage of the utter loneliness of the road and disturbed state of the
country to be most insolent in their demands for money. Sometimes they
would stop altogether in a desolate valley and refuse to let their
horses go an inch farther unless we paid a sort of ransom. On such
occasions we always took out our books and employed ourselves till they
went on from sheer weariness. We were never conquered, but it made the
journey very anxious and fatiguing.
It was with real thankfulness that we reached Rome on November 12, and
engaged the upper apartment of 31 Piazza di Spagna, our landlady being
the pleasant daughter of Knebel the artist, who lived in some little
rooms above us, with her brother Tito and her nurse Samuccia.
The first days at Rome this winter were absolute Elysium--the sitting
for hours in the depth of the Forum, then picturesque, flowery, and
"unrestored," watching the sunlight first kiss the edge of the columns
and then bathe them with gold: the wanderings with different friends
over the old mysterious churches on the Aventine and C\x9Clian, and the
finding out and analysing all their histories from different books at
home in the evenings: the very drives between the high walls, watching
the different effects of light on the broken tufa stones, and the
pellitory and maiden-hair growing between them.
We were also especially fortunate this winter in our friends. At first I
much enjoyed very long walks with a Mr.[232] and Mrs. Kershaw, who lived
beneath us. Taking little carriages to the gates, we wandered forth to
the Aqueducts and Roma Vecchia, where we spent the day in drawing and
picking up marbles, not returning till the cold night-dews were creeping
up from the valleys, and the peasants, as we reached the crowded street
near the Theatre of Marcellus, were eating their fritture and chestnuts
by lamplight, amid a jargon of harsh tongues and gathering of strange
costumes.
We saw much of the handsome young Marchese Annibale Paolucci di Calboli,
in the Guardia Nobile, whose wife was an old friend of early
Hurstmonceaux days, and whose children, especially the second son,
Raniero, have always remained friends of mine. This is the family
mentioned by Dante in "Purgatorio," xiv.--
"Questo \xE8 il Rinier; quest' \xE8 il pregio e l'onore
Della casa da Calboli."
Old Lady Wenlock[233] came to the H\xF4tel Europa close beside us, and was
a constant pleasure. My mother drove with her frequently. She scarcely
ever said anything that was not worth observing, and her reminiscences
were of the most various kinds. She it was who, by telling my mother of
her own strong wish and that of other people to possess some of my
sketches, first suggested the idea of selling my drawings. We amused
ourselves one evening by putting prices on the backs of sketches of the
winter--highly imaginative prices, as it seemed to us. Some time
afterwards Lady Wenlock had a party, and asked for the loan of my
portfolio to show to her friends: when they came back there were orders
to the amount of \xA360.
Other friends of whom we saw much this winter were old Lady Selina
Bridgeman, sister of my mother's dear friend Lady Frances Higginson; and
Lord and Lady Hobart. Lord Hobart was afterwards Governor of Madras, but
at this time he was excessively poor, and they lived in a tiny attic
apartment in the Via Sistina. At many houses we met the long-haired
Franz Liszt, the famous composer, and heard him play. Mr. and Mrs.
Archer Houblon also were people we liked, and we were drawn very near to
them by our common interest in the news which reached us just after our
arrival in Rome of the engagement of Arthur Stanley, just after his
appointment to the Deanery of Westminster, to Lady Augusta Bruce (first
cousin of Mrs. Houblon), the person whom his mother had mentioned as the
one she would most like him to marry.
A little before Christmas--a Christmas of the old kind, with a grand
Papal benediction from the altar of St. Peter's--Henry Alford, Dean of
Canterbury, and his family came to Rome. With them I went many
delightful expeditions into the distant Campagna: to Ostia, with its
then still gorgeous marbles and melancholy tower and pine; to Castel
Fusano, with its palace, like that of the Sleeping Beauty, rising lovely
from its green lawns, with its pine avenue and decaying vases with
golden-flowered aloes, and beyond all the grand old forest with its deep
green recesses and gigantic pines and bays and ilexes, its deep still
pools and its abysses of wood, bounded on one side by the Campagna, and
on the other by the sea; to Collatia, with its woods of violets and
anemones, and its purling brook and broken tower; to Cerbara, with its
colossal caves and violet banks, and laurustinus waving like angels'
wings through the great rifts; to Veii, with its long circuit of ruins,
its tunnelled Ponte Sodo and its mysterious columbarium and tomb.
Another excursion also lives in my mind, which I took with Harry and
Albert Brassey, when we went out very early to Frascati, and climbed in
the gorgeous early morning to Tusculum, where the little crocuses were
just opening upon the dew-laden turf, and then made our way across hedge
and ditch to Grotta Ferrata and its frescoes.
[Illustration: OSTIA.[234]]
I have always found--at Rome especially--that the pleasantest way is to
see very little, and to enjoy that thoroughly. "Je n'avale pas les
plaisirs, je sais les go\xFBter."
[Illustration: THEATRE OF TUSCULUM.[235]]
In the spring our sketchings and excursions were frequently shared by
our cousins, Maria and Mary Shaw-Lefevre, who came to Rome with their
maternal aunt, Miss Wright, whom I then saw for the first time, but who
afterwards became the dearest of my friends--a nominal "Aunt Sophy," far
kinder and far more beloved than any real aunt I have ever known.
But most of all does my remembrance linger upon the many quiet hours
spent alone with the mother during this winter, of an increasing
communion with her upon all subjects, in which she then, being in
perfect health, was able to take an active and energetic interest.
Especially do I look back to each Sunday afternoon passed in the Medici
Gardens, where she would sit on the sheltered sunny seats backed by the
great box hedges--afternoons when her gentle presence, when the very
thought of her loved existence, made all things sweet and beautiful to
me, recalling Cowper's lines--
"When one that holds communion with the skies
Has filled her urn where these pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with us meaner things,
'Tis e'en as if an angel shook his wings;
Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide,
And tells us whence her treasures are supplied."
These afternoons with the mother are my real Roman memories of
1863-64--not the hot rooms, not the evening crowds, not the ceremonies
at St. Peter's!
This year I greatly wished something that was not compatible with the
entire devotion of my time and life to my mother. Therefore I smothered
the wish, and the hope that had grown up with it. Those things do
not--cannot--recur.
One day in the spring, mother and I drove to our favourite spot of the
Acqua Acetosa, and walked in the sun by the muddy Tiber. When we came
back, we found news that Aunt Esther was dead. She had never recovered
a violent cold which she caught when lying for hours, in pouring rain,
upon her husband's grave. Her death was characteristic of her life, for,
with the strongest sense of duty and a determination to carry it out to
the uttermost, no mental constitution can possibly be imagined more
happily constructed for self-torment than hers. My mother grieved for
her loss, and I grieved that my darling had sorrow.... How many years of
heartburnings and privation are buried for ever out of sight in that
grave! _Requiescat in pace._ I believe that I have entirely forgiven all
the years of bitter suffering that she caused me. "He who cannot forgive
others, breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself: for every man
hath need to be forgiven," was a dictum of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. I
believe that I really feel this; still "les morts se pr\xE9tent aux
r\xE9conciliations avec une extr\xEAme facilit\xE9," as Anatole France says.[236]
We did not go to many of the services. The most impressive processions
we saw were really those of the bare-footed monks who followed the
funerals, many hundreds of them, each with his lighted candle: we used
to hear their howling chant long before they turned the corner of the
Piazza di Spagna.
_To_ MY SISTER.
"_31 Piazza di Spagna, Rome, Feb. 1864._--Manning is indefatigable
in proselytising. I once went to hear him preach at San Carlo:
anything so _dull_, so wholly unimpassioned, I never heard. There
was a great function at the Minerva the other day as a protest
against Renan. Michelangelo's statue of Christ was raised aloft and
illuminated. A Dominican friar preached, and in the midst of his
sermon shouted, 'Adesso, fratelli miei, una viva per Ges\xF9 Cristo!'
and all the congregation shouted 'Viva.' And when he finished, he
cried 'Adesso tre volte viva per Ges\xF9 Cristo!' and when they were
given, 'E una viva di pi\xF9,' just as if it were a toast. The Bambino
of Ara C\x9Cli has broken its toe! It was so angry at the church
door being shut when it returned from its drive, that it kicked the
door till one of its toes came off, and the monks are in sad
disgrace.
"The old Palace of the C\xE6sars, as we have always called it, is
being superseded by immense _scavi_, opened by the French Emperor
in the Orti Farnesiani: these have laid bare such quantities of old
buildings and pavements, that the Orti are now like a little
Pompeii."
We left Rome before Easter, and spent it quietly at Albano, where we had
many delightful days, with first the Hobarts and then the Leghs of
Booths in our hotel, and I made charming excursions up Monte Cavi and
round the lake of Nemi with Alexander Buchanan and the Brasseys. On Good
Friday there was a magnificent procession, the dead and bleeding Christ
carried by night through the streets upon a bier, preceded and attended
by monks and mutes with flaming torches, and followed by a wailing
multitude. In the principal square the procession stopped, the bier was
raised aloft, and while the torchlight flamed upon the livid features of
the dead, a monk called upon the people to bear witness and to account
for his "murder."
At Sorrento we spent a fortnight at the Villa Nardi, with its quiet
orange-grove and little garden edged with ancient busts overlooking the
sea. At Amalfi, the Alfords joined us. We went together to Ravello. I
remember how the Dean insisted on calling the little dog that went with
us from the inn "Orthodog," and another dog, which chose to join our
company, "Heterodog," on the principle of Dr. Johnson, who explained the
distinction by saying, "Madam, orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is
any other person's doxy."
[Illustration: AMALFI.[237]]
As we returned through Rome we stayed at the Palazzo Parisani, and much
enjoyed the luxury of the large cool rooms, where we lived chiefly on
riccotta and lettices. One day as we came in, the porter gave us a
black-edged letter. It was the news that poor "Italima" was released
from all her sorrows. For my sister, to whom Madame de Trafford had
written exactly foretelling what was going to happen, one could only
give thanks (though she truly mourned her mother); but it was strangely
solemnising receiving the news in "Italima's" own rooms, where we had
seen her in her utmost prosperity. It was a fortnight before Esmeralda
could send us any details.
"_34 Bryanston Street, May 9, 1864._--Your long-expected letter
came this morning. I had been waiting for it every day, every hour.
The illness was so short, and the sense of desolation so terrible
afterwards, it seems strange to have lived. On the Thursday the
nuns of the Precious Blood came to dinner, and were alarmed by
seeing a change in Mama. She talked cheerfully to them, but when I
left the room, she said to the Superior, 'I am really ill,' but
this was not told me till afterwards. I sent for Dr. Bell. He said
at once, 'It is bronchitis, but there is no danger, nothing to be
feared.' On Friday, Mama was up as early as usual. Father Galway
came to see her, also Lady Lothian. Mama was cheerful, and they saw
no cause for anxiety. Every hour made me more anxious. Mama kept
saying, 'Esmeralda, you cannot keep quiet, what is the matter with
you? I am not ill.' On Saturday I thought Mama worse, and more so
on Sunday, though she got up and came downstairs. Lady Lothian came
at two o'clock, then Father Galway. Mama talked to Father Galway
about her past life, and seemed quite cheerful. She sat up till
nine o'clock. When Mama was in bed, she said, 'I am better, I
think; go to bed, you are so tired, and do not get up again.' I
went to my room and wrote a letter to Father Galway, as I dreaded
that a change might take place in the night, and wished that the
letter might be ready to send. I went to Mama several times.... It
was at two o'clock that she laid her hand upon my head and said,
with a great effort, 'Esmeralda, I am going from you.' ... In a few
minutes she began to say the Gloria. I repeated the Belief, the Our
Father, and the Hail Mary.... Soon after five o'clock Father Galway
was here, and then Lady Lothian came with a nun of the Misericorde
as a nurse. Mama was then better, and seemed surprised to see
Father Galway. I remained praying in the next room with the nun and
Lady Lothian. At seven, I went in to Mama. She did not then believe
she was dying, but said she was ready to make her last confession.
The nuns of the Precious Blood had brought the relic of the True
Cross. At a quarter past eight o'clock Father Galway had heard
Mama's confession; he then said she must be raised before she could
receive the Last Sacraments. We all went into the room. Lady
Lothian made every effort to raise Mama. She _stood_ on the bed,
and tried to raise her; it was no use; we all tried in turn. The
nun of the Misericorde suggested raising Mama on sheets. It must
have been dreadful agony. There were a few deep moans, but at last
the nuns and Lady Lothian did raise Mama. Then she received Extreme
Unction; the nuns, Lady Lothian, and I kneeling around. Father
Galway approached the bed, and said to Mama that she was going to
receive the Body and Blood of our Lord--'Could she swallow still?'
She said 'Yes' audibly. She fixed her eyes on Father Galway; her
face was for the instant lighted up with intensity of love and
faith. There was a pause. Her breathing had in that moment become
more difficult. Father Galway said a second time the same words,
and again, with a great effort, Mama said 'Yes.' She then received
the Holy Viaticum, and in that solemn moment her eyes opened wide,
and a beautiful calm peaceful look came over her countenance,--and
this calm look never left her through all the long hours till
half-past three o'clock, when she breathed her last. When she was
asked anything, she always answered, 'Pray, pray.' Once she opened
her eyes wide, and with a long parting look said, 'Do not
worry,'--she passed her hand over my head: she liked to see me
kneeling by her side.
"Francis did not arrive till Mama had received the Last Sacraments.
I met him on the stairs, and said, 'Francis, you are too late.' He
staggered against the wall, and with a cry of agony exclaimed, 'It
is impossible.' Father Galway was then saying the prayers of the
agonising, the responses being taken up by the nuns and Lady
Lothian. Lady Williamson and Lady Georgina Fullerton had also
arrived, but I do not think Mama knew them. At two o'clock Mama
asked for Lady Lothian, for she always missed her when she left the
room and asked for her back again, asked her to pray, and tried
hard to say something to her about me. I led Francis into the room,
and Lady Lothian said to Mama, 'Francis, you remember Francis,' and
Mama said 'Yes,' and then she blessed him. Francis buried his head
in his hands, his whole frame quivering with sobbing. Mama fixed
her eyes on him with a kind parting look, and then closed them
again. Lady Lothian then said, 'William' (for he and Edith had
come), and Mama said 'Yes,' and she opened her eyes again and
blessed William. Father Galway at intervals took up the prayers for
the dying,--and then, at last, while Francis, William, Auntie, and
Lady Lothian were kneeling at the foot of the bed, and the nuns
supporting Mama, the words were heard--'Go forth.' There was a
slight, hardly audible, rattle in Mama's throat. Father Galway
turned round to me, and said, 'Now you can help her more than you
did before,' and began the prayers for the dead--the five joyful
mysteries of the Rosary. The overpowering awe of that solemn moment
prevented any outburst of grief; a soul had in that instant been
judged. For long I had prayed that Mama might make a good death,
and this prayer was answered. All Father Galway's devotion before
and afterwards to each and all of us,--all Lady Lothian's untiring
kindness, I can never tell you, it was so beautiful. Then came long
days of watching by the body. The nuns of the Precious Blood sent
their large crucifix and their high silver candlesticks; the room
was hung in black and white. Auntie is sadly altered, but always
patient and self-sacrificing. I was with Lady Lothian a week; how
that week went by I cannot tell, and now there are lawyers. I long
for rest. There is such a blank, such a loneliness. I like to be
alone with our Blessed Lord, and to shut out the world."
"_May 18._--Probably I have told you everything up to the time of
the death, three weeks last Monday, and still I can hardly realise
it. Those last hours are so vivid. My thoughts are going back. Was
there anything that could have been done that was not done to save
Mama's life? was there anything she wished for that was not done?
because her breathing was so difficult she could only articulate
the shortest words. There was one sentence she tried to say to Lady
Lothian, and over and over again she began it with such an anxious
look that Lady Lothian should understand it, but it was impossible.
It began with _Es ... da_, and ended with _her_, but the
intermediate words were lost.
"After all was over, Lady Lothian took me by the hand and led me
gently to the sofa in the other room. After some time the nun of
the Mis\xE9ricorde fetched me into the room of death, and we began to
light torches round the bed, and watch those dear remains, and
there we watched and prayed for the dead for long, long hours. I
ordered a person to watch from eleven at night until the morning,
when the nun of the Mis\xE9ricorde went in. She had been resting in my
bedroom next door, and we had been taking up alternately, in the
stillness of the night, the prayers for dear Mama. Then began the
watching through the day. The Abb\xE9 de Tourzel, Father Galway,
William, Edith, Lady Lothian, and Lady G. Fullerton came in turn to
watch, and so the day passed, and the night, and Tuesday. On
Tuesday evening Francis came up. The whole room had been
transformed. When he entered the door, he stopped and looked
around, then he went round the bed, stooped over Mama, and said,
'Oh sister, Mama does not look _dead_,' then he sat down, buried
his head in his hands, and there he remained for an hour and a half
without moving. And then he left, and others came and joined in
the Rosary and Litany for the dead, and then came the second night,
and on Wednesday there were watchers through the day. On Wednesday
I first felt the great fatigue, but that day also passed praying
and watching. The next day Lady G. Fullerton came and took me to
her house while those dear remains were laid in the coffin. In the
evening the nun who was watching would not let me see Mama again,
but I got up early the following morning and went into the room,
and I cannot tell you what the agony of that moment was:--I became
senseless and was carried out. The coffin was closed and stood in
the middle of the room, which looked like a chapel. The crucifix
stood at the head of the coffin, huge silver candlesticks near and
around,--the room draped in black and white, and a bouquet of fresh
flowers at the head of the coffin. Watchers succeeded each other,
Miss Turville several times, Mrs. Galton, and so through Thursday
and Friday. On Friday evening Lady Lothian took me away.
"The body was carried to the church at Farm Street at half-past
eight on Friday evening, as it was my wish that it should remain
before the Blessed Sacrament throughout the night. Low Masses
commenced at seven o'clock, at which time persons began to
assemble. At ten o'clock were the Requiem and High Mass. The coffin
was placed on a catafalque in front of the high altar, surrounded
by burning tapers. Francis was on the right, William on the left,
the four nuns at the foot, Lady Williamson, Lady Hardwicke, Sir
Hedworth, Lord Normanby, Col. Augustus Liddell, Victor Williamson,
and many others, stood near them. The chapel was full, the wailing
chant very impressive. There was one person, an old man tottering
with grief, whom every one saw, and every one inquired who he was.
At eleven o'clock six bearers came up the centre of the church, and
slowly the coffin was carried out. The family followed. Lady
Lothian came out of one of the seats and implored me not to follow
to the cemetery. The crowd closed in behind the coffin. Lady
Lothian and I remained in the church; after a time we returned to
her house. Everything appeared indistinct from that time. Now
William will tell the rest.
(_Continued by William._)--"The four carriages started along the
road; by the side ran the weather-beaten white-haired gentleman,
and every one still inquired who he was. We reached Kensal Green at
half-past one. The coffin was carried into the chapel, and laid
upon another catafalque, where it was asperged. After a very
impressive oration by Father Galway, the procession left the chapel
headed by the four nuns. Then came the priests, then all the others
following the coffin, and last of all the white-haired unknown. As
the coffin was lowered, the responses were chanted by the nuns, and
at the same time a gleam of sunshine burst forth, being the only
one that appeared, throwing a strong light over everything.
"That day the nuns and Father Galway went to see my sister, who was
terribly exhausted. On Monday morning the white-haired unknown came
to Bryanston Street and asked for Miss Hare. He was sent on to Lady
Lothian. Sister was alone (now she dictates the rest).--The door
opened, and as I looked, I saw a white-haired old man, who seemed
almost as if he had not strength to come forward. I went up to him.
Tears were streaming down his face; he clasped my hands in his, and
exclaimed, 'Ah! Mademoiselle!' and his sobs choked him and
prevented him from saying any more, and I, in my turn, exclaimed,
'Oh! Lamarre, c'est vous!' It was indeed Lamarre, our old cook from
Palazzo Parisani! His was the most touching sorrow I ever saw.
'Celle que j'ai servi, celle que j'ai v\xE9ner\xE9 pendant tant d'ann\xE9es,
j'ai voulu lui rendre ce dernier homage de mon devoir. J'ai
respect\xE9 votre douleur dans l'\xE9glise, et j'ai suivi le cort\xE8ge \xE0
pied jusqu'au cimeti\xE8re. J'ai desir\xE9 voir la fin.' As Lamarre
leaned over me, he was trembling from head to foot. I made him sit
down by the fireside, and then we talked more calmly. Only when he
spoke of Victoire and her terrible grief, all his sorrow burst out
again, and large tears trickled down his cheeks. It was such a sad
parting when he went. But I was comforted in feeling how Mama had
been loved, how much she had been esteemed in her life, how many
there were who were deeply attached to her, who felt the sorrow as
I felt it. Then came the days of long letters of condolence from
France, from Italy, from Pisa, from Victoire, whose heart seemed
breaking, and where the funeral mass was said with great pomp,
sixty of the Pisan clergy attending, who sent me a list of their
names. At Rome the Duchess Sora will have a funeral mass said at
San Claudio, and all the clergy and friends who knew Mama well will
be present to offer up their prayers."
According to Roman custom, the death was announced to acquaintances by a
deep mourning paper inscribed:--
"_Have pity on me, have pity on me, at least you, my
friends_."--JOB xix. 21.
Of your charity pray for the soul of
MRS. ANN FRANCES HARE,
(Widow of Francis George Hare, Esq., brother of the late
Archdeacon Hare of Lewes, Sussex), who departed this life,
after a short illness, on the 25th of April 1864, aged sixty-three
years, fortified with all the rites of Holy Church. On
whose soul sweet Jesus have mercy.
* * *
_Requiescat in pace. Amen._
* * *
"Afflicted in few things, in many shall they be well rewarded,
because God has tried them."--_Wisdom_, iii. 5.[238]
It was Mr. Trafford who responded to the announcement of the death which
had been sent to Madame de Trafford:--
"_Ch\xE2teau le Beaujour, par Onzain, Cher et Loire, ce 1 Mai
1864._--Croyez, ma ch\xE8re Demoiselle, que nous partageons bien votre
douleur, mais femme propose, et Dieu dispose. Vous savez que Madame
de Trafford avait pr\xE9vu ce qui est arriv\xE9.... Madame de Trafford
vous dira encore 'Esp\xE9rance et Confiance.'
"E. W. TRAFFORD."
TO MY SISTER.
"_Florence, May 22, 1864._--This morning we have received your most
touching account of the last hours, of which we had so longed to
know something. You may imagine with what breathless interest we
have followed every detail.
" ... I have seen poor Mr. Landor several times. He has a small
lodging in the Via della Chiesa, where he 'sits out the grey
remainder of his evening,' as Coleridge would describe it. He is
terribly altered, has lost the use of his hearing and almost of his
speech, and cannot move from his chair to his bed. I think he had a
very indistinct recollection who I was, but he remembered the
family, and liked to say over the old names--'Francis, Augustus,
Julius, I miei tre imperatori. I have never known any family I
loved so much as yours. I loved Francis most, then Julius, then
Augustus, but I loved them all. Francis was the dearest friend I
ever had.' He also spoke of the Buller catastrophe. 'It was a
great, great grief to me.' I did not tell him what has happened
lately; it was no use, he can live so short a time.[239]
"When he last left the Villa Landore, it was because Mrs. Landor
turned him out by main force. It was a burning day, a torrid summer
sun. He walked on dazed down the dusty road, the sun beating on his
head. His life probably was saved by his meeting Mr. Browning, who
took him home. After some time, Browning asked to take him to the
Storys' villa at Siena, and he stayed with them a long time. Mrs.
Story says that nothing ever more completely realised King Lear
than his appearance when he arrived, with his long flowing white
locks and his wild far-away expression. But after a day of rest he
seemed to revive. He would get up very early and sit for hours at a
little table in the great hall of the villa writing verses--often
Latin verses.
"One day he wrote, and thundered out, an epigram on his wife:--
'From the first Paradise an angel once drove Adam;
From mine a fiend expelled me: Thank you, madam.'
"Then he would tell the Storys interesting things out of his
long-ago, describing Count D'Orsay and Lady Blessington, with
Disraeli sitting silently watching their conversation, as if it
were a display of fireworks. He was always courteous and kind--a
polished gentleman of the old school. At last Browning arranged for
him to go to a lodging of his own, but he went to spend their
little girl's birthday with the Storys. He walked to their villa
along the dusty road in his old coat, but when he came in, he
unbuttoned it, and with one of his old volleys of laughter showed a
flowered waistcoat, very grand, which 'D'Orsay and he had ordered
together,' and which he had put on in honour of the occasion.
"After he was living in Florence, Mrs. Browning told him one day
that she had just got Lord Lytton's new book 'Lucile.'--'Oh, God
bless my soul!' he said, 'do lend it to me.' In an hour he sent it
back. 'Who could ever read a poem which began with _But_?' However,
he was afterwards persuaded to read it, and shouted, as he
generally did over what pleased him, 'Why, God bless my soul, it's
the finest thing I ever read in my life.'
"Mrs. Browning did not think he was properly looked after at
Florence, and sent her excellent maid, Wilson, to care for him. But
it did not answer. Wilson cooked him a most excellent little
dinner, and when he saw it on the table, he threw it all out of the
window; it was too English, he said."
In returning north from Italy, we made an excursion to Courmayeur,
driving in a tiny carriage from Ivrea along the lovely Val d'Aosta, and
lingering to sketch at all the beautiful points. In France we had an
especially happy day at Tonnerre, a thoroughly charming old town, where
the people were employed in gathering the delicious lime-flowers which
lined the boulevards, for drying to make tisanes.
[Illustration: COURMAYEUR.[240]]
There was a subject of painful interest to us during this summer, which
it is difficult to explain in a few words. My sister's letter mentions
how, when Italima was dying, there was one thing which she tried over
and over again to say to the Dowager Lady Lothian, who was with her, and
which Lady Lothian and the other bystanders vainly endeavoured to
understand. It began with "Esmeralda" and ended with "her," but the
intermediate words were lost. We naturally explained it to mean
"Esmeralda will be very desolate when I am gone; you will look after
her."
After Italima's death, Esmeralda had moved from Bryanston Street to a
house in Duke Street, Manchester Square, which was kept by Mrs. Thorpe,
the faithful and devoted maid of Italima's old friend Mrs. Chambers.
Here my sister had every comfort, and might have had rest, but one day
her brother William came to visit her, and broke a blood-vessel while he
was in the house. His wife was sent for, and for several weeks he
hovered between life and death; indeed, he never really recovered from
this attack, though he was able to be moved in a month and lived for
more than three years. The fatigue of her brother's illness entirely
prostrated Esmeralda, who was already terribly shaken in health by the
fatigue of the strange watchings, enjoined by Catholicism, which
followed her mother's death.
It was about August that I received a letter from my Aunt Eleanor Paul
begging me to come to London immediately, for something most
extraordinary and trying had happened. When I went, I found my sister
looking terribly ill, and my aunt greatly agitated. My aunt said that
two days before Mrs. Beckwith had been to visit my sister; that,
supposing she was come to talk of Catholic matters, she had not paid
any especial attention to what they were saying, and, owing to her
deafness, she consequently heard nothing. That she was suddenly startled
by a scream from my sister, and looking up, saw her standing greatly
excited, and Mrs. Beckwith trying to soothe her; that she still supposed
it was some Catholic news which had agitated my sister, and that
consequently she made no inquiries.
The next day, Esmeralda went out to drive with Mrs. Beckwith, and when
she came back she looked dreadfully harassed and altered, so much so
that at last my aunt said, "Now, Esmeralda, I am quite sure something
has happened. I stand in the place of a mother to you now, and I insist
upon knowing what it is."
Then my sister said that Mrs. Beckwith had startled her the day before
by saying that, as she had been walking down Brook Street, Madame de
Trafford had suddenly appeared before her, and, looking back upon all
the events connected with the past appearances of Madame de Trafford,
the news was naturally a shock to her. After driving with Mrs. Beckwith,
she had returned with her to her hotel, and while she was there the door
suddenly opened, and Madame de Trafford came in.
The malady from which Esmeralda had been suffering was an extraordinary
feeling, a sensation of burning in her fingers. The doctor whom she had
consulted, when this sensation became so acute as to prevent her
sleeping, said it arose from an overwrought state of nerves, possibly
combined with some strain she might have received while helping to move
furniture to turn the room into a chapel, after her mother's death. When
Madame de Trafford came into the room at the hotel, my sister instantly,
as usual, jumped up to embrace her, but Madame de Trafford put out her
hands and warded her off with a gesture of horror, exclaiming, "Ne me
touchez pas, ma ch\xE8re, je vous en supplie ne me touchez pas: c'est vos
doigts qui sont en feu. Ah! ne me touchez pas." And then she became
terribly transfigured--the voice of prophecy came upon her, and she
said, "When your mother was dying, there was something she tried to say
to Lady Lothian, which you none of you were able to hear or understand.
I, in my ch\xE2teau of Beaujour in Touraine, I heard it. It echoed through
and through me. It echoes through me still. For three months I have
struggled day and night not to be forced to tell you what it was, but I
can struggle no longer; I am compelled to come here; I am forced away
from Beaujour; I am forced to England against my will. When your mother
was dying she saw the future, and said, 'Esmeralda will soon follow me:
I shall not long be separated from her.' And you _will_ follow her,"
shrieked Madame de Trafford, her eyes flaming, and every nerve quivering
with passion. "You _will_ follow her very soon. Only one thing could
save you: if you were to go to Rome before the winter, that might save
your life; but if not, you must--die!" And then Madame de Trafford,
sinking down suddenly into an ordinary uninspired old woman, began to
cry; she cried and sobbed as if her heart would break.
When my aunt heard what Madame de Trafford had said, she felt the injury
it might do to my sister's impressible nature, and she was very angry.
She felt that, whatever her impulse might have been, Madame de Trafford
ought to have conquered it, and she determined to see her and to tell
her so herself. Very early the next morning she went to the hotel where
Madame de Trafford was and asked to see her. She was refused admittance,
but she insisted upon waiting, and she did wait, till at last she was
let in. Madame de Trafford was then quite composed and calm, very
courteous, very kind, very like other people, and my aunt said that in
entering upon her subject, it was like accusing a sane person of being
perfectly mad. But suddenly, whilst they were talking, Madame de
Trafford glided round the table, and standing in front of the fireplace,
seemed to rise out of herself, and in her terrible voice, every syllable
of which was distinctly audible to my deaf aunt on the other side of the
room, exclaimed these words--"Votre ni\xE8ce est malade; elle sera encore
plus malade, et puis elle mourira," and having said this, she went
out--she went entirely away--she went straight back to France. She had
fulfilled the mission for which she came to England, and the next day
she wrote from Beaujour in Touraine to pay her bill at the hotel.
Aunt Eleanor said that to her dying day that awful voice and manner of
Madame de Trafford would be present to her mind.
Looking back upon the past, could Esmeralda and her aunt disbelieve in
the prediction of Madame de Trafford? Had not my sister in her desk a
warning letter which had told the day and hour of her mother's death?
and how true it had been! Yet at this time her going to Rome seemed
quite impossible; she could not go away whilst all her law affairs were
unwound up, indeed even then in the most critical state: besides that,
she had no funds. But in November, three suits in Chancery were suddenly
decided in her favour. By two of these my sister recovered \xA38000 of her
mother's fortune; by the third she secured \xA33000 from the trustees who
had signed away her mother's marriage settlement. So she and her aunt
immediately started for Rome, accompanied by Cl\xE9mence Boissy, the old
maid of her childhood, whom she had summoned to return to her
immediately on her recovering an income. I will give a few extracts from
Esmeralda's letters after this:--
"_Paris, Nov._--At last we did start. But what a packing! what a
confusion!... Yesterday I saw Madame Davidoff,[241] as enthusiastic
as ever, but she was so rushed upon from all quarters, that I could
not get a quiet talk. I also saw the P\xE8re de Poulevey, the great
friend of the P\xE8re de Ravignan, who wrote his life.... And now you
will say this is a very cheerful letter, and on the contrary I feel
very sad, and very sad I felt at the Sacr\xE9 C\x9Cur and at S. Roch
this morning. Everything I see brings back the past."
"_Dec. 8, 1864, Ma\xE7on._--How astonished you will be to see the date
of this place. 'Why are you not in Rome by this time?' you will
exclaim. Because I was so exhausted when we arrived here that
Auntie agreed that the only thing to do was to take a long rest,
give up the Mont Cenis, and proceed slowly by Nice and Genoa.
[Illustration: Anne F. M. L. Hare.
From a portrait by Canevari]
"Villefranche, which is about an hour's drive from Ars, is on our
way to Lyons. If the road is not a heavy one, Auntie and I shall
spend the Feast of the Immaculate Conception there next Thursday,
and then proceed on our journey. The mistress of the hotel here has
been backwards and forwards to Ars for upwards of twenty-five
years, and constantly talked to the Cur\xE9 d'Ars and heard him
preach. 'Vous ne pouvez pas vous imaginer,' she says, 'ce que
c'\xE9tait que d'entendre le Cur\xE9 d'Ars en chair; on fondait en
larmes, on croyait entendre les paroles de notre Seigneur quand il
enseignait le peuple. C'\xE9tait peu de paroles, mais cela remuait
jusqu'\xE0 fond de l'\xE2me. "Oh, mes enfants," disait le Cur\xE9, "_si_
vous pouviez voir le bon Dieu comme je le vois, combien peu de
chose seraient \xE0 vos yeux les choses de cette terre. Ah! si vous
connaissiez l'amour de Dieu!" Et puis les larmes coulaient le long
de ses joues. Il pleurait toujours quand il parlait de l'amour de
Dieu. Ce n'\xE9tait pas un grand orateur que l'on \xE9coutait. Oh! non,
Mademoiselle, c'\xE9taient seulement quelques paroles qui allaient
droit au c\x9Cur. Vous deviez l'entendre quand il faisait son
cat\xE9chisme \xE0 midi, \xE0 chaque jour un sujet nouveau. L'\xE9glise \xE9tait
toujours pleine. Il y'a vingt-cinq ans, il y a m\xEAme trente ans,
l'on parlait du Cur\xE9 d'Ars et on allait \xE0 Ars. Le Cur\xE9 restait dans
son confessional jusqu'\xE0 minuit, quelquefois jusqu'\xE0 une heure de
matin. Alors il sortait de l'\xE9glise pour prendre deux heures de
repos. Quatre femmes de la campagne se mettaient aux quatre coins
pour emp\xEAcher le monde de passer, car, au moindre bruit, M. le Cur\xE9
se levait et sortait de suite: ces femmes de la campagne \xE9taient
bien d\xE9vou\xE9es.
"'Un jour que j'\xE9tais dans l'\xE9glise d'Ars, le Cur\xE9 s'\xE9criait,
"Laissez passer cette dame," designant du doigt une dame au chapeau
verte--"laissez la passer." Un jour une autrefois il me vit; il dit
\xE0 la foule qui se pressait autour de lui, "Laissez passer cette
dame, car elle n'est pas d'ici, il faut qu'elle parte,"--et ainsi
j'ai pu m'approcher et lui parler. J'allais voir le Cur\xE9 d'Ars bien
malade d'une maladie des nerfs \xE0 la suite de la maladie de ma
fille. "Vous \xEAtes bien souffrante," dit le Cur\xE9, "vous ne voulez
pas encore mourir; c'est pour vos enfants que vous desirez vivre:
c'est bien," dit il, "c'est bien; vous serez encore malade aussi
longtemps que vous l'avez \xE9t\xE9, et puis vous serez bien." En effet,
il y'avait huit mois que je souffrais, et huit mois apr\xE8s je fus
gu\xE9rie--tel que M. le Cur\xE9 d'Ars m'avait dit.'
"'Le Vicaire-G\xE9n\xE9ral,' said the mistress,'m'a racont\xE9 ceci
lui-m\xEAme, avec des larmes aux yeux. Il a log\xE9 ici une nuit: c'est
alors qu'il me l'a racont\xE9. "Madame," dit il, "je ne pouvais croire
\xE0 tout ce que j'entendis d'Ars. Je croyais que ces paysans \xE9taient
exalt\xE9s. Je voulus donc voir en personne: je me rendis \xE0 Ars.
J'arrivai donc \xE0 Ars. Il y'avait beaucoup de monde. J'y suis rest\xE9
deux jours. Voici ce qui est arriv\xE9. Je quittais l'\xE9glise avec M.
le Cur\xE9. J'allais avec lui vers sa petite maison. En arrivant, la
vieille cuisini\xE8re ou bonne du Cur\xE9 vient \xE0 notre rencontre. 'Ah!
M. le Cur\xE9,' dit elle, 'nous n'avons plus rien, nous ne pouvons
plus donner.'--'Donnez,' r\xE9pondit M. le Cur\xE9, 'donnez
toujours.'--'Mais nous ne pouvons pas,' dit encore la vieille
femme, 'il n'y a rien, _rien_,' r\xE9petait elle. M. le Cur\xE9 \xE9tait
vif. Combien il lui a cout\xE9 pour pouvoir se mod\xE9rer--'Donnez,
donnez toujours par poign\xE9es,' dit il encore. 'Comment,' r\xE9pondit
la vieille, 'comment voulez-vous que je donne: il n'y a rien?'
"C'est alors," dit M. le Vicaire-G\xE9n\xE9ral, "que j'ai dit au Cur\xE9,
'Je ferai un rapport \xE0 Monseigneur l'Ev\xEAque, je suis s\xFBr qu'il vous
enverra pour vos pauvres.' Le Cur\xE9 ne r\xE9pondit pas; il fit comme un
mouvement d'impatience. 'Montez au gr\xE9nier,' dit il \xE0 la vieille
cuisini\xE8re, 'et donnez, donnez toujours aux pauvres.' Cette fois
elle ob\xE9it. Elle court, elle ouvre la porte du gr\xE9nier. Elle
descende aussi vite; le gr\xE9nier \xE9tait tout plein. 'Ah, M. le Cur\xE9,
si c'est ainsi,' dit elle, 'nous pouvons toujours donner.' Ce
fait," dit M. le Vicaire, "je l'ai vu de mes yeux, et les larmes
remplissaient ses yeux en me le racontant."'
"Miraculous cures are still constantly occurring. Cl\xE9mence is going
to-morrow to find out for me a boy whose limbs were distorted and
who was made whole. I wish to hear from his own lips about the
wonderful cure; but here people are accustomed to all this, and any
particular miraculous cure does not strike them as extraordinary.
The facts in this case are that the boy was the son of a baker,
eight years old, who, with limbs all distorted and suffering
acutely, was carried by his parents to Ars. The Vicar-General and
several of the clergy were at the church-door when the carriage
drove up with this poor cripple in it. His mother carried him to
the altar-rail and endeavoured to place him on his knees, but the
boy could hardly keep himself in a kneeling posture owing to his
distorted limbs, and seemed to swing first to the right and then to
the left. When mass was ended he said, 'I am better,' and was led,
being supported, to the hotel, where he was laid upon a bed. His
mother, remaining in the room, after a while saw him looking
upwards intently, and for a long time he continued as if gazing at
something above him. She called her husband and said, 'Come and see
our child looking upwards; what is he looking at?' Suddenly the boy
turned towards his mother and said, 'Lift me off the bed; I think
that I am well and that I can walk,'--and so it was: she lifted him
on to the floor, and the boy was cured, and has been well from that
hour, and lives opposite this hotel at the baker's shop.
"The mistress told me--'Un jour le Cur\xE9 d'Ars alla voir un cur\xE9 de
Lyon qu'on dit \xEAtre saint. "Vous prendrez ma place," dit il. "Vous
ferez encore plus de conversions."' I am going to Lyons to try to
find out this cur\xE9. At Ma\xE7on also there is a certain 'Cur\xE9 de S.
Pierre,' who is greatly beloved, and of whom many beautiful stories
are told.
"I think of you at different times in the day, and try to picture
you, sometimes in the study, sometimes reading to Aunt Augustus,
sometimes late in the evening sitting on the large sofa, with all
your manuscripts on the table, and good Lea coming in to put up the
curtains. When I think of all the late family troubles, I try to
remember that God never allows anything to happen, however painful,
unless it is for our good. It depends on ourselves to make use of
every trial, so I trust that you may be able to forgive and
forget--the last is the more difficult.
" ... You expect too much good from---- Do not expect too much. We
must leave those to flutter like sparrows who cannot soar like
eagles. It is S. Ambrose who says so."
[Illustration: ARS.[242]]
My sister next wrote from Avignon:--
"_Dec. 11, 1864._--Not further than Avignon! I was ill at Lyons and
could not go on. There I had a most agreeable visitor, a M. Gabet,
very zealous in the \x9Cuvres de la Propagation de la Foi. He spent
two evenings with us, and told us much that was very interesting.
He told me that he had lately received a donation from Dahomey,
and he corresponds with missionaries in every part of the world.
Auntie went up to the convent to fetch two friends of mine who were
staying there, and I have been given a small medal of the Cur\xE9
d'Ars blessed by himself."
My sister did not reach Rome till the second week in January.
"_Jan. 16, 1865._--We arrived late on Tuesday night, coming
_voiturier_ from Leghorn, two long days, and very fatiguing. When
we arrived at Leghorn a violent storm was raging, and we were
obliged to give up going by sea, only sending Leonardo with the
luggage. Auntie, Victoire, Cl\xE9mence, and I travelled in a tolerable
carriage. There are so few travellers that way, that at Orbetello,
where we slept, the excitement was intense, the women wishing to
examine dress and coiffure, to know the _ultima moda_. The carriage
was quite mobbed, the _voiturier_ having declared it was a _gran
signora_. 'La vogliamo vedere,' the people cried out, and pushed
and struggled. It seemed so strange to return to a country where so
little could create such an excitement. I was carried upstairs, so
terribly tired with the incessant shaking. We slept also at Civita
Vecchia, whence Victoire and Cl\xE9mence went on to Rome by an early
train, Auntie and I following late. It was quite dark as we drove
up to the Parisani, and the streets seemed perfectly silent. The
porter came out saying 'Ben tornata,' and then his wife, with a
scarlet handkerchief over her head, exclaiming 'Ben tornata' also,
and we came upstairs without being heard by any one else. I rushed
through the rooms, throwing open one door after another. In the
little sitting-room Cl\xE9mence and Victoire were sitting together, a
look of misery on both faces. When I reached my own room I fell
upon a chair: I could scarcely breathe. I heard Victoire cry
out,'Mon Dieu! courage; c'est la volont\xE9 de Dieu: l'heure de votre
m\xE8re a sonn\xE9, l'heure aussi du mari de Cl\xE9mence a sonn\xE9.' She
poured something down my throat and rubbed my hands, and brought me
round by degrees. Cl\xE9mence was sobbing violently for the old
husband, whose death she had learnt on her arrival; Auntie was
standing looking from one to the other, as if she did not realise
how terrible was that evening: she had hoped that the joy of seeing
Rome again would make me forget what was sad. Poor Victoire had
made one great effort, and then she could scarcely speak for hours.
I never saw such devotion to the memory of a relation or friend as
her devotion to the memory of dear Mama; and then there was so much
to remind her also of the good F\xE9lix, gone to his rest since our
Roman home was broken up. I had dreaded this arrival for months,
and had been glad to put it off from week to week, till I could put
it off no longer. Now it is a pleasure to Victoire to unpack Mama's
things and bring them to me, one after another, her eyes often
filled with tears, and then she says, trying to compose herself,
'Que la volont\xE9 de Dieu soit faite.' And yet I cannot wish dear
Mama back again. What I had lived for was that deathbed--that it
should have God's blessing and that her soul should be saved. I
used to think _how_ glorified that soul might be, after so much
suffering, if only at death resigned. But now I am going back to
past thoughts, instead of telling my Augustus about the present.
"The old beggar-woman at San Claudio rushed towards me. 'L'ho
saputo,' she said,'quella benedetta anima!' and she cried also, and
then the sacristan of San Claudio, and he told me how Mama had died
on one of the great days of San Claudio--the feast of Notre Dame de
Bon Conseil--our Lady's altar under that title being the altar
where Mama had knelt for so many years: all have been struck by
this."
"_Feb. 9._--It is, as you say, a gathering up of the fragments that
remain. I am beginning to feel the sense of loneliness in these
desolate rooms less, though I still feel it very much. I do not
wish that anything should be different from what God has willed it
I used to tell Mama when we were so poor how strange it was that I
never _felt_ poor. She used to say that was the great difference
between herself and me, that she felt poor and I did not; why not
she could never understand. I feel quite certain that Mama would
never have liked Rome again; probably she never would have returned
here, and perhaps it was necessary that through suffering she
should be prepared for death by being detached from the things of
life.
"Most of the Romans have called, some paying long visits--Duchess
Sora, Princess Viano, Prince Doria, Dukes Fiano and Sora. In fact,
a day never passes without two or three visitors. I have made three
devoted friends--the Princess Galitzin; the Padre Pastacaldi, a
venerable ecclesiastic of Pisa, who is anxious to further my views
in establishing a particular association for raising funds for the
Church; and lastly, Don Giovanni Merlini, the friend of 'the
Venerable'[243] for thirty years, who has already paid me four
visits. These visits are quite delightful: I always feel I am in
the presence of a saint. His language is most beautiful. Yesterday
he gave me his blessing in the most solemn, earnest manner, laying
his hand on my head. I have heard from him so much of the Venerable
del Bufalo.... A great storm has swept over the nuns of the
Precious Blood: it nearly swept them out of England, but instead of
that they are to move to the Italian Church of S. Pietro in
Bloomsbury. I have had a great deal of correspondence about them."
"_March 4._--The friend of the Venerable[244] came to-day, and we
planned together work for the nuns in London,--a great work I have
wished to see established since early in 1858. Again he gave me his
solemn blessing. He spoke of poverty--voluntary poverty, but said
that all were not called to that '_spogliamento_.' Then I told him
that I had also been poor, and he looked around at the decorations
of the room and said simply 'Iddio ci ha rimediato.' His is
certainly a beautiful face from its expression; there is so much
light about it, and such simplicity and humility. Pierina[245]
certainly ought to be saint-like, since she has been trained to a
religious life by such a man."
"_March 9._--During my mother's illness I often thought of the
80,000 who die daily, and who have to appear before the
judgment-seat and who are found wanting. Sometimes, when I am
alone, I think how in every moment which I am idling away a soul
has been judged, and perhaps a prayer could have saved that soul.
Oh! in your watchings beside the sick-bed, ask forgiveness for the
souls that are then passing away from the earth, that they may be
counted amongst the blessed for eternity.... It is strange what
mental agony one can live through. A sort of supernatural strength
is given when it is required, and is it not another proof of the
watchful tenderness of our Blessed Lord? It is so true, that when a
soul is ready for the change, death is only an entering on the
perfected life.... I believe that God has still blessings left for
my brother: His blessings can never be exhausted."
"_May 3._--How you will envy me when you hear that the saint of
Acuto, the Rev. Mother-General of the Precious Blood, is coming to
Rome at the end of the week and is coming to see me. The
Father-General came to give me this welcome news, when I was
wondering and planning how I could get to Acuto with my weak back.
I have begged for two visits at least.... I have constant letters
from the Rev. Mother of the Precious Blood in London about the new
work of her nuns. I have been thinking of writing the life of the
Venerable del Bufalo. Don Giovanni Merlini, the Father-General,
promises help and materials, and the Italian life is very poor. The
Taigi and Bufalo lives would come out so well together, as they
lived at the same time, and died, I believe, in the same year,
though quite independent of each other; but I have not the gift of
writing--_there_ is the difficulty.
"On the 25th there was an anniversary High Mass and a very
beautiful choir for dearest Mama, Monseigneur Level attending, and
many friends. Mrs. Monteith sat next to me, and felt it so much,
she cried nearly the whole time. It is so beautiful this love for
the dead in the Catholic Church.
"I have had a letter from Mrs. Wagner, who says just that which
struck me in one of Father Galway's sermons, when he spoke of
parents' sorrow at the loss of their children, that they are to
look upon them as gifts _lent_ for a time. She says, 'We do not
repine, but render back with thankfulness the gift lent us for a
season.'
"To-day I had a beautiful simple note from the Father-General of
the Precious Blood. I wrote to thank him for several things he had
sent me. His answer was, 'Do not thank me; it suffices me that you
love our Lord Jesus Christ. I bless you from my heart. Pray for me
miserable.' I thought how my Augustus would have liked this note."
My sister during the whole of this winter very seldom left the house,
and never went into society. Political differences, however, rendered
Roman society at this time less pleasant than before. Esmeralda
wrote--"The usual conversation goes on, but all parties are divided and
contradictory: the Pope (Pius IX.) alone is perfectly calm, and trusts
in Providence whilst the world is raging and storming and plotting." If
Esmeralda went out, it was generally to the Villa Ludovisi, where the
Duke and Duchess Sora were living in a sort of honourable banishment,
the Duke's parents, the Prince and Princess Piombino, having been exiled
to Tuscany. The Duchess Sora used to talk to my sister of the
patriarchal life in her great "villa," where there were so many small
farmhouses and cottages within the grounds, that it gave her occupation
enough to visit their inmates and learn their characters. She said that
she brought up her children amongst the people within the walls of the
villa, that they might thus early learn to know thoroughly those who
would depend on them afterwards. She let them call one man after another
to work in their little gardens, that they might thus make individual
acquaintance with each. On Good Friday, when the chaplain called in all
the work-people to prayer, there were seventy in the chapel, including
the Duke and herself, and all, as it were, one great family.[246]
One of the people who most rejoiced over Esmeralda's return to Rome was
Giacinta Facchini, commonly known as "the Saint of St. Peter's." This
extraordinary woman lived for forty years in St. Peter's without ever
leaving it, devoting herself to incessant prayer and sleeping in a cell
in one of the pillars. When people had any particular object in view,
they used to go down to St. Peter's and ask her to pray for it.
Esmeralda used constantly, during her prosperity, to go to visit her in
St. Peter's, and she would remain with her for hours. At length one day
the confessor of the saint came to her and said that now, though she had
lived in St. Peter's for forty years, she would be showing a far more
real devotion to God and a more lowly spirit if she were to break
through the life which was beginning to make her celebrated, and return
to the humble service of God in the world. Giacinta Facchini obeyed, and
after that she often used to go to see my sister at the Palazzo
Parisani. But she still spent the greater part of her time in St.
Peter's, where I have often seen her quaint figure, in a half nun's
dress, bowed in prayer before one of the altars, or perfectly prostrate
on the pavement in silent adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
Here are a few extracts from Esmeralda's private meditations at this
time:--
"Let me offer myself continually with all I have for the greater
glory of God, remembering the words of St. Ignatius, that 'having
received everything from God, we ought to be ever ready to render
back all that He has given us.' The propensity most opposed to the
reign of Jesus in our souls is the want of resolution in all
matters connected with spiritual advancement. Kneeling at the foot
of the cross, let me make war against all my evil propensities;
that I may be purified and strengthened in God's love, let me seek
to detach myself from everything, exterior and interior, that
separates me from God.'
"Self-love must be overcome by mortification of self, by asking of
God to give us His love, to fill us with His love, for if the love
of God _fills_ our hearts, self-love must be rooted out. Let me ask
of our Lord that I may have the same resolution in spiritual
matters, and in the carrying out and _on_ of a spiritual life,
which I have where a temporal matter is concerned. Oh! with what
zeal and earnestness can I pursue a temporal object, with the same
zeal and earnestness may I carry out my resolutions for a spiritual
life."
"_Jan. 14, 1865._--Unless we can build up a solitude in our hearts,
completely detaching ourselves from the love of everything in this
world, we can never hope to attain to that spiritual joy which is a
preparation for the life of Jesus in our souls, a preparation for
the resurrection to eternal life."
"_March 4._--Where there is such a strong attachment to this life,
my will cannot be perfectly united to the Divine. Oh! _how_ many
steps there are in the ladder of a spiritual life! Detachment from
this life must gradually lead to the union of my will with the
Divine and to the entire _indw\xE8lling_ of the love of Jesus in my
soul."
"_March 17._--By the light of the wounds of Jesus Christ, may I
search the innermost folds of my heart, and cast out all that is
contrary to charity and humility. 'We must study in the book of
Charity more than in any other: that book teaches us all things;'
these are the words of S. Dominic."
"_March 30._--May filial love of God take the place of servile fear
in our hearts; then will our Lord draw nigh to us and replenish us
with His grace. When filial love has closed the door against all
earthly thoughts, then shall we return into that inward solitude in
which our Lord loves that we should dwell, to seek Him and commune
with Him."
"_April 1._--I ask for the grace of a pure love of God. The more we
can leave off thinking of ourselves, the nearer we shall attain to
that union with our Lord which the saints speak of--loving Him only
and entirely, because He first loved us. In proportion as our
confidence in God increases, and we can lay aside all confidence in
ourselves, we shall attain purity of intention in all our thoughts,
words, and actions. Let us seek that purity of intention which can
only follow confidence in God, and can only exist in those souls
which unite themselves entirely to God."
"_April 22._--Day by day I leave at the foot of the cross something
more of myself. I cannot live again the time that is no longer
mine. We are constantly journeying on to our last end, so let us
strive in our spiritual life truly to lay at the foot of the cross
something of that which binds our wills to ourselves and to
creatures, and thus free our will from all that hinders its perfect
union with the will of our Lord Jesus Christ."
I have been making a long digression from my personal story, but
Esmeralda, in her gentle patience and ardent search after all things
high and holy, had become so greatly endeared to us in the last few
years, that her life was almost ours. And indeed all those things are
ever a part of life which are a constant part of thoughts and
conversation.
* * * * *
In the summer of 1864 we had a delightful visit at Holmhurst from Dean
Alford and his family. He read Tennyson's "Guinevere" aloud to us in
the garden, and was at his very best, full of anecdote and fun. I
remember his description of a trial for murder which resulted in a
verdict of manslaughter owing to the very effective evidence of a
Somersetshire peasant. "He'd a stick and he'd a stick, and he hit he and
he hit he, and if he'd ha hit he when he hit he, he'd ha killed he and
not he he."
In the autumn, while I was staying with Mr. Stephen Lawley at Escrick
near York, I had much conversation with his charming old mother, Lady
Wenlock.[247] Here are some notes of what she told me:--
"I once saw Lord Nelson. It was when I was quite a little child.
The maids took me to church at St. George's, and there I saw the
wonderful little man, covered with orders and with one arm. They
told me it was Lord Nelson, and I knew it was, for his figure and
prints were in all the shop-windows.
"I remember well the battle of Trafalgar. It was the _Euryalus_,
Captain Blackwood, that brought the news, and, oh dear! the
sensation. I was seven years old then, but I knew the names of all
the ships and captains. My sister was then the mistress of my
father's house, and I was sent for down to her. She was not up,
and the newspaper was lying on the bed. 'Oh, my dear,' she said,
'my father has sent me up the newspaper, and we have taken twenty
ships of the line, but--Nelson is dead!' Child as I was, I burst
into tears; one had been taught to think that nothing could go on
without him.
"I cannot quite forgive Dean Trench his book.[248] Nelson was the
one hero of his time, and it was a pity to bring up the bad vulgar
side again and not to let it sleep.... The Lady Carysfort the book
mentions was my aunt. My cousins were quite devoted to Mrs. Trench,
and have often told me how enchanted they felt when she came back
to England."
* * *
"King George III. used to be very fond of driving about in
Berkshire with the Queen and visiting the families in the
neighbourhood of Windsor--those whom they used to honour with their
notice. He often came to my grandfather,[249] who was gouty with
the gout of that day, which prevented people from rising, so that
he was not able to get up when the King came in. The King and Queen
always came quite simply in a carriage and four with the prickers
riding before in crimson liveries. There was a particular point in
the avenue at which the prickers were visible from the windows, and
when they were seen, my grandfather used to ring the bell and ask
if there was a round of beef in the house. He was generally
answered in the affirmative, and then it was all right, for none of
the royal party took luncheon, only the Queen used to have a
particular kind of chocolate brought to her: my father generally
offered it on a tray, after they had been about half-an-hour in the
house. They used to take an interest in everything, and if any one
ventured to rehang their pictures, they would say, 'Mr. So-and-so,
why have you rehung your pictures?' I remember the King one day
asking my grandfather if he had read the memoirs which every one
was talking about at that time. They were those of the Duc de St.
Simon, La Grande Mademoiselle, &c., and my father said no, he had
not seen them. The King came again within the fortnight, and my
grandfather did not see him coming down the avenue, nor did he know
the King was in the house, till there was a kind of fumbling
outside the door, and the King, who would not let any one come to
help him, opened the door, with a great pile of volumes reaching
from his waist to his chin, saying, 'Here, Mr. Grenville, I have
brought you the books we were talking about.' But as the King came
through the door, the books slipped and fell all about on the
floor: my grandfather could not move, and the King began to pick
them up, till some one came to help him and put them on the table
for him.
"The scene on the terrace at Windsor on Sundays was the prettiest
thing. It was considered proper that every one in the neighbourhood
who could should go; those who were in a position of life to be
presented at court stood in the foremost rank. The presence of the
King was announced by the coming of 'Lavender,' a kind of
policeman-guard, who used to clear the way and always preceded the
royal family; he was the only kind of guard they had. The Queen
wore evening dress, a sort of cap with a string of diamonds, and a
loose flowing kind of gown; there was no such thing then as
demi-toilette. After her came the princesses, or any of the princes
who happened to have come down from London, or, on fine days, some
of the Cabinet Ministers. The royal family stopped perpetually and
talked to every one. I remember the King coming up to me when I was
a very little girl, and dreadfully frightened I was. 'Well, now,'
said the King, 'and here is _this_ little girl. Come, my dear, take
off your bonnet,' he said (for I wore a poke), and then he added,
'I wanted to see if you were like your mother, my dear.'
"It was Miss Burney who gave the impression of Queen Charlotte as
being so formidable. Nothing could be more false; she was the
kindest person that ever lived, and so simple and unostentatious.
The fact was that Miss Burney had been spoilt by having been made a
sort of queen in Dr. Johnson's court. The day 'Evelina' came out
Dr. Johnson said to her, 'Miss Burney, _die_ to-night,' meaning
that she had reached the highest point of fame which it was
possible to attain. Queen Charlotte made her one of her readers,
for she was passionately fond of being read to while she worked.
But Miss Burney was one of those people afflicted with _mauvaise
honte_. She could not read a bit, and the Queen could not hear a
word she said. 'Mama the Queen,' said the Duchess of Gloucester to
me, 'never could bear Miss Burney, poor thing!' So the Queen
invented some other place in her extreme kindness to Miss Burney,
to prevent having to send her away, and in that place Miss Burney
was obliged to stand.
"An instance of Queen Charlotte's extreme kindness was shown when
she made Lady Elizabeth Montagu one of her ladies-in-waiting, out
of her great love to Lady Cornwallis. When Lady Elizabeth arrived
at court, the Queen sent for her and said, 'My dear, you have no
mother here, so I must beg that you will consider me as your
mother, and if you have any trouble or difficulty, that you will
come to me at once.' When Lady Elizabeth went to her room, she
found the bed covered with new things--new dresses, a quantity of
black velvet to make the trains which were worn then, and a great
many ornaments. 'My dear,' said the Queen, 'you will want these
things, and it will be a year before your salary is due; I thought
it might not be convenient to you to buy them just now, so you must
accept them from me.'
"Another day, when Lady Elizabeth had been ill in the evening and
unable to go with the Queen to a concert, early in the morning she
heard a knock at her door while she was in bed, and the Queen came
in in her dressing-gown, with what we called a combing-cloth (which
they used because of the powder) over her shoulders, and all her
hair down. 'May I come in, Lady Elizabeth?' she said. 'I heard you
were ill, and there is nothing stirring to-day, so I came to beg
that you will not think of getting up, and that you will send for
everything you can wish for. Pray think of everything that it is
right for you to have.'"
* * * * *
"Mrs. Fry came to Escrick once, and was pleased to see our gardens
and the few little things we had to show her. 'Friend Caroline, I
like thy pig-styes,' she said."
During this and the following summer I was often with my sister in
London, and saw much of her friends, persons who have been entirely lost
to me, never seen again, since the link which I had to them in her has
been broken. Thus at Esmeralda's house I often saw the gentle sisters of
the Precious Blood and their sweet-looking Mother, Pierina Roleston. She
was utterly ignorant of worldly matters, and entirely governed by her
priests, but her own character was of a simplicity much like that of the
Cur\xE9 d'Ars. She once described to me Maria de Matthias, and the story of
the foundation of her Order.
"Oh, I wish you could see the Mother-General: she is so simple,
such a primitive person. When she wants anything, she just goes
away and talks to our Blessed Lord, and He gives it to her.
Sometimes the nuns come and say to her, 'What can we do, Mother? we
have no flour, we cannot bake;' and she answers, 'Why should you be
troubled? Are not the granaries of our Master always full? We will
knock at them, and He will give us something.'
"One day there was nothing at all left at Acuto: there was no
bread, and there was no money to buy any. But Mother-General had
just that simple faith that she was not at all troubled by it, and
she even brought in five additional persons, five workmen who were
to make some repairs which were necessary for the convent. When
they came, she made the nuns come into the chapel, and she said,
'Now, my children, you know that we have nothing left, and we must
pray to our Master that He will send us something;' and she
herself, going up to the altar, began to talk to Our Blessed Lord
and to tell Him all her needs. 'Dear Lord,' she said, 'we have
nothing to eat, and I am just come to tell you all about it, and to
ask you to send us something; and I am in debt too, dear Lord. I
owe twenty-five scudi for your work; will you send it to me?' and
so she continued to talk to Our Blessed Lord, just telling Him all
she wanted.
"At that moment there was a knock at the door, and a young man put
a paper into the portress's hand, only saying these words--'Pray
for the benefactor.' The portress brought the paper to the
Mother-General in the chapel, and she opened it and said,'My
children, give thanks; the Master has sent us what we asked for.'
It was the twenty-five scudi. Mother-General was not surprised. She
_knew_ that our Blessed Lord heard her, and she felt sure He would
answer her. Soon after the convent bell rang for the dinner-hour.
The nuns were coming downstairs, but there was nothing for them to
eat. The Mother-General said, however, that the Master would send
them something, and indeed, as they reached the foot of the stairs,
the door-bell rang, and a large basket of food was left at the
door, sent by some ladies in the neighbourhood. 'See how our Lord
has sent dinner to us,' said the Mother-General.
"The Mother-General is an educated person, really indeed quite
learned, considering that in the time of her youth it was not
thought well to teach girls much, for fear they should learn
anything that is evil.
"When the Mother-General was a young person, as Maria de Matthias
in Vallecorso, she was very worldly and gay. But she heard 'the
Venerable' (Gaspare del Bufalo) preach in Vallecorso, and, as he
preached, his eye fixed upon her, he seemed to pierce her to the
very soul. When she went home, she cut off all her hair except the
curls in front, and turned her gown inside out, and wore her oldest
bonnet. She thought to please our Lord in this way, and she
remained for seven years shut up in her father's house, but all
that time she was not satisfied, and at last she went to 'the
Venerable' and asked him what she was to do, for she wished to do
something for our Blessed Lord. And the Venerable said to her, 'You
must go to Acuto, and there you will be told what you must do.' She
had never heard of Acuto, but she went to a friend of hers, also
named Maria, and inquired where Acuto was, for she was ordered to
go there. The friend said she would go with her, and ordered out
her horse, but the horse was a wild horse,[250] and she did not
know how to ride it. Maria de Matthias, however, went up to the
horse and patted it, saying, 'You must not be wild, you must become
calm, because it is necessary that we should go to Acuto: you and I
have to go in obedience, and I cannot walk, for it is twelve
hours' journey.' When the Mother had thus spoken to the horse, it
became quite mild, and, hanging down its head, went quite gently,
step by step, and the Mother rode upon it. When they had gone
half-way, she wished that the other Maria should ride, and the
Mother got off, and Maria climbed upon a wall to mount the horse,
but with her the horse would not move an inch, and then Maria felt
it was not our Lord's will that she should mount the horse, and the
Mother continued to ride to Acuto. When they arrived, and the
Mother got off the horse, it became again immediately quite wild,
and when Maria attempted to touch it, it was in such a fury that it
kicked and stamped till the fire came out of the ground.
"The priest of Acuto was waiting to receive the Mother, and she
remained there teaching a school. She believed at first that this
only was her mission, but in a short time the children began to
call her 'Mother,' and to ask her to give them a habit. The first
nun who received the habit was a little child of eight years old,
who is now Mother Caroline, Superior of the Convent at Civita
Vecchia.
"The Mother-General often preaches, and she preaches so powerfully
that even the priests crowd to hear her. When the people see her
come forward to the edge of the altar-steps and begin to speak,
they say 'Hark! the great Mother is going to talk to us,' and there
is fixed silence and attention. She generally begins by addressing
them as 'Brothers and Sisters,' and then she teaches them.
"The Mother-General cannot write. When she is obliged to write a
letter, she kneels down and kisses the feet of the Crucifix and
asks Our Lord to help her, and letters of hers which she has
written in this way, in the most beautiful hand, are preserved.
When there are no flowers for the altar she says, 'Our Master's
flowers are always blooming; He will send us some;' and that day
flowers come.
"After her death Sister Caterina appeared three times to Sister
Filomena, and begged her to tell the Mother not to be troubled, for
that the Sisters would suffer yet for four months longer, and then
that they would have all that they needed. That day four months
Lady Londonderry gave us a house.
"'The Venerable' left a prophecy that an English subject should
come to join his Order in Italy, and then go back to found the
female Order in England. When I took the veil, it was remembered
that the Venerable had said this.
"Don Giovanni Merlini used to accompany 'the Venerable' on his
missions. 'The Venerable' used to say, 'Take care of Don Giovanni,
for he is a saint.' Don Giovanni is still living at the little
church of the Crociferi near the Fountain of Trevi."
At this time my sister went frequently to see and consult Dr. Grant, the
Bishop of Southwark. She believed him to be quite a saint, and fancied
that he had the gift of healing, and she delighted to work for others
under his direction. But Esmeralda was always willing to believe in or
to find out saints of the nineteenth century. It was by Dr. Grant's
advice, I believe, that she went to visit a nun of saintly attributes
who lived near him, the S\x9Cur Marie Anne. Of this visit she wrote:
"S\x9Cur Marie Anne was quite full of canonizations and of all that was
going on about the Venerable Labre, because she said that, when she was
a child, she had once seen him as a venerable pilgrim, going through a
village, when the boys stoned him. She had been so struck, so _saisie_
by his appearance, that she went up to him and said, 'Forgive me, but I
hope that you will not refuse to tell your name.'--'Labre,' he said, and
the name Labre had stuck by her to that day. She implored me to get up a
special veneration for the Venerable Labre, but I said that I really
could not, for he was _too_ dirty."
In 1863, under the direction of her priests, and with the assistance of
many Catholic friends, Esmeralda had published a "Manual of the Dolours
of Our Lady," which she caused to be translated into almost every
language of Europe and to be disseminated among all its nations; this
she did through the medium of foreign converts. In her "retreats" and in
her religious life Esmeralda had for some years been brought nearer to
many of her former friends with the same interests, but especially to
Lady Lothian, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, and to a Miss Bradley, a recent
pervert to the Church of Rome. By them she had been induced to join the
society of "Les Enfants de Marie;" a society of persons united together
by special acts of devotion to the Virgin, and works of charity
conducted in her honour. In sorrow, faithfully borne, the beauty and
power of holiness had become hourly more apparent to Esmeralda. But she
could never join in the exaggeration which led many of these ladies to
invest the Virgin with all the attributes of our Lord Himself, as well
as with the perfection of human sympathies. I remember as rather
touching that when the Dowager Lady Lothian was writing to Esmeralda
about her son as being so "fearfully Protestant," she said, "It is very
trying to know that one cannot share one's thoughts with any one. I try
to make our dear Mother more my companion, but I am tempted sometimes to
remember how Our Lady, in all her sorrows, never can have had that of
anxiety about her son's _soul_. I know that she has it in and for us,
her adopted children, but she never can have felt it about Our Lord."
From the devotion which Esmeralda felt to the Blessed Virgin followed
her especial interest in the Order of the Servites, who had lately been
established in London, and who always wore black in sympathy with the
sorrows of Mary. The very name had an interest for Esmeralda, derived as
it was from the special love shown to the Madonna by seven noble
Florentines, the founders of the Order, which induced the children to
point at them in the streets, saying, "Guardati i servi di Maria." For
the Servites Esmeralda never ceased to obtain contributions.
Another confraternity in which my sister had entered herself as an
associate, together with Lady Lothian and most of her friends, was that
of "The Holy Hour"--first instituted by the beatified nun, Margaret Mary
Alacoque of Paray le Monial, a convent near Monceaux les Mines,[251] for
which her admirers, and my sister amongst them, had worked a splendid
carpet, to cover the space in front of her altar. The rules of this
society set forth that it "is established as a special manner of sharing
the agony of our Divine Lord, and of uniting in associated prayer for
reparation of insults offered Him by sin. The associates of this
devotion thus form a band of faithful disciples, who in spirit accompany
our Saviour every Thursday night to the scene of His agony, and share
more particularly that watch which Our Blessed Lady and the Apostles
kept on the eve of the Passion. With this end in view, the associates
spend one hour of Thursday evening in mental or vocal prayer upon the
Agony in the Garden, or other mysteries of the Passion." Thus every
Thursday night my sister repeated:--
"O Lord Jesus Christ, kneeling before Thee I unite myself to Thy
Sacred Heart and offer myself again to Thy service. In this hour
when Thou wert about to be betrayed into the hands of sinners, I, a
poor sinner, dare to come before Thee and say, 'Yes, Lord, I too
many times have betrayed and denied Thee, but Thou, who knowest all
things, knowest that I desire to love Thee, that I desire to
comfort Thee insulted by sin, that I desire to watch with Thee one
hour, and to cry before Thy throne, 'O Lord, remember me when Thou
comest into thy kingdom!' And therefore, with my whole heart, I now
promise before thee--
"When the mysteries of Thy life and Passion are denied: the more
firmly will I believe in them and defend them with my life.
"When the spirit of unbelief, coming in like a flood, seeks to
quench our hope: I will hope in Thee and take refuge in Thy Sacred
Heart.
"When blinded men obstinately shut their hearts to Thy love: I will
love Thee who hast shown me an everlasting love.
"When the Majesty and power of Thy Divinity are denied: I will say
to Thee--day by day--'My Lord and my God!'
"When Thy law is broken and Thy sacraments profaned: I will keep
Thy words in my heart and draw near to thy holy altar with joy.
"When all men forsake Thee and flee from Thy ways: I will follow
Thee, my Jesus, up the way of sorrow, striving to bear Thy cross.
"When the evil one, like a roaring lion, shall seek everywhere the
souls of men: I will raise Thy standard against them and draw them
to Thy Sacred Heart.
"When the Cross shall be despised for the love of pleasure and the
praise of men: I will renew my baptismal vows, and again renounce
the devil, the world, and the flesh.
"When men speak lightly of Thy Blessed Mother and mock at the power
of Thy Church: I will renew my love to the Mother of God, hailing
her as 'Our life, our sweetness, and our hope,' and will again give
thanks for the Church that is founded upon the rock."
At my sister's house, I now, at least on one occasion, met each of my
brothers, but we never made the slightest degree of real acquaintance;
indeed, I doubt if I should have recognised either of them if I had met
him in the street. When my eldest brother, Francis, came of age, he had
inherited the old Shipley property of Gresford in Flintshire, quantities
of old family plate, &c., and a clear \xA33000 a year. He was handsome and
clever, a good linguist and a tolerable artist. But he had a love of
gambling, which was his ruin, and before he was seven-and-twenty
(October 1857) he was in the Queen's Bench, without a penny in the
world, with Gresford sold--Hurstmonceaux sold--his library, pictures,
and plate sold, and \xA353,000 of debts. After Francis was released in
1860, he went to join Garibaldi in his Italian campaign, and being a
brave soldier, and, with all his faults, devoted to military adventure
and impervious to hardships, he was soon appointed by the Dictator as
his aide-de-camp. He fought bravely in the siege of Capua. His especial
duty, however, was to watch and follow the extraordinary Contessa della
Torre, who rode with the troops, and by her example incited the Italians
to prodigies of valour. Of this lady Francis said--
"The Contessa della Torre was exceedingly handsome. She wore a hat
and plume, trousers, boots, and a long jacket. She was foolhardy
brave. When a shell exploded by her, instead of falling on the
ground like the soldiers, she would stand looking at it, and making
a cigarette all the time. The hospital was a building surrounding a
large courtyard, and in the centre of the court was a table where
the amputations took place. By the side of the surgeon who operated
stood the Contessa della Torre, who held the arms and legs while
they were being cut off, and when they were severed, chucked them
away to join others on a heap close by. There were so many, that
she had a heap of arms on one side of her and a heap of legs on the
other. The soldiers, animated by her example, often sang the
Garibaldian hymn while their limbs were being taken off, though
they fainted away afterwards.
"When the war was over, the Contessa della Torre retired to Milan.
Her first husband, the Count della Torre, she soon abandoned; her
second husband, Signor Martino, a rich banker, soon abandoned
_her_. Lately she has founded a Society for the Conversion of the
Negroes of Central Africa, of which she appointed herself
patroness, secretary, and treasurer; and, obtaining an English
Clergy List, wrote in all directions for subscriptions. Of course
many clergy took no notice of the appeal, but a certain proportion
responded and sent donations, which it is needless to say were
_not_ applied to Central Africa."
After the siege of Capua, Francis was very ill with a violent fever at
Naples, and then remained there for a long time because he was too poor
to go away. It was during his stay at Naples that he formed his
friendship with the K.'s, about which my sister has left some curious
notes.
"When Francis first went to Naples, he had his pay, was well to do,
and stayed at the Hotel Victoria. Amongst the people who were
staying in the house and whom he regularly met at the
_table-d'h\xF4te_, were an old Mr. K. and his daughter. Old Mr. K. was
a very handsome old gentleman and exceedingly pleasant and
agreeable; Miss K. was also handsome, and of very pleasing manners:
both were apparently exceedingly well off. After some time, the
K.'s went to Rome, where they passed some time very pleasantly.
When they returned, the siege of Capua was taking place, and it was
a source of great surprise to the Garibaldian officers to see the
father and daughter constantly walking about arm in arm with the
most perfect _sang-froid_ in the very teeth of the firing, shells
bursting all around them. The Garibaldians remonstrated in vain:
the K.'s remained unhurt in the heat of every battlefield, and
appeared to bear charmed lives.
"Some time after, it transpired that the K.'s had no money to pay
their bills at the Victoria. They were much respected there, having
been there often before, but they could not be allowed to remain
without payment, so the landlord told them they must leave. They
went to another hotel, where the same thing happened. Then they
went to a lodging.
"One day Francis met them coming down under the arch in the Chiaja.
He turned round and went with them to the Villa Reale. As they
went, Miss K. spoke of the great distress which was then prevalent
in Naples, and said that a _gentleman_ had just begged of them in
the street, and that they had nothing to give him. 'Before I would
be reduced to that,' she said, 'I would drown myself.'--'Yes, and I
too would drown myself,' said Mr. K.; but what they said did not
strike Francis till afterwards. When they reached the Villa Reale,
they walked up and down together under the avenue. Miss K. was more
than usually lively and agreeable, and they did not separate till
nightfall, when the gates of the Villa were going to be shut.
"At two o'clock the next morning, Francis was awakened by the most
dreadful and vivid dream. He dreamt that he stood on the little
promontory in the Villa Reale, and that he saw two corpses bobbing
up and down a short distance off. The dream so took possession of
him, that he jumped up, dressed himself, and rushed down to the
Villa, but the gates were shut when he got there, and he had to
wait till they were opened at four o'clock in the morning. He then
ran down the avenue to the promontory, and thence, exactly as he
had seen in his dream, he saw two corpses bobbing up and down on
the waves a short distance off. He called to some fishermen, who
waded in and brought them to land, and he then at once recognised
Mr. and Miss K. They must have concealed themselves in the Villa
till the gates were closed, and must then have deliberately climbed
over the railing of the promontory, and then tied each other's
ankles and wrists, and, after filling their pockets with heavy
stones, leapt off into the sea.
"Capua they had vainly hoped would destroy them.
"Some time after Francis found that Mr. K. had once been
exceedingly rich, but had been ruined: that his wife, who had a
large settlement, had then left him, making him a handsome
allowance. A few days before the catastrophe this allowance had
been suddenly withdrawn, and Mr. K. with the daughter, who devoted
herself to him, preferred death to beggary."
It may seem odd that I have never mentioned my second brother, William,
in these memoirs, but the fact is, that after he grew up, I never saw
him for more than a few minutes. It is one of the things I regret most
in life that I never made acquaintance with William. I believe now that
he was misrepresented to us and that he had many good qualities; and I
often feel, had he lived till I had the means of doing so, how glad I
should have been to have helped him, and how fond I might have become of
him. At Eton he was an excessively good-looking boy, very clever, very
mischievous, and intensely popular with his companions. He never had any
fortune, so that it was most foolish of his guardian (Uncle Julius) to
spend \xA32000 which had been bequeathed to him by "the Bath aunts," in
buying him a commission in the Blues. I only once saw him whilst he was
in the army, and only remember him as a great dandy, but I must say
that he had the excuse that everything he wore became him. After he left
the army he was buffeted about from pillar to post, and lived no one
knows where or how. Our cousin Lord Ravensworth was very kind to him,
and so was old Lady Paul; but to Hurstmonceaux or Holmhurst he was never
invited, and he would never have been allowed to come. I have often
thought since how very odd it was that when he died, neither my mother
nor I wore the slightest mourning for him; but he was so entirely
outside our life and thoughts, that somehow it would never have occurred
to us. He had, however, none of the cold self-contained manner which
characterised Francis, but was warm-hearted, cordial, affectionate, and
could be most entertaining. After his mother's great misfortunes he went
to Spain on some temporary appointment, and at Barcelona nearly died of
a fever, through which he was nursed by a lady, who had taken an
extraordinary fancy to him; but on his return, when it was feared he
would marry her, he took every one by surprise in espousing the very
pretty portionless daughter of a physician at Clifton.
During the year 1864 I constantly saw my Lefevre cousins and found an
increasing friendship for them. Sir John always showed me the greatest
kindness, being full of interest in all my concerns. I consulted him on
many subjects, feeling that he was the only person I had ever known,
except my mother, willing to take the trouble of _thinking_ how to give
the best advice and perfectly disinterested in giving it: consequently I
always took _his_ advice and his only. His knowledge was extraordinary,
and was only equalled by his humility and self-forgetfulness. Many were
the interesting reminiscences of other days which he delighted to call
up--many the remarkable parallels he drew between present events and
those he remembered--many the charming stories he told me. One of these,
which has always struck me as very grand and dramatic, I have so often
repeated that I will make a note of it here:--
"Within the memory of those still living there resided in Madrid a
family called Benalta. It consisted of Colonel Benalta, a man of
choleric and sharp disposition; of his wife, Madame Benalta; of his
young daughter; of his little son Carlos, a boy ten years old; and
of the mother of Madame Benalta, who was a woman of large property
and of considerable importance in the society at Madrid. On the
whole, they were quoted as an example of a happy and harmonious
family. It is true that there were, however, certain drawbacks to
their being completely happy, entirely harmonious, and the chief of
these was that Colonel Benalta, when his temper was not at its
best, would frequently, much more often than was agreeable, say to
his wife, 'My dear, you know nothing: my dear, you know nothing at
all: you know nothing whatever.' This was very disagreeable to
Madame Benalta, but it was far more unpleasant to the mother of
Madame Benalta, who considered her daughter to be a very
distinguished and gifted woman, and who did not at all like to have
it said, especially in public, that she knew--nothing!
"However, as I have said, on the whole, as Madrid society went, the
Benaltas were quoted as an example of a happy and harmonious
family.
"One day Colonel Benalta was absent on military duty, but the rest
of the family were assembled in the drawing-room at Madrid. In the
centre of the room, at a round table, sat Madame Benalta and her
daughter working. At a bureau on one side of the room sat the
mother of Madame Benalta, counting out the money which she had just
received for the rents of her estates in Andalusia, arranging the
louis-d'ors in piles of tens before her, and eventually putting
them away in a strong box at her side. At another table on the
other side of the room sat little Carlos Benalta writing a copy.
"Now I do not know the exact words of the Spanish proverb which
formed the copy that Carlos Benalta wrote, but it was something to
the effect of 'Work while it is to-day, for thou knowest not what
may happen to-morrow.' And the child wrote it again and again till
the page was full, and then he signed it, 'Carlos Benalta, Sept.
22nd,' and he took the copy to his mother.
"Now the boy had signed his copy 'Carlos Benalta, Sept. 22nd,' but
it really was Sept. 21. And Madame Benalta was a very superstitious
woman; and when she saw that in his copy Carlos had anticipated the
morrow--the to-morrow on which 'thou knowest not what may
happen'--it struck her as an evil omen, and she was very much
annoyed with Carlos, and spoke sharply, saying that he had been
very careless, and that he must take the copy back and write it all
over again. And Carlos, greatly crestfallen, took the copy and went
back to his seat. But the mother of Madame Benalta, who always
indulged and petted Carlos, looked up from her counting and said,
'Bring the copy to me.' And when she saw it she said to her
daughter, 'I think you are rather hard upon Carlos, my dear; he has
evidently taken pains with his copy and written it very well; and
as for the little mistake at the end, it really does not signify;
so I hope you will forgive him, and not expect him to write it
again.' Upon which Madame Benalta, but with a very bad grace, said,
'Oh, of course, if his grandmother says he is not to write it
again, I do not expect him to do it; but I consider, all the same,
that he ought to have been obliged to do it for his carelessness.'
Then the grandmother took ten louis-d'ors from the piles before
her, and she tore the copy out of the book and rolled them up in
it, and sealed the parcel, and she wrote upon the outside, 'For my
dear grandson, Carlos Benalta; to be given to him when I am dead!'
And she showed it to her daughter and her grand-daughter, and said,
'Some day when I am passed away, this will be a little memorial to
Carlos of his old grandmother, who loved him and liked to save him
from a punishment.' And she put the packet away in the strong box
with the rest of the money.
"The next morning the news of a most dreadful tragedy startled the
people of Madrid. The mother of Madame Benalta, who inhabited an
apartment in the same house above that of her daughter and
son-in-law, was found murdered in her room under the most dreadful
circumstances. She had evidently fought hard for her life. The
whole floor was in pools of blood. She had been dragged from one
piece of furniture to another, and eventually she had been
butchered lying across the bed. There were the marks of a bloody
hand all down the staircase, and the strong box was missing.
Everything was done that could be done to discover the murderer,
but unfortunately he had chosen the one day in the year when such a
crime was difficult to trace. As Mademoiselle Benalta was not yet
'out,' and as the family liked a quiet domestic life, they never
went out in the evening, and the street door was known to be
regularly fastened. Therefore, on this one day in the year, when
the servants went on their annual picnic to the Escurial, it was
supposed to be quite safe to leave the street door on the latch,
that they might let themselves in when they returned very late. The
murderer must have known this and taken advantage of it; therefore,
though Colonel Benalta offered a very large reward, and though the
Spanish Government--so great was the public horror--offered, for
them, a very large reward, no clue whatever was ever obtained to
the murderer.
"A terrible shadow naturally hung over the house in Madrid, and the
Benalta family could not bear to remain in a scene which to them
was filled with such associations of horror. By the death of the
poor lady, Madame Benalta's mother, they had inherited her estates
in Andalusia, and they removed to Cordova. There they lived very
quietly. From so great a shock Madame Benalta could not entirely
rally, and she shrank more than ever from strangers. Besides, her
home life was less pleasant than it had been, for Colonel Benalta's
temper was sharper and sourer than ever, and even more frequently
than before he said to her, 'My dear, you know nothing: you really
know nothing at all.'
"Eleven years passed away, melancholy years enough to the mother,
but her children grew up strong and happy, and naturally on them
the terrible event of their childhood seemed now quite in the
far-away past. One day Colonel Benalta was again absent on military
duty. Madame Benalta was sitting in her usual chair in her
drawing-room at Cordova, and Carlos, then a young man of
one-and-twenty, was standing by her, when the door opened and
Mademoiselle Benalta came in. 'Oh, mother,' she said, 'I've been
taking advantage of our father's absence to arrange his room, and
in one of his drawers I have found a little relic of our childhood,
which I think perhaps may be interesting to you: it seems to be a
copy which Carlos must have written when he was a little boy.'
Madame Benalta took the paper out of her daughter's hand and saw,
'Work while it is to-day, for thou knowest not what may happen
to-morrow,' and at the bottom the signature 'Carlos Benalta,
September 22nd,' and she turned it round, and there, at the back,
in the well-known trembling hand, was written, 'For my dear
grandson Carlos Benalta, to be given to him when I am dead.' Madame
Benalta had just presence of mind to crumple up the paper and throw
it into the back of the fire, and then she fell down upon the floor
in a fit.
"From that time Madame Benalta never had any health. She was unable
to take any part in the affairs of the house, and scarcely seemed
able to show any interest in anything. Her husband had less
patience than ever with her, and more frequently abused her and
said, 'My dear, you know nothing;' but it hardly seemed to affect
her now; her life seemed ebbing away together with its animation
and power, and she failed daily. That day-year Madame Benalta lay
on her death-bed, and all her family were collected in her room to
witness her last moments. She had received the last sacraments, and
the supreme moment of life had arrived, when she beckoned her
husband to her. As he leant over her, in a calm solemn voice,
distinctly audible to all present, she said, 'My dear, you have
always said that I knew nothing: now I have known two things: I
have known how to be silent in life, and how to pardon in death,'
and so saying, she died.
"It is unnecessary to explain what Madame Benalta knew."
In later years, in Spain, I have read a little book by Fernan Caballero,
"El Silencio en la Vita, e el Perdono en la Muerte," but even in the
hands of the great writer the story wants the simple power which it had
when told by Sir John.
* * * * *
The winter of 1864-65 was a terribly anxious one at Holmhurst. My mother
failed daily as the cold weather came on, and was in a state of constant
and helpless suffering. I never could bear to be away from her for a
moment, and passed the whole day by the side of her bed or chair,
feeding her, supporting her, chafing her inanimate limbs, trying by an
energy of love to animate her through the weary hours of sickness,
giddiness, and pain. We were seldom able to leave one room, the central
one in the house, and had to keep it as warm as was possible. My
recollection lingers on the months of entire absence from all external
life spent in that close room, sitting in an armchair, pretending to
read while I was ceaselessly watching. My mother was so much worse than
she had ever been before, that I was never very hopeful, but strove
never to look beyond the present into the desolate future, and, while
devoting my whole thoughts and energies to activity for her, was always
able to be cheerful. Still I remember how, in that damp and misty
Christmas, I happened to light upon the lines in "In Memoriam"--
"With trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round our Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possess'd the earth,
And sadly fell our Christmas Eve."
And how wonderfully applicable they seemed to our case.
_To_ MY SISTER.
"_Holmhurst, Dec. 17, 1864._--How we envy you the warmth of Italy!
Had we known how severe a winter this was likely to be, we also
should have started for Italy at all risks, and I feel that I have
been _very_ wrong ever to have consented to the mother's staying in
England, though she seemed so weary of travelling and so much
better in health, that I could not believe the effect would be so
bad. The cold is most intense. After a month of wet, we have had
two days of snow with black east wind, and now it is pouring again,
but the rain freezes as it falls.
"The dear mother is perfectly prostrated by the cold, and looks at
least twenty years older than in the summer. She has great and
constant pain, and trembles so greatly as to be quite unable to
feed herself, and she can do nothing whatever all day, so that she
is very miserable. Of course I am dreadfully and constantly anxious
about her, and the dread of paralysis haunts me night and day. I
need not say how sweet, and gentle, and uncomplaining my poor
darling is, but one can see she suffers greatly, and 'the pleasures
of an English winter,' which some of the family have always been
urging her to enjoy, consist in an almost total non-existence on
her part, and constant watching on mine."
Gradually the consciousness came to all around her that the only chance
of my mother's recovery would be from taking her abroad. How I longed to
follow the advice given in "Kotzebue's Travels" when he urges us to take
pattern by our ancestors, who were content to sit still and read the
injunction in their Bibles, "Let not your flight be in the winter." Yet
this year even poor Lea, generally so averse to leaving home, urged us
to set off. Then came the difficulty of how to go, and where. We decided
to turn towards Pau and Biarritz, because easier of access than Cannes,
and because the journeys were shorter: and then there was the constant
driving down to look at the sea, and the discovery that, when it was
calm enough, my mother was too ill to move, and when she was better, the
sea was too rough. At last, on the 20th of January, we left home in the
evening.
_To_ MY SISTER.
"_Bordeaux, Jan. 28, 1865._--I cannot say what a comfort it is,
amid much else that is sad and trying, to think of you safe at
Palazzo Parisani, in the home of many years, with the devoted
auntie and the two old domestic friends to share your interests and
sorrows and joys--so much left of the good of life, so much to gild
the memory of the past. I know how you would feel the return to
Rome at first--the desolate room, the empty chair, the unused
writing-table; and then how you would turn to 'gather up the
fragments that remain,' and to see that even the darkest cloud has
its silver lining.... No, you cannot wish your mother back. In
thinking of her, you will remember that if she were with you now,
it would not be in the enjoyment of Rome, of Victoire, and
Parisani, but in cheerless London rooms, with their many trials of
spirits and temper. _Now_ all those are forgotten by her, for
'Who will count the billows past,
If the shore be won at last'?
"And for yourself, you are conscious that you are in the place
where she would have you be, and that if she can still be with you
invisibly, her life and your life may still be running on side by
side, and yours now giving to her unclouded eyes the pleasure it
never could have given when earthly mists obscured them.
"I often think of Christian Andersen's story of the mother who was
breaking her heart with grief for the loss of her only child, when
Death bade her look into his mirror, and on one side she saw the
life of her child as it would have been had it remained on earth,
in all the misery of sorrow and sickness and sin; and on the other,
the glorified life to which it was taken; and then the mother
humbly gave thanks to the All-Wise, who chose for her, and could
only beg forgiveness because she had wished to choose for herself.
"Do you know, my Esmeralda, that great sorrow has been very near me
too? My sweetest mother has been very, very ill, and even now she
is so little really better, that I am full of anxiety about her.
From the New Year she was so ill at Holmhurst from the cold and
snow, that it was decided that we must take the first available
moment for going abroad. But we were packed up and waiting for more
than a fortnight before her health and the tempests allowed us to
start.
"Her passage on the 21st was most unfortunate, for a thick fog came
on, which long prevented the steamer from finding the narrow
entrance of Calais harbour, and the boat remained for two hours
swaying about outside and firing guns of distress every ten
minutes. These were answered by steamers in port, and the great
alarm-bell of Calais tolled incessantly. At last another steamer
was sent out burning red lights, and guided the wanderer in. My
poor mother was quite unable to stand from the cold and fatigue
when she was landed, and the journey to Paris, across the plains
deep in snow, was a most anxious one. During the three days we
spent at Paris, she was so ill that I had almost given up all hope
of moving her, when a warm change in the weather allowed of our
reaching Tours, where we stayed two more days.
"Tours is a fine old town, and is the place where our grandfather
died. I saw his house, quite a palace, now the museum. We slept
again at Angoul\xEAme, a very striking place, the old town rising out
of the new, a rocky citadel surrounded with the most beautiful
public walks I ever saw out of Rome, and a curious cathedral. This
Bordeaux is a second Paris, only with a river like an arm of the
sea, and immense quays, full of bustle and hubbub, like the
Carminella at Naples."
[Illustration: TOURS.[252]]
"_Hotel Victoria, Pau, Feb. 2._--On Monday we made the easiest move
possible from Bordeaux to Arcachon, a most quaint little
watering-place. The hotel was a one-storied wooden house, with an
immensely broad West-Indian-like balcony, in which three or four
people could walk abreast, descending on one side to the strip of
silver sand which alone separated it from the wave-less bay of the
sea called the Bassin d'Arcachon;[253] the other opening into the
forest--sixty or seventy miles of low sandhills covered with
arbutus, holly, and pine. Near the village, quantities of
lodging-houses, built like Swiss ch\xE2lets, are rising up everywhere
in the wood, without walls, hedges, or gardens, just like a fairy
story, and in the forest itself it is always warm, no winds or
frosts penetrating the vast living walls of green. If the mother
had been better, I should have liked to linger at Arcachon a few
days, but we could not venture to remain so far from a doctor. Here
at Pau we live in a deluge: it pours like a ceaseless waterspout;
yet, so dry is the soil, that the rain never seems to make any
impression. Pau is dreadfully full and enormously expensive. I see
no beauty in the place, the town is modern with a modernised
castle, the surrounding country flat, with long white roads between
stagnant ditches, the '_coteaux_' low hills in the middle distance
covered with brushwood, the distant view scarcely ever visible. We
are surrounded by cousins. Mrs. Taylor[254] is most kind--really as
good-natured as she is ugly, and, having lived here twenty years,
she knows everything about the place. Dr. Taylor is a very skilful
physician. Edwin and Bertha Dashwood are also here with their five
children, and Amelia Story with her father and step-mother.[255]
"Alas! my sweetest mother is terribly weak, and has hitherto only
seemed to lose strength from day to day. She cannot now even walk
across the room, nor can she move from one chair to another
without great help. We are a little cheered, however, to-day by Dr.
Taylor."
[Illustration: AT ANGOUL\xCAME.[256]]
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
"_Pau, Feb. 12._--For the last two days my dearest mother's
suffering has been most sad, without intermission.... This evening
Dr. Taylor has told me how very grave he thinks her state, and
that, except for the knowledge of her having so often rallied
before, there is no hope of her precious life being restored to
us. God has given her back before from the brink of the grave, and
it might be His will to do so again; this is all we have to cling
to. Her weakness increases daily. She cannot now help herself at
all.... Her sweetness, her patience, the lovely expression of her
countenance, her angelic smile, her thankfulness for God's
blessings even when her suffering is greatest, who can describe?
These are the comfort and support which are given us.
"I do not gather that the danger is quite immediate; the dread is a
stupor, which may creep on gradually.... I am always able to be
cheerful in watching over her, though I feel as if the sunshine was
hourly fading out of my life."
_To_ MY SISTER.
"_Pau, Feb. 14._--My last account will have prepared you for the
news I have to give. My sweetest mother is fast fading away.... Lea
and I have been up with her all the last two nights, and every
minute of the day has been filled with an intensity of anxious
watching. The frail earthly tabernacle is perishing, but a mere
look at my dearest one assures us that her spirit, glorious and
sanctified, has almost already entered upon its perfected life. Her
lovely smile, the heavenly light in her eyes, are quite
undescribable.
"All through last night, as I sat in the red firelight, watching
every movement, it seemed to me as if the end was close at hand.
Her hymn rang in my ears--so awfully solemn and real:--
'It may be when the midnight
Is heavy upon the land,
And the black waves lying dumbly
Along the sand;
When the moonless night draws close,
And the lights are out in the house;
When the fires burn low and red,
And the watch is ticking loudly
Beside the bed:
Though you sleep, tired out, on your couch,
Still your heart must wake and watch
In the dark room,
For it may be that at midnight
I will come.'
When the Master does come, she will be always found waiting. Has
not my darling kept her lamp burning all her life long? Surely when
the Bridegroom cometh, she will enter into the kingdom.
"I cannot tell how soon it will be. I have no hope now of her being
given back to me. It is a solemn waiting. Oh! my Esmeralda, when
you hear that the hour _has_ come, pity, pray for her unutterably
desolate son."
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
"_Feb. 17._--There has been an unexpected rally. Two days ago, when
I was quite hopeless and she lay motionless, unconscious of earth,
Dr. Taylor said, '_Wait_, you can do nothing: if this trance is to
end fatally, you can do nothing to arrest it; but it may still
prove to be an extraordinary effort of Nature to recruit itself.'
And truly, at eight o'clock yesterday morning, after sixty hours
of trance, she suddenly opened her eyes, smiled and spoke
naturally. I had just left the room, when Lea called me back--'She
is talking to me.' I could scarcely believe it; yet, when I went
in, there my darling sat in her bed, with a sweet look of restored
consciousness and returning power.
"It was like a miracle.
"She remembers nothing now of her illness. She does not think she
has suffered. During the last night she says she was constantly
saying the seventy-first Psalm. Almost the first thing she said
after rallying was, 'I have not been alone: your Uncle Penrhyn and
your Aunt Kitty[257] have been here, supporting me all through the
night.'
"Our nice simple little landlady had just been to the church to
pray for her, and, coming back to find her restored, believes it is
in answer to her prayers.
"I did not know what the agony of the last three days was till they
were over. While they lasted, I thought of nothing but to be bright
for _her_, that she might _only_ see smiles, to prevent Lea from
giving way, and to glean up every glance and word and movement; but
to-day I feel much exhausted."
_To_ MY SISTER.
"_Pau, Feb. 21._--My darling has been mercifully restored to me for
a little while--a few days' breathing space; and yet I could not
count upon this even while it lasted; I could not dwell upon hope,
I could not look forward--the frail frame is so _very_ frail. I
cannot think she is given to me for long: I only attempt to store
up the blessings of each day now against the long desolate future.
[Illustration: PAU.[258]]
"Last Sunday week she fell into her trance. It lasted between sixty
and seventy hours. During this time she was almost unconscious. She
knew me, she even said 'Dear' to me once or twice, and smiled most
sweetly as she did so, but otherwise she was totally unconscious of
all around her, of day and night, of the sorrow or anxiety of the
watchers, of pain or trouble. A serene peace overshadowed her, a
heavenly sweetness filled her expression, and never varied except
to dimple into smiles of angelic beauty, as if she were already in
the company of angels.
"But for the last sixteen hours the trance was like death. Then
the doctor said, 'If the pulse does not sink and if she wakes
naturally, she may rally.' This happened. At eight the next
morning, my darling gently awoke and was given back into life. This
was Thursday, and there were three days' respite. But yesterday she
was evidently failing again, and this morning, while Dr. Taylor was
in the room, the trance came on again. For ten minutes her pulse
ceased to beat altogether.... Since then she has lain as
before--scarcely here, yet not gone--quite happy--_between_ heaven
and earth.
"I believe now that if my darling is taken I can give thanks for
the exceeding blessedness of this end.
"Meantime it is again a silent watching, and, as I watch, the
solemn music of the hymns that my darling loves comes back to me,
and I repeat them to myself. Now these verses are in my mind:--
'Have we not caught the smiling
On some beloved face,
As if a heavenly sound were wiling
The soul from our earthly place?--
The distant sound and sweet
Of the Master's coming feet.
We may clasp the loved one faster,
And plead for a little while,
But who can resist the Master?
And we read by that brightening smile
That the tread we may not fear
Is drawing surely near.'
And then, in the long watches of the night, all the golden past
comes back to me--how as a little child I played round my darling
in Lime Wood--how the flowers were our friends and companions--how
we lived in and for one another in the bright Lime garden: of her
patient endurance of much injustice--of her sweet forgiveness of
all injuries--of her loving gratitude for all blessings--of her
ever sure upward-seeking of the will and glory of God: and my eye
wanders to the beloved face, lined and worn but glowing with the
glory of another world, and while giving thanks for thirty years of
past blessing, shall I not also give thanks that thus--not through
the dark valley, but through the sunshine of God--my mother is
entering upon her rest?
"God will give me strength: I feel quite calm. I can think only how
to soothe, how to cheer, how to do everything for her."
"_Feb. 26._--It is still the same; we are still watching. In the
hundred and twelfth hour of her second trance, during which she had
taken no nourishment whatever, my mother spoke again, but it was
only for a time. You will imagine what the long watchings of this
death-like slumber have been, what the strange visions of the past
which have risen to my mind in the long, silent nights, as, with
locked doors (for the French would insist that all was over), I
have hovered over the pillow on which she lies as if bound by
enchantment. Now comes before me the death-bed scene of S. Vincent
de Paul, when, to the watchers lamenting together over his
perpetual stupor, his voice suddenly said, 'It is but the brother
that goes before the sister.' Then, as the shadows lighten into
dawn, Norman Macleod's story of how he was watching by the
death-bed of his beloved one in an old German city, and grief was
sinking into despair, when, loud and solemn, at three in the
morning, echoed forth the voice of the old German watchman giving
the hours in the patriarchal way--'Put your trust in the _Divine
Three_, for after the darkest night cometh the break of day.'
"Last night the trance seemed over. All was changed. My sweetest
one was haunted by strange visions; to her excited mind and renewed
speech, every fold of the curtains was a spirit, every sound an
alarm. For hours I sat with her trembling hands in mine, soothing
her with the old hymns that she loves. To a certain extent,
however, there is more hope, more of returning power. Is it a
superstition to think that she began to revive when in the churches
at Holmhurst, Hastings, Hurstmonceaux, Alton, and Pau prayers (and
in many cases how earnest) were being offered up for her
restoration?
"_Two_ P.M.--My darling has been sitting up in bed listening to
sweet voices, which have been singing to her; but they were no
earthly voices which she heard.
"_Ten_ P.M.--She has just declared that she sees Ruth Harmer (a
good, sweet girl she used to visit, who died at Hurstmonceaux)
standing by her bedside. 'It is Ruth Harmer--look at Ruth Harmer,'
she said. But it was not a voice of terror; it was rather like the
apostolic question, 'Who are these who are arrayed in white robes,
and whence come they?' There has also been a time when she has
spoken of 'dear Holmhurst, _dear_ beautiful Holmhurst,' in the
most touching way."
"_Feb. 27._--She has fallen into a third stupor, deeper than the
others; there is no sign of breath, the heart does not beat, the
pulse does not beat, the features have sunk. I _alone_ now declare
with certain conviction that she lives. The shadows are closing
around us, yet I feel that we are in the immediate presence of the
Unseen, and that the good Ruth Harmer is only one of the many
angels watching over my sweetest one. Years ago she told me that
when dying she wished her favourite hymn--
'How bright those glorious spirits shine,--'
to be sung by her bedside; was it these words which she heard the
angels sing to her? Oh! my Esmeralda, are you praying that I may
endure while it is necessary to do everything for her, only so
long? How strange that the scene which I have so often imagined
should be in a country hitherto unknown, the only relations near
having been strangers before; yet the simple French people here are
very sad for us, and there is much sympathy."
"_March 10._--It has been many days since I have ventured to write:
it has been so difficult to say anything definite, with the
constant dread of another relapse, which we have thought must come
every day: yet I think I may now venture to write in thanksgiving
that my mother is restored to me from the brink of the grave. It
seemed _quite_ impossible that she could come back, as if she
_must_ enter the world on the portals of which she had been so long
resting. Doctor and nurse gave up all hope; and at last the nurse
went out, saying all must be over when she returned in three hours'
time. In those three hours the remedies began to take effect, the
dead limbs to revive, the locked mouth to open, the closed eyes to
see, the hands to feel. It had been a death-like trance of a
hundred and ninety-six hours altogether--ten days and nine nights.
She remembers nothing of it now, and nothing of the illness which
came before, but a gradual revival and awakening of all her powers
is going on. It has been less painful to her throughout than to any
one, and it is so still.
"Dr. Taylor is made Sir Alexander. He and Lady Taylor have been
most kind to us--could not have been more so. It has been
interesting to see so much of her, the last survivor of our
father's generation in the family, and one who, living constantly
at Hurstmonceaux, was present through all the old family crises and
conflicts, which she narrates with much of sound sense and
observation. I shall hope to write down much of her recollections,
and shall begin in good earnest to collect the memorials of that
earlier family period, quite as curious in its way as many later
ones."[259]
"_Pau, March 27._--My sweet mother continues slightly better
certainly, but in a most fragile and harassing state of health. I
never feel happy in leaving her, even for half-an-hour. On some
days she is better and almost able to enjoy reading a few words, or
being read to a little: on others, as to-day, the trembling
increases to such a degree as to prevent her occupying herself in
any way. I need not say how beautiful are her faith and love, how
increasing the beatitude of her inner, her heavenly life. 'Oh, how
long it is since I have been at church,' she said last night. 'But
you are always at church in your soul, darling,' I said. 'Yes,' she
answered, 'that is the greater part of my day--meditation and
prayer, and in the night I say my hymns and texts.' On my birthday
she gave me a solemn blessing. Each day I watch her every look and
movement. Truly I feel as if the pulse of her life beat into mine.
She does not see many people, but our sweet little cousin Lady
Dashwood, Lady Taylor, and Lady Charles Clinton come occasionally.
"Pau is the most unattractive place I ever was in, and it pours or
snows almost incessantly. The 'society' is small, good, and
uninteresting, and snubs the immense remainder of the Anglo-Pau
world with hearty goodwill.
"For some days we have been very sad about dear Emma Leycester, who
has been terribly ill: at least I have been, for I think the mother
has scarcely taken in the great cause for alarm."
I think the name of this most dear cousin, Emma Leycester (Charlotte's
much younger sister) has scarcely been mentioned in these memoirs, and
yet there was scarcely any one who had a tenderer place in our home life
and thoughts, or to whom we were more devoted. Perhaps the very fact of
omitting her shows how entirely she must have kept aloof from all family
squabbles and disorders, whilst rejoicing in all our pleasures and
sorrowing in all our griefs. She was never strong, and I always
recollect her as a semi-invalid, yet more animated and cheerful than
most people in strong health, and able, from the very fact of weakness
removing her from the general turmoil of all that was going on around
her, to give her full attention and sympathy to the things she could
participate in. Small in person, she was of a most sweet countenance,
with grey hair, a most delicate complexion, and bright eyes, full of
expression and humour--
"Her angel's face
As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place."[260]
As a child, in her visits to Stoke and Lime, I was quite devoted to her,
and in the persecutions of my boyhood was comforted by her unfailing
sympathy. When at Southgate, the greatest pleasure of my London
excursions was that they sometimes ended at "Charlotte and Emma's house"
in Wilton Crescent, and that I often went to have tea with the dear
Emma, who was already gone to rest upon the sofa in her own little
sitting-room. When I was at Oxford she came to visit me there; and
latterly the loss of her own brother and sister had drawn this
sister-like cousin nearer to my mother as well as to myself.
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
"_Pau, April 6, 1865_, 8 P.M.--I must write one little line of love
this evening: the sad news reached us two hours ago, and you will
know _how_ we are mourning with you. I had just a hope, and can
hardly feel yet that dearest Emma's sweet presence, her loving
tender sympathy and interest, are taken from us in this world: but
may we not feel that she is perhaps still near us in her perfected
state, and to you and to my darling mother even the visible
separation may be a very short one, it _can_ only be a few
years--long here, but like a moment to her, till the meeting again.
"I am glad to think of you at Toft, and of her resting there, where
we can visit the grave. I feel so _deeply_ not being able to be
with you, or to do anything for you, as dearest Emma so often said
I should do for her, if you were taken from her.
"The news came at tea-time. It was impossible to conceal it. The
mother had had a suffering day, and was utterly crushed. We put
her to bed at once, and very soon she literally 'fell asleep for
sorrow,' and I, watching beside her, heard her lips murmur, 'O
blessed are they who die in Thee, O Lord, for they rest from their
labours.'"
"_L'Estelle, April 8._--My mother continued so seriously ill up to
yesterday morning, that I was certain if she were not moved at
once, I must not hope she ever would be. Dr. Taylor declined to
take the responsibility, but I felt some one _must_ act; so I sent
for a large carriage, and had her carried down into it like a baby,
and brought off here, only two hours' easy drive from Pau. Before
we had gone six miles she began to revive, was carried to her room
without exhaustion, and to-day opens her eyes on a lovely view of
the snow mountains above the chestnut woods, with a rushing river
and the old convent of B\xE9tharram in the gorge, which is a wonderful
refreshment after having lived in a narrow street, and seen nothing
but a white-washed wall opposite for eleven weeks. Already she is
better."
_To_ MY SISTER.
"_L'Estelle, April 9._--You will have heard of our great sorrow....
A week ago dearest Emma's fever passed and took the form of prayer,
which, as Charlotte says, 'flowed like a river.' Once she said, 'I
have been fed with angels' food; I did not _ask_ for it, I could
not, but I have _had_ it.' Her last resting-place is at Toft.
Charlotte was able to be present.... I feel that, though we have
many still to love, no one can ever fill the _same_ place in our
hearts."
[Illustration: B\xC9THARRAM.][261]
During my mother's long illness at Pau, I naturally thought of nothing,
and saw scarcely any one, but her. In the last three weeks, however,
after her rally, and before the last alarm, I saw a few people, amongst
them very frequently Lady Vere Cameron, whose husband, Cameron of
Lochiel, had been known to my mother from girlhood. Through Lady Vere,
I was introduced to a remarkable circle then at Pau, which formed a
society entirely occupied with spiritualism. Most extraordinary were the
experiences they had to narrate. I have kept some notes of my
acquaintance with them:--
"_Pau, March 1865._--When I was at Lady Vere Cameron's, the subject
of table-turning was brought forward, and I then said that I had
been told that I was a medium, meaning merely with reference to
tables. We sat down to a table and it turned. Soon it began to rap
violently, and a scratching noise was heard underneath. This I
believe to have been owing to some ventriloquism on the part of
Ferdinand Russell, who was present, but it excited Lady Vere very
much.
"Some days after I had a note from Lady Vere to desire that I would
come to be introduced to her 'particular friend,' Mrs. Gregory, at
a party in her own house. As I knew that Mrs. Gregory was a great
spiritualist and much occupied with the subject, I naturally
supposed that this desire to make my acquaintance was due to the
table-turning at Lady Vere's, and I went expecting to find a
s\xE9ance.
"But it was a large party, a great number of people whom I had
never seen before. Mrs. Gregory had the odd expression of always
looking for something behind her. She spoke at once of my being a
medium, and then said in an excited manner, 'But are you far
advanced? are you like me? when a friend is going to die, do you
see it written before you in letters of light _there_?'--pointing
into vacancy. 'No,' I said, 'certainly not: that never happens to
me.' Speaking of this afterwards to a Mr. Hamilton, he bade me
beware, for very unpleasant things often happened at Mrs. Gregory's
s\xE9ances, or, if they did not happen, every one present believed
that they did--that hands appeared, &c.: that his cousin, Mrs. H.
of S., had received messages from her child who was dead: that
others also had received messages from their dead relations. The
meetings were always solemnly opened with prayer.
"At Mrs. White Hedges' I saw Mrs. H. She said that she also was
certain that I was a medium, and asked whether I did not frequently
have messages from the other world. I said 'No,' and that I did not
wish to have any. 'What,' she said, with a look of great surprise,
'you do not wish, then, for the regeneration of the world; for if
you did you would feel that it can only be brought about through
the instrumentality of spirits.'"
"_April 4._--At Lady Robinson's[262] I again met Mrs. Gregory, who
asked me to come on the 6th to help her to turn a table, and see if
I should receive any messages. I agreed to do so, understanding
that nothing more was intended than she said. Afterwards I sat by
Miss N. L., who said, 'I see that terrible woman has been getting
hold of you. Pray don't go. You don't know what you will see. Every
one who goes is beguiled by small pretexts till they see the most
appalling things. It can only be through the devil.'
"Persuaded by Miss N. L., I went to Mrs. Gregory and said, 'Mrs.
Gregory, do tell me exactly what you expect to happen on Thursday,
because I do not wish to _see_ anything.'
"'Oh, you are a coward, are you?' said both Mrs. Gregory and Mrs.
Alexander, who was sitting near her.
"'Yes, certainly I am a coward about trifling with the
supernatural. It is not because I do not believe that spirits can
return from the dead, but because I do believe it that I would
rather not come, if you expect to see anything.'
"'Well, I can only say that both seeing and receiving messages are
the greatest possible comfort to me: it is only that which keeps me
in my right mind,' said Mrs. Gregory.
"I answered that I should dislike being upset for the ordinary and
practical duties of life by being led to dwell constantly upon the
supernatural.
"'That is precisely what strikes me as the greatest advantage,'
said Mrs. Gregory; 'surely one cannot think too much of the other
world. To feel that spirits are constantly watching you, and
grieving or rejoicing over you, must surely tend to keep you from a
great deal of evil. I have known many infidels entirely converted
to a new and Christian life by what they have seen with me--Mr.
Ruskin, for instance. I asked Mr. Ruskin one day what he believed,
and he answered "Simply nothing." He afterwards came to my house
several times when I had s\xE9ances, and then he took my hands, and
with tears in his eyes said, "Mrs. Gregory, I cannot thank you
enough for what you have shown me: it will change my whole life,
for because I have seen I believe." Mr. Pickersgill the artist was
another instance. Certainly hands often appear to me, but I like to
see them. If you had lost any one who was a part of your life,
would you not like to know that you were receiving a message from
those you loved? You need not be afraid of the messages I receive.
Just before I came here I received this message--"Keep close to God
in prayer." There was nothing dreadful in that, was there? Was not
that a beautiful message to receive. But sometimes the spirits are
conflicting. There are good and bad spirits. If the messages are
not such as we should wish, then we know the bad spirits are there.
All this is in the Bible, "Ye shall try the spirits, whether they
be good or evil." This is one of the means of grace which God gives
us: surely we ought not to turn aside from it.'
"Afterwards I asked Lady Robinson her experience. She said that she
had been at one of the s\xE9ances, but nothing appeared and 'the
Indicator' gave nothing decided. She said it was conducted most
seriously, with all religious feeling. She described Mrs. Gregory
as not only praying at the time, but living in a state of prayer,
and she believed that the messages were granted in answer to real
faith. She said quantities of people had seen the hands appear.
Mrs. Gregory had a very large s\xE9ance at Sir William Gomm's in
London, and Lady Gomm asked for an outward sign before she would
believe. A bodiless hand then appeared, and, taking up a vase with
a plant in it from a china dish upon the table, set it on the
floor, and then breaking a flower from the plant, came and laid it
in Lady Gomm's lap: all the company saw it.
"I told the Taylors what I had heard. Sir Alexander said that he
thought the chief good of such a clever physician as Mrs. Gregory's
husband (Dr. Gregory of the powders) appearing would be to write a
prescription for the living."
While we were at Pau, my sister wrote much to me upon the death of
Cardinal Wiseman, to whom she was greatly devoted, and whom I have
always believed to be a most sagacious and large-hearted man. His burly
figure upon the sands at Eastbourne used to be very familiar to me in my
boyhood. I heard Monsignor Capel, who afterwards attained some
celebrity, preach his funeral sermon at Pau.
"Thirty years ago," he said, "there were only six Catholic churches
in London; now there are forty-six. Then there were six Catholic
schools in London; now there are at least three in each of these
parishes--one for boys, one for girls, and one for infants. Then
there were only 30,000 Catholics in all England; now there are two
millions, one-ninth of the whole population of the country. Then
there were no religious Orders except the Jesuit Fathers, who had
lingered on from the Reformation, flying from one Catholic house to
another, and administering the sacraments in fear and trembling;
now there are in London the followers of St. Francis and St.
Dominic, the Passionist Fathers, the Redemptorists, and at least
twelve nunneries of English ladies. All this change is in a great
measure due to Cardinal Wiseman, the founder of the English
hierarchy. He entered on his labours in troublous times: with the
enthusiasm and love of splendid ritual which he imbibed as a
Spanish boy, with the ecclesiastical learning of Italy, with the
dogmatic perseverance and liberality which he drank in with his
English education. He chose as the title of his bishopric the see
of the last martyred English bishop, and he also thirsted for
martyrdom."
These notes are curious as showing how the rapid growth of Catholicism
in England, which we Protestants are so unwilling to recognise, had
advanced under Cardinal Wiseman's leadership.
At L'Estelle my mother daily revived, and was soon able to sit out on
the sunny balcony, for the valleys of the Pyrenees were already quite
hot, though the trees were leafless and the mountains covered with snow.
It was long, however, before I ventured to leave her to go beyond the
old convent of B\xE9tharram, with its booths of relics and its calvary on a
hill. When she was stronger, we moved to Argel\xE8s, a beautiful upland
valley, whence excursions are very easy to Cauterets and Luz.
Afterwards we visited Eaux Chaudes and Eaux Bonnes; but though the snow
was too deep to allow of mountain rambles, the heat was already too
intense for enjoyment of the valleys. We had left Pau without a sign of
vegetation, and when we came back three weeks later, it was in all the
deadest, heaviest green of summer. So it was a great refreshment to move
at once to Biarritz, with its breezy uplands, covered with pink daphne,
and its rolling, sparkling, ever-changing sea, so splendid in colour. To
my mother, Biarritz was a complete restorative, and she was able there
to take up her drawing again, to enjoy seeing friends, and to enter into
the interests and peculiarities of the curious Basque country.
[Illustration: BIARRITZ.[263]]
We visited many of the Basque churches, which are always encircled
within by three galleries, except over the altar. These galleries are of
black oak. The men sit in the galleries, and the women below, and they
enter at different doors. In the churchyards the graves have all little
crosses or Basque head-stones with round tops, and they are all planted
with flowers. The houses all have wide overhanging roofs and external
wooden galleries. Bidart and Cambo are good specimens of Basque
villages. Bidart is a beautiful place on the road to S. Jean de Luz,
and has a church with the characteristic overhanging belfry and high
simple buttresses. A wide entry under the organ-loft is the only
entrance to the church. In the hollow below is a broken bridge reflected
in a pool, which is golden at sunset, and which, with the distant sea
and sands, and the old houses with their wooden balconies scattered over
the hillside, forms a lovely picture. Here I stayed one evening to draw
with Miss Elizabeth Blommart, an acquaintance we made at Biarritz
(afterwards our friend for many years), while my mother and Lea walked
on, and descended from the opposite hill upon the sands. We had often
been told of the treacherous waves of Bidart, but could not have
believed in danger--so distant, beyond the long reaches of sand, seemed
the calm Atlantic, glistening in the last rays of sunlight. To our
horror, when we had nearly finished our drawing, we looked up, and saw
my mother and Lea coming towards us pouring with salt water from cloaks,
bonnets, everything. They had been walking unsuspiciously on the sands
three-quarters of a mile from the sea, when suddenly, without any
warning, a great wave surrounded them. My mother was at once swept off
her feet, but Lea, with her usual presence of mind, caught her cloak and
rolled it round her arm, and plunging herself deep into the sand,
resisted the water and held her mistress till the wave receded, when
they made their escape. A few days afterwards an Englishman with his
little dog was walking in the Bay of Bidart; the man escaped, but the
dog was swept out to sea.
Cambo is two hours' drive from Biarritz--a most pleasant watering-place
on a high terrace above the Nive, with pergolas of vines and planes, a
churchyard which is a perfect blaze of lilies and roses, and an
inn-garden which is full of lovely flowers. Close by is the opening to
the Pas de Roland, a grand little gorge where the Nive rushes through
the mountains--a finer Dovedale. A rocky path ascends by the side of the
stream and climbs a succession of steeps to _la roche perc\xE9e_, through
which it passes to a little hamlet and old bridge. Eighteen miles
farther is S. Jean de Port, whence one can ride to Roncesvalles.
[Illustration: THE PAS DE ROLAND.[264]]
The whole of this Basque country is full of memorials of the Peninsular
War, the events of which in this district are wonderfully well described
in the novel of "The Subaltern." There are deep woods and glens which
ran down with blood; green lanes (as at Irogne) which were scenes of
desperate combats; tombs of English officers, as in the churchyard at
Bidart and in the picturesque mayor's garden between Bidart and
Biarritz, where a flat stone commemorating three English officers is to
be seen under the old apple-trees, overlooking a wide expanse of
country. The most dreadful slaughter was near the Negressa Station,
where the two armies, having occupied the ridges on either side the
lake, suffered frightful carnage. It might have been spared, but in both
armies it was then unknown that Napoleon had abdicated, and that peace
was proclaimed. Between S. Jean de Luz and the Behobia is a picturesque
old ch\xE2teau, which was taken by the English after an easy siege, the
inhabitants having been forced to fly with such precipitation that
everything was abandoned, even the mail-bags which they had just seized
being left behind and the contents scattered about on the floor. The
first letter the English officer in command picked up was directed to
himself and from his own father! He took nothing from the house but a
Spanish dictionary from the library, but returning that way three weeks
afterwards, found it completely pillaged by the Spanish camp-followers.
The peasantry of the Basque country are most interesting to talk to, and
it is strange that more should not have been said and written about
them, as their conversation is more full of ancient proverbs and
folk-lore than that of the inhabitants of any other part of France. I
remember an old Basque woman saying that her language was not only the
best, but far the oldest in the world--in fact, it was that which Adam
and Eve spoke in Paradise!
Twice, while we were at Biarritz, I made excursions into Spain, crossing
the Bidassoa close to the Isle of Pheasants with intense interest. In
all the Spain I have seen since, there is nothing more utterly Spanish
than the tiny walled town of Fontarabia, with its wooden balconies piled
one above another, and its lookout over a blue estuary. Most striking
also is Passages--a land-locked bay of the sea with a very narrow
opening, which is passed on the way to S. Sebastian.
[Illustration: S. EMILION CATHEDRAL DOOR.[265]]
Our return journey to England in the late spring was very delightful. My
mother, in entire enjoyment of her marvellously restored health, and
delighting to drink in the full beauties of nature and antiquity, was in
no hurry to return to the turmoil of English life. We lingered
everywhere, making short half-day journeys, and spending quiet
afternoons sketching in the grass-grown streets of half-deserted cities,
or driving out in little carriages to grand old ch\xE2teaux. Thus we first
saw S. Emilion, that marvellous place, where the buildings are so
mingled with the living rock, that you scarcely can tell where the work
of man begins, and where each sculptured cornice glows in late spring
with a glory of crimson valerian. In one of the quietest streets of
Poitiers, before a cottage door, we bought an old inlaid table, which is
one of the pleasantest memorials of our journey. At Amboise we stayed
several days in a most primitive but charming hotel, the vision of my
dear mother in which often comes back to me, sitting with her psalm-book
in a low room with white-washed walls and brick floor, and with a
latticed window looking out over the great river glistening in the
sunset. My mother liked and admired Amboise[266] more than almost any of
our thousand resting-places, and she delighted in the excursions to
moated Chenonceaux and to Chambord, where we and Lea had tea and
bilberry jam at a delightful little inn which then existed on the
outskirts of the forest.
[Illustration: AMBOISE[265a]]
On the 27th of May we reached Holmhurst. One of those curious incidents
which are inexplicable had occurred during our absence, and was narrated
to us, on our return, by our servants, neighbours, and by Mrs. Hale,
the wife of our Hastings doctor. During my mother's illness at Pau, two
of our maids, Alice and Jane Lathom, slept, according to their custom,
in one of the spare rooms to the front of the house. In the middle of
the night they were both aroused by three piercing terrible screams in
the room close to the bed. Petrified with horror, they hid under the
bed-clothes, and lay thus more dead than alive till morning. With the
first streak of dawn they crept down the passage to John Gidman's room,
roused him, and told him what had happened. He felt it was certainly an
omen that the death they expected had occurred; took the carriage and
drove down at once to St. Leonards to Mrs. Hale. Dr. and Mrs. Hale were
at breakfast when John Gidman arrived and sent in word that his mistress
was dead. When they went out, they found he had received no letter, but
had only an inward conviction of the event from what had happened.
It was the same hour at which my mother, waking from her second trance
in her room at Pau, had uttered three long piercing screams in her
wandering, and said, "Oh, I shall never, never see my dear Holmhurst
again!"
There is no explanation to offer.
* * * * *
We had much enjoyment of our little Holmhurst this summer and a constant
succession of guests. Amongst those who now came annually were Arthur
Stanley and his wife Lady Augusta. To my mother, Augusta Stanley was
always a very tender and dutiful niece, and to me a most kind cousin.
She rejoiced to aid my mother in acting as a drag to Arthur's
ever-increasing impression that the creed of progress and the creed of
Christianity were identical. Many people thought that such an intense,
almost universal warmth of manner as hers must be insincere, but with
her it was perfectly natural. She took the sunshine of court favour, in
which they both lived, quite simply, accepting it quietly, very glad
that the Royal Family valued her, but never bringing it forward. She was
indeed well worthy of the confidence which her royal mistress reposed in
her, for though the Queen wrote to her daily, and though she generally
came in to breakfast with several sheets in the large well-known
handwriting, not one word from them ever transpired to her nearest
relation or dearest friend.
What Lord Beaconsfield called "Arthur Stanley's picturesque sensibility"
made him care more than Augusta about having royal (_i.e._ historic)
friendships, though he had less personal feeling than she had for the
illustrious persons who made them. He was, however, quite devoted to the
Queen, to her own personality, and would certainly have been so had she
been in any other position of life. The interests of Westminster made
him very happy, and he rejoiced in the duty which fell upon him of
preserving the Abbey as he received it, furious when it was suggested
that some of the inferior and ugly monuments might be removed, or that
the peculiar character of the choir (like a Spanish _coro_) might be
altered. Always more a lover of moral than of doctrinal, or even
spiritual Christianity, at this time he was beginning to be the victim
of a passion for heretics which went on increasing afterwards. The
Scotch were delighted with him: they thought he had an enthusiastic
admiration for their Church. But he almost equally admired all
schismatics from the Church to which he officially belonged, and was
almost equally interested in them, and if he could get any one with ever
so slight a taint of heresy to preach in the Abbey, it was a great
delight to him: he thought it was setting an example of Christian
liberality.
* * * * *
My sister left Rome with her aunt at the end of May (1865). At Pisa she
took leave of her beloved Victoire, who remained at her own house. When
she reached France, weakness prevented her intended visit to Paray le
Monial, whence the nuns sent her the following rules for the employment
of "The Holy Hour" in acts of reparation for insults offered to our Lord
by the sins of men:--
{ Short acts.--"Lord, I believe, help
1. Unbelief { thou mine unbelief."
{ Faith.--"Lord, increase our faith," &c.
2. Ridicule, mockery. Secret prayers for the scoffers.
3. Irreverence.--Special reverence towards the Blessed Sacrament.
4. Rash judgments.--Acts of reparation to the Sacred Heart.
5. Unlawful opinion.--Silence upon things settled by authority.
6. Careless life.--Act of offering morning and night against
frivolous and immoderate words and actions.
7. Love of ease and pleasure.--Simple acts of mortification
and self-denial in the course of the day.
Esmeralda was detained for some time by serious illness at Dijon, with
the strange symptoms which, three years later, attended her final
illness, and which were then inexplicable to all around her. On her
recovery, Madame de Trafford met her at Paris, and insisted that she
should follow her to her ch\xE2teau in Touraine. Hence Esmeralda wrote:--
"_Ch\xE2teau de Beaujour, June 1865._--You will have heard from Auntie
of our arrival in this fairy ch\xE2teau.... I have heard much that is
wonderful, but what is most striking is to watch the perfect
simplicity of a life so gifted as Madame de Trafford's--the three
virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity, that faith which can move
mountains, and with it great humility. Madame de Trafford is deeply
interested in any details I give her of the last six years: she was
really attached to Mama. Here, in her ch\xE2teau, she saw that Mama
was dying. She turned suddenly round to Mr. Trafford, who was here,
and said, 'Ah! elle va mourir--sortons.' She could not bear it, and
felt that she must go out into the open air.
"We shall be in London some time next week, with endless affairs to
settle. I quite dread the lawyers' deeds, days and weeks of worry,
never ending and still beginning.
"I think of you once more in your study, as if a new life were
given you, and dear Aunt Augustus in her arm-chair, and everything
bright and beautiful around you."
Of this, her first visit to Beaujour, Esmeralda has left a few
remarkable notes.
"_July 1865._--Madame de Trafford came off to receive us at Paris
as soon as she heard we were on our way. Then, when she heard I was
so ill at Dijon, she often telegraphed there four times a day to
Auntie, to the master of the hotel, to every one, so that they
thought at Dijon that I was quite 'une grande personage.' At last,
when I was better, we went to Beaujour. Madame de Trafford sent to
meet us at Blois, but not her own horses, because they were _trop
vifs_. It was a long drive, though we went at a great pace, for
Madame de Trafford had told the coachman he was to drive as fast as
possible. At last, in the avenue of poplars, the ruts were so deep
that I thought we should have been overturned. Beaujour is a large
square house with wings to it. Madame de Trafford herself opened
the door, with a handkerchief over her head. 'Ah! vous voil\xE0,' she
said, 'c'est bien; il y'a longtemps que je vous attends.'
"The lower part of the ch\xE2teau is unfurnished and vast. This Madame
de Trafford considers to represent chaos, the chaos of nations. On
the upper floor, each room represents a nation. Where she considers
there is something wanting to the nation, there is some piece of
furniture wanting to the room. When she considers that a nation has
too much, the room is over-crowded. Thus in England, Canada,
Gibraltar, and Malta are _de trop_, but India she allows for.
"For us she had a whole suite of rooms newly furnished. I had a
bedroom, boudoir, dressing-room, and bath-room, and Auntie had the
same. They contained every possible luxury. My bed was the most
delicious I ever slept in. Madame de Trafford's power of
second-sight had enabled her to see exactly what I liked best.
"All morning we sat in Madame de Trafford's bedroom or mine, and in
the evening in the sitting-rooms. All day she talked of the future
of Europe. 'Je plane sur l'Europe,' she used to say; and, when she
was about to see anything--'Mon second \xEAtre s'en va.'
"Madame de Trafford is frequently in conflict with the devil. At
such moments she is perfectly awful--quite sublime in her grandeur.
She will repeat _sotto voce_ what he says to her, suggestions of
pride, &c.,--and then, raising herself to her full height, in a
voice of thunder will bid defiance to the evil spirit. She spoke of
the many things in connection with herself which made people say
she was mad, and said she did not feel it safe to have people to
stay with her in consequence. I told her that this would be quite
impossible, for that even in the week which I had spent with her, I
had seen much which others never ought to have the opportunity of
seeing and misjudging. She often spoke most severely of my faults,
and said that I lived too much for myself. 'Prenez garde,' she
said, 'que vous ne passiez pas par cette petite porte, que j'ai vue
une fois.' This was the gate of hell. She saw it in a most awful
vision--the judged souls, 'qu'ils baissent leurs t\xEAtes et passent
par cette petite porte.'
"One day the Cur\xE9 sent up word that the village procession was
coming to the gates of the ch\xE2teau. On such an occasion an altar is
always expected to be prepared. There was a dreadful fuss and
hurry, but it had to be done. A foundation of barrels was covered
with coloured cloths, on this rose a higher platform, and on that
the altar. Workmen were immediately employed to dig up trees and
plant them around it, and Cl\xE9mence was sent to the garden to dig up
all the lilies she could find. When the procession arrived, all was
ready and the people were delighted."
During this and succeeding visits at Beaujour, Madame de Trafford
dictated many remarkable passages in her life to my sister. This she did
walking up and down the room, often with her eyes flaming and her arms
extended, as in a state of possession. At such times she would often
break off her narration and suddenly begin addressing the spirit within
her, which answered her in the strange voice, not her own, which
sometimes came from her lips. Some of the stories she narrated at these
times are of the wildest description, and are probably mere
hallucinations, but a vein of truth runs through them all; and her
complete biography, as I still preserve it, is a most curious document.
Almost all her stories are tinged by her enthusiasm for the Bonaparte
family, with whom she had some mysterious connection. They are mingled
with strange visions and prophecies, many of which have undoubtedly come
true, and her second-sight caused her to foresee, and in one case to
prevent, an attack on the life of Napoleon III. She was constantly
occupied in works of benevolence--in fact, her whole life was a contest
between good and evil. "On joue sur moi," she said, "ce sont les bons et
les mauvais esprits." Sometimes, when Esmeralda happened to go suddenly
into the room, she would find Madame de Trafford, with livid face and
glaring eyes, in horrible personal conflict with an evil spirit--"Prince
de cette terre, adore donc ton Cr\xE9ateur et ton Dieu." In a late Life of
Jeanne Darc, whose early existence amongst spiritual influences is much
like that of Madame de Trafford, Catherine de l'Armagnac, the great
friend of Jeanne, is described as resembling her, and the observation is
made that this extraordinary power remains in the Armagnac family
still. Madame de Trafford was _n\xE9e_ Martine Larmignac (de l'Armagnac).
But it was not only in Jeanne Darc that there was a similarity to the
visions, the voices, the inspirations of Madame de Trafford: exactly the
same appears in the histories of St. Bridget, St. Catherine of Siena,
and Savonarola. The child-prophet Samuel also heard such voices calling
to him.
In her "Life," Madame de Trafford says that she was brought up at
Saumur, where spirits surrounded and talked to her in her childhood.
When she was hungry, she believed that they brought her food. She was
starved and ill-treated by her nominal mother, but her nominal father
was kind to her. She always loved the poor, and they loved her. She once
stole a loaf to give to a poor family. She was dressed in the richest
child's frocks and lace till she was seven years old, then they were
taken away and poor clothes were given to her. In her solitary life at
Saumur she fancied that every one else like herself talked to
spirits....
To escape from a marriage with a French Count, and, as she believed, in
obedience to the spirits, Martine Larmignac went with the family of
Sharpe as governess to England. Here she eventually became the second
wife of Mr. Trafford of Wroxham Hall in Norfolk, but even then she never
expected happiness in her life. She said that a spirit announced to her
before her marriage, "Ton nom pour toi, ta fortune pour les autres, et
_tu_ ne seras jamais heureuse." She had two children by Mr. Trafford.
She foresaw the deaths of both by her second-sight, and had the agony of
watching the fatal hour approaching even when they were well and strong.
During the Crimean war, Madame de Trafford went out to Constantinople
with some Irish Sisters of Charity. She was with them during the
earthquake which overwhelmed Broussa. At the moment when the Emperor
Nicholas is supposed to have died, she alarmed those who were with her
by starting up and in her fearful voice of prophecy exclaiming,
"Nicholas! arr\xEAte toi! tu n'est pas mort: tu as disparu." She always
maintained that the Emperor did not die at the time at which his death
was announced as having taken place.
One day Madame de Trafford was sitting in her room at Paris, when the
spirit told her she was to go--not where she was to go, or why, but
simply that she was to set off. She caught up her bonnet and shawl and
bade her maid Annette (for she had servants then) to follow her. She
went out: she walked: she walked on till she arrived at the
railway-station for going to Lyons (Chemin de Fer de Lyon). She still
felt she was to go on, but she did not know whither, so she said to the
guard that she must pay for her ticket when she left the train, for she
could not tell where she should get out. She went on till the railway
came to an end, and the railway in those days came to an end at Toulon.
Then she got out and went to a hotel and ordered rooms for herself and
her maid Annette, and dinner--for they were famished after the long
journey. But still she felt restless: she was still convinced that she
was not in the right place.
"J'avais arr\xEAt\xE9 un appartement pour une semaine, mais une voix me
dit, 'Pars,' et je savais qu'il y'avait du danger. Je fis appeler
la ma\xEEtresse de l'h\xF4tel. Je lui dis, 'Je vous payerai tout ce que
vous voulez, mais je dois partir. Faites attendre dix minutes la
malle-poste pour Marseilles.' J'arrive \xE0 Marseilles fatigu\xE9e. Je me
repose sur un lit. Il faisait d\xE9j\xE0 nuit. J'appelais ma femme de
chambre et je lui dis, 'Je veux sortir.' Je sors. J'avance. Je
retourne. Ah, mon Dieu! qu'est ce que c'est? J'ai peur: je tremble:
je ne sais pourquoi. 'Annette, suivez-moi,' je dis. J'avance
encore. Je monte les rues \xE9troites de Marseilles. J'arr\xEAte. Oh, mon
Dieu! qu'est que c'est que je vois--une _rue_! Je ne puis plus
avancer, mais qu'est que c'est cette rue? Je tourne: je monte la
rue en fr\xE9missant. 'Annette, suivez-moi.' J'arr\xEAte. Je vois une
maison--une fen\xEAtre. La maison est ferm\xE9e. C'est ici. Je m\xE9sure la
distance de cette maison \xE0 la maison vis-\xE0-vis. Une, deux, trois,
quatre. La police me suivait. Ils soup\xE7onnaient quelque chose, mais
je disais, 'Qu'est que c'est que cela--une maison, une fen\xEAtre?' La
police entre dans la maison, dans cette fen\xEAtre elle y trouva une
machine infernale. Napoleon \xE9tait sauv\xE9: il devait y passer le
lendemain."
From her extraordinary powers of second-sight, supernatural gifts were
attributed by ignorant persons, and to her own great distress, to Madame
de Trafford. The poor around her, both in Touraine and at Paris, often
implored her to heal their sick, insisting that she could do so if she
would, for she had the power.
"J'allais \xE0 la Madeleine un dimanche pour la messe. La fille de mon
cocher avait \xEAte bien malade depuis longtemps. Je demandais \xE0 mon
cocher en descendant \xE0 l'\xE9glise comment se portait sa fille. 'Elle
a demand\xE9 Madame de Trafford,' disait-il en pleurant, 'jusqu'\xE0 son
dernier moment.'--'Comment, Florimond,' lui dis-je, 'que voulez
vous dire?'--'Elle est morte,' disait il en sanglotant: 'elle est
morte hier \xE0 minuit.'--'Ah,' disais-je, et je descendais de la
voiture. 'Florimond, pourquoi ne m'avez-vous pas fait appeler?'
J'entrais \xE0 l'\xE9glise, mais je ne pouvais rester tranquille. Je
sentais que je ne pouvais rester pour la messe, et je sortis. Je
remonte en voiture. 'Florimond, au grand trot,' lui dis-je, 'chez
vous.'--'Chez moi, Madame,' dit-il; 'ah, il est trop tard; ah, si
vous \xE9tiez venue plut\xF4t, Madame, mais le pauvre enfant a d\xE9j\xE0
chang\xE9,' et le pauvre homme pleurait; ah! combien il aimait cet
enfant. Nous arrivons. Je descends vite. Je monte. J'entre. J'ouvre
la porte. D\xE9j\xE0 on avait plac\xE9 un linceul sur le corps de la jeune
fille: on se preparait \xE0 l'ensevelir. La m\xE8re et la garde-malade
\xE9taient dans la chambre. Je fis sortir la garde. J'approche le lit.
Je jette par terre chapeau et mantelle. Je l\xE8ve le linceul. Ah! je
n'avais jamais vu un mort: je ne puis vous dire l'eff\xEAt que cela me
fit. D\xE9j\xE0 depuis si peu d'heures! Il avait treize heures qu'elle
\xE9tait morte, et les levres \xE9taient serr\xE9es: tout le contour de la
bouche \xE9tait d\xE9color\xE9. Je m'approchais. 'Seigneur,' dis-je, 'je ne
vous ai rien demand\xE9 jusqu'\xE0 ce jour: je vous demande aujourd'hui
la vie de cet enfant. Oh, Seigneur, c'est la fille unique, rendez
donc, je vous en supplie, rendez donc cette fille \xE0 sa m\xE8re.' Alors
une voix d'un mauvais esprit me dit, 'Tu peux rendre la vie: tu as
le pouvoir.' Mais je r\xE9pondis, 'Moi, je ne puis rien, je ne suis
rien; mais, Seigneur, vous avez le pouvoir, vous seul pouvez tout;
rendez donc, je vous supplie, rendez donc cette fille \xE0 sa m\xE8re.'
Je passais la main sur la figure de l'enfant: je le prends par la
main. 'L\xE8ve-toi,' lui dis-je, et la jeune fille se levait en
sursaut! mais ses yeux \xE9taient encore ferm\xE9s, et tout doucement
elle dit ces paroles, 'Madame T.. r.. a.. fford.. je.. vais..
dormir.' Les couleurs revenaient tout doucement dans ses joues. Je
me retournais \xE0 la m\xE8re: 'Votre fille dormait,' dis-je. Je quittais
la maison. Je commandais qu'on lui donnait \xE0 manger. 'Florimond,'
dis-je \xE0 mon cocher, 'vous pouvez monter: votre fille n'est pas
morte--elle dort.' Je quittais Paris sur-le-champ."[267]
The generosity of Madame de Trafford knew no bounds. Once she went to
Bourges. She arrived at the hotel and ordered dinner. The waiter said
dinner could not be ready for an hour. She asked what she could do to
occupy the hour. The man suggested that she could visit the cathedral.
She said she had often seen the cathedral of Bourges: "what else?" The
man suggested the convent of Ursuline nuns on the other side of the
street. "Yes," she said, she was much interested in education, she was
much interested in Ursuline nuns--she would go to them.
A nun showed her everything, and she expressed herself much pleased; but
the nun looked very sad and melancholy, and at last Madame de Trafford
asked her what made her look so miserable. "Oh," said the nun, "it is
from a very peculiar circumstance, which you, as a stranger, could not
enter into."--"Never mind," said Madame de Trafford, "tell me what it
is?"--"Well," said the nun, "since you insist upon knowing, many
convents were founded in the Middle Ages by persons who had very
peculiar ideas about the end of the world. They believed that the world
could not possibly endure beyond a certain number of years, and they
founded their institutions with endowments to last for a time which they
believed to be far beyond the possible age of the world. Now our convent
was founded on that principle, and the time till which our convent was
founded comes to an end to-morrow. To-morrow there are no Ursuline nuns
of Bourges: to-morrow we have no convent--we cease to exist."--"Well,"
said Madame de Trafford, "but is there no other house you could have,
where you could be re-established?"--"Oh, yes," said the nun, "there is
another house to be had, a house on the other side of the street, which
would do very well for a convent, but to establish us there would cost
\xA33000. We are under vows of poverty, we have no money, so it is no use
thinking about it."--"Well," said Madame de Trafford, "if you can have
the house, it is a very fortunate circumstance that Mr. Trafford sent me
a bill for \xA33000 this morning: there it is. You can have your convent."
This story my sister had from the nuns of Bourges: it was her
second-sight of the trouble overhanging them which had taken Madame de
Trafford to Bourges.
Amongst the most extraordinary of the dictations of Madame de Trafford
are those which state that she was really the person (accidentally
walking and botanising on those mountains) who appeared out of a dense
fog to the two children of La Salette, and whom they took for a vision
of the Virgin.
People who have heard our histories of Madame de Trafford have often
asked if I have ever seen her myself. I never did. The way in which I
have been brought nearest to her was this. One day I had gone to visit
Italima and Esmeralda at their little lodging in Chester Terrace, in the
most terrible time of their great poverty. I was standing with my sister
in the window, when she said, "Oh, how many people there are that I knew
in the world who would give me five pounds if they knew _what_ it would
be to me now. Oh, how many people there are that would do that, but they
never think of it." Esmeralda thought no one was listening, but Italima,
who was sitting on the other side of the room, and who was then in the
depths of her terrible despair, caught what she was saying, and
exclaimed, "Oh, Esmeralda, that is all over; no one will ever give you
five pounds again as long as you live."
Three days after I went to see them again. While I was there, the
postman's knock was heard at the door, and an odd-looking envelope was
brought up, with a torn piece of paper inside it, such as Madame de
Trafford wrote upon. On it were these words: "As I was sitting in my
window in Beaujour this morning, I heard your voice, and your voice
said, 'Oh, how many people there are that I knew in the world who would
give me five pounds if they knew what it would be to me now! Oh, how
many people there are that would do that, but they never think of it.'
So I just slipped this five-pound note into an envelope, and here it
is." And in the envelope was a five-pound note.
"J'\xE9tais l\xE0; telle chose m'advint." I was present on both these
occasions. I was there when my sister spoke the words, and I was there
when the letter came from Madame de Trafford sending the five-pound
note, and repeating not only my sister's words, but the peculiar form of
reduplication which she so constantly used, and which is so common in
Italy when it is desired to make a thing emphatic.
Esmeralda spent the greater part of the summer at Mrs. Thorpe's, where I
frequently visited her. She was soon deep in affairs of every kind, far
too much for her feeble frame, as she added incessant religious work to
her necessary legal worries. She would go anywhere or bear anything in
order to bring over any one to the Roman Catholic Church, and was
extraordinarily successful in winning converts. Her brother William had
already, I think, been "received," and her little sister-in-law, Mrs.
William Hare, was "received" about this time. Esmeralda's most notable
success, however, had been in the case of Mr. and Mrs. T. G. When she
was living in Sloane Street, she heard accidentally that Mrs. G. was
wavering in her religious opinions. Esmeralda did not know her, but she
drove immediately to her house at ten o'clock in the morning, and by
four o'clock that afternoon not only Mrs. G., but her husband, had been
received into the Roman Catholic Church.
Still, Esmeralda never believed that all those who were without the pale
of her own Church would be lost. She felt certain of the salvation of
every soul that had died in union with God by the indwelling of the Holy
Ghost.
Amongst the persons whom I frequently saw when staying with my sister
were the singular figures, in quaint dress with silver ornaments, with
long hair, and ever booted and spurred as cavaliers, who were known as
the Sobieski Stuarts. Their real names were John Hay Allan and Charles
Stuart Allan, but my sister recognised them by the names they gave
themselves--John Sobieski Stolberg Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart. I
believe that they had themselves an unfailing belief in their royal
blood. Their father was said to be the son of Charles Edward Stuart and
Louise of Stolberg, Countess of Albany, born at Leghorn in 1773. Fear of
"the King of Hanover" was described as the reason for intrusting him as
a baby to Admiral Allan, whose frigate was off the coast. Allan brought
up the boy as his own, and he lived to marry an English lady and leave
the two sons I have mentioned. The elder brother died in 1872, and the
younger on board a steamer off Bordeaux on Christmas Eve, 1880.
Upon her return to England, Esmeralda found in completion the beautiful
monument which she had caused to be erected to her mother in the
Catholic Cemetery at Kensal Green. It represents "Our Lady of
Sorrows"--a figure of life-size, seated under a tall marble cross, from
which the crown of thorns is hanging.
From Esmeralda's private meditations of this summer I extract:--
"_July 15, 1865._--Ask for the gift to sorrow only for our Blessed
Lord's sake, that truly we may share the divine sorrow of His
Blessed Mother, and mingle our tears with hers on Calvary at the
foot of the cross."
"_August 20, 1865._--Ask for the grace of filial love. Strive to
overcome all evil inclinations that are an impediment to filial
love, amongst which one of the chief is self-conceit. Make acts of
reparation for all the selfconceit of past life. When thoughts of
self-conceit enter, let us shut the gates of our hearts against
them, and make an act of profound humility and sorrow, seeing our
own nothingness and baseness. We must seek for filial love by
laying aside all confidence in self, and placing all our confidence
in God alone; for all that proceeds from ourselves is corrupt, and
our best actions have no merit unless performed solely for God's
greater glory, without regard to ourselves."
"_August 27, 1865._--Lay at the foot of the cross all secret doubts
of God's guidance. It is this secret instinct which is one of the
great hindrances to the reign of Jesus in our souls. Let us make an
act of the will--'Lord, I believe that Thou lovest to make the
souls of men Thy tabernacle; help Thou mine unbelief. I believe
that Thou lovest me, in spite of my unworthiness and infidelity. I
am blind and poor and naked; I have nothing of myself to offer Thee
but what is corrupt and evil, but Thou hast given me by inheritance
all the poverty and humility of Thy Blessed Mother, all her
sorrows,--and these I offer Thee--Thy gift I give back to Thee. O
my Lord, let me learn to know Thee more and more.'"
END OF VOL. II.
_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_Edinburgh and London_
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
VOL. III
[Illustration: Anne F. M. L. Hare]
From a portrait by Swinton.]
THE STORY OF
MY LIFE
BY
AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
AUTHOR OF "MEMORIALS OF A QUIET LIFE,"
"THE STORY OF TWO NOBLE LIVES,"
ETC. ETC.
VOLUME III
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1896
[_All rights reserved_]
_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_At the Ballantyne Press_
CONTENTS
PAGE
ENGLISH PLEASURES AND ROMAN TRIALS 1
LAST YEARS OF ESMERALDA 233
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CONSPIRACY 273
LAST YEARS WITH THE MOTHER 314
INDEX TO VOLS. I., II. AND III. 421
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. III
ANNE F. M. L. HARE. _From Swinton._ (_Photogravure_) _Frontispiece_
PAGE
THE CORONATION CHAIR, WESTMINSTER 4
BAMBOROUGH CASTLE 9
THE SUNDIAL GARDEN, FORD 12
THE FOUNTAIN, FORD 13
FORD CASTLE, THE TERRACE 28
ELIZABETH, LADY STUART DE ROTHESAY. _From a miniature_
_by Miss A. Dixon._ (_Photogravure_) _To face_ 32
THE PASS OF BRACCO 52
AT PORTO VENERE 53
LA SPINA, PISA 62
CONTADINA, VALLEY OF THE SACCO 99
THE BRIDGE OF AUGUSTUS, NARNI 101
THE MEDI\xC6VAL BRIDGE, NARNI 102
VIEW FROM THE BOBOLI GARDENS, FLORENCE 104
HOLMHURST, FROM THE GARDEN 108
LADY AUGUSTA STANLEY. (_Photogravure_) _To face_ 110
ALTON BARNES CHURCH 111
BODRYDDAN 124
S. REMY 137
FROM MAISON S. FRAN\xC7OIS, CANNES 138
BOCCA WOOD, CANNES 140
MAISON S. FRAN\xC7OIS, CANNES 141
MARIA HARE. (_Line engraving_) _To face_ 142
CAGNES 145
ANTIBES 147
LE PUY 150
ROYAT 151
IN THE DEAN'S GARDEN, CANTERBURY 156
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, DEAN OF WESTMINSTER. (_Photogravure_)
_To face_ 158
COURTYARD, DEANERY, WESTMINSTER 160
PALACE GARDEN, PETERBOROUGH 163
FONTAINES 184
ARC DE S. CESAIRE, ALISCAMPS, ARLES 185
AT SAVONA 186
SESTRI 189
CASTLE OF ESTE 227
PETRARCH'S TOMB, ARQUA 230
TOMB OF THE COUNT OF CASTELBARCO, VERONA 231
ESMERALDA'S GRAVE 271
MARY STANLEY. (_Photogravure_) _To face_ 282
JOIGNY 316
PORTE D'ARROUX, AUTUN 321
FORD CASTLE, THE LIBRARY 325
BAR-LE-DUC 334
BRIDGE OF BAR-LE-DUC 335
MANTUA 337
VICENZA 339
VICENZA FROM MONTE BERICO 340
THE PRATO DELLA VALLE, PADUA 341
SIENA 342
S. GEMIGNANO 343
THE H\xD4TEL DE LONDRES DURING THE FLOOD 349
S. ANTONIO, PISA, DURING THE FLOOD 355
VIEW FROM THE VIA GREGORIANA 361
NEMI 369
TIVOLI 371
BRACCIANO 375
GRAVE OF AUGUSTUS W. HARE, ROME 377
FROM THE LOGGIA DEI LANZI 379
PIAZZA S. DOMENICO, BOLOGNA 381
CLUNY 384
CLOISTER OF FONTENAY 385
ST. MARTIN'S, CANTERBURY 394
HENRY ALFORD, DEAN OF CANTERBURY. (_Photogravure_)
_To face_ 394
THE CHURCH LANE, HURSTMONCEAUX 410
XII
ENGLISH PLEASURES AND ROMAN TRIALS
"The holidays of joy are the vigils of sorrow."--_Proverb._
"Dear friend, not every herb puts forth a flower;
Nor every flower that blossoms fruit doth bear;
Nor hath each spoken word a virtue rare;
Nor every stone in earth its healing power."
--_Folgore da San Gemignano._
"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying."--HERRICK.
We were for some time at the Deanery at Westminster in the summer of
1865. I think it was then that Archbishop Manning's consecration took
place. I heard much about it, though I was not there. Manning looked
like the white marble statue of a saint, especially when the
consecration was over and he moved slowly down the church, giving the
benediction. Newman was there also, and looked even more statuesque
still. Wonderful was the selfcontrolling power which both these priests
had. Many years before, as the Stanleys were going into St. Margaret's,
there was a scuffle, and a huge black cat was driven out of the church.
No one thought any more about it, and nobody saw any more of it, till,
just as Newman was coming forward within the altar-rail, and was in the
act of reading the Communion Service, the black cat sprang from one of
the rafters of the roof, and came crashing down upon him, falling upon
the hem of his white surplice. Newman's face never changed a muscle, and
quietly, reverently, and slowly he went on reading the service without
moving: but it must have seemed like a demon.[268]
During this visit to London I frequently saw, at the house of Lady
Franklin (widow of the Arctic voyager) the gentle and pleasing Queen
Dowager (Emma) of the Sandwich Islands.[269] Her complexion was
copper-coloured, but she was very good-looking, and simply but
handsomely attired in the dress of an English widow lady. She had
greatly looked forward to the fogs of England, having been used to
nothing but the blue or copper-coloured sky of the Pacific, and was
dreadfully disappointed when she saw the resplendent blue sky of the
glorious day on which she arrived at Southampton. "Why, I might just as
well have been in the Sandwich Islands." She went over Westminster Abbey
with far more knowledge of the tombs and persons they commemorate than I
have seen in European royalties with whom I have visited the Abbey in
later days. In stepping back to allow the Queen to inspect the
Coronation Chair, my mother had a bad fall on the pavement of Edward the
Confessor's Chapel, and the concern and amiability she showed made her
very attractive.
Mr. Evans, of St. Andrew's, Wells Street, preached in Westminster Abbey
at the evening service whilst we were at the Deanery. He preached on the
destruction of the Temple, applying it to Westminster--that we were not
to be taken in by "the grandeur of the building, the solemn distances of
the choir, the misty shadows of the roof, the windows by painters who
dipped their pencils in the rainbow," &c. He described the different
Jewish temples; the first, rising from the heart of David and the hand
of Solomon; the second, of Zerubabel; the third built by Herod, and
"certainly _he_ was no saint."
[Illustration: THE CORONATION CHAIR, WESTMINSTER.[270]]
After the sermon was over I rushed upstairs, and was preaching it to the
family with all its quaintnesses, when I saw Mary Stanley making most
unaccountable faces, and turning round, I found Mr. Evans close behind
me. The little dark figure had hirpled itself into the room and was
listening all the time.
Madame Mohl (whom I have described at Paris in 1858) was staying at the
Deanery, where Arthur and Augusta were very fond of her, and always
called her "Molina." She was most amusing.
"When I was leaving Paris, I asked my friend M. Bourdon whether I
could take anything to England for him, and he said that he was
obliged to me, and that if I would take a very valuable Indian
shawl, he would avail himself of my offer. However, before I left
Paris, my little friend Barbara was starting for England, and she
said to me that part of her box was empty, and that she could take
anything I wanted, so I was very glad to give her M. Bourdon's
Indian shawl. Now Barbara was in that dreadful accident at
Staplehurst, and so were all her boxes, and when the train went
over, the boxes went down into the water, and all the things were
spoilt. At first I hoped it was not so bad, but 'the fact is that
the shawl _is_ spoilt,' wrote Barbara to me, and ever since that M.
Bourdon and I have been _en froid_, which I am very sorry for, as
we used to be such good friends."
"Oh, that will soon pass," I said.
"No, I am afraid it will _not_," said Madame Mohl, "for remember we
are _en froid_, not merely _en delicatesse_. Being _en delicatesse_
is easily remedied. 'Je suis en delicatesse avec maman,' said a
young lady to me.... A little while ago I went to see the famous
author Jules Janin. He could not attend to me. He was sitting at a
table covered with papers and was writing notes. Messengers went
off with the notes, and almost immediately came back with the
answers, which were evidently written a very short distance off.
This went on for some time, till at last Jules Janin looked up and
said, 'Je vous demande mille pardons: faites bien d'excuses,
Madame: c'est que je suis en delicatesse avec ma femme.'"
One day Madame Mohl told me:--
"There was a handsome young woman married to a man who was in her
own, which was a very lowly station of life, but after her marriage
she consented to go a journey by sea with a family which she had
previously lived with. On the way the ship was wrecked, and she was
one of the few persons saved. It was a desolate coast, and one of
the officers who was saved with her fell in love with her--she was
a very pretty young woman--and married her. Eventually they
returned to England, and he died, leaving her a very fine place and
a large fortune. Some years after, her favourite maid told her that
she was going to be married, and, being attached to her maid, she
desired her to bring her betrothed that she might see what he was
like. When he came in, she recognised her own first husband. He did
not know her again, but going upstairs, she put on an old shawl,
and coming down said, 'Do you remember that shawl?'--'Yes,' he
said, 'it is the shawl which I gave to my wife on our
wedding-day.' Then the lady revealed herself and took her husband
back; but he was a low man, and led her an awful life and drank
dreadfully; but on the whole that was a good thing perhaps, for it
soon brought on delirium tremens, so that he died and she got rid
of him. 'What a fool she was ever to let him know who she was!' was
what I felt when I heard the story."
"Well, I suppose she wanted to save her maid from marrying a man
who was married already," I said; "it would have been very wrong if
she had not."
"So the Bishop of Winchester seemed to think," said Madame Mohl,
"for he was there when the story was told, and he was very much
shocked and very grave, and he said, 'I think, Madame, that you
should recollect our life is only a railway, and that it does not
signify so much if we are comfortable in the railway, as at the
home to which we are going.' But I told him I would rather be
comfortable in the railway as well, and that I would certainly not
have been such a fool--and the Bishop of Winchester thought I was a
very wicked person."
In August and September my mother was very well, and had a succession of
visitors, so that I was able to be away from her.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Hallingbury, August 10, 1865._--The Archer Houblons' carriage met
me at Bishop Stortford. This is a great red brick house in a large
park, comfortable inside, but perfectly filled with _oggetti_--too
many things. The country round is dull, except 'the forest,'
Hatfield Broadoake, which is a grand possession for a private
family--eight miles of green glades, old oaks, gnarled thorn-trees,
and a small lake."
"_Mainsforth, August 13._--I went to Cambridge on Friday, and saw
the dear Hurstmonceaux Rectory pictures, which no one seemed to
admire as we did, and the Hurstmonceaux books in Trinity College
Library, where nobody ever reads them. I dined with the Public
Orator, and the next day went to Ely.... The Cathedral is
beautifully situated, a green sloping lawn with fine trees on one
side, and it stands in a group of picturesque and venerable
buildings--Deanery, Palace, and Grammar-school."
"_Bamborough Castle, August 19._--My mother will be well able to
imagine me in this old castle: it is such a pleasure that she knows
it all. As we drove up the hill, I could see dear old Mrs. Liddell
sitting in her usual place in the great window of the
Court-room.... I walked till dinner with Mr. Liddell on those
delicious open sands, fitful gleams coming on with the sunset over
Holy Island, and the sea covered with herring-boats. Mr. Liddell
talked of his youth. 'The old Duchess of Gordon used to lead the
_ton_ in my day--so exclusive it was! She took care to marry all
her daughters well. With regard to their looks she said, "Give me
eyes and I will supply the rest." Every one used to struggle to get
into Almack's. When Lady Jersey was abroad, she heard of some
"little people" being admitted, and set off home directly, saying,
"I am obliged to come back to keep you all from going wrong." Lady
Londonderry and Lady Jersey were rival queens, and I am afraid
rejoiced in each other's misfortunes when their daughters married
ill.'
[Illustration: BAMBOROUGH CASTLE.]
"Yesterday we went to Holy Island--Charlotte, Mrs. George Liddell,
Miss Parke, and I--crossing in a boat the emerald green waves, upon
which great seagulls were floating in the most bewitching manner.
We had luncheon in St. Cuthbert's Abbey, and by the time we were
ready to return, the sea was like a lake, the lights most lovely in
the still water, and the great castle looming against a yellow sky.
We have had a very pleasant evening since. Mr. Liddell has just
been telling me of an old man at Easington who said that the Bible
was like a round of beef, it was always 'coot and coom again.'"
"_Ford Cottage, August 22._--Lady Waterford had sent a kind
invitation for the whole party at Bamborough to come to luncheon,
so they drove with me here--sixteen miles. As we came down upon
Ford all was changed. The gingerbread castle of Udolpho had marched
back three centuries, and is now a grand massive building in the
Audley End style, but with older towers. The ugly village had moved
away from its old site to a hillside half a mile off, and
picturesque cottages now line a broad avenue, in the centre of
which is a fountain with a tall pillar surmounted by an angel.
Schools for boys and girls have sprung up, a school for washing,
adult schools, a grand bridge of three tall arches over the dens:
it is quite magical.
"The cottage is radiant--gorgeous beds of flowers, smoothly shaven
miniature lawns, and large majolica vases, while raised stands of
scarlet geraniums look in at the windows. Dear old Lady Stuart
received us, and then Lady Waterford came in. I felt rather shy at
bringing such an immense party, but I believe the visit was really
welcome to her, and all the guests were completely fascinated by
her beauty, her kindness, and her goodness.... The castle will be
magnificent inside. The ghost room is opened and a secret staircase
found at the very spot from which the ghost was said to emerge. The
Bamborough party went away after tea, and we had a delightful
evening, Lady Waterford singing and talking by turns. 'Here are my
two little choristers,' she said, showing her last picture. 'I
painted them against the grass in early spring: it has all the
effect of a gold ground. They like coming to me. They are the only
children who have come to me who have not been sick: after the
first hour, all the others used to turn perfectly livid and say
"I'm sick." It was something in the room, and having to look
fixedly at one object. Lady Marion Alford says it was just the same
with the children who came to her.... I have often seen skies like
this in my drawing, but I suppose others don't. I asked a little
schoolgirl that came to me if she had ever seen anything like it.
"No, _never_," she said.... I should like my fountain drawn either
with a black cloud behind the angel or with a very deep blue sky; I
have seen it both ways.... That is a sketch of a French town we
went through, where the arms of the town are three owls. We asked a
woman what it meant, and she said it was on account of a sermon.
Some one betted the priest that he would not bring an owl into his
sermon. So he preached on Dives and Lazarus, and, after describing
the end of the rich man, said "Il bou, Il bou, Il bou" (He boils,
boils, boils).... When Ruskin came here, he said I would never
study or take pains, so I copied a print from Van Eyck in
Indian-ink; it took me several months. When I took Ruskin into my
school he only said, "Well, I expected you would have done
something better than that."'
"But, in spite of Ruskin, my mother would be perfectly enchanted
with the schools, which are glorious. The upper part of the walls
is entirely covered with large pictures, like frescoes, by Lady
Waterford, of the 'Lives of Good Children'--Cain and Abel, Abraham
and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his Brethren, &c., all being
really portraits of the Ford children, so that little Cain and Abel
sit underneath their own picture, &c. The whole place is unique.
The fountain in the centre of the village is worthy of Perugia,
with its tall red granite pillar and angel figure standing out
against the sky. All the cottages have their own brilliant gardens
of flowers, beautiful walks have been made to wander through the
wooded dene below the castle, and miles of drive on Flodden, with
its wooded hill and Marmion's Well. The whole country is wild and
poetical--deep wooded valleys, rugged open heaths, wind-blown
pine-woods, and pale blue distances of Cheviot Hill; and Lady
Waterford is just the person to live in it, gleaning up and making
the most of every effect, every legend, every ballad, and
reproducing them with her wonderful pencil, besides which her large
income enables her to restore all the old buildings and benefit all
the old people who have the good fortune to be within her reach."
[Illustration: THE SUNDIAL GARDEN, FORD.[271]]
[Illustration: THE FOUNTAIN, FORD.[272]]
"_Ford Cottage, August 24._--I have been walking in the dene to-day
with Lady Stuart. She narrates very comically the effect which her
two beautiful daughters produced when they came out into the world,
and the way in which she saw a lady at a ball gaze at them, and
then at her, and heard her say, '_How_ beautiful they are, and
isn't it strange, _considering_?' Some one spoke of how Blake the
artist used to go into a summer-house with Mrs. Blake, and practise
for the Adam and Eve of his pictures, and how one day some visitors
came, and it was very awkward. 'It would not have been so with the
real Adam and Eve,' said Lady Stuart, 'for they could never dread
any droppers-in.' In her anecdotes of old times and people, she is
quite inexhaustible. Here are some of them:--
"'Yes, we were at George the Fourth's coronation; a great many
other ladies and I went with Lady Castlereagh--she, you know, was
the minister's wife--by water in one of the great state barges. We
embarked at Hungerford Stairs, and we got out at a place called
Cotton Garden, close to Westminster Hall. Lord Willoughby was with
us. When we got out, we were looking about to see where all the
ministers lived, &c., when somebody came up and whispered something
to Lord Willoughby. He exclaimed "Good God!" and then, apologising
for leaving us, went off in a hurry looking greatly agitated. Queen
Caroline was at that moment knocking at the door of the Abbey. She
had got Lady Anne Barnard, who was with her, to get her a peer's
ticket, which was given her, but it was not countersigned, and they
would not admit her. She was in despair. She stood on the platform
and wrung her hands in a perfect agony. At last Alderman Wood, who
was advising her, said, "Really your Majesty had better retire."
The people who had tickets for the Abbey, and who were to go in by
that door, were all waiting and pressing for entrance, and when the
Queen went away, there were no acclamations for her; the people
thought she had no business to come to spoil their sport.[273]
"'She had been married twenty-five years to the King then. They
offered her \xA3100,000 a year to stay quietly abroad, but she would
come back at once and assert her rights as a queen. She died of
that Coronation-day. She went home and was very ill. Then came a
day on which she was to go to one of the theatres. It was placarded
all about that she was to appear, and her friends tried to get up a
little reaction in her favour. She insisted on going, and she was
tolerably well received, but when she came home she was worse, and
she died two days after.
"'The Duchesse de Berri[274] thought of marrying George IV. after
her Duke was dead. People began to talk to her about marrying
again. "Oh dear, no," she said, "I shall never marry again. At
least there is only one person--there is the King of England. How
funny it would be to have two sons, one the King of France and the
other King of England--yes, and the King of England the cadet of
the two." I never had courage to tell George IV. what she said,
though I might have done it. He once said to me, when his going to
France was talked of, "Oh dear, no, I don't want to see them. Poor
Louis XVIII., he was a friend of mine, but then he's dead; and as
for Charles X., I don't want to see him. The Dauphine! yes, I pity
her; and the Duchesse de Bern, she's dreadful ugly, ain't she?" I
wish I had said to him, "Yes, but she does not wish your Majesty to
think so."
"'I went down one day to St. Cloud to see the Duchesse de Berri;
she had been pleased to express a wish to see me. While I was
there, her son rushed in.[275] "Come now," she said, "kiss the hand
of Madame l'Ambassadrice. But what have you got there?" she said.
"Oh, je vous apportais mes papillons," said he, showing some
butterflies in a paper case, and then, with an air of pride, "C'est
une assez belle collection." The Duchesse laughed at them, and the
boy looked so injured and hurt, that I said, "But it is a very nice
collection indeed." Many years afterwards, only three years ago,
Lou and I were at Venice, and we went to dine with the Chambords.
He remembered all about it, and laughed, and said, "Apr\xE8s, je
regrettais mes papillons." For it was only a fortnight after I saw
them that the Revolution took place, and the family had to fly, and
of course the butterflies in their paper case were left behind in
the flight. We were in the Pyrenees then, and indeed when the
Duchesse sent for me, it was because she heard I was going there,
and she wished to tell me about the places she had been to, and to
ask me to engage her donkey-woman.
"'When they were at Venice, the Chambords lived in one palace, a
very fine one, and the Duchesse de Berri in another farther down
the canal, and the Duchess of Parma in a third. I did not see the
Duchesse de Berri, though I should have liked to have done so. She
was married then to a Marchese Lucchesi, by whom she had a quantity
of grown-up sons and daughters. They were dreadfully
extravagant--not Lucchesi, he never was, but she was, and her
sons-in-law. The Comte de Chambord paid her debts over and over
again, but at last her things were obliged to be sold.
"'When we went to dine with the Chambords, we were warned that we
must not allow anything to pass, or we should not get any dinner.
We went at half-past four, and the soup came, and the Duke (de
Bordeaux) was talking to me at that time, and, while I was
listening, the soup was carried away, and so it was with nearly
everything else. The party was almost entirely composed of French
exiles. Lou wrote down their names at the time, but I have
forgotten them now. At seven our gondola was ordered, and it came
too late, the royalties were so punctual. The Duke and Duchess got
up, and saying, "I wish you a pleasant evening," went out, and then
we had nothing for it but to go away. An old Venetian gentleman
helped us out of the scrape, and gave us a lift home in his
gondola, and very much aghast our gondoliers were when they met us
in another boat upon the canal, while they were rowing with all
their might to fetch us away. The royal family used to go in the
evening to an island, which the Duke had bought for them to have
exercise upon.
"'They would never do for France: they have not the manners. She is
ugly,[276] and then she dresses so badly--no, she would never do.
The only one who would do out of both sets is Aumale: he is really
a fine prince. The Comte de Paris would of course naturally come
first, but the Duke of Orleans used to say, 'I will never be a king
by anything but popular election,' and that is against his family
succeeding. All the members of the family _look up_ to Aumale.
"'Did you ever hear about the old Duc de Coigny and his arm? His
arm was shot during the Moscow campaign, and when it was amputated,
numbers of others having their limbs taken off at the same time, he
exclaimed, "Oh mon cher bras, qui m'a si bien servi, je ne puis
jamais me s\xE9parer de ce cher bras," and he insisted on its being
found for him, which was highly inconvenient, and packed it up in a
portmanteau, which he carried before him on horseback during the
whole of the return. The soldiers quite hated that arm; however,
the Duke insisted upon it. At last, as he was crossing a ford in a
carriage, the portmanteau rolled off his knee on to his foot and
hurt it exceedingly, upon which he was so exasperated that in a fit
of rage he opened the carriage door and kicked it out into the
river. When he got to his night quarters, however, the Duke was in
absolute despair--"Oh mon pauvre bras! mon pauvre cher bras!" He
had wished it to be buried with him; for was it not his most
faithful servant? he said. However, none of the soldiers were
inclined to go and fish it up for him, and since then, poor man, he
has had to be buried without it.
"'The wife of this Duc de Coigny was Henrietta Dalrymple Hamilton,
who brought him large estates. Her parents were miserable at her
marrying a foreigner, from the idea that the estates would
certainly then go out of the family; but of all his children only
two daughters survive; one is Lady Manvers, and the other married
Lord Stair, and thus brought back the estates to the elder branch
of the Dalrymples. The Duc died last year, chiefly of grief for the
death of another daughter who had married a Frenchman. His sister
married Mar\xE9chal Sebastiani and had five daughters. One of these
was the murdered Duchesse de Praslin.
"'Madame de Praslin was one of a society that there was in Paris
then, who used to laugh at anything like spiritualism or warnings
from another world. Madame de Rabuteau was her great friend and
partisan in these opinions. One day Madame de Praslin went with her
husband to Choiseul Praslin. Her room was magnificent, and she
slept in a great velvet bed. In the middle of the night, she awoke
with a sense of something moving in the room, and, lifting herself
up in bed, saw, by the expiring embers of the fire, a figure, and
as it turned, she saw, as it were, something green. She scarcely
knew whether she was asleep or awake, and, to convince herself,
stretched out her hand and encountered something cold, hard, and
which felt like steel. Then, widely awake, she saw the figure
recede and vanish out of the room. She felt a thrill of horror and
began to reason with herself. "Well," she said, "I have always
opposed and laughed at belief in these things, and now one of them
has come to _me_. Now what can it mean? It can only mean that I am
soon to die, and it has come as a warning."
"'Soon after Madame de Praslin returned to Paris, and at the house
of Madame de Rabuteau she met all her former intimates. "Oh," said
Madame de Rabuteau as she entered the room, "I am so glad you have
come to help me to laugh at all these people, who are holding forth
upon revelations from another world."--"Indeed, I think we had
better talk of something else," said Madame de Praslin; "let us
talk of something else."--"Why, my dear, you used to be such an
ardent defender of mine," said Madame de Rabuteau, "are _you_ going
over to the other side?" But Madame de Praslin resolutely refused
the subject and "parlons d'autre chose" was all that could be
extracted from her. When the rest of the company was gone, Madame
de Rabuteau said, "Well, now, what is it? what can have come over
you this evening? why do you not laugh at their
manifestations?"--"Simply because I have had one myself," replied
very gravely Madame de Praslin, and she told what had happened,
saying that she believed it to indicate her approaching death.
Madame de Rabuteau tried to argue her out of the impression, but in
vain. Madame de Praslin went home, and a few days after she was
murdered in the H\xF4tel Sebastiani.
"'When the Duke was taken, search was made, and amongst his things
were found a green mask and a dagger. He had evidently intended to
murder the Duchess at Choiseul Praslin, and it had been no spirit
that she saw.
"'Madame de Feuch\xE8res was originally a Miss Sophia Dawes, the
daughter of Mr. Dawes, who was a shipbuilder at Ryde and a very
respectable man. The Duc de Bourbon[277] saw her somewhere and took
a great fancy to her, and, to facilitate an intimacy with her, he
married her to his aide-de-camp, the Baron de Feuch\xE8res. But M. de
Feuch\xE8res was a very honourable man. When the marriage was proposed
to him, the Duke paying the dowry, he took her for a daughter of
the Duke, and when he found out the real state of things, he
separated from her at once, leaving all her fortune in her hands.
It was supposed that Madame de Feuch\xE8res was in the Orleans
interest, and that therefore the Duke would leave everything to the
Duc d'Aumale. I must say for the Duchesse de Berri that she was
exceedingly good-natured about that. When there was a question
about the Feuch\xE8res being received at the palace, she advocated it,
for the sake of _ma tante_,[278] and Madame de Feuch\xE8res came. But
when the Revolution took place and Charles X. fled, the feelings of
the Duc de Bourbon were changed; all his loyalty was roused, and he
said that he must follow _son roi_. Nothing that Madame de
Feuch\xE8res could say could change this resolution. They said that he
hanged himself (August 27, 1830), immediately after hearing of the
escape, but few believed it; most thought that Madame de Feuch\xE8res
had done it--unjustly perhaps, because, on arriving at an inn where
they were to sleep, the Duke observed that the landlord looked very
dispirited, and knowing the cause, said, "I am afraid you have had
some sad trouble in your family besides all these terrible public
events."--"Yes, Monseigneur," said the man, "my brother hanged
himself yesterday morning."--"And how did he do that?" said the
Duke. "Oh, Monseigneur, he hanged himself from the bolt of the
shutter."--"No, that is impossible," said the Duke, "for the man
was too tall." Then the landlord exactly described the process by
which his brother had effected his purpose, raising himself upon
his knees, &c., and it was precisely in that way that the body of
the Duke was found in the ch\xE2teau of St. Leu. Still most people
thought that Madame de Feuch\xE8res had murdered him in his bed, and
then hung up his body to avoid suspicion.[279]
"'It was said that the Duke could not have hanged himself, because
he had hurt his hand and could not use it, and so could not have
tied himself up, but Lord Stuart always said that he was very
thankful that his evidence was not called for, because he had met
the Duke at a dinner-party a little while before, when he showed
that he could use his hand by carving a large turkey beautifully.
That dinner-party was at St. Leu. Madame Adelaide had wanted to buy
St. Leu, but the Duke said, "No; yet never mind; some day it will
come into your family all the same." The Duke sat by Madame
Adelaide at dinner and carved the turkey. "Pray do not attempt it,
Monseigneur," she said, "for it will be too much for you," but he
was able to do it very well.
"'In consequence of the Duke dying when he did, the Duc d'Aumale
got the Cond\xE9 property. Madame de Feuch\xE8res came to England, and
her brother, Mr. Dawes, took a place for her near Highcliffe. I
never called on her, but Lord Stuart did. I remember Bemister, a
carpenter, being sent for by her, and coming to me afterwards. He
told me, "I felt very queer when she told me to hang up a picture
of the Duke on the wall of her room, and before I thought what I
was about I said, 'And where will _you_ hang _he_?'"--"And what in
the world did she answer?" I asked. "Well," he said, "I was looking
very foolish, and she said, 'Why, you don't think I really _did_
it, do you?'"--"And what did you really think, Bemister?" I said.
"Why, I don't think she _did_ it," answered Bemister, "but I think
she worrited of him into doing it himself," and I suspect this was
pretty near the truth.'
"I sleep at the castle, and at 10 A.M. go down to the cottage,
which looks radiant in its bowers of flowers and shrubs, with a
little burn tossing in front. Lady Waterford reads the lessons and
prayers to the household (having already been to church herself).
Then comes breakfast in the miniature dining-room opening into the
miniature garden, during which she talks ceaselessly in her
wonderfully poetical way. Then I sit a little with Lady
Stuart--then draw, while Lady Waterford has her choristers and
other boy models to sit to her. At two is luncheon, then we go out,
Lady Stuart in a donkey-chair. Yesterday we went all over Flodden;
to-day we are going to Yetholm, the gipsy capital. At half-past
seven we dine, then Lady Waterford paints, while I tell them
stories, or _anything_, for they like to hear everything, and then
Lady Waterford sings, and tells me charming things in return. Here
are some snatches from her:--
"'I wish you had seen Grandmama Hardwicke.[280] She was such a
beautiful old lady--very little, and with the loveliest skin, and
eyes, and hair; and she had such beautiful manners, so graceful and
so gracious. Grandmama lived till she was ninety-five. She died in
'58. I have two oak-trees in the upper part of the pleasaunce which
were planted by her. When she was in her great age, all her
grandchildren thought they would like to have oak-trees planted by
her, and so a row of pots was placed in the window-sill, and her
chair was wheeled up to it, to make it as little fatigue as
possible, and she dropped an acorn into each of the pots. Her old
maid, Maydwell, who perfectly doted upon her, and was always afraid
of her overdoing herself, stood by with a glass of port wine and a
biscuit, and when she had finished her work, she took the wine,
and passing it before the pots, said, "Success to the oak-trees,"
and drank it. I am always so sorry that Ludovic Lindsay (Lord
Lindsay's eldest boy) should not have seen her. Lord Lindsay wished
it: he wished to have carried on further the recollection of a
person whose grandfather's wife was given away by Charles the
Second; but it was Maydwell who prevented it, I believe, because
she was too proud of her mistress, and did not think her looking
quite so well then as she had looked some years before. The fact
was, I think, that some of the little Stuarts had been taken to see
her, and as they were going out they had been heard to say, "How
_awfully_ old she looks."
"'Her father, Lord Balcarres, was what they call "out in the '45,"
and his man was called on to swear that he had not been present at
a time when he was. The man swore it and Lord Balcarres got off.
When they were going away safe he said to his man, "Well now, how
_could_ you swear such a lie!"--"Because I had rather trust my
sowle to God," said the man, "than your body to deevils." The first
wife of Lord Balcarres's father[281] was Mauritia of Nassau, who
was given away by Charles II. When they came to the altar, the
bridegroom found that he had totally forgotten the ring. In a great
fright he asked if one of the bystanders could lend him a ring, and
a friend gave him one. He did not find out then that it bore the
device of a death's-head and cross-bones, but Mauritia of Nassau
found it out afterwards: she considered it a prophecy of evil, and
she died within the year.
"'When he was almost an old man, Lord Balcarres went to stay with
old Lady Keith. There were a quantity of young ladies in the house,
and before he came Lady Keith said, "Now there is this old
gentleman coming to stay, and I particularly wish that you should
all endeavour to make yourselves as pleasant to him as you can."
They all agreed, but a Miss Dalrymple[282] said, "Well, you may all
do what you like, but I'll bet you anything you please that I'll
make him like me the best of all of us," and so she did; she made
him exclusively devoted to her all the while he was there; but she
never thought of anything more than this, and when he asked her to
marry him, she laughed at the very idea. He was exceedingly
crestfallen, but when he went away he made a will settling
everything he possessed upon this Miss Dalrymple. Somehow she heard
of this, and said, "Well then, after all, he must really care for
me, and I _will_ marry him," and she did. He was fifty-eight then,
but they had eleven children. When Lady Balcarres was an old woman,
she was excessively severe, indeed she became so soon after her
marriage. One day some one coming along the road towards her house
met a perfect procession of children of all ages, from three
upwards, walking one behind the other, and the eldest boy, who came
first, gipsy fashion carrying the baby on his back. They were the
eleven children of Lady Balcarres making their escape from their
mother, with the intention of going out to seek their own fortunes
in the world. It was one of the family of this Lady Balcarres who
was the original of Lucy Ashton in the "Bride of Lammermoor." The
story is all true. The Master of Ravenswood was Lord Rutherford.
She rode to church on a pillion behind her brother that he might
not feel how her heart was beating.
"'In consequence of Grandmama Hardwicke's great age, people used to
be astonished at my aunt Lady Mexborough, when nearly eighty,
running upstairs and calling out 'Mama.' When my aunt Lady Somers
was at Bath, she sent for a doctor, and he said to her, "Well, my
lady, at _your_ age, you cannot expect to be ever much
better."--"At _my_ age!" she said, "why, my mother only died last
year." The doctor was perfectly petrified with amazement. "It is
the most wonderful thing," he said, "that I ever heard in my life."
My grandmother's sisters were very remarkable women; one was Lady
Margaret Lindsay, the other was Lady Anne Barnard. Lady Anne was
the real authoress of "Auld Robin Gray." She loved the tune,[283]
but the original words were bad and unfit for a lady to sing, so
she wrote, "Auld Robin Gray," though some one else has always had
the credit of it.'
[Illustration: FORD CASTLE, THE TERRACE.[284]]
"We have been walking this afternoon through the cornfields towards
Etal. Lady Waterford recalled how Lady Marion Alford had shown her
that all the sheaves leaning towards one another were like hands
praying. To-night Mr. Williams dined at the cottage. Asking Lady
Waterford about him afterwards, she said:--
"'I do not know if Mr. Williams is old or young. I think he is like
the French lady of whom it was said, "Elle n'avait pas encore perdu
l'ancienne habitude d'\xEAtre jeune." Apropos of this, Lady Gifford
made such a pretty speech once. A little girl asked her, "Do tell
me, are you old or young? I never _can_ make out," and she said,
"My dear, I have been a very long time young."
"'The story of Mr. Williams is quite a pretty one. When Lord
Frederick FitzClarence was in India, there was a great scandal in
his government, and two of his aides-de-camp had to be sent away.
He wrote to his brother-in-law to send him out another in a hurry,
and he sent Mr. Williams. When he arrived, Lord Frederick was very
ill, and soon after he died. After his death, Mr. Williams had the
task of bringing Lady Frederick and her daughter home. Miss
FitzClarence was then very much out of health, and he used to carry
her up on deck, and they were thrown very much together. I believe
the maids warned Lady Frederick that something might come of it,
but she did not see it. Before the end of the voyage, Mr. Williams
and Miss FitzClarence had determined to be married, but she decided
not to tell her mother as yet. When the ship arrived at Portsmouth,
the coffin of Lord Frederick had to remain all night on the deck,
and Mr. Williams never left it, but walked up and down the whole
time watching it, which touched Lady Frederick very much. Still,
when her daughter told her she was going to marry him, she was
quite furious, contrary to her usual disposition, which is an
exceedingly mild one, and she would not hear of it, and sent him
away at once.
"'It was the time of the war, and Captain Williams went off to the
Crimea, but Miss FitzClarence grew worse and worse, and at last the
difference between them made her so uncomfortable with her mother,
that she went off to her grandmother; but while there she
continued to get worse, and at last it was evidently a case of
dying, and when her mother went to her, she was so alarmed that she
begged she would marry any one she liked; she would consent to
whatever she wished, and would send for Captain Williams at once.
So Williams threw up everything, though it was considered a
disgrace in time of war, and came home, but when he arrived, poor
Miss FitzClarence was dead.
"'Then Lady Frederick felt that she could not do enough for him,
and she took him to live with her as her son. The relations,
however, were all very angry, and the _mauvaises langues_ said that
she meant to marry him herself. So then she thought it would not
do, and she got him an agency on Lord Fife's property and sent him
to live alone. However, after a time, the agency somehow was given
up, and he came back, and he always lives now with Lady Frederick.
At Etal they always sit in church gazing into the open grave, which
Lady Frederick will never have closed, in which his love is to be
buried when she (the mother) dies, and is laid there also, and at
Ford he sits by his love's dead head.
"'I think Captain Williams must be no longer young, because he is
so very careful about his dress, and that is always a sign of a
man's growing old, isn't it?"
"The neighbours at Ford most of them seem to have 'stories' and are
a perpetual source of interest. Lady Waterford says:--
"'Grindon is a fine old manor-house near Tillmouth. Mr. Friar lives
there. One morning he was a carpenter working down a coal-pit, and
in the evening he was the master of Grindon: I believe an uncle
left it him.
"'Then there was that Sir F. Blake whose wife was a Persian
princess, who afterwards left a fine diamond necklace and two most
magnificent Persian vases to the family. I was so sorry when those
vases were sold for \xA340: they were worth many hundreds.
"'Near Howtell is Thorpington, a farm of the Hunts. Sir J. Hunt was
attainted for fighting in the Jacobite cause, and his property was
all confiscated. His son was so reduced that he was obliged to
become a groom, but he so gained the regard of his master, that,
when he died, he left him all his horses. From that time the Hunts
have taken to selling horses and their breed has become famous.
They never sell a horse, however, under \xA3200: if they do not get
that sum, they either shoot them or give them away.'"
"_Chillingham Castle, August 27, 1865._--On Thursday afternoon I
drove with Lady Waterford and Lady Stuart to Yetholm, twelve miles
from Ford. The way wound through wild desolate valleys of the
Cheviots, and the village itself is a miserable place. I drew the
palace of the gipsy queen--a wretched thatched hovel with a mud
floor, but royalty was absent on a tinkering expedition.
"On Friday I went in the pony-carriage to Etal. There I was shown
into a room hung with relics of Lord Frederick FitzClarence and
miniatures of George IV. and the royal family. Very soon Lady
Frederick[285] came in--a figure like a nun, one straight fall of
crape, without crinoline, enveloping her thin figure, and her hair
all pushed back into a tight round white muslin cap, and
coal-scuttle bonnet. She scarcely ever sees any one, so it was an
effort to her to receive me, but she was not so odd as I expected.
She talked about the place and then about wasps, and said that if
Captain Williams was stung by a wasp, it had such an effect upon
him that he swelled up all over and fell down perfectly senseless
upon the ground that instant. In the hall was the dinner service of
Nelson (painted with figures of Lady Hamilton as Amphytrite), which
was given to Lord Frederick by William IV. Captain Williams went
with me to the ruined castle of Etal and then along a walk above
the Till, which was very beautiful, with weird old willows, high
rocks, and lovely reaches of wood and water.
"Yesterday morning I made a sketch of the door of the cottage, with
all its flowers, &c., which I gave to Lady Stuart, much to her
pleasure. She told me about Lord Waterford's death. On that
morning, as always, Lady Waterford read to him a chapter in the
Bible whilst he was dressing, and for that day it was the lament
for Absalom. It contained the verse in which a pillar is raised up
to him for 'he had no son to keep his name in remembrance;' so his
widow determined to raise a pillar to his memory, and has done so
in the beautiful angel-fountain at Ford.
[Illustration: _Elizabeth, Lady Stuart de Rothesay.
From a miniature by Miss Dixon_.]
"In the middle of luncheon Lady Tankerville drove up, came to fetch
me, and bringing Lady Bagot[286] and Lady Blanche Egerton[287] to
see the castle. So at five I came away with them, and took leave of
the cottage and its delightful inmates.... It was a cold
dreary day, and gusts of wind and rain blew from the Cheviots
during our fourteen miles. Lady Tankerville drove."
"_Chillingham, August 29._--Yesterday we all drove through pouring
rain to Hulne Abbey in Alnwick Park, where we were glad of the
shelter of the one unruined tower for our luncheon. Afterwards we
drove through the park to the castle, which I had not seen since
the reign of Algernon the Great and Eleanor the Good. Now we were
the guests of Lady Percy, a kind pleasant person, and Lady Louisa.
The rooms are grandly uncomfortable (except the library, which is
an attractive room), but the decorations cost \xA3350,000!"
"_August 30._--Yesterday, as the family here are impervious to
damp, we picknicked in the forest. Lady Tankerville made the fire
and boiled the kettle; Lady Blanche laid the cloth and cut bread
and butter; a young Grey and I made the toast, and the little boys
and girls caught fresh trout out of the burn close by. In the
evening Lord Tankerville told us this story:--
"'My father had a beautiful villa at Walton, which we have given up
now. It was in the old days when we had to ride across Putney Heath
to reach it. My father used to think it very odd that when he went
into the stables to see his horses in the morning, they were all in
a foam and perfectly exhausted, as if they were worn out with hard
riding. One day he was coming home across Putney Heath, and he was
bringing Lord Derby back with him. When they came near the heath,
he had said, "Well, now, we had better have our pistols ready,
because highwaymen are often to be met with here." So they loaded
their pistols, and it was not a bit too soon, for directly after a
highwayman rode up to the carriage-window and demanded their money
or their lives. As he spoke he recognised them, and saw also that
my father recognised his own groom upon one of his own horses. In
the moment's hesitation he drew back, and in that moment my father
and Lord Derby fired. Several shots were exchanged on both sides,
but at last came a moment's pause, during which Lord Derby cried
out of the window to the postillion to ride forward, and he dashed
on at full gallop. The highwayman fired into the back of the
carriage, and Lord Derby and my father returned his fire by leaning
out of the windows. At last the back of the carriage was quite
riddled with shot, and the ammunition of those inside was quite
exhausted, and then Lord Derby held out a white handkerchief as a
flag of truce out of the window, and the highwayman rode up and
they delivered up all their valuables to him. Of course my father
never saw his groom again, and his horses were in much better
condition ever afterwards--at least those which were left, for the
highwayman rode away upon the best horse in the stables.'"
"_Howick, Sept. 1, 1865._--Yesterday I was able to stop the express
at the private station (for Howick), whither Lord Grey sent for me.
It was a drive of about a mile and a half, chiefly through
shrubberies of hollies and rhododendrons, to this large square
house with wings. It is most comfortable inside, with a beautiful
library opening into a great conservatory. Lady Grey[288] is one of
the severest-looking and one of the kindest-meaning persons I have
ever seen. Lord Grey is little and lame, but gets about with a
stick very actively. He is quite grey, but the very image of Lady
Mary Wood. The rest of the party had put off coming for a day from
different reasons, but I was not sorry to make acquaintance alone
first with my host and hostess, and they were most pleasant, so
that it was a very agreeable evening."
"_Sept. 2._--Yesterday morning a great bell on the top of the house
summoned all in it to prayers, which were read by Lord Grey in the
breakfast-room opening on to very pretty terraces of flowers, with
perfect shrubberies of sweet verbena, for the climate here is very
mild. After breakfast I went down through the wood to the sea, not
a mile distant, and a very fine bit of coast, with rich colour in
the rocks and water, and Dunstanborough Castle on its crag as the
great feature. The place reminds me a little of Penrh\xF4s. When I
returned from driving with Lady Grey to Alnwick, the Belhavens
arrived, and before dinner the Bishop of London and Mrs. Tait, and
the Durhams."
"_Sept. 4._--My dearest mother will like to know how intensely I
have enjoyed being at Howick. The Greys make their house so
pleasant and the life here is so easy. Then Lady Belhaven[289] is
always celebrated as a talker, and it has been delightful to sit
on the outskirts of interesting conversations between my host and
Sir George Grey or the Bishop.
"On Saturday afternoon I drove with the Durhams and Lady Belhaven
to Dunstanborough. The sea was of a deep Mediterranean blue under
the great cliffs and overhanging towers of the ruined castle. Lord
Durham[290] and I walked back three miles along the cliffs--a high
field-walk like the old one at Eastbourne.
"On Sunday the Bishop preached at the little church in the grounds.
It has been rebuilt and decorated with carvings by Lady Grey and
her sisters-in-law. In the chancel is the fine tomb of the Prime
Minister Lord Grey. I went with Durham afterwards all over the
gardens, which are charming, with resplendent borders of
old-fashioned flowers; and after afternoon church, we all went down
through the dene to the sea, where there is a bathing-house, with a
delightful room fitted up with sofas, books, &c., just above the
waves. All the French herring-fleet was out, such a pretty sight.
The Bishop read prayers in the evening to the great household of
forty-eight persons. He is a very pleasant, amiable Bishop.
"I enjoyed seeing so much of Durham; no one could help very much
liking one who is very stiff with people in general, and most
exceedingly nice to oneself. But Lady Durham[291] is always
charming, so perfectly na\xEFve, natural, and beautiful. She is
devoted to her husband and he to her. Some one spoke of people in
general not loving all their children. She said: 'Then that is
because they do not love their husbands. Some women think no more
of marriage than of dancing a quadrille; but when women love their
husbands, they love all their children equally. Every woman must
love her first child: the degree in which they love the others
depends upon the degree in which they love their husbands.'
"Sitting by her at dinner, I asked if she had ever read 'Les
Mis\xE9rables'? 'No. When I was confirmed, the clergyman who was
teaching me saw a French novel on the table, and said, "My dear
child, you don't read these things, do you?" I said "No," which was
quite true, for it belonged to my French governess, and he then
said, "Well, I wish you never would. Don't make any actual promise,
for fear you should not keep it, but don't do it unless you are
obliged;" and I never have.'
"I spoke to her of the inconsistency involved by the confirmation
ceremony, by which young ladies renounced the pomps and vanities of
the world, being generally the immediate predecessor of their
formal entrance upon them.
"'Yes; I never thought of that. But certainly my pomps and vanities
were of very short duration. I went to three balls, two
tea-parties, and one dinner, and that was all I ever saw of the
world; for then I was married. One year I was in the school-room in
subjection to every one, ordered about here and there, and the next
I was free and my own mistress and married.'
"'And did not you find it rather formidable?' I said. 'Formidable
to be my own mistress! oh no. One thing I found rather formidable
certainly. It was when a great deputation came to Lambton to
congratulate George upon his marriage, and I had to sit at the end
of the table with a great round of beef before me. I wanted them
not to think I was young and inexperienced. I wanted to appear
thirty at least; so I _would_ carve: and then only think of their
saying afterwards in the newspaper paragraphs, "We are glad to
learn that the youthful Countess is not only amiable but
intelligent." I was glad that they should think I was amiable, but
when they said I was intelligent, I was perfectly furious, as if
George's wife could possibly have been anything else.
"'I was brought up a Tory, but as long as I can remember I have
felt myself a Radical. I cannot bear to think of the division
between the classes, and there is so much good in a working-man. I
love working-men: they are my friends: they are so much better than
we are.
"'When my little George of four years old--such a little duck he
is!--was with me at Weymouth, I told him he might take off his
shoes and stockings and paddle in the water, and he went in up to
his chest; and then the little monster said, "Now, mama, if you
want to get me again, you may come in and fetch me, for I shan't
come out." I was in despair, when a working-man passed by and said,
"Do you want that little boy, ma'am?" and I said "Yes," and he
tucked up his trousers and went in and fetched George out for me;
but if the _man's_ little boy had been in the water, I am afraid I
should not have offered to fetch him out for him.
"'And when I was going to church at Mr. Cumming's in Covent Garden
(I daresay you think I'm very wrong for going there, but I can't
help that), it began to pour with rain, and a cabman on a stand
close by called out, "Don't you want a cab, ma'am?" I said, "Yes,
very much, but I've got no money." And the cabman said, "Oh, never
mind, jump in; you'll only spoil your clothes in the rain, and I'll
take you for nothing." When we got to the church door, I said, "If
you will come to my house you shall be paid," but he would not hear
of it, and I have liked cabmen ever since. Oh, there is so much
good in the working-men; they are so much better than we are.'"
"_Winton Castle, N.B., Sept. 5, 1865._--My sweetest mother will
like to think of me here with the dear old Lady Ruthven.[292] I
left Howick at mid-day yesterday, with the Bishop and Mrs. Tait and
their son Crauford, an Eton school-boy. It had been a very pleasant
visit to the last, and I shall hope to repeat it another year, and
also to go to the Durhams. We had an agreeable journey along the
cliffs. I had become quite intimate with the Taits in the three
days I was with them, and liked the Bishop very much better than
Mrs. Tait, though I am sure she is a very good and useful
woman.[293] At Tranent Lady Ruthven's carriage was waiting for me.
I found her in a sadly nervous state, dreadfully deaf, and
constantly talking, the burden of her refrain being--
'Mummitie mum, mummitie mum,
Mummitie, mummitie, mummitie mum.'
But in the evening she grew much better, and was like other people,
only that she would constantly walk in and out of the dark
ante-chambers playing on a concertina, which, as she wore a tiara
of pearls and turquoises, had a very odd effect in the half light;
and then at eleven o'clock at night she would put on her bonnet and
cloak and go off for a walk by herself in the woods. Charming Miss
Minnie Fletcher of Saltoun is here. She told me that--
"Sir David Brewster and his daughter went to stay with the
Stirlings of Kippenross. In the night Miss Brewster was amazed by
being awakened by her father coming into her room and saying, 'My
dear, don't be alarmed, but I really cannot stay in my room. It may
be very foolish and nervous, but there are such odd noises, such
extraordinary groanings and moanings, that I positively cannot bear
it any longer, and you must let me stay here. Don't disturb
yourself; I shall easily sleep on the sofa.'
"Miss Brewster thought her father very silly, but there he stayed
till morning, when he slipped away to his own room to dress, so as
not to be found when the servant came to call his daughter. When
the maid came she said, 'Pray, ma'am, how long are you going to
stay in this house?' Miss Brewster was surprised, and said she did
not know. 'Because, ma'am, if you are going to stay, I am sorry to
say I must leave you. I like you very much, ma'am, and I shall be
sorry to go, but I would do anything rather than again go through
all I suffered last night; such awful groanings and moanings and
such fearful noises I can never endure again.' Miss Brewster was
very much annoyed and laughed at the maid, who nevertheless
continued firm in her decision.
"In the afternoon Miss Brewster had a headache, and at length it
became so bad that she was obliged to leave the dinner-table and go
up to her room. At the head of the stairs she saw a woman--a large
woman in a chintz gown, leaning against the banisters. She took her
for the housekeeper, and said, 'I am going to my room: will you be
so kind as to send my maid to me?' The woman did not answer, but
bowed her head three times and then pointed to a door in the
passage and went downstairs. Miss Brewster went to her room, and
after waiting an hour in vain for her maid, she undressed and went
to bed. When the maid came up, she asked why she had not come
before, and said she had sent the housekeeper for her. 'How very
odd,' said the maid, 'because I have been sitting with the
housekeeper the whole time.' Miss Brewster then described the
person she had seen, upon which the maid gave a shriek and said,
'Oh, then you have seen the ghost.' The maid was in such a state of
terror, that when Mrs. Stirling came up to inquire after her
headache, Miss Brewster asked her about the woman she had seen,
when, to her surprise, Mrs. Stirling looked quite agonised, and
said, 'Oh, then there is more misery in store for me. You do not
know what that ghost has been to me all through my married life.'
She then made Miss Brewster promise not to tell the persons who
slept in the room pointed at, that theirs was the room. It was a
Major and Mrs. Wedderburn who slept there. Mrs. Stirling and Miss
Brewster then both wrote out accounts of what had happened and
signed and sealed them. Before the year was out, they heard that
the Wedderburns were both killed in the Indian Mutiny."
"_Winton Castle, Sept. 8._--My visit here has been very pleasant
indeed. The Speaker and Lady Charlotte Denison came on Tuesday
afternoon with the Belhavens. He is a fine-looking elderly man,
with a wonderful fund of agreeable small-talk. Lady Charlotte[294]
is very refined, quite unaffected, and very pretty still: they are
both most kind to me. Miss Fletcher has been here all the time to
help Lady Ruthven, for whom it is well that she has such a kind,
pleasant greatniece only a mile off, to come and help her to amuse
all her guests, as she has had fifty-six parties of people
_staying_ in the house in the last year. We saw a large party of
the great-great nephews and nieces of Lady Ruthven and Lady
Belhaven on Wednesday, when we went to spend the afternoon at Lord
Elcho's. It is a fine place, Amisfield--a huge red stone house in a
large park close to the town of Haddington, where there is a
beautiful old cathedral, but in ruins, like all the best Scotch
churches. Lady Elcho[295] has the stately refinement of a beautiful
Greek statue. Her children are legion, the two eldest boys very
handsome and pleasant. We went over the house, with old tapestry,
&c., to be seen, and the gardens with fine cedars, and then all
Lord Wemyss's twenty-four race horses were brought out in turn to
be exercised round the courtyard and admired: after which we had
Scotch tea--scones, cakes, apricot-jam, &c.
"I have made rather friends with John Gordon,[296] a younger
brother of Lord Aberdeen, who has been staying here. He is a second
Charlie Wood in character, though only eighteen, and I have seldom
seen any one I liked as well on short acquaintance. His family are
all supposed to be dreadfully shy, but he seems to be an exception.
"Yesterday Lady Belhaven and Lady Ruthven went to Edinburgh, and I
stayed with Miss Fletcher, and walked with her in the afternoon to
Saltoun, where we had tea with Lady Charlotte and saw the
curiosities. Lady Charlotte Fletcher[297] said:--
"'The French royal family were often here at Saltoun when they were
at Holyrood--Charles X. and the Duchesse d'Angoul\xEAme, and the
Duchesse de Berri and her daughter, the Duc and Duchesse de Guise
and the Duc de Polignac.... The Duchesse d'Angoul\xEAme and the Duc de
Polignac used to go down to the bridge in the glen and stay there
for hours: they said it reminded them so much of France, the trees
and the water. The Duc de Polignac said our picture of the
leave-taking of Louis XVI. and his family contained figures more
like than any he had seen elsewhere. We turned it to the wall and
locked the door when they came, for fear the Duchesse d'Angoul\xEAme
should see it, but the little Mademoiselle de Berri was playing
hide-and-seek through the rooms, and she got in by the outer door,
and it was the first thing she observed, and she insisted on seeing
it.... She did me a little drawing, and left it behind her.
"'The family were very fond of coming here, because my father, Lord
Wemyss, had been kind to them when they were here during the first
Revolution. On the Duchesse de Berri's birthday, she was asked what
she would like to do in honour of it, and she chose a day at
Saltoun. It was very inconvenient their all coming with the
children at a few hours' notice, such a large party, but she wrote
a pretty note, saying what a pleasure it would be to see her old
friends again, and another afterwards, saying what a delight it had
been, so that we were quite compensated.'
"On Sunday, when it was church-time, Lady Ruthven said, 'We'll just
gang awa to the kirk and see what sort of a discoorse the minister
makes; and if he behaves himself, well--we'll ask him up to
dinner!' She sat in kirk, with her two dogs beside her, in a kind
of chair of state just under the pulpit, where she might have been
mistaken for the clerk. She is as demonstrative in church as
elsewhere, and once when Miss Fletcher came unexpectedly into the
gallery after she had been some time without seeing her, she called
out, 'Eh, there ye are, Minnie, my darling,' before the whole
congregation, and began kissing her hands to her. When a child
screamed in kirk, and its mother was taking it out, the minister
interrupted his discourse with, 'Na, bide a wee: I'm no that
fashed wi' the bairn.'--'Na, na,' said the mother, 'I'll no bide:
it's the bairn that's fashed wi' ye.' Talking afterwards of the
change of feeling with which church-services were usually regarded
now-a-days, Lady Charlotte Fletcher said:--
"'Old Lady Hereford, my aunt, was quite one of the old school. She
had a large glass pew in church, and the service was never allowed
to begin till she had arrived, settled herself, and opened the
windows of her pew. If she did not like the discourse, she slammed
down her windows. After the service was over, her steward used to
stand by the pew door to receive her orders as to which of the
congregation were to be invited to dine in her hall that day.'
"While the party were talking of the change of manners, Lord
Belhaven said:--
"'I just remember the old drinking days:[298] they were just dying
out when I entered the army. Scarcely any gentlemen used to drink
less than two bottles of claret after dinner. They used to chew
tobacco, which was handed round, and drink their wine through it,
wine and tobacco-juice at the same time. A spittoon was placed
between every two gentlemen. It was universal to chew tobacco in
country-houses: they chewed it till they went in to dinner, and
they began again directly the ladies left the room, when tobacco
and spittoons were handed round.
"'There were usually the bottles called "Jeroboams" on the table,
which held six bottles of port. The old Duke of Cleveland[299]
always had his wine-glasses made without a foot, so that they would
not stand, and you were obliged to drink off the whole glass when
you dined with him.
"'I remember once dining at a house from which I was going away the
next morning. I got to bed myself at twelve. When I came down to go
off at eight, I asked when the other gentlemen had left the
diningroom. "Oh," said the servant, "they are there still." I went
in, and there, sure enough, they all were. When they saw me, they
made a great shout, and said, "Come, now, you must drink off a
bumper," and filled a tumbler with what they thought was spirits,
but to my great relief I saw it was water. So I said, "Very well,
gentlemen, I shall be glad to drink to your health, and of course
you will drink to mine,"--so I drank the water, and they drank the
spirits.'"
"_Castlecraig, Noblehouse, Sept. 9._--I came out this morning by
the railway to Broomlee, a pretty line, leading into wild moorland,
and at the station a dogcart met me, and brought me six miles
farther, quite into the heart of the Pentlands. The ascent to this
house is beautiful, through woods of magnificent alpine-looking
firs. Addie Hay[300] was waiting for me. You would scarcely believe
him to be as ill as he is, and he is most cheerful and pleasant,
making no difficulties about anything. He is often here with my
present host, Sir William Carmichael."
"_Winton Castle, Sept. 10._--Yesterday I saw the beautiful grounds
of Castlecraig--green glades in the hills with splendid pines,
junipers, &c., and part of the garden consecrated as a
burial-ground, with mossgrown sculptured tombs of the family
ancestors on the green lawn.
"At Eskbank Lady Ruthven met me, and I came on with her to
Newbattle. It is an old house, once an abbey, lying low in a large
wooded park on the banks of the Esk--a fine hall and staircase hung
with old portraits, and a beautiful library with long windows,
carved ceiling, old books, illuminated missals, and stands of
Australian plants. Lady Lothian is very young and pretty,[301] Lord
Lothian a hopeless invalid from paralysis. She showed me the
picture gallery and then we went to the garden--most lovely, close
to the rushing Esk, and of medi\xE6val aspect in its splendid flowers
backed by yew hedges and its stone sundials. After seeing Lady
Lothian's room and pictures, we had tea in the garden. The long
drive back to Winton was trying, as, with the thermometer at 70\xB0,
Lady Ruthven would have a large bottle of boiling water at the
bottom of the close carriage.
"Lady Ruthven is most kind, but oh! the life with her is so odd.
One day a gentleman coming down in the morning looked greatly
agitated, which was discovered to be owing to his having looked out
of his window in the middle of the night, and believing that he had
seen a ghost flitting up and down the terrace in a most ghastly
clinging white dress. It was the lady of the castle in her white
dressing-gown and night-gown!"
"_Wishaw, Sept. 14._--I came here (to the Belhavens) after a two
days' visit to Mrs. Stirling of Glenbervie, whence I saw Falkirk
Tryste--the great cattle fair of Scotland. It was a curious sight,
an immense plain covered with cattle of every description,
especially picturesque little Highland beasts attended by drovers
in kilts and plumes. When I saw the troops of horses kicking and
prancing, I said how like it all was to Rosa Bonheur's 'Horse
Fair,' and then heard she had been there to study for her picture.
"We dined yesterday at Dalzel, Lady Emily Hamilton's,[302] a
beautiful old Scotch house, well restored by Billings. To-day is
tremendously hot, but though I am exhausted by the sun, I am much
more so by all the various hungers I have gone through, as we had
breakfast at half-past ten and luncheon at half-past five, and in
the interval went to Bothwell--Lord Home's,--beautiful shaven lawns
above a deep wooded ravine of the Clyde, and on the edge of the
slope a fine old red sandstone castle."
"_Lagaray, Gareloch, Sept. 17._--How I longed for my mother on
Friday in the drive from Helensburgh along a terrace on the edge of
the Gareloch, shaded by beautiful trees, and with exquisite views
of distant grey mountains and white-sailed boats coming down the
loch! I was most warmly welcomed by Robert Shaw Stewart[303] and
his wife.... Yesterday we went an immense excursion of forty-five
miles, seeing the three lakes--Lomond, Long, and Gareloch."
"_Carstairs House, Lanarkshire, Sept. 18._--Nothing could exceed
the kindness of the Shaw Stewarts, and I was very sorry to leave
them. The Gareloch is quite lovely, such fine blue mountains
closing the lake, with its margin of orange-coloured seaweeds....
The Monteith family were at luncheon when I arrived at this large
luxurious house--the guests including two Italians, one a handsome
specimen of the Guardia Nobile--Count Bolognetti Cenci, a nephew by
many greats of the famous Beatrice. After luncheon we were sent to
the Falls of the Clyde--Cora Linn--a grand mass of water foaming
and dashing, which the Italians called 'carina'!"
Before returning home, I went again to Chesters in Northumberland, to
meet Dr. Bruce, the famous authority on "The Roman Wall" of
Northumberland, on which he has written a large volume. It was curious
to find how a person who had allowed his mind to dwell exclusively on
one hobby could see no importance in anything else. He said, "Rome was
now chiefly interesting as illustrating the Roman Wall in
Northumberland, and as for Pompeii, it was not to be compared to the
English station of Housesteads."
At the end of September I returned home, and had a quiet month with the
dear mother, who was now quite well. I insert a fragment of a letter
from a niece who had been with her in my absence, as giving a picture of
her peaceful, happy state at this time:--
"Auntie and I have spent our evenings in reading old letters and
journals, which have made the past seem nearer than the present.
Hers is such a sweet peaceful evening of life. There have been many
storms and sorrows, but her faith has stood firm, and she is now
calmly waiting her summons home. Oh! I pray that she may be spared
to us yet awhile, now so doubly dear to us, the one link left with
the loved and lost."
We left Holmhurst at the beginning of November, and went to Italy by the
Mont Cenis, with Emma Simpkinson, the gentle youngest sister of my
Harrow tutor, as our companion. Fourteen horses dragged us over the
mountain through the snow in a bright moonlight night, during the
greater part of which I crouched upon the floor of the carriage, so as
to keep my mother's feet warm inside my waistcoat, so great was my
terror of her having any injury from the cold.
MY MOTHER _to_ MISS LEYCESTER.
"_Spezia, Nov. 11, 1865._--The day was most lovely on which we left
Genoa, and so was the drive along the coast, reminding us of
Mentone in its beauty--the hills covered with olive-woods and
orange-groves, the mountains and rocky bays washed by the bluest of
blue waves. We dined at Ruta, a very pretty place in the mountain,
and slept at Chiavari. Saturday was no less beautiful, the
_tramontana_ keen when we met it, like a March day in England, but
the sun so burning, it quite acted as a restorative as we wound up
the Pass of Bracco after Sestri--lovely Sestri. We had the carriage
open, and so could enjoy the views around and beneath us, though
the precipices were tremendous. However, the road was good, and
occasionally in some of the worst places there was a bit of wall to
break the line at the edge. Nothing could be more grand than the
views of the billowy mountains with the Mediterranean below. At
Borghetto was our halting-place, and then we had a rapid descent
all the way here, where we arrived at half-past six."
"_Pisa, Nov. 14._--To continue my history. Sunday was again a
splendid day, and the Carrara mountains most lovely, especially at
sunset. On Monday we drove to Porto Venere, and spent the morning
in drawing at the ruined marble church. We dined, and at half-past
five set out, reaching Pisa at half-past seven. And here was a
merciful preservation given to me, where, to use the words of my
favourite travelling Psalm (xci.), though my feet 'were moved,' the
angels had surely 'charge over me.' Augustus had just helped me
down from the train and turned to take the bags out of the
carriage. When he _re_-turned to look after me, I lay flat on the
ground in the deep cutting of the side railway, into which, the
platform being narrow, unfinished, and badly lighted, I had fallen
in the dark. I believe both Augustus and Lea thought I was dead at
first, so frightful was the fall, yet, after a little, I was able
to walk to the carriage, though of course much shaken. Three falls
have I had this year--in the waves of the Atlantic, in Westminster
Abbey, and at Pisa--and yet, thanks be to God, no bones have been
broken."
[Illustration: THE PASS OF BRACCO.[304]]
At Pisa we stayed at the excellent Albergo di Londra, which was kept by
Flora Limosin, the youngest daughter of Victoire[305] and foster-sister
of Esmeralda. Victoire herself was living close by, in her own little
house, filled with relics of the past. I had not seen her since
Italima's death, and she had many questions to ask me, besides having
much to tell of the extraordinary intercourse she had immediately after
our family misfortunes with Madame de Trafford--the facts of which she
thus dictated to me:--
[Illustration: AT PORTO VENERE.[306]]
F\xE9lix and Victoire followed Italima from Geneva to Paris. Victoire
says--"We rejoined Madame Hare at the house of Madame de Trafford.
I went with her and Mademoiselle to the station in the evening.
Madame Hare did all she could to console me. It was arranged that
Constance should accompany them, because she was Miss Paul's maid.
I had no presentiment then that I should never see Madame Hare
again. After they were gone, we remained at the house of Balze, our
son-in-law, at the end of the Faubourg S. Germain, but every day I
went, by her desire, to see Madame de Trafford, at the other end of
the Champs Elys\xE9es. She was all kindness to me. She did all she
could to console me. When she had letters from Madame Hare, she
read them to me: when I had them, I read them to Madame de
Trafford. Matters went from bad to worse. One day Madame de
Trafford had a letter which destroyed all hope. It was three days
before she ventured to read it to me. I have still the impression
of the hour in which she told me what was in it. She made me sit by
her in an armchair, and she said, 'Il ne faut pas vous illusionner,
Victoire: Madame Hare ne reviendra _jamais_; elle est absolument
ruin\xE9e.' I remained for several hours unconscious: I knew there was
no hope then. I was only sensible that Madame de Trafford gave me
some strong essence, which restored me in a certain degree. Then
she did all she could to console me. It was the most wonderful
heart-goodness possible. She took me back that day to my
son-in-law's house. I was thinking how I could break it to F\xE9lix: I
did not venture to tell him for a long time. At last he saw it for
himself; he said, 'Il y'a quelque chose de pire \xE0 apprendre, ou
vous me cachez quelque chose, Victoire,' and then I told him. The
next day Madame de Trafford said that she could not endure our
sufferings. 'Apr\xE8s trente ans de service, apr\xE8s tant de d\xE9vouement,
elle ne pouvait pas souffrir que nous irions \xE0 la mendicit\xE9. Vous
n'avez rien,' she said, 'je le sais plus que vous.' I did not like
her saying this. 'Yes, we have something,' I said, 'we are not so
badly off as that.'--'Tais-toi, Victoire, vous n'avez rien,' she
repeated, and she was right, it was her second-sight which told
her. She bade me seek in the environs of Paris for a small house,
any one I liked, in any situation, and she would buy it for me. If
there was a large house near it, so much the better--that she would
buy for herself. She said she knew I could not live there upon
nothing, but that she should give me an annuity, and that F\xE9lix '\xE0
cause de son rhumatisme,' must have a little carriage. I was quite
overwhelmed. 'Mais, Madame, nous ne m\xE9ritons pas cela,' I said.
'Oui, Victoire, je sais que vous le m\xE9ritez bien, et _je le veux_.'
I said it was impossible I could accept such favours at her hands.
She only repeated with her peculiar manner and intonation--'_je le
veux_.' The next day we both went to her. Her table was already
covered with the notices of all the houses to let in the
neighbourhood of Paris. 'Nous allons visiter tout cela,' she said,
'nous allons choisir.' Both F\xE9lix and I said it was impossible we
could accept such kindness, when we could do nothing for her in
return. 'Est que je veux _acheter_ votre amiti\xE9?' she said. She
repeatedly said that she wished nothing but to come and see us
sometimes, and that perhaps she should come every day. Thus we went
on for fifteen days, but both F\xE9lix and I felt it was impossible we
could accept so much from her; besides, F\xE9lix suffered so much from
his rheumatism, and he felt that the climate of Pisa might do him
good; besides which, our hearts always turned to Pisa, for it
seemed as if Providence had willed that we should go there, in
disposing that Madame Jacquet, who had a claim to our house for
her life, should die just at that time. We made a pretext of the
health of F\xE9lix to Madame de Trafford, but it was fifteen days
before she would accept our decision. 'Eh bien, vous voulez
toujours aller \xE0 votre masure la bas \xE0 Pise,' said Madame de
Trafford. She called our house a 'masure.' 'Eh bien, j'irai avec
vous, je veux aussi aller \xE0 Pise, moi.' She wrote to M. Trafford,
who came over to take leave of her, as he always does when she
leaves Paris, and she arranged her apartment.... 'Oh, comme c'est
une femme d'ordre, et comme son appartement est beau, le plus beau
que j'ai jamais vue, m\xEAme \xE0 la cour.' Then she left Paris with us.
"Voil\xE0 sa pr\xE9venance--the going to Pisa was in order that she might
undertake all the expenses of our journey. Quand elle est chez
elle, elle est tr\xE8s \xE9conome, mais quand elle voyage, elle voyage
grandement. Where another person would give two francs, Madame de
Trafford gives ten. She is always guided by her _seconde vue_: she
reads the character in the face. She wished us to travel
first-class, and she insisted on taking first-class tickets for us
all, but F\xE9lix absolutely refused to go in anything but a
second-class carriage. I travelled with Madame de Trafford. We went
first to Turin. Thence, 'pour donner distraction \xE0 F\xE9lix, \xE9tant
ancien militaire,' Madame de Trafford insisted on taking us to the
battle-fields of Solferino and Magenta. Elle nous a fait visiter
tout cela, et vraiment grandement. At last we reached Pisa. It was
then that Madame de Trafford first revealed to us that she intended
to rent our house. She insisted upon paying for it, not the usual
rent, but the same that she paid for her beautiful apartments in
the H\xF4tel de la Metropole, and nothing could turn her from this;
she was quite determined upon it. Every day she ordered a large
dinner; although she only ate a morsel of chicken herself,
everything was served and then removed. F\xE9lix served her. It was in
order that we might have food. It was the same with wine: she
always had a bottle of wine, Madeira or whatever it might be: a new
bottle was to be uncorked every day; she only drank half a glass
herself, but the same bottle was never allowed to appear twice.
"Up to that time I had never entirely believed in her second-sight.
It was just after we arrived in Pisa that I became quite convinced
of it. I was astonished, on her first going into our house, to see
her walk up to one of the beds and feel at the mattresses, and then
she turned to me and said, 'On vous a vol\xE9, Victoire; vous avez mis
ici de la bonne laine, et on a mis la malsaine et vieille laine.' I
did not believe her at the time. I had sent money to Pisa to pay
for the re-stuffing of those very mattresses: afterwards I unripped
the mattresses, and found it was just as she said. From time to
time in England we had bought a little linen, because the house was
let without linen. M. Hare had left a thousand francs to F\xE9lix and
me. This was paid to us in London; therefore we had spent it in
carpets and linen. The carpets we sent at once to Pisa. The linen
was also sent, but it was left packed up in boxes under the care of
the woman who looked after the house. Soon after we arrived, Madame
de Trafford asked if I had any linen. I said 'Yes,' and going to
the boxes, unlocked them, and brought the sheets and towels which
she required. She felt at them, and then she said, 'On vous a vol\xE9
encore ici, Madame Victoire; vous avez mis de telles et telles
choses dans une telle et telle bo\xEEte.'--'Oui, c'est ainsi,' I
replied. 'Eh bien, on vous a vol\xE9 telles et telles choses dans une
telle et telle bo\xEEte.' I rushed to look over the boxes, and it was
just as she said. The third time was when we went to Florence, for
she would take me to spend some days with her at Florence. She
bought me a beautiful black silk dress to wear when I went with
her, and it was one of her _pr\xE9venances_ that we should not go to
any hotel I had been in the habit of going to, for she wished me to
be entirely with her _sans aucune remarque_. When we went to
Florence, the two large boxes Madame de Trafford had brought with
her were left in the salon at Pisa. When we came back she said,
with her peculiar intonation, 'Je vous prie, Victoire, de compter
mes mouchoirs: savez-vous combien j'ai?'--'Mais oui, Madame; vous
en avez cinque paquets avec des douzaines en chaque.'--'Eh bien,
comptez-les: on m'a vol\xE9 trois dans un paquet, deux dans un autre,'
&c. _Effectivement_ it was just as Madame de Trafford had said: it
must have been the same person who had taken my linen before.
"It was always the custom at the convent of S. Antonio, which is
close to our house, that any poor people who chose to come to the
door on a Saturday should receive something. Madame de Trafford,
from her window, saw the people waiting, and asked me what it
meant. When I told her, she desired me to go to the convent and
find out exactly what it was they received. Madame de Trafford will
never be contradicted, so I went at once. When I came back I told
her that it was one kreutz or seven centimes. She thought this much
too little, and bade me give each of the people a paul. I sent the
money down to them. The result was that next time, instead of ten,
two or three hundred poor people came. They all received money. It
made quite a sensation in the quarter. The house used to be quite
surrounded and the streets blocked up by the immense crowds at that
time. It became necessary to fix a day. Thursday was appointed,
that was the day on which Madame de Trafford gave her alms. One day
from the window she saw a poor woman with a child in her arms.
'Voil\xE0 une qui est bien malheureuse,' she said; 'descendez, je vous
prie, et donnez lui de l'argent sans compter.' One cannot disobey
Madame de Trafford. I went down directly, and gave a handful of
silver to the woman, shutting the door upon her thanks and leaving
her petrified with astonishment.
"One day we went to Leghorn by the eleven-o'clock train (for she
always made me go with her). We descended at the hotel, and then
she desired me to order a carriage--'le plus bel \xE9quipage qu'on
pourrait avoir.' Soon afterwards the carriage came to the door: it
was a very poor carriage indeed, and the coachman wore a ragged
coat and a wide-awake hat. She seemed surprised, and asked me if I
could not have done better for her than that, and, knowing her
character, I was quite angry with the master of the hotel for
ordering such a carriage; but in reality there was no other, all
the others were engaged. So at length we got in, but when we had
gone some distance she began to fix her eyes upon the driver, and
said, 'Mais est-ce qu'on peut aller avec un cocher qui a un trou
comme \xE7a dans son habit?' and she desired him to drive back to the
hotel. As we went back she said to me, 'Ce pauvre jeune homme doit
\xEAtre bien malheureux, dites lui de venir \xE0 l'h\xF4tel.' When we got
back to the inn, she desired me to procure everything that was
necessary to dress the young man, everything complete, and of the
best. But I could not undertake myself to dress the young man, so I
asked the master of the hotel to do it for me. At Leghorn this is
not so difficult, because there are so many ready-made shops. So
the landlord procured a complete set of clothes, coat, trousers,
waistcoat, boots, hat, everything, and Madame de Trafford gave
orders that he should be shaved and washed and sent in to her. When
he came in, the change was most extraordinary; he was such a
handsome young man that I should not have known him. But Madame de
Trafford only turned to me and said, 'Mais je vous ai ordonn\xE9 de
lui procurer un habillement complet, et est-ce que vous pensez que
avec un habit comme \xE7a, il peut porter cette vilaine vieille
chemise?' for she perceived directly that they had not changed his
shirt, which I had never thought of. The shirt was procured, but
there was always something wanting in the eyes of Madame de
Trafford. 'Mais que fera ce jeune homme,' she said, 's'il est
enrhum\xE9, quand il n'a pas de mouchoirs de poche,' and then I was
obliged to get other shirts and socks, and cravats and
handkerchiefs--in short, a complete trousseau. And then a commoner
dress was wanted for the morning: and then the tailor was ordered
to come again with greatcoats. Of these he had two; one cost much
more than the other, but Madame de Trafford chose that which cost
the most.
"Le jeune homme regardait tout \xE7a comme un r\xEAve. Il ne le croyait
pas, lui, et il disait rien du tout: il laissa faire. Il disait
apr\xE8s \xE0 F\xE9lix qu'il pensait que c'\xE9tait des mystifications, et il
ne croyait pas \xE0 ce qu'il voyait.
"At last, when all was completed and paid for in his presence, four
o'clock came, and he mounted on his box and drove us to the
station. All the little boys in the street, who had known him in
his old dress, ran along by the side of the carriage to stare at
him. At last, when we reached the station and were actually going
off, he began to believe, and flung himself on his knees before all
the people in his gratitude to Madame de Trafford. 'Je me suis
soulag\xE9e d'un poids en laissant ce jeune homme ainsi,' said Madame
de Trafford to me.
[Illustration: LA SPINA, PISA.[307]]
"After this," continued Victoire, "came the great floods in the
marshes near Pisa. When Madame de Trafford heard of the sufferings
which they caused, she bade me order a carriage and drive out there
with her. We drove as far as we could, and then we left the
carriage and walked along a little embankment between the waters to
where there were some cottages quite flooded, from which some poor
women crept out along some planks to the bank on which we were.
Before we left the hotel, Madame de Trafford had said, 'Mettez vos
grandes poches' (because she had made me have some very large
pockets made, very wide and deep, to wear under my dress and hold
her valuables when we travelled), and then she had said that I was
to fill them up to the brim with large piastres, without counting
what I took. I had shovelled piastres into my pockets by handfuls
till I was quite weighed down. I did not like doing it, but I was
obliged to do as she bade me. Then she said, 'Have you taken as
much as your pockets will hold? I wish them to be filled to the
brim.' When we arrived and saw the poor women, she said,
'Donnez-leur des piastres, mais donnez-les par poignets, et surtout
ne comptez pas, ne comptez jamais.' So I took a large heap of
piastres, and put them into the hands of Madame de Trafford that
she might give them to the women. Then she began to be angry--'Je
vous ai dit de les donner, je ne les veux pas.' So I began to give
a handful of piastres to one woman and another, all without
counting; even to the children Madame de Trafford desired me to
give also. At first they were all quite mute with amazement, then
the women began to call aloud to me, 'E chi \xE9 questa principessa
benedetta, caduta dal cielo? dite chi \xE9 che possiamo
ringraziarla.'--'Qu'est-ce qu'ils disent donc,' said Madame de
Trafford. 'Mais, Madame, ils demandent quelle princesse vous \xEAtes
qu'ils puissent vous remercier.'--'Dites les que je ne suis pas
princesse,' said Madame de Trafford, 'que je ne suis qu'une pauvre
femme faite en chair et os comme eux.'
"Then Madame de Trafford asked them if there were no more poor
people there, and they went and fetched other poor women and
children, till there was quite a crowd. To them also she ordered me
to give piastres--'toujours sans compter'--till at last, through
much giving, my pockets were empty. Then Madame de Trafford was
really angry--'Je vous ai dit, Madame Victoire, de porter autant
que vous pouviez, et vous ne l'avez pas fait.'--'Mais, Madame, vous
ne m'avez pas dit de mettre quatre poches, vous m'avez dit de
mettre deux poches: ces deux poches \xE9taient remplis, \xE0 present les
voil\xE0 vides.'
"When we were turning to go away, all the people, who had not till
that moment believed in their good fortune, fell on their knees,
and cried, 'Oh, Signore, noi ti ringraziamo d'avere mandato questa
anima benedetta, e preghiamo per ella.'--'Mais retournez bien vite
\xE0 la voiture, mais montez donc bien vite, Madame Victoire,' said
Madame de Trafford, and we hurried back to the carriage; and the
coachman, concerning whom she had taken care that he should not see
what had happened, was amazed to see us coming with all this crowd
of poor women and children following us. When we were driving away,
Madame de Trafford said, 'Quel jour heureux pour nous, Madame
Victoire, d'avoir soulag\xE9 tant de mis\xE8re; quel bonheur de pouvoir
faire tant de f\xE9licit\xE9 avec un peu d'argent.'"
After remaining many weeks at Pisa with Victoire, Madame de Trafford had
accompanied her to Rome, whither she went in December 1859 to arrange
the affairs of Italima at the Palazzo Parisani, and thence, having
fulfilled her mission, and seen Victoire comfortably established in her
Pisan home, Madame de Trafford had returned to Paris.
In 1865 the journey from Pisa to Rome was still tiresome and difficult.
We went by rail to Nunziatella, and there a cavalcade was formed (for
mutual protection from the brigands), of six diligences with five horses
apiece, with patrols on each carriage, and mounted guards riding by the
side. The cholera had been raging, so at Montalto, one of the highest
points of the dreary Maremma, we were stopped, and those who were
"unclean"--_i.e._, had omitted to provide themselves with clean bills of
health at Leghorn--were detained for eight days' quarantine. We had
obtained "clean" bills, from the Spanish Consul, grounded upon the
hotel bills of the different places we had slept at since crossing the
Alps, and, with others of our kind, were taken into a small white-washed
room filled with fumes of lime and camphor, where we were shut up for
ten minutes, without other hurt than that any purple articles of dress
worn by the ladies came out yellow. Most dreary was the long
after-journey through a deserted region, without a house or tree or sign
of habitation, till at 10 p.m. we came in sight of the revolving light
of Civita Vecchia, beautifully reflected in the sea. Then I had to watch
all the luggage being fumigated for three midnight hours. However,
November 18 found us established in Rome, in the high apartment of the
Tempietto (Claude Lorraine's house), at the junction of the Via Sistina
and Via Gregoriana, with the most glorious view from its windows over
all the Eternal City, and a pleasant Englishwoman, Madame de Monaca, as
our landlady. Hurried travellers to Rome now can hardly imagine the
intense comfort and repose which we felt in old days in unpacking and
establishing ourselves in our Roman apartment, which it was worth while
to make really pretty and comfortable, as we were sure to be settled
there for at least four or five months, with usually far more freedom
from interruptions, and power of following our own occupations, than
would have attended us in our own home, even had health not been in
question. Most delightful was it, after the fatigues and (on my mother's
account) the intense anxieties of the journey, to wake upon the splendid
view, with its succession of a\xEBrial distances, and to know how many
glorious sunsets we had to enjoy behind the mighty dome which rose on
the other side of the brown-grey city. And then came the slow walk to
church along the sunny Pincio terrace, with the deepest of unimaginable
blue skies seen through branches of ilex and bay, and garden beds,
beneath the terraced wall, always showing some flowers, but in spring
quite ablaze with pansies and marigolds.
The first time we went out to draw was to the gardens of S. Onofrio,
where, when we were last here, we used to be very much troubled by a
furious dog. We rang the bell, and the woman answered; she recognised
us, and, without any preliminary greetings, by an association of ideas,
exclaimed at once, "Il cane e morto." It was very Italian.
So many people beset me during this winter with notes or verbal
petitions that I would go out drawing with them, that at last I wrote
on a sheet of paper a list of the days (three times a week) on which I
should go out sketching, and a list of the places I should go to, and
desiring that any one who wished to go with me would find themselves on
the steps of the Trinit\xE0 de' Monti at 10 A.M., and sent it round to my
artistic acquaintance. To my astonishment, on the first day mentioned,
when I expected to meet one or two persons at most, I found the steps
covered by forty ladies, in many cases attended by footmen, carrying
their luncheon-baskets, camp-stools, &c. I introduced four ladies to
each other that they might drive out together to the Campagna, and I
generally tried to persuade those who had carriages of their own to
offer seats to their poorer companions. For a time all went radiantly,
but, in a few weeks, two-thirds of the ladies were "_en delicatesse_"
and, at the end of two months, they were all "_en froid_," so that the
parties had to be given up. Of the male sex there was scarcely ever any
one on these sketching excursions, except myself and my cousin Frederick
Fisher,[308] who was staying at Rome as tutor to the young Russian
Prince, Nicole Dolgorouki. He was constantly with us during the winter,
and was a great pleasure from his real affection for my mother, who was
very fond of him.
In the spring Esmeralda came to Rome, and I used often to go to see her
in the rooms at Palazzo Parisani. She was very fragile then, and used to
lie almost all day upon an old velvet sofa, looking, except for the
heavy masses of raven hair which were still uncovered, almost like an
uncloistered nun, with her pale face and long black dress, unrelieved at
the throat, and with a heavy rosary of large black beads and cross at
her waist.
_From my_ JOURNAL.
"_Rome, Dec. 21, 1865._--Cardinal Cecchi died last week, and lay in
state all yesterday in his palace, on a high bier, with his face
painted and rouged, wearing his robes, and with his scarlet hat on
his head. Cardinals always lie in state on a high catafalque,
contrary to the general rule, which prescribes that the higher the
rank the lower the person should lie. Princess Piombino lay in
state upon the floor itself, so very high was her rank.
"The Cardinal was carried to church last night with a grand
torchlight procession, which is always considered necessary for
persons of his rank; but it is expensive, as everything in Rome
costs double after the Ave Maria. The fee for a frate to walk at a
funeral is four baiocchi in the daytime, but after the Ave it is
eight baiocchi. When the Marchesa Ponziani was taken to church the
other day, all the confraternities in Rome attended with
torches.[309]
"To-day at 10 A.M. the Cardinal was buried in the church at the
back of the Catinari. According to old custom, when he was put into
the grave, his head-cook walked up to it and said, 'At what time
will your Eminence dine?' For a minute there was no response, and
then the major-domo replied, 'His Eminence will not want dinner any
more (_non vuol altro_).' Then the head-footman came in and asked,
'At what time will your Eminence want the carriage?' and the
major-domo replied, 'His Eminence will not want the carriage any
more.' Upon which the footman went out to the door of the church,
where the fat coachman sat on the box of the Cardinal's state
carriage, who said, 'At what time will his Eminence be ready for
the carriage?' and when the footman replied, 'La sua Eminenza non
vuol altro,' he broke his whip, and throwing down the two pieces on
either side the carriage, flung up his hands with a gesture of
despair, and drove off.
"The other day Mrs. Goldsmid was in a church waiting for her
confessor, who was not ready to come out of the sacristy. While she
was waiting, two men came in carrying something between them, which
she soon saw was a dead frate. His robe was too short, and his
little white legs protruded below. They put him on a raised couch
with a steep incline and left him, and her agony was that he would
slip down and fall off, and then that the priests would think she
had done it. She became so nervous, that, as she kept her eyes
fixed on the body, it seemed to her to slip, slip, slip, till at
last she made sure the little man was coming down altogether, and
going to the sacristy door, she rang the bell violently, and
entreated to be let out of the church.
"Mrs. Goldsmid says that the Pope, Pius IX., cannot stop spitting
even when he is in the act of celebrating mass.... Being very
jocose himself, he likes others to be familiar enough to amuse him.
The other day a friend asked Monsignor de Merode why the Pope was
so fond of him: he said it was because, when he saw the Pope in a
fit of melancholy, he always cut a joke and made him laugh, instead
of condoling with him.
"The Pope is always thoroughly entertained at the stories which are
circulated as to his 'evil eye' and its effects, as well as those
about the 'evil eye' of the excellent and strikingly handsome
Monsignor Prosperi. When the fire occurred in the Bocca di Leone,
and the Pope was told of it, he said, 'How very extraordinary, for
Monsignor Prosperi was out of Rome, and I was not there.'
"When the Pope, who does not speak good French, was talking of
Pusey, he said, 'Je le compare \xE0 une cloche, qui sonne, sonne, pour
appeler les fid\xE8les \xE0 l'\xE9glise, mais qui n'entre jamais.'
"I think there can scarcely be any set of men whose individuality
is more marked than the present Cardinals.... Antonelli's manner
in carrying the chalice in St Peter's is reverent in the extreme.
Cardinal Ugolini, who is almost always with the Pope, never fails
to ruffle up his hair in walking down St. Peter's or the Sistine."
"_Christmas Day._--The Pope heard of the death of his sister, an
abbess, this morning, just as he was going to be carried into St.
Peter's, but the procession and the chair were waiting, and he was
obliged to go. The poor old man looked deadly white as he was
carried down the nave, and no wonder."
"_January 15, 1866._--Went, by appointment, with Mrs. Goldsmid to
the Church of SS. Marcellino e Pietro--the church with a roof like
that of a Chinese pagoda, in the little valley beneath St. John
Lateran. Inside it is a large Greek cross, and very handsome, with
marbles, &c. The party collected slowly, Mrs. De Selby and her
daughter, Mrs. Alfred Montgomery, Madame Sainte Aldegonde, the
Bedingfields, a French Abb\xE9, Mrs. Dawkins, and ourselves. Soon a
small window shutter was opened to the left of the altar, and
disclosed a double grille of iron, beyond which was a small room in
the interior of the monastery. In the room, but close to the
grille, and standing sideways, with lighted candles in front of it,
was a very beautiful picture of the Crucifixion. It was much
smaller than life, and seemed to be a copy of Guido's picture in
the Lucina. The figure hung alone on the cross in the midst of a
dark wind-stricken plain, and behind it the black storm clouds were
driving through the sky, and beating the trees towards the ground.
As you looked fixedly at the face, the feeling of its intense
suffering and its touching patience seemed to take possession of
you and fill you. We all knelt in front of it, and I never took my
eyes from it. Very soon Mrs. Goldsmid said, 'I begin to see
something; do you not see the pupils of its eyes dilate?' Mrs.
Montgomery, in an ecstasy, soon after said, 'Oh, I see it: how
wonderful! what a blessing vouchsafed to us! See, it moves! it
moves!' Mrs. De Selby, who is always sternly matter-of-fact, and
who had been looking fixedly at it hitherto, on this turned
contemptuously away and said, 'What nonsense! it is a complete
delusion: you delude yourselves into anything; the picture is
perfectly still.' Mrs. Dawkins now declared that she distinctly saw
the eyes move. Lady Bedingfield would not commit herself to any
opinion. The French Abb\xE9 saw nothing.
"Meanwhile Madame Ste. Aldegonde had fallen into a rapture, and
with clasped hands was returning thanks for the privilege
vouchsafed to her. 'Oh mon Dieu! mon Dieu! quelle gr\xE2ce! quelle
gr\xE2ce!' Shortly after this the French Abb\xE9 saw it also. 'Il n'y a
pas le moindre doute,' he said; 'il bouge les yeux, mais le voil\xE0,
le voil\xE0.' They all now began to distress themselves about Mrs. De
Selby. 'Surely you must see _something_,' they said; 'it is
impossible that you should see _nothing_.' But Mrs. De Selby
continued stubbornly to declare that she saw nothing. While Madame
Ste. Aldegonde was exclaiming, and when the scene was at its
height, I could fancy that I saw something like a scintillation, a
speculation, in one of the eyes of the Crucified One, but I could
not be certain. As we left the church, the other ladies said,
apropos of Mrs. De Selby, 'Well, you know, after all, it is not a
thing we are _obliged_ to believe,' and one of them, turning to
her, added consolingly, 'And you know you _did_ see a miracle at
Vicovaro.'
"Mrs. Goldsmid declared that she was so shocked at my want of
faith, that she should take me immediately to the Sepolti Vivi, to
request the prayers of the abbess there. So we drove thither at
once. The convent is most carefully concealed. Opposite the Church
of S. Maria del Monte, a little recess in the street, which looks
like a _cul de sac_, runs up to one of those large street shrines
with a picture, so common in Naples, but of which there are very
few at Rome. When you get up to the picture, you find the _cul de
sac_ is an illusion. In the left of the shrine a staircase in the
wall leads you up round the walls of the adjoining house to a
platform on the roof. Here you are surrounded by heavy doors, all
strongly barred and bolted. In the wall there projects what looks
like a small green barrel. Mrs. Goldsmid stooped down and rapped
loudly on the barrel. This she continued to do for some time. At
last a faint muffled voice was heard issuing from behind the
barrel, and demanding what was wanted. 'I am Margaret Goldsmid,'
said our companion, 'and I want to speak to the abbess.'--'Speak
again,' said the strange voice, and again Mrs. G. declared that she
was Margaret Goldsmid. Then the invisible nun recognised the voice,
and very slowly, to my great surprise, the green barrel began to
move. Round and round it went, till at last in its innermost
recesses was disclosed a key. Mrs. Goldsmid knew the meaning of
this, and taking the key, led us round to a small postern door,
which she unlocked, and we entered a small courtyard. Beyond this,
other doors opened in a similar manner, till we reached a small
white-washed room. Over the door was an inscription bidding those
who entered that chamber to leave all worldly thoughts behind them.
Round the walls of the room were inscribed: 'Qui non diligit, manet
in morte'--'Militia est vita hominis super terram'--'Alter alterius
onera portate,' and on the side opposite the door--
'Vi esorto a rimirar
La vita del mondo
Nella guisa che il mira
Un moribondo.'
Immediately beneath this inscription was a double grille, and
beyond it what looked at first like pitch darkness, but what was
afterwards shown to be a thick plate of iron, pierced, like the
rose of a watering-pot, with small round holes, through which the
voice might penetrate. Behind this plate of iron the abbess of the
Sepolti Vivi receives her visitors. She is even then veiled from
head to foot, and folds of thick serge fell over her face. Pope
Gregory XVI., who of course could penetrate within the convent,
once wishing to try her faith, said to her, 'Sorella mia, levate il
velo.'--'No, mio Padre,' replied the abbess, '\xE9 vietato dalle
regole del nostro ordine.'
"Mrs. Goldsmid said to the abbess that she had brought with her two
heretics, one in a state of partial grace, the other in a state of
blind and outer darkness, that she might request her prayers and
those of her sisterhood. The heretic in partial grace was Mrs.
Dawkins, the heretic in blind darkness was myself. Then came back
the muffled voice of the abbess, as if from another world, 'Bisogna
essere convertiti, perch\xE8 ci si sta poco in questo mondo: bisogna
avere le lampane accese, perch\xE8 non si sa l'ora quando il Signore
chiamer\xE0, ma bisogna che le lampane siano accese coll' olio della
vera fede, e se ve ne manca un solo articolo, se ne manca il
tutto.' There was much more that she said, but it was all in the
same strain. When she said, 'Se ve ne manca un solo articolo, se ne
manca il tutto,' Mrs. Goldsmid was very much displeased, because
she had constantly tried to persuade Mrs. Dawkins that it was _not_
necessary to receive _all_, and the abbess had unconsciously
interfered with the whole line of her argument. Afterwards we asked
the abbess about her convent. They were 'Farnesiani,' she said;
'Sepolti Vivi' was only 'un nome popolare;' but she did not know
why they were called Farnesiani, or who founded their order. She
said the nuns did not dig their graves every day, that also was
only a popular story. When they died, she said, 'they only enjoyed
their graves a short time, like the Cappuccini (a year, I think),
and then, if their bodies were whole when they were dug up, they
were preserved; but if their limbs had separated, they were thrown
away. She said the nuns could speak to their 'parenti stretti' four
times a year, but when I asked if they ever _saw_ them, she laughed
in fits at the very idea, 'ma perch\xE8 bisogna vederli?' Mrs.
Goldsmid was once inside the convent, but could not get an order
this year, because, when it had been countersigned by all the other
authorities, old Cardinal Patrizi remembered that she had been in
before, and withdrew it.
"I heard afterwards that generally when the crucifixion at S.
Marcellino is shown, a nun of S. Teresa, with her face covered, and
robed from head to foot in a long blue veil, stands by it
immovable, like a pillar, the whole time."
"_January 27._--Gibson the sculptor died this morning. He was first
taken ill while calling on Mrs. Caldwell. She saw that he could not
speak, and, making him lie down, brought water and restoratives. He
grew better and insisted on walking home. She wished to send for a
carriage, but he would not hear of it, and he was able to walk home
perfectly. That evening a paralytic seizure came. Ever since, for
nineteen days and nights, Miss Dowdeswell had nursed him. He will
be a great loss to Miss Hosmer (the sculptress), whom he regarded
as a daughter. They used to dine together with old Mr. Hay every
Saturday. It was an institution. Mr. Gibson was writing his memoirs
then, and he used to take what he had written and read it aloud to
Mr. Hay on the Saturday evenings. Mr. Hay also dictated memoirs of
his own life to Miss Hosmer, and she wrote them down."
"_January 29._--I had a paper last night begging me to be present
at a meeting about Gibson's funeral, but I could not go. The
greater part of his friends wished for a regular funeral procession
on foot through the streets, but this was overruled by Colonel
Caldwell and others. A guard of honour, offered by the French
general, was however accepted. The body lay for some hours in the
little chapel at the cemetery, the cross of the Legion of Honour
fixed upon the coffin. It was brought to the grave with muffled
drums, all the artists following. Many ladies who had known and
loved him were crying bitterly, and there was an immense attendance
of men. The day before he died there was a temporary rally, and
those with him hoped for his life. It was during this time that the
telegraph of inquiry from the Queen came, and Gibson was able to
receive pleasure from it, and held it in his hand for an hour.
"Gibson--'Don Giovanni,' as his friends called him--had a quaint
dry humour which was all his own. He used to tell how a famous
art-critic, whose name must not be mentioned, came to his studio to
visit his newly-born statue of Bacchus. 'Now pray criticise it as
much as you like,' said the great sculptor. 'Well, since you ask me
to find fault,' said the critic, 'I think perhaps there is
something not quite right about the left leg.'--'About the leg!
that is rather a wide expression,' said Gibson; 'but about what
part of the leg?'--'Well, just here, about the bone of the
leg.'--'Well,' said Gibson, 'I am relieved that _that_ is the fault
you have to find, for the bone of the leg is on the other side!'
"Gibson used to relate with great gusto something which happened to
him when he was travelling by diligence before the time of
railways. He had got as far as the Mont Cenis, and, while crossing
it, entered into conversation with his fellow-traveller--an
Englishman, not an American. Gibson asked where he had been, and he
mentioned several places, and then said, 'There was one town I saw
which I thought curious, the name of which I cannot for the life of
me remember, but I know it began with an R.'--'Was it Ronciglione,'
said Gibson, 'or perhaps Radicofani?' thinking of all the
unimportant places beginning with R. 'No, no; it was a much shorter
name--a one-syllable name. I remember we entered it by a gate near
a very big church with lots of pillars in front of it, and there
was a sort of square with two fountains.'--'You cannot possibly
mean Rome?'--'Oh yes, Rome--that _was_ the name of the place.'"
"_February 4._--I spent yesterday evening with the Henry
Feildens.[310] Mrs. Feilden told me that in her girlhood her family
went to the Isle of Wight and rented St. Boniface House, between
Bonchurch and Ventnor. She slept in a room on the first floor with
her sister Ghita: the French governess and her sister Cha slept in
the next room, the English governess above. If they talked in bed
they were always punished by the English governess, who could not
bear them; so they never spoke except in a whisper. One night, when
they were in bed, with the curtains closely drawn, the door was
suddenly burst open with a bang, and something rushed into the room
and began to whisk about in it, making great draught and
disturbance. They were not frightened, but very angry, thinking
some one was playing them a trick. But immediately the curtains
were drawn aside and whisked up over their heads, and one by one
all the bed-clothes were dragged away from them, though when they
stretched out their hands they could feel nothing. First the
counterpane went, then the blankets, then the sheet, then the
pillows, and lastly the lower sheet was drawn away from _under_
them. When it came to this she (Ellinor Hornby) exclaimed, 'I can
bear this no longer,' and she and her sister both jumped out of bed
at the foot, which was the side nearest the door. As they jumped
out, they felt the mattress graze against their legs, as it also
was dragged off the bed. Ghita Hornby rushed into the next room to
call the French governess, while Ellinor screamed for assistance,
holding the door of their room tightly on the outside, fully
believing that somebody would be found in the room. The English
governess and the servants, roused by the noise, now rushed
downstairs, and the door was opened. The room was perfectly still
and there was no one there. It was all tidied. The curtains were
carefully rolled, and tied up above the head of the bed: the sheets
and counterpane were neatly folded up in squares and laid in the
three corners of the room: the mattress was reared against the wall
under the window: the blanket was in the fireplace. Both the
governesses protested that the girls must have done it themselves
in their sleep, but nothing would induce them to return to the
room, and they were surprised the next morning, when they expected
a scolding from their mother, to find that she quietly assented to
the room being shut up. Many years after Mrs. Hornby met the lady
to whom the property belonged, and after questioning her about what
had happened to her family, the lady told her that the same thing
had often happened to others, and that the house was now shut up
and could never be let, because it was haunted. A murder by a lady
of her child was committed in that room, and she occasionally
appeared; but more frequently only the noise and movement of the
furniture occurred, and sometimes that took place in the adjoining
room also. St. Boniface House is mentioned as haunted in the
guide-books of the Isle of Wight."
"_Feb. 12._--Went in the morning with the Feildens to S. Maria in
Monticelli--a small church near the Ghetto. The church is not
generally open, and we had to ring at the door of the priest's
lodgings to get in: he let us into the church by a private passage.
In the right aisle is the famous picture over an altar. It is a
Christ with the eyes almost closed, weighed down by pain and
sorrow. The Feildens knelt before it, and in a very few minutes
they both declared that they saw its eyes open and close again.
From the front of the picture and on the right side of it, though I
looked fixedly at it, I could see nothing, but after I had looked
for a long time from the left side, I seemed to see the eyes
languidly close altogether, as if the figure were sinking
unconsciously into a fast sleep.
"In the case of this picture, Pope Pius IX. has turned Protestant,
and, disapproving of the notice it attracted, after it was first
observed to move its eyes in 1859, he had it privately removed from
the church, and it was kept shut up for some years. Two years ago
it was supposed that people had forgotten all about it, and it was
quietly brought back to the church in the night. It has frequently
been seen to move the eyes since, but it has not been generally
shown. The sacristan said it was a '_regalo_' made to the church at
its foundation, and none knew who the artist was.
"In the afternoon I was in St. Peter's with Miss Buchanan when the
famous Brother Ignatius[311] came in. He led 'the Infant Samuel' by
the hand, and a lay brother followed. He has come to Rome for his
health, and has brought with him a sister (Sister Ambrogia) and the
lay brother to wash and look after the Infant Samuel. He found the
'Infant' as a baby on the altar at Norwich, and vowed him at once
to the service of the Temple, dressed him in a little habit, and
determined that he should never speak to a woman as long as he
lived. The last is extremely hard upon Sister Ambrogia, who does
not go sight-seeing with her companions, and having a very dull
time of it, would be exceedingly glad to play with the little
rosy-cheeked creature. The Infant is now four years old, and is
dressed in a white frock and cowl like a little Carthusian, and
went pattering along the church in the funniest way by the side of
the stately Brother Ignatius. He held the Infant up in his arms to
kiss St. Peter's toe, and then rubbed its forehead against his
foot, and did the same for himself, and then they both prostrated
themselves before the principal shrine, with the lay brother behind
them, and afterwards at the side altars, the Infant of course
exciting great attention and amusement amongst the canons and
priests of the church. A lady acquaintance of ours went to see
Brother Ignatius and begged to talk to the Infant. This was
declared to be impossible, the Infant was never to be allowed to
speak to a woman, but she might be in the same room with the Infant
if she pleased, and Brother Ignatius would then himself put any
questions she wished. She asked who its father and mother were, and
the Infant replied, 'I am the child of Jesus Christ and of the
Blessed Virgin and of the holy St. Benedict.' She then asked if it
liked being at Rome, 'Yes,' it said, 'I like being at Rome, for it
is the city of the holy saints and martyrs and of the blessed
Apostles Peter and Paul.' When we saw the party, they were just
come from the Pope, who told Brother Ignatius to remember that a
habit could not make a monk.
"Miss Dowdeswell has been to see us, and given us a terrible
account of the misapplication of the Roman charities. She says the
people would rather beg, or even really die of want, than go into
most of the institutions--that the so-called soup is little more
than water, and that the inmates are really starved, besides which
the dirt and vermin are quite disgusting. The best hospital is that
of the 'Buon Fratelli,' where the people who obtain entrance are
kindly treated, but it is exceedingly difficult to get admittance,
and the hospital authorities will always say it is full, scarcely
ever taking in more than nine patients, though there is
accommodation for thirty, and each person admitted has to pay ten
scudi. At S. Michele, which is enormously endowed, and which
professes to be free, the patient is not only compelled to have a
complete outfit of bedding and everything else she requires, but
must pay three scudi a month for her maintenance as long as she
remains, yet for this will not have what she could procure for the
same sum elsewhere."
"_Feb. 15._--Went with the Eyres to Benzoni's studio. Amongst many
other statues was a fine group of a venerable old man raising a
little half-naked boy out of a gutter. 'Ecco il mio benefattore,'
said Benzoni. It was the likeness of Conte Luigi Taddini of Crema,
who first recognised the genius of Benzoni when making clay images
in the puddles by the wayside, and sent him to Rome at his own
expense for education. Count Taddini died six years after, but, in
the height of his fame, Benzoni has made this group as a voluntary
thank-offering and presented it to the family of his benefactor in
Crema. He was only twelve years old when adopted by Taddini.
"A curious instance of presentiment happened yesterday. Some
charitable ladies, especially Mrs. McClintock,[312] had been
getting up a raffle for a picture of the poor artist Coleman, whom
they believed to be starving. The tickets cost five scudi apiece,
and were drawn yesterday. Just at the last moment Mrs. Keppel, at
the Pension Anglaise, had a presentiment that 77 would be the lucky
number, and she sent to tell Mrs. McClintock that if she could have
77 she would take it, but if not, she would not take any number at
all. Seventy-seven happened to be Mrs. McClintock's own number.
However, she said that rather than Mrs. Keppel should take none,
she would give it up to her and take another. Mrs. Keppel took 77
and she got the picture."
"_Feb. 24, 1866._--The other day little Nicole Dolgorouki came in
to dinner with a pencil in his hand. The Princess said, 'Little
boys should not sit at dinner with pencils in their hands;' upon
which the child of eight years old coolly replied, 'L'artiste ne
quitte jamais son crayon!'
"When the Mother and Lea were both ill last week, our Italian
servants Clementina and (her daughter) Louisa groaned incessantly;
and when Clementina was taken ill on the following night, Louisa
gave up all hope at once, and sent for her other children to take
leave of her. This depression of spirits has gone on ever since
Christmas, and it turns out now that they think a terrible omen has
come to the house. No omen is worse than an upset of oil, but, if
this occurs on Christmas Eve, it is absolutely fatal, and on
Christmas Eve my mother upset her little table with the great
moderator lamp upon it. The oil was spilt all over her gown and the
lamp broken to pieces on the floor, with great cries of 'O
santissimo diavolo' from the servants. 'Only one thing can save us
now,' says Louisa; 'if Providence would mercifully permit that some
one should break a bottle of wine here by accident, that would
bring back luck to the house, but nothing else can.'
"The Borgheses have had a magnificent fancy ball. Young Bolognetti
Cenci borrowed the armour of Julius II. from the Pope for the
occasion, and young Corsini that of Cardinal de Bourbon. The
Duchess Fiano went in the costume of the first Empire, terribly
improper in these days, and another lady went as a nymph just
emerged from a fountain, and naturally clothed as little as
possible. The Princess Borghese[313] was dreadfully shocked, but
she only said, 'I fear, Madame, that you must be feeling horribly
cold.'
"When the French ambassador sent to the Pope to desire that he
would send away the Court of Naples, the Pope said he must decline
to give up the parental prerogative which had always belonged to
the Popes, of giving shelter to unfortunate princes of other
nations, of whatever degree or nation they might be, and 'of this,'
he added pointedly, 'the Bonapartes are a striking example.' The
French ambassador had the bad taste to go on to the Palazzo
Farnese, and, after condoling with the King of Naples[314] upon
what he had heard of his great poverty, said, 'If your Majesty
would engage at once to leave Rome, I on my part would promise to
do my best endeavours with my Government to obtain the restoration
of at least a part of your Majesty's fortune.' The King coldly
replied, 'Sir, I have heard that in all ages great and good men
have ended their days in obscurity and poverty, and it can be no
source of dread to me that I may be numbered amongst them.'
"The Queen-mother of Naples[315] is still very rich, but is now a
mere nurse to her large family, with some of whom she is to be
seen--'gran' bel' pezzo di donna'--driving every day. When the King
returned from Caieta, she was still at the Quirinal, and went down
to the Piazza Monte Cavallo to receive him; but with him and the
Queen came her own eldest son, and, before noticing her sovereign,
she rushed to embrace her child, saying, 'Adesso, son pagato a
tutto.'
"One sees the Queen of Naples[316] daily walking with her sister
Countess Trani[317] near the Porta Angelica, or threading the
carriages in the Piazza di Spagna, where the coachmen never take
off their hats, and even crack their whips as she passes. She wears
a straw hat, a plain violet linsey-woolsey dress, and generally
leads a large deerhound by a string. She is perfectly lovely.
"The great Mother, Maria de Matthias,[318] has lately come down
from her mountains of Acuto to visit my sister, who has arrived in
Rome, and the confessor of the Venerable Anna Maria Taigi has also
visited her. I have read the life of this saint, and have never
found out any possible excuse for her being canonised, unless that
she married her husband because he was a good man, though he was
'ruvido di maniere e grossolano.'
"At dinner at Mr. Brooke's, I met the quaint and clever Mrs.
Payne, Madame d'Arblay's niece. She said that England had an honest
bad climate and Rome a dishonest good one.
"Count Bolognetti Cenci is marvellously handsome, face and figure
alike perfect. Some people maintain that Don Onorato Cai\xEBtani is
equally handsome. He has the extraordinary plume of white hair
which is hereditary in the Cai\xEBtani family. His father, the Duke of
Sermoneta, said the other day, with some pardonable pride, 'Our
ancestors were reigning sovereigns (in Tuscany) long before the
Pope had any temporal power.'
"We have been to the Villa Doria to pick 'Widowed Iris,' which the
Italians call 'I tre Chiodi del Nostro Signore,'--the three nails
of our Saviour's cross.
"My sister declares that when Madame Barr\xE8re, late superior of the
Order of the Sacr\xE9 C\x9Cur, was in her great old age, a Catholic
lady who was married to a Protestant came to her and implored her
to promise that, as soon as she entered heaven, her first petition
should be for her husband that he might be a Catholic. Soon after
this the Protestant husband was taken alarmingly ill, but gave his
wife no hope that he would change his religion; yet, to her great
surprise, when he was dying he bade her send for a priest. She
considered this at first as a result of delirium, but he insisted
upon the priest coming, and, rallying soon after, was received into
the Roman Catholic Church. In a few days came the news of the death
of Madame Barr\xE8re, and on inquiry it was found that the moment of
her death and that of the Protestant sending for the priest exactly
coincided."
"_March 13._--The Roman princes are generally enormously rich.
Tortonia is said to have an income which gives him 7000 scudi
(\xA31200) a day. He is very charitable, and gives a great many
pensions of a scudo a day to poor individuals of the _mezzoceto_
class. The Chigis used to be immensely rich, but were ruined by old
Princess Chigi, who gambled away everything she could get hold of.
When one of her sons was to be made a Monsignore, a collection was
arranged amongst the friends of the family to pay the expenses, but
they imprudently left the rouleaux of money on the chimney-piece,
where the old Princess spied them, and snapping them up,
_gioccolare_-d them all away. The Massimi are rich, but the old
Prince[319] is very miserly. The other day he told his cook that he
was going to give a supper, but that it must not cost more than
fifteen baiocchi a head, and that he must give minestra. The cook
said it was utterly impossible, but the Prince declared he did not
care in the least about 'possible,' only it must be done. The
supper came off, and the guests had minestra. The next day the
Prince said to his cook, 'Well, now, you see you could do it
perfectly well; what was the use of making such a fuss about it?'
The cook said 'Yes, I _did_ it, but would you like to know where I
got the bones from that made the soup?' The Prince shrugged his
shoulders and said, 'Oh no, I don't want in the least to know about
that; so long as you do your suppers for my price, you may get your
bones wherever you like.' The cook told his friends afterwards that
he got them at the Immondezzajo!"
"_March 25._--Last January my sister wanted to engage a new maid.
The mistress of a famous flower shop at Paris recommended her
present maid, 'Madame Victorine,' who came to the hotel to see
Esmeralda, who was delighted with her, only thinking her too good
for the place. The new maid only made two stipulations: one was
that she should always be called _Madame_ Victorine; the other,
that she should not be expected to have her meals with the other
servants. My sister said that as to the first stipulation, there
would be no difficulty at all; that she had always called her
mother's maid 'Madame Victoire,' and that she could have no
objection to calling her Madame Victorine; but that as to the
second stipulation, though she insisted upon nothing, and though
Madame Victorine would be perfectly free to take her food away and
eat it wherever she pleased, yet she did not advise her to make any
difficulty of this kind, as they were going to Italy, where the
servants have jealous natures, and would be peculiarly liable to
resent anything of the sort. Upon this Madame Victorine waived her
second stipulation.
"Esmeralda was surprised, when Madame Victorine came to her, to
find how well she had been educated and little traces of her having
belonged to a higher position several times appeared by accident,
upon which occasions Madame Victorine would colour deeply and try
to hide what she had said. Thus, once she was betrayed into saying,
'I managed in that way with my servants;' and once in the railway,
'I did so when I was travelling with my son.' My sister observed
not only that all her dresses were of the best silk though
perfectly plain, but that all her cuffs, collars, and handkerchiefs
were of the very best and finest material. But the oddest
circumstance was, that once when Esmeralda was going to seal a
letter, having no seal about her, she asked Madame Victorine if she
had one. Madame Victorine lent her one, and then, colouring
violently, as if she remembered something, tried to snatch it away,
but Esmeralda had already pressed it down, and saw on the
impression a coronet and a cipher. When my sister first told Madame
Victorine that she was too good for the place, she seemed greatly
agitated and exclaimed, 'Oh don't, don't change your mind, do take
me: I will consent to do anything, only do take me.'
"One day since they have been at Palazzo Parisani, Esmeralda was
looking for something amongst her music. 'You will find it in such
an opera,' said Madame Victorine. 'Why, do you play also?' said
Esmeralda, much surprised. 'Yes,' said Madame Victorine, colouring
deeply. 'Then will you play to me?' said my sister. 'Oh no, no,'
said Madame Victorine, trembling all over. 'Then I hope you will
play sometimes when I am out,' said Esmeralda, and this Madame
Victorine said she would do, and it seemed to please her very
much."[320]
"_March 26._--The Santa Croce are perhaps really the oldest family
in Rome. They claim descent from Valerius Publicola, and the
spirit of his life, that which characterised 'the good house that
loved the people well,' still remains in the family. The other day
Donna Vincenza Santa Croce was speaking of the Trinit\xE0 de'
Monti,[321] and the system of education there, and she said, 'I do
so dislike those nuns: they are so worldly: they do so give in to
rank, for when a girl of one of the great noble houses is there,
they will make all the other girls stand up when she comes into a
room! But this, you know, is not right, for it is only goodness and
talent, not rank, that ought to make people esteemed in the world.'
And was not this the spirit of Valerius Publicola speaking through
his descendant?"
"_March 27._--Last Sunday (Palm Sunday) was the last day of the
'mission' which the Pope had appointed in the hope of warding off
both the cholera and the destruction of his own power. All the week
processions had paraded the streets and monks had preached in the
piazzas, rousing the feelings of the people in behalf of the Holy
Father, and last Sunday it all came to a close. Giacinta, 'the
Saint of St. Peter's,' came to tell my sister about the scene at
Santo Spirito, where she was. A Passionist Father took a real crown
of thorns and pressed it upon his head three times, till the thorns
sank deep into the flesh, and the blood ran in streams down his
face and over his dress. The people cried and sobbed convulsively,
and were excited to frenzy when he afterwards took a 'disciplina'
and began violently to scourge himself before all the congregation.
One man sobbed and screamed so violently that he was dragged out by
the carabinieri. Whilst the feelings of the people were thus
wrought up, the father besought and commanded them to deliver up
all books they possessed which were mentioned in the Index,
tambourines and things used in dancing the saltarella, and all
weapons,--and all through that afternoon they kept pouring in by
hundreds, men bringing their books, and women their tambourines,
and many their knives and pistols, which were piled up into a great
heap in the courtyard of the Santo Spirito and set on fire. It was
a huge bonfire, which burnt quite late into the evening, and whilst
it burnt, more people were perpetually arriving and throwing on
their books and other things, just as in the old days of Florence
under the influence of Savonarola.
"Last Thursday at the Caravit\xE0, the doors of the church were
'closed at one hour of the day' (_i.e._, after Ave Maria), only men
being admitted, and when they were fast, scourges were distributed,
the lights all put out, and every one began to scourge both
themselves and their neighbours, any one who had ventured to remain
in the church without using a 'disciplina' being the more
vigorously scourged by the others. At such times all is soon a
scene of the wildest confusion, and shrieks and groans are heard on
all sides. Some poor creatures try to escape by clinging to the
pillars of the galleries, others fly screaming through the church
with their scourgers pursuing them like demons.
"They say that the reason why St. Joseph's day was so much kept
this year is that the Pope is preparing the public mind to receive
a dogma of the Immaculate Conception of St. Joseph--perhaps to be
promulgated next year: St. Anne is to be reserved to another time."
"_April 1, Easter Sunday._--Passion Week has been very odd and
interesting, but not reverent. It was very curious to see how--as
Mrs. Goldsmid says, 'the Church always anticipates,' so that the
Saviour, personified by the Sacrament, is laid in the tomb long
before the hour of His death, and Thursday, not Saturday, is the
day upon which all the faithful go about to visit the
sepulchres.[322] My sister decorated that of S. Claudio with
flowers and her great worked carpet. The Mother recalls John
Bunyan's confession of faith--
'Blest cross, blest sepulchre,--blest rather He,
The Man that there was put to shame for me.'
"We went to the Benediction in the Piazza S. Pietro--a glorious
blue sky and burning sunshine, and the vast crowd making the whole
scene very grand, especially at the moment when the Pope stretched
out his arms, and, hovering over the crimson balcony like a great
white albatross, gave his blessing to all the world. Surely nothing
is finer than that wonderful voice of Pius IX., which, without ever
losing its tone of indescribable solemnity, yet vibrates to the
farthest corners of the immense piazza.
"Afterwards we went to S. Andrea della Valle to see the 'sepolcro;'
but far more worth seeing was a single ray of light streaming in
through a narrow slit in one of the dark blinds, and making a
glistening pool of gold upon the black pavement.
"On Good Friday, after the English service, we went to Santo
Spirito in Borgo, where, after waiting an hour and a half, seeing
nothing but the curiously ragged congregation, we found that the
'Tre Ore' was to be preached in broad Trasteverino, of which we
could not understand a word. We went into St. Peter's, which was in
a state of widowhood, no bells, no clock, no holy water, no
ornaments on any of the altars, no lamps burning at the shrine, and
all because the Sacrament was no longer present. We went again in
the afternoon, when the whole building was thickly crowded from end
to end. I stood upon the ledge of one of the pillars and watched
two graceful ladies and a gentlemanly-looking man in black
buffetted in the crowd below me: they were the King and Queen of
Naples and the Countess Trani. Some zealous Bourbonists kissed
their hands at risk of being trampled on.
"To-day St. Peter's and all the other churches have come to life
again: the Sacrament has been restored: the bells have rung: and
fire and water have been re-blessed for the year to come. All
private Catholic houses too have had their blessings. A priest and
a boy surprised Lea by coming in here and blessing everything, and
she found them asperging the Mother's bed with holy water, all at
the desire of our fellowlodger, Mr. Monteith of Carstairs, whom
Louisa described as dropping gold pieces into their water-vessel.
At Palazzo Parisani, as well as below us, a 'colazione' was set
out, with a great cake, eggs, &c., and after being blessed was
given away.
"Antonelli has just been made a priest, in the vague idea, I
suppose, that it might some day be convenient to raise him to the
papacy.
"Mr. Perry Williams, the artist, thought the old woman who cleans
out his studio looked dreadfully ill the other day, and said, 'You
look very bad, what on earth is the matter with you?'--'Cosa vuole,
Signore, ho avuto una digestione tutta la notte.'"
"_April 3._--This morning poor little Miss Joyce lay in a chapelle
ardente at S. Andrea delle Fratte, and all the English Catholics,
with the Borgheses and Dorias, who were her cousins, attended the
requiem mass. She was only alarmingly ill for thirty-six hours, of
brain fever, caused by a dose of twenty-five grains of quinine
after typhus, which she had brought back from Naples. She had been
the gayest of the gay all the season, and a week ago was acting in
tableaux and singing at Mrs. Cholmondeley's party. It is said that
at least one young lady is killed every year by being taken to
Naples when she is overdone by the balls and excitement here.
"My sister gave a small party yesterday evening. The Duke and
Duchess Sora were there. The Duchess has a wonderfully charming
expression. K., a young Tractarian, was introduced to her. She said
afterwards, 'J'ai pens\xE9 longtemps qu'il \xE9tait catholique, et puis
j'ai tourn\xE9, j'ai tourn\xE9, j'ai tourn\xE9, et voil\xE0 qu'il \xE9tait
protestant!'"
"_April 8._--On Thursday, at the Monteiths', I met Lady Herries,
Mrs. Montgomery, my sister, and many other Catholics. They were all
assembled before dinner to receive Cardinal de Reisach, a very
striking-looking old man, whose white hair and brilliant scarlet
robes made a splendid effect of colour.
"On Friday, at 2 P.M., I joined the Feildens to go to the Palazzo
Farnese. Mrs. F. wore a high grey dress without a bonnet: little
Helen was in black velvet, with all her pretty hair flowing over
her shoulders; Mr. Robartes, Mr. Feilden, and I wore evening dress.
The whole way in the carriage my companions declared they felt more
terrified than if they were going to a dentist, as bad as if they
were going to have their legs taken off. We drove into the
courtyard of the Farnese and to the foot of the staircase. Several
other people were just coming down. We were shown through one long
gallery after another to a small salon furnished with green, where
the Duca della Regina and an old lady received us. Soon the door
was opened at the side, and in very distinct tones the Duke
mentioned our names. Just within the door stood Francis II. He
looked grave and sad, and his forehead seemed to work convulsively
at moments; still I thought him handsome. The Queen sat on a sofa
at the other side of the room. She was in a plain black mourning
dress with some black lace in her hair (for Queen Marie Amelie, her
husband's aunt). The room was a boudoir, hung round with family
portraits. There was a beautiful miniature of the Queen on the
table near which I sat.
"I went up at once to the King and made as if I would kiss his
hand, but he shook mine warmly and made me sit in an arm-chair
between him and the Queen. Mrs. Feilden in the meantime had gone
direct to the Queen, who seated her by her side upon the sofa, and
taking little Helen on her lap, kissed her tenderly, and said she
remembered her, having often seen her before. I said, 'Ce petit
enfant a tant de d\xE9vouement pour sa Majest\xE9 la Reine, qu'elle va
tous les jours \xE0 la Place d'Espagne seulement pour avoir le bonheur
de voir sa Majest\xE9 quand elle passe.' The Queen's eyes filled with
tears, and she hid her face in Helen's hair, which she kissed and
stroked, saying, 'Oh mon cher enfant, mon cher petit enfant!'
"The King then said something about the great rains we had
suffered. I mentioned the prophecy if it rained on the 4th April--
'Quattro di brillante,
Quaranta di durante,'
and the King said that in Naples there was a superstition of the
same kind as that of our St. Swithin in England.
"As another set of people came in, we rose to go, kissing the
Queen's hand, except Helen, who kissed her face. The King[323]
shook hands and walked with us to the door, expressing a wish that
we should return to Rome; and replying, when I said how much my
mother benefited by the climate here, that Madame my mother ought
always to make the most of whatever climate suited her health and
remain in it. In the anteroom the Duca della Regina and the old
lady were waiting to see Helen again.
"To-day Mrs. Ramsay asked me the difference between the Italian
words _mezzo-caldo_ and _semi-freddo_. One would think they were
the same, but _mezzo-caldo_ is hot punch and _semi-freddo_ is cold
cream!"
I have put in these extracts from my journal, as they describe a state
of things at Rome which seemed then as if it would last for ever, but
which is utterly swept away now and rapidly passing into oblivion. The
English society was as frivolous then as it is now, but much more
primitive. It was the custom in those days, when any one gave a larger
party than usual, to ask Mrs. Miller, a respectable old Anglo-German
baker who lived in the Via della Croce, to make tea and manage the
refreshments, and one knew whether the party that one was invited to was
going to be a large or small one by looking to see if there was "To meet
Mrs. Miller" in the corner.
[Illustration: CONTADINA, VALLEY OF THE SACCO.[324]]
Our days were for the most part spent in drawing, and many were the
delightful hours we passed in the Villa Negroni, which has now entirely
disappeared, in spite of its endless historic associations, or in the
desolate and beautiful _vigne_ of the Esquiline, which have also been
destroyed since the Sardinian occupation of Rome. Indeed, those who
visit Rome now that it is a very squalid modern city, can have no idea
of the wealth and glory of picturesqueness which adorned its every
corner before 1870, or of how romantic were the passing figures--the
crimson Cardinals; the venerable generals of religious orders with their
flowing white beards; the endless monks and nuns; the pifferari with
their pipes; the peasant women from Cori and Arpino and Subiaco, with
their great gold earrings, coral necklaces, and snowy head-dresses; the
contadini in their sheep-skins and goat-skins; the handsome stalwart
Guardia Nobile in splendid tight-fitting uniforms; and above all, the
grand figure and beneficent face of Pius IX. so frequently passing,
seated in his glass coach, in his snow-white robes, with the stoic
self-estimation of the Popes, but with his own kindly smile and his
fingers constantly raised in benediction.
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF AUGUSTUS, NARNI.[325]]
The heat was very great before we left Rome in April. We went first to
Narni, where we stayed several days in a very primitive lodging, with
the smallest possible amount of furniture, and nothing to eat except
cold goat and rosemary, but in a glorious situation on the terrace
which overlooks the deep rift of the Nar, clothed everywhere with ilex,
box, and arbutus; and we spent long hours drawing the two grand old
bridges--Roman and Medi\xE6val--which stride across the river, even Lea
being stimulated by the intense beauty to a trial of her artistic
powers, and making a very creditable performance of the two grand
cypresses on the slope of the hill, which have disappeared under the
Sardinian rule.
[Illustration: THE MEDI\xC6VAL BRIDGE, NARNI.[327]]
We spent a happy day at Spoleto, with its splendid ilex woods. Here my
friends Kilcoursie[326] and Pearson joined us, and I went with them to
spend the morning at the Temple of the Clitumnus, and returned just too
late for the train we had intended to leave by. It is very
characteristic of the slowness of those early days of Italian railways,
that though we did not order our carriage till some time after the train
was gone, we reached Perugia by road, in spite of the steep hill to be
climbed, before the train which we were to have taken arrived on the
railway. This evening's drive (April 23) is one of the Italian journeys
I look back upon with greatest pleasure, the going onwards through the
rich plain of vines and almonds and olives, and all the blaze of spring
tulips and gladioli, and the stopping to buy the splendid oranges from
the piles which lay in the little market under the old cathedral of
Foligno; then seeing the sky turn opal behind the hills, and deepen in
colour through a conflagration of amber, and orange, and crimson, of
which the luminousness was never lost, though everything else
disappeared into one dense shadow, and the great cypresses on the
mountain edges were only dark spires engraven upon the sky. How many
such evenings have we spent, ever moving onwards at that stately smooth
_vetturino_ pace--and silent, Mother absorbed in her heavenly, I in my
earthly contemplations; dear Lea, tired by her long day, often sleeping
opposite to us against the hand-bags.
We spent several days in Florence in 1866, when the streets were already
placarded with such advertisements as 'I Menzogne di Genese, o
l'Impostatura di Mos\xE9'--typical of the change of Government. I paid
several visits to the Comtesse d'Usedom (the Olympia Malcolm of my
childhood), who was more extraordinary than ever. When I went to
luncheon with her in the Villa Capponi, she talked incessantly for three
hours, chiefly of spirits.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE BOBOLI GARDENS, FLORENCE.[328]]
"I believe in them," she said, "of course I do. Why, haven't I
_heard_ them?" (with a perfect yell). "Why, I've seen a child whom
we knew most intimately who was perfectly possessed by
spirits--evil spirits, I mean. There is nothing efficacious
against _that_ kind but prayer and the crucifix. Why, the poor
little thing used to struggle for hours. It used to describe the
devils it saw. They were of different kinds. Sometimes it would
say, 'Oh, it's only one of the innocent blackies,' and then it
would shriek when it thought it saw a red devil come. It was the
red devils that did all the mischief. All the best physicians were
called in, but they all said the case was quite beyond them. The
possession sometimes came on twice in a day. It would end by the
child gasping a great sigh, as if at that moment the evil spirit
went out of it, and then quite calmly it would open its eyes,
wonder where it was, and remember nothing of what had happened. The
doctors urged that the child should not be kept quiet, but taken
abroad and amused, and mama writes me word now that it is quite
well.
"I never saw the ghosts at Rugen," said Madame von Usedom, "but
there is one of Usedom's houses there which I have refused ever to
go to again, for I have heard them there often. The lady in the
room with me saw them too--she saw three white sisters pulling her
husband out of his grave.
"We have an old lady in our family, a relation of Usedom's, who has
that wonderful power of second-sight.... When we left you at
Bamberg (in 1853), we went to Berlin, and there we saw Usedom's
relation, who told me that I was going to have a son. She 'saw it,'
she said. _Saw it!_ why, she saw it as plain as daylight: I was
going to have a son: Usedom's first wife had brought him none, and
I was going to give him one.
"When I left Berlin, we went to Rugen, but I was to return to
Berlin, where my son was to be born. Well, about three weeks before
my confinement was expected, the old lady sent for a relation of
Usedom's, who was in Berlin, and said, 'Have you heard anything of
Olympia?'--'Yes,' he said, 'I heard from Usedom yesterday, and she
is going on as well as possible, and will be here in a few
days.'--'No,' said the old lady, 'she will not, for the child is
dead. Yesterday, as I was sitting here, three angels passed through
my room with a little child in their arms, and the face of the
child was so exactly like Usedom's, that I know that the child is
born and that it is in heaven.' And so it was. I had a bad fall in
Rugen, which we thought nothing of at the time. I had so much
strength and courage that it did not seem to affect me; but a week
after my boy was born--dead--killed by that fall, and the image,
oh! the very image of Usedom."
From Florence we went to Bellagio on the Lago di Como, and spent a week
of glorious weather amid beautiful flowers with nightingales singing in
the trees all day and night. Many of our Roman friends joined us, and we
passed pleasant days together in the garden walks and in short
excursions to the neighbouring villas. When we left Bellagio, the two
Misses Hawker, often our companions in Rome, accompanied us. We ascended
the Splugen from Chiavenna in pitch darkness, till, about 4 A.M., the
diligence entered upon the snow cuttings, and we proceeded for some time
between walls of snow, often fifteen feet high. At last we stopped
altogether, and in a spot where there was no refuge whatever from the
ferocious ice-laden wind. Meantime sledges were prepared, being small
open carts without wheels, which just held two persons each: my mother
and I were in the second, Lea and an Italian in the third, and the
Hawkers in the fourth: we had no man with our sledge. The sledges
started in procession, the horses stumbling over the ledges in the snow,
from which we bounded up and down. At last the path began to wind along
the edge of a terrific precipice, where nothing but a slight edging of
fresh snow separated one from the abyss. Where this narrow path turned
it was truly horrible. Then came a tunnel festooned with long icicles;
then a fearful descent down a snow-drift almost perpendicularly over the
side of the mountain, the horses sliding on all fours, and the sledges
crashing and bounding from one hard piece of snow to another; all this
while the wind blew furiously, and the other sledges behind seemed
constantly coming upon us. Certainly I never remember anything more
appalling.
At the bottom of the drift was another diligence, but the Hawkers and I
walked on to Splugen.
[Illustration: HOLMHURST, FROM THE GARDEN.]
We spent an interesting afternoon at Brugg, and drew at K\xF6nigsfelden,
where the Emperor Albert's tomb is left deserted and neglected in a
stable, and Queen Agnes's room remains highly picturesque, with many
relics of her. In the evening we had a lovely walk through the forest to
Hapsburg, where we saw a splendid sunset from the hill of the old
castle. With a glimpse at Freiburg-im-Breisgau, we reached Carlsruhe,
with which we were very agreeably surprised. The Schloss Garten is
really pretty, with fine trees and fountains: the town is bright and
clean; and all around is the forest with its endless pleasant paths. We
found dear Madame de Bunsen established with her daughters Frances and
Emilia in a nice old-fashioned house, 18 Waldhornstrasse, with all their
pictures and treasures around them, the fine bust of Mrs. Waddington in
itself giving the room a character. Circling round the aunts were
Theodora von Ungern Sternberg's five motherless children, a perpetual
life-giving influence to the home. We went with them into the forest and
to the _faisanerie_, and picked masses of wild lilies of the valley. In
the palace gardens we saw the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, a very
handsome couple: she the only daughter of the King of Prussia. At the
station also I saw again, and for the last time, the very pleasing Queen
Emma of the Sandwich Islands, and presented the Bunsens to her.[329] On
the eve of Trinity Sunday we reached home.
_From my_ JOURNAL.
"_July 30, 1866.--Holmhurst._--Another happy summer! How different
my grown-up-hood has been to my boyhood: now all sunshine, then all
reproach and misery. How strange it is that my dearest mother
remembers nothing of those days, _nothing_ of those years of bitter
heartache which my uncles' wives cost me. But her present love, her
beautiful full heart devotion, are all free-will offering, not
sacrifice of atonement. Our little Holmhurst is most lovely and
peaceful."
[Illustration: Lady Augusta Stanley]
[Illustration: ALTON BARNES CHURCH.]
In August we spent a fortnight at the Deanery at Westminster with Arthur
and Augusta Stanley, the latter _fit les delices_ of all who came under
her influence, and both were most kind in asking every one to meet us
that they thought we could be interested to see. To me, however, no one
was ever half so interesting as Arthur himself, and his conversation at
these small Deanery dinner-parties was most delightful, though, as I
have heard another say, and perhaps justly, "it was always versatile
rather than accurate, brilliant rather than profound." From London we
went to look after our humble friends at Alton, where all the villagers
welcomed my mother with a most touching wealth of evergreen love, and
where forty old people came to supper by her invitation in the barn. The
owls hissed overhead in the oak rafters; the feast was lighted by
candles stuck into empty ginger-beer bottles, and in quavering voices
they all drank the mother's health. She made them a sweet little speech,
praying that all those who were there might meet with her at the great
supper of the Lamb. I had much interest at Alton in finding out those
particulars which form the account of the place in "Memorials of a Quiet
Life." The interest of the people, utterly unspoilt by "civilisation,"
can hardly be described, or the simplicity of their faith. Speaking of
her long troubles and illness, "Betty Smith" said, "I ha' been sorely
tried, but it be a' to help I on to thick there place." William Pontyn
said, "It just be a comfort to I to know that God Almighty's always at
whom: _He_ never goes out on a visit." Their use of fine words is very
comical. Old Pontyn said, "My son-in-law need na treat I ill, for I
niver gied un no _publication_ for it." He thanked mother for her
"respectable gift," and said, "I do thank God ivery morning and ivery
night, that I do; and thank un as I may, I niver can thank un enough, He
be so awful good to I." He said the noise the threshing-machine made
when out of order was "fierly ridic'lous," and that he was "fierly
gallered (frightened) at it"--that he was "obliged to _flagellate_ the
ducks to get them out of the pond."
I drove with Mr. Pile to see the remains of Wolf Hall, on the edge of
Savernake Forest, where Henry VIII. married Jane Seymour. The house,
once of immense size, is nearly destroyed. The roof of the
banqueting-hall is now the roof of a barn. The beautiful fragment of
building remaining was once the laundry. Hard by, at Burbage, is "Jane
Seymour's Pool."
After leaving Alton, as if making the round of my mother's old homes, we
went to Buntingsdale, Hodnet, and Stoke. While at the former, I remember
the Tayleurs being full of the promptitude of old Mrs. Massie (whose son
Edward married our cousin Sophy Mytton). When above ninety she had been
taken to see the church of Northwich, where some one pointed out to her
a gravestone with the epitaph--
"Some have children, and some have none;
Here lies the mother of twenty-one."
Old Mrs. Massie drew herself up to her full height and at once made this
impromptu--
"Some have many, and some have few;
Here _stands_ the mother of twenty-two."
And what she said was true.
My mother turned south from Shropshire, and I went to Lyme, near Disley,
the fine old house of the Leghs, whose then head, W. T. Legh, had
married Emily Wodehouse, one of the earliest friends of my childhood. It
is a most stately old house, standing high in a very wild park, one of
the only three places where wild cattle are not extinct. The story of
the place is curious.
"Old Colonel Legh of Lyme left his property first to his son Tom,
but though Tom Legh was twice married, he had no sons, so it came
to the father of the present possessor. Tom's first wife had been
the celebrated Miss Turner. Her father was a Manchester
manufacturer, who had bought the property of Shrigley, near Lyme,
of which his only daughter was the heiress. She was carried off
from school by a conspiracy between three brothers named Gibbon
Wakefield and a Miss Davis, daughter of a very respectable master
of the Grammar School at Macclesfield. While at school, Miss Turner
received a letter from home which mentioned casually that her
family had changed their butler. Two days after, a person
purporting to be the new butler came to the school, and sent in a
letter to say that Mr. Turner was dangerously ill, and that he was
sent to fetch his daughter, who was to return home at once. In the
greatest hurry, Miss Turner was got ready and sent off. When they
had gone some way, the carriage stopped, and a young man got in,
who said that he had been sent to break to her the news that her
father's illness was a fiction; that they did not wish to spread
the truth by letting the governess know, but that the fact was that
Mr. Turner had got into some terrible money difficulties and was
completely ruined, and he begged that his daughter would proceed at
once to meet him in Scotland, whither he was obliged to go to evade
his creditors. During the journey the young man who was sent to
chaperon Miss Turner made himself most agreeable. At last they
reached Berwick, and then at the inn, going out of the room, he
returned with a letter and said that he was almost afraid to tell
her its contents, but that it was sent by her father's command, and
that he only implored her to forgive him for obeying her father's
orders. It was a most urgent letter from her father, saying that it
rested with her to extricate him from his difficulties, which she
could do by consenting to marry the bearer. The man was handsome
and pleasant, and the marriage seemed no great trial to the girl,
who was under fifteen. Immediately after marriage she was taken to
Paris.
"Meantime all the gentlemen in the county rallied round Mr. Turner,
and he contrived somehow to get his daughter away whilst she was in
Paris. Suspicion had been first excited in the mind of the
governess because letters for Miss Turner continued to arrive at
the school from Shrigley, and she gave the alarm. There was a great
trial, at which all the gentlemen in Cheshire accompanied Mr.
Turner when he appeared leading his daughter. The marriage was
pronounced null and void, and one of the Gibbon Wakefields was
imprisoned at Lancaster for five years, the others for two. It was
the utmost punishment that could be given for misdemeanour, and
nothing more could be proved. The Gibbon Wakefields had thought
that, rather than expose his daughter to three days in a witness
box, Mr. Turner would consent to a regular marriage, and they had
relied upon that. Miss Turner was afterwards married to Mr. Legh,
in the hope of uniting two fine properties, but as she had no son,
her daughter, Mrs. Lowther, is now the mistress of Shrigley."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Lyme Hall, August 29, 1866._--I have been with Mrs. Legh to
Bramhall, the fine old house of the Davenports, near Stockport,
with the haunted room of Lady Dorothy Davenport and no end of
relics. Out of the billiard-room opens the parish church, in the
same style as the house, with prayer-books chained to the seats. We
returned by Marple, the wonderfully curious old house of Bradshaw
the regicide."
"_Sept. 1._--To-day we had a charming drive over the hills, the
green glens of pasture-land, the steeps, and the tossing burns
recalling those of Westmoreland. I went with Mrs. Legh into one of
the cottages and admired the blue wash of the room, 'Oh, _you_ like
it, do ye?' said the mistress of the house; 'I don't--so that's
difference of opinions.' The whole ceiling was hung with different
kinds of herbs, 'for we're our own doctors, ye see, and it saves
the physic bills.'
"The four children--Sybil and Mob (Mabel), Tom and Gilbert Legh,
are delightful, and Sybil quite lovely. It is a pleasure to hear
the little feet come scampering down the oak staircase, as the four
rush down to the library to ask for a story at seven o'clock--'A
nice horrible story, all about robbers and murders: now do tell us
a really horrible one.'"
"_Thornycroft Hall, Cheshire, Sept._ 3.--The family here are much
depressed by the reappearance of the cattle plague. In the last
attack sixty-eight cows died, and so rapidly that men had to be up
all night burying them by lantern-light in one great grave in the
park.... How curious the remains of French expressions are as used
by the cottagers here. They speak of _carafes_ of water, and say
they should not oss (oser) to do a thing. The other day one of the
Birtles tenants was being examined as a witness at the Manchester
assizes. 'You told me so and so, didn't you?' said the lawyer. And
the man replied, 'I tell't ye nowt o' the kind, ye powther-headed
monkey; ask the coompany now if I did.'"
From Thornycroft I went to stay (only three miles off) at Birtles, the
charming, comfortable home of the Hibberts--very old friends of all our
family. Mrs. Hibbert, _n\xE9e_ Caroline Cholmondeley, was very intimate
with my aunt Mrs. Stanley, and a most interesting and agreeable person;
and I always found a visit to Birtles a most admirable discipline, as my
great ignorance was so much discovered and commented upon, that it was
always a stimulus to further exertion. It was on this occasion that Mrs.
Hibbert told me a very remarkable story. It had been told her by Mrs.
Gaskell the authoress, who said that she felt so greatly the uncertainty
of life, that she wished a story which might possibly be of consequence,
and which had been intrusted to her, to remain with some one who was
certain to record it accurately. Three weeks afterwards, sitting by the
fire with her daughter, Mrs. Gaskell died suddenly in her arm-chair.
Mrs. Hibbert, in her turn, wished to share her trust with some one, and
she selected me.
In my childhood I remember well the Misses T., who were great
friends of my aunt Mrs. Stanley, and very clever agreeable old
ladies. "Many years before," as Mrs. Gaskell described to Mrs.
Hibbert, "they had had the care of a young cousin, a girl whose
beauty and cleverness were a great delight to them. But when she
was very young, indeed in the first year of her 'coming out,' she
engaged herself to marry a Major Alcock. In a worldly point of view
the marriage was all that could be desired. Major Alcock was a man
of fortune with a fine place in Leicestershire: he was a good man,
of high character, and likely to make an excellent husband. Still
it was a disappointment--an almost unspoken disappointment--to her
friends that the young lady should marry so soon--'she was so
young,' they thought; she had had so few opportunities of judging
persons; they had looked forward to having her so much longer with
them,' &c.
"When Mrs. Alcock went to her new home in Leicestershire, it was a
great comfort to the Misses T. and others who cared for her that
some old friends of the family would be her nearest neighbours, and
could keep them cognisant of how she was going on. For some time
the letters of these friends described Mrs. Alcock as radiantly,
perfectly happy. Mrs. Alcock's own letters also gave glowing
descriptions of her home, of the kindness of her husband, of her
own perfect felicity. But after a time a change came over the
letters on both sides. The neighbours described Mrs. Alcock as sad
and pale, and constantly silent and preoccupied, and in the letters
of Mrs. Alcock herself there was a reserve and want of all her
former cheerfulness, which aroused great uneasiness.
"The Misses T. went to see Mrs. Alcock, and found her terribly,
awfully changed--haggard, worn, preoccupied, with an expression of
fixed melancholy in her eyes. Both to them and to the doctors who
were called in to her she said that the cause of her suffering was
that, waking or sleeping, she seemed to see before her a face, the
face of a man whom she exactly described, and that she was sure
that some dreadful misfortune was about to befall her from the
owner of that face. Waking, she seemed to see it, or, if she fell
asleep, she dreamt of it. The doctors said that it was a case of
what is known as phantasmagoria; that the fact was that in her
unmarried state Mrs. Alcock had not only had every indulgence and
consideration, but that even the ordinary rubs of practical life
had been warded off from her; and that having been suddenly
transplanted into being the head of a large establishment in
Leicestershire, with quantities of visitors coming and going
throughout the hunting season, had been too much for a very
peculiar and nervous temperament, and that over-fatigue and
unwonted excitement had settled into this peculiar form of
delusion. She must have perfect rest, they said, and her mind would
soon recover its usual tone.
"This was acted upon. The house in Leicestershire was shut up, and
Major and Mrs. Alcock went abroad for the summer. The remedy
completely answered. Mrs. Alcock forgot all about the face, slept
well, enjoyed herself extremely and became perfectly healthy in
body and mind. So well was she, that it was thought a pity to run
the risk of bringing her back to Leicestershire just before the
hunting season, the busiest time there, and it was decided to
establish her cure by taking her to pass the winter at Rome.
"One of the oldest established hotels in Rome is the H\xF4tel
d'Angleterre in the Bocca di Leone. It was to it that travellers
generally went first when they arrived at Rome in the old
_vetturino_ days; and there, by the fountain near the hotel door
which plays into a sarcophagus under the shadow of two old
pepper-trees, idle contadini used to collect in old days to see the
foreigners arrive. So I remember it in the happy old days, and so
it was on the evening on which the heavily laden carriage of the
Alcock family rolled into the Bocca di Leone and stopped at the
door of the H\xF4tel d'Angleterre. Major Alcock got out, and Mrs.
Alcock got out, but, as she was descending the steps of the
carriage, she happened to glance round at the group under the
pepper-trees, and she uttered a piercing shriek, fell down upon the
ground, and was carried unconscious into the hotel.
"When Mrs. Alcock came to herself, she affirmed that amongst the
group near the door of the hotel she had recognised the owner of
the face which had so long tormented her, and she was certain that
some dreadful misfortune was about to overwhelm her. Doctors,
summoned in haste, when informed of her previous condition,
declared that the same results were owing to the same causes. Major
Alcock, who disliked bad hotels, had insisted on posting straight
through to Rome from Perugia; there had been difficulties about
horses, altercations with the post-boys--in fact, 'the delusion of
Mrs. Alcock was owing, as before, to over-fatigue and excitement:
she must have perfect rest, and she would soon recover.'
"So it proved. Quiet and rest soon restored Mrs. Alcock, and she
was soon able to enjoy going about quietly and entering into the
interests of Rome. It was decided that she should be saved all
possible fatigue, even the slight one of Roman housekeeping: so the
family remained at the H\xF4tel d'Angleterre. Towards January,
however, Mrs. Alcock was so well that they sent out some of the
numerous letters of introduction which they had brought with them,
and, in answer to these, many of the Romans came to call. One day a
Roman Marchese was shown upstairs to the Alcocks' room, and another
gentleman went up with him. The Marchese thought, 'Another visitor
come to call at the same time as myself,' the waiter, having only
one name given him, thought, 'The Marchese and his brother, or the
Marchese and a friend,' and they were shown in together. As they
entered the room, Mrs. Alcock was sitting on the other side of the
fire; she jumped up, looked suddenly behind the Marchese at his
companion, again uttered a fearful scream, and again fell down
insensible. Both gentlemen backed out of the room, and the Marchese
said in a well-bred way that as the Signora was suddenly taken ill,
he should hope for another opportunity of seeing her. The other
gentleman went out at the same time.
"Again medical assistance was summoned, and again the same cause
was ascribed to Mrs. Alcock's illness: this time she was said to be
over-fatigued by sight-seeing. Again quiet and rest seemed to
restore her.
"It was the spring of 1848--the year of the Louis Philippe
revolution. Major Alcock had a younger sister to whom he was sole
guardian, and who was at school in Paris, and he told his wife
that, in the troubled state of political affairs, he could not
reconcile it to his conscience to leave her there unprotected; he
must go and take her away. Mrs. Alcock begged that, if he went, she
might go with him, but naturally he said that was impossible--there
might be bloodshed going on--there might be barricades to get
over--there might be endless difficulties in getting out of Paris;
at any rate, there would be a hurried and exciting journey, which
would be sure to bring back her malady: no, she had friends at
Rome,--she must stay quietly there at the hotel till he came back.
Mrs. Alcock, with the greatest excitement, entreated, implored her
husband upon her knees that she might go with him; but Major Alcock
thought this very excitement was the more reason for leaving her
behind, and he went without her.
"As all know, the Louis Philippe revolution was a very slight
affair. The English had no difficulty in getting out of Paris, and
in a fortnight Major Alcock was back in Rome, bringing his sister
with him. When he arrived, Mrs. Alcock was gone. She was never,
never heard of again. There was no trace of her whatever. All that
ever was known of Mrs. Alcock was that, on the day of her
disappearance, some people who knew her were walking in front of S.
John Lateran, and saw a carriage driving very rapidly towards the
Porta S. Giovanni Laterano, and in it sat Mrs. Alcock crying and
wringing her hands as if her heart would break, and by her side
there sat a strange man, with the face she had so often described."
I have my own theories as to the explanation of this strange story of
Mrs. Alcock, but as they are evolved entirely from my own imagination, I
will not mention them here.
[Illustration: BODRYDDAN.]
From Cheshire I went to North Wales to pay a visit to our cousinhood at
Bodryddan, which had been the home of my grandmother's only brother, the
Dean of St. Asaph. The place has been spoilt since, but was very
charming in those days. Under an old clock-tower one entered upon a
handsome drive with an avenue of fine elms, on the right of which a
lawn, with magnificent firs, oaks, and cedars, swept away to the hills.
At the end rose the stately old red brick house, half covered with
magnolias, myrtles, and buddlea, with blazing beds of scarlet and yellow
flowers lighting up its base. Through an oak hall hung with armour a
fine staircase led to the library--an immense room with two deep
recesses, entirely furnished with black oak from Copenhagen, and
adorned with valuable enamels collected at Lisbon. The place had
belonged to the Conwys, and that family ended in three sisters, Lady
Stapleton, Mrs. Cotton, and Mrs. Yonge: they had equal shares. Mrs.
Cotton bought up Lady Stapleton's share, and left it with her own to the
two daughters of her sister Mrs. Yonge, of whom the elder married my
great-uncle, Dean Shipley, and was the mother of William and Charles
Shipley and of the three female first cousins (Penelope, Mrs. Pelham
Warren; Emily, Mrs. Heber; and Anna Maria, Mrs. Dashwood) who played so
large a part in the early history of my father and his brothers, and who
are frequently mentioned in the first volume of these memoirs.
When Dean Shipley married, he removed to his wife's house of Bodryddan.
Miss Yonge lived with them, and after her sister's death the Dean was
most anxious to marry her, trying to obtain an Act of Parliament for the
purpose. For some years their aunt, Lady Stapleton, also continued to
hold a life-interest in the property. Of this lady there is a curious
portrait at Bodryddan. She is represented with her two children and a
little Moor, for whom her own little boy had conceived the most
passionate attachment, and from whom he could never bear to be
separated. One night, after this little Moor was grown up, Lady
Stapleton, returning very late from a ball, went to bed, leaving all her
diamonds lying upon the table. Being awakened by a noise in the room,
she saw the Moor come in with a large knife in his hand, and begin
gathering up her jewels. Never losing her presence of mind, she raised
herself up in bed, and, fixing her eyes upon him, exclaimed in a
thrilling tone of reproach, "Pompey, is that you?" This she did three
times, and the third time the Moor, covering his face with his hands,
rushed out of the room. Nothing was heard of him till many years
afterwards, when the chaplain of a Devonshire gaol wrote to Lady
Stapleton that one of his prisoners, under sentence of death for murder,
was most anxious to see her. She was unable to go, but heard afterwards
that it was Pompey, who said that on the night he entered her room he
had intended to kill her, but that when she spoke, such a sense of his
ingratitude overwhelmed him, that he was unable to do it.
As an ecclesiastical dignitary, Dean Shipley would certainly be called
to account in our days. He was devoted to hunting and shooting, and used
to go up for weeks together to a little public-house in the hills above
Bodryddan, where he gave himself up entirely to the society of his
horses and dogs. He had led a very fast life before he took orders, and
he had a natural daughter by a Mrs. Hamilton, who became the second wife
of our grandfather; but after his ordination there was no further stain
upon his character. As a father he was exceedingly severe. He never
permitted his daughters to sit down in his presence, and he never
allowed two of them to be in the room with him at once, because he
could not endure the additional talking caused by their speaking to one
another. His daughter Anna Maria had become engaged to Captain Dashwood,
a very handsome young officer, but before the time came at which he was
to claim her hand, he was completely paralysed, crippled, and almost
imbecile. Then she flung herself upon her knees, imploring her father
with tears not to insist upon her marriage with him; but the Dean
sternly refused to relent, saying she had given her word, and must keep
to it.
She nursed Captain Dashwood indefatigably till he died, and then she
came back to Bodryddan, and lived there with her aunt Mrs. Yonge,
finding it dreadfully dull, for she was a brilliant talker and adored
society. At last she went abroad with her aunt Louisa Shipley, and at
Corfu she met Sir Thomas Maitland, who gave her magnificent diamonds,
and asked her to marry him. But she insisted on coming home to ask her
father's consent, at which the Dean was quite furious. "Why could you
not marry him at once?"--and indeed, before she could get back to her
lover, he died!
After the death of Mrs. Yonge, Mrs. Dashwood lived at Cheltenham, a rich
and clever widow, and had many proposals. To the disgust of her family,
she insisted upon accepting Colonel Jones, who had been a neighbour at
Bodryddan, and was celebrated for his fearfully violent temper. The day
before the wedding it was nearly all off, because, when he came to look
at her luggage, he insisted on her having only one box, and stamped all
her things down into it, spoiling all her new dresses. He made her go
with him for a wedding tour all over Scotland in a pony-carriage,
without a maid, and she hated it; but in a year he died.
Then she insisted on marrying the Rev. G. Chetwode, who had had one wife
before and had two afterwards--an old beau, who used to comb his hair
with a leaden comb to efface the grey. On her death he inherited all she
had--diamonds, \xA32000 a year, all the fine pictures left her by Mr.
Jones, and all those Landor had collected for her in Italy.
But to return to Dean Shipley. To Mrs. Rowley, who was the mistress of
Bodryddan when I was there, the Dean had been the kindest of
grandfathers, and she had no recollection of him which was not
associated with the most unlimited indulgence. The Dean was much
interested in the management of his estate, but he insisted that every
detail should pass through his own hands. For instance, while he was
absent in London, a number of curious images and carvings in alabaster
were discovered under the pavement at Bodryddan: news was immediately
sent to him, but he desired that everything should be covered up, and
remain till he came home. On his return, he put off the examination from
time to time, till, on his death, the place was forgotten, and now no
one is able to discover it.
Mrs. Rowley was the beautiful Charlotte, only daughter of Colonel
William Shipley, and had led an adventurous life, distinguishing herself
by her bravery and heroism during the plague while she was in the East,
and on various other occasions. By her marriage with Colonel Rowley,
second son of the first Lord Langford, she had three children,--Shipley
Conwy, the present owner of Bodryddan; Gwynydd, who has married twice;
and Efah, who, after her mother's death, made a happy marriage with
Captain Somerset.
In her early married life, Mrs. Rowley had lived much in Berkeley Square
with her mother-in-law, old Lady Langford, who was the original of Lady
Kew in "The Newcomes," and many pitched battles they had, in which the
daughter-in-law generally came off victorious. Lady Langford had been
very beautiful, clever, and had had _une vie tr\xE8s orageuse_. She had
much excuse, however. She had only once seen her cousin, Lord Langford,
when he came to visit her grandmother, and the next day the old lady
told her she was to marry him. "Very well, grandmama, but when?"--"I
never in my life heard such an impertinent question," said the
grandmother; "what business is it of yours _when_ you are to marry him?
You will marry him when I tell you. However, whenever you hear me order
six horses to the carriage, you may know that you are going to be
married." And so it was.
At the time I was at Bodryddan, the most devoted and affectionate
deference was shown by Mrs. Rowley to every word, movement, or wish of
her only brother, Colonel Shipley Conwy. He looked still young, but was
quite helpless from paralysis. Mrs. Rowley sat by him and fed him like a
child. It was one mouthful for her brother, the next for herself. When
dinner was over, a servant came in and wrung his arms and legs, as you
would pull bell-ropes, to prevent the joints from stiffening (a process
repeated several times in the evening), and then carried him out. But
with all this, Colonel Shipley Conwy--always patient--was very bright
and pleasant, and Mrs. Rowley, who said that she owed everything to my
father and his interest in her education, was most cordial in welcoming
me. I never saw either of these cousins again. They spent the next two
winters at the Cape, and both died a few years afterwards.
A little later, I went to stay at Dalton Hall in Lancashire, to visit
Mrs. Hornby, a cousin of my Aunt Penrhyn, and a very sweet and charming
old lady, who never failed to be loved by all who came within her
influence. She told me many old family stories, amongst others how--
"The late Lord Derby (the 13th Earl) was very fond of natural
history even as a boy. One night he dreamt most vividly of a rare
nest in the ivy on the wall, and that he was most anxious to get
it, but it was impossible. In the morning, the nest was on his
dressing-table, and it could only have got there by his opening the
window in his sleep and climbing the wall to it in that state.
"Another instance of his sleep-walking relates that he had a
passion, as a little boy, for sliding down the banisters, but it
was strictly forbidden. One night his tutor had been sitting up
late reading in the hall, when he saw one of the bedroom doors
open, and a little boy come out in his night-shirt and slide down
the banisters. This he did two or three times, and when the tutor
made some little noise, he ran upstairs and disappeared into his
bedroom. The tutor followed, but the little boy was fast asleep in
bed."
Apropos of sleep-walking, Mr. Bagot (husband of Mrs. Hornby's daughter
Lucy) told me a story he had just seen in the _Times_:--
"A large pat of butter was lately on the breakfast table of a
family. When it was divided, a gold watch and chain were found in
the midst of it. The maid who was waiting gave a shriek, and first
rushed off to her room, then, coming back, declared it was hers.
The family were much surprised, but what she said turned out to be
true. She had dreamt that she was going to be robbed of her watch
and chain, and that the only way of hiding them would be to wrap
them up in a pat of butter, and she had done it in her sleep."
A sister-in-law of Mrs. Hornby--a Mrs. Bayley--was staying at Dalton
when I was there. She told me--first hand--a story of which I have heard
many distorted versions. I give it in her words:--
"My sister, Mrs. Hamilton (_n\xE9e_ Armstrong), was one night going to
bed, when she saw a man's foot project from under the bed. She
knelt down then and there by the bedside and prayed for the wicked
people who were going about--for the _known_ wicked person
especially--that they might be converted. When she concluded, the
man came from under the bed and said, 'I have heard your prayer,
ma'am, and with all my heart I say Amen to it;' and he did her no
harm and went away. She heard from him years afterwards, and he was
a changed man from that day."
Apropos of the growth of a story by exaggeration, Mrs. Bayley said:--
"The first person said, 'Poor Mrs. Richards was so ill that what
she threw up was almost like a black crow.' The second said, 'Poor
Mrs. Richards was so ill: it was the most dreadful thing, she
actually threw up a black crow.' The third said, 'Poor Mrs.
Richards has the most dreadful malady: it is almost too terrible to
speak of, but she has already thrown up ... three black crows.'"
Mrs. Bayley was a very "religious" person, but she never went to church;
she thought it wrong. She called herself an "unattached Christian," and
said that people only ought to go to church for praise, but to do their
confessions at home. When I left Dalton, she presented me with a little
book, which she begged me not to read till I was quite away. It was
called "Do you belong to the Hellfire Club?" It was not an allegorical
little book, but really and seriously asked the question, saying that,
though not generally known, such a club really existed, where the most
frightful mysteries were enacted, and that it was just within the
bounds of possibility that I might secretly belong to it, and if so,
&c., &c. A similar little book was once thrust into my hand by a lady at
the top of St. James's Street.
On the 29th of October 1866 we left England for Cannes, stopping on the
way at Villefranche, that we might visit Ars, for the sake of its
venerable Cur\xE9.
_To_ MY SISTER.
"_Nov. 1866._--It was a pretty and peculiar drive to Ars: first
wooded lanes, then high open country, from whence you descend
abruptly upon the village, which, with its picturesque old church,
and the handsome wooden one behind it, quite fills the little
hollow in the hills. The village itself is almost made up of hotels
for the pilgrims, but is picturesque at this season, with masses of
golden vine falling over all the high walls. We left the carriage
at the foot of the church steps, and ascended through a little
square crowded with beggars, as in the time of the Cur\xE9.[330] The
old church is exceedingly interesting. In the middle of the floor
is the grave of the Cur\xE9, once surrounded by a balustrade hung with
immortelles, which are now in the room where he died. At the sides
are all the little chapels he built at the different crises of his
life, that of S. Philomene being quite filled with crutches, left
by lame persons who have gone away cured. Beyond the old church
opens out the handsome but less interesting modern building
erected by the Empress and the bishops, with a grand baldacchino on
red granite pillars, and on the altar a beautiful bas-relief of the
Cur\xE9 carried to heaven by angels. In the old church a missionary
was giving the pilgrims (who kept flocking in the whole time) a
very beautiful and simple exposition on the life of Christ as a
loving Saviour, quite carrying on the teaching of the Cur\xE9.
"At half-past twelve a Sister of Charity came to show the Cur\xE9's
room. It is railed off, because the pilgrims would have carried
everything away, as they have almost undermined the thick walls in
their eagerness to possess themselves of the bits of stone and
plaster; but you see the narrow bed, the poor broken floor, his
chair, his table, his pewter spoon and earthenware pot,--the
picture which was defiled by the Demon,--the door at which 'the
Grappin' knocked,--the narrow staircase from which he shouted
'Mangeur de truffes,'--the still poorer room downstairs where the
beloved Cur\xE9 lay when all his people passed by to see him in his
last sleep,--the little court shaded by ancient elder-trees in
which he gave his incessant charities,--and close by the little
house of his servant Catherine. She herself is the sweetest old
woman, seeming to live, in her primitive life, upon the gleanings
and the teaching of the past. She sate on a low stool at Mother's
feet, and talked in the most touching way of her dear Cur\xE9. When
Mother said something about the crowds that came to him, she said,
'I have always heard that when the dear Saviour was on earth, He
was so sweet and loving, that people liked to be near Him, and I
suppose that now when men are sweet and loving, and so a little
like the dear Saviour, people like to be near them too.' In a small
chapel of the school he founded they showed some blood of the Cur\xE9
in a bottle--'_encore coulant_.' Many other people we saw who
talked of him--'Comme il \xE9tait gai, toujours gai,' &c. The whole
place seemed cut out of the world, in an atmosphere of peace and
prayer, like a little heaven: no wonder Roman Catholics like to go
into 'Retreat' there."
We stayed afterwards at Arles, and made the excursion to S. Remy, one of
the most exquisitely beautiful places I have ever seen, where Roman
remains, grand in form and of the most splendid orange colouring, rise
close to the delicate Alpines.
At Cannes we were most fortunate in finding a house exactly suited to
our needs--a primitive bastide, approached by a long pergola of vines,
on the way to the Croix des Gardes, quite high up in woods of myrtle and
pine upon the mountain-side.[331] It was far out of the town and
dreadfully desolate at night, but in the daytime there were exquisite
views through the woods of the sea and mountains, and a charming
terraced garden of oranges and cassia--the vegetation quite tropical.
Close to the turn into our pergola was a little shrine of S. Fran\xE7ois,
which gave a name to our cottage, and which the peasants, passing to
their work in the forests, daily presented with fresh flowers.
Delightful walks led beyond us into the hilly pine woods with a soil of
glistening mica, and, if one penetrated far enough, one came out upon
the grand but well-concealed precipices of rock known as the Rochers de
Bilheres. Just below us lived Lord Mount-Edgecumbe, the "Valletort" of
my Harrow days, with his sweet invalid wife, and their three little
girls, with the little Valletort of this time, were a perpetual pleasure
to my mother in her morning walk to the Croix des Gardes. Old Madame
B\x9Cuf, our landlady, used to come up every morning in her large
flapping Proven\xE7al hat to work with her women amongst the cassia: the
sunshine seemed almost ceaseless, and all winter we used to sit with
open windows and hear our maid Marguerite carolling her strange patois
ballads at her work.
[Illustration: S. REMY.[332]]
[Illustration: FROM MAISON S. FRAN\xC7OIS, CANNES.[333]]
On the other side of Cannes, at the H\xF4tel de Provence, we had a large
group of friends, Lady Verulam and her sons; Lord and Lady Suffolk and
their two daughters; and the Dowager Lady Morley with her son and
daughter. With the latter I became very intimate, and joined them in
many long and delightful excursions to remote villages and to the
unspeakably grand scenery above the Var. Lady Suffolk too became a dear
and much honoured friend.
A still greater pleasure was the neighbourhood, in a small house by the
torrent at the foot of our hill, of the dear old Lady Grey of our Nice
days, and her niece Miss G. Des V\x9Cux. I generally dined with them
once or twice a week, and constantly accompanied them on delightful
drawing excursions, taking our luncheon with us. In the spring I went
away with them for several days together to the wild mountains of S.
Vallier and S. Cesaire. Lady Grey painted beautifully, though she only
began to be an artist when she was quite an old woman. She always went
out sketching with thirty-nine articles, which one servant called over
at the door, another answering "Here" for each, to secure that nothing
should be left behind.
Beneath us, at the H\xF4tel Bellevue, were Lady Jocelyn and her children,
with Lord and Lady Vernon and Mr. and Lady Louisa Wells, whom we saw
frequently; also three admirable Scotch sisters, Mrs. Douglas, Miss
Kennedy, and Mrs. Tootal. Hither also came for two months our dear
friend Miss Wright ("Aunt Sophy"), and she was a constant pleasure,
dropping in daily at tea-time, and always the most sympathising of human
beings both in joy and sorrow.
[Illustration: BOCCA WOOD, CANNES.]
Altogether, none of our winters was so rich in pleasant society as this
one at Cannes, and we had nothing to trouble us till the spring, when
Lea was taken very seriously ill from the bite either of scorpion or
tarantula, and, while she was at the worst and unable to move, my
mother became alarmingly ill too with a fever. I was up with them
through every night at this time; and it was an odd life in the little
desolate bastide, as it was long impossible to procure help. At length
we got a S\x9Cur de Charit\xE9--a pretty creature in a most picturesque
nun's dress, but efficient for very little except the manufacture and
consumption of convent soup, made with milk, tapioca, and pepper.
[Illustration: MAISON S. FRAN\xC7OIS, CANNES.]
Still, for the most part, my mother had not been so well or so
perfectly happy for years as in our little hermitage amid the juniper
and rosemary. It was just what she most enjoyed, the walks all within
her compass--perfect country, invariably dry and healthy, perpetual
warmth in which to sit out, and endless subjects for her sketch-book.
Lea, rejoiced to be rid for some months of her tiresome husband, found
plenty of occupation in her kitchen and in attending to the poultry
which she bought and reared; while I was engrossed with my drawings, of
which I sold enough to pay our rent very satisfactorily, and with my
"Lives of the Popes," a work on which I spent an immense amount of time,
but which is still unfinished in MS., and likely to remain so. My mother
greatly appreciated the church at Cannes, and we liked the clergyman,
Mr. Rolfe, and his wife. His sermons were capital. I do not often attend
to sermons, but I remember an excellent one on Zacharias praying for
vengeance, and Stephen for mercy on his murderers, as respectively
illustrating the principles of the Old and New Testament--Justice and
Mercy.
[Illustration: Maria Hare. 1862.]
I dined once or twice, to meet Mr. Panizzi[334] of the British Museum,
at the house of a quaint old Mr. Kerr, who died soon afterwards. It
was him of whom it used to be said that he had been "trying to make
himself disagreeable for sixty years and had not quite succeeded." When
he was eighty he told me that there were three things he had never had:
he had never had a watch, he had never had a key, and he had never had
an account.
I frequently saw the famous old Lord Brougham, who bore no trace then of
his "flashes of oratory," of his "thunder and lightning speeches," but
was the most disagreeable, selfish, cantankerous, violent old man who
ever lived. He used to swear by the hour together at his sister-in-law,
Mrs. William Brougham,[335] who lived with him, and bore his
ill-treatment with consummate patience. He would curse her in the most
horrible language before all her guests, and this not for anything she
had done, but merely to vent his spite and ill-humour. Though a proper
carriage was always provided for him, he would insist upon driving about
Cannes daily in the most disreputable old fly he could procure, with the
hope that people would say he was neglected by his family. Yet he
preferred the William Broughams to his other relations, and entirely
concealing that he had other brothers, procured the reversion of his
title to his youngest brother, William, much to the annoyance of the
Queen when she found it out. Lord Brougham was repulsive in appearance
and excessively dirty in his habits. He had always been so. Mr. Kerr
remembered seeing him at the Beefsteak Club, when the Prince Regent was
President, and there was the utmost license of manners. One day when he
came in, the Prince Regent roared out, "How dare you come in here,
Brougham, with those dirty hands?"--and he insisted on the waiters
bringing soap and water and having his hands washed before all the
company. In early life, if anything aggravated him at dinner, he would
throw his napkin in the face of his guests, and he did things quite as
insulting to the close of his life at Cannes, where he had a peculiar
prestige, as having, through his "Villa Louise Eleanore,"[336] first
brought the place into fashion, which led to the extension of a humble
fishing village into miles upon miles of villas and hotels.
[Illustration: CAGNES.[337]]
_To_ MISS WRIGHT (after she had gone on to Rome).
"_Maison S. Fran\xE7ois, Cannes, Feb. 2, 1867._--On Tuesday we made an
immense excursion of thirteen hours to the 'Seven villages of the
Var.' The party consisted of Lord Morley and Lady Katherine, Lord
Suffolk and Lady Victoria, Lord Henry Percy, Lord Mount-Edgecumbe,
and myself. We left by the 7.40 train and had carriages to meet us
at Cagnes. These took us as far as the grand Sinai-like granite
peaks of S. Janet, and thence we walked. The whole terrace is most
grand for seven miles above the tremendous purple gorge of the Var,
overhung here and there by splendid Aleppo pines or old gnarled
oaks; and as we reached just the finest point of all, where the
huge castle of Carrozza stands out on a great granite crag, the
mist curtain drew up and displayed range on range of snow
mountains, many of them close by--really a finer scene than any
single view I remembered in Switzerland. The whole of our party,
hitherto inclined to grumble, were almost petrified by the
intensity of the splendour.
"M. Victor Cousin's sudden death at dinner has been a great shock
to the Cannes world. It was just at that time that our attention
was so sadly occupied by the illness and death of dear old Sir Adam
Hay. The Hays gave a picnic at Vallauris, to which I was invited,
and Sir Adam caught a cold there, which excited no attention at the
time, as he had never been ill in his life before. Four days
afterwards Addie Hay took Miss Hawker and me in their carriage to
Napoule, where we spent a pleasant day in drawing. When we came
back, his father was most alarmingly ill, and absent children had
been already telegraphed for. All that week I went constantly to
Villa Escarras, and shared with the family their alternations of
hope and fear, but at the end of a week dear Sir Adam died, and all
the family went away immediately, as he was to be buried at
Peebles."
[Illustration: ANTIBES.[338]]
During the latter part of our stay at Cannes, the society of Madame
Goldschmidt (Jenny Lind) was a great pleasure to my mother, and in her
great kindness she came often to sing to her. We went with the
Goldschmidts to Antibes one most glorious February day, when Madame G.
was quite glowing with delight in all the beauties around and gratitude
to their Giver. "Oh, how good we ought to be--_how_ good with all this
before our eyes! it is a country to die in." She spoke much of the
sweetness of the Southern character, which she believed to be partly due
to the climate and scenery. She talked of an old man, bowed with
rheumatism, who worked in her garden. That morning she had asked him,
"Comment \xE7a va t'il? Comment va votre sant\xE9?"--"Oh, la volont\xE9 de Dieu!"
he had replied--"la volont\xE9 de Dieu!" In his pretty Proven\xE7al his very
murmur was a thanksgiving for what God sent. She spoke of the dislike
English had to foreigners, but that the only point in which she envied
the English was their noble women. In Sweden she said they might
_become_ as noble, but that hitherto the character of Swedish women had
been oppressed by the bondage in which they were kept by the laws--that
they had always been kept under guardians, and could have neither will
nor property of their own, unless they married, even when they were
eighty. She said that she was the first Swedish woman who had gained her
liberty, and that she had obtained it by applying direct to the king,
who emancipated her because of all she had done for Sweden. Now the law
was changed, and women were emancipated when they were five-and-twenty.
Then Madame Goldschmidt talked of the _faithfulness_ of the Southern
vegetation. In England she said to the leaves, "Oh, you poor leaves! you
are so thin and miserable. However, it does not signify, for you have
only to last three or four months; but these beautiful thick foreign
leaves, with them it is quite different, for they have got to be
beautiful always."
We drove up the road leading to the lighthouse, and then walked up the
steep rocky path carrying two baskets of luncheon, which we ate under
the shadow of a wall looking down upon the glorious view. Madame
Goldschmidt had been very anxious all the way about preserving a
cream-tart which she had brought. "Voil\xE0 le grand moment," she exclaimed
as it was uncovered. When some one spoke of her enthusiasm, she said,
"Oh, it is delightful to soar, but one is soon brought back again to the
cheese and bread and butter of life." When Lady Suffolk asked how she
first knew she had a voice, she said, "Oh, it did fly into me!"
At first sight Madame Goldschmidt might be called "plain," though her
smile is most beautiful and quite illuminates her features; but how true
of her is an observation I met with in a book by the Abb\xE9 Monnin, "Le
sourire ne se raconte pas." "She has no face; it is all _countenance_,"
might be said of her, as Miss Edgeworth said of Lady Wellington.
[Illustration: LE PUY.[339]]
[Illustration: ROYAT.[340]]
It was already excessively hot before we left Cannes on the 29th of
April. After another day at the grand ruins of Montmajour near Arles, we
diverged from Lyons to Le Puy, a place too little known and most
extraordinary, with its grand and fantastic rocks of basalt crowned by
the most picturesque of buildings. Five days were happily spent in
drawing at Le Puy and Espailly, and in an excursion to the charming
neighbouring campagne of the old landlord and landlady of the hotel
where we were staying. Then my mother assented to my wish of taking a
carriage through the forests of Velay and Auvergne to the grand desolate
monastery of the Chaise Dieu, where many of the Popes lived during their
exile in France, and where Clement VI. lies aloft on a grand tomb in
the centre of the superb choir, which is so picturesquely hung with old
tapestries. Our rooms at the hotel here cost half a franc apiece.
Joining the railway again at Brioude, we went to the Baths of Royat,
then a very primitive and always a very lovely place, with its torrent
tumbling through the walnut woods, its gorge closed by a grand old
Templars' church, and its view over rich upland vineyards to the town
and cathedral of Clermont. On the way home we visited the great deserted
abbey of Souvigny near Moulins, and bought the beautiful broken
statuette which is one of the principal ornaments of Holmhurst.
* * * * *
In June I went to Oxford to stay with my friend Henry Hood, and was
charmed to make acquaintance with a young Oxford so different from the
young Oxford of my days, that it seemed altogether another race--so much
more cordial and amusing, though certainly very Bohemian. During this
visit I cemented an acquaintance with Claude Delaval Cobham, then
reading for the orders for which he soon felt himself unsuited. In some
respects, he is one of the cleverest men I have met, especially from his
unusual linguistic acquirements, combined with extreme correctness. I
have frequently received kindness from him since and valuable advice and
help in literary work, and though I have sometimes conceitedly rebelled
against his opinion at the time, I have never failed to find that he was
in the right.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Oxford, June 1, 1867._--We went this morning in two
pony-carriages to Cuddesden, where Claude Cobham now is, and spent
the afternoon in walking and sitting in the Bishop's shady and
weedy garden.
"The other day, coming out of this garden, the Bishop heard two
navvies on the other side of the road talking. 'I zay, Bill, ain't
yon a Beeshop?' said one. 'Yees,' said Bill. 'Then oi'll have some
fun oot o' him.' So he crossed the road and said, 'I zay, zur, be
you a Beeshop?'--'Yes, at your service,' said the Bishop. 'Then can
you tell us which is the way to heaven?'--'Certainly,' said the
Bishop, not the least discomposed; 'turn to the right and go
straight on.'"
"_June 3._--I enjoy being at Oxford most intensely, and Hood is
kindness itself. A wet day cleared into a lovely evening for the
boat-race, which was a beautiful sight, the green of the
water-meadows in such rich fulness, and the crowd upon the barges
and walks so bright and gay."
"_6 Bury Street, June 12_.--The first persons I met in London were
Arthur and Augusta Stanley, who took me into their carriage, and
with them to the Park, whence we walked through Kensington Gardens,
and very pretty they looked. Arthur described his first sight of
the Queen on that spot, and Augusta was full of Princess Mary's
cleverness in being confined in the same house on the same day on
which the Queen was born.
"Then I went to Lady Wenlock, a most charming visit to that sweet
old lady, now much feebler, but so animated and lively, and her
life one long thanksgiving that her paralysis has left all her
powers unimpaired. She told me many old stories. I also called on
Lady Lothian, who is greatly disturbed at Madame de Trafford's
power over my sister. She says she quite considers her 'possessed,'
and that she ought to be exorcised. To-day I dined with Lady Grey.
She told me that as Charlie Grey was crossing to America, his
fellow-passengers were frightfully sea-sick, especially a man
opposite. At last an American sitting by him said, 'I guess,
stranger, if that man goes on much longer, he'll bring up his
boots.'"
"_June 15._--I have been sitting long with Lady Eastlake. She spoke
of how the great grief of her widowhood had taught her to sift the
dross from letters of condolence. She says that she lives upon
hope; prayer is given her in the meanwhile as a sustenance, not a
cure, for if it were a cure, one might be tempted to leave off
praying: still 'one could not live without it; it is like port wine
to a sick man.'
"She says she finds a great support in the letters of Sir Charles
to his mother--his most precious gift to her. She said touchingly
how she knew that even to her he had a slight reserve, but that to
his mother he poured out his whole soul. In those letters she had
learnt how, when he was absent, his mother hungered after him, and
perhaps, in all those blessed years when she had him, his mother
was hungering after him. In giving him up, she felt she gave him up
to her: he was with her now, and from those letters she knew what
their communion must be. 'I know he is with her now, for "I have
seen my mother, I have seen my mother," he twice rapturously
exclaimed when he was dying.' How touching and how consoling are
those visions on this side of the portal. Old Mr. Harford, when he
was dying, continually asked his wife if she did not hear the
music. 'Oh, it is so wonderful,' he said, 'bands upon bands.' She
did not understand it then but she knows now.
"'It was beautifully ordered,' said Lady Eastlake, 'that my
"History of Our Lord" was finished first: I could not have done it
now. And through it I learnt to know his library. My darling was
like a boy jumping up and down to find the references I wanted,
and, if possible, through the book I learnt to know him better.'
"She spoke of his wonderful diligence. When he was a boy he wrote
to his mother, 'London will be illuminated to-morrow, I shall draw
all night.'"
* * * * *
[Illustration: IN THE DEAN'S GARDEN, CANTERBURY.[341]]
In July I spent a few days with the Alfords at the Deanery of
Canterbury, which was always most enjoyable, the Dean so brimming with
liveliness and information of every kind. In the delightful garden grows
the old historic mulberry-tree,[342] about which it used to be said
that the Deans of Canterbury sit under the mulberry till they turn
purple, because those Deans were so frequently elevated to the episcopal
bench, and bishops formerly, though it is rare now, always wore purple
coats. I dined out with the Dean several times. I remember at one of the
parties a son of Canon Blakesley saying to me--what I have often thought
of since--"I find much the best way of getting on in society is never
to be able to understand why anybody is to be disapproved of." Both the
Dean's daughters were married now, and he cordially welcomed my
companionship, always treating me as an intimate friend or relation. No
one could be more sympathetic, for he had always the rare power of
condemning the fault, but not the action of it.[343] I insert a few
snatches from his table-talk, though they give but a faint idea of the
man.
"We have been studying Butler's Analogy ever since we came back
from Rome, for we've had eight different butlers in the time. The
last butler said to me, 'It's not you who govern the Deanery, and
it's not Mrs. Alford, but it is the upper housemaid.'"
"Archbishop Harcourt was very fond of hunting, _so_ fond that he
was very near refusing the archbishopric because he thought if he
accepted he should have to give it up. He consulted a friend, who
said that he must take counsel with others. 'Of course I should
never join the meet,' said the Archbishop, 'but you know I might
fall in with the hounds by accident.' After some time the friend
came back and said that on the whole the party considered that the
Archbishop might hunt, provided he did not shout."
"Archbishop Manners Sutton had a wonderfully ready wit. One day a
blustering vulgar man came up to him and said, 'I believe,
Archbishop, that I am a relation of yours: my name is Sutton.' The
Archbishop quietly replied, 'Yes, but you want the Manners.'"
"When some one was abusing our font the other day, I could not help
saying that, for a font, I thought renaissance peculiarly
appropriate."
"I met Lady Mounteagle the other day: you know she was the sister--
'Of the woman tawny and tough[344]
Who married the Master rude and rough
Who lived in the house that Hope built.'
You know Hope gothicised the Master's Lodge at Trinity. At the
Whewells' 'perpendiculars,' as their large parties were called, no
one was allowed to sit down: if any one ventured to do so, a
servant came and requested him to move on."
"When Alice was a little girl, I was explaining the Apostles' Creed
to her. When we came to the point of our Saviour descending into
hell she said, 'Oh, that is where the devil is, isn't
it?'--'Yes.'--'Then why didn't the devil run at him and tear him
all to pieces?'"
[Illustration: Arthur Penrhyn Stanley]
In August we spent some time at the Deanery of Westminster, where Arthur
and Augusta Stanley were always hospitality itself, and, with more than
the usual kindness of hosts, always urged, and almost insisted, on
our inviting our own friends to dinner and luncheon, making us, in fact,
use their house and fortune as our own.
_From my_ JOURNAL.
"_July 28, 1867._--In the evening, from the gallery of the Deanery
which overhangs the abbey, Mother, Mrs. Hall, and I looked down
upon the last service. Luther's hymn was sung and the Hallelujah
chorus, and trumpets played: it was very grand indeed. The Bishop
of Chester and the Wordsworths dined. Yesterday Arthur showed
thirty working-men over the Abbey. He pointed out where Peel was
buried. One of them received it very gravely in silence, and then,
after several minutes, said, 'Well, it is very extraordinary. I've
lived all my life in the next county, and I never knew that before:
I always thought he was buried at Drayton. Now that's what I call
_information_.'"
"_August 3._--It has a weird effect at night to look down upon the
Abbey, and see the solitary watchman walking along the desolate
aisles and the long trail of light from the lantern he carries
flickering on each monument and death's-head in turn. Hugo Percy,
who was here the other evening, asked him about his nights in the
Abbey. 'The ghosts have been very cross lately,' he said.
'Palmerston was the last who came, but Mr. Cobden has not come
yet.'
[Illustration: COURTYARD, DEANERY, WESTMINSTER.]
"We have been to Buckingham Palace to see the rooms which were
arranged for the Sultan, which are dull and handsome. The chief
fact I derived from the housekeeper was that the Sultan never 'goes
to bed' and never lies down--in fact, he cannot, for a third of the
imperial bed at either end is taken up by a huge bolster, in the
middle of which he _sits_ all night, and reclines either way in
turn. There was a picture of the late Sultan in the room, and of
Frederick, Prince of Wales, sent from Windsor for the occasion. One
room was entirely hung with portraits of French kings and their
families."
From London I went to visit Bishop Jeune,[345] who was most wonderfully
kind to me, really giving up his whole time to me whilst I was with him,
and pouring forth such stores of information as I had not received since
the days of Dr. Hawtrey; and it was a great pleasure to feel, to be
quite sure--which one so seldom is--that he liked my visit as much as I
liked being with him.
_From my_ JOURNAL.
"_August 10, 1867._--On the 8th I went to Peterborough, where I
have had a most agreeable visit at the Palace. When I arrived at
half-past seven, the family were all gone to dine with Dr. James,
an old Canon in the Close, whither I followed them. He was a
charming old-fashioned gentleman, most delightful to see.
"In the morning the Bishop, wearing his surplice and hood, read
prayers at a desk in the crypted hall of the Palace. Afterwards we
walked in the garden. I spoke of there being no monument in the
Cathedral to Catherine of Arragon. 'It is owing to that very
circumstance,' said the Bishop, 'that you are here to-day. If
Catherine of Arragon had had a tomb, I should never have been
Bishop of Peterborough. When people reproached Henry VIII. with
having erected no monument to his first wife, he said, "The Abbey
of Peterborough shall be a cathedral to her monument," and he
instituted the bishopric; the last abbot was the first bishop.' As
we passed the lavatory of the old convent, the Bishop said that a
touching description was still extant of its dedication and of the
number of cardinals, bishops, and priests who were present. 'How
few of them,' he said, 'would have believed that not only their
buildings, which they believed would last for ever, could become an
indefinite ruin, but that their Church, whose foundations they
believed to be even more eternally rooted in the soil, should be
cast out to make way for another Church, which is already tottering
on its base and divided against itself.' He said he 'firmly
believed that the ends both of the Church and monarchy were close
at hand, that the power of government was even now in the hands of
a few individuals, who were in their turn in the hands of a few
Irish priests.'
"While passing through the garden in returning to the Palace, the
Bishop showed me a white fig-tree growing out of the old wall of
the refectory and abundantly bearing fruit. 'This,' he said, 'I
believe to be the white fig-tree which is nearest to the Pole.'
Passing a fine mulberry-tree he said, 'We owe that to James I., as
he was so excessively anxious to promote the manufacture of silk,
that he recommended to every one the cultivation of the
mulberry-tree, but especially to the clergy, and those of the
clergy planted it who wished to stand well with him. Therefore it
is to be found in the neighbourhood of many of our cathedrals.'
[Illustration: PALACE GARDEN, PETERBOROUGH.]
"Afterwards the Bishop showed the old chronicle of the Abbey, which
he had had splendidly restored at Oxford. He read me some Latin
verses which had evidently been inserted by one of the monks
descriptive of his amours. 'Yet,' said the Bishop, 'these sins of
the monk were probably only sins of the imagination, quite as vivid
as real ones. You know,' he added, 'there are far more acted than
enacted sins, and the former are really far the more corrupting of
the two.'
"In the afternoon we drove to Croyland. The Bishop talked the whole
way. I spoke of his patronage, and envied the power it gave him; he
bitterly lamented it. He said, 'I have in my gift three canonries,
two archdeaconries, and sixty livings, and if any of these fell
vacant to-morrow, I should be at my wit's end whom to appoint. On
the average, two livings fall vacant every year, and then comes my
time of trouble. A bishop who would appoint the best man would be
most unpopular in his diocese, for every one of his clergy would be
offended at not being considered the best.' With regard to the
canonries, I suggested that he could find no difficulty, as he
might always choose men who were employed in some great literary
work. The Bishop allowed that this was exactly what he desired, but
that no such men were to be found in his diocese. There were many
very respectable clergy, but none more especially distinguished
than the rest. He said that when he was appointed bishop, Dr.
Vaughan advised him never to become what he called 'a carpet-bag
bishop,' but that this, in fact, was just what he had become: that
when he was going to preach in a village and sleep in a clergyman's
house, he did not like to trouble them by taking a man-servant, and
that he often arrived carrying his own carpet-bag. That
consequently he often never had his clothes brushed, or even his
boots blacked, but that he brushed his boots with his clothes-brush
as well as he could, as he was afraid of ringing his bell for fear
of mortifying his hosts by showing that he had not already got all
that he wanted. He said, however, that the work of a bishop was
vastly overrated, that there was nothing which did not come within
the easy powers of one man, yet that a proposition had already been
made to exclude the bishops from the House of Lords, to reduce
their incomes to \xA31500, and to double their number. He said that he
believed all Conservatives had better at once emigrate to New
Zealand, and that he wondered the Queen did not invest in foreign
funds; that it was utterly impossible the monarchy could last much
longer; that the end would be hastened by the debts of the two
Princes.
"When we reached Croyland we went into the Abbey Church, where the
Bishop pointed out the baptistery used for immersion, and several
curious epitaphs, one as late as 1729 asking prayers for the dead.
The drive was most curious over the fens, which are now drained,
but of which the soil is so light that they are obliged to marl it
all over to prevent its being blown away. The abbey itself is most
picturesque. It was built by St. Guthlac, a courtier, who retired
hither in a boat, but who came from no desire of seclusion and
prayer, but merely because he longed for the celebrity which must
accrue to him as a hermit. His sister, Pega, became the foundress
of Peakirk. The Bishop spoke much of the sublimity of the
conception under which these great abbeys were founded--'One God,
one Pope as God's interpreter, one Church, the servant of that
Pope, unity in everything.' He spoke of the Jesuit influence as
used to combat that of the Gallican Church, and he said that there
were now only three Gallican bishops.
"Coming home, the Bishop talked about Wales, and asked if I had
ever compared the military tactics of the Romans with regard to
Wales with those of Edward I. 'The Romans,' he said, 'built the
castle of Lincoln for the repression of the savage people of the
fens, and with the same idea built a line of fortresses between
England and Wales for the repression of the Welsh; but the
consummate skill of Edward I. saw a better plan than this, and he
built a line of fortresses along the coast, which could be
provisioned from the sea, so that if the Welsh made a raid into
England, he could bring them back by falling upon their wives and
children.
"In the evening the Bishop read aloud French poetry, a ballad of
the early part of the seventeenth century, on which Goldsmith had
evidently founded his 'Madame Blaise,' the powerful 'Malbrook,' and
many old hymns; also a beautiful hymn of Adolph Monod on the
Passion of Christ, which he said showed too much philosophy. He
described how he had preached in Westminster Abbey in French during
the great Exhibition, and the immense power of declamation that
French gave; that he had apostrophised those lying in the tombs,
the dead kings round about him, as he never should have ventured to
do in English. He spoke of the transitions of his life, that his
childhood had been passed amongst the rocks of Guernsey, and that
he had loved rocks and wild rolling seas ever since. That as a
child he was never allowed to speak French, as only the lower
orders spoke it, but that he went to the French college of S.
Servan, and there he learnt it. Then came his Oxford life, after
which, thinking that he was never likely to have any opening for
making his way in England, he went off to Canada in despair,
intending to become a settler in the backwoods. The rough life,
however, soon disgusted him, and in a year he returned to England,
where he became fellow and tutor of his college. Thence he was
appointed Dean of Jersey, and ruled there over the petty community.
Then he was made Master of Pembroke (where he remained twenty
years), Vice-Chancellor, Dean of Lincoln, and Bishop of
Peterborough. He spoke of the honour of Oxford men and the
consistency of the Hebdomadal Board, compared with others he had to
deal with. In Jersey, as a matter of course, all his subordinates
voted with their Dean. When he came to Oxford he expected the same
subserviency, and looked on all his colleagues with suspicion, but
he was soon convinced of their uprightness. He said touchingly
that, when near the grave, on looking back, it all seemed much the
same--the same pettiness of feeling, the same party strife, only he
did not worry himself about it; they were all in the hands of One
who died for all alike; that now there were changes in
everything--only One was unchanged.
"Speaking of the morality of Italy, he said that his friend Mr.
Hamilton, head of a clan, had met 'Sandy,' one of his men,
travelling between Rome and Naples. After expressing his surprise
at seeing him there, he asked what he thought of Rome and Naples.
'Wal,' said Sandy, 'I jist think that if naething happens to Rome
and Naples, Sodom and Gomorrah were very unjustly dealt with.'
"'I met Gioberti in Italy,' said the Bishop, 'and asked him about
the Pope. "C'est une femme vertueuse," he replied, "mais c'est
toujours une femme."'
"The Bishop said that, when younger, he wished to have written a
series of Bampton Lectures (and began them) on the History of the
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. He intended to begin with a
description of three scenes--first, the supper in the upper chamber
at Jerusalem; then the Pope officiating at the altar of the
Lateran; then a simple Scotch meeting in the Highlands--and he
would proceed to describe what had led to the differences between
these; how the Agape was arranged as a point at which all divisions
and dissensions should be laid aside; how it was set aside after
sixty years by the Roman Emperor; then of the gradual growth of the
Eucharist, till oaths were taken on the wafer, and deeds were
sealed with it to give them a solemnity; and till, finally, it came
to be regarded as the actual body of Christ; then of the gradual
rise of all the different theories, the impanation, the invination
of the Saviour.
"This morning the Bishop asked if I knew what was the difference
between the entrance of a field in France and England. 'In
England,' he said, 'it is a _gate_ to let people in; in France a
_barri\xE8re_ to keep people out: from this you might proceed to
theorise that England was a country where sheep might stray, but
France not: England a country for milk and flesh, France for corn
and wine.'
"The Bishop said he knew our Roman acquaintance Mr. Goldsmid well.
'I met Nat Goldsmid in Paris about the time of the Immaculate
Conception affair, and I said to him, "Goldsmid, now why has your
Church done this? for you know you all worshipped the Virgin as
much as you could before, and what more can you do for her
now?"--"Yes," he said, "that is quite true; we all worshipped the
Virgin before, but we have done this as a stepping-stone to
declaring the infallibility of the Pope. A Pope who could take upon
himself to declare _such_ a dogma as this must be infallible!"'
From Peterborough I went to stay at Lincoln with Mrs. Nicholas Bacon,
mother of the premier baronet, a very pretty old lady, who reminded me
of the old lady in "David Copperfield," finding her chief occupation in
rapping at her window and keeping the Minster green opposite free from
intruding children, and unable to leave home for any time because then
they would get beyond her--"so sacrilegious," she told them, it was to
play there. Going with her to dine with that Mrs. Ellison of Sugbrooke
who has bequeathed a fine collection of pictures to the nation, I met
the very oldest party of people I ever saw in my life, and as one
octogenarian tottered in after another, felt more amazed, till Mrs.
Ellison laughingly explained that, as Mrs. Bacon had written that she
was going to bring "a very old friend" of hers, she had supposed it
would be agreeable to him to meet as many as possible of his
contemporaries! Afterwards, when staying with Mr. Clements at
Gainsborough, I saw Stowe, which, as an old cathedral, was the
predecessor of Lincoln--very curious and interesting. Thence I went to
Doncaster, arriving in time to help Kate[346] with a great tea-party to
her old women. She asked one old woman how she was. "Well," she said, "I
be middling _upwards_, but I be very bad _downwards_. I be troubled with
such bad legs; downright dangerous legs they be." After visits at
Durham, Cullercoats, and Ridley Hall, I went to stay with the
Dixon-Brownes at Unthank in Northumberland.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Unthank, August 27, 1867._--I spent yesterday morning in my
Northern home (at Ridley), which is in perfect beauty now--the
Allen water, full and clear, rushing in tiny waterfalls among the
mossy rocks, all the ferns in full luxuriance, and the rich heather
in bloom, hanging over the crags and edging the walks. At six
o'clock the flag was raised which stops all trains at the bottom of
the garden, and I came the wee journey of seven miles down the
lovely Tyne valley to Haltwhistle. Unthank is the old home of
Bishop Ridley, the house to which he wrote his last letter before
the stake, addressed to 'my deare sister of Unthanke,'--and it is a
beautiful spot in a green hollow, close under the purple slopes of
the grand moor called Plenmellor. The house is modern, but has an
old tower, and a garden splendid in gorgeous colouring sweeps up
the hill behind it. To-day we went up through a romantic gill
called 'The Heavenly Hole' to Plenmellor Tarn, a lovely blue lake
in the midst of the heather-clad hills. We spoke of it to an old
man there, 'Aye,' he said, 'it's jist a drap of water left by the
Fluid, and niver dried up.'"
"_Bonnyrigg, August 30._--This shooting lodge of Sir Edward
Blackett is quite in the uninhabited moorlands, but has lovely
views of a lake backed by craggy blue hills--just what my sweet
mother would delight to sketch. Lady Blackett is very clever and
agreeable.[347] We have been a fatiguing walk through the heather
to 'the Queen's Crag,' supposed to be Guinevere turned into stone."
"_Bamborough Castle, Sept. 7._--I always long especially for my
dearest mother in this grand old castle, to me perhaps the most
delightful place in the world, its wild scenery more congenial than
even beautiful Italy itself. Nothing too can be kinder than the
dear old cousins.[348] ... It was almost dark when we drove up the
links and under all the old gateways and through the rock entrance:
the light burning in Mrs. Liddell's recess in the court-room. And
it was pleasant to emerge from the damp into the brightly lighted
tapestried chamber with the dinner set out. All yesterday the
minute-gun was booming through the fog to warn ships off the
rocks--such a strangely solemn sound.
"Mr. Liddell was speaking to an old Northumbrian here about the
organ yesterday, and he said, 'I canna bear the loike o' that kist
o' whistles a buzzin' in my ears.'"
"_The Lodge, North Berwick, Sept. 9._--I find my sweet hostess,
Mrs. Dalzel,[349] little altered, except perhaps more entirely
heavenly than before in all her thoughts and words. 'I am very near
the last station now,' she says, 'and then I shall be at home. I am
the last of fifteen, and I can think of them all _there_--my
mother, my sisters, one after another, resting upon their Saviour
alone, and now with Him for ever!' 'When one is old, the wonderful
discoveries, the great works of man only bewilder one and tire one;
but the flowers and the unfolding of Nature, all the wonderful
works of God, refresh and interest as much as ever: and may not it
be because these interests and pleasures are to be immortal, amid
the flowers that never fade?'
"Mr. Dalzel does not look a day older, but he sat at dinner with a
green baize cloth before him to save his eyes. We dined at five,
and another Mrs. Dalzel came, who sang Scottish songs most
beautifully in the evening. Mr. Dalzel prayed aloud long extempore
prayers, and we dispersed at ten. Before dinner I went to the sands
with Mrs. Allen Dalzel,[350] who was very amusing:--
"'The old Dalzel house is at Binns near Linlithgow. The first
Dalzel was an attendant of one of the early Kenneths. The king's
favourite was taken by his enemies and hanged on a tree. "Who will
dare to cut him down?" said the king. "Dalzel," or "I dare," said
the attendant, who cut him down with his dagger. Hence came the
name, and hence the Dalzels bear a dagger as their crest, with the
motto "I dare," and on their arms a man hanging.
"'At Binns there are trees cut in the shape of men hanging. There
is also a picture of the "tyrannous Dalzel," who persecuted the
Covenanters, and who made a vow at the death of Charles I. that he
would never shave again or change his costume. He lived for fifty
years after that, but he never cut his beard, and he is represented
in his odd suit of chamois leather, with a high-peaked hat and his
hair down to his waist.
"'His comrade was Grierson of Lag, whose eye was the most terrible
ever seen. Long after the persecution was over, he was told that a
servant in the house had a great curiosity to see him. "Let him
bring me a glass of wine," said Grierson. The servant brought it in
upon a salver. Grierson waited till he came close up, and then,
fixing his eye on him, exclaimed, "Are there ony Whigs in Galloway
noo?" and the effect was so terrible, that the servant dropped the
salver, glass and all, and rushed out of the room.
"'I used to go and teach Betty O'Brien to read when we lived at
Seacliffe. Her mother was a clean tidy body, and, though she had
not a penny in the world, she was very proud, for she came from the
North of Ireland, and looked down upon all who came from the South.
I asked her why she did not make friends with her neighbours, and
she said, "D'ye think I'd consort wi' the loike o' them, just
Connaught folk?" So on this I changed the subject as quick as I
could, for I just came from Connaught myself.
"'Her daughter, however, married one of those very Connaught
Irish--what she called "the boy O'Flinn," and she would have
nothing to do with her afterwards; and she lay in wait for "the boy
O'Flinn," and threw a stone at him, which hit him in the chest so
badly that he was in bed for a week afterwards. When I heard of
this, I went to see her and said, "Well, Betty, you're Irish, and
I'm Irish, and I think we just ought to set a good example and show
how well Irishwomen can behave." But she soon cut short my little
sermon by saying, "They've been telling tales o' me, have they? and
it's not off you they keep their tongues neither: they say you're a
_Roman_!" I did not want to hear any more, and was going out of the
cottage, when she called after me in a fury, "_I_ know what you've
been staying so long in Edinburgh for; you just stay here to fast
and to pray, and then you go there to faast and drink tay."'"
"_Sept. 10._--I wish for my dearest mother every hour in this
sanctuary of peace and loving-kindness, with the sweet presence of
Mrs. Dalzel. What she is and says it is quite impossible to give an
idea of; but she is truly what Milton describes--
"Insphered
In regions mild of calm and air serene,
Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot
Which men call earth."
"Her constant communion with heaven makes all the world to her
only a gallery of heavenly pictures, creating a succession of
heavenly thoughts, and she has so sweet and gentle a manner of
giving these thoughts to others, that all, even those least in
unison with her, are equally impressed by them. Most striking of
all is her large-heartedness and admiration of all the good people
who disagree with her. Her daughter-in-law has quite given up
everything else in her devotion to her: it is really Ruth and Naomi
over again.
"This afternoon we drove to Tantallon and on to Seacliffe, a most
beautiful place on the coast, where Mrs. Dalzel lived formerly. A
delightful little walk under a ruined manor-house and through a
wood of old buckthorn trees led down to the sea, and a most grand
view of Tantallon rising on its red rocks. We walked afterwards to
'Canty Bay,' so called because the Covenanters sang Psalms there
when they were being embarked for the Bass.
"'How curious it would be,' Mrs. Dalzel has been saying, 'if all
the lines on people's faces had writing on them to say what brought
them there. What strange tales they would tell!'
"'Oh, what it is to be at peace! at perfect peace with God! in
perfect reliance on one's Saviour! I often think it is like a
person who has packed up for a journey. When all his work is
finished and all his boxes are packed, he can sit down in the last
hour before his departure and rest in peace, for all his
preparations are made. So in the last hours of life one may rest in
peace, if the work of preparation is already done.'
"'I used to count the future by years: now I only do it by months;
perhaps I can only do it by weeks.'
"'My eldest brother lived in a great world. He was very handsome
and much admired. As aide-de-camp to Sir Ralph Abercromby, George
IV. made him his friend, and many people paid court to him. At last
one day he came to my dear mother, who was still living in her
great age, and who had found her Saviour some years before, and
said to her, "Mother, I feel that my health is failing and that
this world is rapidly slipping away from me, and I have no certain
hope for the next: what would you advise me to do?" And my mother
said to him, "My dear son, I can only advise you to do what I have
done myself, take your Bible and read it with prayer upon your
knees, and God will send you light." And my brother did so, and God
granted him the perfect peace that passeth understanding. He lived
many years after that, but his health had failed, and his Bible was
his constant companion. When I went to see him, he used to lay his
hand on the Book and say, "_This_ is my comforter." A few years
before he died, a malady affected one of his legs which obliged him
to have the limb amputated. When the operation was about to
commence, the doctor who was standing by felt his pulse, and did
not find it varied in the least. "General Macmurdo," he said, "you
are a hero."--"No," said my brother solemnly, "but I hope I am a
Christian." And the doctor said he felt the power of Christianity
from that day.'
"'From the shore of another world all my past life seems like a
dream.'[351]
"I think if one stayed here long, one would quite feel the
necessity of sinning occasionally to avoid the danger of becoming
intolerant of petty faults and unsuitablenesses, from living with
those so entirely without them."
"_Carstairs, Sept. 18._--This is a large and comfortable house, and
Mr. Monteith is busied with various improvements in the grounds.
One improvement I should certainly make would be the destruction of
a horrible tomb of a former possessor of the place, an atheist
relation, with an inscription 'to the Infernal Deities.' No wonder
that the avenue leading to the tomb is said to be haunted."
It was during this summer that old Lady Webster died.[352] She had long
been a conspicuous figure in our home neighbourhood, and had seemed to
possess the secret of eternal youth. In my childhood she reigned like a
queen at Battle, but the Websters had several years before been obliged
to sell Battle to Lord Harry Vane (afterwards Duke of Cleveland),
chiefly because there were five dowager Lady Websters at once, all
drawing jointures from the already impoverished property. Of these
ladies, three, usually known as "the good Lady Webster," "Grace, Lady
Webster," and "the great Lady Webster," lived much at Hastings. When the
great Lady Webster died, she left several sons, and it was a subject of
much comment at the time that, when her will was opened, she was found
to have left nothing to any of them. Her will was very short. She left
everything she possessed in the world to her dear and faithful companion
Madame Bergeret. It excited many unkind remarks, but those who learnt
the real facts always admitted that, in the crowning act of her life,
Lady Webster had only acted with that sense of justice and duty which
had ever been her characteristic. The story is this:[353]--
Towards the latter part of the last century there lived at an old
manorial farm in Brittany a female farmer named Bergeret. Her
ancestors had owned the farm, and had cultivated their own land for
hundreds of years, and Madame Bergeret herself was well known and
highly respected through all the neighbouring country, charitable
to her poorer neighbours, frank, kind, and unfailingly hospitable
to those in her own rank of life. She lived bounteously, kept an
open house, and spent in beneficence and hospitality the ample
income which her lands brought her.
One day she was surprised by a visit from her next neighbour, a man
named Girard, in her own class of life, whose family had always
been known to her own, and who had possessed the neighbouring farm.
He told her that he felt she would be shocked to hear that he had
long been acting a part in making himself appear much better off
than he was; that he had lost a great deal of money in speculation;
that all was on the eve of being divulged; that if he could manage
to keeps things going till after the next harvest, he might tide
over his misfortunes, but that otherwise he must be totally ruined,
lose everything he had, and bring his wife and children to
destitution; and by the recollection of their old neighbourhood and
long intimacy he adjured Madame Bergeret to help him. Madame
Bergeret was very sorry--very sorry indeed, but she told him that
it was impossible; and it really was. She lived amply up to her
income, she had laid nothing by: she was well off, but all she had
came from her lands; her income depended upon her harvest; she
really had nothing to give to her poor neighbour, and she told him
so--told him so with a very heavy heart, and he went away terribly
crestfallen and miserable.
When Girard was gone, Madame Bergeret looked round her room, and
she saw there a collection of fine old gold plate, such as often
forms the source of pride to a Breton yeoman of old family, and
descends like a patent of nobility from one generation to another,
greatly reverenced and guarded. Madame Bergeret looked at her
plate, and she said to herself, "If this was sold, it would produce
a very large sum; and ought I, for the sake of mere family pride,
to allow an old and honourable family to go to destitution?" And
she called her neighbour back, and she gave Girard all her gold
plate. The sum for which he was able to sell it helped him through
till after the harvest; soon afterwards he found an opportunity of
disposing of his Breton lands to very great advantage, and removed
to another part of the country. He thanked Madame Bergeret, but he
did not seem to realise that she had made any great sacrifice in
his behalf; and she, resting satisfied in having done what she
believed to be right, expected no more.
Some years afterwards, Madame Bergeret, being an old woman, placed
her Breton lands in the hands of an agent, and removed with her two
children to Paris. The great French Revolution occurred while she
was there, and the Reign of Terror came on, and Madame Bergeret,
who belonged to a Royalist family of loyal Brittany, was arrested:
she was thrown into the prison of La Force, and she was condemned
to death.
The Madame Bergeret I knew in another generation recollected being
with her little brother in a room on the Rue St Honor\xE9 on the day
on which a hundred and twenty persons were to suffer in the Place
Louis XV. She saw them pass down the street to execution in
twenty-two tumbrils; but when the last tumbril came beneath the
window, the friends who were with her in the room drew down the
blinds; not, however, before she had recognised her own mother in
that tumbril, with all her hair cut off, that the head might come
off more easily.
All the way to the place of execution, Madame Bergeret consoled
and encouraged her companions, and she assented to their petition
that she should suffer last, that she would see them through the
dread portal before her. Therefore, when her turn at length came,
the ground around the scaffold was one sea of blood, for a hundred
and nineteen persons had perished that day. Thus, on descending the
steps of the cart, Madame Bergeret slipped and stumbled. This
arrested the attention of the deputy who was set to watch the
executions. He started, and then rushed forward saying, "This woman
has no business here. I know her very well; she is a most honest
citoyenne, or, if she is not, I know quite well how to make her so:
this woman is not one to be guillotined." It was Girard.
Now Madame Bergeret was quite prepared for death, but the sudden
revulsion of her deliverance overcame her and she fainted. Girard
carried her away in his arms, and when she came to herself she was
in bed in a house in a quiet back-street of Paris, and he was
watching over her. He had removed to Lyons, and, with the sudden
changes of the time, had risen to be deputy, and being set to watch
the executions, had recognised the woman who had saved him. By the
help of Girard, and after many hairbreadth escapes, Madame Bergeret
reached the coast, and eventually arrived in England. She then made
her way to the only person she knew, a lady who had once spent some
time in her Breton village, a Mrs. Adamson. Her daughter played
with and was brought up with the little Miss Adamson. When Miss
Adamson married Sir Godfrey Webster of Battle Abbey, Mademoiselle
Bergeret (her mother being dead) went with her and lived at Battle
as a sort of companion to Lady Webster and nursery-governess to her
boys. For fifty years she never received any salary, and having,
through the changes of things in France, inherited something of her
mother's Breton property, she twice sacrificed her little all to
pay the debts of the Webster family. Therefore it was that, in the
close of life, Lady Webster felt that her sons might provide for
themselves, but that, having very little to bequeath, the one
person she could not leave destitute was "her dear and faithful
companion and friend, Madame Bergeret."
Five months before her death, Lady Webster was very full of the
terrible deaths which had lately occurred from railway accidents,
and, on leaving home, she said to Madame Bergeret, "Here is this
paper, and if I should be killed by an accident or not live to come
home, you may read it; but at any rate keep it for me, and perhaps,
if I come back, some day I may want it again." Lady Webster came
back well and did not ask for the paper, and when she died, it was
so sudden, a few minutes after talking quite cheerfully to Madame
Bergeret, that in the shock she remembered nothing about it, and it
was only long afterwards, when they were making a great fuss about
there being no will, that she suddenly thought of the paper
entrusted to her, and, when it was read, found Lady Webster had
left her all she possessed.
Madame Bergeret dying herself about a year afterwards, left
everything back to the Webster family. She was a quiet primitive
old woman, who used to sit in the background at work in Lady
Webster's sitting-room.
After my return home in the autumn of 1867, my mother was terribly ill,
so that our journey abroad was a very anxious one to look forward to. I
tried, however, to face it quite cheerily. I have read in an American
novel somewhere, "It is no use to pack up any worries to take with you;
you can always pick up plenty on the way;" and I have always found it
true.
_To_ MISS WRIGHT _and_ JOURNAL.
"_Nice, Nov. 17, 1867._--My dear Aunt Sophy will be delighted to
see this date. So far all our troubles and anxieties are past, and
the sweet Mother certainly not the worse, perhaps rather better for
all her fatigues. It is an extraordinary case, to be one day lying
in a sort of vision on the portals of another world, the next up
and travelling.
[Illustration: FONTAINES.[354]]
"When we reached Paris she was terribly exhausted, then slept for
thirty-six hours like a child, almost without waking. At the
Embassy we were urged to go on to Rome, all quiet and likely to
subside into a dead calm; but so much snow had fallen on Mont
Cenis, that in Mother's weak state we could not risk that passage,
and were obliged to decide upon coming round by the coast. On
Monday we reached Dijon, where twenty-four hours' sleep again
revived the Mother. It was fiercely cold, but Tuesday brightened
into a glorious winter's day, and I had a most enchanting walk
through sunshine and bracing air to Fontaines. It is picturesque
French country, a winding road with golden vines and old stone
crosses, and a distance of oddly-shaped purple hills. Fontaines
itself is a large village, full of mouldering medi\xE6val fragments,
stretching up a hillside, which becomes steeper towards the top,
and is crowned by a fine old church, a lawn with groups of old
walnut-trees, and the remains of the ch\xE2teau where St. Bernard was
born. Over the entrance is a statue of him, and within, the room of
his birth is preserved as a chapel. The view from the churchyard is
lovely, and the graves are marked by ancient stone crosses and
bordered with flowers. Within are old tombs and inscriptions--'Ce
git la tr\xE8s haute et tr\xE8s puissante dame,' &c.
"We came on to Arles by the quick night-train, and stayed there as
usual two days and a half--days of glaring white sirocco and no
colour, and at Arles we found ourselves at once in Southern heat,
panting, without fires and with windows wide open."
[Illustration: ARC DE S. CESAIRE, ALISCAMPS, ARLES.[355]]
"_Pisa, Dec. 1._--We left Nice on the 21st, and slept at Mentone,
quite spoilt by building and by cutting down trees. I saw many
friends, especially the Comtesse d'Adhemar, who flung her arms
round me and kissed me on both cheeks. We spent the middle of the
next day at S. Remo and slept at Oneglia. The precipices are truly
appalling. I have visions still of the early morning drive from
Oneglia along dewy hillsides and amongst hoary olives, and through
the narrow gaily painted streets of the little fishing-towns, where
the arches meet overhead and the wares set out before the
shop-doors brush the carriage as it passes by.
[Illustration: AT SAVONA.[356]]
"The second day, at Loiano, I was left behind. I went just outside
the hotel to draw, begging my mother and Lea to pick me up as they
went by. The carriage passed close by me and they did not see me.
At first I did not hurry myself, thinking, when they did not find
me, that they would stop for me a little farther on; but seeing the
carriage go on and on, I ran after it as hard as I could, shouting
at the pitch of my voice; but it never stopped, and I quite lost
sight of it in the narrow streets of one of the fishing-villages
before reaching Finale. At Finale I was in absolute despair at
their not stopping, which seemed inexplicable, and I pursued mile
after mile, footsore and weary, through the grand mountain coves in
that part of the Riviera and along the desolate shore to Noli,
where, just as night closed in, I was taken up by some people
driving in a little carriage, on the box of which, in a bitter cold
wind, I was carried to Savona, where I arrived just as our heavy
carriage with its inmates was driving into the hotel. It was one of
the odd instances of my dear mother's insouciance, of her
'happy-go-lucky' nature: 'they had not seen me, they had not looked
back; no, they supposed I should get on somehow; they knew I always
fell on my legs.' And I was perfectly conscious that if I had not
appeared for days, my mother would have said just the same. We
spent a pleasant Sunday at Savona, the views most beautiful of the
wonderfully picturesque tower, calm bay of sapphire water, and
delicate mountain distance.
"The landlord of the Croce di Malta at Genoa engaged a _vetturino_
to take us to La Spezia. The first day, it was late when we left
Sta. Margherita, where we stayed for luncheon. The driver lighted
his lamps at Chiavari. Soon both my companions fell asleep. I sat
up watching the foam of the sea at the bottom of the deep black
precipices without parapets as long as I could see it through the
gloom: then it became quite dark. Suddenly there was a frightful
bolt of the horses, scream after scream from the driver, an awful
crash, and we were hurled violently over and over into the black
darkness. A succession of shrieks from Lea showed me that she was
alive, but I thought at first my mother must be killed, for there
was no sound from her. Soon the great troop of navvies came up,
whose sudden appearance from the mouth of a tunnel, each with a
long iron torch in his hand, had made the horses bolt. One of them
let down his torch into the mired and broken carriage as it lay
bottom upwards. 'Povera, poveretta,' he exclaimed, as he saw Lea
sitting pouring with blood amongst the broken glass of the five
great windows of the carriage. Then Mother's voice from the depth
of the hood assured us that she was not hurt, only buried under the
cushions and bags, and she had courage to remain perfectly
motionless, while sheet after sheet of broken glass was taken from
off her (she would have been cut to pieces if she had moved) and
thrown out at the top of the carriage. Then there was a great
consultation as to _how_ we were to be got out, which ended in the
carriage being bodily lifted and part of the top taken off, making
an opening through which first Lea was dragged and afterwards the
Mother. Then my mother, who had not walked at all for many weeks,
was compelled to walk more than a mile to Sestri, in pitch darkness
and pouring rain, dragged by a navvy on one side and me on the
other. Another navvy supported Lea, who was in a fainting state,
and others carried torches. We excited much pity when we arrived at
the little inn at Sestri, and the people were most hospitable and
kind. I had always especially wished to draw a particular view of a
gaily painted church tower and some grand aloes on the road near
Sestri, and it was curious to be enabled to do so the next day by
our forcible detention there for want of a carriage.
[Illustration: SESTRI.[357]]
"On the 29th we crossed once more the grand pass of Bracco, with
its glorious scenery of billowy mountains ending in the delicate
peaks of Carrara; and we baited at a wretched village where Mother
was able to walk in the sunny road. Yesterday we came here by the
exquisite railway under Massa Ducale, and were rapturously welcomed
by Victoire[358] and her daughter."
"_Palazzo Parisani, Rome, Dec. 10._--We had a wearisome journey
here on the 3rd, the train not attempting to keep any particular
time, and stopping more than an hour at Orbetello for the
'_discorso_' of the guard and engine-driver,[359] and at other
stations in proportion. However, Mother quite revived when the
great masses of the aqueducts began to show in the moonlight. They
had given up expecting us in the Palazzo, where my sister has lent
us her apartments, and it was long before we could get any one to
open the door.
"It has been bitterly cold ever since we arrived and the air filled
with snow. The first acquaintance I saw was the Pope! He was at the
Trinit\xE0 de' Monte, and I waited to see him come down the steps and
receive his blessing on our first Roman morning. He looked
dreadfully weak, and Monsignor Talbot seemed to be holding him
tight up lest he should fall. The Neapolitan royal family I have
already seen, always in their deep mourning.[360]
"The Pincio is still surrounded with earthworks, and the barricades
remain outside the gates: a great open moat yawns in front of the
door of the English Church. The barrack near St. Peter's is a
hideous ruin. The accounts of the battle of Mentana are awful: when
the Pontificals had expended all their ammunition, they rushed upon
the Garibaldians and tore them with their teeth.
"Terrible misery has been left by the cholera, and the streets are
far more full of beggars than ever. The number of deaths has been
frightful--Princess Colonna and her daughters; old Marchese
Serlupi; M\xFCller the painter and his child; Mrs. Foljambe's old maid
of thirty years; Mrs. Ramsay's donna and the man who made tea at
her parties, are amongst those we have known. The first day we were
out, Lea and I saw a woman in deep mourning, who was evidently
begging, look wistfully at us, and had some difficulty in
recognising Angela, our donna of 1863. Her husband, handsome
Antonio the fisherman, turned black of the cholera in the
Pescheria, and died in a few hours, and her three children have
been ill ever since.
"Mrs. Shakspeare Wood has been to see us, and described the summer
which she has spent here--six thousand deaths in Rome between May
and November, sixty in the Forum of Trajan, thirty in the
Purificazione alone. The Government wisely forbade any funeral
processions, and did not allow the bells to be tolled, and the dead
were taken away at night. Then came the war. The gates were closed,
and an edict published bidding all the citizens, when they heard
'cinque colpi di cann\xF3ne, d'andare subito a casa.' The Woods laid
in quantities of flour, and spent \xA35 in cheese, only remembering
afterwards that, having forgotten to lay in any fuel, they could
not have baked their bread."
"_Dec. 13._--Yesterday I went to Mrs. Robert De Selby.[361] She
described the excitement of the battles. In the thick of it all she
got a safe-conduct and drove out to Mentana to be near her husband
in case he was wounded. She also drove several times to the army
with provisions and cordials. If they tried to stop her, she said
she was an officer's wife taking him his dinner, and they let her
pass. One of the officers said afterwards to her mother, 'La sua
figlia vale un altro dragone.'
"She told me Lady Anne S. Giorgio (her mother),[362] was living in
the Mercede, and I went there at once. She was overjoyed to see me,
and embraced me with the utmost affection. She is also enchanted to
be near the Mother, her 'saint in a Protestant niche.' She is come
here because 'all the old sinners in Florence' disapproved of her
revolutionary tendencies. Lady Anne remembered my father's great
intimacy with Mezzofanti. She said my father had once a servant who
came from an obscure part of Hungary where they spoke a very
peculiar dialect. One day, going to Mezzofanti, he took his servant
with him. The Cardinal asked the man where he came from, and, on
his telling him, addressed him in the dialect of his native place.
The man screamed violently, and, making for the door, tried to
escape: he took Mezzofanti for a wizard.
"Lady Anne recollected my father's extreme enjoyment of a scene of
this kind. There was a Dr. Taylor who used to worship the heathen
gods--Mars and Mercury, and the rest. One day at Oxford, in the
presence of my father and of one of the professors, he took his
little silver images of the gods out of his pocket and began to
pray to them and burn incense. The professor, intensely shocked,
tried to interfere, but my father started up--'How _can_ you be so
foolish? _do_ be quiet: don't you see you're interrupting the
comedy?' The same Dr. Taylor was afterwards arrested for
sacrificing a bullock to Neptune in a back-parlour in London!"
"_44 Piazza di Spagna, Dec. 29._--We moved here on the 20th to a
delightfully comfortable apartment, which is a perfect sun-trap.
Most truly luxurious indeed does Rome seem after Cannes--food,
house, carriages, all so good and reasonable. I actually gave a
party before we left my sister's apartment, lighting up those fine
rooms, and issuing the invitations in my own name, in order that
Mother might not feel obliged to appear unless quite equal to it at
the moment. Three days after I had another party for children--tea
and high romps afterwards in the long drawing-room.
"On the 21st I went with the Erskines, Mrs. Ramsay, and Miss
Garden, by rail to Monte Rotondo. The quantity of soldiers at the
station and all along the road quite allayed any fears of brigands
which had been entertained regarding the mile and a half between
the village and the railway. The situation proved quite
beautiful--the old houses crowned by the Piombino castle, rising
from vineyards and gardens, backed by the purple peak of Monte
Gennaro. Beyond, in the hollow, is the convent where Garibaldi was
encamped, and farther still the battlefield of Mentana.
"On the 23rd there was a magnificent reception at the Spanish
Embassy. Every one went to salute the new ambassador, Don
Alessandro del Castro, and the whole immense suite of rooms thrown
open had a glorious effect. There was an abundance of cardinals,
and the Roman princesses all arrived in their diamonds. The
Borgheses came in as a family procession, headed by Princess
Borghese in blue velvet and diamonds. The young English Princess
Teano looked lovely in blue velvet and gold brocade. On Christmas
Day I went to St Peter's for the coming in of the Pope, and stayed
long enough to see Francis II. arrive with his suite. In the
afternoon I took Lea to the Ara C\x9Cli and Sta. Maria Maggiore. At
the Ara C\x9Cli great confusion prevails and much enthusiasm on
account of a new miracle. When people were ill, upon their paying a
scudo for the carriage, the Santo Bambino was brought by two of the
monks, and left upon the sick-bed, to be fetched away some hours
after in the same way. A sacrilegious lady determined to take
advantage of this to steal the Bambino; so she pretended her child
was ill and paid her scudo; but as soon as ever the monks were
gone, she had a false Bambino, which she had caused to be prepared,
dressed up in the clothes of the real one, and when the monks came
back they took away the false Bambino without discovering the
fraud, and carried it to the place of honour in the Church of Ara
C\x9Cli.
"That night the convent awoke to fearful alarm, every bell rang at
the same moment, awful sounds were heard at the doors; the
trembling brotherhood hastened to the church, but loud and fast the
knocks continued on the very door of the sanctuary ('bussava,
bussava, bussava'). At last they summoned courage to approach the
entrance with lights, and behold, a little tiny pink child's foot,
which was poked in under the door; and they opened the door wide,
and there without, on the platform at the head of the steps, stood,
in the wind and the rain, quite naked, the real Bambino of Ara
C\x9Cli. So then the real child was restored to its place, and the
lady, confounded and disgraced, was bidden to take the false child
home again.
"Our donna, Louisa, was in ecstasies when she told us this
story--'Oh com' \xE8 graziosa, oh com' \xE8 graziosa questa storia,'--and
she never can understand why we do not send for the Bambino to cure
Mother of all her ailments, though, in consequence of the theft, it
is now never left alone in a house, but is taken away by the same
monks who bring it. Lea was imprudent enough to say she did not
believe the Bambino would ever do _her_ any good; but when Louisa,
looking at her with wondering eyes, asked why, said weakly,
'Because I have such a bad heart,' in which Louisa quite acquiesced
as a reason.
"It had been a sad shadow hitherto over all this winter that my
sweetest Mother had been so ill. At Parisani I had many sad days
and nights too. She suffered almost constantly from pain in the
back, and moaned in a way which went to my very heart.... Twice
only in the fortnight was Mother able to get out to the Forum and
walk in the sun from the Coliseum to the Capitol, and she felt the
cold most terribly, and certainly the Palazzo was very cold.
"At first, when we came to this house, Mother was better, and she
was delighted with these rooms, which fulfilled a presentiment she
had told me of before we left home, that this winter she should
have the pleasantest apartment she had ever had yet. But on the
21st she was chilled when driving with Mrs. Hall to Torre Quinto,
and that evening quite lost her power of articulation. It only
lasted about an hour.... She was conscious of it afterwards, and
said, 'It was so odd, I was not able to speak.' Some days after,
though able to articulate, she was unable to find the words she
needed, calling the commonest things by their wrong names, and this
was the more alarming as more likely to be continuous. On Thursday
she was well enough to drive with me to the Aqua Acetosa, and walk
there in the sun on the muddy Tiber bank, but that evening she
became worse, and since then has scarcely been out of bed."
"_Dec. 30._--On Saturday I was constantly restless, with a sense of
fire near me, but could discover nothing burning in the apartment.
I had such a strong presentiment of fire that I refused to go out
all day. When Lea came in with my tea at 8 P.M., I told her what an
extraordinary noise I continually heard--a sort of rushing over the
ceiling, which was of strained canvas--but she thought nothing of
it. Soon after she was gone, a shower of sparks burst into the room
and large pieces of burning wood forced their way through a hole
in the ceiling. Shouting to Lea, I rushed up to the next floor, and
rang violently and continuously at the bell, shouting 'Fuoco,
fuoco;' but the owners of the apartment were gone to bed and would
not get up; so, without losing time, I flew downstairs, roused the
porter, sent him off to fetch Ferdinando Manetti, who was
responsible for our apartment, and then for the _pompieri_.
Meantime the servants of Miss Robertson, who lived below us, had
come to our help, and assisted in keeping the fire under with
sponges of water, while Lea and I rushed about securing money,
valuables, drawings, &c., and then, dragging out our great boxes,
began rapidly to fill them. Mother was greatly astonished at seeing
us moving in and out with great piles of things in our arms, but
did not realise at once what had happened. I had just arranged for
her being wrapped up in blankets and carried through the streets to
Palazzo Parisani, when the _pompieri_ arrived. From that time there
was no real danger. They tore up the bricks of the floor above us,
and poured water through upon the charred and burning beams, and a
cascade of black water and hot bricks tumbled through together into
our drawing-room."
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
"_Jan. 1._--Alas! I can give but a poor account of her who occupies
all my real thoughts and interests. My sweetest Mother is still
very, very feeble, and quite touchingly helpless. She varies like a
thermometer with the weather, and if it is fine, is well enough to
see Mrs. Hall and one or two friends, but she is seldom able to be
dressed before twelve o'clock, and often has to lie down again
before four. I seldom like to be away from her long, and never by
day or night feel really free from anxiety."
JOURNAL.
"_Jan. 2, 1868._--I have been out twice in the evening--to Mrs.
Ramsay to meet M. de Soveral, the ex-minister of Portugal, and his
wife and daughter, and to Mrs. Hall to meet the Erskines. Mrs. Hall
described a sermon she had lately heard at the Coliseum, the whole
object of which was the glorification of Mary Queen of Scots. It
was most painful, she said, describing how Elizabeth, who turned
only to her Bible, died a prey to indescribable torments of mind,
while Mary, clinging to her crucifix, died religiously and
devoutly.
"The Marchesa Serlupi has given a fearful account of the Albano
tragedy. The old Marchese had come to them greatly worn out with
his labours in attendance on the Pope during the canonisation,[363]
and he was seized with cholera almost at once. When the doctor
came, his hair was standing on end with horror. He said he had not
sat down for eighteen hours, hurrying from one to another. He said
the old Marchese had the cholera, and it was no use doing anything
for him, he would be dead in a few hours. The Marchesa thought he
had gone mad with fright, which in fact he had. When he was gone,
she gave remedies of her own to the old man, which subdued the
cholera at the time, but he sank afterwards from exhaustion.
During that time the dead all around them were being carried out:
the Appian Way was quite choked up by those who were in flight, and
people were dying among the tombs all along the wayside.
"As soon as the old Marchese was dead, the Serlupi family
determined to fly. As the Marchesa had been constantly nursing the
old man, she would not take her child with her, and sent him on
first in another carriage. When they got half way, a man came up to
them saying that the person who was with the child in the other
carriage was in the agonies of death, and they had to take the
child into their own carriage. At the half-way house they stopped
to inquire for a party of friends who had preceded them: five had
fled in the carriage, three were already dead! There was only one
remedy which was never known to fail: it was discovered by a
Capuchin monk, and is given in wine. It is not known what the
medicine is, and its effect entirely depends upon the exact
proportions being given. The Marchesa used to send dozens of wine
to the Capuchin, and then give it away impregnated with the
medicine to the poor people in Rome.
"To-day my darling has been rather better, and was able to drive
for an hour on the Pincio. Yesterday evening she prayed aloud for
herself most touchingly before both me and Lea, that God would look
upon her infirmities, that He would forgive her weakness, and
supply the insufficiency of her prayers. Her sweet pleading voice,
tremulous with weakness, went to our hearts, and her trembling
upturned look was inexpressibly affecting."
"_Feb. 4._--When we first came here, we were much attracted by
Francesca Bengivenga, a pleasant cordial woman who lets the
apartment above us, and who lived in a corner of it with her nice
respectable old mother. Lea went up to see them, and gave quite a
pretty description of the old woman sitting quietly in her room at
needlework, while the daughter bustled about.
"On January 9 we were startled by seeing a procession carrying the
Last Sacraments up our staircase, and on inquiry heard that it was
to a very old woman who was dying at the top of the house. Late in
the evening it occurred to Lea that the sick person at the top of
the house might perhaps be in want, and she went up to Francesca to
inquire if she could be of any use. Then, for the first time, we
heard that it had been Francesca's mother who had been ill, and
that she had died an hour after the priests had been. Francesca
herself was in most terrible anguish of grief, but obliged to
control herself, because only a few days before she had let her
apartment, and did not venture to tell her lodgers what had
occurred in the house. So whenever the bell rang, she had to dry
her tears by an effort, and appear as if nothing had happened. We
urged her to reveal the truth, which at length she did with a great
burst of sobs, and the tenants took it well. The next day at four
o'clock the old woman was carried away, and on the following
morning I pleased Francesca by attending at the _messa cantata_ in
S. Andrea delle Fratte.
"On January 10 Charlotte and Gina Leycester arrived. By way of
showing civilities to acquaintance, I have had several excursions
to the different hills, explaining the churches and vineyards with
the sights they contain. On the Aventine I had a very large--too
large a party. With the Erskines I went to San Salvatore in Lauro,
where the old convent is partially turned into a barrack, and was
filled with Papal Zouaves, who spoke a most unintelligible jargon
which turned out to be High Dutch. A very civil little officer,
however, took us into a grand old chapel opening out of the
cloisters, but now occupied as a soldiers' dormitory, and filled
with rows of beds, while groups of soldiers were sitting on the
altar-steps and on the altar itself, and had even piled their arms
and hung up their knapsacks on the splendid tomb of Pope Eugenius
IV., which was the principal object of our visit.[364] We went on
hence to the Vallicella, where we saw the home and relics of S.
Filippo Neri--his fine statue in the sacristy, his little cell with
its original furniture, his stick, his shoes, the crucifix he held
when he was dying, the coffin in which he lay in state, the
pictures which belonged to him, and the little inner chapel with
the altar at which he prayed, adorned with the original picture,
candlesticks, and ornaments.
"Another excursion has been to the Emporium, reached by an
unpleasant approach, the Via della Serpe behind the Marmorata, an
Immondezzajo half a mile long; but it is a fine mass of ruin, with
an old gothic loggia, in a beautiful vineyard full of rare and
curious marbles. Close by, on the bank of the Tiber, the ancient
port of the Marmorata is now being cleaned out.
"My dearest Mother continues very ailing and terribly weak, but I
am hopeful now (as the cold months are so far advanced), that we
may steer through the remainder of the winter, and that I may once
more have the blessing of taking her back to England restored to
health and power. Every Friday she has been seriously ill, but has
rallied afterwards. On Friday 17th, she was very ill, and I was too
anxious about her to rest at all during the night, but perpetually
flitted ghost-like in and out of her room. Last Friday again she
was, if anything, worse still, such a terrible cloud coming over
all her powers, with the most complete exhaustion. I scarcely left
her all day. When these sad days are over, life becomes quite
different, so heavy is the burden lifted off, and it is difficult
to realise all that they have been, the wearing anxiety as to what
is best to be done, the terribly desolate future seeming so near at
hand, all the after scenes presenting themselves so vividly, like
fever phantoms, to the imagination, and then sometimes the seeming
carried with my dearest one to the very gates of the unseen
world.... She is always patient, always self-forgetful, and her
obedience to her 'doctor,' as she calls me, is too touching, too
entirely confiding and childlike. Oh, if our unity is broken by
death, no one, _no one_ will ever realise what it has been. Come
what will, I can bless God for this winter, in which that union has
been without one tarnished moment, one passing difference, in which
my sweetest one has entirely leant upon me, and I have entirely
lived for her.
"_Feb. 9._--There is no improvement in my dearest Mother. If there
is a temporary rally, it is followed by a worse attack and intense
fits of exhaustion, and the effort of going up and down stairs
fatigues her so much that it is difficult to judge how far it is
wise to gratify her constant craving for air. On Tuesday, Lea and I
took her to the Monte Mario, and she sat in the carriage while we
got out and picked flowers in the Villa Mellini. That day she was
certainly better, and able to enjoy the drive to a certain degree,
and to admire the silver foam of the fountains of St. Peter's as we
passed them. I often think how doubly touching these and many other
beautiful sights may become to me, if I should be left here, when
she, with whom I have so often enjoyed them, has passed away from
us to the vision of other and more glorious scenes.
"It is in these other scenes, not _here_, that I often think my
darling's mind is already wandering. When she sits in her great
weakness, doing nothing, yet so quiet, and with her loving
beautiful smile ever on her revered countenance, it is surely of no
earthly scenes that my darling is thinking.
"In the night I am often seized with an irresistible longing to
know how she is, and then I steal quietly through the softly
opening doors into her room and watch her asleep by the light of
the night-lamp. Even then the face in its entire repose wears the
same sweet expression of childlike confidence and peace.
"I dined with Mrs. Robert Bruce one day, meeting Miss Monk and
Cavendish Taylor, and went with them afterwards to see the 'Grande
Duchesse de Gerolstein' acted. It was in a booth in the Piazza
Navona, such as is generally used for wild beasts at a fair, and
where one would expect an audience of the very lowest of the
people; but instead the place was crowded with the most _\xE9lite_ of
the Roman princes and their families. The acting was wonderful, and
the dresses and scenery very beautiful. It is said that the actors
are a single family, fourteen sons, three daughters, and their
cook!
"At the Shakspeare Woods' I met Miss Charlotte Cushman, the great
American tragic actress, who has been living here for some years.
She was the Mrs. Siddons of her time in America, and places were
taken weeks beforehand for the nights when she acted. She does a
great deal of good here and is intensely beloved. In appearance she
is much like Miss Boyle,[365] with white hair rolled back, and is
of most winning and gracious manners. I went to a party at her
house last night, and never saw anything more dignified and
graceful than her reception of her guests, or more charming than
her entertainment of them. She sang, but as she has little voice
left, it was rather dramatic representation than song, though most
beautiful and pathetic.
"The American Consul, Mr. Cushman, told me he had crossed the
Atlantic forty-seven times. The last time he returned was during
the cholera at Albano, and he described its horrors. A hundred and
fifty people died in the village on the first day, and were all
thrown immediately into a large pit by a regiment of Zouaves,
happily quartered there, and were tumbled in just as they happened
to fall. The next day, so many more died, that soldiers were sent
down into the pit to pack the bodies closer, so as to fit more in.
The bodies already in the pit were so entangled, that several arms
and legs were pulled off in the process. The Zouaves employed in
the work all died."
I often saw Miss Cushman afterwards, and greatly valued her friendship.
Hers was a noble and almost unique character, a benignant influence upon
all she came in contact with. Her youth had been a long struggle, but it
gave her a wonderful sympathy with young artists striving as she herself
had done, and for them her purse, her hand, and her heart were always
open. When she was only a "stock actress," the wife of the manager, who
played herself and was jealous of her talents, got her husband to give
her a very inferior part: it was that of Nancy Sykes in "Oliver Twist."
Miss Cushman saw through the motive, and determined to prepare herself
thoroughly. She disappeared. She went down to the worst part of the
town, and remained for four days amongst all the lowest women there,
till she understood them thoroughly and could imitate their
peculiarities to perfection. Her first appearance, when she strolled on
to the stage chewing a sprig of a tree, as they all do, took the house
by storm, and from that time it was at her feet. The play of "Guy
Mannering" was written to suit her in the part of Meg Merrilies. She
would take an hour and a half to get herself up for it, painting all the
veins on her arms, &c., and her success was wonderful.
She had been originally intended for an opera-singer, but, just when she
was to appear, she had a dangerous illness, and, when she recovered, her
voice was gone. But she wasted no time in regrets: she immediately
turned to being an actress. This power of making the best of whatever
_was_, formed one of the grandest traits of her character.
She died of what, to many, is the most terrible of all diseases. She
insisted on an operation; but when she went to have it repeated, the
great surgeons told her it was no use, and advised her to devote her
remaining life to whatever would most take her out of herself and make
her forget her pain. Then she, who had left the stage so long, went back
to it as Meg Merrilies again and had all her old triumphs. And the last
time she appeared, when she, as it were, took leave of the stage for
ever, she repeated the words "I shall haunt this old glen," &c., in a
way which sent a cold shiver down the backs of all who heard them.
Miss Stebbings' interesting Life of Miss Cushman is inadequate. It
dwells too much on the successful part. What were really interesting,
and also useful to those beginning life, would have been the true story
of the struggles of her youth, and how her noble nature overcame them.
JOURNAL.
"_Feb. 10._--My dearest Mother is better and up again, sweet and
smiling. Last week, after poor Mrs. C. had died, Mrs. Ramsay, not
knowing it, sent to inquire after her. 'E andata in Paradiso,' said
her old servant Francesco, quite simply, when he came back."
"_Feb. 25._--On the 16th old Don Francesco Chigi died, a most
well-known figure to be missed out of Roman life. He was buried
with perfectly medi\xE6val pomp the next day at the Popolo. The
procession down the Corso from the Chigi Palace was most gorgeous,
the long line of princely carriages and the running footmen with
their huge torches and splendid liveries, the effect enhanced by
the darkness of the night, for it was at nine o'clock in the
evening.
"Yesterday I rushed with all the world to St. Peter's to stare at
the bridal of Donna Guendalina Doria, who had just been married at
S. Agnese to the Milanese Conte della Somaglia. The Pope gave her
his benediction and a prayer-book bound in solid gold and diamonds.
Thirteen carriages full of relations escorted her to St. Peter's,
but very few had courage to come with her into the church. She
looked well in a long lace veil and white silk cloak striped with
gold.
"My sweet Mother has gained very little ground the last fortnight.
Yesterday for the first time she went out--carried down and
upstairs by Benedetto and Louisa, and drove with Charlotte to the
Villa Doria. But in the evening her breathing was difficult. To-day
I drove with Lady Bloomfield[366] and Jane Adeane to the Campagna,
and when I came back I found that she had been quite ill the whole
time. The dear face looks sadly worn."
"_Feb. 27._--When I went into my darling's room at 3 A.M., both she
and Lea were sleeping quietly, but when I went again at six, the
Mother had been long awake, and oppressed with great difficulty of
breathing. At half-past nine Dr. Grilli came and begged for another
opinion.... How did I bear it when he said that my darling was in
the greatest danger, that if she would desire any spiritual
consolations, they ought to be sent for! Then I lost all hope.
'No,' I said, 'she has long lived more in heaven than on earth.'
'Quello se vede,' said Dr. Grilli.
"I questioned whether she should be told the danger she was in, but
I decided not; for has not my darling been for years standing on
the threshold of the heavenly kingdom? Death could to _her_ only be
the passing quite over that threshold, and to us the last glimpse
of her most sweet presence here.
"2 P.M.--Charlotte Leycester and Emma Simpkinson have been with me
in the room all morning by turns. I cannot but think her slightly
better. The shutter has just been opened that she may see the sun,
which poured into the room. My darling was sitting up then and
smiled to see it.
"5-1/2 P.M.--Waiting for the consultation of doctors. How I dread
it, yet I cannot but think they will find my darling better. I have
a feeling that there must still be hope. At two I went in a
carriage to the Villa Negroni,[367] as the most solitary place I
knew, and there spent an hour on that terraced walk beneath the
house in which I was born, where my two mothers walked up and down
together before my birth, and where I have often been, oh! so happy
in the sunshine of her presence who is life to me.
"Coming back, I went into the Church of the Angeli. A white
Carthusian was kneeling there alone. I knelt too and prayed--not
that God would give my darling back to me unless it were His will,
but oh! so earnestly that there might be no pain in her departure.
"Mrs. Woodward and Miss Finucane want to come and sit up--always
good and kind. Grilli has been this evening with Dr. Bertoldi, and
says everything depends on how she passes the next night: if she
sleeps and the breathing becomes easier, we may hope, but even then
it will be most difficult to regain the ground lost. In this I buoy
myself up that _they_ know nothing of her wonderful power of
rallying.
"When Charlotte went away for the night, she said, 'I shall think
of you, dear, and pray for you very much to-night.'--'Yes, into
the Lord's hands I commend my spirit,' said my darling solemnly.
"_9 A.M. Feb. 28, Friday._--Last night, when I wished her
good-night, she said in her sweetest manner, 'Don't be too anxious;
it is all in His hands.' Lea went to bed and Emma Simpkinson sat
upon the sofa. I went in and out all through the night. Since 4
A.M. she has been less well!
"6 P.M.--I went rapidly to-day in a little carriage to St. Peter's,
and kneeling at the grating of the chapel of the Sacrament by
Sixtus IV.'s tomb, I _implored_ God to take two years out of my
life and to add them to my Mother's. I could not part with her now.
If there is power in prayer, I _must_ have been heard. I was back
within the hour.
"When Charlotte came, she repeated to the Mother the texts about
the saints in white robes, and then said 'Perhaps, dear, you will
be with them soon--perhaps it is as in our favourite hymn, "Just
passing over the brink."'--'Yes,' said my darling, 'it cannot last
long; this is quite wearing me out.' I heard this through the door,
for I could not bear to be in the room. Then Charlotte said, 'The
Lord be with you,' or similar words, and my darling answered 'Yes,
and may He be with those who are left as well as with those who are
taken.' At this moment I came in and kissed my darling. Charlotte,
not knowing I had heard, then repeated what she had said. 'She is
praying that God may be with you and with me,' she said. I could
not bear it, and went back to the next room. Charlotte came in and
kissed me. 'I cannot say what I feel for you,' she said. I begged
her not to say so now, 'as long as there was anything to be done I
must not give way.'"
"_3 P.M. Saturday._--The night was one of terrible suffering. Mrs.
Woodward sat up, but I could not leave the room. In the morning my
darling said, 'I never thought it would have been like this; I
thought it would have been unconscious. The valley of the Shadow of
Death is a dark valley, but there is light at the end.... No more
pain.... The Rock of Ages, that is my rock.' Then I read the three
prayers in the Visitation Service. 'It will be over soon,' she
said; 'I am going to rest.'
"'Will you give me some little word of blessing, darling?' I said.
'The Lord keep you and comfort you, my dear child,' she said.
'Don't fret too much. _He_ will give you comfort.' I had begged
that Mrs. Woodward would call in Lea, who was now kneeling between
us at the bedside. 'And you bless poor Lea too,' I said. 'Yes, dear
Lea; she has been a most good and faithful and dear servant to me.
I pray that God may be with her and John, and keep them, and I hope
that they will be faithful and loving to you, as they have been to
me, as long as you need them.... Be reconciled to all who have been
unkind to you, darling; love them all, this is my great wish,
love--love--love--oh, I have tried to live for love--oh! love one
another, that is the great thing--love, love, love!'
"'The Lord bless and comfort you, dear,' she said to Charlotte. 'Be
a mother to my child.'--'I will,' said Charlotte, and then my
darling's hand took mine and held it.
"'We look for the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ,' said
Charlotte. 'Yes, and it was here that it first dawned upon me ...
through much tribulation.... He will be with me, and He will be
with those who are left.'
"'We look for the King in His beauty,' said Charlotte. 'Yes, beauty
such as we have never seen,' my darling said. 'Eye hath not seen
nor ear heard the things which God hath prepared for them that love
Him. Oh, I have been able to serve Him very little.'--'Yes,
darling, but you have loved Him much.'
"'I send my love to all my dear ones in England; none are
forgotten, none.' Then, after a pause, 'Tell your sister that we
shall meet where there is no more controversy, and where we shall
know thoroughly as we are known.'
"In the night the terrible pain came on, which lasted many hours
and gave us all such anguish. 'And He bore all this,' she said, and
at one of her worst moments--'He that trusteth in Thee shall never
be put to confusion.' What these trembling words were to us I
cannot say, with her great suffering and the sadly sunken look of
her revered features. Mrs. Woodward cried bitterly.
"'Mine eyes look to the hills, from whence cometh my help,' said
Charlotte when she came in. 'You have loved the Psalms so much,
haven't you, dear?'--'Yes, the Psalms so much.'--'All Thy waves and
storms pass over me,' said Charlotte, 'but the Rock resisteth the
flood.'--'Yes, the _Rock_,' said my darling. 'The floods lift up
their waves, but the Lord is mightier.'--'He is mightier,' she
repeated. 'The Lord is a refuge and a strong tower,' said
Charlotte. 'He is _indeed_,' she answered with emphasis; 'it is a
dark valley, but there is light beyond, for He is the strength of
my heart and my portion for ever.'
"She bade me in the early morning not to leave her, and I sat by
her without moving from 6 A.M. till 1 P.M. 'Oh, you will all be
_so_ tired,' she said once. When she was very ill, Charlotte leant
over her and said, 'I am oppressed, O Lord, undertake for me: may
the everlasting arms be beneath you.'--'Yes,' she said."
"_March 1, Sunday morning._--How long it is! At 6 P.M. she was very
restless and suffering. At last she gave me her hand and lay down
with me supporting the pillows behind. She spoke quite clearly, and
said, 'My blessing and darling, may you be blessed in time and
eternity!' This quiet sleep seemed to soothe and rest her, and
afterwards Lea was able to take my place for an hour. But the night
was terrible. Mrs. Woodward and Miss Finucane both sat up with me.
Once she said, 'Through the grave and the gate of death ... a
glorious resurrection.' At seven, she was speaking again, and
leaning over her I heard, 'How long, how long? when will the
Bridegroom come?'"
"_4 P.M. Monday, March 2._--A rather less suffering night. Dear
Miss Garden sat up with me, saying she felt as if it was her own
mother who was lying there, and Mother rambled gently to her about
'going home.' At 7 A.M. she fell asleep sweetly with her hand
clasped in both of mine. I did not venture to move, and sank from
my knees into a sitting position on the floor; so we remained for
nearly an hour. When she waked, her moan was more definite. 'Oh,
for rest! oh, for rest!' I said, 'Darling, rest is coming
soon.'--'Yes,' she said, 'my health will all come back to me soon;
no infirmities and no pains any more."
"10 A.M.--When Charlotte went at nine, I thought my darling sinking
more rapidly, and Dr. Grilli when he came told us it was all but
impossible she could rally. She looks to me at moments quite
passing away. I would not call my darling back for worlds now: if
God took her, I could only be lost in thankfulness that her pains
were over. Oh, that she may be soon in that perfect health which we
shall not be permitted to see. I scarcely leave her a moment now,
though it is agony to me if she coughs or suffers. Can I afford to
lose one look from those beloved eyes, one passing expression of
those revered features? So I sit beside her through the long hours,
now moistening her lips, now giving her water from a spoon, now and
then a little soup-jelly, which she finds it easier to swallow than
the soup itself, and now and then my darling gently gives me her
hand to hold in mine. 'Rest in bliss,' she said to Mrs. Woodward,
'rest ever in bliss.' Afterwards Charlotte said, 'When thou passest
through the waters, they shall not overflow thee: underneath thee
are ... the everlasting arms."
"12-1/2 P.M.--Charlotte has repeated sentences from the Litany--'By
Thine agony and bloody sweat.' We thought she scarcely understood
at first, then her lips, almost inaudibly, repeated the sentences.
Soon she said, 'It is _so_ long coming!' Then Charlotte read,
'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they _rest_ from
their labours.' She opened her eyes, looked up at Charlotte, and
said, 'Oh, how well I know you!'
"1 P.M.--After some minutes' quiet she opened her eyes with
surprise and said, 'I thought I was safe home; I thought I was, yet
I can move, so I suppose it will not be yet.'
"2 P.M.--Her face has lost all its troubled look, and though she
still moans, there is a happy appearance of repose stealing over
her features.
"3 P.M.--When C. L. came in she said, 'Oh, Charlotte, I thought it
was all over. I did not hear the noise of the waves any more. Oh,
they were so very tormenting, and then, when I did not hear them, I
thought it was over, and then I heard your voice, and I knew I was
still here.... I have no more pain now.... It was very long, but I
suppose He thought He would knock out all that was bad in me.'
"_Midnight, Monday._--After a terrible afternoon, she had such an
extraordinary rally in the evening that we all began to hope. But
soon after there was another change. Her features altered, her face
sunk, but her expression was of the most transcendent happiness.
Thinking the last moment was come, we knelt around the bed, I alone
on the right; Charlotte, Lea, and Mrs. Woodward on the left; the
nurse, Angela Mayer, at the foot. Charlotte and Mrs. W. prayed
aloud. Then my darling, in broken accents, difficult to understand,
but which I, leaning over her, repeated to the others, began to
speak--'I am going to glory ... I have no pain now ... I see the
light ... Oh, I am _so_ happy ... no more trouble or sorrow or sin
... so extremely happy ... may you all meet me there, not one of
you be wanting.'
"I, leaning over her, said, 'Do you know me still, darling?'--'Yes,
I know and bless you, my dearest son ... peace and love ... glory
everlasting ... all sins and infirmities purged away ... rest ...
love ... glory ... reign for ever ... _see Christ_.
"'Oh, be ready!
"'Mary and Arthur and Kate and Emmie and Mamie, faithful servants
of Christ, to meet me there in His kingdom.
"'Let peace and love remain with you always. This is my great wish,
peace and love ... peace and love.'
"After saying this, my mother solemnly folded her trembling hands
together on her breast, and looking up to heaven, said, 'Oh, Lord
Jesus, come quickly, and may all these meet me again in Thy
kingdom!' As she said this, my darling's eyes seemed fixed upon
another world.
"After this I begged the others to leave me alone with her, and
then my dearest one said to me, 'Yes, darling, our love for one
another on earth is coming to an end now. We have loved one another
very deeply. I don't know how far communion will be still possible,
but I soon _shall_ know; and if it be possible, I shall still be
always near you. I shall so love to see and know all you are doing,
and to watch over you; and when you hear a little breeze go
rustling by, you must think it is the old Mother still near you....
You will do all I wish, darling, I know. I need not write, you
will carry out all my wishes.'--'Yes, dearie,' I said, 'it will be
my only comfort when you are gone to do all you would have wished.
I will always stay at Holmhurst, darling, and I will continue going
to Alton, and I will do everything else I can think of that you
would like.'
"'Yes, and you must try to conquer self ... to serve God here, and
then we may be together again in heaven.... Oh, we _must_ be
together again there.'
"Lea now came in, and my darling stroked her face while she sobbed
convulsively. 'Your long work is done at last,' Mother said; 'I
have been a great trouble to you both, and perhaps it is as well I
should be taken away now, for I am quite worn out. Tell John and
all of them that I am sorry to leave them, but perhaps it was for
the best; for this is not an illness; it is that I am worn out....
You and Augustus will stay together and comfort one another when I
am gone, and you will bear with one another's infirmities and help
one another. The great thing of all is to be able to confess that
one has been in the wrong. Oh, peace and love, peace and love,
these are the great things.'
"'Have I been a good child to you, dearest?' I said. 'Oh, yes,
indeed--dear and good, dear and good; a little wilful perhaps you
used to be, but not lately; you have been all good to me
lately--dear and good.'--('Yes, that he has,' said Lea.)--'Faithful
and good,' my darling repeated, 'both of you faithful and good.'
"Charlotte now came in. 'Here is Charlotte.'--'Dear Charlotte! Oh
yes, I know you. I do not know whether there will be any
communication where I am going, but if there is, I shall be very
near you. I am going to rest ... rest everlasting. Be a mother to
my child. Comfort him when I am gone ... give him good advice....
You know what suggestions I should make.... You will say to him
what I should say ... and if he could have a good wife, that would
be the best thing ... for what would you do, my child, in this
lonely world?... No, a good wife, that is what I wish for you--a
good wife and a family home.
"'And now I should like to speak to kind Mrs. Woodward' (she came
in). 'Thank you so much; you have been very good and kind to me,
dear Mrs. Woodward. I am going fast to my heavenly home. I have
said all I meant to have written all the time I have been ill, and
have never been able ... my mouth has been opened that I might
speak.'"
"7 A.M. _March 3._--'Oh, it is quite beautiful. Good-bye, my own
dearest! I cannot believe that you will look up into the clouds and
think that I am only there ... but you will also see me in the
flowers and in my friends, and in all that I have loved.'
"8 A.M.--With the morning light my dearest Mother has seemed to
become more rapt in holy thoughts and visions, her eyes more
intently fixed on the unseen world. At last, with a look of rapture
she has exclaimed, 'Oh, angels, I see angels!' and since then pain
seems to have left her.
"8-1/2 A.M.--(To Lea.) 'You will take care of him and comfort him,
as you have always taken care of me: you have been a dear servant
to me.'--'Yes,' said Lea, 'I will always stay with him and take
care of him as long as I live. I took care of your dear husband,
and I have taken care of you, and I will take care of him as long
as he wants me.' 'Darling sweet,' I said to her. 'Yes, darling
sweet,' she repeated, with inexpressible tenderness. 'I always hear
the tender words you say to me, dear, even in my dreams.' Then she
said also to Mrs. Woodward, 'You have been very kind to us; you
will comfort Augustus when he is left desolate: you know what
sorrow is, you have gone through the valley.... It seems so much
worse for others than for me.... For then I shall begin really to
live.'
"All this time my darling lay with her eyes upturned and an
expression of rapt beatitude. The nurse says that in her forty
years' nursing she never saw any one like this, so quiet, so happy.
'Nothing ever puts her out or makes her complain: I never saw
anything like it.'[368]
"8-1/2 A.M.--'It is very difficult to _realise_ that when you are
absent from the body you are present with the Lord.'
"10 A.M.--Dr. Grilli says she may live till evening, even possibly
into the night. She has just said, a little wandering, 'You know in
a few days some pretty sweet violets will come up, and that will be
all that will be left to you of the dear Mother.'
"11-1/2 A.M.--She has taken leave of Emma Simpkinson and Miss
Garden. When I came in she took my hand and said, 'And you,
darling, I shall always think of you, and you will think of me. I
shall spring up again like the little violets, and I shall put on
an incorruptible body. I shall be always floating over you and
watching over you somehow: we shall never be separated; and my body
will rest beside that of my dear husband. So strange it should be
here; perhaps, if it had been anywhere else, I might have wished to
get better, but as it was here, the temptation was too great. I am
quite worn out. I thought I could not get better after my last
illness, and I _was_ given back to you for a little while, though I
have always felt very weak, but I shall be quite well now.'
"10 A.M. _March 4._--All night she wandered gently, saying that she
would 'go out and play with the little children; for there can be
nothing bad amongst very little children.' In the morning Charlotte
still thought there was a chance of her rallying, but Emma
Simpkinson and I both think her sinking, and Dr. Grilli says that
'sussulti tendin\xF3si' of the pulses have come on, and that there is
not the slightest hope. It can probably only be two hours, though
it may last till evening. He has formally taken leave, saying that
medicine is useless, and that it is no use for him to return any
more. Since the early morning my darling has been lying with her
hand in mine, leaning her head against mine on the pillow, her eyes
turned upwards, her lips constantly moving in inarticulate prayer.
She has asked, 'What day is it? I think it is my birthday to-day.'
I have not told her it is her father's birthday, as I believe it
will be her own birthday in heaven.
"11 A.M.--She has again appeared to be at the last extremity.
Raising her eyes to heaven and taking my hand, she has prayed
fervently but inaudibly. Then she prayed audibly for blessings for
me and Lea, and, with a grateful look to Emma, added, 'And for dear
Emma too.'
"1 P.M.--She wandered a little, and asked if the battle was over.
'Yes,' said Lea, 'and the victory won.'
"1-1/2 P.M.--'I am all straight now, no more crookedness.... You
must do something, dear, to build yourself up; you must be a good
deal pulled down by all this.... Rest now, but work, work for God
in life.
"'Don't expect too much good upon earth.
"'Don't expect too much perfection in one another.
"'Work for eternity.
"'Only try for love.
"2 P.M.--'Oh, how happy I am! I have everything I want here and
hereafter.'
"2.10.--(With eyes uplifted and hands clasped.) ... 'Living water.
The Lamb, the Lamb is the life.'
"2.15.--C. L. repeated at her request 'Abide with me, fast falls
the eventide.'
"2.30.--The dear Mother herself, with her changed voice, clasped
hands, and uplifted eyes, has repeated the hymn 'Just as I am,
without one plea.'
"3 P.M.--'I am glad I am not going to stay. I could not do you any
more good, and I am _so_ happy.'
"4 P.M.--(With intense fervour.) 'O God, O God! God alone can
save--one and eternal. Amen! Amen!'
"4.15.--'Let us be one in heaven, dear, as we are one on earth.'
"4.30.--'Oh, let me go.... I have said I was ready to go so often,
but you won't give me up.' I said, 'I think you had better try to
sleep a little now, darling.'--'Yes, but let it be the last: I have
had so many, many last sleeps.'--'You are in no pain now, dearie?'
I said. 'Oh no, no pain; there is no pain on the borderland of
heaven.
"'May He who ruleth all, both in heaven and earth, bless you, my
child--bless you and keep you from ill. Love, love, perfect love,
love on earth and then love in heaven.... I can hear words from the
upper world now and none from the nearer. They have taught me
things that were dark to me before.'
"5 P.M.--'Peace be with you, peace and love.
"'Sin below, grace above.
"'We sinners below, Christ above.
"'All love, all truth in Jesus Christ, my Lord and my God.'
"5-1/2 P.M.--'Oh, let it be. It could not be better--no doubt, no
difficulty.... All the good things of this world, what are they?...
soon pass away--pride, vanity, vexation of spirit; but oh! love!
love!' It was after saying these words that my darling's face
became quite radiant, and that she looked upward with an expression
of rapture. 'I see a white dove,' she said, 'oh, such a beautiful
white dove, floating towards me.' Soon after this she exclaimed,
'Oh, Lord Jesus, oh, come quickly'.... When she opened her eyes,
'What a wilful child you are! you will not let your mother depart,
and she is _so_ ready.'--'Is it he who keeps you?' said C. L. 'No,
a better One; but let me go or let me stay, O Lord, I have no will
but Thine.'"[369]
"2 A.M. _March 5._--During the night she has prayed constantly
aloud for various relations and friends by name, and often for me.
Once she said, 'Ever upright, ever just, sometimes irritable, weak
in temperament, that others should love him as I have done ... and
a good wife, that is what I have always thought.'
"8 P.M. _March 5._--Twice to-day there has been a sudden sinking of
nature, life almost extinct, and then, owing to the return of
fever, there has been a rally. She became excited if I left her
even for a moment, so through last night and to-day I have
constantly sat behind her on the bed, supporting her head on a
pillow in my arms.
"10 P.M.--Emma Simpkinson is come for the night, but there is a
strange change. My mother is asleep! quietly asleep--the fever is
reduced after the aconite which I insisted upon, and which the
hom\x9Copathic doctor said _must_ end her life in half-an-hour.
"_Friday evening, March 6._--All day there has been a rally, and
she has now power to cough again. Grilli had given the case up, so
at noon to-day I had no scruple in sending for Dr. Topham, writing
full explanation of the strange case. He says it is the most
extraordinary he has ever seen and a most interesting
study--'Before such a miracle of nature, science can only sit
still.' Life still hangs on a thread, but there is certainly an
improvement. She knows none but me."
"_Saturday evening, March 7._--What a quiet day of respite we have
had after all the long tension and anxiety. My darling's face has
resumed a natural expression, and she now lies quite quiet,
sleeping, and only rousing herself to take nourishment."
I have copied these fragments from my journal of two terrible weeks,
written upon my knees by my mother's side, when we felt every hour
_must_ be the last, and that her words, so difficult to recall
afterwards, would be almost our only consolation when the great
desolation had really fallen. But no description can give an idea of the
illness--of the strange luminousness of the sunken features, such as one
reads of in lives of Catholic saints--of the marvellous beauty of her
expression--of the thrilling accents in which many words were spoken,
from which her sensitive retiring nature would have shrunk in health.
Had there been physically any reason for hopefulness, which there was
not--had the doctors given any hope of recovery, which they did not, her
appearance, her words, her almost transfiguration would have assured us
that she was on the threshold of another world. I feel that those who
read must--like those who saw--almost experience a sort of shock at her
being given back to us again. Yet I believe that God heard my prayer in
St. Peter's for the two years more. During that time, and that time
only, she was spared to bless us, and to prepare me better for the final
separation when it really came. She was also spared to be my support in
another great trial of my life, to which we then never looked forward.
But I will return to my journal, with which ordinary events now again
entwine themselves.
"_March 10, 1868._--My darling is gradually but slowly regaining
strength, the doctor saying he can give no medicine, but that he
can only stand still in awe before the marvels of nature, whilst
we, the watchers, are gradually rallying from the great strain and
tension of the last week.
"Yesterday was Santa Francesca Romana's day. I went to her house,
the old Ponziani Palace, now the Ezercizii Pii, hung outside for
the day with battered tapestry and strewn within with box. The
rooms inside are the same as when the Saint lived in them, with
raftered ceilings, and many of them turned into chapels. Downstairs
is the large room which she turned into a hospital, and there is a
bright open courtyard planted with orange-trees, though certainly
nothing of the 'magnificent Ponziani Palace' described by Lady
Georgiana Fullerton in her book.
"Thence to the Tor de' Specchi, where a cardinal, a number of Roman
ladies, and a crowd of others were passing through the bright old
rooms covered with frescoes and tapestry, and looking into the
pleasant courtyards of the convent with their fountains and
orange-trees. Upstairs is a fine chapel, where the skeleton of the
Saint lies under the altar, dressed as an Oblate (with the face
exposed), but in a white veil and white gloves! The living Oblates
flitting about were very interesting picturesque-looking women,
mostly rather old. Several relics of Santa Francesca are preserved.
On a table near the entrance was the large flat vase in which she
made ointment for the poor, filled with flowers.
"On Sunday, when many ladies went to the Pope, he made them a
little sermon about their guardian angels and Sta. Francesca
Romana."
"_March 15._--My sweet Mother is in almost exactly the same
state--a sort of dormouse existence, and so weak that she can
scarcely hold up her head; yet she has been twice wheeled into the
sitting-room.
"I have been with the Fitzmaurices to the Castle of S. Angelo, very
curious, and the prisons of Beatrice Cenci and her stepmother, most
ghastly and horrid. There are between seven and eight hundred men
there now, and many prisoners. Over the prison doors passers-by had
made notes in chalk: one was 'O voi che entrate qui, lasciate ogni
speranza;' another, 'On sait quand on entre, on ne sait pas quand
on sort;' another, 'H\xF4tel des Martyrs.'
[Illustration: CASTLE OF ESTE.[370]]
"On Friday evening I rushed with all the world to the receptions of
the new cardinals--first to the Spanish Embassy, then to the
Colonna to see Cardinal Bonaparte,[371] who has a most humble
manner and a beautiful refined face like Manning at his best; and
then to the Inquisition, where Cardinal de Monaco was waiting to
receive in rooms which were almost empty."
"_March 30._--The dear Mother makes daily progress. She has the
sofa in her bedroom, and lies there a great deal in the sunny
window.
"I went to Mrs. Lockwood's theatricals, to which, as she said, 'all
the people above the rank of a duchess were asked down to the
letter M.' The play, _L'A\xEFeule_, was wonderfully well done by
Princess Radziwill, Princess Pallavicini, Princess Scilla, Duca del
Gallo, and others, a most beautiful electric light being let in
when the grandmother steals in to give the poison to the sleeping
girl."
"_May 8._--We leave Rome to-morrow--leave it in a flush of summer
glory, in a wealth unspeakable of foliage and flowers, orange
blossoms scenting our staircase, the sky deep blue.
"All the last fortnight poor Emma Simpkinson[372] has been terribly
ill--a great anxiety to us as to what was best to be done for her,
but we hope now that she may be moved to England, and I must go
with my restored Mother, who is expanding like a flower in the
sunshine.
"This afternoon, at the crowded time, the young Countess Crivelli,
the new Austrian Ambassadress, drove down the Corso. At the Porta
del Popolo she met her husband's horse without a rider. Much
alarmed, she drove on, and a little farther on she found her
husband's dead body lying in the road. She picked it up, and drove
back down the Corso with the dead man by her side."
Amongst the many English who spent this spring in Rome, I do not find
any note, in my diaries, of Lord Houghton, yet his dinners for six in
the Via S. Basilio were delightful. His children were real children
then, and his son, Robin,[373] a boy of wonderful promise. Lord Houghton
was never satisfied with talking well and delightfully himself; his
great charm was his evident desire to draw out all the good there was in
other people.
JOURNAL.
"_Venice, May 10, 1868._--We had a terribly hot journey by Spoleto
and Ancona, and came on to Este. It is a long drive up from the
station to the primitive little town close under the Euganean
Hills, with the ruined castle where the first Guelph was born. The
inn (La Speranza) is an old palace, and our sittingroom was
thirty-four feet long. The country is luxuriance itself, covered
with corn and flax, separated by rows of peach and fig trees, with
vines leaping from tree to tree. I drove to Arqua, a most
picturesque village in a hollow of the hills. In the little court
of the church is Petrarch's tomb, of red Verona marble, and on the
high ridge his house, almost unaltered, with old frescoes of his
life, his chair, his chest, and his stuffed cat, shrunk almost to a
weasel."
"_Augsburg, May 24._--From Venice we saw Torcello--the Mother, Lea,
and I in a _barca_ gliding over those shallow mysterious waters to
the distant island and its decaying church, where we sat to draw
near Attila's marble chair half buried in the rank growth of the
mallows.
[Illustration: PETRARCH'S TOMB, ARQUA.[374]]
"We came away by an early train to Verona, and drove in the
afternoon to San Zenone, and then to the beautiful Giusti gardens
for the sunset. Mother was able to climb up to the summer-house on
the height, and the gardener gave us pinks and roses.
"On the 24th we came on to Trent, a most attractive place, with an
interesting cathedral, fine fountains, beautiful trees, and
surroundings of jagged pink mountains tipped with snow. Cheating
the Alps by crossing the Brenner, we went by Salzburg to
Berchtesgaden, where we found quiet rooms with a splendid view of
the snow-clad Watzmann. We were rowed down the K\xF6nigsee as far as
the waterfall, Lea dreadfully frightened on the lake."
[Illustration: TOMB OF THE COUNT OF CASTELBARCO, VERONA.[375]]
From Augsburg we went to Oberwesel on the Rhine, where we were very
happy in a primitive hotel amid the vines and old timberhouses. On our
second morning there, while I was drawing on the shore of the river, a
strange and terrible presentiment came over me of some great misfortune,
some overwhelming grief which was then taking place in England. I threw
down my drawing things and hurried back to the hotel to my mother.
"Never," I said, "have these sudden presentiments come to me without
meaning. I am sure you will listen to me when I say that we ought to be
in England directly."--"Yes," she said, "I quite believe it; let us go
at once;" and then and there, in the hot morning, we walked down to the
train. We travelled all night, and at daybreak we were in England. I
confess that, as we travelled, the detailed impression which I had from
my presentiment was wrong. I thought of what would have affected my
mother most. I fancied that, as I was sitting on the Rhine shore, Arthur
Stanley had died at Westminster. But John Gidman met us with our little
carriage at Hastings, and as we drove up to Holmhurst he told me the
dreadful truth--that, at the very moment of my presentiment, my sister
Esmeralda had expired.
I still feel the echo of that terrible anguish.
XIII
LAST YEARS OF ESMERALDA
"Sleep sweetly, dear one; thou wilt wake at dawn."--MOSCHUS.
"Her mind was one of those pure mirrors from which the polluting
breath passes away as it touches it."--BISHOP HEBER.
"Cette longue et cruelle maladie qu'on appelle la vie, est enfin
gu\xE9rie."--MADEMOISELLE D'ESPINASSE.
"Let her pure soul ...
Remain my pledge in heaven, as sent to show
How to this portal every step I go."--SIR JOHN BEAUMONT.
I think that I have not written anything concerning the life of my
sister after we met her at Rome in the winter of 1865-66. Since that
time she had been more incessantly engrossed by the affairs, and often
very trivial interests, of the Roman Catholic Church, but without for a
moment relaxing her affection and cordiality towards us. Great was my
pleasure in watching how, in spite of all religious differences, my
mother became increasingly fond of her every time they met. I think it
is William Penn who says, "The meek, the just, the pious, the devout,
are all of one religion."
On leaving Rome in 1866, Esmeralda made it an object to visit the famous
"Nun of Monza," Ancilla Ghizza, called in religion the "Madre Serafina
della Croce." This nun had been founding a religious order at Monza,
which was at first intended to be affiliated to the Sacramentarie on the
Quirinal at Rome. She was supposed to have not only the "stigmata," but
the marks of our Lord's scourging, to be gifted with a wonderful power
and knowledge of the interior life, and to possess the gift of prophecy.
She was summoned to Rome, and, after three years' noviciate at the
Sacramentarie, she was permitted, in 1862, to return to Monza, and to
begin her community, fifteen nuns being clothed at the same time. She
used to distribute little crosses which she declared to have been
blessed by our Lord in person, and she was often in an ecstasy, in which
it was alleged that her body became so light that she could be raised
from the ground by a single hair of her head! Concerning Serafina della
Croce, Esmeralda had already received from a celebrated Italian
ecclesiastic the following:--
"_Venezia, 3 Gennaio, 1864._--Mi scusi se io cos\xEC presto riprendo
la penna, per offrirle il mio povero tentativo di consolarla, sotto
la forma di questa piccola croce, che io ebbi dall' Ancilla Ghizzi
di Monza, e che \xE8 stata benedetta dalle mani stesse di Nostro
Signore in una visione. Io potrei dirle molto di queste croci, ma
ci vorrebbe troppo tempo. Cos\xEC io le dir\xF2 soltanto per affermare la
sua opinione sopra la santit\xE0 di questa serva di Dio, che io
conosco qui un sacerdote che and\xF2 a vederla, e al quale il
confessore dell' Ancilla deleg\xF2 la sua autorit\xE0, dicendogli che
poteva commandarla ed interrogarla per un' ora, come se fosse lui
stesso il suo confessore. Infatti, portatosi dall' Ancilla, senza
che essa fosse stata avvertita di quest' accordo fra loro, il
Sacerdote le di\xE8de mentalmente l'obbedienza di unirsi con Dio in
orazione, ed essa immediatamente and\xF2 in estasi, e continu\xF2 un' ora
intera in questo stato, nel qual tempo egli le domand\xF2
_mentalmente_ varie cose in rapporto a certe persone che
desiderebbero essere raccomandate alle sue preghiere, ed essa
rispondeva al suo precetto mentale, raccomandogli ogni persona ed
ogni domanda al Signore di _viva voce_, continuando cos\xEC un dialogo
non interrotto. Qualche volta per la soddisfazione di una terza
persona che era presente, questo Sacerdote gli diceva all' orecchio
il soggetto sopra il quale voleva schiarimento. Debbo aggiungere
che in questo stato il suo corpo \xE8 cos\xEC leggiero che la poteva
sollevare da terra _per un solo dei suoi capelli_, come se non
avesse pi\xF9 nessun peso. Ho pure veduto dei manoscritti voluminosi
del suo confessore pieni di maraviglie, e che dimostrano che la sua
familiarit\xE0 colle cose e colle persone celesti \xE8 arrivata ad un
tal punto, che si pu\xF2 ben paragonare a tutto ci\xF2 che si legge nelle
vite dei santi. Anzi a me mi pare che supera tutto quel che io ho
letto fin qui."
Another intention of Esmeralda was to visit "Torchio," the inspired
cobbler at Turin, and consult him on various subjects. This Torchio had
had the most extraordinary visions of the Judgment; but alas! I
neglected to write down the long verbal account which my sister gave me
of her visit to him, and thus it is lost. I have only the following,
written in crossing the Mont Cenis with an Asiatic bishop, to whom
Esmeralda had offered a place in her carriage:--
"_June 4, 1866._--For three days running before leaving Rome, I had
the visits of the venerable Monsignor Natale, and we talked of
coming events in the political world. I went over from Pisa to
Leghorn, and there I saw a very remarkable person called Suora
Carolina. We went to Milan for one day, and from thence to Monza. I
saw the bishop, and besought and entreated, and at last he gave
permission, and I was the first to pass through the closed door of
the convent, and to kneel and kiss the hand of the saint. Auntie
went with me. I can never express what I felt. It was like seeing
S. Francesco d'Assisi, and it seemed like a dream as, side by side,
we walked through the cloisters and then went up into her cell:
one so highly favoured! it was too much happiness. All I had heard
was nothing to the reality, and there was Auntie sitting in her
cell, the other nuns standing round. Her face was quite beautiful,
quite heavenly.
"And then we returned to Milan and started for Turin, and there I
went to see Torchio, the celebrated Torchio, as he sat on his
basket and spoke as he was inspired. It was a wonderful and
beautiful sermon, both in word and action. When he spoke of the
Passion, one seemed to follow him to Calvary. He is a poor man
living at the top of a very poor house, but he is an apostle."
Esmeralda returned to London to Mrs. Thorpe's, but in the autumn she
went north and paid visits to the Monteiths and Stourtons and to Lady
Herries in Yorkshire. Lady Herries said afterwards that she liked to
think of her as she so often saw her in the chapel at Everingham,
praying, "oh, so fervently," for hours together. As her life became more
absorbed in devotion and religious interests, she was conscious of the
danger of neglecting earthly duties and sympathies. On August 4, 1866,
she wrote:--
"Let me walk in the presence of God without underrating His gifts,
for the underrating of God's gifts is one of the temptations which
I am required to fight against."
On September 8 she wrote:--
"Let me surrender entirely my individual will, to be completely
united and absorbed in the will of Jesus Christ,--then will the
truths of Christianity become a fixed life in my soul.
"The great impediment to the life of Jesus in the soul is the
aiming at mediocrity in things pertaining to our Lord and to a
spiritual life; whereas our Master would have us aim at
_perfection_, and bear in mind as a command His words, 'Be ye
perfect.'"
In August Esmeralda was thrown into real heart-mourning by the news
which reached England of the death of "the Great Mother," Maria de
Matthias. The following is from Pierina Rolleston, Superior of the Order
of the Precious Blood in England:--
"My own dearest in the precious blood, I write in haste, and while
I write my tears are flowing, because I have sad news to tell you
and dear Mrs. Montgomery, who are both children of the Institute,
and love our beloved Mother-General, who is in heaven, praying for
us all. The following is a copy of a letter I received yesterday
from Monsignor Talbot:--'I write to announce to you the death of
your Mother-General. She expired two days ago--died as she lived,
after giving examples of patience and resignation in the midst of
her sufferings. To-morrow her funeral will be celebrated at the
Church of SS. Vincenzo ed Anastasio, and I intend to attend. I do
not think you need fear for the future of your Institute, because
I think that the successor of your late Mother-General, though she
may not be so saintly a person, will be equally able to carry on
the business. I do not think you can be too grateful to Almighty
God for having such friends as Monsignor Paterson and Miss Hare.'
... My dearest, I write in haste that you may receive all the news
of our beloved Mother. Sister Carolina Longo, whom she named as her
successor upon her death-bed, is a good clever nun, and she was
Mother's dear child. She lived with Mother from a child of eight
years old, and became a religious about the age of twenty-two. We
have lost one of the dearest of mothers, but can look up to her in
heaven, and I am sure she will help us in our work.... With fond
love in the precious blood, I am always your most affectionate in
Christ,
"PIERINA OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD."
The winter of 1866-67 was chiefly passed by my sister at the house of
Mrs. Alfred Montgomery at Ifield near Crawley, where Esmeralda and her
aunt for many months shared in the housekeeping. For Esmeralda had been
induced to regard Mrs. Montgomery as a religious martyr, and her
impressionable nature was completely fascinated by her hostess. While at
Ifield, a fatal web was drawn each day more closely by her Catholic
associates, by which Esmeralda was induced to entrust large sums to her
brother Francis for speculation upon the political prophecies of Madame
de Trafford. Her unworldly nature was persuaded to consent to this means
of (as Francis represented) largely increasing her income, by the
prospect which was held out to her of having more money to employ in
assisting various religious objects, especially the establishment of the
Servites in London, and the foundation of their church, for which she
had promised Father Bosio, General of the Servites, to supply \xA3500, to
be obtained either by collections or otherwise, at the expiration of
three years. Esmeralda never knew or had the faintest idea of the sum to
which her speculations amounted. She was beguiled on from day to day by
two evil advisers, and, her heart being in other things, was induced to
trust and believe that her worldly affairs were in the hands of
disinterested persons. The lists of her intended employments for the
next day, so many of which remained amongst her papers, show how little
of her time and attention was given to pecuniary matters. From them it
is seen that a quarter of an hour allotted to the discussion of
investments with her brother would be preceded by an hour spent in
writing about the affairs of a French convent or the maintenance of a
poor widow in Rome, and followed by an hour devoted to the interests of
the Servites or some other religious body. There is no doubt that
Esmeralda undertook far more than was good either for her health or for
her mind; each hour of every day was portioned out from the day before,
and was fully and intensely occupied, especially when she was in London.
If visitors or any unexpected circumstance prevented the task for which
she had allotted any particular hour, she did not leave it on that
account unfulfilled, but only detracted from the hours of rest. One
thing alone, her daily meditation, she allowed nothing to interfere
with. In the hours of meditation she found the refreshment which helped
her through the rest of the day. "Our Lord requires of us that our souls
should become a tabernacle for Him to dwell in," she wrote on February
2, 1867, "and the lamp lighted before it is the lamp of our affections."
All through the summer of 1866, my brother William's health had been
declining, and in the autumn, in the hope of benefit from the
sea-breezes, he was moved to Brighton, which he never left. After
Christmas day he was never able to leave the house. The small fortune of
his pretty helpless wife had been lost in a bankruptcy, and they were
reduced to a state of destitution in which they were almost devoid of
the absolute necessaries of life. The following are extracts from
William's letters to his sister at this time:--
"You cannot imagine how I miss your letters when you cease to write
for any length of time.... Since Sunday I have been confined to my
bed, having almost lost all use of my limbs. I could not possibly
be moved to our sitting-room, being in so weak and emaciated a
condition, and I fear I shall have to keep my bed all through this
bitter cold weather. I am so miserably thin that it is with the
greatest difficulty that I can contrive to sit or lie in any
position. It is, however, God's will that it should be so, and I am
enabled to say 'Thy will be done, O Lord.' ... God has mercifully
vouchsafed me time for repentance, and has brought me back to
Himself, and made me one with Him by strengthening me with His own
body, so that, dear sister, I feel supremely happy and at peace
with all the world; and should it please Almighty God to call me
hence, I feel serene in His love, that He has graciously forgiven
me all my sins, and that He will take me to Himself where there is
no longer any pain or suffering. Father Crispin came on Wednesday
to hear my confession, and on Thursday morning he administered the
most Blessed Sacrament to me. ... Dear Edith has received \xA310
lately, which you may well suppose at this critical time was
obtained with very great difficulty; but all this money has been
expended on my illness, and there is nothing left for the doctor's
visits, medicine, or to pay the butcher, baker, washerwoman, milk,
or coal bill. Yet it will not do to give up the doctor in my
critical state, or to cease taking his medicine, or to deny myself
the necessary restoratives; if I did I must inevitably sink. Will
you not, in compassion for my fallen state, consent to make me some
sort of allowance during my illness to enable me to obtain what is
necessary?
"Mr. Blackwood (you will remember 'Beauty Blackwood,' who married
the Duchess of Manchester[376]) has sent me a little book which he
has just published--'The Shadow and the Substance,' which he
assures me is quite free from controversy, and he desires me to
read it with especial care and attention, as being conducive to my
comfort during hours of sickness and suffering."
My sister immediately sent William all he required, when he again
wrote:--
"How can I thank you sufficiently for so generously responding to
my appeal in more senses than one, by sending me money to relieve
the pressure of want, books to comfort me in hours of sickness, and
wine to cheer and strengthen me?... Should I be spared, I must
accept this illness as one of the greatest, indeed the greatest
blessing I could possibly receive, for it has taught me my own
nothingness, my all insufficiency, and it has drawn me from a
sphere of sin into a sphere of grace; it has caused me to despise
the world and all its vanities, and has diverted my heart and
whole being to Almighty God; it has brought me into close communion
with Him, strengthened by the graces of His Holy Sacraments, and
has made me feel the blessedness of constant prayer. Oh, I would
not change my present state for worlds; and should it please
Almighty God to call me from hence, I feel that He will receive me
into everlasting peace. Father Crispin called last evening: he
considers me so prostrate that he intends administering the
sacrament of Extreme Unction. Pray for me! I cannot express to you
how rejoiced I am that we are again hand in hand together. You
should not forget the days of our youth, we were always
inseparable; we were then estranged from each other, and a very,
very bitter time that was to me. I cannot say that I am any
better."
After the receipt of this letter my sister hurried to Brighton, and she
was there when William died. On the 11th of March she wrote to me:--
"We are here to be with William, to wait by his bedside during
these last days of his illness. On Thursday night, and again on
Friday night, it seemed as if the last hour was come, but there is
now a slight, a very slight improvement, so that he may live a few
days longer. Yesterday there came over him a momentary wish to
recover, but it passed away, and his calm resignation was really
unbroken and continues the same to-day. He does not murmur, though
his sufferings must be terrible.... From time to time he asks me
to read aloud a few lines of the 'Imitation of Christ,' but I can
scarcely do it without breaking down as I look up and see those
sunken cheeks and large glazed eyes fixed upon me with such a deep
look of intense suffering."
Two unexpected friends appeared to cheer William's last days. One was
the young Duchess of Sutherland, who had been intimate with him as a
child, and having never met him since the days when they both lived in
the Maison Valin, heard accidentally of his illness at Brighton; she
came repeatedly to see him, and supplied him with many comforts, and
even luxuries. The other was the well-known Miss Marsh, the authoress of
the "Memorials of Hedley Vicars,"--the staunch Protestant, but liberal
Christian. She happened to call to see the landlady of the lodging where
he was, when, hearing of William's illness and poverty, she went
constantly to visit him, and laying aside in the shadow of death all
wish for controversy, read and prayed with him in the common sympathy of
their Christian faith and trust. She wrote afterwards:--
"Blessed be God that I have no doubt that the dying friend in whom
I have been so deeply interested was in Christ and is now _with_
Him. We never spoke together of Romanism or Protestantism; all I
cared for was to persuade him, by the help of the Holy Ghost, to
accept at once the offer of a free and present salvation through
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and through Him _only_: and to
believe God's word that he that believeth on the Son of God hath
everlasting life, because of His _one_ sacrifice _once_ offered for
the sins of the whole world. And _he did believe it_, and false
confidences faded away like shadows before the sunrise. 'Jesus
only' became all his salvation and all his desire, and he passed
into His presence with a radiant smile of joy. I was not with him
when he died, but the hour of communing with his spirit that same
evening was one of the sweetest I have spent on earth."
My sister has left some notes of that which occurred after William's
death:--
"After all was over, and when the room was decorated and the body
laid out, Miss Marsh came to see him, and taking his dead hand, she
placed a white camellia in it. Then kneeling by the side of the
bed, she offered up the most beautiful prayer aloud, in which she
described as in a picture our Blessed Lord and the angels receiving
his soul. It was quite wonderfully beautiful: there was only one
thing she left out; she never mentioned Our Blessed Lady; she
placed the angels before our Lady. I was standing at the foot of
the bed with a crucifix, and when she ceased praying, I said, 'But
you have never spoken of Our Lady: I cannot let Our Lady be passed
over.' And Miss Marsh was not angry; no, she only rose from her
knees, and coming to me, she threw her arms round my neck and
said, 'Do not let us dispute upon this now; we have one God and one
Saviour in common, let us rest upon these,' and she came to see me
afterwards when I was ill in London.
"'Know thou that courtesy is one of God's own properties, who
sendeth His rain and His sunshine upon the just and the unjust out
of His great courtesy; and verily Courtesy is the sister of
Charity, who banishes hatred and cherishes love.' Were not these
the words of the dear S. Francis of Assisi?
"During William's illness Miss Marsh came every day with something
for him, and quite stripped her own room to give him her own chair,
and even her mattress. She was just the one person William wanted.
Any dried-up person might have driven him back, but she was daily
praying by his side, handsome, enthusiastic, dwelling only on the
love of God, and she helped him on till he began really to think
the love of God the only thing worth living for.
"'O sister,' he said to me once, 'if it should please God that I
should live, all my life would be given up to Him.'
"The doctor who went up to him when he was told that he could not
live many hours came down with tears upon his face. 'There must
indeed be something in religion,' he said, 'when that young man can
be so resigned to die.'"
On the Saturday after William's death my sister wrote to us:--
"Now that dear William's last call has come, I feel thankful for
his sake. The good priest who attended him in all the latter part
of his illness wrote to me the day after his death that I could
have no cause of anxiety for his everlasting welfare. It was a
beautiful death, he was so happy, peaceful, and resigned. I had
only left him a _very_ short time when he again asked for Edith.
She came up to his bedside, and then there seemed to come over
William's face a bright light illuminating his countenance, and
fixing his eyes upwards with a short sigh, he breathed his last.
There was no suffering then, no agony. I had asked him if he feared
death. 'No,' he said, and looked as if he wondered at the thought
coming into my mind. He felt he had found the only true peace and
happiness. He told me he wished to be buried at Kensal Green. His
only anxiety was about poor Edith, and when I told him that I would
do what lay in my power for her, he seemed satisfied, and never, I
believe, gave this world another thought, but prepared to meet our
Blessed Lord. That beautiful look of peace was on his face after
death. Francis arrived too late to see him alive, but when he
looked on William's face he said, 'Oh, sister, how beautiful!' The
little room was draped with black and white. There he lay, and we
were coming and going, and praying by the side of the open coffin.
On Tuesday will be the funeral. On Monday the body will be removed
to the Church of St. Mary of the Angels, Bayswater, where it will
remain through the night, according to devout Roman custom."
After the funeral Esmeralda wrote:--
"_Ifield Lodge, Crawley._--When the long sad week was over, I felt
all power of further exertion gone, and yet it seemed, as it does
now, that for the soul God had taken to Himself, should the
happiness of that soul not yet be perfected, prayers must be
obtained, and that I must work on and on as long as life lasts.
There is a feeling of longing to help in the mind of every Catholic
for those departed. On Monday the 24th the dear remains were moved
from Brighton by the 6 P.M.train. Auntie and I went up by the same
train from Three Bridges, and Francis came to the Victoria Station
to meet the coffin; but such was the heavy feeling of sorrow, that,
though we were on the platform at the same time, we did not see
each other.
"The next morning I went for Edith, and we arrived at the church
early. The body had been placed in one of the side-chapels, and had
remained there through the night. Before mass it was brought out,
and remained before the high-altar during mass. There were many of
William's friends present, and also Margaret Pole, now Mrs. Baker.
The funeral procession formed at the door of the church. As the
body was moved down the church, Edith and I followed after the
officiating priests. I held Edith's hand tightly, and did not
intend her to get into one of the mourning coaches, but suddenly,
as the hearse moved slowly from the church door, she wrenched her
hand from my grasp and was gone before I had time to speak. Four
nuns went to say the responses at the grave. One was the nun who
had nursed dear Mama through her last hours, and had stayed on with
me in Bryanston Street. I returned from the church to the hotel,
and there Auntie and Edith found me after the funeral was over.
"The funeral service in the church was very solemn, but there was
no weight of gloom or sadness. The strong feeling of the safety of
the soul was such a consolation, that the end for which that soul
had been created had been gained, and that if it were not then in
heaven, the day would come soon, and could be hastened by the
prayers said for it. His dear remains rest now under the figure of
Our Lady of Sorrows, which he had so wished to see erected. I never
looked forward to such a deathbed for William, where there would be
so much peace and love of God, and now I can never feel grateful
enough for such grace granted at the eleventh hour. May we all and
each have as beautiful an end and close of life. Edith says, 'Oh I
wish I could see what William saw when he looked up with that
bright light on his face.' With that look all suffering is blotted
out of poor Edith's mind, all her long watchings.
"I can never feel grateful enough to Miss Marsh for all her
kindness to William. It helped him to God, and it was very, very
beautiful.... I hope still to go to Rome for the _funzione_ in
June, and also to Hungary for the coronation of the Emperor."
May 1867 was passed by my sister in London, where, by her astonishing
cleverness and perseverance, she finally gained the last of her
lawsuits, that for the family plate, when it had been lost in three
other courts. Soon after, in spite of the great heat of the summer,
Esmeralda started for Rome, to be present at the canonisation of the
Japanese martyrs, paying a visit to Madame de Trafford on the way. She
wrote to me:--
"When I first went to Beaujour, I was afraid to tell Madame de
Trafford that I intended to go to Rome. 'Mais o\xF9 allez vous donc,
ma ch\xE8re?' said Madame de Trafford. 'Mais, Madame, je vais ... en
voyage.'--'Vous allez en voyage, \xE7a je comprends, mais \xE7a ne r\xE9pond
pas \xE0 ma question: vous allez en voyage, mais il faut aller quelque
part, o\xF9 allez vous donc?'--'Mais, Madame, vous verrez de mon
retour.'--'Mais o\xF9 allez vous donc, ma ch\xE8re? dites-moi, o\xF9 allez
vous?'--'Je vais \xE0 ... Rome!' Madame de Trafford sprang from her
chair as I said this, and exclaimed, 'Rome, Rome, ce mot de Rome,
Rome, Rome ... et vous allez \xE0 Rome ... moi aussi je vais \xE0 Rome,'
and she went with us. From the time that Madame de Trafford
determined to go, Auntie made no opposition to our going, and was
quite satisfied."
The journey to Rome with Madame de Trafford was full of unusual
incidents. The heat was most intense, and my sister suffered greatly
from it. At Turin she was so ill that she thought it impossible to
proceed, but Madame de Trafford insisted upon her getting up and going
on. Whilst they were still _en route_ Madame de Trafford telegraphed to
Rome for a carriage and every luxury to be in readiness. She also
telegraphed to Pisa to bid M. Lamarre, the old family cook of Parisani,
go to Rome to prepare for them. My sister telegraphed to Monsignor
Talbot to have places reserved for the ceremonies, &c. All the last part
of the way the trains were crowded to the greatest possible degree,
hundreds of pilgrims joining at every station in Umbria and the
Campagna, for whom no places were reserved, so that the train was
delayed six or seven hours behind its time, and the heat was increased,
by the overcrowding, to the most terrible pitch. My sister wrote:--
"In the carriage with us from Florence was a young Florentine
noble, a Count Gondi, all of whose relations I knew. He asked me
what I should do after the canonisation. '\xC7a d\xE9pend, M. le Comte,
si on attaquera Rome.'--'Mais, certainement on l'attaquera.'--'Eh
bien, done je reste.'--'Mais vous restez, Mademoiselle, si on
attaque Rome.'--'Oui, certainement.'--'Et vous, Madame,' said Count
Gondi, turning to Madame de Trafford. 'Mais si on attaque Rome,'
said Madame de Trafford, 'je ferais comme Mademoiselle Hare, je
reste, bien sure.' His amazement knew no bounds.
"When we arrived at Rome, I was so afraid that Madame de Trafford
might do something very extraordinary that I made her sleep in my
room, and slept myself in the little outer room which we used to
call the library, so that no one could pass through it to my room
without my knowing it. The morning after we arrived she came into
my room before I was up. I said, 'Mais, Madame, c'\xE9tait \xE0 moi de
vous rendre cette visite?'--'Laissez donc ces frivolit\xE9s,' said
Madame de Trafford, 'nous ne sommes pas ici pour les frivolit\xE9s
comme cela: parlons du s\xE9rieux; commen\xE7ons.'"
The ceremonies far more than answered my sister's expectations. She
entered St. Peter's with Madame de Trafford by the Porta Sta. Marta, and
they saw everything perfectly. She met the Duchess Sora in the church,
radiant with ecstasy over what she considered so glorious a day for
Catholicism. "I _knew_ you would be here," said the Duchess; "you
_could_ not have been away." The meeting was only for a moment, and was
their last upon earth. "When the voices of the three choirs swelled into
the dome," wrote Esmeralda, "then I felt what the Pope expressed in
words, 'the triumph of the Church has begun.' When we first went into
St. Peter's, Giacinta,[377] who had _felt_ I should be there, was
waiting for me. 'Eccola, la figlia,' she said, 'io l'aspettava.'"
Afterwards Giacinta came to see my sister at the Palazzo Parisani. "I
shall never forget the meeting of those two souls," wrote Esmeralda,
"when Giacinta first saw Madame de Trafford. They had never heard of one
another before: I had never mentioned Giacinta to Madame de Trafford,
and she had never heard of Madame de Trafford, but they understood one
another at once. Madame de Trafford passed through the room while
Giacinta was talking to me, and seeing only a figure in black talking,
she did not stop and passed on. Giacinta started up and exclaimed, 'Chi
\xE8?'--'Una signora,' I said. 'Quello se vede,' said Giacinta, 'ma quello
non \xE8 una risposta--chi \xE8?'--and when I told her, 'O vede un' anima,'
she exclaimed. Madame de Trafford then did what I have never known her
do for any other person; she looked into the room and said, 'Faites la
passer dans ma chambre,' and we went in, and the most interesting
conversation followed."
As she returned through Tuscany, Esmeralda had her last meeting with her
beloved Madame Victoire, who had then no presentiment of the end. At
Paris she took leave of Madame de Trafford, and returned to London,
where she for the first time engaged a permanent home--5 Lower Grosvenor
Street. The furnishing of this house was the chief occupation of the
next two months, though Esmeralda began by depositing in the empty rooms
a large crucifix which Lady Lothian had given her, and saying, "Now the
house is furnished with all that is really important, and Providence
will send the rest." A room at the top of the house was arranged as an
oratory; an altar was adorned with lace, flowers, and images; a lamp
burned all night long before the crucifix, and if Esmeralda could not
sleep, she was in the habit of retiring thither and spending long hours
of darkness in silent prayer. There also she kept the vigil of "the Holy
Hour." Early every morning the Catholic household in Grosvenor Street
was awakened by the sharp clang of the prayer-bell outside the oratory
door.
I went to stay with my sister in August for a few days. Esmeralda was at
this time looking very pale and delicate, but not ill. Though the beauty
of her youth had passed away, and all her troubles had left their trace,
she was still very handsome. Her face, marble pale, was so full of
intelligence and expression, mingled with a sort of sweet pathos, that
many people found her far more interesting than before, and all her
movements were marked by a stately grace which made it impossible for
her to pass unobserved. Thus she was when I last saw her, pale, but
smiling her farewell, as she stood in her long black dress, with her
heavy black rosary round her neck, leaning against the parapet of the
balcony outside the drawing-room window.
All through the winter Esmeralda wrote very seldom. She was much
occupied with her different books, some of which seemed near
publication. "The Study of Truth," upon which she had been occupied ever
since 1857, had now reached such enormous dimensions, that the very
arrangement of the huge pile of MS. seemed almost impossible. A volume
of modern American poetry was to be brought out for the benefit of the
Servites, and was also in an advanced state; yet her chief interest was
a collection of the "Hymns of the Early Church," obtained from every
possible source, but chiefly through the aid of foreign monasteries and
convents. Upon this subject she kept up an almost daily correspondence
with the Padre Agostino Morini of the Servites, who was her chief
assistant, especially in procuring the best translations, as the
intention was that the original Latin hymn should occupy one page and
that the best available translation should in every case be opposite to
it: many hundreds of letters remain of this correspondence. In the
autumn Esmeralda was again at Ifield Lodge, where she was persuaded into
a wild scheme for building a town for the poor at Crawley. Land was
bought, measurements and plans were taken, and a great deal of money was
wasted, but Esmeralda fortunately withdrew from the undertaking before
it was too late.
But the state of excitement and speculation in which she was now
persuaded to live had a terrible effect upon Esmeralda, who had
continued in a weak and nervous state ever since her hurried journey to
Rome. She now found it difficult to exist without the stimulus of daily
excitement, and she added one scheme and employment to another in a way
which the strongest brain could scarcely have borne up against. On her
return to London she threw herself heart and soul into what she called a
scheme for the benefit of the "poor rich." She remembered that when she
was herself totally ruined, one of her greatest trials was to see her
mother suffer from the want of small luxuries in the way of food to
which she had been accustomed, and that though their little pittance
allowed of what was absolutely necessary, London prices placed chickens,
ducks, cream, and many other comforts beyond their reach. Esmeralda
therefore arranged a plan by which she had over twice a week, from
certain farms in Normandy, large baskets containing chickens (often as
many as eighty at a time), ducks, geese, eggs, apples, and various other
articles. The prices of the farm produce in Normandy were so low, that
she was able, after paying the carriage, to retail the contents of her
hampers to the poor families she was desirous of assisting, besides
supplying her own house, at a cost of not more than half the London
prices. Many families of "poor rich" availed themselves of this help and
were most grateful for it, but of course the trouble involved by so many
small accounts, with the expenditure of time in writing notes, &c.,
about the disposition of her poultry was enormous. It was in the
carrying out of this scheme that Esmeralda became acquainted with a
person called Mrs. Dunlop, wife of a Protestant, but herself a Roman
Catholic. Esmeralda never liked Mrs. Dunlop; on the contrary, she both
disliked and distrusted her; but owing to her interesting herself in the
same charities, she inevitably saw a great deal of her.
During the winter an alarming illness attacked my brother Francis. He
was my brother by birth, though I had seldom even seen him, and
scarcely ever thought about him. Looking back now, in the distance of
years, I wonder that my Mother and I never spoke of him; but he was
absolutely without any part in our lives, and we never did, till this
winter, when my sister mentioned his refusing to go to live with her in
Grosvenor Street, which she had hoped that he would do when she took the
house, and of his putting her to the unnecessary expense of paying for
lodgings for him. Here he caught cold, and one day, unexpectedly, Dr.
Squires came to tell Esmeralda that he considered him at the point of
death. She flew to his bedside and remained with him all through the
night. As she afterwards described it, she "could not let him die, and
she breathed her life into his: she was willing to offer her life for
his."
After this Esmeralda wrote to us (to Rome) that the condition of Francis
was quite hopeless, and that her next letter must contain the news of
his death. What was our surprise, therefore, when the next letter was
from Francis himself (who had never written to us before), not merely
saying that he was better, but that he was going to be married
immediately to a person with whom he had long been acquainted. At the
time of this marriage, Esmeralda went away into Sussex, and afterwards,
when she returned to London, she never consented to see Mrs. Francis
Hare.
My sister's cheque-books of the last year of her life show that during
that year alone her brother Francis had received \xA3900 from her, though
her income at the most did not exceed \xA3800. He had also persuaded
Esmeralda to take a house called "Park Lodge" in Paddington, with an
acre and a half of garden. The rent was certainly low, and the
arrangement, as intended by Esmeralda, was that her brother should live
in two or three rooms of the house, and that the rest should be let
furnished. But tenants never came, and Francis lived in the whole of the
house, after furnishing it expensively and sending in the bills to his
sister, who paid them in her fear lest anxiety about money matters might
make him ill again.
At the end of March Esmeralda received a letter from Madame de Trafford,
of which she spoke to Mrs. Dunlop. She said, "Madame de Trafford has
written to me in dreadful distress. She says she sees me in a very dark,
narrow place, where no one can ever get at me, and where no one will
ever be able to speak to me any more." Esmeralda laughed as she told
this, and said she supposed it referred to the prison to which Augustus
said she would have to go for her extravagance; but it was the grave of
which Madame de Trafford spoke.
In March, Esmeralda talked to many of her friends of her plans for the
future. She said that in consequence of the expense of keeping up the
house, she should be obliged to part with Grosvenor Street, and that she
should go abroad--to Rome, and eventually to Jerusalem. She did more
than merely form the plan of this journey. She had the dresses made
which she intended to wear in the East, and for three nights she sat up
arranging all her papers, and tying up the letters of her different
friends in separate parcels, so that they might more easily be returned
to them. To Mary Laffam, her then maid, who assisted her in this, she
said, "Mary, I am going on a very, very long journey, from which I may
never return, and I wish to leave everything arranged behind me."
In the beginning of May Esmeralda went with her aunt to spend three
weeks in Sussex. After she returned to Grosvenor Street, she was very
ill with an attack like that from which she had suffered at Dijon
several years before. Having been very successfully treated then in
France, she persuaded her aunt to obtain the direction of a French
doctor. The remedy which this doctor administered greatly increased the
malady. This was on Tuesday 19th.
On Thursday 21st my sister was so much weakened and felt so ill, that
she dismissed the French doctor, and sent again for her old doctor,
Squires, who came at once. He was much shocked at the change in her, and
thought that she had been terribly mistreated, but he was so far from
being alarmed, that he saw no reason why her house should not be let, as
arranged, on the following Tuesday, to Mademoiselle Nilsson, the Swedish
songstress, and said that the change would do her good.
About this time, by Esmeralda's request, my aunt wrote to tell Madame de
Trafford of the illness, but she did not then express any alarm. On
Saturday the good and faithful Mrs. Thorpe[378] saw Esmeralda, and was
much concerned at the change in her. She remained with her for some
time, and bathed her face with eau-de-Cologne. Esmeralda then took both
Mrs. Thorpe's hands in hers, and said no one could do for her as she
did. Mrs. Thorpe was so much alarmed at Esmeralda's manner, which seemed
like a leave-taking, that she went down to our Aunt Eleanor and tried
to alarm her; but she said that as long as the house could be let on
Tuesday to Mademoiselle Nilsson, the doctor must be perfectly satisfied,
and there could not possibly be anything to apprehend.
Sunday passed without any change except that, both then and on Saturday,
whenever her brother Francis was mentioned, Esmeralda became violently
agitated, screamed, and said that he was on no account to be admitted.
Father Galway was away, but on Monday Esmeralda sent for Father Eccles,
and from him she received the Last Sacraments. When I asked my aunt
afterwards if this did not alarm her, she said, "No, it did not, because
Esmeralda was so nervous and so dreadfully afraid of dying without the
Last Sacraments, that whenever she felt ill she always received them,
and the doctor still assured her that all was going on well."
That night (Monday, May 25), a nun of the Misericorde sat up in the
room. Aunt Eleanor went to bed as usual. At half-past four in the
morning she was called. The most mysterious black sickness had come on,
and could not be arrested. Dr. Squires, summoned in haste, says that he
arrived exactly as a clock near Grosvenor Square struck five. He saw at
once that the case was quite hopeless, still for three hours he
struggled to arrest the malady. At the end of that time, Esmeralda
suddenly said, "Dr. Squires, this is very terrible, isn't it?"--"Yes,"
he replied, throwing as much meaning as possible into his voice, "it is
indeed _most_ terrible." Upon this Esmeralda started up in the bed and
said, "You cannot possibly mean that you think I shall not recover?" Dr.
Squires said, "Yes, I am afraid it is my duty to tell you that you
cannot possibly recover now."--"But I do not feel ill," exclaimed
Esmeralda; "this sickness is very terrible, but still I do not feel
ill."--"I cannot help that," answered Dr. Squires, "but I fear it is my
duty to tell you that it is quite impossible you can live."
"It was then," said her doctor, "that her expression lost all its
anxiety. Death had no terror for her. She was almost radiant." The
serenity of her countenance remained unchanged, and to her last moment
she was as one preparing for a festival.
After a pause she said, "Tell me how long you think it possible that I
should live." Dr. Squires said, "You might live two days, but it is
quite impossible that you should live longer than that." She at once
asked for writing materials, and with a firm hand, as if she were well,
she wrote a telegraphic despatch bidding Madame de Trafford to come to
her at once. (The office was then closed, and when it was opened, it was
already too late to send the despatch.) Then Dr. Squires kindly and
wisely said, "I fear you have little time to lose, and if you wish to
make any changes in your will, you had better make them at once." My
sister answered, "Oh, I must alter everything. I never thought it
possible that I should die before my aunt, and I wish to leave things so
that my death will make no difference to her." The doctor, seeing a
great change coming on, was afraid to leave the room even to get a sheet
of paper, and he wrote upon a scrap of paper which he picked up from the
floor. My sister then made a very simple will, leaving everything to her
(Protestant) aunt, Miss Paul, except her interest in Park Lodge and a
chest of plate which she left to Francis, and her claims to a portrait
by Sir Joshua Reynolds,[379] which she left to me.
When Esmeralda had dictated the page containing these bequests, her
doctor wisely made her sign it in the presence of her servants before
she proceeded to dictate anything else. Thus the first portion of her
will is valid, but before she had come to the end of another page
containing small legacies to the Servites, to the Nuns of the Precious
Blood, &c., the power of signature had failed, and it was therefore
valueless.
Esmeralda then said almost playfully, "You had better send for the Nuns
of the Precious Blood, for they would never forgive me, even after all
is over, if they had not been sent for," and a maid went off in a cab to
fetch the Abbess Pierina. It was then that a priest arrived from Farm
Street to administer extreme unction, and Dr. Squires, seeing that he
could do nothing more, and that my sister was already past observing who
was present, went away.
The Abbess Pierina says that she arrived at the house about nine
o'clock, and saw at once that Esmeralda was dying. A priest was praying
by the bedside. She remained standing at the foot of the bed for about
ten minutes, then she went up to Esmeralda, who said, "I am dying." A
few minutes afterwards, in a loud and clear voice, she called "Auntie,"
and instantly fell back and died.
Thus the day which she looked for as her Sabbath and high day came to
her, and she passed to the rest beyond the storm--beyond the bounds of
doubt or controversy--to the company of those she justly honoured, and
of some whom she never learnt to honour here, in the many mansions of an
all-reconciling world. Let us not look for the living amongst the dead.
She exchanged her imperfect communion with God here for its full
fruition in the peace of that Sabbath which knows no evening.
* * * * *
During the whole of the last terrible hours our poor deaf aunt was in
the room, but she had sunk down in her terror and anguish upon the chair
which was nearest the door as she came in, and thence she never moved.
She never had strength or courage to approach the bed: she saw all that
passed, but she heard nothing.
Soon after all was over, the Abbess Pierina came down to my aunt, and
revealed--what none of her family had known before--that Esmeralda had
long been an Oblate Sister of the Precious Blood, and she begged leave
to dress her in the habit of the Order. All the furniture of the room
was cleared away or draped with white, and the bed was left standing
alone, surrounded night and day by tall candles burning in silver
sconces, with a statue of "Our Lady of Sorrows" at the head, and at the
foot the great crucifix from the oratory. Esmeralda was clothed in a
long black dress, which she had ordered for her journey to Jerusalem,
but had never worn, and round her waist was the scarlet girdle of the
Precious Blood. On her head was a white crape cap and a white wreath, as
for a novice nun.
As soon as Aunt Eleanor was able to think, she sent for her sister, Mrs.
Fitz-Gerald, who arrived at 11 A.M. She, as a strong Protestant, said
that she could never describe how terrible the next three days were to
her. All day long a string of carriages was ceaselessly pouring up the
street, and a concourse of people through the house, nuns of the
Precious Blood being posted on the different landings to show them where
to go. Each post brought letters from all kinds of people they had never
heard of before, asking to have _anything_ as a memorial, even a piece
of old newspaper which Esmeralda had touched.
On the day after we arrived at Holmhurst from Germany (Sunday 31st), I
went up to try to comfort my broken-hearted aunt at the house in
Grosvenor Street. The rooms in which I had last seen Esmeralda looked
all the more intensely desolate from being just finished, new carpets
and chintzes everywhere, only the last pane of the fernery in the back
drawing-room not yet put in. My aunt came in trembling all over. It was
long before she was able to speak: then she wrung her hands. "Oh, it was
so sudden--it was so sudden," she said; and then she became more
collected, and talked for hours of all that had passed. Those present
said that for the whole of the first day she sat in a stupor, with her
eyes fixed on vacancy, and never spoke or moved, or seemed to notice any
one who went in or out.
The coffin was already closed, and stood in the middle of the room
covered with a white pall, and surrounded by burning candles and vases
of flowers. Upon the coffin lay the crucifix which both Italima and
Esmeralda held in their hands when they were dying. Near it was the bed,
with the mark where the head had lain still unremoved from the pillow.
On Monday afternoon there was a long wearying family discussion as to
whether the remains were to be taken to Kensal Green in the evening, to
remain throughout the night in the cemetery chapel. Francis insisted
that it should be so. Our Aunt Fitz-Gerald declared that if it was done
she would not go to the funeral, as she would not follow _nothing_. I
agreed with Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, and the nuns of the Precious Blood were
most vehement that the body should not be removed. Eventually, however,
Francis carried his point. At 9 P.M. we all went up for the last time to
the room, still draped like a chapel, where the coffin lay, covered with
fresh flowers, with the great crucifix still standing at the foot
between the lighted candles. Then what remained of Esmeralda was taken
away.
The next day (June 2) was the funeral. At the cemetery the relations who
came from the house were joined by Mr. Monteith, Lady Lothian, Lady
Londonderry, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, the Abbess Pierina, and all the
nuns of the Precious Blood, with several nuns of the Misericorde.
[Illustration: ESMERALDA'S GRAVE.]
The chapel was full of people, but it is very small, and a very small
part of it is used for seats. The larger part was spread with a rich
crimson carpet, in the midst of which rose a kind of catafalque, upon
which lay the coffin, covered with a long purple velvet pall,
embroidered in golden letters--"May all the holy saints and angels
receive her soul." Round this were six candles burning in very tall
brass candlesticks. After the priest had gone round with the holy water
and incense, a door at the east end of the church was thrown open and
the pall removed, when the light poured in upon the coffin and its
silver ornaments and the large silver cross lying upon it. Then we all
passed out round the shrubberies to the grave, where the vault was
opened just behind the beautiful seated statue of "Our Lady of Sorrows"
under the cross, which Esmeralda had herself erected. Upon the coffin
was engraved--
ANNE FRANCES MARIA LOUISA HARE,
E. de M.
(Enfant de Marie),
_Oblate of the Order of the Precious Blood._
Born October 9, 1832.
Died May 26, 1868.
As the priest said all the leading sentences, the nuns, with clear
voice, sang the responses. The whole service occupied nearly an hour and
a half. We drove home in total silence: Aunt Fitz-Gerald led Auntie into
the desolate house.
Thus was my sweet sister Esmeralda taken from us--being removed from the
evil to come.
"Souls of the Holy Dead!
Though fancy whispers thus to musing hearts,
We would not call ye back, whence ye are fled,
To take your parts
In the old battle-strife; or break
With our heartache--
The rest which ye have won and in Christ's presence take."
XIV
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CONSPIRACY
"Glory to Thee in Thine Omnipotence,
Who dost dispense,
As seemeth best to Thine unerring will
The lot of victory still;
Edging sometimes with might the sword unjust,
And bowing to the dust
The rightful cause, that so much seeming ill
May Thine appointed purposes fulfil."
--SOUTHEY.
"Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden."
--_Swiss Inscription._
"If you your lips would keep from slips,
Of five things have a care:
To whom you speak, of whom you speak,
And how, and when, and where."
--_Old Distich._
At eleven o'clock on the morning of my sister's death, our aunt, Mrs.
Fitz-Gerald, arrived in Grosvenor Street. She wrote to me afterwards:--
"When Eleanor sent for me, after I recovered the shock, I went
immediately to Grosvenor Street, and the first thing I asked before
going up to Eleanor was, 'Is Mr. Hare (Francis) upstairs?' The
maid made answer, 'Oh, no; Miss Hare would not hear of seeing him,
and forbade us to let him enter the house, declaring that he had
her death to answer for.' I could not believe this statement, and I
called another servant into the dining-room, who repeated exactly
the same thing, saying also that things had taken place in that
house which were fearful, and that they were afraid of their lives.
_I_ was the innocent cause of Francis coming to sleep in the house,
as I did not think it was right that Eleanor should be left alone
with the dead body of your sister. I did not know till the
following morning, when the servants told me, that people had been
walking about the house the whole night, and that the Rev. Mother
(Pierina) had forbid them to leave the kitchen, hear what they
would."[380]
Upon this, and all succeeding nights until the funeral, the three maids
persistently refused at night to go upstairs, saying that they had seen
a spirit there, and they remained all through the night huddled up
together in a corner of the kitchen. By day even they manifested the
greatest terror, especially Mary Laffam, the lady's-maid, who started
and trembled whenever she was spoken to, and who entreated to be allowed
to go out when she heard the lawyer was coming, "for fear he should ask
her any questions." If they had the opportunity, they always made
mysterious hints of poison, and of Esmeralda's death having been caused
by unnatural means. To the Rev. Mother Pierina, Mary Laffam said at one
time that Miss Hare had told her she knew that she should die of
poison.[381] All the servants constantly repeated to the Rev. Mother
their conviction that Miss Hare was poisoned. They talked a great deal,
especially Mary Laffam, who horrified the Abbess by saying that Miss
Hare had herself said in her last moments, "I am poisoned and I die of
poison."[382] In consequence of all that the servants had said to Mrs.
Fitz-Gerald of their certain conviction that my sister had been
poisoned, she was most anxious, before my return to England, for a
post-mortem examination, but Francis violently opposed this, and he
carried his point.
The opinion that my sister's death was caused by poison was shared by
many of those who came to see her after death. They could not but
recollect that though Dr. Squires _then_ said he believed her to have
died of ulceration of the intestines, up to the day before the death he
had said that she might be removed, that the house might be let, and had
suggested no such impression. For two days _after_ death, black blood
continued to stream from the mouth, as is the case from slow corrosive
poison, and three eminent physicians, on hearing of the previous
symptoms and the after appearances (Dr. Hale, Sir Alexander Taylor, and
Dr. Winslow), gave it as their opinion that those were the usual
symptoms and appearances induced by corrosive poison. Mrs. Baker
(Marguerite Pole) wrote to me on June 24:--"The idea of poison is the
one I formed the first moment I saw the body, as for some years I was
practically versed in medicine, and I was at a loss how to account for
various appearances in a natural way--_i.e._, from illness."
When I arrived at the house on May 31 (the death having taken place on
the 26th), I found all its inmates agitated by the various reports which
were going about. Mrs. Fitz-Gerald was full of a dreadful message which
she believed to have been given by my dying sister to the Abbess
Pierina. "When I am dead, go to my brother Francis, and tell him that he
was the cause of my death, and that he will have to answer for it." This
message was also repeated to me by Mrs. Baker and by Mrs. William Hare,
and was always spoken of as having been given to the Rev. Mother
herself. On each occasion on which I heard it spoken of, I said that the
message had much better not be given to Francis, as he was in such a
weak state of health that it might do him serious injury; and that
probably when my sister gave it, she was in a state of semi-delirium,
brought on by her extreme weakness. I entirely declined to question the
servants, consequently I heard nothing directly from them, only their
words as repeated by Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, and the many persons to whom the
Mother Pierina had related them.
I never had any interview with or heard anything directly from Pierina
herself. The reason of this was that, three days after the death, she
had a violent scene with Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, who had intercepted her in
the act of carrying off two large heavy silver candelabra from the
oratory, and some valuable point-lace, which she had ripped off the
altar-cloth and concealed in her pocket. She also took away a quantity
of small articles (rosaries, crucifixes, &c.), which were afterwards
returned with the more valuable articles by order of Monsignor Paterson,
who wrote to express his extreme grief and annoyance at her conduct. My
own impression still is that Pierina was a simple and devout character,
who would not willingly do anything she believed to be wrong, but that
she was really convinced (as she said) that it was a duty to take away
these things, which had been dedicated to the service of a Roman
Catholic altar, in order to prevent their being applied to secular uses
in a Protestant household. After this, however, which occurred before my
arrival, the Abbess Pierina was never allowed to return to the house, so
that I never saw her.
Immediately after the death, all the small articles in my sister's room
had been hastily removed, in order that the room might be draped with
white, and to give it as much as possible the appearance of a chapel. On
the day before the funeral, I saw Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, who was in the inner
drawing-room, after opening a davenport and looking into a
blotting-book, suddenly burst into tears. "Oh," she said, "the whole
mystery is revealed now; it is all quite plain; you may see what it was
that killed your sister," and she held up a letter from Francis, written
on the Friday evening before her death--a cruel letter, telling her in
the harshest terms that she was totally ruined, that she might sell her
house and her plate, and all else that she possessed, for she had
nothing whatever left to live upon; but that, as he did not wish her to
starve, she and her aunt might come to live _with his wife_. This letter
Esmeralda must have received on Saturday morning, soon after writing the
affectionate note to Francis, which was read afterwards at Guildford in
proof of the happy terms on which she was living with him. But it was
her peculiar habit, when she was ill or suffering, to put letters aside,
whoever they might be from, and not to read them till she felt better;
it is therefore quite possible that she did not open this letter till
Monday, when it gave the fatal blow. This was my impression at the time,
and then and always afterwards, when others spoke of poison, I said,
"There were strange signs of poison, and many people think she was
poisoned, but it is my firm conviction that she did not die of poison,
but of _a broken heart_--_a heart broken by her brother Francis_."
On the 6th of June I spent the whole morning in the office of my
sister's solicitor examining accounts and papers, and the afternoon at
Coutts' Bank to find out what was left. The result of the investigation
was to show that in October my sister possessed \xA312,000 clear, besides
a great quantity of plate, diamonds, and other valuables, and the house
in Grosvenor Street paid for and clear from debt, as well as the
property in the Palazzo Parisani at Rome. At the time of her death she
possessed, interest and principal combined, \xA3216, and debts to a
considerable amount, while the diamonds and plate seemed to have
disappeared without leaving a trace behind them.
Several days afterwards, while I was taking an envelope out of the
envelope-box on the table, I saw a bit of bluish paper sticking up
between the partitions of the box. I absently poked it up with a
paper-knife, and then found that it was a pawn-ticket from Attenborough
for \xA3120 upon diamonds. Turning out a quantity of old _Times_ from a
cupboard, I afterwards found there a pawn-ticket for \xA3100 upon plate;
later I found a third ticket for \xA382 upon some diamond earrings.
Attenborough told me that Francis had brought his sister there at
different times and placed the plate and diamonds in pawn.
Whilst I was still in Grosvenor Street, many of my sister's Catholic
friends came to see me. Mrs. Montgomery came three times. I had never
liked her, and had greatly deprecated my sister's intimacy with her, but
in the presence of what I believed to be a common grief I could not
refuse to receive her, and she was apparently most sympathising and even
affectionate. The second time she came she sat by me on the sofa and
spoke of Esmeralda's death as making a blank in her whole future life.
She said what a comfort and happiness it would be to her if she were
ever able to be of use to me in any way,--in any way to supply the place
of her I had lost.... Yet ten days after![383]
Mrs. Dunlop came several times. On June 8 she would not get out of her
carriage, but begged me to come down to her and speak to her in it. She
then said, "Now I know you would not speak of these things to any one
else, but you _know_ you may trust me: now do tell me, was it not most
extraordinary that Francis should, in spite of her forbidding him, force
his way into his sister's house just upon the one day on which he knew
his aunt was away? Now of course you would not speak of this to every
one, but Esmeralda loved me as a sister. You _know_ you may trust me."
She went on very long in the same strain. At last I was so shocked that
I got up and said, "Mrs. Dunlop, I see what you _wish_ me to say. You
_wish_ me to say that I think my brother poisoned my sister. Recollect
that _I do not think so_. I distinctly think that he was the cause of
her death, but I think that she died of a broken heart," and so saying I
left her.
In the face of this Mrs. Dunlop afterwards asserted that I had told her
that Francis poisoned my sister. In fact, I shall always believe that
the whole of the poisoning story, as it appeared at the trial which
ensued, originated, sprung up, and fructified with Mrs. Dunlop, the most
unscrupulous of the conspirators concerned. "Where the devil cannot go,
he sends an old woman," is an old German proverb.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Mary Stanley]
On June 9 I received a letter from my adopted mother's niece, Mary
Stanley, saying that some friends had come up to her at a party, and
spoken of the cruel way in which Mr. (Francis) Hare had been treated by
his Protestant relations. When she asked an explanation, they said that
Mrs. Montgomery had asserted (it was at Lord Denbigh's) that the doors
of the house in Grosvenor Street were forcibly closed upon Mr. and Mrs.
Francis Hare during Miss Hare's illness, and that she was influenced in
her last moments to cancel a will in which she had left all her money to
her brother Francis; also that neither Francis nor his wife were
then allowed to enter the house or to see their aunt, and that they had
nothing to live upon, owing to their having been disinherited by Miss
Hare, who supported them during her life. Mary Stanley, a Roman
Catholic, shocked at such falsehoods promulgated by a member of her own
creed, and seeing the discredit it was likely to bring upon her party,
strongly urged my writing to Mrs. Montgomery, who had professed such
intimate friendship for me, stating that I had heard such a report was
circulated, though not by whom, and after putting her in possession of
the facts, as my sister's dearest friend, urging her to contradict it.
Having an inward distrust of Mrs. Montgomery, and a shrinking from any
communication with her, I did not then write as Mary Stanley wished.
On June 11 Mary Stanley came down to Holmhurst, and again vehemently
urged my writing to Mrs. Montgomery in defence of Miss Paul. On June 12
I yielded to her repeated solicitations, and wrote--Mary Stanley and my
adopted mother looking over the letter and approving it sentence by
sentence. When it was finished, Mary Stanley said, "That letter is
perfect: you must not alter a word: it could not be better." The letter
was as follows:--
"_Holmhurst, June 13, 1868._--Dear Mrs. Montgomery, I have heard on
good authority that a report has been circulated in London to the
effect that the doors were perfectly closed upon Mr. and Mrs.
Francis Hare during Miss Hare's illness, and that she was
influenced in her last moments to cancel a will in which she had
left all her money to her brother Francis; also that neither
Francis nor his wife are now allowed to enter the house or to see
their aunt, and that they have nothing to live upon, owing to their
being disinherited by Miss Hare, who supported them during her
life.
"As it is a pity that this impression should be allowed to gain
ground, and as you were latterly the most intimate friend my
dearest sister possessed, I venture to put you in possession of the
facts.
1. "In her previous will my sister had not even mentioned Francis'
name. She had left \xA34000 to me, a very large legacy to Lady G.
Fullerton, legacies to other friends, and the remainder to her
aunt. Francis was not even alluded to.
2. "Francis was not allowed to see my sister during the last days
of her life at her own especial request: the very mention of his
name made her scream with horror. In her last moments she left a
solemn message with the Superior of the Precious Blood, to be given
him after her death. This message was of so terrible a kind that,
owing to Francis' critical state of health and the uncertainty of
his life, he has hitherto been spared the pain of hearing it.
3. "Francis and his wife are _not_ allowed, by the lawyer's
direction, to see my aunt until the whole terrible story of my
sister's sudden death is cleared up. In the month of November,
besides Grosvenor Street, bought and paid for, she possessed
\xA312,000 in money; when she died she was absolutely penniless,
except \xA3216, interest and principal combined, and she was
overwhelmed with debts. There is no trace of any part of her
fortune except of \xA32000 which was lost on the Stock Exchange
through brokers to whom Francis introduced her.
4. "My dear sister's accounts at Coutts' show only too clearly that
Francis had the greater part of her income. He will henceforward
receive _nothing_ from his aunt, who is totally ruined, and will
scarcely have enough left to buy daily bread, as \xA32400 of her own
little fortune is gone owing to signatures which Francis persuaded
her to give.
"I am sure you will forgive my troubling you thus far with our
family affairs, but I am certain that many, knowing your intimacy
with my sister, may ask you for information, and I wish you to be
in a position to give it. Believe me yours very truly,
"AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE."
In writing this letter, I had no idea of the significance which it might
be made possible to attribute to the sentence No. 3--"Until the whole
story of my sister's sudden death is cleared up." My own mind dwelt
entirely and fixedly upon the impression that my sister's terribly
sudden death was caused by the cruel shock of Francis' ungrateful letter
coming to her in her weak state. To have it cleared up would be in my
mind to have it clearly ascertained that she was poisoned, as most
people believed, because in that case it would be certain that Francis
might be held guiltless of her death, since--putting other reasons
aside--he had never once been allowed to enter the house during the last
days of the illness, and therefore _could_ have nothing to do with it.
The statements about the money were perfectly correct; my sister's
solicitor vouched for them. I believed all the other statements to be
correct also, for I wrote them, not upon what I had heard from one
person, but from what I had heard repeatedly and from many. I did not
know till long afterwards that "the message" was not given _by my
sister_ herself to the Superior of the Precious Blood, but that the
Superior had received it through the servants. It will be borne in mind
that I had never myself seen the Superior, except in the group of
mourners round the grave.
It was not till after I had written the letter to Mrs. Montgomery that I
was able to read all the details of my sister's former will, annulled
upon her death-bed. All that I had said and more than that was true.
The will was of great length and detail, but Francis was not even
alluded to. It began by leaving \xA34000, the family diamonds, miniatures,
and plate, with various other valuables, to me, but it also left me
residuary legatee. There was a legacy of \xA34000 to Lady Georgiana
Fullerton, or, if she were dead, to her husband, Alexander Fullerton;
\xA3200 to Lady Lothian; \xA3200 to Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Galton; \xA3200 to
Father Galway--in all about \xA35000 to Roman Catholics. Besides these,
there were considerable legacies to Victoire, to Flora Limosin and her
daughter, to Cl\xE9mence Boissy,[384] and \xA3200 annuity to her aunt. There
were small legacies to various nuns--Serafina della Croce, Pierina of
the Precious Blood, the "Saint of St. Peter's," &c.
From the virulence and avarice afterwards displayed by the Roman
Catholics, and by the fact of their bringing an action to get the exact
sum, \xA35000, we could only conclude that they had discovered that my
sister had originally left them that sum and that they determined to
extort it from the Protestant part of the family, in spite of the fact
that she had really left _nothing_, so that even the last will was
valueless, and that, if it had not been so, I should have been the chief
sufferer, having been residuary legatee under the old will.[385]
In less than a week from the time of my sending the letter to Mrs.
Montgomery, I received one from a lawyer, who had long been mixed up
with Francis' affairs, stating that unless I at once withdrew and
apologised for every part of that letter, an action for libel would be
brought against me. Knowing that Francis was utterly insolvent, my
family and I treated this as an idle threat, and declining any
correspondence with the person in question, referred him to my
solicitor. Mrs. Montgomery and Mrs. Dunlop had persuaded Francis to
these proceedings, and Mrs. Montgomery had at once begun to stir up
strife by taking the letter to him.
On hearing what had happened, Mary Stanley wrote:--
"_July_ 16, 9 A.M.--You may imagine that my indignation is
boundless. I can scarcely believe it. There must be some mistake,
because there is no _sense_ in it. _You_ were not in England when
the will was made: it is Miss Paul, if any one, from whom they
ought to extort money, if they wish it.
"2 P.M.--All morning I have been out in your service. I went first
to Farm Street, to see if I could see any of the priests who knew
anything of the matter, but only two were in, who knew nothing.
Then I went to Lady G. Fullerton, she was out; to Lady Lothian, she
was out; then to find out Monsignor Paterson's direction, and
happily I found _it_ and _him_. I wish you could have heard all he
said. The _moment_ I mentioned the name principally concerned he
stopped me--'You need say no more; I can believe _anything_ of that
person.' _Nothing_ could be stronger than his words about her....
He was just as indignant at the whole transaction as you and I are.
He said Francis, finding all else fail, was now trading on his
faith. The Abbess Pierina had told him _all_ that your sister said
on her deathbed, and Monsignor Paterson desired me to say that you
had only to command his services, and he would keep _her_ to her
words."
Meanwhile the action for libel was declared, an action which openly
avowed its object, to extort \xA35000. Meanwhile, also, it was found that
Mr. and Mrs. Monteith of Carstairs had joined the conspirators, and were
hand in hand with Mrs. Dunlop and Mrs. Montgomery. Soon after I reached
home, Mrs. Monteith had written to me, expressing her great devotion to
my sister's memory, and begging me to send all the sad details connected
with her death. I answered to the effect that those who were present
could better tell the story of my sister's death. Had I written to Mrs.
Monteith, doubtless my letter to _her_ would have been used in the
action, instead of that which I wrote, when I fell into the more skilful
trap laid by Mrs. Montgomery. The Monteiths before this were intimate
friends of mine. I had spent a week at Carstairs in the preceding
October. With Francis they were previously unacquainted. Therefore it
could have been only the interests of their Church which incited them to
the course they pursued.
On the 18th of July Mary Stanley wrote:--
"At last I have got into the enemy's camp. I found Mrs. Dunlop this
morning, and for an hour heard her version, and was aghast at the
violence with which she spoke. I am very glad I have seen her,
because it gives me a fresh insight into the state of things. She
said Francis himself was absolutely passive, and allowed his
friends to act for him; that he was now living on charity, and of
course his friends must defray the cost of prosecution.
"She also said that Mrs. Montgomery's letter was used for the
prosecution only because it happened to be more convenient than
Mrs. Dunlop's evidence. They were _resolved to prosecute you_.
"I was so afraid of doing mischief, I scarcely knew what to say,
but the general point I urged was that I had heard from a Catholic
priest to whom I had spoken on the subject that the accusation of
poison originated with the Abbess, _who had told my informant_ that
Miss Hare had said so _to her_!--and that my informant was ready to
hold her to these words."
I do not think that any words could describe my misery at this
time--"battered and fretted into great sorrow of heart," as Carlyle
would say. It was naturally of far more consequence to _me_ than to any
one else to screen the miserable Francis, whom I _alone_ had cared for
and helped during the long years of his prison life, and who was now--as
a last resource--consenting to extort what was equivalent to hush-money
from me--either hush-money to save the family from the exposure of his
own past life, or a provision for life from the Roman Catholic
conspirators, if they were successful in the scheme to which he lent
himself. Yet I possessed nothing, and even if I could have brought
myself to let the Roman Catholics so far triumph, I could not have
allowed my adopted mother to impoverish herself by the purchase of their
silence. And all the time there was the unutterable weariness of
contradicting all the false reports, of making over and over again the
statement that if my sister were poisoned, _then_ Francis, who had never
seen her during her illness, was innocent of her death, but that if she
were _not_ poisoned, then the moral cause of it must be attributed to
him; and mingled through the whole were silent bursts of indignant
misery over the cruel sufferings which Esmeralda had undergone, and the
calumnious falsehood of her friends, with anguish over her so recent
death.
* * * * *
When it became quite evident that the only real object of the conspiracy
was to extort money from me, because I was supposed to be, as Mrs.
Dunlop expressed it, "the richest of the family," I did all I could to
save family scandal by offering to withdraw the letter to Mrs.
Montgomery altogether. My solicitor made every possible offer on my
part, but was always answered that they must have "pecuniary
compensation,"--in fact, it was always made a question of buying back
the letter to Mrs. Montgomery. The conspirators, as Mrs. Dunlop said,
were "resolved to prosecute," and wished to use the letter to Mrs.
Montgomery because "it was more convenient to use than anything else."
They would listen to nothing, consider nothing. Is it not
Whyte-Melville who says, "I never knew but one woman who could
understand reason, and she wouldn't listen to it?"
When we knew that the trial was inevitable, we did what we could to
prepare for it. I was strongly advised to put the case entirely into the
hands of my sister's solicitor, who was already acquainted with all the
dark page of Francis' past life, rather than to give it to my adopted
mother's respectable, old-fashioned solicitor, who was totally
unacquainted with it. I afterwards regretted this course, as the one
remark made by the latter, "that the Abbess should _now_ be allowed to
deliver her message," showed greater perspicuity than anything which was
done by the former. He, on the contrary, insisted that there should be
no communication at all with Pierina till just before the trial, and
begged that I would not see her at all; he also allowed himself entirely
to lose sight of the servants, in spite of my repeated entreaties. His
plan seems to have consisted in ferreting out all the proofs of what
Francis' conduct had been for many years past, and of the way in which
he preyed upon his sister during the last year of his life, as shown by
his own letters and my sister's accounts, which were in our hands.
In the "declaration of the action for libel" it was set forth as the
necessary "injury" that it had caused Francis to be avoided by all his
friends and acquaintances. Upon this we sued for particulars. Francis
returned a list of the persons whom he declared to have been led to
avoid him--"Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. Dunlop, Mr. Monteith, Mrs. Monteith,
Marchioness of Lothian, and Miss Bowles," a list which included the very
persons (several of whom he had not known before) who were at that time
in constant communication with him, and were bringing on and subscribing
for the action, which was nominally on his behalf. On Tuesday, July 28,
the Roman Catholic lawyer asked permission to fix the day for the trial.
This courtesy was not refused. He fixed the day instantly and summoned
his witnesses, but he did not let us know till Saturday, August 1, that
the trial was to be on Monday, August 3, when, owing to the want of a
London post on Sunday, it was most difficult, almost impossible, to
summon the witnesses on our side.
On Friday, July 31, my acting solicitor went to Monsignor Paterson and
took down his deposition as to Pierina's account to him of the
death-bed. Monsignor Paterson then deposed that "the message" had been
given by my sister in the form already described, and that my sister had
also said she was "poisoned, and knew that she died of poison." Upon
receiving this evidence, my solicitor naturally felt sure of his cause.
He then went to see the Abbess Pierina in Mecklenburgh Square, when, to
his utter amazement, she totally denied ever having received the
message; but (being terrified by threats as to the "legal consequences"
which might accrue to her) she did not _then_ say that the message had
been given to the servants and by them delivered to her to give to
Francis.
On Saturday afternoon, August 1, Monsignor Paterson again saw Pierina,
and, to _his_ amazement, was informed that the message which he had so
positively declared to have been given to the Abbess was not what Miss
Hare said to her, but what Miss Hare had said to the maids, who had told
her. Monsignor Paterson wrote this immediately to my solicitor, who
(owing to the want of London post on Sunday) only received it in court.
On Saturday, August 1, the announcement came that the trial would take
place at Guildford on Monday the 3rd. On Monday morning Mary Stanley and
I drove early to the Waterloo station to go down to Guildford. There
were so many passengers for the trial that a special train was put on.
At the station I was close to Mr. Monteith, who had come from Scotland
to represent his wife, and young Gerard, who was to open the
prosecution, but there was no speech between us. Sir Alexander Taylor
went down with us, and at Guildford we were joined by many other
friends.
The heat of that day was awful, a broiling sun and not a breath of air.
We had a little room to meet in at the hotel. Almost immediately I was
hurried by my solicitor to the room where our senior counsel, the great
Hawkins, was breakfasting at the end of a long table. He complained of
the immense mass of evidence he had had to go through. He said--what I
knew--that such a trial must expose terrible family scandals--that it
would be a disgrace not to snatch at any chance of bringing it to a
close--that probably the judge would give it for private investigation
to some other Queen's counsellor--that, in fact, it was never likely to
_be_ a trial.
When I came down from Mr. Hawkins, Mary Stanley and I were taken to
court. There were so many cases to be tried, that ours could not come on
for some time. As Leycester Penrhyn was there, who was chairman of the
Quarter Sessions at Guildford, we were given places on the raised da\xEFs
behind the judge, and there we all sat waiting through many hours. In
that intensely hot weather, the court-house, with its high timber roof
and many open windows, was far cooler than the outer air, and we did not
suffer from the heat. But the judge, Baron Martin, whom I have heard
described as far more at home on a racecourse than on the judgment-seat,
was suffering violently from diarrh\x9Ca, was most impatient of the
cases he had to try, and at last snatched his wig from his head and
flung it down upon the ground beside him.
About three o'clock in the afternoon we were assured that it was quite
impossible our case could be brought on that day, as there were still so
many others to be tried, and we were advised to go out and rest. So Mary
Stanley and I went back to the hotel and remained there in a cool room.
Presently, to our horror, a messenger came running down from the court
and said, "Your case is on, and has been on twenty minutes already." We
rushed to the court and found the whole scene changed. All the
approaches to the court were crowded, literally choked up with witnesses
and Roman Catholic spectators. The court itself was packed to
overflowing. As I was hurried through the crowd, I recognised the
individuals forming the large group of figures immediately behind the
judge. There were Pierina of the Precious Blood and her attendant nuns
in their long black veils and scarlet girdles; there, in her quaint
peaked head-dress, was the nun of the Misericorde who had watched
through the illness; there was the burly figure of Mr. Monteith; the
sallow face of Mrs. Dunlop; her husband the Admiral; Mrs. Montgomery,
beautiful still; Lady Lothian in her deep mourning and looking very sad
at being subp\x9Cnaed, which was a terrible pain to her; Dr. Squires,
Mr. Seyer, and Miss Bowles.
When I was brought in, all seemed to be confusion, every one speaking at
once; Mr. Hawkins was in vain trying to put in a word, the judge was
declaiming that he would have an end of the trial, whilst Serjeant Parry
for the prosecution was in a loud voice reading the letter to Mrs.
Montgomery and giving his comments upon it.
The proceedings had commenced by the judge saying that he considered the
case one which it would be most undesirable to discuss in a public
court; and suggesting, indeed trying to enforce, that it should be left
to the arbitration of some friend of the family. Repeatedly Baron Martin
urged the expediency of a private investigation, saying that he "felt it
his duty to make the suggestion, and that he thought the learned counsel
(Parry) might act upon it." But the lawyers for the opposition refused
any compromise whatever, for they knew what the evidence of Pierina and
the servants was to be.
Serjeant Parry then opened his speech by describing between whom the
action was taking place. He drew a picture of the nominal prosecutor's
life in which he dwelt on "the brilliant examination at Sandhurst," but
touched lightly upon the time which he had passed in the gaieties both
of the Continent and of this country, after which he became "not
embarrassed, but reduced in circumstances." He then said that Esmeralda
had recently had a tolerable fortune, and was doubtless "supposed at her
death to be in possession of it, but she was not, for she entered into
speculations which had proved unsuccessful, so that she died a
comparatively poor woman." He then described the death-bed will. He
asserted that the only cause of the death was inflammation of the
bowels. He then said that he should proceed to read the letter,
"supplementing it with evidence to prove that the defendant was actuated
by the wickedest malice."
It was at this point that we arrived in court. When a little silence was
obtained, Parry began to read the letter, and having concluded the first
sentence, said, "When the defendant states that a report has been
circulated in London, &c., he states a deliberate falsehood. No such
report ever was heard by him, and I will not say it is the effect of his
imagination, it is simply an invention for the purpose of damaging the
character of his brother."[386]
Serjeant Parry then read the paragraph saying that in the first will
Francis was not even alluded to. "I have reason to believe that this
also is totally false," he said, and that with the will itself lying
open upon the table before him.
Parry passed over the third paragraph of the letter, without any
criticism except an absolute denial, but he read a note written by my
sister before she received Francis' fatal letter, in proof of the
affectionate terms on which they were living. That the "mention of his
name made her scream with horror," he declared to be utterly false, and
he asserted (for the first time stating facts) that the Abbess Pierina
would deny that any message was given by my sister to _her_. Finally,
Parry denied that there was any truth in the statement that Francis had
received money from his sister, beyond the sum of \xA3300.
As Serjeant Parry concluded his speech, Mrs. Montgomery was called into
the witness-box. While the preliminary questions were being put to her,
the confusion in court increased; a letter was brought in to Mr.
Harrison and handed on by him to Mr. Hawkins. It was the letter from
Monsignor Paterson, written on Saturday evening, which announced that
Pierina would deny and belie the deposition he had made. Immediately Mr.
Hawkins turned round to me and said, "Our cause has received a fatal
blow; the Abbess Pierina is about to deny all the evidence she has given
before--deny all that she has said to Monsignor Paterson, and will swear
that your sister's death-bed passed in total silence, save for the
single word 'Auntie,' and under these circumstances it is perfectly
useless to go on; our antagonists will get the money they long for; for
money is all they really care for."--"But," I said, "we can bring
endless persons and Monsignor Paterson's own deposition to prove what
the Abbess's former statements have been."--"No," said Mr. Hawkins, "you
cannot bring a witness to prove a witness."--"But," I said, "we can
prove every other part of the letter."--"That will do no good," said Mr.
Hawkins; "if you fail in proving a single point, you fail in proving the
whole, and the Roman Catholics will get the money; besides, you cannot
prove every other part of the letter, for where is the maid, Mary
Laffam?--she is not here." And in truth, Mary Laffam (whose evidence was
all-important, who was to swear to the screaming at the very mention of
Francis' name, who was constantly present during the illness) was
mysteriously missing, and no trace of her could then be found. Two days
afterwards she was traced, and it was discovered that she had been sent
abroad by the Roman Catholic confederates to be out of the way--sent by
them to the Augustinian Abbey of Charentan in France.
During the discussion which was now taking place, the utmost excitement
prevailed in court. Almost every one stood up. Mr. Hawkins urged--"Are
your adopted family prepared to pay what the Roman Catholics
claim?"--"Certainly not."--"Then you must submit to a verdict."--"I
leave it in your hands." So I wrote on a bit of paper, "Say no more than
this. I withdraw anything that may be legally taken as _libellous_ in
the letter to Mrs. Montgomery." Then the group opened, and Mr. Hawkins
again stood up and said that he was in a position to withdraw the
letter--if it contained any libellous statements to apologise for them.
At the same time "his client could not submit to be told that he had
either acted maliciously or invented anything: he was absent from
England at the time of his sister's death, and had throughout acted
entirely upon information he had received from those upon the spot."
"I will have an end of this, gentlemen," exclaimed the judge--"I give a
verdict for forty shillings."
"Make it ten guineas, my Lord," shouted the Roman Catholic lawyer, who
had previously interrupted Serjeant Parry by saying "We will have money,
we will have money." "There shall be an end of this, gentlemen," said
the judge; "I give a verdict for forty shillings," and he walked out of
court. And so this painful ordeal came to an end. It was not till
afterwards that I was aware that the verdict of forty shillings obliged
me to pay the costs of both sides--\xA3199 to my lawyer, and \xA3293 to the
Roman Catholic lawyer, which was afterwards reduced by a taxing-master
to \xA3207, 9s. 1d.
As soon as we left the court and returned to the hotel, our solicitor
came in, and, before all those of our family who were present, declared
how, by my desire, he had repeatedly offered to withdraw the letter to
Mrs. Montgomery, but how money was always demanded as its price, and how
money was proved throughout to be the only real object of those who
brought the action. In looking back, therefore, upon the whole of this
terrible affair, I only see three ways in which the trial could have
been avoided:--
1. If Miss Stanley had had the courage to go openly to Mrs.
Monteith and Lady Lothian, and say boldly that she, a Roman
Catholic, was the cause of my writing the letter to Mrs.
Montgomery; that as to the "report," I acted entirely and
exclusively on information which she gave; that at first I had
hesitated to do as she wished, but that she had continued to urge
it; and that she, a Catholic, had looked over the letter before it
was sent, and begged me not to alter a word of it.
2. If my solicitor had acted upon the one piece of advice given by
Mr. Phelps, and weeks before the trial had requested Pierina to
deliver her "message," we should then have known that the message
was not given to her except through the medium of the servants,
and therefore that by English law the wording of the letter was
indefensible.
3. If my solicitor had been less supine in summoning witnesses--if
he had at once subp\x9Cnaed Mary Laffam and the other maids on our
side, and had also summoned my Aunt Fitz-Gerald, who would have
been willing and glad to give her evidence, and whose very
appearance would have made Francis shrink from allowing the Roman
Catholic confederacy to continue the trial.
Mary Stanley and I went early to the Guildford station to wait for the
train which was to take us back to London. We had not been long on the
platform before all the Roman Catholic party emerged upon it. I went at
once to meet and _pass_ them, thinking it better at once to establish
the terms on which we were to remain through life. The Mother Pierina
alone lingered behind the rest, and, with streaming eyes and
outstretched hands, came towards me. "Oh, I thought it would have been
for peace," she said. I could not refuse to take her hand, when Mr.
Monteith, turning round, roughly seized her by the shoulder and led her
away, saying, "Reverend Mother, I must insist that you do not speak to
that ... _person_." Afterwards, when she was entering the railway
carriage after the others, Mrs. Dunlop seized Pierina and pushed her out
of the carriage, almost throwing her down upon the platform, and slammed
the carriage-door in her face. Admiral Dunlop immediately forced his
wife to get out of the carriage and apologise to the Reverend Mother. I
did not know till long afterwards the reason of Mrs. Dunlop's violence,
which was the persistence with which Pierina throughout that day had
dwelt upon the wicked unfairness of having the trial in the absence of
Mary Laffam, who was the witness really responsible for all that had
been said. On August 19 Mary Stanley wrote to me:--
"Yesterday I saw Sister Pierina. She said how extremely grieved she
had been for you. She said the lawyer on the Catholic side read the
evidence to all the party at Guildford, and that she then expressed
her dissent, saying that it was not in accordance with what Mary
Laffam had said to her and others, and that in justice to you, she,
Laffam, ought to be present. All through that day (which she said
was most dreadful to her) she asserted and reasserted this, and
that you were not fairly dealt with, and to me she complained sadly
of the un-christian spirit in which the affair had been carried on:
Mrs. Dunlop, she said, was _far_ the worst.
"Pierina denies _nothing_. She could only say, when asked about the
message, that none was given directly to _her_, and that to her
your sister had only said, 'Tell Francis that he has been the
cause of my death.' She was forbidden to say to whom the message
was given. So far from going over to the other side, she was at war
with them the whole day, and told me she did not believe any of
that party would ever come near her again; and I met Monsignor
Paterson on Sunday, who told me that Mrs. Dunlop had been to him to
complain bitterly of her."
Afterwards the feeling of the conspirators, especially of Mrs. Dunlop
and Mrs. Montgomery, became so violent against the Mother Pierina (on
account of her persisting in the injustice of the trial), that they not
only stopped their own subscriptions to her charities, but induced
others to do so, and eventually, by the interest of Mr. Monteith with
Monsignor Talbot and other Roman authorities, they brought about her
recall and persecuted her out of England altogether.
On August 7, Monsignor Paterson wrote a long letter to Mary Stanley,
explanatory of his conduct in the affair. It contained the following
remarkable passage:--
"A day or two after Miss Hare's death, which took me quite by
surprise, I went to her house, and there saw Sister Pierina, who
told me she had been summoned, and found Miss Hare actually dying;
that she seemed very suffering, and had some difficulty in
resigning herself to the will of God. I remember also hearing that
she expressed distress at some conduct on the part of Mr. Francis
Hare, and I thought that other expressions used implied a suspicion
on her part of some kind of _foul play_. Of course, had I taken
this _au s\xE9rieux_, it would have made a great impression, but I set
it down, after a moment's reflection, as a random (perhaps almost
delirious) expression, such as people who are very ill sometimes
use with very little meaning at all."
Strange certainly that an eminent Roman Catholic priest should call at
his friend's house, hear that she had died suddenly, and that she had
said on her death-bed that she died from "foul play," and yet be able so
easily to dismiss the subject from his mind!
Soon after the trial I wrote a long account of the whole proceedings to
Archbishop Manning. His answer was very kind but very evasive--"Miss
Hare's death was most sad ... the trial must have been most painful," he
"sympathised deeply," &c., but without giving a direct opinion of any
kind.
It was not till some months later that I became acquainted with a secret
which convinced me that, though my sister's end was probably hastened by
the conduct of her brother Francis, yet poison was the original cause of
her death. When we next visited Pisa, Madame Victoire told me how, when
my sister was a little girl of six years old at Paris, she and her own
little girl, Victoria Ackermann, were sitting on two little stools doing
their needlework side by side. Suddenly there was a terrible outcry.
Little Anna Hare had swallowed her thimble. The whole house was in
consternation, doctors were summoned in haste, the child was given
emetics, was held upside down, everything was done that could be done to
bring the thimble back, but it was too late. Then the doctors inquired
what the thimble was like, and on seeing the thimble of the little
Victoria, who had received one at the same time, were satisfied that it
was not dangerous, as the thimble being of walnut-wood, would naturally
dissolve with time, and they gave medicines to hasten its dissolution.
But, in the midst of the confusion, came Mrs. Large, the nurse, who
confessed with bitter tears that, owing to her folly, the thimble was
not what it was imagined to be. She had not liked to see the child of
the mistress with the same thimble as the child of the maid, and had
given little Anna one with a broad band which looked like gold but was
really copper. When the doctors heard this, the accident naturally
assumed a serious aspect, and they redoubled their efforts to bring back
the thimble. But everything failed; the wooden thimble dissolved with
time, but the copper band remained. Gradually, as Esmeralda grew
stronger, the accident was forgotten by all but her mother, Mrs. Large,
and Madame Victoire, who observed from time to time, in childish
illnesses of unusual violence, symptoms which they alone could
recognise, but which were such as would arise through slight injury from
poison of verdigris. As my sister grew, the copper ring grew also,
attenuated to the minutest thread, but encircling her body. From time to
time she was seriously affected by it, but her mother could not bear it
to be spoken of, and her repulsion for the subject communicated itself
to Esmeralda herself. She was warned to evade a damp climate or the use
of vegetables. When she was seized with her violent illness at Dijon,
the symptoms were all such as would be caused by poison of verdigris.
She then went to Pisa, where Madame Victoire was alarmed by what she
heard, and insisted upon the best advice being procured, and a medical
examination. The doctors who saw her, even then spoke to Madame Victoire
of her state as very serious, and requiring the most careful watching.
When Esmeralda went to Rome to the canonisation in the summer of 1867,
she returned by Pisa. The faithful Madame Victoire then sent for a
famous medical professor of the University of Bologna to meet her, and
insisted upon her being examined by him. He afterwards told Madame
Victoire privately that though, by intense care, Miss Hare might live
for many years, her life, in case of accident, hung on a thread, and
that it was highly improbable that she would live long, for that the
copper ring was beginning to tell very seriously upon her constitution,
and that when she died it would probably be suddenly of black sickness,
with every appearance of poison--poison of verdigris. And so it was.
* * * * *
One of the principal actors in the scene at Guildford was soon after
called to account before a higher tribunal than any that earth can
afford. On the 18th of November (1868) I received (at Rome), to my great
surprise, a letter from Madame Flora Limosin, of the H\xF4tel de Londres at
Pisa (Victoire's youngest daughter), saying that Francis was about to
arrive there from Hy\xE8res. He had been sent away from England some time
before, having then \xA380 in his possession. Whether this sum was obtained
by a Roman Catholic subscription, I have never been able to learn, but
from this time the Roman Catholic conspirators ceased to help him: he
had failed as the instrument for which they required him, and they now
flung him aside as useless. His folly at Guildford, in lending himself
to their designs, had also alienated the whole of his own family, even
to the most distant degrees of relationship. Not knowing where to turn,
he could only think of two persons who would receive him in his
destitution. His mother's faithful maid Madame Victoire and her daughter
Flora were still living at Pisa, and to them, when he had only \xA320 left,
he determined to make his way. On landing at Spezia, though even then in
a dying state, he would not enter a hotel, because he felt that if he
entered it he would never have strength to leave it again, and he sat
for hours upon his luggage on the platform of the station till the train
started. For the sake of their old companionship in childhood, and of
the kindness she had received from my father, Flora Limosin not only
received Francis, but also the person to whom he was married, and gave
them some quiet rooms opening upon the garden of the H\xF4tel de Londres,
where he was nursed by the faithful friends of his infancy.[387] He was
attended by Padre Pastacaldi, who administered to him the last offices
of the Church, and says that he died penitent, and sent me a message
hoping that I forgave him for all that had passed at Guildford. He died
on the 27th of November, utterly destitute, and dependent upon the
charity of his humble friends. He was buried by them in a corner of the
Campo Santo at Pisa, near their own family burial-place, where the
letters F. H. in the pavement alone mark the resting-place of Francis
George Hare, the idolised son of his mother.[388]
XV
LAST YEARS WITH THE MOTHER
"Nothing but the infinite pity is sufficient for the infinite
pathos of human life."--JOHN INGLESANT.
"Never here, for ever there,
Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death, and time shall disappear--
For ever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly,--
Forever--never!
Never--forever!"
--LONGFELLOW.
"Dic nobis ... Quid vidisti in via?
... Gloriam vidi Resurgentis."
--_From the Paschal Mass._
"C'est une \xE2me qui se racconte dans ces volumes: '_Autrefois,
aujourd'hui_.' Un ab\xEEme les s\xE9pare, le tombeau."--VICTOR HUGO.
The autumn of 1868 was indeed filled for me with utter misery and
"weariness of spirit." If it were not that my dear Mother had gone hand
and hand with me through the terrible time of the trial and the weeks
which followed, I could scarcely have survived them. To please her, I
went away for a time, at the end of August, to our old friend Mrs.
Francis Dawkins near Havant, and to Ripley Castle and Flaxton in
Yorkshire; but I had no spirits to enjoy, scarcely to endure these
visits.
It added to the complication of troubles that the poor Aunt Eleanor, for
whose sake alone I had brought all the trouble upon myself, now began to
take some perverted view,--_what_ I have never ascertained. She went to
live with her brother George Paul, who had lately returned from America,
and for ten years I never saw her to speak to.
[Illustration: JOIGNY.[389]]
I was most thankful when we left England for Italy on the 12th of
October, and seemed to breathe freely when we were once more in our old
travelling life, sleeping in the primitive inns at Joigny and Nuits, and
making excursions to Citeaux and Annecy. Carlyle says, "My father had
one virtue which I should try to imitate: _he never spoke of what was
disagreeable and past_," and my Mother was the same; she turned her back
at once upon the last months, which she put away for ever like a sealed
volume. We spent several weeks at Florence in the Via della Scala,
whence, the Mother being well, I went constantly to draw in the gallery
of sketches by Old Masters at the Uffizi. But, in the middle of
November, I felt already so ill, that I began to dread a possibility of
dying where my Mother would not have any one to look after her, and on
the 16th we hurried to Rome, where I had just time to look out lodgings
for my Mother, and establish her and Lea in the Piazza Mignanelli, when
I succumbed to a violent nervous fever. Most terrible are the sufferings
which I recollect at this time, the agonising pains by day, and the
nights of delirium, which were truly full of Coleridge's "pains of
sleep," in which I was frequently haunted by the sardonic smile of the
horrible Mrs. Dunlop, and otherwise by dreams which were, as Carlyle
would say, "a constant plunging and careering through chaos and cosmos."
In the second week of December I rallied slightly, and could sit with
Mother in the sun on the terrace of Villa Negroni. By the 14th I was
able to walk a little, and went, supported on each side, to the quiet
sunny path by the Tiber which then existed opposite Claude's villa. Just
in front of us a carter was walking by the side of his cart, heavily
laden with stones. Suddenly the wheel of the cart went too near the
steeply sloping bank of the Tiber and tipped over; the horse tried in
vain to recover itself, but the weight of the stones was so great that
it was dragged down, and slowly, slowly, screaming as only animals do
scream, disappeared with the cart under the swollen yellow waters; while
the driver stood helplessly upon the bank shrieking and wringing his
hands.
Weak as I was, this terrible scene naturally brought back all my fever,
which now turned to typhoid, and I soon became delirious. By the
following Sunday my life was despaired of. But in the small hotel where
we had stayed at Florence, we had met an American, Dr. Winslow, with
his wife and daughters, to whom my Mother had shown kindness, and who
had been struck with our entire union and devotion to each other. Dr.
Winslow arrived in Rome when I was at the worst, and the first news he
heard was that I was dying. He at once gave up his Roman sight-seeing
and everything else, and devoted himself to me, coming many times a day
and nursing me with such wonderful care, that I eventually recovered,
though it was February before I was at all myself again. It was an
unspeakable blessing that my Mother continued well during my long
illness, and was so kindly looked after by Mrs. Woodward and Miss Wright
that I had no anxiety about her; though in the spring, when we had moved
to the Via Babuino, she had one of her strange illnesses, ending in a
tranquil unbroken sleep which lasted two days and nights. It was about
this time that she was called to bear a loss which in earlier years
would have been utterly crushing, that of her sister-friend Lucy, who
expired peacefully in her quiet home at Abbots-Kerswell, with only her
faithful maid watching over her. In her hermit-life, my Aunt Lucy had
become farther removed from us each year, but two years before my
Mother had found great happiness in visiting her, and her beautiful
letters were a constant enjoyment. Still it is a merciful dispensation
that to those who are themselves on the border-land of heaven,
bereavements fall less bitterly, separations seem so short; and, to my
Mother, the loss of the dearest friend of her early life was only a
quiet grief: she had "only gone from one room into the next." My Aunt
Lucy Hare had never liked me, but I had none of the bitter feeling
towards her which I had towards my Aunt Esther: she truly loved my
Mother, and I could admire, though I could not enter into, the various
graces of her character, which were none the less real because they were
those of a Carmelite nun in Protestant form.
To Roman antiquaries this spring was rendered important from the
discovery of the site of the Porta Capena,--the site of which was long a
vexed question,--by Mr. J. H. Parker, the Oxford publisher, who devoted
much of his fortune to arch\xE6ological pursuits. Pius IX. granted him
permission to excavate without in the least believing anything would
come of it. But when he came to inspect the discoveries he exclaimed,
"Why, the heretic's right," and complained bitterly that his own
arch\xE6ologists, whom he paid highly, should have failed to find what had
been discovered by a foreigner. Mr. Parker carefully marked all the
pieces then found of the Servian Wall, and numbered them in red; but the
_guardia_, seeing the red marks, thought they meant something
revolutionary, and destroyed them. When he found them gone, Parker was
furious. "Is it," he said, "due to the absurdities of an effete
religion, or is it perhaps the insolence of some rival arch\xE6ologist?"
(meaning Rosa).
As we returned through France in the spring of 1869, we diverged to
Autun and Nevers, the last of the pleasant expeditions the dear Mother
and I made together in summer weather. The greater part of our summer
was spent quietly at home, and was chiefly marked for me by the marriage
of my dear friend Charlie Wood to Lady Agnes Courtenay.
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
"_Holmhurst, July 10, 1869._--Your description made me see a
pleasant mental picture of the cousinhood assembled at your party.
For myself, I cannot but feel that all _social_ pleasures will
henceforward become more and more difficult for me, as the Mother,
though not ill, becomes daily more dependent upon me for all her
little interests and amusements, so that I scarcely ever leave her
even for an hour. It is an odd hermit-like life in the small
circuit of our little Holmhurst, with one or two guests constantly
changing in its chambers, but no other intercourse with the outside
world. At last summer has burst upon us, and looks all the brighter
for the long waiting, and our oak-studded pastures are filled with
gay groups of haymakers, gathering in the immense crop. The garden
is lovely, and my own home-sunflower is expanding in the warmth and
stronger and better than she has been for months past."
[Illustration: PORTE D'ARROUX, AUTUN.[390]]
"_Holmhurst, August 1._--I cannot be away from home at all this
summer, partly because I cannot leave Mother, who (though very
anxious to promote my going away) is really becoming more dependent
upon my constant care and companionship; and partly because I
cannot afford the inevitable small expenses of going anywhere, our
finances having been completely prostrated by the Roman Catholic
robberies last year. Indeed, I have never been poorer than this
year, as I have had _nothing_, and when I put two threepenny bits
into the Communion plate to-day, felt exceedingly like the widow
with the two mites, for it was literally all that I possessed!
However, this is not so very dreadful after all, and I daresay
another year matters will come round."
In September, however, when Charlotte Leycester came to take care of my
Mother, I did go to the North.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Ridley Hall, Sept. 1, 1869._--Though I have got into a great
scrape with Cousin Susan by calling blackberry jelly, 'jam,' and
though I was _terribly_ scolded the other day for saying
'thanks,'--'such new-fangled vulgarity,'--this visit at Ridley has
been very pleasant. First, there never was more perfect ideal
weather, so fresh and bright, so bracing, and the colouring of the
woods and moorlands, and the glorious tumbling amber-coloured
rivers so beautiful. Then I feel much stronger and better than I
have done for two years past, and Cousin Susan, who thought me
most ghastly when I arrived, is quite satisfied with the results of
her grouse, pheasants, and sherry. On Wednesday Lady Blackett came
to spend the day, and, after she was gone, Cousin Susan and I made
a long exploring expedition far beyond the Allen Water, up into the
depths of Staward valley--most romantic little paths through woods
and miniature rocky gorges to a ruined bridge and 'Plankey Mill,'
and then up a steep wood path to the moor of Briarside. Cousin
Susan had never been so far since she lived here, and we were
walking, or rather climbing, for three hours, attended by the white
dogs. These have chairs with cushions on each side the fireplace in
her new sitting-room. One is in bad health, has medical attendance
from Hexham at half-a-guinea a visit, and uninitiated visitors must
be rather amazed when they see 'my poor little sick girl' whom
Cousin Susan is constantly talking of.... On Sundays there is only
service here in the morning: the clergyman giving as his curious
reason for not having it in the afternoon, that 'perhaps it might
annoy the Dissenters.' ... This evening it has thundered. Cousin
Susan, as usual on such occasions, hid herself with her maid under
the staircase (the safest place in case of thunderbolts), and held
a handkerchief over her eyes till it was over; but her nerves have
been quite upset ever since, and we are not to have the carriage
to-morrow for fear the storm should return."
_"Ford Castle, Sept. 8._--It was almost dark as I drove up the
beautiful new road over the high bridge to the renovated castle,
which is now all grand and in keeping. I found the beautiful
mistress of the house in her new library, which is a most
delightful room, with carved chimney-piece and bookcases, and vases
of ferns and flowers in all the corners and in the deep embrasures
of the windows. She is full of the frescoes in her school. 'I want
to paint "Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign." I
think he must be a little boy on a step with other children round
him--a very little boy, and he must have some little regal robes
on, and I think I must put a little crown upon his head.'"
[Illustration: FORD CASTLE, THE LIBRARY.[391]]
"_Sept. 10._--Every day of a visit at Ford always seems to contain
more of charm and instruction than hundreds of visits elsewhere.
The great interest this time has been Lady Canning's drawings--many
hundreds of them, and all so beautiful that you long to look at
each for hours. All yesterday evening Lady Waterford read aloud to
us--old family letters, from old Lady Hardwicke and from Lady Anne
Barnard. 'My great-aunt, Lady Anne Barnard,' she says, 'wrote a
book very like your Family Memoirs, only hers was too imaginative.
She called all her characters by imaginary names, and made them all
quite too charming: still her book is most interesting. She was
very intimate with Mrs. Fitzherbert, and describes all her first
meetings with George IV. and the marriage, and then she went with
her on her famous expedition to Paris. She got possession of all
the real letters of the family and put them into her book, but she
embellished them. She got hold of a letter Uncle Caledon wrote to
my aunt when he proposed to her, but when Uncle Caledon read the
book and found a most beautiful letter, he said, "My dear, I never
wrote all this."--"No, my dear," she answered, "I know you did not,
but then I thought your real letter was not warm enough." Lady Anne
Barnard wrote "Auld Robin Gray," and she used to describe how some
one translated it into French, and how, when she went to Paris, she
saw every one looking at her, she could not imagine why, till she
heard some one say, "Voil\xE0 l'auteur du fameux roman de Robin
Gray.'"[392]
"_Sept. 10._--We have all been to luncheon at Carham, sixteen miles
off, and the latter part of the drive very pretty--close to the
wide reaches of the Tweed, with seagulls flitting over it, and
Cuyp-like groups of cattle on the shore, waiting for the ferryboats
to take them across to Coldstream Fair. Carham is one of the
well-known haunted houses: the 'Carham light' is celebrated and is
constantly seen. We asked old Mrs. Compton of eighty-three, who
lives there now, about the supernatural sights of Carham. 'Och,'
she said, 'and have ye niver heard the story of the phantom
carriage? We have just heard it this very morning: when we were
waiting for you, we heard it drive up. We are quite used to it now.
A carriage drives quickly up to the door with great rattling and
noise, and when it stops, the horses seem to paw and tear up the
gravel. Strange servants are terribly frightened by it. One day
when I was at luncheon I heard a carriage drive up quickly to the
door: there was no doubt of it. I told the servant who was in
waiting to go out and see who it was. When he came back I asked who
had come. He was pale as ashes. "Oh," he said, "it's only just the
phantom coach."
"'And then there is the Carham light. That is just beautiful! It is
a large globe of fire in the shape of a full moon: I have seen it
hundreds of times. It moves about in the woods, and sometimes
settles in one place. The first time I saw it I was driving from
Kelso and I saw a great ball of fire. I said to the driver, "What
is that?"--"Oh, it's just the Carham Light," he said. When
Dick[393] came in, he said he did not believe it--he had never seen
it; but that night it came--bright as ever. All the gentlemen went
out into the woods to examine it; but it moved before them. They
all saw it, and they were quite convinced: it has never been
explained.'
"We had tea with the charming old lady. 'I've just had these cakes
made, Lady Waterford,' she said, 'because they were once very weel
likit by some very dear to you; so I thought you would like them.'
"Lady Waterford sends you a riddle:--
'Mon premier est un tyran, mon second une horreur,
Mon tout est le diable lui-m\xEAme.
Mais si mon premier est bon, mon second ne fait rien,
Et mon tout est le bonheur supr\xEAme.'"[394]
"_Foxhow, Ambleside, Sept. 12, 1869._--How lovely the drive into
Foxhow from Windermere; but, after the grand ideas of my childhood,
how small everything seems, even the lake and the mountains! We
drove in at the well-remembered gate by Rotha Cottage, and along
those lovely Swiss pasture-meadows. It was like a dream of the past
as one turned into the garden, all so exactly the same and so well
remembered, not only from our last brief visit, but from that of
twenty-six years ago. Dear Mrs. Arnold is little altered, and is so
tenderly affectionate and charming, that it is delightful to be
with her. She likes to ask all about you and Holmhurst, and says
that her power of producing mind-pictures and dwelling upon them
often brings you before her, so that she sees you as before, only
older, in your home life. It is quite beautiful to see the intense
devotion of her children to their mother and her happiness in them,
in Fan especially. All the absent ones write to her at least three
times a week.
"We have just been in a covered car to Rydal Church: how beautiful
the situation! How well I remembered being sick as a child from the
puggy smell of its hideous interior. It was just as puggy to-day,
but I was not sick. There was a most extraordinary preacher, who
declared that the Woman on the seven mountains was Rome on her
seven hills--'allowed to be so by all authorities, Jewish, and even
Romanist,'--that the dragon was only the serpent in its worshipped
form, and that both were identical with the Beast and represented
the pagan religion; that the Woman flying into the wilderness
before the Beast was Early Christianity flying from pagan
persecution, and that when she came back, to St. John's
astonishment she was seated _on_ the Beast, _i.e._, she had adopted
all the pagan attributes, the cross, the mother and
child--well-known objects of worship at Babylon, and Purgatory--a
tenet of pagan Rome!"
"_Foxhow, Sept. 14._--My Mother will have thought of this pouring
weather as most unpropitious for the Lake Country, but in reality
it has not signified very much, as each day it has cleared for a
few hours, and the lights and shadows have been splendid. On
Sunday afternoon Edward (Arnold) and I went up Loughrigg. All the
little torrents were swollen by the storms, and the colours of the
dying fern and the great purple shadows on Helm Crag and Bow Fell
were most beautiful. It is a most picturesque bit of mountain, and
it all strikes me, as I remember it did in 1859, as more really
beautiful than anything in Switzerland, though so contracted.
"Yesterday afternoon we walked to Grasmere, and I stayed looking at
the interesting group of Wordsworth tombs, whilst Edward paid a
visit. Afterwards the lake looked so tempting, that Edward rowed me
down it, sending the boat back by a boy. We landed at the outlet of
the Rotha on the other side, and had a beautiful walk home by a
high terrace under Loughrigg. If one remained in this country, one
could not help becoming fond of Wordsworth, his descriptions are so
exact. Edward has repeated many of his poems on the sites to which
they apply, and they are quite beautifully pictorial. Mrs. Arnold
is very happy in the general revival of interest in his poetry....
Nothing can be more enjoyable and united than the family life here,
the children and grandchildren coming and going, and so many
interesting visitors. Truly dear Mrs. Arnold's is an ideal old age,
so hedged in by the great love and devotion of her
descendants."[395]
"_Dalton Hall, Lancashire, Sept. 17._--I always enjoy being here
with the Hornbys. Yesterday we drove in the morning to Yealand, a
pretty village so called from the Quakers who colonised it. In the
afternoon we went to Levens. It is a lovely country, just upon the
outskirts of the Lake District, with the same rich green meadows,
clear streams, and lanes fringed with fern and holly. We passed
through Milnthorpe, and how well I remembered your shutting me up
and making me learn a Psalm in the inn there, instead of letting me
go out to draw! The country is very primitive still. An old
clergyman who officiated till lately in the neighbouring church of
Burton Moss had only three sermons, one of which was laid in turn
on the pulpit desk by his housekeeper every Sunday morning. When he
had finished, he used to chuck it down to her out of the pulpit.
One of these sermons was on 'Contentment,' and contained--apropos
of discontent--the story of the Italian nobleman whose tombstone
bore the words, 'I was well, I wished to be better, and now I am
here.'"
It was a great pleasure this autumn to see again in London the New
Zealand Sir George Grey. I remember his saying how he wished some one
would write a poem on Pharaoh pursuing the Israelites to the Red Sea,
from the point of view that in pursuing them he was pursuing
Christianity; that if the Israelites had perished, and not Pharaoh,
there would have been no Redemption.
JOURNAL (The Green Book).
"_Holmhurst, Oct. 13, 1869._--After the storms of last year, this
summer has been peaceful and quiet. My sweet Mother, though often
ailing, has been very gently and quietly happy. She seems older,
but age has with her only its softening effects--casting a brighter
halo around her sweet life, and rendering more lovable still every
precious word and action.... We are more than ever to each other
now in everything."
We left home in 1869 on the 14th of October, intending to cross the
Channel at once, but on arriving at Folkestone, found such a raging sea,
that we retreated to Canterbury to wait for better weather. This enabled
us to pay a charming visit to Archdeacon and Mrs. Harrison, who had been
very familiar to us many years before, when the Stanleys lived at
Canterbury. It was the last visit my Mother ever paid, and she greatly
enjoyed it, as it seemed almost like a going back into her Hurstmonceaux
life, a revival of the ecclesiastical interests which had filled her
former existence. Whenever any subject was alluded to, Archdeacon
Harrison, like Uncle Julius, went to his bookcase, and brought down some
volume to illustrate it. Thus I remember his reading to us in the
powerful sermons of Bishop Horsley. One of the most remarkable was upon
the Syro-Ph\x9Cnician woman. Another is on the French Nuns, in defence
of their institution in England, saying, with little foresight, how
unlikely they were to increase in number, and how very superior they
were to those women "who strip themselves naked to go out into the
world, who daub their cheeks with paint, and plaster their necks with
litharge."
Apropos of the proverb about Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands,
Archdeacon Harrison described how it was in allusion to two things
totally disconnected. Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands are very far
apart, and of course have no connection whatever: yet perverse persons
used to say that Tenterden Steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands, as
money which ought to have been used to prevent the accumulation of
Goodwin Sands was diverted to the building of Tenterden Steeple. The
place where you may hear most about it is "Latimer's Sermons." Latimer
is inveighing against the persons who denounced the study of the Bible
as the cause of the misfortunes of the time, and says that they had as
much connection as Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands, and so forth.
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
"_Munich, Nov. 1, 1869._--We made it four days' journey from Paris
to Strasbourg. First we went to Bar-le-duc. I had longed to see it,
from a novel I read once, and it is well worth while--the old town
rising above the new like the old town of Edinburgh--tall grey
houses pierced with eight or ten rows of windows, a river with a
most picturesque bridge, and in the church 'Le Squelette de Bar,' a
wonderful work of Richier, the famous sculptor of S. Mihiel,
commemorating the Princes of Bar (Henri I., II., III., &c.),
sovereigns of whom I wonder if you ever heard before: I never did.
"We slept next at Toul, where there is a fine huge dull cathedral,
a beautiful creche by Ignace Robert, and a lovely convent cloister
of flamboyant arches. Living at Toul is wonderfully cheap; our
rooms for three were only four francs, and dinner for three four
francs.[396] We wonder people do not emigrate to Lorraine instead
of to Australia; it would be far cheaper, and infinitely more
amusing. If it had been warmer, we should have gone to Domremy and
S. Mihiel, but we feared the cold. We were a day at Nancy: how
stately it is! At Strasbourg we found that the storks had left, and
we thought it the least interesting place on the road, yet most
people stay only there.
[Illustration: BAR-LE-DUC.[397]]
[Illustration: BRIDGE OF BAR-LE-DUC.[398]]
"We had three days at Carlsruhe, and found dear Madame de Bunsen
most bright and well and charming, with much to tell that was worth
hearing, and the fullest sympathy and interest in others.
Generally one feels that conversation weakens the mind; with the
Bunsens it never fails to strengthen it. Madame de Bunsen talked
much of the difficulties which had crowded round her when she
herself was to begin the Memoir of her husband. Bunsen had said to
her, 'You must tell the story of our common life; you are able to
do it, only do not be afraid.' Thus to her the work was a sacred
legacy. First, as material, her son George brought her Bunsen's
letters to his sister Christiana, which she had given to him, and
which he had fortunately never given to his father for fear he
should destroy them. Then she had written to Reck, the early
G\xF6ttingen friend and confidant of all Bunsen's early life, and had
been refused all help without any explanation! Then Stockmar,
Brandeis, &c., sent all their letters; thus the work grew. But
there were no journals, she had made no notes, there was only her
recollection to fall back upon. Madame de Bunsen regretted bitterly
the destruction of Uncle Julius's letters by his widow, especially
those written in his early life to his brother Augustus, which
would have been 'the history of the awakening of a new phase of
opinions.' I made quantities of notes from the intensely
interesting reminiscences Madame de Bunsen poured forth of her own
life.[399]
"We were one day at Stuttgart, which I had never seen, and was
delighted with--so handsome, really a beautiful little capital, and
we reached Munich in time to have one day for the International
Exhibition of Paintings, which was well worth seeing--finer, I
thought, than ours. The German artists have surely far more
originality than the artists of other nations. Three pictures
especially remain in my mind--'The Chase after Luck,' a wild
horseman with Death riding behind him in pursuit of Luck, a
beautiful figure scattering gold and pearls whilst floating on a
bladder, full speed across a bridge which ends in a rotten plank
over a fathomless abyss: 'The Cholera in Rome,' the Angel of Death
leading the Cholera--a hideous old woman--down the street under the
Capitol by moonlight, and showing her the door she is to knock at:
'L'Enfant qui dort \xE0 l'ombre du lit maternel, et les Anges qui
savent d'avance le sort des humains, et baissent avec larmes ses
petites mains.' It is interesting to see how familiar the German
common people are with their artists: the great names of Kaulbach,
Henneberg, &c., are in every mouth; how few of our common people
would know anything of Landseer or Millais!"
"_Vicenza, Nov. 14._--The descent into Italy by the Brenner was
enchanting--the exchange of the snow and bitter cold of Germany for
vineyards and fruit-gardens, still glorious in their orange and
scarlet autumnal tints. We were greatly delighted with Botzen,
where the delicately wrought cathedral spire against the faint pink
mountains tipped with snow is a lovely subject.
[Illustration: MANTUA.][400]
"At Verona we spent several days, thinking it more captivating than
ever. Mother was able to enjoy the Giusti gardens, and I went one
day to Mantua. It is wonderful. The station is two miles off, and
the drive into the town across an immense bridge over the lake is
most striking[401]--the towers all reflected in the still waters,
and the fishing-boats sailing in close under the houses. Then, in
the town, the intense desolation of one part--courts and corridors
and squares all grass-grown and utterly tenantless--is a striking
contrast to the other part, teeming with life and bustle. The
Palazzo del T\xE9 is marvellous--only one story high, gigantic rooms
covered with grand frescoes opening on sunny lawns with picturesque
decaying avenues. I wandered over the vast ducal palace with three
American ladies, who 'guessed' that 'when Mantua was in its prime,
it must have been rather an elegant city.'"
"_H\xF4tel de Londres, Pisa, Dec. 7._--From Verona we went to Vicenza,
where we stayed nearly a week in the old-fashioned palazzo which is
now turned into the H\xF4tel de la Ville. We found some old Roman
acquaintances there--Mrs. Kuper and her daughter, great Italian
travellers, famous linguists, and excessively amusing companions.
With them I went many delightful walks in the lovely country near
Vicenza, which is quite the ideal Italy one reads so much of and so
seldom sees--splendid mountain background with snowy peaks; nearer
hills golden with decaying chestnuts and crimson with falling
vine-leaves; old shrines and churches half hidden in clematis and
vine, and a most interesting town with a fine
picture-gallery--Montagna (not Mantegna) being the great master. I
took to the plan of trying to make ever so slight sketches from
pictures, and find them, bad as they are, far more interesting than
photographs. We had permission to walk in the lovely gardens of the
old Marchese Salvi, close to the hotel, a great pleasure to the
Mother.
[Illustration: VICENZA.[402]]
[Illustration: VICENZA FROM MONTE BERICO.[403]]
[Illustration: THE PRATO DELLA VALLE, PADUA.[404]]
[Illustration: SIENA.[405]]
[Illustration: S. GEMIGNANO.[406]]
"The Kupers preceded us to Padua and engaged comfortable rooms for
us there, to which we followed. Here was another kind of interest
in the quaint churches; the Prato della Valle with its stone
population; the University, where we went to hear a lecture and saw
the 3000 students assembled; and the society of some pleasant young
Paduans--M. Fava and Count Battistino Medine, introduced by the
Kupers. But alas! Mother became very unwell indeed during the
latter part of our stay at Padua, and I was made very unhappy by
her constant cough and inability to take food. So I was thankful
when we were able to come on to this comfortable hotel, where Flora
and the faithful Victoire are incessant in their attentions. I am
still anxious about my sweet Mother, who is very ailing and unable
to go out; otherwise I always like staying at Pisa, with its clean
quiet streets and the interest of the Campo Santo, so full of
beautiful relics and memories. Many delightful hours have I spent
there, and what a school of art and history it is! And then the
Spina is always so graceful and striking against the crimson sunset
which turns the muddy Arno into a river of fire.[407] Then, only
think, I have made a new friend, and, strange to say, an American,
with the uninteresting name of Robert Peabody. I do not know when,
if ever, I have seen any one I like so much--so clever, so natural,
so unworldly, so large-minded, so good-looking. The Mother thinks
my sudden friendships most fantastic, but I have no doubt about
this one; and as Mother was much better last week, I went away with
him for four days to Siena and S. Gemignano, and we were entirely
happy together, though it poured cats and dogs the whole time, and
thundered and lightened as if the skies were coming down. I do not
think you have ever been half excited enough about Siena: it seems
to me such a sublime place--the way it rises out of that desolate
earthquake-riven country, the cathedral so grandly solemn, and such
a world of interest circling around all the scenes in S.
Catherine's life. I tried to draw the famous Sodoma, and longed to
stay months, but we only did stay two days, and then away we went
in a _baroccino_ over the hills to S. Gemignano. You must never
come to Italy again without going there: I am beginning now to
fancy that no one has seen Italy who has missed S. Gemignano. It is
a perfect sanctuary of art, the smallest town ever seen, but with
thirteen tall medi\xE6val towers in fullest preservation, crowning the
top of the little hill like a huge group of ninepins, and with
churches covered with frescoes by Filippo and Simone Memmi,
Beccafumi, Ghirlandajo, and all that wonderful school. The great
saint of the place is Santa Fina--a poor girl, who had a spine
complaint, lay for years on a backboard, bore her intense
sufferings with great patience, and finally died a most peaceful
and holy death--perhaps the _one_ Roman Catholic saint whose story
is unspoilt by miracles. I first heard about her from Lady
Waterford, and had always longed to see her native place. The
Ghirlandajo fresco of her death is most touching and real,
portraying the bare cottage room, the hard-featured Tuscan nurse,
the sick girl on her backboard--all like a scene in a Tuscan
cottage now; and, above, the angels floating away with their
newly-gained sister. But the people of S. Gemignano forgot the
picture when they quaintly told us that 'all the little flowers and
shrubs were so enchanted with her exemplary patience, that they
began to sprout around her bed, and by her twenty-eighth year (when
she died) she was lying in quite a garden of beautiful flowers.'"
In recollection I feel grateful for this short absence from my Mother
with Robert Peabody, as it procured for me my last tiny letter from
her--cheerful and tender as all her letters were now. But after the
beginning of December I seldom left her, and the next six weeks were
spent entirely in her room, in watching and cheering her through a time
of great suffering, whilst the rain never ceased to fall in torrents. I
was often able to amuse her with stories of my companions at the
_table-d'h\xF4te_.
JOURNAL.
"_Pisa, Nov. 27._--The chief interest here has been from travellers
in the hotel--a Mr. and Mrs. D., kind, vulgar people, who have
seldom been out of London, except to Paris, and who do not speak a
word of any foreign language; at least Mr. D. does speak certain
words, and uses them all together to all the foreigners he meets,
without any regard to their meaning--'Lait pain th\xE9 bongjour
toodyswee;'--a haughty pretty Polish girl and her governess, and a
clever pretty Polish Comtesse de M. with her young husband. The
last lady keeps the whole table alive with her stories, told with
the utmost na\xEFvet\xE9, and in the prettiest manner.
"'I will tell you about my going to Ferrara. When I arrived I was
gasping with hunger. We drove up to the hotel. "Could we have any
dinner?"--"J'en suis d\xE9sol\xE9, Madame, but the cook is out." We drove
to another. "Could we have any dinner?"--"J'en suis au d\xE9sespoir,
Madame, mais il n'y a pas de feu." We drove on. Another hotel. We
ordered our dinner, and when it was put on the table, it was so
dreadful, I gave one look and ran out of the room. And then the
sights of Ferrara! We went to the castle. It was horrible--a
ghastly dungeon with bare walls and chains and one glimmering ray
of light. "_This_," said the guide, "was the dungeon of Ugo and
Parisina; here they suffered and here they died." Oh, mon Dieu,
quel horreur! I wished to go somewhere else. They took me to a
convent--again a ghastly room, a fearful prison. "_This_, Madame,
was the prison of Tasso"--encore des horreurs! Oh, then I would
have a carriage. I asked the driver where he would take me. "Ma,
Signora, allo Campo Santo." Ah! quelle triste ville la ville de
Ferrare! But when we got to Bologna, and I asked where we should
go, c'\xE9tait toujours la m\xEAme chose--toujours au Campo Santo, and at
Pisa here, it is encore au Campo Santo!
"'At Ferrara, in the prison of Tasso, they show on the wall an ode
written by Lord Byron. The rest of the wall is white, but the place
where the ode is written is brown. "Why," I asked, "is that part of
the wall brown?"--"Ah!" said the custode, "that is the sweat of the
English. All the English will touch the writing of their
compatriot, and then they perspire from their hot fingers, and thus
it is brown." In the same room is a great hole; the wall has
crumbled away: it is gone: the room will fall. "And what is that?"
I asked. "Ah! that is made by the English, who all insist upon
taking away a morsel of the prison of Tasso." And thus it was at
Verona; when I saw Juliet's tomb, they told me it was only an
imitation; for as for the real one, the English ladies had chopped
it all up and were wearing it in bracelets. Oh, comme c'est
ennuyant de voyager, il faut tourner la t\xEAte pour regarder les
tableaux, et on casse le cou par ici: il faut regarder par la
f\xEAnetre pour voir la vue, et on casse le cou par l\xE0: il faut
regarder au plafond pour voir les fresques, et on casse le cou de
tous les c\xF4t\xE9s \xE0 la fois. And then the journey to Switzerland!
Mais aller en Suisse, jamais! What do you want to see mountains
for? to admire their height? Ah! then how stupid to go up! Why, of
course they become shorter every step you go. No, you should go
into the depths to see the mountains. Les plaines pour moi!...
Jusqu'\xE0 mon mariage je ne suis jamais sortie \xE0 pied, mais depuis
mon mariage je suis devenue ... raisonable.'
"I asked the Polish ladies if the language they spoke was Russian.
It was like throwing a bomb into the camp. They detest the
Russians, and would not speak to a pleasant Countess Boranoff,
_n\xE9e_ Wasilikoff, who has been staying here.... But of all my Pisan
acquaintance there is none like Robert Peabody! He has been at an
atelier in Paris for two years studying as an architect, and had a
charming life there with his fellow-students, making walking tours
in France, &c. When he first went to Paris, he did not know a word
of French, and made out his washing bills by drawing little
pictures, socks, shirts, drawers, &c., and the washerwoman put the
prices opposite them."
On December 10 occurred the terrible floods of the Arno.
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
"_Pisa, Dec. 11, 1869._--How little you will be able to imagine all
we have been going through in the last twenty-four hours! We have
had a number of adventures in our different travels, but this is by
far the worst that has ever befallen us. Now I must tell you our
story consecutively.
"For the last three days the Mother has been very ill. On Thursday
she had an attack of fainting, and seemed likely to fall into one
of her long many days' sleep.... The rain continued day and night
in torrents. Yesterday made it three weeks since we arrived, and in
that time there had been only two days in which the rain had not
been ceaseless. The Arno was much swollen: I saw it on Thursday,
very curious, up to the top of the arches of the bridges.
"Yesterday, Friday, Madame Victoire came to dine with Lea.
Afterwards she came up to see us as usual, and then Flora's
children came to be shown pictures. I think it must have been
half-past three when they took leave of us. Lea went with them down
the passage. Soon she came back saying that little Anna said there
was 'such an odd water coming down the street, would I come and
see,' and from the passage window I saw a volume of muddy water
slowly pouring down the street, not from the Arno, but from towards
the railway station, the part of the street towards Lung' Arno (our
street ends at the Spina Chapel) remaining quite dry. The children
were delighted and clapped their hands. I meant to go and see the
water nearer, but before I could reach the main entrance, in half a
minute the great heavy waves of the yellow flood were pouring into
the courtyard and stealing into the entrance hall.[408]
"It was as suddenly as that it came upon us.
[Illustration: THE H\xD4TEL DE LONDRES DURING THE FLOOD.]
"The scene for the next half-hour baffles all description. Flora
and her mother stood on the principal staircase crying and wringing
their hands: the servants rushed about in distraction: Lea, pale as
ashes, thought and cried that our last moment was come; and all the
time the heavy yellow waters rose and rose, covering first the
wheels of the omnibus, the vases, the statues in the garden, then
up high into the trees. Inside, the carpets were rising and swaying
on the water, and in five minutes the large pieces of furniture
were beginning to crash against each other. I had rushed at the
first alarm to the _garde meuble_, and (how I did it I cannot
imagine) dragged our great box to the stairs: it was the only piece
of luggage saved from the ground-floor. Then I rushed to the
_salle-\xE0-manger_, and shouting to Flora to save the money in her
bureau, swept all the silver laid out for dinner into a tablecloth,
and got it safe off. From that moment it was a _sauve qui peut_. I
handed down rows of teapots, jugs, sugar-basins, &c., to the maids,
who carried them away in lapfuls: in this way also we saved all the
glass, but before we could begin upon the china, the water was up
to our waists and we were obliged to retreat, carrying off the
tea-urns as a last spoil. The whole family, with Amabile and all
the old servants, were now down in the water, but a great deal of
time was wasted in the belief that a poor half-witted Russian lady
was locked into her room and drowning, and in breaking open the
door; but when at last a panel of the door was dashed in, the room
was found full of water and all its contents swimming about, but
the lady was ... gone out for a walk!
"As I was coming in from the lower rooms to the staircase with a
load of looking-glasses, a boat crashed in at the principal
entrance, bringing home the poor lady and two other English, who
had been caught by the flood at the end of the street, and had been
for some time in the greatest peril: the boatmen having declined to
bring them the few necessary steps until they had been paid twenty
francs, and then having refused altogether to bring a poor Italian
who had no money to give them. At this moment Madame Victoire
insisted on taking the opportunity of the boat to return to her
own house. It was a dreadful scene, all the women in the house
crying and imploring her to stay, but she insisted on embarking.
She did not arrive without hairbreadth escapes. When she reached
her own house, the current was so strong, and the boat was dashed
so violently against the walls, that it was impossible for her to
be landed; but the flood was less violent beneath her larger house
which is let to the Marchese Guadagna, from which sheets were let
down from the upper windows, and she was fastened to them and
raised: but when she reached the grille of the first-floor windows,
and was hanging half-way, the current carried away the boat, and at
the same moment the great wall opposite S. Antonio fell with an
awful crash. However, the Guadagna family held tight to the sheets,
and Madame Victoire was landed at last, though she fell insensible
on the floor when she entered the window.
"The walls were now falling in every direction with a dull roar
into the yellow waters. The noise was dreadful--the cries of the
drowning animals, the shrieks of the women, especially of a mother
whose children were in the country, wringing her hands at the
window of an opposite house. The water in our house was rising so
rapidly that it was impossible to remain longer on the side towards
the principal staircase, and we fled to the other end, where
Pilotte, a poor boy in the service, lay dangerously ill, but was
obliged to get up from his bed, and, though quite blind from
ophthalmia, was far more useful than any one else. Since her mother
left, Flora had been far too distracted to think of anything; still
we saved an immense number of things, and I was able to cut down
pictures, &c., floating on a sofa as if it were a boat. The great
difficulty in reaching the things was always from the carpet
rising, and making it almost impossible to get out of the room
again. The last thing I carried off was the 'Travellers' Book!' It
was about half-past 5 P.M. when we were obliged to come out of the
water, which was then terribly cold and above the waist.
"Meantime the scene in the street was terrible. The missing
children of the woman opposite were brought back in a boat and
drawn up in sheets; and the street, now a deep river, was crowded
with boats, torches flashing on the water, and lights gleaming in
every window. All the thirty poor hens in the hen-house at the end
of the balcony were making a terrible noise as they were slowly
drowned, the ducks and pigeons were drowned too, I suppose, being
too frightened to escape, and many floated dead past the window.
The garden was covered with cushions, chairs, tables, and ladies'
dresses, which had been washed out of the lower windows. There was
great fear that the omnibus horse and driver were drowned, and the
Limosins were crying dreadfully about it; but the man was drawn up
late at night from a boat, whose crew had discovered him on the top
of a wall, and at present the horse exists also, having taken
refuge on the terrace you will remember at the end of the garden,
where it is partially above water. The street was covered with
furniture, great carved wardrobes being whirled down to the Arno
like straws. The cries of the drowning animals were quite human.
"All this time my poor sweet Mother had been lying perfectly still
and patient, but about 6 P.M., as the water had reached the highest
step of the lower staircase and was still mounting, we had our
luggage carried up to the attics, secured a few valuables in case
of sudden flight (as no boat would have taken luggage), and began
to get Mother dressed. There was no immediate danger, but if
another embankment broke, there might be at any moment, and it was
well to be prepared. Night closed in terribly--pouring rain again,
a perfectly black sky, and waters swelling round the house: every
now and then the dull thud of some falling building, and, from
beneath, the perpetual crash of the furniture and floors breaking
up in the lower rooms. Mother lay down dressed, most of the
visitors and I walked the passages and watched the danger-marks
made above water on the staircase, and tried to comfort the unhappy
family, in what, I fear, is their total ruin. It seemed as if
daylight would never come, but at 6 A.M. the water was certainly an
inch lower.
"It was strange to return to daylight in our besieged fortress.
There had been no time to save food, but there was one loaf and a
little cheese, which were dealt out in equal rations, and we
captured the drowned hens as the aviary broke up, and are going to
boil one of them down in a tiny saucepan, the only cooking utensil
saved. Every one has to economise the water in their jugs (no
chance of any other), and most of all their candles.... How we are
ever to be delivered I cannot imagine. The railways to Leghorn,
Spezia, and Florence must all be under water."
"_Dec. 14._--It seems so long now since the inundation began and we
were cut off from every one: it is impossible to think of it as
only three days.
"Nothing can be more dreadful than the utter neglect of the new
Government and of the municipality here. They were fully warned as
to what would result if Pisa was not protected from the Arno, but
they took no heed, and ever since the dikes broke they have given
no help, never even consenting to have the main drains opened,
which keeps us still flooded, refusing to publish lists of the
drowned, and giving the large sums sent for distribution in charity
into the hands of the students, who follow one another, giving
indiscriminately to the same persons, whilst others are starving.
On Saturday night there ceased to be any immediate alarm: the fear
was that the Arno might break through at the Spina, which still
stands, and which, being so much nearer, would be far more serious
to us. The old bridge is destroyed. All through that night the
Vicomte de Vauriol and the men of the house were obliged to watch
on the balconies with loaded pistols, to defend their property
floating in the garden from the large bands of robbers who came in
boats to plunder, looking sufficiently alarming by the light of
their great torches. The whole trousseau of the Vicomtesse is lost,
and her maid has 4000 francs in her box, which can still be seen
floating _open_.... But the waters are slowly going down. Many
bodies have been found, but there are still many more beneath the
mud. In the lower rooms of this house the mud is a yard deep, and
most horrid in quality, and the smell of course dreadful. I spend
much of my time at the window in hooking up various objects with a
long iron bed-rod--bits of silver, teacups, even books--in a state
of pulp."
[Illustration: S. ANTONIO, PISA, DURING THE FLOOD.]
"_Dec. 19._--My bulletin is rather a melancholy one, for my poor
Mother has been constantly in bed since the inundation, and cannot
now turn or move her left side at all.... I have also been very ill
myself, with no sleep for many days, and agonies of neuralgia from
long exposure in the water.... However, I get on tolerably, and
have plenty to take off my thoughts from my own pain in attending
to Mother and doing what I can for the poor Limosins.... In the
quarter near this seventy bodies have been found in the mud, and as
the Government suppresses the number and buries them all
immediately, there are probably many more. Our friends at Rome have
been greatly alarmed about us."
"_Dec. 27._--Mother has been up in a chair for a few hours daily,
but cannot yet be dressed. The weather is horrible, torrents of
rain night and day--quite ceaseless, and mingled with snow,
thunder, and lightning. It is so dark even at midday, that Mother
can see to do nothing, and I very little. The mud and smell would
prevent our going out if it were otherwise possible. It has indeed
been a dismal three months, which we have all three passed entirely
in the sick-room, except the four days I was away.... Still the
dear Mother says 'we shall have time to recount our miseries in
heaven when they are over; let us only recount our mercies now.'"
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
"_33 Via Gregoriana, Rome, Jan. 19, 1870._--You will have heard
from others of our misfortunes at Pisa, of Mother's terrible
illness, and my wearing pains, and in the midst of all this our
awful floods, the Arno bursting its banks and overwhelming the
unhappy town with its mud-laden waves. I cannot describe to you the
utter horror of those three days and nights--the rushing water
(waves like the sea) lifting the carpets and dashing the large
pieces of furniture into bits like so many chips,--the anxious
night-watchings of the water stealthily advancing up step after
step of the staircase,--the view from the upper corridor windows of
the street with its rushing _tourbillon_ of waters, carrying
drowning animals, beds, cabinets, gates, &c., along in a hideous
confusion;--from our windows of the garden one maze of waters
afloat with chairs, tables, open boxes, china, and drowned
creatures;--the sound of the falling walls heavily gliding into the
water, and the cries of the drowning and their relations. And then,
in the hotel, the life was so strange, the limited rations of food
and of water from the washing jugs, and the necessity for rousing
oneself to constant action, and far more than mere cheerfulness, in
order to prevent the poor people of the hotel from sinking into
absolute despair.
"When the real danger to life once subsided and the poor drowned
people had been carried away to their graves, and the water had
changed into mud, it was a strange existence, and we had still six
weeks in the chilled house with its wet walls, and an impossibility
of going out or having change. However, there is a bright side to
everything, and the utter isolation was not unpleasant to me. I got
through no end of writing work, having plenty also to do in
attending on my poor Mother; and you know how I can never
sufficiently drink in the blessedness of her sweet companionship,
and how entirely the very fact of her existence makes sunshine in
my life, wherever it is.
"All the time of our incarceration I have employed in writing from
the notes of our many Roman winters, which were saved in our
luggage, and which have been our only material of employment. It
seems as if 'Walks in Rome' would some day grow into a book. Mother
thinks it presumptuous, but I assure her that though of course it
will be full of faults, no book would ever be printed if perfection
were waited for. And I really do know much more about the subject
than most people, though of course not half as much as I ought to
know.
"One day I was away at Florence, where I saw Lady Anne S. Giorgio
and many other friends in a very short time. How bright and busy it
looked after Pisa.
"Last week Pisa devoted itself, or rather its priests, to intense
Madonna-worship, because, owing to her image, carved by St. Luke,
the flood was no worse. Her seven petticoats, unremoved for years,
were taken off one by one and exchanged for new, and this delicious
event was celebrated by firing of cannon, processions, and
illuminations all over the town. In the midst, the Arno displayed
its disapproval by rising again violently and suddenly; the utmost
consternation ensued; the population sat up, doors were walled up,
the doll-worshippers were driven out of the cathedral (which lies
very low) at the point of the bayonet by the Bersaglieri under
General Bixio. To _us_, the great result of the fresh fright was,
that the Mother suddenly rose from her bed, and declaring that she
could not stay to endure another inundation, dressed, and we all
set off last Wednesday morning, and arrived at midnight after a
prosperous journey, though the floods were certainly frightful up
to the very walls of Rome.
"Oh, how glad we were to get here--to feel that after all the
troubles of the last few months we were safe in the beloved, the
home-like city. It is now only that I realise what a time of
tension our stay at Pisa has been. We breathe quietly. Even the
calm placid Mother feels the relief of not having to start up at
every sound and wonder whether 'L'Arno \xE9 sbordato.'
"I always feel as if a special Providence watched over us in
respect of lodgings. It has certainly been so this time, as we
could never have hoped, arriving so late, to obtain this charming
apartment, with full sun, glorious view, and all else we can wish.
You can fancy us, with all our own pictures and books, the mother
in her chair, the son at his drawing-table, and Lea coming in and
out.
"But on Friday we had a terrible catastrophe. In the evening at the
hotel the poor Mother fell violently upon her head on the hard
stone floor and was dreadfully hurt. You will imagine my terror,
having gone out at 8 P.M., to find every one in confusion on my
return, that Dr. Winslow had been sent for, and that I had been
searched for everywhere. For some hours the Mother was quite
unconscious, and she can still see nothing, and I am afraid it will
be some days before any sight is restored; but all is going on
well, and I am most thankful to have been able to move her to her
own house.
"Do you know, I am going to renounce the pomps and vanities of the
world this winter and not 'go out' at all. I have often found that
it has rather fatigued Mother even to _hear_ of my going out, and
it is far easier to give a thing up altogether than partially. In
the daytime I can see people. My American friend Robert Peabody is
here, and the most delightful companion, and there are endless
young men artists, quite a colony, and of the pleasantest
description.
"The weather is very fine, but very cold. I went to-day to St.
Peter's (Il Giorno della Scatola), and the procession was certainly
magnificent. The Bishop who attracts most attention is Monsignor
Dupanloup of Orleans, who at first displayed great courage in
opposing the Infallibility doctrine, but is allowing his opposition
to be swamped. Many of the Bishops are most extraordinary--such a
variety of forms and colours in costume, blue and violet veils,
green robes and hats, and black caps with gold knobs like the
little Shems and Hams in Noah's Ark. But the central figure of Pius
IX. looks more than ever solemn and impressive, the _man_ so lost
in his intense feeling of the _office_, that it is impossible to
associate him, mentally, with the Council and its blasphemies. Of
the Council itself we hear nothing, and there is little general
interest about it. Lord Houghton asked Manning what had been going
on: he answered, 'Well, we meet, and we look at one another, and
then we talk a little, but when we want to know what we have been
doing, we read the _Times_.'"
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
"_Jan. 31._--We have had another anxious week, though once more all
is going on well. On Monday the Mother was well enough to see
visitors, but that night was in terrible suffering, and the next
day had a slight paralytic seizure ... followed by long
unconsciousness; but it was all accounted for the next morning when
we found the roof white with snow. She continued in great suffering
till Friday, when the weather suddenly changed to _scirocco_, and
she at once rallied. That day I was able to have my lecture on the
Quirinal and Viminal--all new ground. There was a large gathering
in spite of weather, so many people had asked to come. I have
yielded to the general wish of the party in arranging weekly
meetings at 10 A.M., but it makes me feel terribly ignorant,
and--in the intervals of tending Mother--I am at work all the week
instructing myself upon the subject of my lecture."
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE VIA GREGORIANA.]
"_Feb. 19._--The Mother is still sadly weak, and always in an
invalid state, yet she has not the serious symptoms of the winter
you were here. She is seldom able to be dressed before twelve, and
can do very, very little--to read a few verses or do a row of her
crotchet is the outside. I scarcely ever leave her, except for my
lectures. I had one on the Island yesterday. The weather is
splendid and our view an indescribable enjoyment, the town so
picturesque in its blue morning indistinctness, and St. Peter's so
grand against the golden sunsets. As usual, the Roman society is
like the great net which was let down into the deep and brought up
fish of every kind.... The Mother is quite happy and bright in
spite of all her misfortunes, but we have had to feed her like a
bird in her blindness. I wonder if you know the lines of Thomas
Dekker (1601)--
'Patience! why, 'tis the soul of peace;
Of all the virtues, 'tis nearest kin to heaven;
It makes men look like gods. The best of men
That e'er wore earth about Him was a sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;
The first true gentleman that ever breathed."
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
"_Rome, Feb. 27._--My life this winter has been one of constant
watching and nursing; the Mother has been so very powerless and
requires such constant care: but she is, oh! so sweet and patient
_always_. You need not pity me for not going out; after the day's
anxiety I find the luxury of the evening's rest so very great.
"My Friday lectures now take place regularly, and I hope they give
pleasure, as they are certainly crowded. I am amused to see many
ultra-Catholics come time after time, in spite of my Protestant
anecdotes. How I wish the kind Aunt Sophy were here to share these
excursions."
On the 12th of March I spent a delightful afternoon with a young artist
friend, Henry Florence, in the garden of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, drawing
the gloriously rich vegetation and the old cypresses there. My Mother
was tolerably well, and the air, the sunshine, and the beauty around
were unspeakably enchanting. "I never saw _any one_ enjoy things as you
do," said Florence, and I spoke of my thankfulness for having the power
of putting away anxieties when they were not pressing, and of making the
utmost of any present enjoyment, even though it be to "borrow joy at
usury of pain."[409] "Perhaps it may be the last day," I said. It _was_.
There is an old proverb which says, "The holidays of joy are the vigils
of sorrow." That night my dearest Mother had the terrible paralytic
seizure which deprived her of the use of her left arm and side, and from
which she never recovered.
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
"_Rome, March. 16, 1870._--My darling Mother is to-day in a happy
peaceful state, no longer one of suffering, which is--oh! such rest
to us. She is now able to articulate, so that I always, and others
often, understand her.... I sleep close by upon the floor and never
leave her. On Monday night we were pleasantly surprised by the
arrival of Amabile, the maid from Pisa, who is quite a tower of
strength to us--so kind, gentle, and strong. Mrs. Woodward comes
and goes all day. Every one is kind and sympathising."
"_March 23._--Mother talks constantly of Albano and her great wish
to be there amongst the flowers, but for many weeks, perhaps
months, this must be impossible."
"_March 28._--It has been the same kind of week, alternately
saddened by the strange phases of illness, or cheered by slight
amendments; but Mother has had many sad nights, always worse than
her days, without rest even for a minute. Her mind is only _too_
clear. She will translate hymns, 'Abide with me,' &c., into
Italian; the great difficulty is to keep it all in check. From 4 to
10 P.M. the nervous spasms in the paralysed arm are uncontrollable,
and she can only endure them by holding tight to my arm or Lea's.
All yesterday, however, I was away from her, tending poor young
Sutherland, who has been dreadfully ill at the H\xF4tel de Londres of
typhoid fever, and who is quite alone and helpless."
"_April 3._--The Mother goes on very slowly, but I hope has not had
an unpleasant week. She never seems to find the time long, and
always looks equally placid and happy. Physically she is certainly
more comfortable now she is entirely in bed. Her chief trouble is
from the returning vitality of the poor arm; the muscles knot all
round it, and move on slowly by a quarter of an inch at a time, as
the life advances: passing the shoulder was agony, and I dread the
passing the elbow. Meantime, the rest of the arm is an independent
being, acting by its independent muscular action, and is obliged to
be constantly watched, as it will sometimes lay its heavy weight
upon her chest, once clutched her by the throat and nearly
strangled her, at others annoys her by stealing her
pocket-handkerchiefs! She has been able to hear a psalm and some
prayers read aloud every evening, and occupies herself with her own
inexhaustible stores of mental hymns and verses incessantly. Mrs.
Woodward's daily visit is one of her little pleasures, and she has
also seen Mrs. Hall several times.
"My young cousin Edward Liddell[410] returned lately from Naples,
and on Monday became very ill of fever, pronounced typhoid, and
likely to become typhus and very infectious, so, as he had no one
else to look after him, I have been nursing him ever since. It was
so fortunate for me that Mother was really better at this time, or
I do not know what we could have done, as though he had one good
nurse, she was quite worn out, and there was no other to be
procured. So now we take it in turns, four hours at a time, and I
chiefly at night, when she goes home to her children. I am writing
in the darkened room, where Edward lies powerless, with all his
hair cut off and his head soaked in wet towels, almost unable to
move, and unable to feed himself. I am sorry not to be able to go
out while Marcus Hare is here, and he is much disappointed. He
arrived suddenly from Naples and embraced me as if we were still
children."
"_April 10._--My dear Mother is much the same. It has been a
peaceful week with her, though there is no improvement.... The
paralysed arm is quite useless, and has a separate and ungovernable
individuality. This is why she can never be left alone. Its weight
is like a log of lead, and sometimes it will throw itself upon her,
when no efforts of her own can release her. Odd as it sounds, her
only safe moments are when the obstreperous member is tied up by a
long scarf to the post of Lea's bed opposite and cannot injure her.
Mentally, she is always quiet and happy, and I believe that she
never feels her altered life a burden. She repeats constantly her
hymns and verses, for which her memory is wonderful, but she has no
longer any power of attention to reading and no consecutive ideas.
All names of places and people she remembers perfectly. As Dr.
Winslow says, some of the organs of the brain are clearer than
ever, others are quite lost.
"As the fear of infection caused him to be left alone, I have been
constantly nursing Edward Liddell. All last week his fever
constantly increased, and he was so weak that he could only swallow
drops of strong soup or milk, perpetually dropped into his mouth
from a spoon. Had this been ever relinquished, the feeble flame of
life must have become extinct. Last Monday morning I had gone home
to rest, when the doctor hastily summoned me back, and I found new
symptoms which indicated the most immediate danger; so then, on my
own responsibility, I telegraphed for Colonel and Mrs. Augustus
Liddell (his father and mother), and soon had the comfort of
hearing that they were _en route_. That evening the alarming
symptoms returned with such frightful vehemence that both nurse and
doctor thought it impossible that he could survive the night. Then
and for three nights after I never left Edward for a moment,
bathing his head, feeding him, holding him, and expecting him every
instant to die in my arms, and in the day only I returned to pay
Mother visits. Anything like his sweetness, gentleness,
thankfulness, I never saw in any one, and his perfect readiness for
heaven made us feel that it was the less likely that his life would
be given back to us; and you may imagine, though I had scarcely
known him before, how very close a cousinly tie has been drawn in
these hours of anguish. He received the Sacrament on Thursday. On
Friday there was a very slight improvement, but more delirium. For
four days and nights he lay under a vast poultice of snow, which
had to be replenished as often as it melted, and _making_ snow with
a machine has been perhaps the most laborious part of my duties.
Each night I have watched for the faint streak of dawn, wondering
if he _could_ live till morning, and feeling as if I were wrestling
for his life. Yesterday morning, when I knew his parents were
coming, it was quite an agony of suspense; but they arrived safe,
and I was able to give him up _living_ to his mother's care. I have
had every day to write to Mrs. Fraser Tytler, to whose daughter
Christina he had not been engaged a month, and of whom he has
thought touchingly and incessantly.
"I am not much knocked up, but thankful even for myself that Mrs.
Augustus Liddell is come, as my cough is so much increased by
having to be so often out on the balcony at night, up to my elbows
in the snow manufacturing. I do not think I could have held out
much longer, and then I do not know what would have become of
Edward."
[Illustration: NEMI.[411]]
"_April 17._--Last Sunday I had so much more cough, and was so much
knocked up with my week's nursing, that kind Lady Marian Alford
insisted on taking me early on Monday in her own carriage to Albano
for change. It was like travelling with the Queen, everything so
luxurious, charming rooms, and perfect devotion everywhere to 'la
gran donna da bene,' her personal charm affecting all classes
equally.
"Lady Marian had a very pleasant party at Albano, Lord and Lady
Bagot and their daughter, Mr. Story,[412] Miss Boyle,[413] Miss
Hattie Hosmer,[414] and Mr.[415] and Lady Emily Russell. The first
afternoon we drove along the lake to Lariccia, where we went all
over the wonderful old Chigi palace, and then on to the Cesarini
garden at Genzano, overhanging the lake of Nemi. The next morning
we went to the Parco di Colonna and Marino, and then in a
tremendous thunderstorm to Frascati, where we dined in the old
Campana Palace, returning to Rome in the evening. I like Mr. Odo
Russell and his simple massive goodness extremely. I hear that Pius
IX. says of him, 'Non \xE9 un buono cattolico, ma \xE9 un cattivissimo
protestante.' Miss Hosmer had said to him, 'You're growing too fat:
you ought to come out riding; it will do you no end of good;' to
which he replied in his slow way, 'No, I cannot come out
riding.'--'And why not?' said Miss Hosmer. 'Don't you know,' he
said, 'that I am very anxious to be made an ambassador as soon as
possible, and, since that is the case, I must stay working at
home.'
"'I like midges, for they love Venice, and they love humanity,'
said Miss Mary Boyle.
"On Wednesday, finding both my patients better, I acceded to
Marcus's entreaties and went with him and some friends of his to
Tivoli for the day. Most gloriously lovely was it looking! My
companions scrambled round the waterfalls, whilst I sat and what
Robert Peabody calls 'water-coloured' opposite the Cascatelle. In
the evening we went to the Villa d'Este and saw the sun set upon
the grand old palace through its dark frame of cypresses.
"This morning I went for the first time to see the bishops of the
Council; rather a disappointing sight, though they are a fine set
of old men. Some of the American costumes are magnificent.
"Monday is the end of Edward's twenty-one days' fever, and I am
still very anxious for the result. As he says, I feel rather, since
the arrival of his parents, like a hen who has nursed a duckling
which has escaped: but I go every day to look at him."
"_April 30._--It is no use worrying oneself about the journey yet.
It must always be painful and anxious. On returning to America, Dr.
Winslow's last words to me were, 'Remember, if she has _any_
fright, _any_ accident, _any_ anxiety, there will be another
seizure,' and in so long a journey this can scarcely be evaded. She
must have more strength before we can think of it. Her own earnest
wish is to go to Albano first, but I dread those twelve miles
extra. We always had this house till May 15, and hitherto there
has been no heat.
[Illustration: TIVOLI.[416]]
"On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Mother was carried down by two
women in her dressing-gown, wrapped round with shawls, to a little
carriage at the door. They were perfectly still sunny days, no
bronchitis to be caught. The first day we only went round the
Pincio, the second to the Parco di San Gregorio, the third to the
Lateran and Santa Croce: she chose her own two favourite drives.
JOURNAL.
"_May 3, 1870._--Walked with Miss J. Pole Carew and her governess
from the Villa Albani to Sant' Agnese to look for the blood-red
lily, seven feet high, which smells so terribly that no one is able
to pick it. The governess (Miss Nicholson) said how the twisted
palms carried in the Roman Catholic ceremonies seemed to her like a
type of their faith. So much would be beautiful and impressive in
the lives of the martyrs and the memories of the early Church, if,
like the palms, so beautiful when they are first brought to Rome,
they were not twisted and overladen, to the hiding and destruction
of their original character."
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
"_May 8._--Last Sunday we drove to the Villa Borghese, which is now
in its fullest most luxuriant summer green. When we came back, the
Tombola was taking place in the Piazza del Popolo, so that gate was
closed, and we had to go round by Porta Salara. The slight
additional distance was too much for Mother, so that she has been
unable to be up even in her chair for several days. This will show
you how weak she is: how terrible the return journey is to look
forward to.
"She certainly never seems to realise her helplessness, or to find
out that she can no longer knit or do the many things she is
accustomed to.... She likes hearing Job read, because of the
analogy of sufferings, but she does not _at all_ admire Job as a
model of patience! Hymns are her delight, and indeed her chief
occupation. She has great pleasure in the lovely flowers with
which our poorer friends constantly supply us, especially in the
beautiful roses and carnations of the faithful Maria de Bonis (the
old photograph woman), who is as devoted as ever."
"_May 15._--The weather has been perfect. In all our foreign or
home experience I do not recollect such weeks of hot sunshine, yet
never oppressive; such a delicious bracing air always. The flowers
are quite glorious, and our poor people--grateful as only Italians
are--keep the sick-room constantly supplied with them.
"But, alas! it has been a very sad week nevertheless, and if I once
allowed myself to think of it, my heart would sink within me. My
dearest Mother has been so very, _very_ suffering; in fact, there
have been very few hours free from acute pain, and, in spite of her
sweet patience and her natural leaning towards only thanksgiving,
her groans and wails have been most sad and the flesh indeed a
burden.... You will easily imagine what it is to me to see this
state of intense discomfort, and to be able to do nothing to
relieve it; for I am quite convinced that nothing can be done, that
medicine must be avoided as much as possible in her worn-out
system, and that we must trust entirely to the effect of climate
and to a returning power of taking nourishment. Dr. Grigor told her
that it was a case of most suffering paralysis, usually producing
such dreadful impatience that he wondered at her powers of
self-control. But from my sweetest Mother, we never hear one word
which is not of perfect patience and faith and thanksgiving,
though her prayers aloud for patience are sometimes too touching
for us to bear. She has not been out for ten days, as she has
really had no strength to bear the lifting up and down stairs, and
she has seen nobody except our dear Mrs. Woodward and Mary
Stanley."
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
"_Rome, May 22, 1870._--The Mother can recover no power in her lost
limbs, in which she has, nevertheless, acute pain. Yet, deprived of
every employment and never free from suffering, life is to her one
prolonged thanksgiving, and in the sunshine of her blessed state of
outpouring gratitude for the silver linings of her clouds, it is
not for her nurses to repine. In her case daily more true become
the lines of Waller--
'The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.'
But when even her short excursions to the Pincio or Villa Borghese
produce the most intense exhaustion, no stranger can imagine how we
can dream of attempting the immense homeward journey. Still,
knowing her wonderful power of will and what it _has_ accomplished,
I never think anything impossible, and all minor details of
difficulty become easier when one has a fixed point of what must
be. We shall at any rate try to reach Florence, and then, if she
suffers seriously and further progress is quite impossible, we
shall be on the way to Lucca or Siena. If we ever do reach
Holmhurst, of course it will be for _life_, which makes the leaving
this more than second home very sad to me.
[Illustration: BRACCIANO.[417]]
"I have had many pleasant friends here this winter, especially the
Pole Carews, who are a most charming family. Latterly also I have
seen much of Mrs. Terry, who is a very interesting and delightful
person. Since the world has drifted northwards, I have seen more of
the few friends who remain, and with the Terrys have even
accomplished a very old desire of going to Bracciano. It is a
beautiful drive across the Campagna, and then comes the ascent into
the steep old town, and under the many gates and fortalices of the
castle, to a courtyard with painted loggias. Armed with an order
from Princess Odescalchi, we went all over the rooms with their
curious ugly old pictures and carving, and sat in the balconies
looking down upon the beautiful transparent Bracciano lake, twenty
miles in circumference, all the mountains reflected as in a mirror.
Mrs. Terry is charming: after we had talked of sad subjects she
said--'But we have spoken enough of these things; now let us talk
of butterflies and flowers.' In spite of all other work, I have
sold \xA375 worth of sketches this winter, chiefly old ones, so am
nearly able to pay our rent."
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
"_Rome, May 26, 1870._--The Mother is better for the great heat,
thermometer standing at 85\xB0, but Rome always has such a fresh air
that heat is never overpowering, and in our delightful apartments
we never suffer, as we can have so much variety, and if Mother does
not go out, she is moved to the balcony overhanging the little
garden at the back, where she sits and has her tea under a
vine-covered pergola. If we are permitted to reach Holmhurst, I
fear _all_ will not be benefit. I much dread the difficulty there
will be in keeping Lea from being wholly engrossed again by
household affairs, and I cannot see how Mother _could_ do without
her almost constant attendance, which she has now. Also, we shall
greatly miss the large bedroom opening into a sitting-room, where I
can pursue my avocations, able to be with her at the faintest call,
and yet not quite close to the groans.... But all this is long,
long looking forward: there seems such a gulf between us and
England.... Yet we think of attempting the move next week, and on
Friday sent off six large boxes with the accumulations of many
years, retaining also a list of what must be sent back if we never
reach England.
"The Signorina and Samuccia, Clementina and Louisa, Rosina and
Madame da Monaca, have all been to say good-bye, and all kiss
Mother with tears on taking leave, overcome by her helpless state
and sweet look of patience."
[Illustration: GRAVE OF AUGUSTUS W. HARE, ROME.]
"_May_ 29.--Emmie Penrhyn's letter was an especial pleasure to the
Mother, and what she said of the centurion's servant, grievously
'tormented.' Certainly _she_ is grievously tormented. The pain
really never ceases, and the individual motion of the helpless arm
is terrible.... I think with misery of the disappointment the
return to Holmhurst will be to her. She cannot realise that it will
not be, as it has always been, the home of her _well_ months, talks
of how she shall 'frolic out into the garden,' &c. I feel if we
ever reach it, it is going, not to England, but to Holmhurst for
_life_.... We have been to the cemetery under Caius Cestius, and
the sentinel allowed her little carriage to pass across the turf,
so that she was able to look once more upon the well-known grave,
embosomed in its roses and aloes. Yesterday we went to take leave
of the old Miss Haigs at their beautiful villa. The three old
ladies embraced Mother, and presented her, like three good fairies,
one with roses, another with geraniums, and the third with two ripe
strawberries."
"_Florence, June 1._--Monday was a terribly fatiguing day, but
Mother remained in bed, and was very composed, only anxious that
nothing should occur to prevent our departure, and to prove to us
that she was well enough. At five Mrs. Woodward came and sat by her
whilst Lea and I were occupied with last preparations. At 7 P.M.
Mother was carried down and went off in a little low carriage with
Mrs. Woodward and Lea, and I followed in a large carriage with Miss
Finucane and the luggage. There was quite a collection of our
poorer friends to see Mother off and kiss hands. At the railway the
faithful Maria de Bonis was waiting, and she and Mrs. Woodward
stayed with Mother and saw her carried straight through to the
railway _coup\xE9_ which was secured for us. We felt deeply taking
leave of the kindest of friends, who has been such a comfort and
blessing to us, certainly, next to you, the chief support of
Mother's later years. 'Oh, _how_ beautiful it will be when the
gates which are now ajar are quite open!' were her last words to
Mother.
[Illustration: FROM THE LOGGIA DEI LANZI.[418]]
"The carriage was most comfortable.... Mother slept a little, and
though she wailed occasionally, was certainly no worse than on
ordinary nights. The dawn was lovely over the rich Tuscan valleys,
so bright with corn and vines, tall cypresses, and high villa
roofs. She was carried straight through to a carriage, and soon
reached the succursale of the Alleanza, where the people know us
and are most kind. In the afternoon she slept, and I drove up to
Fiesole, where I had not been for twelve years, with Mr. and Mrs.
Cummings, American friends."
"_Bologna, June 5._--I fear, after my last, you will be grievously
disappointed to hear of us as no farther on our way. We can,
however, only tell from hour to hour how soon we may be able to get
on, and I find it entirely useless to make plans of any kind, as we
are sure not to be able to keep them. On Tuesday a great
thunderstorm prevented our leaving Florence, and on Wednesday and
Thursday Mother was in such terrible suffering that it was
impossible to think of it. On Friday evening there was a rally, and
we came on at once, Mrs. Dallas helping us through the difficulties
of the Florence Station, and Mr. and Mrs. Cummings following us
here. I think I mentioned that Dr. Grigor said travelling at night,
when there was no sun, was the only chance of her reaching England
alive. Mother begs I will tell Charlotte that 'No words can
describe her sufferings or my anxieties, but that she has been
brought through wonderfully hitherto, and that she still hopes to
reach England--_in time_.'"
JOURNAL.
"_Bologna, June 5._--Mr. Cummings says the great Church of S.
Petronio here reminds him of the great Church universal--so vast
the space, and so many chapels branching off, all so widely divided
that in each a separate sermon and doctrine might be preached
without distressing its neighbour, while yet all meet in the
centre in one common whole, the common Church of Christ.
[Illustration: PIAZZA S. DOMENICO, BOLOGNA.[419]]
"An old American lady in the train had passed a summer at
Vallombrosa. She said it was a place where to live was _life_ and
where one could be happy when one was _unhappy_."
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
"_Susa, June 8, 1870._--The Mother continued in a most terribly
suffering state all the time we were at Bologna--agonies of pain
which gave no rest. Yesterday afternoon it was so intense that she
implored me to try the railway as a counter-irritant, and we set
off at half-past ten at night. But the train shook fearfully, and
the journey was absolute torture to her. We have never had such a
painful time. Lea and I were obliged to sit on the floor by turns,
holding the poor hand, and trying to animate her courage to bear
up, but her cries were terrible. We reached Turin at 5 A.M., where,
in spite of all promises to the contrary, she had to be carried all
round the station; but fortunately for the next hour the train was
easier and she suffered less. She was carried by two men out of the
station, and down the wet muddy road here, where she has a good
room, and soon fell asleep from exhaustion. We arrived at 6.30
A.M., and shall stay till to-morrow morning. Her state is certainly
one of incomparably more suffering than at Rome, and she feels the
change of climate dreadfully."
"_Aix-les-Bains, June 9._--Last night, to my great relief, Colonel
and Mrs. Cracroft and Miss Wilson arrived at Susa, and were the
greatest possible help to us. We had obtained a _permesso_ for the
Mother to be taken straight through to the Fell railway carriage,
and her little procession started at 7 A.M., and she was carried
from her bed to her seat in the railway. The Cracrofts sat all
round us in the carriage, which was much better than strangers, and
Miss Wilson was most kind in keeping her hands bathed with eau de
Cologne, &c. She suffered much for the first two hours, but the
train was wonderfully smooth and easy, so that really the dreaded
Mont Cenis was the least distressing part of the journey. About the
middle of the pass she revived a little, and noticed the flowers,
which were lovely--such gentianellas, auriculas, large golden
lilies, &c. At S. Michel she bore the being carried about
tolerably, so we were able to come on here, and arrived about four.
Mother desires I will say to Charlotte, 'Hitherto the Lord hath
helped me.'"
"_Macon, June 12._--No farther on our way than this. Mother was
rather less suffering on Friday, and she bore the move from Aix and
the dreaded change at Culoz better than we expected, but in the
latter part of our four hours' journey she was fearfully exhausted,
and arrived here (at the hotel looking out on the Saone and the
wide-stretching poplar plains) in a sad state.... It is impossible
to move on yet.
"Yesterday, while she was sleeping, I drove to Cluny, the queen of
French abbeys. A great deal is left, and it is a most interesting
and beautiful place. I also saw Lamartine's little ch\xE2teau of
Monceaux, described in his 'Confidences.' All his things and his
library were being sold under the chestnut-trees in front of the
house. I just came up in time to buy the old apple-green silk
quilt[420] from the bed of his saint-like mother, described in 'Le
Manuscrit de ma M\xE8re.'"
[Illustration: CLUNY.[421]]
"_Montbard, June 13._--Mother was so anxious to attempt coming on,
that we left Macon at half-past eleven to-day, arriving here at
four. To our dismay, when she had been taken out of the carriage
and laid flat upon the platform, and the train had gone off, we
found the station hotel closed. However, she was well carried on a
chair down a lane to the so-called H\xF4tel de la Poste--an
old-fashioned farm-house in a garden of roses; everything clean,
pretty, and quaint; no sound but cocks and hens crowing and
cackling; delicious farm-house bread, butter, and milk. Montbard is
the place where Buffon lived in a very picturesque old ch\xE2teau and
gardens. Mother seems revived by the intense quiet and fresh
country air. The old landlord and his wife are quite pictures--such
clever, kind old faces, reminding one of La Sarte in 'Citoyenne
Jacqueline.'"
[Illustration: CLOISTER OF FONTENAY.[422]]
"_Paris, June 14._--This morning was like a respite! Mother lay so
quiet that I was actually able to draw as in the old days, which
now seem in the far distance; and I took a little carriage to the
lovely cloistered ch\xE2teau of Fontenay, which I had long wished to
see, and where I had luncheon with the charming owner, Madame de
Montgolfier, and her two sons, people who own immense factories in
the valley and devote their whole lives to the good of their
workpeople. On my return I found Mother so far better that we could
prepare her for the one o'clock express. She had a bath-chair to
the station, and bore it well; but she was terribly tried by the
five hours' journey, and being very ill carried at Paris, arrived
at the hotel utterly prostrated. We _hope_ to go on to-morrow, but
all is most uncertain."
"_Dover Station, June 16._--We are here, with intense thankfulness.
Mother looked so ill and aged this morning we did not hope to move
her, but she had a sudden rally in the middle of the day, so at 6
P.M. we were able to prepare her, and had her carried through the
station to a carriage before the mob of people came.... We dreaded
arriving at Calais, but she was carried in an arm-chair to the
steamer, which was fortunately at the near quay and no steps. Of
course our little procession was the last to arrive, and every
place was taken; but Miss Charlotte Cushman,[423] who had
comfortably established herself in the cabin, with a calm dignity
which is irresistible at once directed the men to put Mother down
in her place, and went up on deck.
"The sea was like glass--lovely moonlight and sunrise, and we
seemed to be at Dover before we left Calais. A sailor carried
Mother in his arms to the railway carriage, in which we were
allowed to go as far as the station platform, and here we are. A
porter has fetched cups of tea, and we have four hours to wait.
"We shall be glad of a visit from you as early as you like to come
next week. I should not like you to defer coming long, as, though I
have no _special_ cause for apprehension, still in Mother's
critical state every day is precious. You will find her terribly
altered in all respects, though the mind and memory are quite clear
_at the moment_. None of her doctors give any hope whatever of
amendment; but you will understand the position much better when
you see it, only I am anxious that you should help me to face what
is inevitable, instead of striving after what cannot be. Let us
seek to alleviate suffering, not struggle after an impossible cure
which may hasten the end."
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
"_Holmhurst, June 17._--I know you will truly rejoice with and
_for_ us that we have arrived in safety, and that my poor suffering
Mother has her great wish of seeing her little home once more. You
will imagine what the journey has been, as she is now utterly
helpless, nearly blind, and never free from acute suffering in the
spine and arm, which is often agony. At Rome it was generally
thought quite impossible that she could survive the journey, and
nothing but her faith and patience, and her self-control, have
enabled us to get through it. We never could make a plan, but just
seized the happy moment when she was a shade better, and at once
pushed on a step. She was, of course, carried everywhere, and
people were wonderfully kind; we had always somebody to go with us
and smooth the difficulties of the railway stations--either old
friends or people who were at my lectures at Rome and met us
accidentally.
"When we arrived, all the old servants were terribly overcome to
see their beloved mistress carried in so changed and helpless. She
is still very ill, but unspeakably thankful to be here, and to feel
that the journey is done. My life is, and must continue to be, one
of constant watching."
"_July 21._--Our letters are now our only intercourse with the
world beyond the gates of Holmhurst, which I never leave; but
indeed I can seldom leave the house before 8 P.M., when I walk
round the fields while Mother is prepared for the night. Though it
is now the only thing I ever think of, it is very difficult to
occupy and cheer her days, for she cannot bear any consecutive
reading. Sometimes I read, and tell her what I have read as a kind
of story. She is seldom up before 3 P.M., and then is carried down
to the lawn in her dressing-gown, and up again at four, when she is
sometimes able to look at a book for a few minutes. That which is
oftenest in her hand is the little 'Invalid's Friend' which you
gave her, and she desires me to tell you how often she finds
comfort in it.... For the last fortnight we have been entirely
alone, which has been really best for her, as, though she has
enjoyed seeing those she loved, each _departure_ has made her
worse.
"I write much at my 'Walks in Rome' in her room, and my ancient
history is so imperfect I have plenty to study, which acts as a
sort of mental tonic."
_From my_ JOURNAL (The Green Book).
"_June 26._--My darling often _talks_ to me in her hymns. To-night,
when I left her, she said with her lovely sweetness, 'Good-night,
darling.
"Go, sleep like closing flowers at night,
And Heaven your morn will bless."'
"'I never wish to leave you,' she said the other day. 'I never wish
for death; always remember that. I should like to stay with you as
long as I can.' And another day, 'I must call you "my
daughter-son," as Mrs. Colquhoun did hers: as long as I have you, I
suppose I can bear anything; but if you were taken away, or if I
had never had you, my life would be indeed desolate: I could not
have lived on.... I try so not to groan when you are here, you must
not grudge me a few groans when you are out of the room.'"
"_July 18._--'I had such a sweet dream of your Aunt Lucy last
night. I thought we were together again, and I said, "How I do miss
you!" and she said she was near me. I suppose I had been thinking
of--
"Saints in glory perfect made
Wait thine escort through the shade."
I think perhaps I had been thinking of that. Dear Aunt Lucy, how
she would have grieved to see me now!'"
"_July 19._--'Yes, I know the psalms; many in your Uncle Julius's
version too. Many a time it keeps me quiet for hours to know and
repeat them. I should never have got through my journey if I had
not had so many to repeat and to still the impatience.'"
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
"_Holmhurst, July 31, 1870._--I continue to work on steadily at my
book in the sick-room. I have just got Murray's Roman Handbook, and
am amazed to see how much better it is than I expected; but I am
glad I have not seen it before, as, though I have already given
even all his newest information, I have told it so _oddly_
differently.
"The sweet Mother continues much the same. She is carried out each
fine afternoon to sit for an hour near the weeping ash-tree on the
lawn, and enjoys the sunshine and flowers.... In this quiet garden,
and never going beyond the gates, everything seems very _far_ off,
and I am beginning to have quite a sympathy with the hermits, and
to wonder the race does not continue: it is certainly more
reasonable than that of the monks. A great peace seems to have
fallen upon us. As I see my helpless Mother's quiet happiness, and
share it, I think of Richard Crashaw's lines--
'How many unknown worlds there are
Of comforts, which Thou hast in keeping!
How many thousand mercies there
In Pity's soft lap lie a-sleeping!
Happy she who has the art
To awake them
And to take them
Home, and lodge them in her heart.'"
_From my_ JOURNAL (The Green Book).
"_August 8._--It is inexpressibly touching to me how Mother now
seems to have an insight into my past feelings which she never had
before, and to understand and sympathise with childish sufferings
which she never perceived at the time, or from which she would have
turned aside if she had perceived them. To-day, after her dinner,
she said most touchingly, watching till every one went away and
calling me close to her pillow--'I want to make my confession to
you, darling. I often feel I have never been half tender enough to
you. I feel it now, and I should like you to know it. You are such
a comfort and blessing to me, dearest, and I thought perhaps I
might die suddenly, and never have told you so. I cannot bear your
being tied here, and yet I do not know how I could do without you,
you are so great a blessing to me.'
"And oh! in the desolate future what a comfort these few words will
contain! But I said--'No, darling, I am not tied: you know it is
just what I like. I know you could not do without me, but then I
could not do without you, so it is just the same for both of us.'"
"_August 26._--To-day is the anniversary of my adoption, what
Mother used to call my Hurstmonceaux birthday. She remembered it
when I went to her, and said touchingly--'God be thanked for having
given me my child, for having preserved him, for having
strengthened him. May he live to His glory, and may I die to His
praise.... Pray that He may forgive the past, watch over the
present, and guide the future.' Later she said--'It is very seldom
that a woman's future is settled at thirty-five, as mine was. I was
not only a widow, but my adopting a child showed to all the world
that I should never marry again.... I can only make a meditation,'
she said; 'I have no strength to make a prayer.... I have long been
obliged to pray in snatches--in moments.... I am so glad that I
know so many psalms, hymns, and collects; they are such a comfort
to me now. I could think of nothing more, but these I dwell
upon.... Sometimes when I can think of nothing else I take the
Lord's Prayer, and lie still to make a meditation upon each
separate clause.' When I left her at night she said
fervently--'Good-night, my own dear love, my blessing: may I be
your blessing, as you are mine.'"
In our quiet life, the news of the war in France, the siege of Paris,
&c., reached us like far-off echoes. My mother cared little to hear of
it, but shared with me in anxiety as to the fate of the excellent people
we had so lately left at Montbard and Fontenay, which were overrun by
the Prussians. On September 8 the Empress Eugenie took refuge at
Hastings, and two days after walked up the hill past our gate. She was
joined at Hastings by the Prince Imperial. I little thought then that I
should afterwards know him so well.
JOURNAL.
"_Sept. 10, 1870._--Lea has just been saying, 'You may go and count
the trees to-day, for I've nothing for you for dinner. The
butcher's never been, good-for-nothing fellow! he's gone gawking
after that Empress, I'll be bound.'"
Almost all my Mother's nieces and many old friends came to see her in
the summer, generally staying only two or three days, but her dear
cousin, Charlotte Leycester, came for the whole of September. While she
was here at Holmhurst I was persuaded to go away for two days, and went
to see Dean Alford at his cottage of Vine's Gate in the Kentish Hills.
He was more charming than ever, and more eccentric, never wearing
stockings, and shoes only when he went out. I was miserable, in my short
absence, with anxiety, which cost me far more than the refreshment of
change could replace; but I was led to go to see the Dean by one of
those strange presentiments for which I have never been able to account.
It was my last sight of this dear friend, with whom I have been more
really intimate than with perhaps any one else, in spite of the great
difference of age and position. Dean Alford died in the following
winter, but it was at a time when, in my own intense desolation, all
minor sorrows fell dumb and dead. But his grave, in St. Martin's
Churchyard at Canterbury, is always a very sacred spot to me.
[Illustration: ST. MARTIN'S, CANTERBURY.]
[Illustration: Henry Alford
Dean of Canterbury.]
I must record a visit which we received soon after my return home, as it
led to a friendship which was one of the great pleasures of many
following years. One morning, as I was sitting in my Mother's room as
usual, a card with "Mrs. Grove, Oakhurst," was brought up to me, and, as
I opened the drawing-room door, I saw an old lady with the very
sweetest and dearest face I ever set eyes upon, in a primitive-looking
hat and apron, and with a basket on her arm, and I fell in love with her
at once. She came often afterwards to see my Mother, who greatly
appreciated her; and after my Mother's sweet life passed away, it is
difficult to say how much of my home interest was associated with
Oakhurst, with the ready sympathy and old-fashioned knowledge of this
dear Mrs. Grove, and with her daughter, Mrs. Baillie Hamilton, and her
two grand-daughters, now Mrs. Spencer Smith and Mrs. Hamilton Seymour.
Alas! as I write this,[424] the dear Mrs. Grove, in her great age, is
herself rapidly fading heavenwards--but so gently, so surrounded by the
love which her own loving-kindness has called forth, that death is
indeed coming as a friend, gently and tenderly leading her into the
visible presence of the Saviour, in whose invisible presence she has so
long lived and served.
JOURNAL (The Green Book).
"_Holmhurst, Oct. 20, 1870._--Mother said to-day, 'I always think
that walking through the Roman picture-galleries is like walking
through the Old and New Testament with the blessed company of
apostles and martyrs beside one.... I am so fond of that prayer
"for all sorts and conditions of men," not only for my invalid
state, but it is _all_ so appropriate to the present time--the
petition for peace and unity, &c.'"
"_Oct. 23, Sunday._--'Alas! another Sunday in bed,' said Mother
this morning.
"'But, darling, you need not regret it; all the days are Sundays to
you.'
"'Yes; but to-day I woke early, and have said all my little Sunday
hymns and psalms.'
"Truly with her, 'Les pri\xE8res de la nuit font la s\xE9r\xE9nit\xE9 du
jour.'"[425]
"_Oct. 26._--'My dear child is never cross to me, _never_; and
always appears just at the very moment I want anything.'"
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
"_Holmhurst, Oct. 28, 1870._--I am so glad you have been here, and
can fancy our perfectly quiet, eventless life, the coming and going
in the Mother's sick-room, and her gentle happiness in all the
little pleasures which are spared to her. Since you were here she
has been not so well, from the wet and cold, I suppose, the sight
dimmer and the other powers weaker; but the symptoms are ever
varying, and, when it is thus, I almost never leave her--watch her
sleeping and try to amuse her waking.
"To-day my absent hour was sadly engaged in attending the funeral
of my dear old friend, Mrs. Dixon,[426] who died quite peacefully
last Saturday, a long illness ending in two days of merciful
unconsciousness. She was buried at Ore, in Emma Simpkinson's grave.
Many deeply mourn her, for few were more sincere and cordial, more
affectionate and sympathising."
JOURNAL (The Green Book).
"_Nov. 1, 1870._--My darling has had two months of comparative
freedom from pain, with many hours of real pleasure, in which she
was often carried down and sat out in her bath-chair amongst the
flower-beds in the sunshine. Sitting under the ash-tree shade, she
has been able to see many friends--Mrs. Wagner, Mrs. Grove, old
Mrs. Vansittart Neale at ninety, and Lady Waldegrave. Charlotte
Leycester was here for six weeks, and the Mother was then so far
better that it was a great source of enjoyment to both the cousins.
Since then she has ailed more frequently, and has had occasional
recurrence of the old pain in her arm. I have sat constantly
writing in her room, laying aside 'Walks in Rome' for a time, and
devoting myself to writing the Family Memorials. For the dear
Mother has wished me to continue the work she began long ago of
writing the life of Augustus and Julius Hare. I represented that,
as one of these died before I was born, and I had never appreciated
the other as she had done, it would be impossible for me to do
this, unless she would permit me to make her, who had been the
sunshine of my own life, the central figure of the picture. At
first she laughed at the idea, but, after a day or two, she said
that, as, with the sole exception of Charlotte Leycester, all who
had shared her earlier life had passed away, she could not oppose
my wish that the simple experience of her own life, and God's
guidance in her case, might, if I thought it could be so, be made
useful for others. And, as she has accustomed herself to this
thought, she has lately taken real pleasure in it. She laughs at
what she calls my 'building her mausoleum in her lifetime,' but has
almost grown, I think, to look upon her own life and her own
experience as if it were that of another in whom she was
interested, and to read it and hear it in the same way. She has
given me many journals and letters of various kinds which I might
use, and has directed the arrangement of others. I have already
written the two earliest chapters of her married life, and read
most of them to her, but she stopped me at last, saying that they
interested her too deeply. She frequently asks now--'Are you
writing the Memorials, or only "Walks in Rome"?' and it is a proof
how clear her understanding still is, that some weeks ago she
wisely directed me, if the work was ever carried out, to evade all
wearying discussion by consulting no one, and that I should on no
account show it to any one of the family, especially the Stanleys,
till it was finished, when they might judge of it as a _whole_.
"Sometimes the dear Mother has herself been able to write some of
her 'Ricordi,' as she calls them, and, with her trembling hand, has
filled a whole little volume with the recollections of her youth,
but this has often been too much for her.... After her tea at four
o'clock, I have generally read some story to her till she has gone
to bed, and after that a chapter and some hymns. There is a passage
in one of George Eliot's autobiographical sonnets, in which,
referring to her mother, she speaks of 'the benediction of her
gaze'; how often have I experienced this!"
"_Nov. 4._--Last night I read to the Mother Luke xvii. and a hymn
on 'Rest' which she asked for. When I was going to wish her
good-night she said--'I do hope, darling, I am not like the
ungrateful lepers. I try to be always praising God, but I know that
I can never praise Him enough for His many, many mercies to me.' I
could not but feel, in the alarm afterwards, if my dearest Mother
never spoke to me again, what beautiful last words those would have
been, and how characteristic of her. Oh, goodness in life brings us
near to God: not death! not death!
"At 2 P.M. I was awakened by the dreadful sound which has haunted
me ever since the night of March 12 in the Via Gregoriana--of Lea
rushing along the passage and flinging open the door--'Come
directly'--no time for more words--and of running through the dark
gallery and finding the terrible change--another paralytic
seizure--calling up John and sending him off to Battle for the
doctor, and kneeling by the bedside, consoling her if possibly
conscious, and watching for the faint dawn of visible life, that
the first words might be tender ones, the first look one of love,
... and it was so--that my darling's first words were something
tender, indefinite, but spoken to me. The entire unconsciousness
was not long. When the doctor arrived the face was almost natural,
but he saw that it had been a regular seizure. By 8 A.M. she was
nearly herself again, and anxious to know what could have happened.
She had been frightened by seeing the doctor. She appeared to have
no pain, and there is no additional injury to the powers. To-day
has been a constant watching, rather a warding off from her of any
possible excitement than anything else.... In all the anguish of
anxiety, I cannot be thankful enough for what we have, especially
the freedom from pain."
"_Nov. 9._--No great change--a happy painless state, the mind very
feeble, its power gone, but peaceful, loving, full of patience,
faith, and thankfulness."
"_Nov. 16._--And since I wrote last, the great, the most
unutterable desolation, so long looked for, so often warded off,
has come upon me. Oh! while they can still be attained, let me
gather up the precious fragments that remain.
"On Thursday the 10th my darling was much better, though her mind
was a little feeble. I felt then, as I feel a thousand times now,
how extraordinary people were who spoke of the trial my darling's
mental feebleness would be to me. It only endeared her to me a
thousandfold--her gentle confidence, her sweet clinging to me to
supply the words and ideas which no longer came unsought, made her
only more unspeakably lovable. On that day I remember that my
darling mentioned several times that she heard beautiful music.
This made no impression on me _then_.
"Friday the 11th, I sat, as usual, all morning in her room
correcting my book. I forget whether it was that morning or the
next that my darling on waking from sleep said that she had had
such a pleasant dream of her childhood and Adderley and 'old Lady
Corbet,' who first taught her to 'love what was beautiful.'[427] At
2 P.M. Mother was up, and sat in her arm-chair by the fire. She was
partly dressed, and wore her pretty old-fashioned cap with the
strings tied in a bow on the top of the head, and a little red
cloak which Miss Wright had given her: I remember thinking she
looked so pretty, and telling her so. I was out at first, while she
wrote a little letter to Fanny Tatton,[428] and talked to Lea about
the texts she had been reading. At four, she had her tea, and then
I sat at her feet, and my darling talked most sweetly about all the
places she had admired most in her life--of Llangollen in her
childhood, and of Capel Curig, of her visit to Rhianva, and of many
places abroad, Narni with its woods and river, and more especially
Villar in the Vaudois, of which I had been making a drawing, which
she had desired to have set up that she might look at it. Then she
asked to have one of her old journals read, and I read one of Rome,
and she spoke of how much happiness, how many blessings, she had
connected with Rome also, though much of suffering. She was
especially bright and sunny. I remember saying to her playfully,
'Take a little notice of me, darling; you do not take enough notice
of me,' and her stroking my head and saying, 'You dear child,' and
laughing.
"At six o'clock my sweetest one was put to bed.
"Afterwards I read to her a chapter in St. Luke--'Let this cup pass
from me,' &c., and sat in her room till half-past nine. When I went
downstairs I kissed her and said, 'Have a good _good_ night,
darling.' I cannot recollect that she spoke, but I remember looking
back as I opened the door, and seeing my sweet Mother lying on her
side as she always did, and her dear eyes following me with a more
than usually tender expression as I left the room.
"I have often thought since of a sentence in Carlyle's 'Life of
Sterling'--'Softly, as a common evening, the last of our evenings
passed away, and no other would come to me for evermore.'
"When I went upstairs again at half-past ten, I went, as I always
did, to listen at her door, and, hearing a noise, went in. Terrible
illness had come on and continued for hours.... The next thirty-six
hours I never left her for an instant, and they all seem to me like
one long terrible night. I remember very little distinctly, but at
eight on Saturday morning she was certainly much better. The doctor
came at ten, and she was able to speak to him. He looked very grave
over the lowness of her pulse, but she continued better for some
hours, and slept a great deal in the afternoon. Towards evening I
thought her not so well, though the doctor, who came at half-past
nine, considered her state much less anxious. I was then possessed
with the feeling that our parting was very near. Lea also called me
downstairs to hear the extraordinary sound that was going on. It
was indeed strange. It was as if hundreds of thousands of crickets
were all chirping together. They appeared everywhere in swarms on
the hearths downstairs. The noise was so great that I felt if it
continued we should be driven out of the place: it was quite
deafening; but they only came that night, they never were heard
before, and the next day they had totally disappeared.[429] I
persuaded Lea to lie down on her bed, where she soon fell asleep.
All through the night I sat by my darling on the pillow. I think
the last thing she said was that the other arm, the well arm,
pained her very much, and we feared paralysis, but more pressing
symptoms diverted attention. At half-past one I called Lea again. I
shall never know in this world whether my Mother was really
conscious, if she even knew anything either of her own great
physical suffering, or of what passed that night. I believe God
helped me to say and do all she would have wished. Each hour I was
more sure of what was coming. Towards dawn, kneeling on the bed, I
said some of the short prayers in the Visitation of the Sick, but
she was then fading rapidly, and at last I repeated the hymn 'How
bright those glorious spirits shine,' which we had always agreed
was never to be used except as the solemn sign that our parting
was surely come. I am not sure if my darling knew that she was
dying before: I am sure, if she could still hear, that she knew it
then. I am sure that she was conscious at the end and that she
speechlessly took leave of us. Her expression was calm and serene,
but very grave, as if she realised for the first time that I might
not travel with her into the solitude she was entering. It was
about a quarter of an hour before the end that all suffering
ceased, her paralysed side seemed to become quite well; the lame
hand, which had been so tightly clenched since the 13th of March,
unfolded then upon the 13th of November, and gently met the other
in prayer. The eyes were closing, but opened once more--as a
look--a look of youth and radiance, stole over the beloved features
at the last, when there was no struggle, only just a gentle sigh or
two. Lea, who was leaning over the bed on the other side, held her
spectacles to the mouth. There was no breath. I could scarcely
believe that she was gone. I still held her in my arms. But oh! in
my unutterable desolation I could give God thanks that the end was
like this. The first stroke of the church-bell sounded as she
passed into the real life.
"When the sweet eyes closed and the dear face lost its last shadow
of colour, I kissed my own Mother for the last time and came away.
The first snowflakes of winter were falling then. They do not
signify now: no snow or cold can ever signify any more.
"But oh! the agony, the anguish!
"And since then her precious earthly form has been lying, with her
hands folded on her breast as if she were praying--the dear lame
hand quite well _now_. The room is draped with white and filled
with flowers. Two large white camellias stand at the head of the
bed and overshadow her pillow, and on the table, draped with white,
are her own particular objects, her bronze wolf, her little gold
tray with her spectacles, smelling-bottle, &c., and all her special
hymn-books. At first when I went in, in my great agony, I did not
draw down the sheet. But now I draw it down and look at my dearest
one. There is a look of unearthly serene repose upon the worn
features, which is almost too beautiful.
"'Days without night, joys without sorrow, sanctity without sin,
charity without stain, possession without fear, satiety without
envyings, communication of joys without lessening, and they shall
dwell in a blessed country, where an enemy never entered, and from
whence a friend never went away.'[430]
"But yet--oh my darling! my darling!"
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
"_Sunday morning, Nov. 13._--My darling Mother has entered into the
real life.
"She grew gradually weaker hour by hour, and I think she suffered
less. She knew me always, and liked to keep her eyes constantly
fixed upon me, but she could not speak. At half-past nine, she
seemed sinking, and I repeated over to her, as she desired me to do
when she was dying, the hymn 'How bright those glorious spirits
shine.' I think she heard it.... Soon after she opened her eyes
and gave me a long, long look of her own perfect lovingness, then
turned to Lea, to me again, and we heard a few gentle sighs. I had
just time to ring the bell close to my hand as I sat on the pillow,
and as John and Harriet[431] (who had been waiting in the passage)
passed sobbing into the room and stood at the foot of the bed, my
sweet darling gently breathed her last in my arms, once more--quite
at the last--opening her eyes, with a look of perfect bliss, as if
gazing at something beyond us. It was so gentle a breathing out of
her spirit, we scarcely knew when it was over. She died in my arms,
with my kiss upon her forehead, at half-past ten. I know how
tenderly my Mother's dearest, most tenderly loved friend feels for
me, and that I need not ask her to pray for my Mother's poor child
Augustus."
"_Nov. 14._--It seems so strange to look out of the window and see
the same sheep feeding in the same green meadows, the same flowers
blooming, and yet such a change over all. I feel as if it were I
who had died yesterday.
"What a long, long day it was! A thousand times I was on the point
of running into the room to say some little loving word to her who
has been the recipient of every thought, _every_ pleasure for so
many, many years, and then the crushing blank, the annihilation
came all afresh. Indeed, I feel it afresh every quarter of an hour,
and when I am calmed after one thing in which my great desolation
is especially presented to me, something else calls it all forth
again. Oh, my darling! my darling! can it be? oh! how can it be?
"The dear earthly form lies with its hands sweetly folded as if she
were praying. I go in often. I am always going in; but it does not
remind me of her, though it is most peaceful, and the servants and
others have the greatest comfort from looking at it.
"It is as a dream that yesterday morning, quite after it was over,
I could say 'The day before yesterday my darling did this, my
darling said that.' On Friday she was so bright, so happy, only her
memory a little astray, but I was already forming a thousand little
schemes for supplying this lost power, so that it should not be
apparent to others, and to me _nothing_, I felt, could ever matter
if the sunshine of my dear Mother's sweet presence was with me
under any change."
"_Tuesday, Nov. 15._--Your most dear letter has come.... How much,
even in the first anguish of my desolation, I have felt what it
would be to you also. You will always be most tenderly entwined
with her sacred memory; indeed, I can scarcely think of you apart.
For the last few years especially your companionship has been her
greatest joy, and in your absence she has never passed many hours
without speaking of you, never _any_, I think, without thinking of
you. The grief she most dreaded was that she might have to mourn
for you, for I think she rightly felt that--great as the sorrow
would be--your physical powers would enable you to bear the
separation better than she could have done.
"This morning I feel a little better, and can dwell more upon my
darling's being perfected, upon the restoration of all her powers,
upon her reunion to those she loved in former times of her life;
and I have a perfect treasure-store in my journals for years of her
sacred words of blessing, and advice, and thought for me, many of
them, I know, intended to be my comfort now.
"I will send you many of the letters about her. I wonder why people
should dread letters of sympathy. To me the letters are nothing,
but what I long for is not to hear that people sympathise with me,
but to know how they loved her.
"To-day it is thick snow. Oh! she would have been so ill; now she
is not ill."
"_Tuesday evening, Nov. 15._--To-day a change came over the dear
face--a look of unspeakable repose and beauty such as I never saw
on any face before. The servants told me of it, and so it was; it
is the most wonderful expression--serene, solemn, holy beauty.
"All the letters are a great--not comfort--nothing can ever be
that, but I like to see how she was loved, and I look forward to
them. There were thirty to-day, and yet I thought no one could
know. What comes home to one is simple sympathy. One cannot help
envying the people who can be comforted in real sorrow by what one
may call Evangelical topics. It seems so perfectly irrelative to
hear that 'man is born to trouble,' that 'it is God that
chasteneth,' &c.
"I recollect now that on Saturday morning I was obliged to send off
some proof-sheets.[432] She asked what I was doing, and then said,
'I shall so enjoy reading it when it is all finished, but I must
have my little desk out then, because I shall not be able to hold
the book.' We have only just remembered this, which proves that
there must have been a slight rally then. It was all so short, so
bewildering at last, that things will only come back gradually.
"I shall be glad when the incessant noise of workmen[433]
downstairs ceases. It is so incongruous in the house now, but could
not be helped. My darling did not mind it; indeed it seems to me,
on looking back, as if she never found fault with anything; often
she did not hear it, and when she did, 'I like that pleasant
sound,' she said."
"_Nov. 16._--There were forty letters to-day, many wanting answers,
so I can only write a little, but it is a comfort to me to send you
any memories of those precious last days as they occur to me, and
as the first _mist_ of anguish clears up, so many things recur.
"You asked about Romo. Indeed it overwhelms me to think of it. The
dear little beast is so touching in his attempts to comfort me. He
comes and licks my hand and rubs himself against me, as he never
was in the habit of doing. In the first sad moments after the dear
eyes closed, Lea, by an old Northern custom, would send down to
'_tell_ the dog and the bees' (the bees would have died, she
thinks, if they had not been told), and Romo understood it all, and
did not howl, but cried plaintively all morning.
"I forget whether I spoke of the music. For the last four days my
darling had said at intervals that she heard beautiful music.
Thursday and Friday I thought nothing of it; on Saturday it began
to have a solemn meaning.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH LANE, HURSTMONCEAUX.]
"I have been to-day to Hurstmonceaux. It was necessary. There was
deep snow the first part of the way, but beyond Battle no snow at
all, leaves still on the trees, and quite a summer look. It was
more overpowering to me than I expected to pass Lime, and I almost
expected to see _her_ come across the field and open the
wicket-gate to her beloved walk to the school. The Haringtons[434]
were most kind in placing Hurstmonceaux Place at our disposal for
the funeral, and removed all scruples about it by saying how
really thankful they were to be able to show their affection for
the Mother in that way. I went up twice to the church. The road
thither and the churchyard looked most beautiful, and the spot
chosen, on the edge towards the level, with the view she always
thought so like the Campagna. I am allowed to enclose a little
space, which will contain my grave also.
"I called on Mrs. W. Isted,[435] and found her quite overpowered,
sitting with my darling's photograph. 'It is not only her own loss,
dearly as I loved her, but the deaths of all my others come back to
me, which she helped me to bear.'"
"_Nov. 17._--Do you know that through a mist of tears I have been
forced to go on sending off proof-sheets of 'Walks in Rome'? One of
the last things she spoke of was her hope that I would not let her
illness hinder the book. The dedication to her, already printed,
will seem touching to those who read it. She herself read _that_
when the first volume was finished. But her great pleasure of the
last few weeks was in the chapters of the 'Memorials' which I was
writing of her Alton life. To continue them with the copious
materials she has left will now be my one great interest. She has
left me perfectly free to make what use I like of all, and one day
made me write down from her dictation an expression to that effect.
The Alton life is certainly the most perfect ideal of a country
clergyman's life that can well be conceived."
"_Nov. 19._--I cannot leave home yet.... Leycester, Mamie, and many
others have written, as she always said they would, that their
hearts and houses are open to receive me, but this must be later.
Indeed, I shall cling to all she loved, and in the ever-living
remembrance of her shall be able to love _all_. I had even a kind
note from Mrs. Maurice[436] to-day: she said I should.
"Henry Papillon came yesterday, touchingly wishful to look upon the
dear face once more, and he was even more struck than I expected
with its immortal beauty.... To-day was a great wrench. This
morning the precious earthly form was sealed away from us."
"_Nov. 22._--I went through yesterday in a dream. I did not realise
it at all. Lea left Holmhurst in an agony of sobs and tears, but I
did not; I had so often thought of it, I seemed to have gone
through it all before, and then I had already lost sight of my
darling.
"Lea, John, Johnnie Cornford, and I went in the little carriage
_first_; Harriet, Anne, Rogers, Joe, and Margaret Cornford[437]
followed _her_. We reached Hurstmonceaux Place about half-past
twelve. In half-an-hour they all began to arrive: each and all of
my dear cousins were most kind to me."
JOURNAL (The Green Book).
"_Dec. 4, 1870._--I have been unable to write in my journal, the
hundred and ninety-two letters which I have had to answer have
taken all the time.... And I live still. I used to think I could
not live, but I am not even ill; and yet how my life is changed,
all the interest, all the happiness, all the sunshine gone, only
the systematic routine of existence left.
"My poor Lea is already beginning to be interested in her chickens
and her farm-life, and to think it all 'such a long time ago.' But
to me it seems as if it had only just happened, and the hour in
which her sweet eyes closed upon me has swallowed up all the hours
which have come since, and is always the last hour to me.
"I think it was about the third day afterwards that Lea came into
my room and told me that the look of wonderful beauty and repose
which appeared at the last had come back again to the dear
features. And so it was. It was the sweetest look of calm, serene
repose. The colour had all faded out of my darling's cheeks, which
had lost every sign of age, and were smooth and white as if they
were chiselled in marble. Her closed eyelids, her gently curving
mouth expressed the sweetest restfulness. The dear lame hand, quite
supple at last, had closed softly upon the other. And this lovely
image of her perfected state was lent to me till the last, when the
beloved features were closed away from me for ever.
"It was on the Saturday that Lea and I went in together for the
last time. Lea cried violently. I was beyond tears. We covered away
together all that was dearest to us on earth. I placed a lock of my
hair in her hands, and laid her favourite flowers by her. Monday a
day of rain and storm-cloud. I shall always associate the road to
Hurstmonceaux with the drive on that winter's morning with
swirling rain-clouds, and the waters out on the distant Levels
gleaming white through the mist. Coming down the hill near Boreham
how many memories of my dearest one came back to me,--of her
anxiety to put me out to walk at Standard Hill,--of her admiration
of the three pines on the hill-top; and then, near Lime, of walks
with her on dewy summer mornings, when I went with her in my
childhood to pick ground-ivy and violets in the fields behind Lime
Cross.
"The coffin lay in the centre of the drawing-room at Hurstmonceaux
Place, upon a high raised stand draped with white. All around it
hung a lovely wreath of flowers from Holmhurst, and at the foot
masses of flowers kindly sent by the present owners of Lime. Mrs.
H. Papillon[438] had sent a beautiful cross of white
chrysanthemums, and some one else a wreath, and in the centre,
linking all with a reminiscence of her sister Lucy, lay a bunch of
withered violets from Abbots Kerswell. Here, over the coffin of her
whose life was perfect peace, the two great enemies in the parish
of Hurstmonceaux shook hands and were reconciled.
"At two the eighteen bearers, all chosen from labourers whom she
had known, filed in in their white smock frocks and took up the
precious burden. Lea and I followed immediately, then Leycester,
Vere, and Emmie Penrhyn; Arthur, Augusta, and Mary Stanley; Morgan
and Mamie Yeatman; Dr. Vaughan, Frederick Fisher, Mrs. Hale, and a
long line of neighbours, clergy, and servants, walking two and two.
"Down the well-known avenue and lanes, the bearers advanced,
looking like a great band of choristers. I saw nothing, but some of
the others remarked that as we came away from the house a beautiful
silver cloud and rainbow appeared over it.
"Arthur and Augusta left the procession at the foot of the hill and
passed on before; so he met us at the gate.
"In the centre of the chancel, where I had seen the coffin of Uncle
Julius, there the coffin of my own darling lay, but it was covered
with no gloomy pall, only garlanded with flowers, the garlands of
her new life.
"At the grave, Lea stood on one side of me, Emmie on the other.
Arthur read most touchingly, and in the words of that service one
was lifted up, not drawn down: but indeed I felt it very little, I
only saw it in a dream.
"Afterwards I think they all came up and kissed me. Then they went
away, and Lea and I walked back alone through the shrubbery to
Hurstmonceaux Place, and so came home.
"To our most desolate home.
"On the Saturday after we went to Hurstmonceaux again. The Sunday
services at the church were most beautiful. In the morning 'How
bright those glorious spirits shine' was sung, and in the evening,
almost in the dark, 'Pilgrims of the night.' Mr. Munn[439] preached
on 'Bury me with my fathers--in the cave of Machpelah,' &c.,
speaking of how she was brought from a distant place, and how, in
foreign lands, her great wish had been to be laid at Hurstmonceaux,
and so to what I wished of the peculiar connection of my darling's
life with Hurstmonceaux, and of how the different scenes in the
parish which called up the remembrance of her sweet words and acts
connected with them, might also call up the recollection of those
truths to which her gentle life was a living witness. When Lea and
I went out to the grave afterwards, we found two poor women--Mrs.
Medhurst and Mrs. Harmer--standing there dressed in black, and the
little mound covered with flowers.
"I saw it once again next day, and made a little wall of holly and
ivy round it. Oh, my darling!--and then we returned here again, to
the ordinary life, only the door of the sacred chamber stands open,
and the room is cold and empty, and my heart and my life are
desolate. 'The sanctuary of sorrow' seems to me an expression full
of significance."
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
"_Holmhurst, Dec. 1, 1870._--Madame de Sta\xEBl shows how she must
have suffered when she wrote--'Le reveil, quel moment pour les
malheureux!' To-day is the first of a month in which my darling has
no share: each day there is something in which I seem to part with
her afresh. My life is so changed that it seems impossible to
believe that it is such a short time since I was so happy--only,
between the present dumb blank and the happy time are those
terrible thirty-six hours of illness, and in the thought of them I
am more than satisfied that she cannot go through them again. Each
minute of those hours comes back to me now so vividly--the
acuteness of the numb misery, which _really_ had no hope, with the
determination that she should see nothing but smiles to the last,
for my whole life afterwards would be long enough for tears.
"Poor Lea sits with me now for an hour every day after tea, and we
talk of every moment of those last days.
"It is most bitterly cold: she would have been _so_ ill."
"_Dec. 17._--Mrs. Tom Brassey passed me to-day, riding with a
party. She made them go on, and stopped to speak to me, then burst
into tears, and spoke most feelingly of old Mr. Brassey's death, to
whom I believe she was truly attached. Then she revealed the
enormous wealth to which they have fallen heirs. They expected to
have no more, as the father had already given each of his sons an
immense sum, but old Mr. Brassey has left six millions! She feels
the awful responsibility of such a heritage, and spoke admirably
and touchingly--said she trusted each of the three brothers would
set out with the determination to spend it worthily of their
father, and then of all their plans already made for the good of
others. It seemed odd to come back from discussing all this to the
great anxiety as to whether my income would amount to \xA3500, and if
I should be able to live on at Holmhurst.
"It is actually five weeks this evening since my darling was here,
and we were entering upon the utter anguish of that last night.
Sometimes the agony comes back to me, so that I am obliged to _do_
something which requires close attention to set it aside; but at
other times--generally--I can think with composure of the five
weeks she has spent well, and _warm_, and happy."
MRS. ARNOLD _to_ AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.
"_Dingle Bank, Nov. 21, 1870._--You will be in such deep grief that
I hardly know how to write to you; and yet I so loved the dear
Mother you have lost, so reverenced her goodness and sweetness and
holiness, that I cannot but hope you may like a few words from me
of truest sympathy, and indeed I can feel for you. To those at a
distance it is the thought of a dear friend transplanted from earth
to heaven, but to you there is the thought of the daily
companionship, the loving nursing, the perpetual consciousness of
what you were to her. In this, however, in the sense of the
continual help and comfort and love that she received from you,
will be your great consolation.
"I have never lost the impression made on me by her own _more_ than
resignation when she spoke to me at Rugby of her own separation
from what was dearest to her upon earth--there seemed such joy in
_his_ happiness, such a realising of it to herself, that earthly
clouds and shadows disappeared.
"I will not say more now, but for _her_ dear sake, and that of my
long and affectionate interest in you, I hope you will sometimes
let me hear of you."
LADY EASTLAKE _to_ AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.
"_7 Fitzroy Square, Dec. 4._--I have seen a notice in the _Times_
which has sent a pang through my heart, and hasten to tell you how
intensely I feel for you. None but those who know the bitterness of
a great sorrow can really sympathise with you, for only they can
measure the length and breadth of the suffering. I know of no
consolation but the conviction that God knows all and does all, and
that He will reunite in His good time to the Beloved One. Sorrow is
a mighty force, and its fruit ought to be commensurate: we sow
truly in tears, but the reaping in joy is, I believe, reserved for
another state. Still there is much to be done by sorrow's husbandry
even here, and assuredly were the fruits of the Spirit to be
attained without suffering, God would not put His poor children
through it.
"I fear that life must look very joyless before you, and that all
things for a time must seem altered, your very self most so. I can
only say be patient with _yourself_, and take every mitigation that
offers itself. I should be very glad to hear from you when you have
heart and leisure. You have seen me in bitter anguish, and will not
be shy of one who has drunk of that cup to the very dregs. God's
holy will be done!"
INDEX
TO VOLS. I., II. AND III.
INDEX
A.
ABERDEEN, John, 7th Earl of, iii. 43.
Ackermann, F\xE9lix, i. 36, 97, 158; ii. 192, 195, 423; iii. 53-56, 338, 349.
---- Madame Victoire, i. 31, 32, 96, 339-340, 354-356; ii. 192, 195,
405, 422-423, 499; iii. 52-64, 189, 253, 308, 310-312, 339, 351.
---- Victoria, iii. 308, 311.
Acland, Sir Thomas, ii. 149.
Acuto, ii. 426, 438-441.
Adeane, Henry John, i. 214.
Adelaide de France, Madame, iii. 23.
---- Queen of England, i. 289, 294.
Aitkens, Mr., of Kingston-Lyle, ii. 140.
Alacoque, Marguerite Marie, ii. 445.
Albert, the Prince Consort, i. 302; ii. 286-288.
Albrecht, Archduke of Austria, ii. 35-36.
Alcock, Mrs., story of, iii. 118-123.
Alderley, i. 61, 66; ii. 292, 293.
Aldermaston, ii. 219.
Alexander, Mary Manning, Mrs., i. 185, 248-251, 357, 469, 481; ii. 128.
Alford, Henry, Dean of Canterbury, i. 479; ii. 390-391, 432-433; iii.
155-157, 393-394.
---- Lady Marian, i. 293; ii. 298; iii. 28, 368.
Alfriston, i. 505.
Alice, H.R.H. the Princess, of Hesse, ii. 288.
Allan, Charles Stuart, ii. 515.
----John Hay, ii. 515.
Alnwick, ii. 353; iii. 33.
Alston, Carlotta, i. 2.
----Mary Margaret, i. 2, 5.
Alton Barnes, i. 45-48, 191-192, 278; iii. 110.
Amboise, ii. 495.
Anderson, Mr., of Bradley, ii. 320.
Angoul\xEAme, Marie Th\xE9r\xE8se de France, Duchesse d', ii. 298;
iii. 43-44.
Antibes, iii. 145-149.
Antonelli, Cardinal, ii. 72;
iii. 71.
Aponte, Dom Emmanuele, i. 6-8.
Aram, Eugene, ii. 332-334.
Arcachon, ii. 465.
Arkcoll, Mr. Thomas, ii. 228, 244.
Arles, iii. 184.
Arnold, Edward, iii. 329.
----Matthew, i. 177, 512.
----Mrs., i. 177; iii. 327-329, 418.
----Dr. Thomas, of Rugby, i. 160.
Ars, Jean Marie Vianney, le Cur\xE9 d', ii. 417-420.
Ars, visit to, iii. 134-136.
Ashdown, ii. 229.
Atbelstan, Mr., ii. 270.
Aumale, Henri, Duc d', iii. 18.
Autun, iii. 320.
B.
Babington, Mrs. Catherine, ii. 351.
Bacon, Mrs. Nicholas, iii. 169.
Baden, Frederick William, Grand Duke, and Louisa, Grand Duchess of, iii. 109.
Baden-Baden, i. 384.
Bagot, Mr. Charles, iii. 132.
---- Lucia, Lady, iii. 32.
---- Lord and Lady, iii. 368.
Balcarres, Colin, 3rd Earl of, iii. 25.
---- James, 5th Earl of, iii. 24.
Bamborough Castle, ii. 271, 354; iii. 8, 170.
Bankhead, Charles, secretary of legation at Constantinople, i. 26.
---- Maria Horatia Paul, Mrs., i. 27, 28, 296.
Bar le Duc, iii. 333.
Barnard, Lady Anne, iii. 14, 27, 324-326, ???.
Barnard Castle, ii. 275, 340.
Barraud, Madame and Mademoiselle, ii. 116, 125-128.
Barr\xE8re, Madame, iii. 87.
Barrington, Hon. Adelaide, ii. 139.
---- Hon. Augusta, ii. 139.
---- George, 5th Viscount, ii. 310.
---- Jane, Viscountess, ii. 138, 140.
---- Shute, Bishop of Durham, ii. 139.
---- William Keppel, 6th Viscount, ii. 139, 140.
---- Mrs. Russell, i. 282.
Bassi, Laura, i. 7.
Bayley, Mrs., iii. 132-134.
Beaujour, Ch\xE2teau de, ii. 500-503.
Beckett, ii. 138-140, 227, 229.
Beckwith, Mrs., of Silksworth, ii. 412.
Belgium, tour in, i. 377.
Belhaven, Hamilton, Lady, ii. 335-337, 354-355, 358;
iii. 35-36.
Belhaven, Lord, ii. 354, 358;
iii. 35, 45-46.
Bellagio, iii. 106.
Belsay, ii. 347.
Benalta, family story of, ii. 454-460.
Bengivenga, Francesca, iii. 200.
Bennet, Hon. Frederick, ii. 268-269.
---- Hon. George, ii. 268-269.
Bentley, Harriet, iii. 406, 412.
Benzoni, the sculptor, iii. 83.
Berchtesgaden, iii. 231.
Bergeret, Madame, story of, iii. 177-182.
Berkeley Castle, i. 287.
Berri, Caroline, Duchesse de, iii. 15-17, 43-44.
Berry, the Misses, i. 299-300.
Betharram, ii. 487.
Biarritz, ii. 488.
Bidart, ii. 489.
Birtles, iii. 117.
Blackett, Sir Edward and Lady, ii. 266-267, 341, 346;
iii. 170, 323.
Blackwood, Sir Arthur, iii. 243.
Blake, Sir Francis, iii. 31.
---- William, the artist, iii. 14.
Blenkinsopp Castle, ii. 353.
Blessington, Harriet Power, Countess of, i. 20, 37;
ii. 408.
Blomfield, Charles James, Bishop of London, i. 470.
Blommart, Miss Elizabeth, ii. 489.
Bodryddan, iii. 123.
Bologna, i. 7-9;
iii. 380.
Bolvilliers, Comtesse de, i. 343-351.
Bonaparte, Cardinal Lucien, iii. 287.
Bonis, Madame Maria de, iii. 373, 378.
Bonnyrigg, ii. 341.
Borghese, Ad\xE8le, Princess, ii. 58.
---- Guendolina, Princess, ii. 58, 59.
---- Marc-Antonio, Prince, ii. 58, 375.
Borghese, Pauline, Princess, ii. 336.
---- Teresa, Princess, ii. 58; iii. 85, 193.
Bosanquet, Charles, of Rock, ii. 278.
---- Mrs., of Rock, ii. 279.
Bothwell Castle, iii. 48.
Bourbon, Louis Henri Joseph, Duc de, iii. 21-23.
Bourges, ii. 310.
Bowes, ii. 276.
Bowes, Lady Anna, ii. 172, 173.
---- John, of Streatlam, ii. 173, 178, 179, 274-276.
---- Mrs. John, ii. 275.
Bowles, Miss, iii. 294, 298.
Boyle, Carolina Amelia Poyntz, Lady, i. 89, 291-292.
---- Hon. Carolina Courtenay, i. 289-294, 436-437, 508-509; ii. 381-384.
---- Miss Mary, i. 293; iii. 368, 370.
Bozledeane Wood, i. 361.
Bracciano, iii. 375.
Bradley Manor in Devon, i. 287.
---- in Northumberland, ii. 320.
Bradley, Rev. Charles, i. 297-299, 303-315, 332-335, 368, 369, 390-393,
396-398, 408.
---- Mrs. Charles, i. 303, 307, 369.
Brainscleugh, ii. 358.
Brassey, Henry and Albert, ii. 391.
---- Mrs. Thomas, iii. 417.
Brewster, Sir David, iii. 40.
Bridgeman, Lady Selina, ii. 389.
Brimham Rocks, ii. 339.
Brinkburn Abbey, ii. 365.
Brodie, Sir Benjamin, i. 248.
Brougham and Vaux, Henry, 1st Lord, iii. 143-144.
Brown, Dr., Professor at Aberdeen, i. 11.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, ii. 91, 409.
---- Robert, ii. 408.
Brownlow, John, and Earl, ii. 137.
Bruce, Rev. J. Collingwood, the antiquarian, ii. 318; iii. 49.
---- Hon. Mrs. Robert, iii. 203.
Brymer, Archdeacon (of Wells), i. 338.
---- Marianne Wilkinson, Mrs., i. 338.
Buchanan, Miss Helen, iii. 81.
Bufalo, the Venerable Gaspare del, ii. 425, 442.
Bulkeley, Anna Maria Hare, Mrs., i. 3, 494.
Bulman, Mrs., ii. 346.
Bunsen, Charles de, ii. 109.
---- Chevalier, afterwards Baron, i. 161-163, 164, 465, 504.
---- Emilia de, iii. 109.
---- Frances de, ii. 293; iii. 109.
---- George de, i. 481.
---- Rev. Henry de, ii. 328.
---- Madame, afterwards Baroness, i. 465; ii. 293, 333-336.
---- Matilda de, ii. 293.
---- Theodore de, i. 464; ii. 294.
Buntingsdale, i. 144, 208; ii. 326-327.
Burney, Miss, ii. 436.
Burns, Robert, the poet, ii. 169.
Burr, Mrs. Higford, ii. 220.
Butler, Rev. W. J., Vicar of Wantage, ii. 222-224.
---- Mrs., i. 501.
C.
Caen, i. 319.
Caerlaverock Castle, ii. 164.
Cai\xEBtani, Don Filippo. ii. 58.
---- Don Onorato, iii. 87.
Calotkin, Count, i. 15.
Cambo, ii. 490.
Cameron, Mr., and Lady Vere, ii. 8.
Cameron, Lady Vere, ii. 481-482.
Campbell, Charlotte Malcolm, Lady, i. 88.
---- Colin, i. 309, 310, 313.
Canevari, G. B., the portrait painter, ii. 75.
Cannes, iii. 136-150.
Canning, Charlotte, Countess, ii. 360; iii. 323.
Canterbury, i. 357-366; ii. 23-25; iii. 331-332, 394.
Capel, Monsignor, ii. 486.
Capheaton, ii. 350.
Capri, ii. 81.
Carew, Miss Julia Pole, iii. 372.
---- Mrs. Pole, iii. 375.
Carham, iii. 326.
Carlsruhe, i. 6; iii. 109.
Carlyle, Thomas, i. 166.
Carmichael, Sir William, iii. 46.
Caroline, Empress of Austria, ii. 42.
---- of Brunswick, Queen of England, iii. 14-15.
Carr of Hedgeley, family of, ii. 286.
Castel Fusano, ii. 390.
Castlecraig, iii. 46.
Castro, Don Alessandro del, iii. 193.
Cavendish, Admiral, and Mrs. George, ii. 94, 97.
---- Louisa, Hon. Mrs., i. 212.
---- Lord Richard, i. 212.
Cecchi, Cardinal, ii. 68.
Cecil, Lord Eustace, i. 241.
Cecinelli, Lucia, i. 53.
Cenci, Count Bolognetti, iii. 49, 85, 87.
Challinor, Mrs. Hannah, i. 150.
Chambord, Henri, Comte de, iii. 16-18.
Charles X., King of France, iii. 43.
Charlotte, Queen of England, ii. 436-437.
Charlotte, Princess, of Belgium, ii. 36, 37.
Charltons of Hesleyside, the, ii. 343.
Chartwell, i. 507; ii. 321.
Chase Dieu, Le, iii. 150.
Chequers, ii. 8.
Chesters, ii. 341; iii. 49.
Chetwode, Mrs. George, i. 157.
Chevreuse, ii. 125.
Chichester, Miss Catherine, ii. 94, 286.
Chillingham, ii. 267-271, 364; iii. 33.
Chingford, i. 312, 400.
Chipchase, ii. 343.
Cholmondeley, Mary Heber, Mrs., i. 142.
Christina, Queen, of Spain, ii. 57.
Civita Castellana, ii. 54.
Clarendon, Caroline, wife of the 5th Earl of, ii. 139.
Clayton, Mrs. Anne, ii. 318-319.
---- George Nathaniel, ii. 318, 353.
---- Isabel, Mrs. G. Nathaniel, ii. 318.
---- John, of Chesters, ii. 318, 343.
---- Miss, ii. 274, 318, 341-344.
---- Mr. Matthew, ii. 318-319.
Cleveland, William Henry, 1st Duke of, iii. 46.
Clifford, Captain, ii. 81.
Clinton, Lady Charles, ii. 477.
---- Lady Louisa, i. 383.
---- Miss Louisa, i. 59, 210, 257, 387-388.
Clive, Mrs. Archer, ii. 452-453.
Cluny, iii. 383.
Clutterbuck, Marianne Lyon, Mrs., of Warkworth, ii. 17, 284, 352.
Clyde, Falls of the, iii. 99.
Cobham, Claude Delaval, iii. 152-153.
Coigny, Augustin, Duc de, iii. 18-19.
Cole, Miss Florence, ii. 45, 54.
---- Miss Louisa, ii. 46.
Colegrave, Mrs. Francis, ii. 94, 286.
Coleman, Miss Sarah, i. 173.
Collatia, ii. 390.
Collins, Staunton, i. 153, 190.
Colonna, Isabella de Toledo, Princess, iii. 190.
Colquhoun, J. E. C., i. 507; ii. 322.
---- John Archibald, iii. 425.
Compton, Mrs., iii. 326.
Conington, John, Professor of Latin, ii. 4.
Conwy, Shipley, iii. 129.
---- Colonel Shipley, iii. 130.
Copeland Castle, ii. 364.
Corbet, Lady, of Adderley, iii. 401.
Cork and Orrery, Edmund, 8th Earl of, i. 293.
Costa le Cerda, Vicomte, ii. 115-116, 121.
Cottrell-Dormer, Mr. and Mrs., of Rousham, ii. 150.
Coulson, Colonel, ii. 354.
---- Hon. Mrs., ii. 354.
---- Misses Mary and Arabella, of Blenkinsopp, ii. 176, 222.
Courmayeur, ii. 409, 458.
Courtenay, Lady Agnes, iii. 318.
---- "Sir William" (Nichols Tom), i. 361-365.
Cousin, M. Victor, iii. 146.
Cowburne, Mrs., i. 128, 209.
Coxe, Rev. Henry Octavius, Bodleian Librarian, ii. 157.
Cracroft, Colonel and Mrs., iii. 382.
Cradock, Hon. Mrs. (Harriet Lister), i. 512; ii. 137-138.
Craster, family of, ii. 279.
Crecy, ii. 380.
Creslow Pastures, ii. 220.
Cresswell, Sir Cresswell, ii. 353.
Crichton Castle, ii. 172.
Croyland, iii. 164.
Cuffe, Sir Charles, ii. 58.
Cummings, Mr. and Mrs., iii. 380.
Cushman, Miss Charlotte, iii. 204-207, 386.
D.
Dallas, Mrs., iii. 380.
Dalton Hall, iii. 131.
Dalzell, ii. 359.
Dalzel, Mrs. Allen, iii. 172.
---- Aventina, Mrs., ii. 17-19, 172, 357; iii. 172, 174-176.
Dampierre, ii. 125.
Darley, George, i. 164.
Darling, Mr., of Bamborough, ii, 272.
Dasent, Sir George, i. 67, 448.
Dashwood, Anna Maria Shipley, Mrs., i. 17, 26, 157; iii. 125, 127-128.
---- Bertha, Lady, ii. 466, 477.
---- Sir Edwin, ii. 466.
D'Aubign\xE9, M. Merle, i. 453.
Davenport, Edward, of Capesthorne, ii. 142.
Davidoff, Ad\xE8le, Madame, i. 351; ii. 65-67, 76, 115, 416.
Davidson, Susan Jessop, Mrs., of Ridley Hall, ii. 172-177, 266, 272-274;
iii. 322-323.
Dawkins, Mrs. Francis, ii. 297; iii. 71-75, 314.
Deimling, Herr Otto, i. 162.
Denfenella, ii. 168.
Denison, Lady Charlotte, iii. 42.
---- Mr. Stephen, ii. 272.
Derby, Edward Smith Stanley, 13th Earl of, iii. 131.
Derwentwater, James Radcliffe, Earl of, ii. 266, 351.
De Selby, Mrs., iii. 71-80.
---- Mrs. Robert, iii. 191.
Des Voeux, Miss Georgiana, ii. 371-372; iii. 139.
Devonshire, Georgiana, wife of William, 5th Duke of, i. 5, 6.
Dickens, Charles, ii. 276.
Dilston, ii. 320.
Dixon, Louisa Simpkinson, Mrs., iii. 397.
Dixon-Browne, Mr. and Mrs., of Unthank, iii. 169.
Dolceacqua, ii. 253.
Dolgorouki, Prince Nicole, iii. 68, 84.
Doncaster, ii. 261.
Doria, Donna Guendolina, ii. 71.
---- Prince, ii. 424.
---- Donna Olimpia, ii. 72.
---- Donna Teresa, ii. 70.
D'Orsay, Count, i. 18, 20, 29, 37; ii. 408.
Dowdeswell, Miss, iii. 76, 82.
Dresden, i. 429.
Duckworth, Robinson, afterwards tutor to Prince Leopold and Canon of
Westminster, i. 446, 472; ii. 4, 33.
Dudley, John, Earl, i. 20.
Dumbleton, Miss Harriet, i. 269.
Dumfries, ii. 163.
Dunlop, Harriet, Mrs., iii. 258, 260, 281-282, 288, 291, 292, 298, 304,
306, 317.
Dunottar, ii. 166.
Dunstanborough Castle, ii. 269-270, 364; iii. 35, 36.
Duntrune, ii. 165.
Dupanloup, Monsignor, Bishop of Orleans, iii. 360.
Durham, ii. 262.
Durham, Beatrix, Countess of, ii. 364-366; iii. 35-39.
---- George-Frederick, Earl of, ii. 364-365; ii. 35-36.
Dyrham Park, i. 315.
E.
Eardley, Sir Culling, ii. 298.
Eastbourne, i. 63, 210, 256, 376, 505.
East Hendred, ii. 230.
Eastlake, Elizabeth Rigby, Lady, iii. 154-155, 418.
Eccles Greig, ii. 168.
Egerton, Lady Blanche, iii. 32, 33.
---- Rev. Charles, i. 136.
Elcho, Anne, Lady, ii. 356; iii. 42.
Ellisland, ii. 169.
Ellison, Mr. Cuthbert, i. 50.
---- Mrs., of Sugbrooke, iii. 169.
Elsdon, ii. 345.
Ely, iii. 8.
Erskine, Rev. J., and Mrs., iii. 200.
---- Thomas, of Linlathen, ii. 165, 278.
Escrick, ii. 437.
Eslington, ii. 320, 364.
Este, iii. 229.
Eugene Beauharnais, Prince, i. 20.
Eugenie, the Empress, i. 492; iii. 392.
Evans, Rev. Mr., iii. 3.
Eversley, Viscount, ii. 217.
Evreux, i. 326.
Exeter, Henry Philpotts, Bishop of, ii. 264.
F.
Facchini, Giacinta, "the Saint of St. Peter's," ii. 429-430; iii. 253-254.
Falconnet, Mademoiselle Judith, ii. 59.
Falkirk Tryste, iii. 48.
Farley Hungerford, i. 271-272.
Feilden, Rev. H. Arbuthnot, and Mrs., iii. 78-80.
Feilding, Lord and Lady, i. 340.
Fellowes, Susan Lyon, Mrs., ii. 272, 311.
Ferney Voltaire, i. 453.
Ferrara, ii. 47;
iii. 345.
Ferronays, M. de la, ii. 68.
Feuch\xE8res, Sophia Dawes, Madame de, iii. 21-23.
Fiano, Duke of, ii. 424;
iii. 269, 286.
---- Giulia, Duchess of, ii. 59.
Fielding, Copley, i. 164, 505.
Filiol, Sybil, i. 156.
Fina, S., iii. 343.
Finucane, Miss, iii. 209, 378.
Fisher, Frederick, iii. 67, 414.
FitzClarence, Lady Frederick, iii. 29-30.
Fitz-Gerald, Edward Fox, i. 29.
---- Jane Paul, Mrs. Edward, i. 29;
iii. 267, 269, 271, 272.
---- Pamela, wife of Lord Edward, i. 29.
Fitzherbert, Mrs., iii. 323.
Fitzmaurice, Mrs., iii. 225.
Fletcher, Miss, of Saltoun, ii. 355;
iii. 40, 42, 43.
---- Lady Charlotte, ii. 356;
iii. 43-45.
Flodden Field, ii. 281.
Florence, ii. 84; iii. 103, 315.
Florence, Henry, iii. 363.
Fontainebleau, i. 451.
Fontaines, iii. 183.
Fontarabia, ii. 493.
Fontenay, iii. 385.
Ford Castle, ii. 280-282, 360-363;
iii. 323-326.
Foster, Dr., Bishop of Kilmore, and Mrs., ii. 233-234.
---- Miss, ii. 234-239.
Fotheringham, Mrs., of Fotheringham, ii. 165.
Francesca Romana, S., iii. 224-225.
Francesco II., King of Naples, iii. 96-97, 85.
Franklin, Lady, iii. 2.
Fray, Miss, i. 268.
Frederick, Crown Prince of Prussia, afterwards Emperor of Germany, ii. 374.
---- the Great, ii. 148.
Fribourg, in Switzerland, ii. 112.
Fritwell Manor, ii. 151.
Fry, Elizabeth, Mrs., i. 229;
ii. 437.
Fullerton, Lady Georgiana, ii. 400, 403, 444.
G.
Gabet, M., ii. 421.
Gabriac, Marquis de, ii. 115.
---- Marquise de, ii. 67.
Gaebler, M. Bernard, i. 160.
Galicano, the Hermitage of, ii. 98.
Galway, Rev. Father, ii. 398-404, 427;
iii. 262, 286.
Garden, Miss Henrietta, i. 108;
iii. 192, 213, 220.
Gaskell, Mrs., the authoress, ii. 224;
iii. 117.
Gasperoni, the robber chieftain, ii. 54.
Gaussen, M., i. 453.
Gayford, Mrs., i. 53, 369.
Gemmi, adventure on the, i. 462.
Geneva, i. 452;
ii. 378.
George III., King of England, ii. 434-436.
George IV., King of England, iii. 14, 15, 176, 324.
Ghizza, Ancilla, iii. 234.
Giacinta, the "Saint of St. Peter's," ii. 429-430;
iii. 253-254.
Gibside, ii. 180.
Gibson, John, the sculptor, iii. 76-78.
Gidman, John, i. 131;
ii. 33, 83, 386;
iii. 232, 406, 412.
---- Mary Lea, i. 205-207, 210;
ii. 33, 468, 489;
iii. 193, 195, 316, 399, 403, 409, 412, 413, 414.
Gioberti, Signor, iii. 167.
Gladstone, Mrs., ii. 381.
Glamis Castle, i. 22.
Glamis, John Lyon, 6th Lord, i. 23.
---- John Lyon, 7th Lord, i. 23.
---- John, 8th Lord, i. 23.
Glastonbury, i. 98.
Goldschmidt, Madame (Jenny Lind), i. 230;
iii. 146-149.
Goldsmid, Nathaniel, ii. 68;
iii. 168.
---- Mrs. Nathaniel, iii. 69, 71-75, 93.
Goldstone Farm, i. 149, 208.
Gondi, Count, iii. 252.
Gordon, Hon. John, iii. 43.
Gore, Lady, i. 278.
Gosan, Lakes of, ii. 41.
Gosford, ii. 356.
Grande Chartreuse, La, ii. 258.
Grant, Dr., Bishop of Southwark, ii. 432.
---- Frederick Forsyth, i. 440;
ii. 151, 168.
Granville, Mr. Court, and Lady Charlotte, ii. 353.
Gregory, Mrs., ii. 482-486.
Gregory XVI., Pope, iii. 74.
Gresford, i. 96;
ii. 448.
Grey, Anna Sophia Ryder, Lady, of Falloden, ii. 279, 363.
---- Charles, 2nd Earl, iii. 36.
---- Lady Charlotte, widow of the Hon. Gen. Sir Henry Grey of Falloden,
ii. 251, 371, 377; iii. 139, 154.
---- Lady Elizabeth, ii. 276, 366.
---- Hon. and Rev. Francis, ii. 276-278, 366.
----, Sir George, of Falloden, ii. 279, 363; iii. 36.
---- Sir George, of New Zealand, ii. 214-217; iii. 330.
---- Lady Georgiana, ii. 332, 334-335, 337-339.
---- Henry George, 3rd Earl, iii. 35, 36.
---- Rev. Harry, i. 253.
---- Mr. John, of Dilston, ii. 266.
---- Maria, Countess, iii. 35-36.
Greville, Mrs., _n\xE9e_ Locke, ii. 94.
Grigor, Dr., iii. 373.
Grimaldi, ii. 250.
Grimaldi, the Marchesa, ii. 320.
Grote, Harriet Lewin, Mrs., i. 368; ii. 218.
Grove, Mrs., iii. 394.
Guildford, the trial at, iii. 294.
Guizot, M. Fran\xE7ois Pierre Guillaume, i. 320.
Gunnora, Duchess of Normandy, i. 319.
Gurney, Miss Anna, i. 230.
---- Mrs. Catherine, i. 229.
H.
Haig, the Misses, iii. 378.
Hale, Dr. Douglas, ii. 369, 497???.
---- Mrs., ii. 497???; iii. 414.
Halifax, Miss Caroline, i. 284.
Hall, Mrs. Richard, iii. 159, 195, 197.
Hallam, Arthur, i. 509.
Hallein, mines of, ii. 42.
Hallingbury, iii. 7.
Hallstadt, ii. 40.
Hamilton Palace, ii. 358.
Hamilton, Alexander, 10th Duke of, ii. 336, 359.
---- Mrs. Cospatrick Baillie, iii. 395.
---- Lady Emily, iii. 48.
Hamilton, Hon. Margaret Dillon, Mrs., i. 382.
---- Mary, Duchess of, ii. 358.
Hampden, Great, ii. 8.
Hanover, King George of, ii. 152, 153.
Harcourt, Archbishop, iii. 157.
Hardwicke, Susan, Countess of, ii. 403.
---- Elizabeth, Countess of, iii. 24-27, 323.
Hare, Anna-Maria Clementina, i. 11, 13.
---- Anne Frances Maria Louisa, i. 39, 160, 338-357, 370; ii. 55-57, 70,
72, 114-115, 182-213, 284, 400, 409-432, 499-517; iii. 68, 89, 232,
233-272.
---- Augustus John Cuthbert: birth of, i. 42;
baptism, 50;
adoption, 51;
is sent to England, 53;
childhood of, 54-166;
sent to school at Harnish, 167;
private school life of, 170;
at Harrow, 214-246;
at Lyncombe, 247-296;
at Southgate, 297-401;
tour in Normandy, 318-331;
tour in Belgium, Germany, and France, 377-387;
goes to University College, Oxford, 402;
second tour in Germany and France, 422-436;
in France and Switzerland, 450-465;
in Wales, 501-503;
in Scotland, ii. 17-23;
leaves Oxford, 31;
in Switzerland and Austria, 33-44;
first journey to Rome and Naples, 45-84;\
summer at Florence and Lucca, 84-103;
autumn in Northern Italy and Paris, 103-128;
writes Murray's Handbook for Berks, Bucks, and Oxfordshire, 133-241;
second summer in Scotland, 162-172; has to leave Hurstmonceaux, 227;
leaves Lime, 243;
settles at Holmhurst, 244;
spends the winter at Mentone, 246-258;
writes Murray's Handbook for Durham and Northumberland, 260-366;
spends the spring at Nice and early summer in Switzerland, 370-380;
second winter at Rome, 384-409;
visit to Eserick, 433;
spring at Pau and Biarritz, 462-497;
summer in Northumberland, iii. 8-49;
third winter at Rome, 50-109;
winter at Cannes, 134-152;
fourth winter at Rome, 183-232;
death of his sister, 232;
is attacked by a Roman Catholic conspiracy, 272-312;
fifth winter at Rome and dangerous illness, 314-320;
fifth winter at Rome, 333-386;
death of his adopted mother, 400.
Hare, Augustus William, Rector of Alton-Barnes, i. 6, 13, 14, 43-49.
---- Mrs. Augustus (Maria Leycester), i. 43, 54-80, 98-171, 187-196,
200-201, 210-212, 240, 254, 259, 262, 365, 376-377, 437-438, 442-444,
450, 454, 464, 466, 469, 487-492; ii. 14-17, 44-49, 76, 80, 85, 97, 109,
130, 227-229, 243, 246-247, 259, 326-328, 367-372, 392-393, 460-497;
iii. 3, 84, 103, 107, 110, 141, 183, 187-190, 202-232, 320-322, 331,
337-419.
---- Miss Caroline, i. 4, 89, 94, 291.
---- Caroline, daughter of Francis and Anne, i. 33, 35.
---- Francis, Dean of St. Paul's and Bishop of St. Asaph and Chichester,
i. 1, 2; ii. 156.
---- Francis George (the elder), i. 6-21, 26, 29-42, 49-53, 84-85, 95,
157-159; ii. 57.
---- Francis George (the younger), i. 35, 92-94, 160, 373-375; ii.
400-402, 448; iii. 240, 248, 257-259, 276, 278, 282-313.
Hare, Mrs. (Anne Frances Paul), i. 33-42, 51, 53, 95, 160, 260-261, 276,
339-355, 370-376; ii. 55-57, 182-213, 214, 397-406; iii. 53, 54.
---- George, i. 91-94.
---- Georgiana, afterwards Mrs. Frederick Maurice, i. 13, 16, 82-83, 280.
---- Gustavus Cockburn, i. 13, 123, 287, 481.
---- Mrs. Gustavus (Annie Wright), i. 123.
---- Mrs. Henckel, i. 3, 4, 89, 90.
---- Henry, i. 91.
---- Julius Charles, i. 6, 10, 14, 49, 50, 59, 67-75, 77, 80-81, 99,
104-107, 109-111, 122, 156, 157, 176, 179, 251-253, 261-262, 357,
466-469, 476, 478, 480-484.
---- Mrs. Julius (Esther Maurice), i. 178-190, 201-203, 210, 238-240,
251, 260, 285, 357, 445, 467; ii. 128-129, 393-394.
---- Marcus Augustus Stanley, i. 74, 86-88; iii. 366, 370.
---- Marcus Theodore, i. 6, 14, 85, 96, 175, 190, 192, 194-196.
---- Mrs. Marcus (Hon. Lucy Anne Stanley), i. 49, 74, 167, 175, 178,
192, 194-196, 201-204; iii. 318-319.
---- Miss Marianne, i. 4, 10, 89, 95, 291.
---- Mary Margaret Alston, Mrs., i. 494; ii. 156.
---- Reginald John, i. 13.
---- Theodore Julius, i. 160, 204.
---- Rev. Robert, Rector of Hurstmonceaux, i. 4, 5.
---- Rev. Canon Robert, i. 2, 6, 494.
----, William Robert, i. 38, 161, 373-375; ii. 401-402, 411, 452-453,
514; iii. 241-250.
Harnham, ii. 351.
Harnish, i. 170.
Harris, Hon. Reginald Temple, i. 264, 277, 282.
Harrison, Archdeacon Benjamin, and Mrs., iii. 331-332.
Harrow, i. 214.
Hastings, i. 122.
Hatfield, i. 307, 313.
Hawker, Misses Jane and Adelaide, iii. 106-107, 146.
Hawkestone, i. 148, 208; ii. 327.
Hawtrey, Dr. Edward Craven, Provost of Eton, ii. 230-232.
---- Miss, ii. 231.
Hay, Adam, of King's Meadows, ii. 137; iii. 46, 146.
---- Miss Ida, ii. 372.
---- Sir Adam, ii. 357; iii. 146.
Heber, Rev. Reginald, Rector of
Hodnet, and Bishop of Calcutta, i. 44.
---- Mrs. Reginald (Emilia Shipley), i. 45; iii. 125.
Hedley, Rev. W., Dean of University College, afterwards Rector of
Beckley, i. 405.
Heidelberg, i. 380.
Heiligenkreutz, ii. 38.
Henckel, Mrs., i. 90.
Herries, Marcia, Lady, iii. 237.
Hesleyside, ii. 343.
Hibbert, Caroline Cholmondeley, Mrs., iii. 117.
Hickledon Hall, ii. 283.
Higginson, Miss Adelaide, i. 479.
---- Lady Frances, i. 479.
High Force, the, ii. 340.
Hill, Ann, Viscountess, i. 148.
---- Sir Rowland, i. 147.
---- Viscount, i. 145.
Hobart, Vere Henry, Lord, and Mary Catherine, Lady, ii. 389.
Hodnet, i. 143; ii. 327.
Hogg, James, the Ettrick Shepherd, ii. 314-315.
Holmhurst, ii. 241-246, 259, 368; iii. 320.
Holy Island, ii. 271-272.
Hood, Henry, iii. 152.
Hope, Lady Mildred, ii. 14.
Hornby, Mrs., of Dalton, iii. 80, 131, 329-330.
Horsley, Bishop, iii. 332.
Hosmer, Miss Harriet, the sculptress, iii. 76, 368.
Hos Tendis, i. 4.
Houblon, Mr., and Mrs. Archer, ii. 390; iii. 7.
Houghton, Robert Monckton, 1st Lord, iii. 229, 360.
Hour, the Holy, ii. 499.
Housesteads, ii. 343.
Howard, Edward Henry, Monsignor, afterwards Cardinal, ii. 67.
---- Lady Victoria, iii. 145.
Howick, iii. 34, 35.
Hughan, Miss Janetta, ii. 284.
Hughes, Miss, "Sister Marion," i. 473-474.
Hull, Henry Winstanley, i. 164, 196-197, 501.
Hulne Abbey, iii. 33.
Hunt, Sir J., iii. 31.
Hurstmonceaux, i. 1-4, 9-12, 54-60, 93, 156-158, 164-166, 187-190,
258-260, 437-438, 475-478, 504-507; ii. 14, 227-228; iii. 410-411,
413-416.
Hutt, William, M.P. for Gateshead, ii. 180.
Hy\xE8res, ii. 370.
I.
Ignatius, Brother, iii. 81-82.
Ingilby, Elizabeth Macdowell, Lady, of Ripley, ii. 283, 337.
---- Miss, ii. 332.
Irongray Church, the, ii. 164.
J.
Jackson, Dean of Christ Church, i. 15.
Janin, Jules, iii. 6.
Jelf, Dr., Canon of Christ Church, ii. 152-153.
Jersey, Sarah, Countess of, iii. 8-9.
Jerusalem, Bishopric of, i. 163.
Jeune, Dr. Francis, Master of Pembroke College, afterwards Bishop of
Peterborough, ii. 6; iii. 161-168.
Jocelyn, Lady Frances Cowper, Viscountess, iii. 140.
Johnson, Mr., of Akeley Heads, ii. 264-265.
Jolliffe, Colonel Hylton, i. 25.
Jones, Anna Maria Shipley, Lady, i. 6, 13, 16; ii. 144.
---- Mr., of Branxton, ii. 280.
---- Sir William, i. 6.
Jowett, Rev. Benjamin, tutor and Master of Balliol, i. 402, 404, 420,
439, 472; ii. 221, 222.
Joyce, Miss, iii. 95.
K.
Keith, Lady, iii. 26.
Kershaw, Rev. E., and Mrs., ii. 388.
Kielder, ii. 342.
Kilvert, Rev. Robert, i. 167, 172, 213.
Kilvert, Thermuthis Coleman, Mrs. Robert, i. 168.
King's Meadows, ii. 357.
Kirk-Newton, ii. 362.
Knaresborough, ii. 332.
Knebel, Mademoiselle, ii. 387.
Knox, Mrs. John, ii. 274.
K\xF6nigsfelden, iii. 108.
Kuper, Mrs. and Miss, iii. 338, 339.
L.
Labre, the Venerable, ii. 443.
Landor, Julia Thuillier, Mrs., ii. 92, 407.
---- Walter Savage, i. 16, 18, 26, 37, 265-268, 270, 277, 289, 292, 510;
ii. 111-112, 407-409.
Laire, M., the antiquary, i. 324.
Lamarre, M., ii. 404-405.
Lamartine, Alphonse de, iii. 383.
Langford, Elizabeth, Viscountess, iii. 129.
Larmignac, Mademoiselle Martine de, ii. 193, 505.
Large, Mrs., iii. 309, 310.
Lawley, Hon. and Rev. Stephen, ii. 433.
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, i. 21.
Lea, Mary, i. 50, 54, 60, 78, 117, 122, 124, 150, 171, 205, 487.
Lefevre, Sir John Shaw, ii. 213, 454.
Legh of Lyme, Emily Wodehouse, Mrs., iii. 113, 116.
Lehmann, Dr., i. 9, 11.
Leigh, Miss Theodosia, i. 178.
Lennox, Lady Arthur, ii. 354.
----- Miss Ethel, ii. 354.
Le Puy, iii. 149.
L'Estelle, ii. 480, 487.
Le Strange, Hamon Styleman, of Hunstanton, ii. 137.
Leslie, Lady, ii. 322-324.
Leuk, Baths of, i. 460.
Leycester, Miss Emma Theodosia, i. 114, 500; ii. 477-481.
---- Mr. and Mrs. Henry, of White Place, ii. 156-157.
---- Judge Hugh, i. 141.
---- Maria, youngest daughter of Rev. Oswald, i. 33.
---- Miss Charlotte, i. 114, 317, 376, 450, 454-458, 480, 487, 499; ii.
33, 161, 289, 479; iii. 200, 208-221, 322, 397, 398.
---- Miss Georgiana, iii. 200.
---- Mrs. Oswald (Elizabeth White), i. 102, 126-142, 209, 228-229, 272-274.
---- Rev. Oswald, Rector of Stoke upon Terne, i. 44, 61, 126, 207-208.
---- Ralph, of Toft, i. 317.
---- Mrs. Susannah, wife of Ralph Leycester of Toft, i. 66.
Lichfield, ii. 330.
Liddell, Miss Amelia, ii. 264, 271.
---- Hon. Colonel Augustus, iii. 367.
---- Hon. Mrs. Augustus, iii. 367.
---- Miss Charlotte, ii. 264, 271.
---- Charlotte Lyon, Mrs., i. 283; ii. 263, 271; iii. 8, 171.
---- Edward, iii. 365-368.
---- Hon. George, ii. 262, 263, 318, 321.
---- Hon. Mrs. George, ii. 263, 318.
---- Hon. Hedworth, ii. 364.
---- Henry, Head-master of Westminster and Dean of Christ Church, i. 283;
ii. 9, 157.
---- Rev. Henry, Rector of Easington, and trustee of Bamborough Castle,
i. 283; ii. 263; iii. 8-10, 171.
---- Maria Susannah Simpson, Lady, i. 25.
---- Hon. Thomas, ii. 139.
---- Rev. William, ii. 264.
Lime, at Hurstmonceaux in Sussex, i. 57-60, 66-75.
Limosin, Madame Flora, iii. 311, 339, 349.
Lincluden Abbey, ii. 164.
Lind, Madame Jenny, i. 236.
Lindsay, Lady Margaret, iii. 27.
Liszt, Franz, ii. 389.
Londonderry, Frances Anne, Marchioness of, iii. 9.
---- Mary, Marchioness of, iii. 270.
Lothian, Lady Cecil Talbot, widow of the 7th Marquis of, i. 339, 356;
ii. 398-404, 409, 444; iii. 153, 270, 287, 294, 298.
---- William Schomberg, 8th Marquis of, iii. 47.
---- Constance, Marchioness of, iii. 47.
Louis, King, of Bavaria, ii. 374.
Lovat, Simon, Lord, ii. 351.
Lucca, Bagni di, ii. 93.
Lucchesi, Marchese, iii. 17.
Lucerne, ii. 33.
Lucy, Mrs., of Charlecote, ii. 14.
Lushington, Dr., ii. 298-309.
Lyall, William Rowe, Dean of Canterbury, i. 359.
Lyme Hall, iii. 113.
Lyncombe, i. 261.
Lyne, Rev. Leycester, iii. 81.
Lynn-Linton, Mrs., i. 268.
Lyon, Sir John, of Glamis, i. 23.
---- Sir John, first Baron Kinghorn, i. 22.
---- Thomas, of Hetton, ii. 317.
---- Mrs. Thomas, of Hetton, ii. 317.
Lyons, i. 451.
M.
Macaulay, Lord, i. 515; ii. 218.
Macmurdo, General, iii. 176.
Macon, iii. 383.
Macsween, Alexander, i. 171.
Mainsforth, ii. 309.
Makrina, La Madre, of Minsk, ii. 72-74.
Malcolm, Miss Ann Emilia, i. 435.
---- Lady, i. 435.
---- Miss Kate, i. 435.
Malmesbury, James Edward, 2nd Earl of, iii. ???.
Manners, Lady John, ii. 284.
Manners-Sutton, Archbishop, iii. 157.
Mannheim, i. 53, 383.
Manning, Archdeacon Henry, afterwards Cardinal, i. 98, 339; ii. 395;
iii. 1, 308, 360.
Mantua, iii. 337.
Marbourg, i. 425.
Marie Amelie, Queen of the French, i. 274.
Marie-Anne, S\x9Cur, ii. 443.
Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, ii. 298;
prison of, ii. 125.
Marlborough, John, 1st Duke of, i. 1.
Marsh, Miss Catherine, i. 407; ii. 289; iii. 245-247, 250.
Martin, Baron, iii. 297.
Masham, Mrs., ii. 309.
Massie, Mrs., iii. 113.
Mastai-Ferretti, Conte, ii. 236-240.
Matfen, ii. 266, 346.
Matthias, Maria de, foundress of the "Order of the Precious Blood," ii.
426, 438-442; iii. 86, 238-239.
Maurice (Annie Barton), Mrs. Frederick, i. 70.
---- Esther Jane, i. 73, 112, 176-178.
---- Rev. Frederick Denison, i. 70-72, 111, 280.
---- Georgiana Hare, Mrs. Frederick, iii. 412.
---- Harriet, i. 179.
---- Mary, i. 179, 182.
Maurice, Priscilla, i. 70-73, 112, 181-182, 410.
Maximilian, Archduke and Emperor, ii. 36.
Medine, Count Battistino, iii. 338.
Melun, M., Protestant pasteur at Caen, i. 321.
Mentone, ii. 246-258; iii. 185.
Merlini, Don Giovanni, Father-General of the Precious Blood, ii. 425,
427, 442.
Merode, Monsignor de, iii. 70.
Meyer, M. Carl Friedrich, i. 382.
Mezzofanti, Cardinal, i. 9.
Milligan, William Henry, i. 416, 420, 422, 493, 499; ii. 1, 2, 131.
Milman, Henry Hart, Dean of St. Paul's, ii. 231.
Milner, Elizabeth Mordaunt, Lady, i. 96.
Mohl, M. Julius, ii. 118.
---- Madame, ii. 118-121; iii. 5-7.
Monceaux, Ch\xE2teau de, iii. 383.
Monk, Miss, iii. 203.
Montagu, Lady Elizabeth, ii. 437.
Montbard, iii. 383.
Mont Blanc, the tour of, i. 458.
Monteith, Robert, of Carstairs, iii. 95, 288, 293, 295.
---- Wilhelmina Mellish, wife of Robert Monteith of Carstairs, ii. 427;
iii. 289, 290, 294.
Monte Cassino, ii. 78.
Montgolfier, Madame de, iii. 385.
Montgomery, Hon. Mrs. Alfred, iii. 71, 96, 239, 280, 282, 284, 289, 294, 301.
Moore, Archdeacon Henry, of Stafford, i. 164; ii. 132.
Morlot, Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, ii. 121-122.
Morpeth, ii. 277, 365.
Morini, Padre Agostino, iii. 256.
Morley, Albert-Edmund, 3rd Earl of, iii. 145.
---- Harriet, Countess of, iii. 139.
Mounteagle, Lady, iii. 158.
Mount-Edgecumbe, Caroline, Countess of, ii. 356.
---- Katherine, Countess of, iii. 138.
---- William Henry, 4th Earl of, iii. 137, 145.
Munich, iii. 336.
Munn, Rev. John Reade, iii. 415.
Murray, John, the third, ii. 133, 134, 260.
N.
Naples, ii. 80.
---- Francesco II., King of, iii. 90-97
---- Marie of Bavaria, Queen of, iii. 86, 94.
---- Marie Th\xE9r\xE8se Isabelle, Queen of, iii. 86, 189.
Napoleon I., i. 91.
Napoleon III., Emperor of the French, ii. 508.
Narni, iii. 100.
Naworth, ii. 354.
Naylor, Anna Maria Mealey, Mrs. Hare, i. 13, 82-83, 280, 287.
---- Bethaia, i. 4.
---- Francis, i. 1.
---- Francis Hare, i. 5, 11.
---- Georgiana Shipley, Mrs. Hare, i. 5-12.
---- Miss Grace, i. 1, 260.
---- Robert Hare, i. 2.
Neri, S. Filippo, iii. 201.
Neuch\xE2tel, ii. 113.
New Abbey, ii. 164.
Newbattle Abbey, iii. 47.
Newcastle-on-Tyne, ii. 318.
Newman, Rev. John Henry, afterwards Cardinal, iii. 1-2.
Nice, ii. 370.
Nicholas I., Emperor of Russia, ii. 74, 506.
Nicholson, Miss, iii. 372.
Normanby, Maria Liddell, wife of the 1st Marquis of, ii. 93, 204, 212.
Northcote, Captain and Mrs., ii. 364.
North Berwick, ii. 357.
Norwich, i. 116-120, 229.
Nunnington Hall, i. 16.
Nuremberg, i. 435.
O.
Oberlin, ii. 109.
Oberwesel, iii. 232.
Ogle, Miss, the authoress, ii. 350.
Orvieto, ii. 84, 385.
Ossulston, Charles, Lord, ii. 268-269.
Otterburn, ii. 344.
Oxenham, Rev. W., i. 236.
Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of, iii. 153.
---- Countess of, i. 18.
P.
Padua, iii. 338-339.
P\xE6stum, ii. 83.
Pallavicini, Carolina, Princess, ii. 59.
Palmer, Mr. William, ii. 207.
Palmerston, H. Temple, 1st Earl of, i. 12.
Panizzi, Sir Antonio, ii. 132; iii. 142.
Pantaleone, Dr., ii. 374-376.
Paolucci di Calboli, Marchese Annibale, ii. 388.
---- Marchese Raniero, ii. 388.
Papillon, Rev. Henry, iii. 412.
---- Mrs. H., iii. 414.
Paray le Monial, ii. 445, 499.
Paris, i. 318-319, 327; ii. 114-128.
Parisani, Palazzo, i. 261, 340, 373; ii. 55-56; iii. 190.
Parker, John Henry, ii. 9; iii. 319.
---- Mrs. J. H., i. 473.
---- Lady Katherine, iii. 145.
Parry, Catherine, Lady, i. 279.
---- Sir Edward, the Arctic voyager, i. 114, 279.
---- Edward, Bishop of Dover, i. 279.
---- (Isabella Stanley) Lady, first, wife of Sir Edward, i. 114.
---- Serjeant, iii. 298, 299, 303.
Pastacaldi, Padre, iii. 313.
Paterson, Mrs., of Linlathen, ii. 165.
---- Monsignor, iii. 294, 295, 301, 302, 307.
Patrizi, Cardinal, iii. 76.
Pattenden, Deborah, i. 211.
Paul, Anne Frances, i. 25, 26, 30.
---- Eleanor-Maria, i. 42, 95, 351-352; ii. 69-70, 94, 103-106, 206,
411-415; iii. 262, 266, 315.
---- Elizabeth Halifax, Lady, i. 284, 295, 453.
---- Frances Eleanor, Lady, i. 21, 26.
---- Jane, i. 28, 295.
---- Sir John Dean, Bart., i. 21, 30, 50, 84, 284, 295.
---- Sir John Dean, the younger, i. 495.
---- Maria Horatia, i. 27, 296.
---- Mary, Lady, widow of Berkeley, Napier of Pennard, i. 84.
---- William Wentworth, i. 295.
Payne, Mrs., iii. 87.
Peabody, Mr. George, ii. 372-374.
---- Robert, iii. 341, 344, 360, 370.
Peakirk, iii. 165.
Pearson, Rev. Hugh, Rector of Sonning, i. 120, 411, 470; ii. 221.
Peebles, ii. 357.
Peglia, ii. 253.
Peglione, ii. 253, 255, 372.
Pellerin, Monsignor, ii. 68-69.
Pellew, Hon. George, Dean of Norwich, i. 231.
Pencaitland, ii. 356.
Pennyman, Lady, ii. 337-338.
Penrhyn, Lady Charlotte, i. 48, 141-142, 408-409.
---- Edward, i. 48, 69, 208, 408, 464, 514; ii. 259-260.
---- Miss Emma, i. 383-384, 408, 464; iii. 377, 414.
---- Mr. and Mrs. Leycester, iii. 414.
Percy, Lord Henry, iii. 145.
---- Hugh Heber, iii. 159.
---- Mrs. Heber (Emily Heber), ii. 159.
---- Dr. Hugh, Bishop of Carlisle, ii. 160.
Petit, Miss Emma, ii. 328.
---- Rev. J. L., the ecclesiologist, ii. 256-258, 330.
Pietra Santa, ii. 102.
Pile, Mr. Robert, i. 60; iii. 112.
---- Mrs. Robert, i. 60, 171, 192, 278.
Piombino, Prince and Princess, ii. 428.
Piper, Mrs., i. 103, 260.
Pisa, ii. 101; iii. 52, 190, 310-312, 338-358.
Pitcairn, Mrs., ii. 289.
Pius IX., Pope, i. 341; ii. 61-64, 289, 428; iii. 70, 71, 80, 93, 167,
190, 319, 360.
Playfair, Sir Hugh Lyon, Provost of St. Andrews, ii. 170.
Plumptre, Rev. Edward, Dean of Wells, i. 179.
---- Rev. Dr. Frederick Charles, Master of University College, i. 405,
441, 474
---- Harriet Maurice, Mrs. E., i. 179.
Pole, Lady Louisa, i. 354.
---- Miss Marguerite, i. 352-357; iii. 248.
---- Sir Peter Van Notten, i. 352.
Polignac, Duc de, iii. 43.
Ponsonby, Miss Melita, ii. 358.
Porson, Dr. Richard, ii. 376.
Portman, Hon. Walter, i. 306, 308, 332, 452.
Port Royal, ii. 125.
Porto Fino, ii. 254.
---- Venere, iii. 51.
Poulevey, P\xE8re de, ii. 416.
Powell, Lucilla Maurice, Mrs., i. 179.
Prague, i. 432.
Praslin, Duchesse de, i. 245; iii. 19-20.
Pr\xE2t, Marquis and Marquise de, ii. 115.
Preignier, Marquise du, ii. 118.
Prentiss, Mr., i. 164.
Prosperi, Monsignor, iii. 70.
Pusey, Dr. Edward Bouverie, iii. 70.
R.
Ramsay, Mrs., iii. 193, 198.
Rathdonnell, Lady, iii. 83.
Ratisbon, Le P\xE8re, ii. 68.
Ravenna, ii. 48.
Ravensworth, Henry Liddell, Earl of, ii. 453.
Ravignan, P\xE8re de, i. 353, 355.
Reedswire, the, ii. 345.
Reisach, Cardinal de, iii. 96.
Rianzares, Duc de, ii. 57.
Richmond, Elizabeth Liddell, Mrs.
Brook, ii. 208, 209, 213.
----George, the artist, ii. 214.
Ridley Hall, ii. 172-178, 266, 272, 341; iii. 170.
Rignano, Emilio, Duke of, ii. 70.
Rimini, ii. 49.
Ripley Castle, ii. 283, 332-336.
Robinson, Miss, ii. 310-317.
Rockend, i. 85-87, 251.
Roddam, Mr. and Mrs., of Roddam, ii. 280, 282, 364.
Roleston, Mary Pierina, Abbess of the Precious Blood, ii. 425, 438-442;
iii. 238, 266-268, 270, 274, 275, 287, 295, 298, 305, 306.
Rome, ii. 54-76, 387-391, 422-432; iii. 65-100, 313-319, 359-378.
Rosam, Miss, i. 504.
Rothbury, ii. 365.
Rousham, ii. 150.
Routh, Dr. Joseph Martin, President of Magdalen, i. 447-450.
Rowley, Charlotte Shipley, Hon. Mrs., iii. 129.
Royat, Baths of, iii. 150.
Ruskin, John, ii. 107-109, 277, 484.
Russell, Lady Frankland, ii. 8, 240.
---- Sir John, of Chequers, ii. 240.
---- Mr. and Lady Emily, iii. 368.
Rutherford, of Egerton, Mr. and Mrs., ii. 322-324.
Ruthven, Mary, Lady, ii. 335-337, 354-356; iii. 39, 42-43, 47.
Rutson, Albert, ii. 7, 9, 16.
Rye House, the, i. 314.
Ryton, ii. 320.
S.
Sackville, S. Stopford, of Drayton, ii. 137.
Sainte Aldegonde, Madame, iii. 71.
St. Andrews, ii. 19, 170.
S. Bernard, Le Grand, i. 459.
S. Denis, i. 327.
S. Emilion, ii. 494.
S. Gemignano, iii. 342-344.
S. Giorgio, Lady Anne, ii. 86-90; iii. 192-193, 358.
---- Contessa Carolina di, ii. 90-91; iii. 191.
S. Pierre, Le Cur\xE9 de, ii. 420.
S. Remo, ii. 377.
Salette, La, ii. 512.
Salis, Comtesse de, ii. 233-237.
Salt, Miss Harriet, ii. 328.
---- Miss Sarah, ii. 256-258, 328.
Salzburg, ii. 40; iii. 231.
Sandwich Islands, Emma, Queen Dowager of the, iii. 2-3, 109.
Santa-Croce, Catherine Scully, Princess of, ii. 59-61.
---- Donna Vincenza, iii. 91.
Sartines, M. de, ii. 145.
Savona, iii. 186.
Saxon Switzerland, i. 430.
Saye and Sele, 14th Baron, ii. 152.
Schouvaloff, Count, ii. 65.
Scott, Sir Walter, ii. 166, 309, 312-314.
Sculthorpe, i. 4.
Sedgwick, Professor Adam, i. 120, 164.
Selman, Sarah, i. 3.
Sepolti Vivi, the, iii. 73-76.
Serafina della Croce, iii. 234-235, 287.
Serlupi, Marchese, iii. 190, 197.
Sermoneta, Margherita, Duchess of, ii. 58.
---- Michelangelo, Duke of, ii. 58; iii. 87.
Servites, Order of the, ii. 445.
Sestri, iii. 187.
Seymour, Mrs. Hamilton, iii. 395.
Shaw-Lefevre, Miss Maria, ii. 392.
---- Miss Mary, ii. 392.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mrs., i. 39
---- Lady, ii. 278.
Sheffield, George, i. 421, 446, 493; ii. 5-8, 33-38, 132, 156.
Shipley, Anna Maria, i. 13.
---- Anna Maria Mordaunt, Mrs., i. 5.
---- Emilia, i. 84.
---- Jonathan, Bishop of St. Asaph, i. 5.
---- Mrs. Louisa, i. 20, 84, 95, 96.
---- William, Dean of St. Asaph, iii. 123-129.
Shrewsbury, 16th Earl, and Countess of, i. 230.
Siddons, Mrs., i. 133; ii. 310.
Siena, iii. 341-342.
Simpkinson, Miss Emma, iii. 50, 208, 220, 228, 397.
---- Rev. John Nassau, i. 122, 214, 243.
---- Miss Louisa, i. 122, 123, 214.
Simpson, Lady Anne, i. 22-26, 351; ii. 320.
---- John, of Bradley, i. 22.
Skiddaw, ascent of, ii. 165.
Sloper, Rev. John, i. 84.
Smith, Goldwin, i. 415, 448.
---- "Sir Hugh," i. 437.
---- Mrs. Spencer, iii. 395.
---- Rev. Sydney, i. 515; ii. 316, 317.
Somerton, Caroline, Viscountess, ii. 139.
Sonning, i. 411, 470.
Sora, Agnese, Duchess of, ii. 59, 405, 424, 428; iii. 95, 253.
---- Rudolfo, Duke of, ii. 59, 428; iii. 95.
Sorrento, ii. 81, 396.
South Wraxhall Manor, i. 272.
Southgate, i. 297.
Souvigny, iii. 152.
Soveral, M. and Madame de, iii. 198.
Spencer, 5th Earl, and Countess, ii. 213.
Splugen, Passage of the, iii. 107.
Spoleto, iii. 101.
Spy, the family, i. 370-376.
Squires, Dr., iii. 262-264, 297.
Sta\xEBl, Madame de, iii. 416.
Stanhope, Hon. Edward, ii. 137.
Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, i. 67, 118-120, 230, 236, 238, 264, 284,
357-366, 383, 393, 402, 439, 471, 481, 483, 491; ii. 122-126, 132,
135-137, 153-155, 158-159, 220-222, 290, 380-381, 390, 497-498; iii.
110, 153, 158-159, 414-415.
---- Lady Augusta, ii. 390, 497-498???; iii. 110, 153, 158, 414.
---- Catherine Maria, afterwards Mrs. C. Vaughan, i. 66, 69, 118, 210,
281, 291.
---- Captain Charles Edward, i. 156, 281.
---- Mrs. Charles Edward, ii. 45.
---- Rev. Edward, Rector of Alderley, and afterwards Bishop of Norwich,
i. 44, 62, 66, 69, 117-118, 132, 231-236, 280.
---- Mrs. Edward (Catherine Leycester), i. 44, 62, 102, 118, 124, 208,
257, 281, 299-301, 360, 383, 399, 407, 471, 514-515; ii. 122-124, 132,
290-292.
---- Hon. Emmeline, ii. 133.
---- Hon. Louisa, i. 412; ii. 140-141.
---- Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley of Alderley, i. 114, 140-143, 411-412.
---- Hon. Maria Margaret, i. 412; ii. 140.
---- Mary, i. 69, 118, 210, 331, 383, 471; ii. 8, 9, 10, 11; iii. 4,
281, 287, 289, 304, 414.
---- Captain Owen, i. 281.
Stanley, William Owen of Penrhos, i. 502.
---- Mrs. W. Owen, i. 502.
Stapleton, Lady, iii. 124.
Star, Thomas, i. 169.
Stephanie, Grand Duchess of Baden, i. 383, 385.
Sterling, Rev. John, i. 70.
Stewart, Robert Shaw, iii. 48, 49.
Stirling, Mrs., of Glenbervie, iii. 48.
---- Mrs., of Kippenross, iii. 40-42.
---- Mrs., of Linlathen, ii. 165.
Stirling-Graham, Miss Clementina, of Duntrune, ii. 165.
Stisted, Mrs., of the Bagni di Lucca, ii. 94.
Stoke upon Terne, i. 61, 64, 124-151; ii. 160, 327.
Stonebyres, ii. 360.
Stonehenge, ii. 155.
Stoney, Mr. Robinson, i. 24.
Story, Miss Amelia, ii. 466.
---- William, the sculptor, iii. 368.
Stowe, Mrs. Beecher, i. 515.
Strathmore, Charles, 6th Earl, i. 23.
---- John, 5th Earl, i. 23.
---- John, 9th Earl of, ii. 172.
---- John, 10th Earl of, ii. 173, 178.
---- Mary Eleanor Bowes, wife of the 9th Earl of, i. 24; ii. 172, 275.
---- Mary Milner, widow of the 10th Earl of, i. 53; ii. 178-180.
Streatham Castle, ii. 178, 274.
Strettel, Mr. and Mrs., ii. 254.
Strickland, Mr., of Cokethorpe, ii. 151.
Stuart, Charles Edward, ii. 515.
---- Lady Euphemia, i. 23.
---- Lady Jane, i. 22.
---- John Sobieski Stolberg, ii. 515.
---- Lady Louisa, i. 301.
---- de Rothesay, Elizabeth, Lady, ii. 280-282, 360.
Stuttgart, iii. 336.
Suffolk, Charles John, 17th Earl of, iii. 139, 145.
---- Isabella, Countess of, iii. 139, 149.
Sumner, John Bird, Archbishop of Canterbury, i. 407.
Surtees of Mainsforth, the historian and poet, ii. 309, 313.
---- of Mainsforth, Mrs., ii. 309-317.
Sutherland, Anna Hay-Mackenzie, Duchess of, iii. 245.
Sutton Place, ii. 217.
Swinburne, Sir John, ii. 350.
T.
Taddini, Conte Luigi, iii. 83.
Tait, Archibald Campbell, Bishop of London, afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury, iii. 35-36, 39.
---- Crawford, iii. 39.
---- Mrs., iii. 35-36, 39.
Talbot, Monsignor, ii. 67; iii. 190, 238, 252.
Tambroni, Clotilda, Professor of Greek at Bologna, i. 6-9.
Tankerville, Charles, 5th Earl of, iii. 33.
---- Charles, 6th Earl of, ii. 267-271, 365.
---- Olivia, Countess of, ii. 267-271; iii. 32, 33.
Tatton, Miss Fanny, iii. 401.
Tayler, Rev. Charles, i. 98.
Tayleur, Miss Harriet, i. 143-144, 501; ii. 326; iii. 113.
---- Miss Mary, i. 143-144, 501; ii. 326.
---- Mr. and Mrs., of Buntingsdale, i. 143.
---- William, of Buntingsdale, ii. 326.
Taylor, Dr., afterwards Sir Alexander, ii. 466, 467; iii. 295.
---- E. Cavendish, iii. 203.
---- Julia Hare, Mrs., afterwards Lady, i. 90; ii. 466, 476.
Teano, Ada, Princess, iii. 193.
Teesdale, ii. 340.
Temple, Harry, i. 12.
Tennyson, Alfred, the Poet Laureate, i. 258.
Tenterden steeple, iii. 332.
Terry, Mrs., iii. 375, 376.
Thirlwall, Connop, Bishop of St. David's, i. 164, 437, 482.
Thomas, John, Bishop of Peterborough, ii. 338.
Thornton, Harriet Heber, Mrs. John, ii. 144-149.
Thornycroft, ii. 161.
Thorpe, Mrs., iii. 237, 262.
Tivoli, iii. 370.
Torcello, iii. 230.
Torchio, iii. 236-237.
Torlonia, Duke of, ii. 295-297.
Torre, Contessa della, ii. 448-449.
Toul, iii. 333.
Tours, ii. 464.
Townshend, Mrs., i. 96.
Trafford, Edward William, of Wroxham, ii. 193, 406, 506.
---- Martine Larmignac, Madame de, ii. 186-200, 406, 412-415, 500-513;
iii. 53-64, 251-254, 260, 265.
Trani, Mathilde of Bavaria, Countess of, iii. 86.
Trenca, M. et Madame, ii. 247.
Trench, Mrs. Richard, ii. 434.
Trent, iii. 231.
Trevelyan, Sir Charles, ii. 348.
---- Paulina, Lady, ii. 277, 348-350.
---- Mrs. Spencer, ii. 351.
---- Mrs. Raleigh, ii. 351.
---- Sir Walter, ii. 277, 348-351.
Treves, i. 385.
Tronchin, Colonel, of Geneva, i. 453.
Trotter, Captain, i. 315.
---- Hon. Charlotte Liddell, Mrs., i. 315.
Troutbeck, John, afterwards Minor Canon of Westminster, i. 414, 417, 419, 446.
Tufton, i. 278.
Turin, ii. 106.
Turner, Miss, iii. 114-115.
Tusculum, ii. 391.
Tytler, Christina Fraser, iii. 368.
U.
Ugolini, Cardinal, iii. 71.
Ungern Sternberg, Baroness Theodora von, iii. 109.
Unthank, iii. 169.
Usedom, Baron and Baroness von, i. 435; iii. 104-106.
V.
Val Anzasca, ii. 109.
Val Richer, i. 320.
Vallombrosa, ii. 84; iii. 381.
Valsamachi, Emily Shipley, Countess, ii. 145, 159, 160, 327.
Van de Weyer, Madame, ii. 232.
---- M. Sylvain, ii. 231-232.
Vatche, the, in Buckinghamshire, i. 2, 3, 493; ii. 156.
Vaucher, Mademoiselle, ii. 379.
Vaudois, the, ii. 109.
Vaughan, Dr. Charles, afterwards Dean of Llandaff, i. 214, 218, 281,
336; ii. 213, 260, 414.
---- Mrs. Charles (Catherine Maria Stanley), i. 281, 311, 315, 336; ii.
213, 261; iii. 170.
Vauriol, Vicomte de, iii. 354.
Veii, ii. 391.
Venables, Rev. E., afterwards Canon and Precentor of Lincoln, i. 240.
Vernon, Augustus Henry, 6th Lord, iii. 140.
Verona, iii. 230, 337.
Verulam, Elizabeth, Countess of, iii. 139.
Vetturino travelling, ii. 46-49.
Vicenza, iii. 338.
Victor-Emmanuel, King of Italy, ii. 376.
Victoria, Queen of England, ii. 286-288.
Victorine, Madame, iii. 89-90.
Vienna, ii. 36.
Vigne, P\xE8re la, i. 338.
Vine's Gate, iii. 393.
W.
Waddington, Dean of Durham, ii. 265.
---- M., Minister of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador in London, i. 319;
ii. 109.
Wagner, Rev. George, i. 79, 80.
---- Mrs., i. 79; ii. 427; iii. 397.
Wake, Sir Baldwin, ii. 151.
Waldegrave, Sarah, Countess, iii. 397.
Wales, Albert Edward, Prince of, ii. 381.
---- Alexandra, Princess of, ii. 381.
Walker, Frederick J., i. 309, 332, 398.
"Walks in Rome," iii. 388, 397, 408.
Wallington, ii. 277, 347-352.
Walpole, Sir Robert, i. 2.
Waltham Abbey, i. 311.
Wantage, ii. 222.
Warburton, Mrs. Eliot, i. 510, 511-513; ii. 12.
---- Miss Sydney, i. 510.
Warkworth, ii. 278, 352.
Warren, Miss Anna, ii. 144.
---- Penelope Shipley, Mrs., i. 165-166; ii. 143-144; iii. 125.
Waterford, John, Marquis of, ii. 280.
---- Henry, Marquis of, ii, 362.
---- Louisa, Marchioness of, ii. 280-282, 360-363; iii. 10-13, 23-31, 323-327.
Way, Albert, i. 503; ii. 133.
Wayland Smith's cave, ii. 230.
Webster, Charlotte Adamson, Lady, iii. 177.
Weeping Cross, ii. 328.
Wellesley, Rev. Dr. Henry, Principal of New Inn Hall, and Rector of
Hurstmonceaux, i. 16; ii. 213, 244, 294-297.
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of, i. 393.
Wells, i. 308.
Wells, Lady Louisa, ii. 356; iii. 140.
Wemyss, Francis, 8th Earl of, iii. 44.
---- Louisa, Countess of, ii. 359.
Wenlock, Caroline, Lady, ii. 389; iii. 153.
West Woodhay, i. 84, 95.
Weymouth, ii. 229.
Whately, Richard, Archbishop of Dublin, i. 228, 283.
Whewell, William, Master of Trinity, i. 164,; iii. 158.
Wickham, William, of Binstead Wyke, ii. 217.
Wilberforce, Samuel, Bishop of Oxford, afterwards of Winchester, i. 470;
iii. 153.
Wilcot House, i. 278.
William IV., King, i. 69, 294.
Williams, Captain, iii. 28, 32.
---- Sir John and Lady Sarah, i. 302.
Williamson, Hon. Anne Liddell, Lady, ii. 207, 208, 211, 212, 400, 403.
---- Captain Charles, ii, 210, 212.
---- Victor Alexander, ii. 137, 210, 214, 403.
Wilson, Miss, iii. 382.
---- Mrs., i. 407.
Winslow, Dr., iii. 318, 359, 366, 370.
Winton Castle, ii. 354.
Wiseman, Nicolas Patrick, Cardinal, ii. 486.
Wishaw House, ii. 358.
Wodehouse, Miss Emily, i. 120.
---- Canon and Lady Jane, i. 120.
Wood, Alderman, iii. 15.
---- Hon. Charles Lindley, ii. 137-138, 214, 251-253, 283, 325; iii. 320.
Wood, Sir Charles, ii. 283.
---- Lady Mary, ii. 251.
---- Mrs. Shakespeare, iii. 190, 203.
Woodward, Mrs., iii. 209, 211, 213, 318, 364, 365, 374, 378.
Wordsworth, William, the poet, i. 177, 499.
Worting House, near Basingstoke, i. 13.
Wright. Miss Sophia, ii. 392; iii. 140, 192, 318.
Y.
Yeatman, Mr. and Mrs. Morgan, iii. 414.
Yetholm, iii. 31.
Yorke, Lady Elizabeth, i. 214.
Z.
Zermatt, i. 460.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] See Lord Chesterfield's Letters.
[2] Dr. Johnson, "The Idler," No. 84.
[3] Epitaph at Hurstmonceaux.
[4] Principal of New Inn Hall, and afterwards Rector of Hurstmonceaux.
[5] The 4th Earl of Crawford.
[6] In her marriage contract (of 1792) with Lord Edward Fitz Gerald,
Pamela was described as the daughter of Guillaume de Brixey and Mary
Sims, aged nineteen, and born at Fogo in Newfoundland. In Madame de
Genlis's Memoirs, it is said that one Parker Forth, acting for the Duke
of Orleans, found, at Christ Church in Hampshire, one Nancy Sims, a
native of Fogo, and took her to Paris to live with Madame de Genlis, and
teach her royal pupils English. An Englishman named Sims was certainly
living at Fogo at the end of the last century, and his daughter Mary
sailed for Bristol with an infant of a year old, in a ship commanded by
a Frenchman named Brixey, and was never heard of again.
[7] Edward Fox Fitz Gerald died Jan. 25, 1863: his widow lived
afterwards at Heavitree near Exeter, where she died Nov. 2, 1891.
[8] I have dwelt upon the first connection of Madame Victoire Ackermann
with our family, not only because her name frequently occurs again in
these Memoirs, but because they are indebted to notes left by her for
much of their most striking material. I have never known any person more
intellectually interesting, for the class to which she belonged, than
Victoire. Without the slightest exaggeration, and with unswerving
rectitude of intention, her conversation was always charming and
original, and she possessed the rare art of narration in the utmost
perfection.
[9] Francis Hare and his father had both been born abroad.
[10] See the chapter called "Home Portraiture" in "Memorials of a Quiet
Life."
[11] Edward Leycester had taken the name of Penrhyn with the fortune of
his father's cousin, Lady Penrhyn of Penrhyn Castle. His wife was Lady
Charlotte Stanley, daughter of the 13th Earl of Derby.
[12] Second daughter of Sir John Stanley, afterwards 1st Lord Stanley of
Alderley, and niece of the Rev. Edward Stanley, Maria Leycester's
brother-in-law.
[13] Edward Stanley, Rector of Alderley and afterwards Bishop of
Norwich, had married my mother's only sister, Catherine Leycester
("Kitty"), who was seven years older than herself.
[14] "Maurice was by nature puzzle-headed, and, though in a beautiful
manner, wrong-headed; while his clear conscience and keen affections
made him egotistic, and, in his Bible reading, as insolent as any
infidel of them all."--_Ruskin_, "_Pr\xE6terita_."
[15] R. Holt Hutton.
[16] The child was only three.
[17] George Herbert.
[18] This half-aunt of mine was living in 1894, having long been the
widow of the Rev. F. D. Maurice. I had not seen her for more than thirty
years before her death. I could not say I adored all the Maurices: it
would have been an exaggeration. So she did not wish to see me.
[19] The Rev. R. Chenevix Trench, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin. The
fact was, his were very pleasant children, and therefore I liked them;
but I was expected to like all children, whatever their characters, and
scolded if I did not.
[20] My uncle Julius Hare's Recollections.
[21] From the notes of Francis Hare's life by Madame Victoire Ackermann.
[22] See Crabbe Robinson's Diary.
[23] He died Rector of North Creake, April 1894.
[24] Merry Wives of Windsor.
[25] Afterwards Mrs. Chatterton.
[26] Ann, Viscountess Hill, died Oct. 31, 1891.
[27] Recollections of Canon Venables, his sometime curate.
[28] Long afterwards I learned that it is recorded in legal proceedings,
how Giles de Fienes (of Hurstmonceaux) brought a suit against Richard de
Pageham for the violent abduction of his wife Sybil, daughter of William
Filiol, on August 30, 1223. I suppose Richard employed the gipsies as
his intermediaries.
[29] She had told Landor so.
[30] The Rev. Adam Sedgwick, Prebendary of Norwich and Woodwardian
Professor of Geology, died Jan. 27, 1873.
[31] Mrs. Vaughan.
[32] De Quincey says that Wordsworth was the only poet he ever met who
could do this, and certainly it is my experience.
[33] To be without (a husband) is bare but it's easy.
[34] Harriet survived all her sisters for many years, as the wife of
Edward Plumptre, Dean of Wells. She died in 1890. A charming account of
her has appeared in Boyd's "Twenty-five Years at St. Andrews:" I thought
her most unlike it.
[35] Actual cases.
[36] Memoires de "Madame," Lettre du 18 Juillet 1700.
[37] R. Browning.
[38] He afterwards married my cousin Lady Elizabeth Yorke.
[39] Robert Smith, who afterwards married my connection Isabel Adeane.
[40] Afterwards Lord Radstock.
[41] Son of the Bishop of London, Alfred Blomfield, afterwards himself
Bishop of Colchester.
[42] Afterwards 4th Earl of Mount Edgecumbe.
[43] Afterwards 14th Lord Saye and Sele.
[44] This account is not the least exaggerated. I remember the storm as
one of the most awful things I ever saw. At this time and long
afterwards I was always very ill in a thunderstorm.--1894.
[45] Dr. Whately.
[46] This eccentric Lord Shrewsbury lived in great pomp at Alton Towers,
with an intense parade of magnificence. Once a large party staying there
included a French Countess of very noble lineage. One day after
breakfast he went up to her in his courteous way and said, "Madame, what
will you be pleased to do to-day? will you walk, or ride, or
drive?"--"Oh, it is a delightful day, I should like to drive."--"Then,
madame, would you prefer an open or a close carriage?"--"Oh, an open
carriage, if you please."--"And, madame, how many horses will you
have?"--"Oh, four-and-twenty horses of course," she said laughing, "you
know I never go out without four-and-twenty horses." The afternoon came,
and at the appointed hour Lord Shrewsbury came to the lady and said,
"The carriage is at the door, madame, the horses are there, but I must
apologise for having only one outrider." She rushed to the window, and,
to her horror, saw a carriage to which four-and-twenty grey horses were
harnessed, each pair being furnished with a postillion. Utterly
terrified, the lady declared that nothing should make her drive with
them, but her fellow-guests assured her she must. So at last she got in,
and the twenty-four horses took her for a short drive in the park. Then
Lord Shrewsbury had pity upon her, and twenty-two were unharnessed, and
she finished her drive with a pair.--_Mr. E. Hussey's Reminiscences._
[47] A very kind friend of mine, afterwards Precentor of Lincoln.
[48] William Wentworth Buller of Strete Raleigh in Devonshire.
[49] Hon. R. J. Harris Temple, eldest son of the second marriage of the
second Lord Harris with Miss Isabella Helena Temple of Waterstown.
[50] "No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether
irreclaimably bad."--_Carlyle_, "_Sartor Resartus_."
[51] There is really no end to the absurd calumnies which I have heard
circulated during my life about dear old Mr. Landor, the kindest, most
refined, most courteous, and most genial, though most irascible of men.
But nothing that ever was said about him was so utterly absurd as Mr.
Adolphus Trollope's statement that he neglected the use of the letter
_h_ in conversation. I lived with him in close intimacy for years, and I
never once traced the slightest indication of his ever dropping the
aspirate; indeed, no one was more particular in inculcating its proper
use.
[52] The vaults of St. Martin's Church have been emptied since.
[53] Hugh Stuart Brown.
[54] Eldest daughter of Vice-Admiral Sir Courtenay Boyle, brother of the
8th Earl of Cork. The brothers had married sisters, daughters of W.
Poyntz of Midgeham--our distant cousins.
[55] _N\xE9e_ Caroline Amelia Poyntz.
[56] Miss Mary Boyle died in 1890.
[57] Mrs. FitzGerald's.
[58] My Uncle Wentworth married the Countess Marie Benningsen, whose
father was one of those who murdered the Emperor Paul of Russia. They
had four children.
[59] Thomas \xE0 Kempis.
[60] "Walks in London."
[61] Parnell, "Rise of Woman."
[62] August 4, 1851.
[63] A well-known starting-point in the valley below where the Holborn
Viaduct now is.
[64] Seventh daughter of the 1st Lord Ravensworth, whose wife was my
grandmother's only sister.
[65] Grandson of my adopted grandfather's elder brother.
[66] Madame de Sta\xEBl.
[67] Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, 5th son of George III.
[68] The 8th Earl of Denbigh, as Lord Feilding, married, 1st, Louisa,
daughter of David Pennant, Esq., and Lady Emma Pennant.
[69] The whole of this account was corrected by Lord Feilding, then Earl
of Denbigh.
[70] "He spoke of the twin brothers George and James Macdonald as two
simple, single-minded, and veracious men, and more than this, as
eminently godly men. He described how the healing of their sister
occurred. She had lain for long bedridden and entirely helpless. One day
they had been praying earnestly beside her, and one of the brothers,
rising from prayers, walked to the bed, held out his hand, and, naming
his sister, bade her arise. She straightway did so, and continued ever
after entirely healed, and with full use of her limbs."--J. C. SHAIRP,
"Thomas Erskine."
[71] Cecil, widow of the 7th Marquis.
[72] Under Dean Powys.
[73] How seeing many people and characters makes one sympathise with the
observation of the Duchesse d'Orleans: "En fait de d\xE9votion, je vois que
chacun suit son humeur; ceux qui aiment \xE0 bavarder veulent beaucoup
prier; ceux qui ont l'\xE2me lib\xE9rale veulent toujours faire des aum\xF4nes;
ceux qui sont gais pensent tr\xE8s bien servir Dieu, en se rejouissant de
tout, et en ne se fachant de rien. En somme, la d\xE9votion est, pour ceux
qui s'y adonnent, la pierre de touche qui fait conna\xEEtre leur humeur."
[74] Grote's History was coming out at this time, and I had got into
terrible disgrace with the Stanleys from knowing nothing about it.
[75] The Spitz dog.
[76] There are 6000 B\xE9guines in Belgium, nuns bound by no vow, and free
to return to the world if they wish. While they wear the habit of their
Order, they live in a colony, but in separate houses, and devote their
whole lives to temporal works of mercy.
[77] Carl Friedrich Meyer, for some time German secretary and librarian
to Prince Albert.
[78] Louisa, eldest daughter of Sir William Clinton of Cokenach.
[79] Louisa Dorothea, widow of Lieutenant-General Sir William Clinton,
was daughter of the 1st Baron Sheffield, and younger sister of Maria
Josepha, 1st Lady Stanley of Alderley. We had always visited her on the
way to Norwich.
[80] Afterwards (1878) Master of Balliol. He died October 1893.
[81] Dr. Plumptre.
[82] Authoress of "Sickness, its Trials and Blessings," &c.
[83] Afterwards Canon of Windsor.
[84] Mother of Mrs. Marcus Hare.
[85] William Henry Milligan, afterwards of the Ecclesiastical Commission
Office.
[86] Minor Canon of Westminster (1894).
[87] Eldest son of Sir J. Barrow.
[88] Fourth son of Sir Robert Sheffield of Normanby in Lincolnshire.
[89] Kingsley's "Saint's Tragedy," which Uncle Julius had read aloud to
us, and afterwards Montalembert's Life, had made me very familiar with
her story.
[90] An old monastic farm on the Levels, between Hailsham and
Eastbourne. The internal interest of the Wartburg has long since been
"restored" away, and its rooms blaze with gilding and colour.
[91] See p. 289.
[92] I was altogether a disappointment to Professor Jowett. I did not
get on in the line in which he wished me to get on, and in what I was
able to do in after life he had no interest whatever. He dropped me
after I left Oxford. I seldom saw him again, and he never knew, perhaps,
how grateful I felt for his long-ago kindness. Professor Benjamin Jowett
died at Headley Hall, in Hampshire, October 1, 1893.
[93] Of Eccles Greig, near Forfar.
[94] It would be impossible to discover a more perfect old "gentleman"
than Dr. Plumptre, though he was often laughed at. When he was inquiring
into any fault, he would begin with, "Now pray take care what you say,
because whatever you say I shall believe." He had an old-fashioned
veneration for rank, and let Lord Egmont off lectures two days in the
week that he might hunt--"it was so suitable."
[95] Dr. Hawkins.
[96] Dean Gaisford.
[97] Walter Berkeley, 4th son of the 1st Viscount Portman.
[98] This was so at that time: now it would be thought nothing of.
[99] Wife of John Henry Parker, the publisher, a peculiar but excellent
person.
[100] The portrait of Mrs. Hare Naylor by Flaxman, now at Holmhurst.
[101] Afterwards Mrs. Owen Grant.
[102] Coleridge.
[103] The High Church author, son of my father's first cousin, Charles
Shipley.
[104] I have always thought that Sir John Paul must have been rather
mad. After he had done his best to ruin all his family, and had totally
ruined hundreds of other people, he said very complacently, "This is the
Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."
[105] My mother in her youth had often visited the ladies at Plas
Newydd--Lady Eleanor Butler (ob. 1829, \xE6t. 90) and Miss Sarah Ponsonby
(ob. 1831, \xE6t. 76). They always wore men's hats and waistcoats, short
petticoats and thick boots.
[106] William Owen Stanley, twin brother of Edward-John, 2nd Lord
Stanley of Alderley.
[107] "Quite untrue, probably."--Note by the Dean of Llandaff, formerly
head-master of Harrow, who read this in MS.
[108] Hon. Carolina Courtenay Boyle
[109] The declaration had already been made in private to Lady Stratford
de Redcliffe at Constantinople.
[110] Rectors of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, and St. Barnabas', Pimlico.
[111] Daughters of the Dean of Bristol.
[112] Daughter of my great-great-uncle T. Lyon of Hetton.
[113] How little those who idolise him in theory attend to the precept
of their beloved Luther: "If anywhere Sunday is made holy for the mere
day's sake,--if any one anywhere sets up its observance as a Jewish
foundation, then I order you to work on it, to dance on it, to do
anything that shall remove this encroachment on Christian
liberty."--_Table-Talk._
[114] Count Aurelio Saffi died 1890, and is buried at Forli.
[115] Princess Charlotte of Belgium.
[116] Since well known from the tragic death of the Crown Prince
Rudolph.
[117] Now a crowded resort of royalty.
[118] In 1895 I retain the lakes of Gosau in recollection as amongst the
most beautiful places I have ever visited.
[119] From "Northern Italy."
[120] From "Central Italy."
[121] From "Central Italy."
[122] From "Central Italy."
[123] From "Days near Rome."
[124] Teresa, Princess Borghese, survived by two years the ruin of her
house, and died July 1894.
[125] Whose beautiful tomb, by Miss Hosmer, is in the Church of S.
Andrea delle Fratte at Rome.
[126] Whose fine portrait of himself is in the Uffizi at Florence.
[127] From "Days near Rome."
[128] From "Southern Italy."
[129] The familiar term expressing "a rascal of a boy."
[130] From "Southern Italy."
[131] From "Southern Italy."
[132] From "Central Italy."
[133] From "Central Italy."
[134] From "Northern Italy."
[135] Ruskin, in his "Pr\xE6terita," describes his father's astonishment
when he brought the maid of honour's petticoat, parrot, and blackamoor
home, as the best fruit of his summer at the court of Sardinia.
[136] From "Northern Italy."
[137] Walter Savage Landor was tried for libel at the suit of a lady, to
whom he had once shown great kindness, but of whom he had afterwards
written abusively. He fled from England to evade the severe fine imposed
upon him, which, however, was afterwards paid.
[138] Wordsworth, Lines written in Thomson's "Castle of Indolence."
[139] She had passed some time at Neuch\xE2tel with her father in 1818, and
had seen much of the society there.
[140] The Marquise de Gabriac was daughter of the Mar\xE9chale Sebastiani,
and only sister of Madame Davidoff.
[141] He died at Lille, July 1891, aged 85.
[142] From "Paris."
[143] This story of the dream was only told me by the Duchess Wilhelmine
of Cleveland in 1887.
[144] From "Paris."
[145] From "Days near Paris."
[146] A year afterwards I had occasion to visit Panizzi upon other
business, and I shall never forget the sharpness with which the astute
old man, recollecting the Archdeacon's letter, and entirely refusing to
recognise any other claim upon his time, turned upon me with, "Well now,
what do you know?--how many languages? what?--answer at once;" and I
could with difficulty make him understand that I did not want the
clerkship. Sir A. Panizzi died April 8, 1879. It was this Antonio
Panizzi who had the honour of being hanged in effigy by the Government
of Modena, after having escaped from an imprisonment (which would
doubtless have ended in his corporeal execution), for his efforts for
the regeneration of Sicily. He was declared liable for all the expenses
of the process, and the Cabinet of Modena, in all simplicity, wrote to
him in his security at Liverpool calling upon him to pay them!
[147] Ten guineas for a sheet, containing twenty-four pages of the close
double-columned type of Murray's Handbooks.
[148] John, 2nd Earl Brownlow.
[149] Of Hunstanton, eldest son of Mrs. Wynne Finch.
[150] Second son of the 5th Earl Stanhope.
[151] Now Sackville of Drayton Manor.
[152] Fourth son of Sir Adam Hay of King's Meadows.
[153] Fourth son of Sir Hedworth Williamson of Whitburn, and of the Hon.
Anne, 2nd daughter of the 1st Lord Ravensworth.
[154] Eldest son of Sir Charles Wood, M.P., afterwards Viscount Halifax,
and of Lady Mary, 5th daughter of the 2nd Earl Grey.
[155] Hon. Mrs. Cradock, wife of the Principal of Brazenose--formerly a
Maid of Honour.
[156] Maria Josepha, daughter of the 1st Earl of Sheffield, and widow of
the first Lord Stanley of Alderley.
[157] Grandfather of the first Lord Knutsford.
[158] Mrs. Pelham Warren died in Nov. 1865.
[159] Mrs. Thornton, a most kind and admirable person, died Jan. 1889.
[160] Mrs. Dormer went to live at Flamborough in Yorkshire after the
death of her husband, and died there, Oct. 1892.
[161] Afterwards 14th Baron Saye and Sele.
[162] His handwriting was so illegible, that printers charged
half-a-crown a sheet extra for setting up each sheet of his "copy."
[163] The universally beloved Henry Octavius Coxe, Bodley's librarian
and Rector of Wytham, born 1811, died July 8, 1881.
[164] The Countess Valsamachi, formerly Mrs. Reginald Heber, was one of
the three daughters of Dean Shipley, and first cousin to my father.
[165] Mr. Thomas Erskine died March 28, 1870, having survived both his
sisters.
[166] Miss Clementina Stirling Graham died at Duntrune, August 23, 1877,
aged ninety-five.
[167] Earl of Dalhousie.
[168] My college friend Frederick Forsyth Grant.
[169] This is described in Lord Auckland's Correspondence.
[170] In May 1860.
[171] F\xE9n\xE9lon.
[172] The voice which passed the lips of Madame de Trafford was often
like the voices of the Irvingites.
[173] Sometimes Madame de Trafford spoke of her spirits as "Les
Maricots."
[174]
"L'asciar l'amico!
Lo seguitai felice
Quand'era il cielo sereno:
Alle tempeste in seno
Voglio seguirlo ancor:
Ah cosi vil non sono."
--METASTASIO.
[175] Principal of New Inn Hall at Oxford.
[176] Our cousins through the Shipleys and Mordaunts.
[177] Grandson of Helena Selman, my great-grandmother's only sister.
[178] I wrote to Sir George Grey several times after this meeting, but
never saw him again till 1869 in Miss Wright's rooms in Belgrave
Mansions.
[179] Sydney Smith's daughter.
[180] Prescott, Washington Irving, Sir J. Stephen, Leigh Hunt, De
Quincey, Macaulay, Hallam.
[181] Ritter, Humboldt, Arndt.
[182] De Tocqueville.
[183] Afterwards Dean of Lincoln.
[184] The Rev. W. J. Butler, then Dean of Lincoln, and his wife, died
within a few weeks of each other in Jan. 1894.
[185] Wife of the Rev. William Gaskell, Unitarian minister of the Chapel
in Cross Street, Manchester. He died June 1884, aged eighty. She died
very suddenly in Nov. 1865.
[186] It is right to say that a very different account of Count de Salis
is given by many of his descendants from that which I wrote down from
the narrative of Dr. Hawtrey.
[187] Mrs. Fane de Salis told me (in 1891) that her mother-in-law had
described to her being with Miss Foster on the Pincio when the handsome
guardsman, Count Mastai, came courting.
[188] Hazeley Court.
[189] Maison Helvetia.
[190] From "South-Eastern France."
[191] From "South-Eastern France."
[192] From "Northern Italy."
[193] From "South-Eastern France."
[194] Rev. J. L. Petit.
[195] From "Northern Italy."
[196] Susan, 5th daughter of Thomas Lyon of Hetton, married the Rev. J.
Fellowes of Shottesham.
[197] The heroine of the wreck of the _Forfarshire_, Sept. 5, 1838.
[198] Only son of John, 10th Earl of Strathmore, and Mary Milner.
[199] Mary Eleanor Bowes, 9th Countess of Strathmore.
[200] Paulina, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Jermyn.
[201] Mrs. Clutterbuck was Marianne, youngest daughter of the Hon.
Thomas Lyon of Hetton, my great-grandmother's youngest brother.
[202] Afterwards Lord Wilfred Seymour.
[203] Arthur Stanley's account.
[204] Montesquieu.
[205] Notably the ballad of "Featherstonhaugh," which Sir Walter
inserted as ancient in his "Border Minstrelsy," introducing one stanza
in the poem of "Marmion" itself.
[206] My great-great-uncle, Thomas Lyon of Hetton, younger brother of
the 9th Earl of Strathmore, married Miss Wren (grand-daughter of Sir
Christopher), heiress of Binchester.
[207] Mr. John Clayton survived till July 1890, leaving personalty
valued at \xA3728,000, and real property supposed to be worth \xA320,000 a
year. The last member of his generation, the universally beloved Mrs.
Anne Clayton, died October 30, 1890.
[208] Rev. J. Collingwood Bruce, author of "The Roman Wall," &c. He
lived till 1893, and is commemorated by a tomb in St. Nicholas,
Newcastle.
[209] Mr. Andersen had two daughters, my great-great-grandmother Mrs.
Simpson, and the Marchesa Grimaldi, great-grandmother of Stacey
Grimaldi, who was at this time trying to establish his claims to the
Principality of Monaco.
[210] Bradley was inherited and sold by Lord Ravensworth, and its
pictures removed to Eslington.
[211] The living of Blanchland was afterwards given by the Governors of
Bamborough to Mr. Gurley on his marriage with my cousin, Mary
Clutterbuck.
[212] The widow of Reginald Heber.
[213] The curious old muniment room at Ripley is now modernised, indeed
destroyed.
[214] Dr. John Thomas, Bishop of Peterborough, and afterwards of
Salisbury--some time tutor to George III.
[215] General Scott had married the Hon. Alethea Stanley, sister of Mrs.
Marcus Hare
[216] It was rebuilt on a large scale in 1893.
[217] Well known from the ballad of "The Death of Parcy Reed."
[218] See the ballad of "Chevy Chase."
[219] Sir Charles Trevelyan, Sir Walter's cousin and heir, who read
this, asked me to add a note, and to say that though it is quite true
that Sir Walter was a miser, he was only a miser for philanthropic
purposes. He gave \xA360,000 at once for a railway which he thought would
benefit the district in which he lived, and his charities, though
eccentric, were quite boundless.
[220] Paulina, Lady Trevelyan, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Jermyn, died in
1866. Sir Walter married afterwards a Miss Loft, and survived till 1879,
but I never saw him again.
[221] 1888.--Alas that I should have to add a note to say that the
mummy-case has been since discovered not to have belonged to a queen at
all, but to the court-jester!
[222] Charlotte, eldest daughter of Lord Stuart de Rothesay, married
(1835) Charles John, afterwards Viscount and Earl Canning and
Governor-General of India, and died at Calcutta, Nov. 18, 1861.
[223] From "The Story of Two Noble Lives."
[224] His great-grandmother, Lady Susan Lyon and my great-grandmother,
Lady Anne, were sisters.
[225] From "South-Eastern France."
[226] The celebrated Porson was given to such utter fits of absence that
he forgot he was married and dined out on the very day of the ceremony.
[227] From "South-Eastern France."
[228] From "North-Eastern France."
[229] Now (1895) pulled down.
[230] From "North-Eastern France."
[231] From "Days near Rome."
[232] Rev. E. Kershaw, afterwards chaplain to Earl De la Warr.
[233] Caroline, daughter of Richard, Lord Braybrooke, widow of the first
Lord Wenlock.
[234] From "Days near Rome."
[235] From "Days near Rome."
[236] All Mrs. Julius Hare's family of her generation have passed away:
_all_ to whom the story of my child life as connected with her could
give any pain.
[237] From "Southern Italy."
[238] Placed on the doors of Catholic churches and chapels.
[239] He died on the 17th of the following September.
"Oh, let him pass! he hates him much
That would upon the rack of this rough world
Stretch him out longer."--_King Lear._
[240] From "Northern Italy."
[241] Ad\xE8le, Madame Davidoff. See pp. 65, 115.
[242] From "South-Eastern France."
[243] The Venerable Gaspare del Bufalo, to whose influence the
foundation of the Order of the Precious Blood was due.
[244] Don Giovanni Merlini of the Crociferi.
[245] Mary Pierina Roleston, Superior of the Order of the Precious Blood
in England.
[246] Alas! after the Sardinian occupation of Rome, the Soras, then
Prince and Princess Piombino, were induced to sell all the grounds of
Villa Ludovisi, the noblest ornament of Rome; its magnificent groves of
ilex and cypress were cut down, and hideous stucco houses built over its
site.
[247] Lady Wenlock died May 1868.
[248] "The Remains of Mrs. Richard Trench," by her son Richard Chevenix
Trench, Dean of Westminster, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin.
[249] The Rt. Hon. George Grenville, father of Catherine, Lady
Braybrooke.
[250] I give, of course, the words of Pierina.
[251] Paray le Monial, now so constant a resort of pilgrimages, was, up
to this time, almost unknown.
[252] From "South-Western France."
[253] These were the very early days of Arcachon.
[254] Born Julia Hare of Hurstmonceaux, a first cousin of my father.
[255] Edwin Dashwood was the son, and the first Mrs. Story had been the
daughter, of Emily Hare of Hurstmonceaux, sister of Mrs. Taylor.
[256] From "South-Western France."
[257] Her brother and sister, who had died long before.
[258] From "South-Western France."
[259] This I afterwards carried out in six unpublished volumes of the
Memoirs of the Hare Family.
[260] Spenser, "Faerie Queene."
[261] From "South-Western France."
[262] Wife of Sir George Robinson of Crauford.
[263] From "South-Western France."
[264] From "South-Western France."
[265] From "South-Western France."
[265a] From "South-Western France."
[266] Now terribly modernised and spoilt.
[267] "What is a miracle? Can there be a thing more miraculous than any
other thing?... I have _seen_ no man rise from the dead: I have seen
some thousands rise from _nothing_."--_Carlyle_.
[268] I do not think that this characteristic anecdote is preserved
elsewhere.
[269] Emma, widow of King Kam\xE9ham\xE9ha IV., who died Nov. 30, 1863. She
was born Jan. 2, 1836, being daughter of George Naca, a native chief,
and of Fanny Yong. Charles Rooke, a rich doctor, adopted her, and left
her all his fortune. Having seen three kings succeed her husband, and
been equally honoured and respected by all, Queen Emma died in March
1885.
[270] From "Walks in London."
[271] From "The Story of Two Noble Lives."
[272] From "The Story of Two Noble Lives."
[273] Colonel Alexander Higginson of the Grenadier Guards, celebrated
for his silence, was keeping the door. He said not a word in answer to
all her entreaties, but dropped his sword as a barrier in front of the
Queen.--_Note from Mrs. Owen Grant, niece of Colonel A. Higginson._
[274] Caroline, daughter of Francis I., king of Naples, widow of the Duc
de Berri, younger son of Charles X.
[275] The Duc de Bordeaux (Comte de Chambord).
[276] The Archduchess Marie Therese, daughter of Francis IV., Duke of
Modena.
[277] Louis Henri Joseph, Duc de Bourbon, father of the Duc d'Enghien,
the last member of the House of Cond\xE9, who fought a duel with Charles X.
in 1776. He married Marie Th\xE9r\xE8se d'Orleans in 1770.
[278] Marie Amelie, Duchesse d'Orleans, afterwards Queen of the French,
was daughter of Ferdinard I., king of the Two Sicilies, and sister of
Francis I., father of the Duchesse de Berri.
[279] The Duc de Bourbon left Madame de Feuch\xE8res two million francs,
the ch\xE2teau and park of St. Leu, the ch\xE2teau and estate of Boissy, and
all their dependencies: also a pavilion at the Palais Bourbon, valued at
fifteen million francs.
[280] Elizabeth, wife of Philip Yorke, 3rd Earl of Hardwicke, and
daughter of James, 5th Earl of Balcarres.
[281] Colin, 3rd Earl of Balcarres.
[282] Anne, only daughter of Sir Robert Dalrymple of Castleton.
[283] The tune which then existed. The Hon. Mrs. Byron, a friend of Lady
Anne Barnard, afterwards gave the words to Lieutenant William Leeves,
1st Foot Guards, who composed the air to which they are now sung, in
imitation of old Scotch music. Lieutenant Leeves afterwards took orders
and became Rector of Wrington in Somersetshire, where he was the
intimate friend of Mrs. Hannah More, who lived in his parish. He died in
1828.
[284] From "The Story of Two Noble Lives."
[285] Augusta, daughter of George, 4th Earl of Glasgow.
[286] Lucia, eldest daughter of Lord Dover.
[287] Second daughter of the 1st Earl of Ellesmere.
[288] Maria, daughter of Sir Joseph Copley of Sprotborough.
[289] Hamilton, daughter of Walter Campbell of Shawfield, younger sister
of Lady Ruthven.
[290] My third cousin, George, 2nd Earl of Durham.
[291] Beatrix, second daughter of the Marquis of Abercorn. She died Jan.
1871.
[292] Mary, widow of the 5th Lord Ruthven, and daughter of Walter
Campbell of Shawfield.
[293] Catherine, daughter of Archdeacon Spooner. Her memoirs were
published by her husband, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1879.
[294] Daughter of the 4th Duke of Portland, afterwards Viscountess
Ossington
[295] Lady Anne Anson, second daughter of the 1st Earl of Lichfield.
[296] Afterwards 7th Earl of Aberdeen.
[297] Fourth daughter of the 7th Earl of Wemyss.
[298] The "custom more honoured in the breach than the
observance."--_Hamlet._
[299] William Henry, 1st Duke of Cleveland, who died in 1842.
[300] Adam, fourth son of Sir Adam Hay of Haystoun, who had been one of
my greatest friends at Christ Church. He died May 1871.
[301] Lady Constance Talbot, daughter of the 19th Earl of Shrewsbury.
[302] Daughter of the 7th Earl of Leven.
[303] A Roman friend, brother of Sir Michael Shaw Stewart.
[304] From "Central Italy."
[305] Madame Victoire Ackermann. See vol. i.
[306] From "Central Italy."
[307] From "Central Italy."
[308] His mother was Susan, daughter of William Leycester, my mother's
first cousin. She was murdered during the Indian Mutiny, with her
husband and child.
[309] The famous S. Francesca Romana had been a member of the Ponziani
family.
[310] The Rev. Henry Arbuthnot Feilden married Ellinor, one of the
daughters of Edmund Hornby, Esq., of Dalton Hall in Lancashire--a very
old friend and connection of our family. Her sister Charlotte afterwards
married my first cousin--Oswald Penrhyn.
[311] Mr. Leycester Lyne, celebrated as a preacher and for his follies
in playing at monasticism. His mother was a Leycester of White Place,
descended from a younger branch of the Leycesters of Toft.
[312] Afterwards Lady Rathdonell.
[313] Th\xE9r\xE8se de la Rochefoucauld, wife of Prince Marc-Antonio Borghese.
[314] Francesco II.
[315] Marie Th\xE9r\xE8se Isabelle, daughter of Archduke Charles of Austria.
[316] Marie, daughter of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria.
[317] Princess Mathilde of Bavaria.
[318] Foundress of the Order of the Precious Blood.
[319] Prince Camillo, who married a princess of Savoy-Carignan.
[320] The mystery of Madame Victorine was never cleared up. In the
summer of 1867 she suddenly expressed a wish to leave, though full of
gratitude and affection for my sister, and she implied that she need no
longer continue in service. Probably she has returned into the sphere of
life from which she evidently came. She called herself Victorine Errard.
[321] A celebrated convent in Rome, where the French nuns have a school,
which is very popular.
[322] Because it was on the day before the Crucifixion that Our Lord
said "This is my body," &c.
[323] King Francesco II., died December 1894.
[324] From "Days near Rome."
[325] From "Days near Rome."
[326] Frederick, Viscount Kilcoursie, son of the 8th Earl of Cavan.
[327] From "Days near Rome."
[328] From "Florence."
[329] Queen Emma died in 1885.
[330] Jean Baptiste Marie Vianney.
[331] All this picturesque side of Cannes has since been spoilt and
vulgarised.
[332] From "South-Eastern France."
[333] From "South-Eastern France."
[334] Afterwards Sir Antonio Panizzi.
[335] Emily, only daughter of Sir Charles Taylor of Hollycombe,
afterwards Lady Brougham and Vaux.
[336] The name of his daughter, who died in 1839.
[337] From "South-Eastern France."
[338] From "South-Eastern France."
[339] From "South-Eastern France."
[340] From "South-Eastern France."
[341] From "Biographical Essays."
[342] See vol. i. p. 359.
[343] See Shakespeare, "Measure for Measure."
[344] Mrs. Whewell.
[345] See vol. ii. p. 6.
[346] Mrs. C. Vaughan. Dr. Vaughan was now Vicar of Doncaster.
[347] Frances Vere, 2nd wife of Sir Edward Blackett of Matfen, and
daughter of Sir William Lorraine.
[348] Rev. Henry and Mrs. Liddell of Easington.
[349] _N\xE9e_ Aventina Macmurdo. See vol. ii. p. 18.
[350] Daughter-in-law of Mr. and Mrs. Dalzel. Their son, a very
distinguished young man, died before them.
[351] Mrs. Dalzel died in October 1871.
[352] Charlotte, eldest daughter of Robert Adamson, Esq., and widow of
Sir Godfrey Vassall Webster, Bart.
[353] As taken down from the narration of old Mr. Frewen of Brickwall,
an intimate friend of the Webster family, who generously bought in all
their family portraits at the time of their ruin, and kept them till
they had the power of redeeming them.
[354] From "South-Eastern France."
[355] From "South-Eastern France."
[356] From "Northern Italy."
[357] From "Central Italy."
[358] Mme. Victoire Ackermann. See vol. i.
[359] Such was a constant cause of detention in early days of Italian
railways, though it seems impossible now.
[360] For the Queen Dowager, who died of the cholera at Albano in the
summer of 1867.
[361] Contessa Carolina di S. Giorgio.
[362] See vol. ii. p. 86.
[363] Of the Japanese martyrs.
[364] It is therefore not fair to say that the desecration of the Roman
churches has _only_ occurred since the Sardinian occupation.
[365] The Hon. Carolina Courtenay Boyle, maid of honour.
[366] My cousins, Lord and Lady Bloomfield, and the Dowager Lady
Barrington, with her daughter Augusta, were spending the winter in Rome.
[367] This beautiful villa and its lovely grounds have been entirely
destroyed under the Sardinian Government.
[368] "Look at a pious person, man or woman, one in whom the spirit
sways the senses: look at them when they are praying or have risen from
their knees, and see with how bright a ray of divine beauty their faces
are illuminated: you will see the beauty of God shine on their faces:
you will see the beauty of an angel."--SAVONAROLA, _Sermons_.
[369] There is a passage in Rudyard Kipling which exactly describes my
mother's state at this time. "The mind was quickened, and the revolving
thoughts ground against each other, as millstones grind when there is no
corn between."
[370] From "Northern Italy."
[371] Prince Lucien, son of the Roman Prince Charles Lucien (nephew of
Napoleon I.) and of Zenaide, only child of Joseph, King of Naples and
Spain.
[372] Emma Simpkinson reached England before us, but was then rapidly
waning heavenwards. She spent the last few weeks of her life at St.
Leonards, where we had the great comfort of being able to cheer and
watch over her, and she is buried in the cemetery at Ore.
[373] Afterwards Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
[374] From "Northern Italy."
[375] From "Northern Italy."
[376] Afterwards Sir Arthur Blackwood, Secretary to the Post-Office. He
died 1893.
[377] "The Saint of St. Peter's." See vol. ii. p. 429.
[378] The maid of our old friend Mrs. Chambers of Hodsock Priory.
[379] She showed her clearness of mind by mentioning this picture, which
she had not seen for years; but much trouble afterwards resulted from
this clause in her will.
[380] Letter of Mrs. Fitz-Gerald, which would have been used at
Guildford had the trial proceeded.
[381] Statement of Pierina to Miss Stanley.
[382] Statement made by Pierina to Monsignor Paterson, and repeated by
him before the trial to Miss Stanley and my solicitor.
[383] Mrs. Alfred Montgomery died at Naples in January 1893.
[384] It was touching to us, and like Esmeralda's forethought, to find a
clause in the will stating that in case of her former maid, Cl\xE9mence,
dying first, the annuity should be continued to her crippled helpless
mother-in-law (whom Esmeralda had never seen), in order that Cl\xE9mence
might die without any burden on her mind.
[385] Every precaution had been taken by Esmeralda to prevent her
fortune from falling to her brother Francis. In case of my dying
unmarried, everything was to go to her cousin Charles Williamson; and in
case of his death without children, to his brother Victor Williamson.
[386] At this point the agitation of Mary Stanley, who had been my
informant, was so great, that she startled the court by something like a
shout of denial.
[387] As Flora Ackermann, Madame Limosin had been brought up in my
father's family, and, with her sister Victoria, had been treated like
his own children.
[388] Now (1895) every one who took part in the trial at Guildford is
dead, except the priests, and, I believe, the Abbess Pierina. The person
whom Francis Hare had married during the last months of his life
vanished, immediately after his death, into the chaos from whence she
had come.
[389] From "South-Eastern France."
[390] From "South-Western France."
[391] From "The Story of Two Noble Lives."
[392] Lady Anne Barnard died in 1825.
[393] Her son-in-law, Mr. Hodgson Hinde.
[394] Mariage.
[395] I never saw Mrs. Arnold again: she died in the autumn of 1873.
[396] In the following year a siege by the Germans made Toul a familiar
name throughout Europe.
[397] From "North-Eastern France."
[398] From "North-Eastern France."
[399] I little foresaw then the immense service these notes would be to
me in writing the Life of Baroness Bunsen herself eight years after.
[400] From "Northern Italy."
[401] The approach to Mantua has since been altered, and is now
commonplace.
[402] From "Northern Italy."
[403] From "Northern Italy."
[404] From "Northern Italy."
[405] From "Central Italy."
[406] From "Central Italy."
[407] The Spina has since been rebuilt and spoilt by the Sardinian
Government.
[408] The great dikes of the Arno had burst a long way off, so that the
flood came upon us from behind. Only the eastern bank of the Arno was
flooded.
[409] Monckton Milnes.
[410] Eldest son of Colonel Augustus Liddell and grandson of my
great-aunt Lady Ravensworth.
[411] From "Days near Rome."
[412] William Story, the sculptor and poet.
[413] Miss Mary Boyle, celebrated for her dramatic powers.
[414] The sculptress.
[415] Afterwards Ambassador at Berlin.
[416] From "Days near Rome."
[417] From "Days near Rome."
[418] From "Florence."
[419] From "Northern Italy."
[420] Now at Holmhurst.
[421] From "South-Eastern France."
[422] From "South-Eastern France."
[423] The well-known and admirable American actress.
[424] In April 1880.
[425] Diderot, "Sarrasins."
[426] Eldest sister of my old Harrow master, and of Emma Simpkinson,
often mentioned in these Memoirs. In my childhood she lived at
Hurstmonceaux.
[427] "When the thoughts of youth return, fresh as the scent of
new-gathered blossoms, to the tired old age which has so long forgotten
them, the coming of Death is seldom very distant."--OUIDA, "_In
Maremma_."
[428] A much-loved cousin and friend; her mother was a Grey, and my
Mother's first-cousin.
[429] This is said often to happen in case of a death. At Holmhurst it
was most remarkable. They never appeared after that night till the night
of October 18, 1882, when my dear old nurse was dying. I have been
laughed at for narrating this, but the noise of crickets at a death is
spoken of in Ecclesiastes xii. 5--"And the grasshopper shall be a
burden, _because man goeth to his long home_."
[430] Jeremy Taylor.
[431] Harriet Bentley, Lea's niece--her much-attached housemaid.
[432] Of "Walks in Rome."
[433] Putting up a heating apparatus in the passages.
[434] The tenants of Hurstmonceaux Place, the old home of the family.
[435] A poor woman at "Lime Cross," constantly visited by my Mother.
[436] My father's half-sister, who had seldom treated me even with
humanity.
[437] All old servants.
[438] A neighbour and the wife of an old college friend.
[439] Rector of Ashburnham.
Etext transcriber's note:
The following changes were made:
Gasparoni=>Gesparoni
Beauharnois=>Beauharnais
Lyell=>Lyall
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