But what I really cared for most was that I accomplished my long-wished-for pilgrimage to Little Gidding.
“It is a most attractive spot, a bosky hollow in the uplands, with a pool and an oak-wood. The monastic house is gone, but probably stood where a farmhouse stands now, and whence the raised path which led to the still existing chapel is yet visible in the turf. An ancient box-tree with a stem like an oak, contemporary with the old house, stands on the grass. An old contemporary book in the library at Elton had made me even more familiar than ‘John Inglesant’ had done with Nicholas Ferrar, his sister—‘a tall ancient gentlewoman about eighty years of age, she being matron of the house’—and with Mrs. Collet and her sixteen children, including the seven sisters named after the Christian virtues—the Patient, the Cheerful, the Affectionate, the Submiss, the Moderate, and the Charitable—who spent their home hours in making such wonderful books of Christian Harmonies.
“To me the chapel was of most touching interest, backed by the oak-wood—‘the fine grove and sweet walks’ which the little book describes. A broad paved path leads to the door, but in the midst of the path rises a high grey altar-tomb—Nicholas Ferrar’s, I suppose—and on its paving-stones are inscriptions over graves, in which you may still make out the oft-repeated names of Ferrar and Collet. Inside, the chapel is lined by stalls of Charles I. date, with round-headed canopies and divided by oak pillars. Below is the open space where the sisterhood, who kept the six canonical hours, ‘prayed publicly three times a day after the order of the Booke of Common Prayer,’ and where the writer of my little book himself saw ‘the mother-matron with all her traine, which were her daughters and daughters’ daughters, who, with four sonnes, kneeled all the while in the body of the half-space, all being in black gownes and round Monmouth capps, save one of the daughters, who was in a friar’s grey gowne.’ There are brasses on one side of the chancel arch to John Ferrar, 1637, and John Ferrar, 1719; and on the other side to Susanna Collet, daughter of Nicholas Ferrar, who ‘had eight sons and eight daughters, and who died at the age of 76;’ below this is a brass to ‘Amy, wife of John Ferrar, 1702.’ And within is the chancel, where, with the sacrament, Inglesant received stillness and peace unspeakable, and life and light and sweetness filled his mind; where in the misty autumn sunlight and the sweeping autumn wind, heaven itself seemed to have opened to him.’
“There were many minor relics of those who did not wish it, but were called ‘the Nuns of Gidding’—an embossed book-cover of their gold-thread work, and tapestry cases to hold the sacred books; and in the farmhouse some old church plate, given to Nicholas Ferrar, and a chalice inscribed ‘What Sir Edmund Sandys bequeathed to the remembrance of friendship, his friende hath consecrated to the honour of God’s service,’ and on the handle—‘For the church of Little Gidding of Huntington Shire.’
“The owner of the property came to dinner at Elton, and told me that Charles Fitzwilliam, Lord Fitzwilliam’s brother, was lost many years ago in the wilds of America. When at the very last gasp, he saw the lights of a farmhouse, to which he made his way. The woman of the house received him most kindly, warmed and dried him, and made him some tea. ‘It will do you good; it’s Gidding tea: I had it over from Gidding.’—‘What! Gidding in Huntingdonshire.’—‘Yes.’—‘Why, that’s where I come from: I’m a Fitzwilliam!’”
To W. H. Milligan.
“July 20, 1895.—I have come away from London because all that was interesting in the season seemed to be at an end; but I enjoyed it to the last, though certainly what I find to delight in would not please many others. Most of all I have liked my quiet writing-table at the Athenæum, and the silence, not the society, of the club, where no one, except Lord Acton and myself, seems to work in the mornings. Then, after two o’clock, I never go back, but see people for the rest of the day. The garden-parties make this delightful, and I had charming afternoons at Osterley, at Roehampton, and at Sion, where the brilliant groups of people are so picturesque under the great cedar-trees. It was a great pleasure once more, to be welcomed to Holland House, and to find how much those who possess it appreciate its great interest and charm. Once a week the writing-time was broken into, and I went with drawing-parties to the garden at Lambeth, to Waltham Abbey, and to the roof of the Record Office, whence we tried to paint St. Paul’s and all the satellite City churches reared up against an opal sky. In the evenings there was less of interest, and a great party at Devonshire House left more to recollect than the daily dinners, with little real conversation. I think it is Bacon who says, ‘A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is not love.’ The last day, however, a dinner at Lady Audrey Buller’s was most pleasant. It was in honour of her cousin Captain Townshend, the hero of Chitral, who gave me a most graphic description of lying all day smoking behind a barrier of earth, with a spyhole through which he could fire at any man who showed himself, hearing the thud of the return shot against his barrier afterwards. Returning to England, he was shocked to find no one but boys at the balls—‘boys who shake hands with a movement like that of kangaroos.’ I sat by —— the widow of the historian, who talked of other historians, especially of Mr. Freeman—how he had the head of a Jupiter on the body of a gorilla: how he did not eat, but devour; it was no use to put anything less than a joint before him: how scenery never gave him the power of realising an event which he could not read of. One day at dinner Mr. Parker was within one of him. To him Freeman talked incessantly across the lady who was next him. At last there was a pause. The lady thought she would have her innings. ‘It has been very hot weather lately, Mr. Freeman,’ she said. ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said Freeman. ‘Parker, you were saying,’ &c. His biographer misses all his characteristics, but errs most in speaking of him as a typical Teuton, when he was undoubtedly a typical Celt.
“I grumbled very much at being engaged to spend a Sunday in the country during my London time, but never enjoyed a visit more than that to Mr. and Mrs. Tower at the Weald, in Essex. It is only seventeen miles from London, but wild and most beautiful, with glorious trees, a delightful old house, and a still more delightful walled garden, with the curious brick chapel of Mary I., a long tank, and an acre of splendid roses. We ate rather too much and long, but the company was charming. I went and came back with young Lord Abinger, whom I like particularly.
‘How delightful the elections are, and the blatant, self-seeking hypocritical Radicals getting the worst of it. Do you know Luttrell’s lines?—
To Viscount Halifax.
“Penrhyn Castle, Sept. 22, 1895.—I left home in the case of one
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STOKESAY.
STOKESAY.
and have much enjoyed my holiday talking-time. How many delightful people there are in the world. I so seldom see any one I cannot care in the least about. One side, one aspect, seems unprepossessing, but then, if one takes the trouble to go round on the other side, one is sure to find something. Was it not Socrates who said, ‘It is impossible to lead a quiet life, for that would be to disobey the Deity.’ And I am sure no one can carry their eyes about with them through a variety of people as I do, without learning fresh lessons of compensating qualities to be traced in most, and the uniform case of all in the fight to be fought, however different the enemies with which each has to contend. I saw no end of people in Shropshire when I was at Buntingsdale—so familiar in my long-ago—for Gertrude Percy’s wedding at Hodnet. After that I was in quieter scenes, but oh! how lovely, on Wenlock Edge, that eighteen-mile long strip of craggy wooded hill which stretches from Wenlock to Craven Arms, with such fine views over the rich plain below. Wenlock Abbey I saw the evening I arrived, with its grand ruin, and the curious cloistered abbot’s house, so well restored as a residence by the Milnes-Gaskells. Lutwyche, which Lord and Lady Chetwynd have hired, is a charming old house in the very centre of all the beauty, and each day we went to some wonderful old grange, manor, or mansion—Langley, Shipton, Stokesay, Wilderhope, but I think you would have liked best of all Pitchford, the gem of old black and white houses, though you would not have enjoyed as I did the untouched pews of the church, where there is a gigantic oaken effigy of a thirteenth-century De Pitchford. At Condover we saw Miss Mary Cholmondeley the authoress,[532] who looks a genius, which most authoresses I have met do not. Even in conversation, ‘les gens d’esprit sont bêtes’ is usually as true as possible.
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PITCHFORD.
PITCHFORD.
“Penrhyn Castle has been delightful, and my room, with its exquisite views over sea and mountains, the most delightful thing in it. Lady Penrhyn presides over the great place with the calm of perpetual moonlight: sunlight is left to her beautiful and impulsive step-daughter Miss Alice (Pennant), who orders out no end of carriages to take guests up into the hills or wherever they want to go. And of course I longed to go to Ogwen Bank and Capel Curig, connected with my mother’s childhood, and more than ever admired these rude savage purple mountains, which have so much individual character that height is quite a secondary consideration. Then yesterday we went to that island in the Menai Straits, where there is an old chapel of great sanctity, to which Welsh funerals still wind along a narrow causeway, singing their beautiful hymns as they go.
“Do you know that ‘The Gurneys of Earlham’ is out? You will not like it, I think, and indeed I feel myself, that Carlyle would be justified in saying it was ‘a very superfluous book.’ Still, I will anticipate your asking me, and tell you that, up to its lights, it is not a bad piece of work. The whole family are a singular instance of unity without uniformity. While I have worked at the book, I have become irresistibly and most strongly attracted by such characters as Catherine Gurney and Richenda Cunningham, though for the great fetish of the family, the self-opinionated, self-parading, egotistical Joseph John, I never could have any warm feeling. Yet a descendant of one of his cousins (Lady Fry) assures me that she was so distressed on hearing of his death in her childhood, that she pulled down all the blinds of her doll’s house. So he must have had his attractive points.
“The book is certainly better reading than the earlier memoirs of those it concerns. Of those memoirs I heard an amusing story the other day. Mr. Parke of Andover, a great American philosopher and thinker, at one time quite lost the power of sleep. He said he had long tried all remedies in vain, but at last found a remedy which never failed. It was to have a book read to him, the story of a woman’s life. It always took effect at once, and soothed him into the sweetest slumbers. If he was nervous, his wife would take the book and begin—‘Elizabeth Fry was born’—‘But,’ said Mr. Parke, ‘she has begun that book constantly for two years, and I have never found out where she was born yet, for with the first words I am in dreamland.’
“Here are two little stories for you. Miss R. told me how the Bishop of Winchester and the Dean of Windsor were walking together down the street of Windsor, when they saw a little boy struggling to reach a bell. ‘Why, you’re not tall enough, my little man; let me ring the bell for you,’ said the Bishop. ‘Yes, if you please, sir,’ said the boy modestly. So the Bishop gave the bell a good pull. ‘Now then, sir, run like the devil,’ shrieked the boy, as he made off as hard as he could.
“Little E. L. was very naughty indeed the other day, and not only scratched her governess, but spit at her. ‘How can you have been so naughty?’ said her mother, ‘it can only have been the devil who made you do such a thing.’ ‘Well, perhaps it was the devil who told me to scratch her,’ replied little E——, ‘but, as for the spitting, it was entirely my own idea.’”
To W. H. Milligan.
“Garrowby, Yorkshire, Oct. 4.—The glorious weather which illuminated Wales continued at Lyme, which was still in the full splendour of summer flowers. I drew with Lady Newton each day, one day at Prestbury, where there is a wonderful old Norman mortuary chapel, like those in Brittany. Mrs. Mitford was at Lyme, and it was a pleasure to talk with her of the dear Lady Egerton, whom we both so much appreciated, and who preserved her sunny nature to the last. ‘How sad to see you suffering so!’ said Mrs. M. to her in her last terrible illness. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but then, you know, I have enjoyed every day of my life.’ Thinking of her, it is a difficult endeavour to be ‘doux envers la mort,’ as Bossuet said after Henrietta Maria’s death.
“I went on to flattest Lincolnshire, to Revesby Abbey, to visit my distant cousin, dear Edward Stanhope’s widow. It is delightful to see how, by making the effort at once, it is no effort to her now to talk of him, and indeed he is so often spoken of, that he seems to have a part still in the family life, and his cheerful grave, like a little garden, under the east window of the church which he built, has nothing sad. It is as if he had gone from this room into the next. Yet how delightful he was, how truly lovable! I was taken, by my urgent desire, to Mavis Enderby; but it is a little inland village with an insignificant church, which could by no possibility have given any tidal warning; so I suppose Jean Ingelow only took the name[533] because of its musical sound. On the way we passed some grassy mounds. ‘What are those?’—‘The remains of Bolingbroke—of the castle of Bolingbroke.’ How Arthur Stanley would have loved them; yet they are amongst the things which are worth seeing but not worth going to see. Another day we went by the remains of the old house of Eresby, which gave its name to Willoughby d’Eresby, to visit the grand tombs of the Willoughbys at Spilsby. They are all of alabaster, the last representing a mother who died in childbirth, with the infant which cost her life by her side in its cradle. Sir John Franklin was born at Spilsby, and he and his two brothers have monuments in the church. Their father was a small farmer close by, and when his farm failed, he settled in the village itself, and kept its shop, grocery on one side the door, drapery on the other. And, coming from thence, John Franklin became the most famous of those Arctic travellers whom Wilkie Collins aptly describes as ‘the men who go nowhere and find nothing.’ In this drive we passed by Keil, where the church tower had suddenly collapsed. ‘Well, now, how was it? was it a hurricane, or did the soil give way, or what?’ said Mrs. Egerton to the sexton, who for a minute answered nothing, and then, ‘Well, mum, ‘twere this way; her just squatted and settled.’
“The house at Revesby was full of interesting objects. Amongst them was a magnificent repeater watch which belonged to the old Lord Stanhope.[534] One night, when he was out late, a man pounced upon him with pistols and ‘Your money or your life.’ Always imperturbable, Lord Stanhope replied very slowly, ‘My friend, I have no money with me.’—‘No,’ said the robber, ‘but you have your watch; I must have your watch.’—‘My friend, this watch was given to me by one very dear to me, and I value it extremely. It is considered to be worth £100. Now, if you will trust me, I will this evening place a hundred-pound note in the hollow of that tree.’ And the highwayman trusted him and Lord Stanhope placed the note there.
“Very many years after, Lord Stanhope was at a public dinner in London, and opposite him sat a City magnate of great wealth and influence. They conversed pleasantly. Next day Lord Stanhope received a letter from him, enclosing a hundred-pound note, and saying, ‘It was your Lordship’s kind loan of that sum many years ago that started me in life, and enabled me to rise to have the honour of sitting opposite your Lordship at dinner.’
“When I was a child, ‘Marmion’ made me long passionately to see Whitby, and ‘Sylvia’s Lovers’ afterwards increased the longing. Now I have been there, and what a wonderful place it is. I think nothing on the English, or French, or Spanish, or German coasts is equal to it. The first morning was a thick fog—a most blessed fog. I felt a presentiment of what would happen. I was certain where the abbey was, and through the dim streets, up the slippery steps, and between the gravestones of the churchyard dripping with wet, I made my way to a certain field, which I was sure was the right place, and there I waited. Soon out of the thick mists rose, bathed in sudden sunlight, the grand ruin of an abbey, all glorious in the heavens, but no earth visible. It was as the summit of Mont Blanc is sometimes seen, but a New Jerusalem, in splendour beyond words—‘And the building of the wall of it was of pure gold.’ And then suddenly the fog came down again and it vanished, and in a few minutes, when the veil drew up the second time, a noble ruined abbey stood there, every arch and pillar reflected in the waters of a lonely tarn, but it was only the bones of the glorious vision which had been.
“The old courthouse of the Cholmondeleys was the abbot’s house, and in it was ‘Lady Anne’s Chamber,’ terribly haunted. A figure used to come down from a picture over the chimney, and was seen by many still living. Close by was a passage with an oubliette, down which ‘the nuns used to throw their babies.’ All, except the offices, has been cleared away by Sir C. Strickland, and a hideous modern house built. Down the steep way below the house Sir Nicholas Cholmondeley used to drive his four-in-hand furiously.
“The fog was fainter all the rest of that day, and oh! how I luxuriated in the winding ways upon the cliffs, in the dark red roofs piled one upon another, and the delicate grey distances of buildings or sea.
“Here, at Garrowby, I have been very happy with the Halifaxes. I always feel better for the life with them, and I have especially liked the spiritual part of it here, where there is no chaplain, as at Hickleton, and where the services in the beautiful little chapel are led by Charlie Halifax himself. Everybody joins, and a footman sings gloriously at the very pitch of his voice. In everything Charlie recalls to me something which I have read with a higher reference—‘Not by his doctrines has Christ laid hold upon the heart of men, but by the story of his life.’[535] He has ‘under all circumstances that just admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity’ which Marcus Aurelius speaks of. Unlike everything else is the simplicity and singleness of heart and purpose written so distinctly on everything he says and does. Action is easy and natural where faith is so absolute. ‘At all times a man who would do faithfully must believe firmly,’ was a saying of Carlyle. And though religion pervades everything, no house was ever so gay as that of which Charlie is master. What merriment we have had over our games in the evening: what fun over the mysterious disappearances by day into the four secret chambers which make this house so curious: what admirably good stories have been told; and while the loss of the dear boys who are gone ever leaves a blank in the parents’ hearts, how happy life is made for the children who remain! ‘La joie est très bonne pour la santé: ce qui est sot, c’est d’être triste’[536]—this seems to be one of the minor guides of action. The place is not very interesting, but the house delightfully full of books and pictures. In the park are African cows, Japanese deer, emus, and kangaroos. Lady Ernestine Edgecumbe and Lady Beauchamp are here. It is a little society of those who feel that ‘we may not only know the truth, but may live even in this life in the very household and court of God.’”[537]
To George Cockerton.
“Holmhurst, Oct. 9.—My return home was saddened by finding dear old Harriet Rogers—Lea’s niece—in a dying state at her little cottage in the grounds. She was just able to recognise me, and whispered touchingly, ‘I thank you! I thank you!’ As in the many other people I have now seen enter the shadow of death, there was no fear and no joy; the power of mental emotion seemed past. Yesterday, whilst I was with her, she died, passing the barrier quite painlessly. Yet what a change for her! There is always something very awe-striking in it.
is a line of the ‘Lady of Shalott’ which Tennyson afterwards removed, as giving too painful an image of death; but it is exactly what happens. To-day I feel it—yes, odd to see the same farm and garden life, in which she was interested and had a share, going on the same, and that her part in it should be so suddenly over—snapped. How she must be longing to tell one now what she felt at that momentous moment. I am exactly like the person in ‘Hitherto’—‘I can’t get over expectin’ her to come in and talk it all over. It seems as though she couldn’t do nothin’ without tellin’ folk how!—But there, I dare say,—if ‘tain’t wicked to think of it,—it’s half over heaven by this time.’
“‘Il faut mourir et rendre compte de sa vie, voilà dans toute sa simplicité le grand enseignement de la maladie. Fais au plus tôt ce que tu as à faire; rentre dans l’ordre, songe à ton devoir; prépare-toi au départ; voilà ce que crient la conscience et la raison.’[538]
“My ‘North-Western France’ is now ready to appear. It has been an immense labour, one compared with which ‘The Gurneys of Earlham’ is as a drop to a river; but I have no doubt the latter will be more read, and certainly more reviewed, for scarcely any Englishmen know enough of France to be critical about descriptions of it. I have another little book ready too—‘Biographical Essays’—which is sure to meet with plenty of abuse, but does not deserve much, all the same. In it I have tried to give such a picture of Arthur Stanley as may make people love him as a friend, whilst they shrink from following him as a guide.”
“The whole value and meaning of life lies in the single sense of conscience—duty.”—Frances Anne Kemble.
“True happiness is only to be obtained by devotedness to the will of God. Seeking the universal good—the highest good of all. Life can only be truly happy, not when we are in ecstasy, but when we are doing right.”—Thomas Cooper, Thoughts at Fourscore.
GREATLY as I always enjoy my little home of Holmhurst, dear as every corner of it is to me, I never feel as if it was well to stay there too long in winter alone. In summer, Nature itself can give sufficient companionship; but when earth is dead and frost-bound, the silence in the long hours after sunset becomes almost terrible, and I increasingly feel that late autumn and winter are the best time for visits.
To Viscount Halifax.
“Holmhurst, Nov. 25.—I have much enjoyed a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Cummings, the Americans who were so kind to us on our terrible return journey from Italy in 1860, and of whom the wife, at least, is so clever, that she is suffering—as Mrs. Kemble said once of some one—from a constipation of her talents. They came here fresh from a visit to Haworth, much impressed with its severe desolation,—‘that any one should be able to have any hope, or look forward to a future life, on the top of Haworth hill is nothing short of a miracle.’ They have made a Brontë museum there now, chiefly full of Branwell’s drawings, of great interest, chiefly military. Did you know that Mr. Nichols hoped to have been rector when Mr. Brontë died? But it was given by election, and he was unpopular, and it went against him. He is still living in Ireland, whither he took all the Brontë memorials he cared for. The rest were sold by auction, and the butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker of Haworth bought them. The sexton showed Mrs. Cummings some of Charlotte’s underclothing, delicately marked by herself with her C. B., and her wedding shoes, of some grey material to match her dress. He had often seen her and her sister come out of the house, and go through the little gate at the back to the moors, which at Haworth are grass, not heather. After Charlotte married, Mr. Nichols would not let her write. His mind was of the very narrowest, and he disapproved of novels, and when she was pent up in that solitude, and all her secret thoughts were pent up too, and never allowed to come out in writing, she—died.
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IN THE WALKS, HOLMHURST.
IN THE WALKS, HOLMHURST.
“Mrs. Cummings says we should not like America; ‘it is a country utterly without perspective; one must go up to the Indians and the Jesuit missionaries for that.’ She has been describing Miss Louisa Alcott,[539] the well-known authoress. ‘She lived with her old father and her beautiful mother and her three sisters. They used to write little stories. One day her sisters said, “Louisa, you must write something more than these.”—“I would, but I can’t do it here,” she answered. So the sisters clubbed their little savings together, and they sold a few things, and Louisa went to Boston. There she called upon Roberts, the publisher of all American good things, and said, “I want to write a story.”—“Very well,” he answered; “what kind will you take?”—“Oh, I can’t make up anything,” said Louisa; “I can only just write what I know.”—“Oh, you can just write what you know,” said Roberts; “then don’t stay talking here; go away at once and begin.” So she went and lived by herself and wrote, and in five weeks she brought him her “Little Women.” He took it and said, “Come again to-morrow.” And when she went next day he said, “Well, I will take your story, and I will offer you one of two things; either you can take two hundred dollars down for it, or you can take your chance.”—“But what would you do if you were me?” asked Miss Alcott. Roberts said he had never been placed in such an awkward predicament in his life, but he spoke the truth and said, “I would take my chance.” She did, and soon after he had to pay her 10,000 dollars.[540] She wrote “Little Men” afterwards, but it did not answer as well; boys do not take books to their pillows as girls do.’
“‘I love crying,’ said Mrs. Cummings, ‘but then I must have somebody to cry to. I cried as a little girl because I thought my mother might die, but I cried most because I thought that then I should have no one to cry to.’ Miss Alcott said to her, ‘My dear, I shouldn’t mind dying if it wasn’t for the funeral.’
“‘Mr. Tennyson was very rude and coarse,’ said Mrs. Cummings, ‘but he died well—reading his little book in the moonlight: he really couldn’t have done it better.’
“‘Louisa Payson, who wrote “The Pastor’s Daughter” and many other books,[541] would not say “thank you” when she was a little girl. Her father, the stern minister, punished her in various ways, but it was no good—she said she couldn’t. So at last, at five years old, he turned her out of doors late on a winter’s evening. He went to his affairs, forgot her, I suppose; but her mother was in an agony, and she prayed for her child with all the spirit that was in her. At last she could bear it no longer, and she opened the door a little way, and then she heard a little wail of “I can’t say thank you: I can’t say thank you.” What was the end I do not know, but at any rate Louisa did not die, and lived to write books.’
“These are some snatches from the Holmhurst tea-table.”
To Herbert Vaughan.
“Kingston Vicarage, Wareham, Nov. 10.—You would have liked going with us to Wool, on a ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ pilgrimage, for there, rising by the reedy river-side, is the old gabled house to which Tess was taken after her marriage. It is exactly as Hardy describes it;[542] even the plank bridge remains across which Angel carried her in his sleep to the stone coffin at Bindon Abbey. The two old pictures mentioned in the book really hang at the top of the staircase, and the lady in one of them is supposed to blow out the candle of any one who ventures up the stairs after midnight. The whole country-side is full of memories of the D’Urbervilles, and there are many still living who depose to having met their phantom coach and four with outriders. The family still exists at Kingston as—Tollerfield!
“We had an awful storm last night, but such hurricanes are the fashion in Purbeck. A Mr. Bellasye, returning home, met, not his bathing-machine, but his bathing-house coming to meet him across the hedges and ditches. Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth had a huge hole blown into their roof by one gust; but that did not much signify, as the next gust blew a haystack on to the roof and filled the hole up. All the cabbages and other vegetables in the kitchen-garden are frequently blown out of the earth and into a heap in a corner, and on one occasion those in the rectory-garden were all blown into the church porch.”
To Viscount Halifax.
“Elvedon, Thetford, Nov. 14.—All the way back from Dorsetshire did I come for the pleasure of meeting the Duchess of York here (at Lord and Lady Iveagh’s); but that was not to be, as an impending event is considered too near for her to travel with safety. The Duke is here, and very unaffected and pleasant, really a very nice prince, and quite good-looking. He never fails to be punctual to the moment—a grand quality for a prince, and due, probably, to naval discipline. He talks a great deal, and talks well, but in reality princes have no chance—no chance at all—conversationally, as no one ever contradicts them, however much they disagree; no subjects are aired but those which they choose for themselves, and the merest commonplaces from royal lips are listened to as if they were oracles.
“Anything more odious or annoying than being a prince certainly cannot be imagined. Such a wearisome round of dullest duties and painful ‘pleasures’ as it is their life’s-work to live in like a tread-mill. Then, every fault of manner, far more of conduct and character, is commented, dwelt on, and exaggerated. I should be sorry for any prince, but am really dreadfully sorry for this one, as he would have been charming, and might have been extremely happy if the misfortune of his birth had not condemned him to the severe and miserable existence of princedom, in which all minor faults are uncorrected because unsuggested, though I believe such a true friend and fine character as, for instance, Lord Carrington, would always notice any sufficiently grave to be of consequence either to the country or the royal family.
“I floated here in the luxurious saloon carriage of a special train, but felt rather shy, because whereas all the rest of the party were on terms of christian-name intimacy, I knew none of them before except Lord Rowton, who is, however, always very kind and pleasant. But I was interested to see those who are so frequently part of the royal circle, and liked them all, especially and extremely Lord and Lady Carrington; but then—everyone does!
“I wonder if you know this house of Elvedon. It was Duleep Singh’s, and he tried to make it like an Indian palace inside. Much of his decoration still remains, and the delicate white stucco-work has a pretty effect when mingled with groups of tall palms and flowering plants. Otherwise the house (with the kindest of hosts), is almost appallingly luxurious, such masses of orchids, electric light everywhere, &c. However, a set-off the other way is an electric piano, which goes on pounding away by itself with a pertinacity which is perfectly distracting. In the evenings singing men and dancing women are brought down from London, and are supposed to enliven the royal guest.
“You know, probably, how this place is the most wonderful shooting in England. The soil is so bad that it is not worth cultivating, and agriculture has been abandoned as a bad business. Game is found to be far more profitable. The sterile stony fields are intersected at intervals by belts of fir; the hedges, where they exist, are of Scotch fir kept low; and acres of thick broom are planted. Each day I have gone out with the luncheon party, and we have met the shooters at tents pitched at different parts of the wilderness, where boarded floors are laid down, and a luxurious banquet is prepared, with plate and flowers. The quantity of game killed is almost incredible, and the Royal Duke shot more than any one, really, I believe, owing to his being a very good shot, and not, as so often is the case in royal battues, from the birds being driven his way.
“A great feature of the party is Admiral Keppel, kindest, most courteous, and most engaging of old gentlemen, so captivating that there is always a rivalry amongst the ladies as to who shall walk with him, and amongst the men to get hold of his stories. He told me of how his father first started him on his naval career, and, while he talked it over at Holcombe, made him sit in the same chair in which he had talked the same subject over with Nelson when he was starting him.
“He described the prayers at Holcombe on Sunday evening in his boyhood. After dinner the men were allowed an hour or two over their wine. Then the prayer-bell rang, and they all went in. Afterwards an old servant stayed to take up those who could not get up from their knees, and carry them to bed by turns when they were too drunk to go by themselves.
“He remembered Charles James Fox reeling down the corridor at Holcombe, falling helplessly from side to side. His father followed him, and he followed his father, who kept exclaiming, ‘Good God! drunk! Good God! drunk again!’ for the expression had not gone out then.
“He said that the present Lord Leicester and his father had married at exactly a hundred years apart.”
To W. H. Milligan and Journal.
“Nov. 27, Hornby Castle, Bedale.—I came here yesterday. Several people were in the castle omnibus when I got into it at the station, of whom a grand lion-like old man turned out to be Mr. Bayard, the American Ambassador. It was dark when we arrived. We found the Duchess (of Leeds), tall, gracious, and most winning in manner, and indeed all the family, in a noble hall, coved at the top, with busts in the upper niches, like the halls of Roman palaces, and looking (by daylight) into a courtyard, which is very picturesque and curious.
“Lady Harewood is here, sweet-looking and very white, with a pleasant daughter, Mr. and Lady Alice Shaw Stewart, and several young men. Mr. Bayard came down to dinner much delighted with a book he had found in his room—the ‘Life of Agrippina’—in which ‘What news from Armenia?’ is anxiously asked, showing how the same subject occupied conversation then as now, at a distance of nineteen centuries. He said, ‘When bad men conspire, good men ought to confederate.’
“This morning, in the library, I had much and delightful talk with Mr. Bayard. He gave an interesting account of the allotment of land in America: how a reserve was left to the Indians, but they were dying out, chiefly because of their catching all the vices of Europeans, especially their love of alcohol. He said they were like the buffaloes. These used to come down and swoop through the country in vast herds, and devour all the spring produce; and later, in their vast battalions they would swoop back again; but now, fettered and shut in by barriers and fences, they pined, starved, and died; and so it was with the Indians. He described how, after an unjust woman had published a libel on her country,[543] the greatest suffering had resulted to the slaves, who would follow their former masters to suffering, wounds, imprisonment, and death. A Southern lady, when ‘the army of liberation’ approached, had entrusted all her silver and jewels to her slaves, and they had brought it all back safely after the army had passed.
“He talked of the Banco di S. Giorgio at Genoa—‘one of the most interesting buildings in the world;’ that whereas the Bank of London had lasted two centuries, that of Genoa had lasted five: that the Bank was the greatest evidence of the philosophy of nations. No aspersion was ever cast upon it, and this was because those who administered it had never derived any profit from it, only honour. An instance of its usefulness as a record-office occurred lately, when a man in America offered Mr. H. an autograph letter of Columbus. To all appearance it was genuine, but Mr. H. asked leave, which was readily granted, to have a photograph facsimile made of it before purchasing. In the Banco di Giorgio the original letter was found, and, when compared with the facsimile, proved that the copy was false. This was especially fortunate, as, after Napoleon I., ‘that great collector of other people’s property,’ took away the archives of Genoa, though most were restored, all were not.
“The library at Hornby is full of interest, but I can only remember a fifteenth-century ‘Roman de la Rose;’ a first edition of Shakspeare, which came to its present owners through Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, who inherited it from William Congreve; and a copy of ‘Dionysius the Areopagite,’ by Beghir, ‘the one-eyed scribe of Brabant’—most delightful name—with notes by Dean Colet.
“The Duchess has shown us the house minutely and delightfully. The family portraits were full of interest, beginning with that of Sir William Hewitt, whose daughter married William Osborne, the apprentice who saved her when she fell over London Bridge, and who founded the Leeds family. In a curious Hogarth of ‘The Beggar’s Opera,’ the Duke of Bolton is represented watching the acting of Polly Peachum, whom he afterwards married: the picture is here because Sir Conyers d’Arcy, an ancestor of the house, is also represented. Mr. Bayard was delighted to find portraits of the wife of the seventh Duke, who was Miss Caton, one of four beautiful American sisters.[544] The Duchess was amused that I had never heard of ‘Godolphin Arabian,’ the ancestor of a succession of famous racehorses.[545] In one of the rooms is the miniature spinning-wheel of Madame de Pompadour; in another, a bed of such glorious embroidery that when Lady Marian Alford was here, she could not get up for looking at it.”
“Nov. 29.—At breakfast, at one of several little round tables, Mr. Bayard talked pleasantly of a grave in the cemetery at Nuremberg. It is one of Adam Kraft’s iron tombstones, and it bears no name. Affixed to it is a human skull, exquisitely modelled, with a jaw which opens and shuts. In the forehead—the bronze forehead—is a white patch of some other metal. The story is that the owner of that skull was very unhappily married. His misery drove him from home, drove him into very bad company, and he sank lower and lower. One day he suddenly died and was buried; but soon afterwards his family began to suspect foul play, and he was exhumed. At first his body seemed to bear no witness, but then, in his forehead, under his hair, a large nail was found, buried up to the hilt, hammered in so accurately that no blood had come. Every one believed that it was his wife who had done it, but it could not be brought home to her; his associates were too bad for their evidence to be trusted. But the model of his skull was laid upon his grave, and his wife left the place; she could not continue to exist near it.
“We went to luncheon at Thorp-Perrow with Sir Frederick and Lady Milbank, who have a glorious garden. He is full of antiquarian lore and interests, and has a precious collection of old locks and keys. She knows sixteen languages well, and is learning a seventeenth. Hungarian she acquired for the sake of its literature. A despatch came to the Foreign Office in Hungarian, and no one there could read it, but Austen Lee sent it to Lady Milbank, who translated it at once. The Milbanks were very intimate with Madame Goldschmidt, whom they lived next door to in London. One day in a church—a country church—they saw her go out of her pew and shake a woman by her shoulders. ‘What on earth had that unfortunate woman done?’ they asked when they came out. ‘Why, didn’t you hear she was singing a false second.’”
“Hams, Birmingham, Nov. 30.—This is a large house of extreme comfort, and its owner, Lord Norton, who looks sixty, though he is eighty-two, is one of the most agreeable hosts in England. Walking on the terrace this morning, he said he ought to put up a slab to record how the whole constitution of New Zealand was settled on that terrace: that which was arranged while walking up and down there had never been altered. The view of the pretty windings of the Thame recalled the exclamation of a famous landscape-gardener when he saw it—‘Clever!’ ‘It was not made, it is natural,’ said Lord Norton. But no, his friend could not regard it except from the gardening point of view, and ‘clever’ was all he could say. The river was terribly polluted by Birmingham, and Lord Norton went to law about it. ‘Should the convenience of one man be considered before that of millions?’ exclaimed the Birmingham advocate at the trial. ‘Yes,’ shouted the opposition, ‘for the grandeur of English law is that millions may not interfere with the comfort and well-being of a single individual. Now the pollution is partially diverted into a sewage farm five miles in extent.
“The clergyman here has only the care of three hundred souls, so he keeps three hundred chickens, and is often able to supplement his income by getting fifty pounds for a cock.
“An oak avenue leads to the church, being a remnant probably of the Forest of Arden, of which there are many traces still, but such an avenue is very rare. The late storm had blown down several fine trees. ‘How strange it is,’ said Lord Norton, ‘that amid the thousand—the million—theories that science has put forth, there should be none about the wind: it is one of the many incidental proofs of the truths of the Bible, that our Saviour saw this when he spoke of—“The wind bloweth where it listeth,” &c.
“‘Those who say that as to religion we know nothing, do not recognise that half religion is instinct (every one has the instinct that there is a God), and the other half what Pascal calls “the submission of reason.”’
“Lord Norton used to know very well Ellis the shoemaker, who devoted himself to the reformation of boys. He said, ‘I do not take them to make shoes only; I take them to give them a conscience.’ He said, ‘Many people say that the boys are fools, but they are philosophers. They reason at night. I overhear them; I hear them reasoning as to whether there is a God.’ There was one boy especially who denied this, who laughed at all who believed. One day this boy was given a parcel to take to Sir Moses Montefiore. Now the boys may steal, but however much they do that, when they are entrusted with anything, they are most tenacious to fulfil their trust. This boy only knew of Sir Moses by his popular name of ‘the King of the Jews,’ and all day long he asked his way to him in vain. He could not find him anywhere. Evening closed in, and he was faint with hunger and fatigue. He was quite sinking, but at the last gasp cried, ‘O God, if there be a God, help me.’
“Immediately a policeman rushed at him. ‘What have you got there, you young rascal? What’s in that parcel?—something you’ve been stealing, I suppose?’—‘No, ‘taint; it’s a parcel for the King of the Jews, and I can’t find him.’—‘Why, you young fool,’ said the policeman, shaking him, ‘it’s Sir Moses Montefiore you mean: I can show you where to find him.’
“That night the boys were philosophising as usual, declaring that there was no God, there couldn’t be, when the boy who had taken the parcel shouted, ‘Stop that rubbish, you fellows; there is a God, and I know it: and as for you, you’re just as much able to judge of God as a worm is to judge of me.’”
“Dec. 2.—A walk amidst the remnants of the Forest of Arden led to much talk about trees. ‘When Gladstone meets any one new,’ said Lord Norton, ‘his first thought is, “What does he know? what can I get out of him?” When he met Lord Leigh, he had heard of Stoneleigh, that it possessed some of the finest oaks in England; so, when he sat down by him, he began at once, “Lord Leigh, have you any theory as to the age of oaks?”—“Yes, certainly I have; I possess several myself that are above a thousand years old.”—“And how do you know that is so?” said Gladstone. “Well,” said Lord Leigh, “I have several that are called ‘Gospel Oaks,’ because the old Saxon missionaries used to preach under them more than eight hundred years ago, and they would not be likely to choose a young oak to preach under: we may suppose that they chose an oak at least two hundred years old.”—“Well, that is a very good reason,” said Gladstone.’
“Lord Norton had lately been with Gladstone to Drayton, full of Peel relics, and with the wonderful collection of portraits which Sir Robert brought together. All the heads of Government, from Walpole to the Peel Administration, are represented. The pistols are preserved with which Peel intended to fight O’Connell at Calais, but O’Connell’s wife prevented it by giving notice and getting him arrested at Dover.
“While talking of hunting as conducive to the manliness of Englishmen, Lord Norton said, ‘When I was hunting with Charlie Newdigate, a boy almost naked, not quite, came out of a coal-pit, and on a donkey, without saddle or bridle, hunted with us all day, not going over the hedges, but through them. Newdigate was delighted. “That’s the stuff English heroes are made of,” he said, and he had a long talk with the boy afterwards, and explained to him all about the field, &c.... In Northumberland there was a boy who would ride one of his father’s bulls. His father cut him off at last, and would have nothing more to do with him. ‘I’m not a bad father,’ he said, ‘and I don’t mind his riding my bull, but when he takes him out with the hounds it’s too much.’”
“The Deanery, Llandaff, Dec. 7.—Lord Robert Bruce told me the facts of Lord Llanover’s ghost story. As Sir Benjamin Hall and he were riding in the Park in London, Sir Benjamin distinctly saw Lord Rivers, who was an intimate friend of his, and he saw him vanish. He went to his club immediately afterwards, and told what he had seen, and before he left the club a telegram was brought in announcing that Lord Rivers was dead. Afterwards Sir Benjamin Hall went to Mrs. Hanbury Leigh, and told her what had happened, adding, ‘You know this must mean something; it must mean that I am myself to die within the year;’ and so he did.
“I have enjoyed being again with the cousin so deeply loved in my childhood, and also seeing the really beautiful work of the gentle and, I am sure, holy Dean amongst the young men preparing for orders, who hover reveringly around him.’
“Catherine Vaughan has told me how, after Augusta Stanley’s death, she said to Mrs. Drummond (of Megginch), who was living at the Deanery, ‘Augusta’s presence so seems to fill this place, that I quite wonder she never appears here;’ and was startled by the way in which Mrs. Drummond said, ‘She does.’ Augusta used on her death-bed to say to Arthur, ‘I shall always be near you when you give the Benediction.’ One day in the Abbey, between the arches, but quite near Arthur, Mrs. Drummond most distinctly saw Augusta—a vaporous figure, wrapped in folds of vaporous white drapery, but with every feature as distinctly visible as in life. This was just before the Benediction, and as its last tones died away the appearance vanished. Mrs. Drummond had no doubt about it at all.”
To George Cockerton.
“Burwarton, Shropshire, Dec. 12.—This is a charming place in the high Clee Hills, and Lord and Lady Boyne, who live in it, are quite delightful. I have been working for a great part of several days in the library at a little book on ‘Shropshire,’ which I hope to be able to finish another year. You would have been amused by the quaint sayings of an old clergyman who came to dinner. Speaking of an unusually stupid neighbour he said, ‘His folly is incredible, but even he has his lucid intervals, for the other day he told me he knew he was an ass.’
“I would give up, if I were you, taking the extra work you speak of. There is an old Swedish proverb which says—‘You cannot get more out of an ox than beef,’ and there is no use, none, in trying to do, or to be, two things at once.”
To Viscount Halifax.
“Rome, April 23, 1896.—I wonder if you know that I have been abroad since the first of February. At first, for a month, I was on ‘the Rivieras,’ finishing up a little volume which will be so called, and which will appear before next winter. Some new places are opened up now by a railway—a most beautiful miniature railway—from Hyères to S. Raphael, and amongst them is S. Maxime, a quiet scene of tranquil beauty, where the pension is still only six francs, in a charming little hotel with a garden which comes down to a sea-cove, where you look across transparent shallows of emerald-green water into mountain distances, not grand, but supremely lovely, and where, in our long-ago days, you and I should have been in a fever of romantic interest over the old castle of Grimaud, which was the cradle of the princely Grimaldis.
“At Nice, I was not in the town, but at the old Villa Arson, which you will remember. It is now a hotel, though its wonderful garden, full of statues, staircases, fountains, and grottoes amongst the flowers and palm-trees, is quite untouched. It was all beautiful, and the sky was cloudlessly blue for a month; and I lingered at Bordighera with the Strathmores and my dear old friend Emilia de Bunsen, and then at Alassio with my cousin Lady Paul, and at beautiful Rapallo. But oh! the difference on entering real Italy, and finding oneself in the delightful old-world streets of Lucca, with their clean pavements and brown green-shuttered houses, with the air so much more bracing, the sky so much more soft, and the pleasant manner and winning tongue of the Italian people.
“At the Florence station I had an unpleasant experience, in being robbed of £100 by two roughly-jostling men at the entrance of the carriage. It was a great loss, but I could not help admiring the cleverness with which they contrived to extract my pocket-book out of the inner breast pocket of my coat with a greatcoat over it. They were taken up afterwards—Frenchmen, I am glad to say, not Italians—and immense booty of watches, purses, &c., found upon them, all taken at Florence station; but I have no chance of recovering my notes. I have had to appear against them already six times and to identify them in prison.
“My last six weeks have been spent in Rome,—spoilt, destroyed, from the old Rome of our many winters here, but settling down now into the inferior mediocrity to which the Sardinian occupation has reduced it. And, though one does not see them every hour as one used to do, there are still many lovely and attractive corners to be hunted up. The Italian archaeologists (so called) are also finding out that they have made a great mistake in tearing away all the plants and shrubs which protected the tops of the ruins, and are comically occupied in planting little roots of grass and chickweed on their barren summits. There are very few capable or interested winter visitors now. They mostly belong to the class of the first of the three audience-seekers to whom Pius IX. addressed his usual question of ‘How long have you been in Rome, and how much have you seen?’ and who answered, ‘I have been here three days, and have seen everything.’[546]
“Good old Dr. Gason has died lately (the man of whom Pius IX. said—‘un certo pagano, chi si chiama Jasone’), the leader of the Evangelical party here—one of a class who seemed to me ‘every one’ when I was a boy, and when the dreary desert of Sunday was only enlivened by Foxe’s ‘Book of Martyrs’ and ‘Josephus,’ and almost everything pleasant was a ‘carnal indulgence.’ How few there are who think like that now—no one who has a real part in my life since dear Charlotte Leycester passed away. Certainly, there is no one now to think one—well, much worse than a pagan for taking one’s sketch-book on Sundays to the Palace of the Caesars, where I have spent many quiet hours meditating on my past and its past. I am often oppressed, however, by my great loneliness, by the want of any relation who has a real interest in me, by the constant feeling—however kind people are—of signifying nothing to anybody. And those who remember our old life—the old life with the mother and Lea which was so different from this—are becoming very, very few. I can only try to say—