"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.
| "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 Hyères, whence we proceeded to Nice.
To my Sister.
"Pension Rivoir, Nice, March 16, 1863.—We stayed at Hyères 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."
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 Vœux 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 Vœux, Mrs. Robert Ellice, and Miss Ellice along the bed of the Var and up Mount Chauve and to Aspromonte; with Miss Des Vœux 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 encadré. She has £1500 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."
————
"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 poséd 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."
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 Hôtel 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.
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 Vénus 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 liberté 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 coupé 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.
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 Cœlian, 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 è il Rinier; quest' è il pregio e l'onore
Della casa da Calboli."
Old Lady Wenlock[233] came to the Hôtel 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 £60.
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.
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 goûter."
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 prétent aux réconciliations avec une extrême facilité," 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 Gesù Cristo!' and all the congregation shouted 'Viva.' And when he finished, he cried 'Adesso tre volte viva per Gesù Cristo!' and when they were given, 'E una viva di più,' just as if it were a toast. The Bambino of Ara Cœli 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 Cæsars, 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."
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 Miséricorde 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 Miséricorde 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 Abbé 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 véneré pendant tant d'années, j'ai voulu lui rendre ce dernier homage de mon devoir. J'ai respecté votre douleur dans l'église, et j'ai suivi le cortège à pied jusqu'au cimetière. J'ai desiré 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:—