‘Charité envers les autres;Sincérité envers Dieu;Dignité envers soi-même.’
‘Charité envers les autres;Sincérité envers Dieu;Dignité envers soi-même.’
And added, ‘But who should one be well with if not with oneself, with whom one has to live so very much.’
“This morning Lady Ducie’s pet housemaid gave warning, because, she said, Lady Ducie was not so sympathetic to her as she was six weeks ago. She said that as Lady Ducie was now not nearly so nice to her as she had been, she should be obliged to marry a greengrocer who had proposed to her.
“In the afternoon we drove to Daylesford—Warren Hastings’ so beloved home. It is a very pretty place, picturesque modern cottages amid tufted trees, and a very beautiful small modern church on a green. This church was built by Mr. Grisewood, and supplants a so-called Saxon church, restored after a thousand years of use by Warren Hastings. The inscription commemorating his restoration still remains, and ends with the text—‘For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday.’ The tomb of Warren Hastings, a yellow urn on a pedestal, stands in the churchyard just under the east window. He left the placeto his wife’s son by her first husband, Count Imhoff. Lady Ducie remembers Countess Imhoff coming to visit her mother, always with a great deal of state, and always dressed in white satin and swansdown, like one of Romney’s pictures. Mr. Grisewood succeeded the Imhoffs, and, when his son became a Roman Catholic, sold the place to Mr. Bias. We drove to the house, which stands well—a comfortable yellow stone house in pretty grounds, with a clear running stream. Its reminiscences and the power of calling them up made Mrs. Stewart speak with great admiration of those who ‘could find the least bit of bone and create a mastodon.’
“In returning, Mrs. Stewart told the story of Miss Geneviève Ward, the actress. In early life she was travelling with her mother, when they fell in with a handsome young Russian, Count Constant Guerra. He proposed to her, and as the mother urged it, thinking it a good match, she married him then and there in her mother’s presence, without witnesses, he solemnly promising to make her his wife publicly as soon as he could. When he could, he refused to fulfil his promise; but the mother was an energetic woman, and she appealed to the Czar, who forced Guerra to keep his word. He said he would do what the Czar bade him, but that his wife should suffer for it all her life. To his amazement, when the day for the marriage arrived, the bride appeared with her mother, led to the altar in a long crape veil as to a funeral. Her brothers stood by her with loaded pistols, and at the door of the church was a carriage into which she stepped as soon as the ceremony wasover, and he never saw her again. She is Madame Constant Guerra, and has acted as ‘Guerrabella.’
“When we came home, I told a story in Lady Ducie’s sitting-room. Then Lord Denbigh told how—
“‘Sir John Acton (whose son was Lady Granville’s first husband) was a great friend of Lord Nelson, who was at that time occupied in a vain and hopeless search for the French fleet.[220]One day Sir John was in his wife’s dressing-room while she was preparing for dinner. As her French maid was dressing her, a letter was put into her hand, at which she gave such a start that she ran a pin she was holding into Lady Acton. This caused Lady Acton to inquire what ailed her. She said the letter was from her brother, a French sailor, from whom she had not heard for a long time, and about whom she had been anxious. Sir John Acton, with great presence of mind, offered to read her the letter while she went on doing her mistress’s hair. As soon as he had read it he went off to Lord Nelson. The letter gave all the information so long sought in vain, and the battle of the Nile was the result of the prick of a pin.’”
“Prestbury, Oct. 6.—It poured so hard this morning that I put off leaving Sarsden till late. Mrs. Stewart again talked much of the Hanoverian Court, of the Guelph love of doubtful stories; how she saved up any story she heard for the blind King. One day she wastelling him a story ‘about Margaret Bremer’s father’ as they were driving. Suddenly the horses started, and the carriage was evidently going to be upset. ‘Why don’t you go on?’ said the King. ‘Because, sir, we are just going to upset.’—‘That is the coachman’s affair,’ said the King; ‘do you go on with your story.’
“With the Greatheeds, in whose cottage I am staying, I went a long excursion yesterday up the Cotswold Hills, which have a noble view of the great rich plain of Gloucestershire. Winchcombe, on the other side, is a charming old town of quaint irregular houses. We passed through it to Hailes Abbey, a small low ruin now, of cloisters in a rich meadow, but once most important as containing the great relic of the Precious Blood, which was brought thither by Edmund, son of the founder, Richard, King of the Romans. Thirteen bishops said mass at different altars at the consecration, and three of the Plantagenets—the founder, his wife, and his son Edmund—are buried in the church. It is now a peaceful solitude, with a few ancient thatched cottages standing round the wooded pastures.
“In returning, we turned aside to Sudeley Castle, the old Seymour house, where Katherine Parr is buried. It is a picturesque and grand old house, partially restored, partly now a green courtyard surrounded by ruined walls and arches. The Queen’s (modern) tomb has a touching sleeping figure[221]guardedby two angels. As we were coming out of the chapel, Mrs. Dent[222]pursued us—a picturesque figure in a Marie Antoinette hat—and brought us in to tea. The Dents made their fortunes as glovers, and, in their present magnificence, a parcel of their gloves, as from the shop, is always left in a conspicuous place in the hall, to ‘keep them humble.’”
“Tettenhall Wood, Oct. 12.—Whilst with the Corbets at Cheltenham, I visited Thirlstone, a curious house which belonged to Lord Northbrook. It wasafterwards bought by Sir J. Philipps, the bibliomaniac, and contains the most enormous and extraordinary collection of books and pictures imaginable; a few gems, but imbedded in masses of rubbish, which the present possessor, Mrs. Fenwick, daughter of the collector, is forbidden to sell or destroy.
“I have been working hard for Mrs. Moore at the Memoir of her husband the Archdeacon (the object of my visit), and have read through all his speeches, &c. I see, however, how impracticable it is to help in work of this kind. Mrs. Moore implores me to cut out what should be omitted. I select what seems to me utterly trivial and commonplace, and she is annoyed, saying it comprises the only matters of real importance. She implores me to correct her diction and grammar: I do so, and she weeps because her pleasure is destroyed in a work which is no longer her own.”
“Donington Rectory, Oct. 13.—This is a pleasant place in itself, and any place would be pleasant within view of the beloved Wrekin.[223]On arriving, I went on at once to Boscobel, and saw the oak which grew from an acorn of the tree that sheltered Charles II., and in the ancient half-timbered house, the hiding-place under the floor at the top of the turret-stairs, where the Prince is said to have crouched for forty-eight hours, with his trap-door concealed by cheeses. Well smothered he must have been, if Staffordshire cheeses smelt then as they do now. There is a good portrait of Charles, which he presented to the houseafter the Restoration. I went on with Henry de Bunsen to White Ladies, now a low ruin of red walls in a meadow, but entered still by a fine Norman archway. Inside is a quiet burial-ground for Roman Catholics, amongst whose lichen-tinted headstones is that of ‘Mistress Joan, who was called friend by Charles II.’—being one of those who assisted in his escape. Beyond, in Hubble Lane, is the ruin of the Pendrill house. The Pendrills[224]were seven brothers, common labourers, but went up to London and had a pension after the Restoration.
“We went on to Tong—a glorious church, quite a church of the dead, so full of noble tombs of Stanleys and Vernons. Near it, in low-lying lands with water, is Tong Castle, the old house of the Durants. The last Mr. Durant brought in another lady to live with his wife, which she resented, and she left him. There was a long divorce suit, which they both attended every day in coaches and six. Owing to some legal quibble, he gained his suit, though the facts against him were well known, and he was so delighted at the triumph over his wife that he erected a monument in honour of his victory on the hill above the castle. The sons all took part with their mother, and when Mr. Durant was lying in his last illness, they set barrels of gunpowder surreptitiously under the monument, and had a match and train ready. They bribed a groom at the house to ride post-haste with the news as soon as the breath was out of their father’s body; and the news of his death firstbecame known to the county by the monument being blown into shivers. The Durants sold Tong to Lord Bradford.”
“Bretton, Yorkshire, Oct. 30.—I have been here for a very pleasant week with a large party of what Lady Margaret (Beaumont) calls her ‘young men and maidens.’ ... There has been nothing especial to narrate, though our hostess has entertained the whole party with her never-failing charm of conversation and wit.
“One day I went with Henry Strutt,[225]whom I like much, to Wakefield, to draw the old chapel on the bridge. What an awful place Wakefield is—always an inky sky and an inky landscape, and the river literally so inky that the Mayor went out in a boat, dipped his pen, and wrote a letter with it to the Commissioners of Nuisances.”
“Raby Castle, Nov. 1.—I came here on Monday, meeting the delicately humorous Mr. Dicky Doyle at Darlington, yet with much fear that there were few other guests; but I was relieved to find ‘Eleanor the Good,’ Duchess of Northumberland, seated at the five-o’clock tea-table, and have had much pleasant talk with her. She spoke of her absorbing attachment to Alnwick and the pain it was to leave it; that the things which make the greatest blanks in life are not thegreatest griefs, but the losses which most affect daily life and habits.... Frederick Stanley and Lady Constance[226]came in the evening, he very pleasant, and she almost more full of laughs than any one I ever saw. Other guests are Colonel and Mrs. Duncombe, young Gage, who will be Lord Gage,[227]and just before dinner a good-looking youth came in, who turned out to be Peddie Bennet.[228]
“Yesterday Lord and Lady Pollington came, and old Lord Strathnairn, looking thinner and more of an old dandy than ever.”
“Nov. 3.—Yesterday, while I was walking with the Pollingtons through the beech-woods deep in rustling leaves, the castle bell announced the advent of guests, and returning, we found the Warwicks and Brooke arrived.”
“Whitburn Hall, Nov. 7.—There is a great pleasure not only in the affection, but in thedemonstrationof affection which one receives here. Dear old Lady Williamson, in her beautiful tender old age, wins all hearts by the patience with which she bears her blindness, and the sweetness with which she sometimes imagines she sees; and Lady Barrington’s lovely and lovable old face brings sunshine to all around it.... In the younger generation, all is hospitality and kindness.”
“Brancepeth Castle, Nov. 8.—Yesterday I went with Augusta Harrington to visit Edward[229]and Tunie Liddell in their new home at Jarrow. It is startling to see how the spirit that animated the early martyrs has induced them to exchange competence for penury, and to give up the elms and flowers and pleasant sunny rooms of the Rectory at Wimpole. Now they are amidst a teeming population of blackened, foul-mouthed, drunken roughs, living in miserable rows of dismal houses, in a country where every vestige of vegetation is killed by noxious chemical vapours, on the edge of a slimy marsh, with a distance of inky sky, and furnaces vomiting forth volumes of blackest smoke. All nature seems parched and writhing under the pollution. Their days are perfectly full of work, and they have scarcely ever an evening to themselves.... They said our visit did them good, and I shall go again.
“Edward had been perplexed by an old woman, one of his parishioners, always declaring herself to be at least ten years younger than he felt certain she must be, yet he did not think she was of the kind who would tell a lie. At last he found that she dated her age from her baptism. ‘The clergy were not so quick upon us then,’ she said, ‘as they are now; so my father he just waited till we were all born to have us baptized, and then had us all done together: there were eleven of us.’
“I reached this great castle in pitch darkness. It isa magnificent place—a huge courtyard and enormous fabric girdled in by tremendous towers of Henry III. The staircase is modern, but most of the rooms have still the vaulted ceilings of Henry III.’s time, though the arms of the Nevilles, with which they were once painted, are gone now. The beer and wine cellars, with some cells called dungeons, are very curious. The butler pointed out with pride theblackcobwebs which hung in festoons and cover much of the wine, a great deal of which was in the huge bottles called ‘cocks’ and ‘hens.’ The white cobwebs he had less opinion of: they are less healthy.
“Pleasant Lady Haddington[230]and her daughter are here. Lady Boyne[231]is a most pretty and winning hostess, and her children are thoroughly well brought up, and take a pleasant easy part in everything. In the evenings the whole party dance ‘Durham reels’ in the great hall.
“It was disappointing to have snow to-day, but there is much to interest in the house and in the old church of St. Brandon close by, where some grand figures of the Nevilles sleep before the altar. The very curious pews and reading-desk of the time of Bishop Cosin were destroyed in a mutilation of the church under the garb of ‘restoration’ sixteen years ago.
“There are several curious pictures by Hogarth here, in which the Lord Boyne of that day is introduced; but the most remarkable is one of Sir Francis Dashwoodas a monk of Medmenham worshipping a naked woman and all the good things of life.”
“Kirklands, Nov. 14.—On Friday I was again at Jarrow, and was warmly welcomed by the Edward Liddells. Next morning I went with Edward to the wonderful old church of the seventh century, where Bede’s chair still stands under the Saxon arches. All around vegetation is blasted; dead trees rear their naked boughs into the black sky, and grimy rushes vainly endeavour to grow in the poisonous marshes. The very horror of ugliness gives a weird and ghastly interest to the place. Edward finds endless work, and enjoys the struggle he lives in. As Montalembert says, ‘Ce n’est pas la victoire qui fait le bonheur des nobles cœurs—c’est le combat.’ His is literally a Christian warfare. If he has spare time, he employs it in looking about the streets for drunken men. As he sees them come reeling along, he offers to help them, and walks home with them clinging to his arm. On the way he draws them out, and having thus found out where they live, returns next day, armed with the silly things they have let fall, to make them ashamed with. While I was making a little sketch of the church, a wedding party came in, the bridegroom being tipsy. Edward accused him of it, and he confessed at once, saying that he had been in such a fright at the ceremony, he had been obliged to take some spirits to keep his courage up. Edward said he wondered he could care for that sort of courage, that was only Dutch courage, real English courage was the only right sort; and as he supposed he wished tomake his wife happy, that was the sort of courage he must look for; but being drunk on the day he married was a bad omen for her happiness. And yet, in the midst of his little scolding, Edward was so charming to them all that the whole wedding party were captivated, and an acquaintance, if not a friendship, was founded. It all showed a power of work in the real way to win souls. And—
‘He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.’[232]
‘He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.’[232]
“I came here by a bitterly cold journey of ten hours through the snow. The train went off the line, and we were delayed so late that I had to drive all the way from Kelso—a dark bitter drive. Har Elliot[233]received me most warmly, with her little Admiral, and dear old George Liddell. The place was built by old Mr. Richardson, the Writer to the Signet, and now belongs to his daughter Joanna. On Sunday afternoon we went to Ancrum, the burnt house of Sir William Scott, now being rebuilt in the old Scotch style; its situation is lovely.”
“Edinburgh, Nov. 19.—I have been four days at Winton with dear old Lady Ruthven. She is now blind as well as deaf, and very helpless, but she is still a loving centre of beautiful and unstinted beneficence.She says, ‘It is a great trial, a very great trial, neither to see nor hear, but it is astonishing the amount of time it gives one for good thoughts. I just know fifty chapters of the Bible by heart, and when I say them to myself in the night, it soothes and quiets me, however great the pain and restlessness. It is often a little trial to me—the unsatisfied longing I have to know just a little more, justsomethingof the beyond. If I could only find out if my husband and my sister knew about me. There is a little poem I often think of—
‘The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.’[234]
‘The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.’[234]
Perhaps it will be so with me; but soon I shall know all, and meantime God is very good. Since my last great illness I have not been able for it, but till then I just always went on reading prayers to my servants, that is, I could not really read, you know, but I justsaida chapter out of my own remembrance, and then I prayed as I felt we needed.’
“Lady Ruthven can repeat whole cantos of Milton and other poets, and her peculiar voice does not spoil them; rather, when one remembers her great age and goodness, it adds an indescribable pathos. She likes to be read to down her trumpet, which is not easy; and the person she hears best thus is George the under-footman; but, as she says, she ‘has formidable rivals in lamps.’
“One of her occupations is feeding her pheasants with bread and milk at the castle door. ‘Ah! I see you are early accustoming them to bread sauce,’ saidMr. Reeve of theEdinburgh Review, when he saw her thus employed.
“One day we drove to Yester (Lord Tweeddale’s), only remarkable for its pretty wooded approach. In leaving Lady Ruthven, one could not but feel one left her for the last time, andwhatfor her the change—which at ninety must be so near—will be, from blindness, deafness, helplessness, after her entirely noble and holy life—to light, and hearing, and power.”
“Edinburgh, Nov. 20.—A visit to the Robert Shaw Stewarts has given me a pleasant glimpse of Edinburgh society.
“Certainly Edinburgh is gloriously beautiful, but never was there a city so richly endowed by Nature contaminated by such abject and ludicrous public monuments!—the enormous monument of Walter Scott, a ludicrous copy in stone of the Bishop’s throne at Exeter: the sort of lighthouse which closes Princes Street (a monument to Lord Nelson, I was told): the statue of the Duke of Wellington, who has lost his hat in a perfectly futile struggle with his restive horse, which is standing on its tail:—worst of all, the figure of the Prince Consort (in Charlotte Square), being adorned by specimens of each class of society, the most ridiculous of all being a peer and peeress in their robes.
“This morning I drew in the Grassmarket. The crowd was most tiresome till it took the idea that I was Sir Noel Paton, the popular Edinburgh artist. I tacitly encouraged the idea, when I found the result was--‘Dinna ye see it’s Sir Noel Paton hissel drawing the cassel? then let Sir Noel see, mon.’
“In the afternoon I went with Mrs. Stewart to the exhibition of Raeburn’s pictures—nothing but Raeburns, though many vast rooms are filled with them; and deeply interesting it is thus not only to follow one great, too little appreciated, painter through life, but to be introduced to the whole world of his illustrious contemporaries. Raeburn’s pictures may be slight, and may have faults of colouring, and even of drawing, but his men never fail to be gentlemen and his women are always ladies—very pleasant people too generally, and people it is delightful to live with. ‘A great portrait should be liker than the original,’ wrote Coleridge. The noblest portrait here seemed to me to be that of Alexander Adam, Rector of the High School, a serious and holy, but engaging old man. Lady Mackenzie of Coul is a sweet, refined, and beautiful woman. As a rule, the old men’s portraits are the best—their shaggy eyebrows, their vigorous old age, the sharp shadows of their chins, so vividly and carefully drawn, and all thedelicaciesof expression centred in the eyes. There were numbers of such old men’s portraits, in which the dead grandfather must still often seem to share the inner family life of many a quiet country-house. It shows the extraordinary change in the value popular feeling places upon art when one recollects that the works of Watts and Millais cost from £2000 to £3000, while these pictures—far more pleasing, far more like those they represent, and, though more sketchy, cleverer and more original—used to cost only £10.”
“Nov. 21.—We have been out to New Hailes, the old Dalrymple house, now inhabited by Lord Shand. The characteristic of the house is its library, which, however, is rather useless, as the bookcases are seventeen feet high, and there is no ladder to reach the upper shelves by.”
“Nov. 22.—Excursion to Pinkie, the fine old house of the Hopes, near Musselburgh—crenellated, machicolated, picturesque as possible. Charles Edward slept there when triumphant from Prestonpans. There is a noble gallery upstairs with a painted ceiling, and a secret passage and staircase. Lady Hope was very kind.[235]
“In Edinburgh I have been, for the first time, received as a sort of mild literary lion, and have found it very amusing. A quantity of people came to call—professors, the bishop, and others.”
“Ravensworth Castle, Nov. 26.—I have been much enjoying a visit here, and the cordial affection which abounds in my dear Liddell cousins. Old General Stanhope[236]is here, and told us—
“‘A gentleman was riding over the Yorkshire Wolds late in the gloaming, when his horse started at something. With the perseverance of a good rider, he forced the horse to return to the spot where he had started, when he saw with horror that he had been frightened by a dead body, evidently ofa murdered man, lying by the side of the road. A dog was sitting by the body, and as he rode up it ran away.
“‘Without losing his presence of mind for an instant, without thought of lingering to hunt up police, &c., the rider set spurs to his horse and pursued the dog. He pursued it a great distance, and eventually saw it enter a low solitary public-house.
“‘He then put his horse into the wretched stable of the place and entered the house. In the brick kitchen three men were drinking, one man by himself, two men together; curled up by the fire was the dog.
“‘The rider called for beer or whisky and sat down. Meanwhile he observed his companions. The two men talked together of quite indifferent subjects; the solitary man said nothing. At last the gentleman got up and gave the dog a great kick. It ran to the lonely man, who said in a fury, “What do you mean, sir, by kicking my dog?”—“I mean that I chose to do it,” he replied; “and furthermore, I mean that I arrest you for murder, and I call uponyou(turning to the other two men) to assist me in arresting this murderer.”
“‘And the man confessed.’
“General Stanhope also gave an interesting account of how old Lord Braybrooke, going to a farm to see some cows, was struck by something in one of the farming men. At last, suddenly slapping him on the shoulder, he exclaimed, ‘Good God! you are De Bruhl!’ and it was a man who had been well known in the world, son of the Bruhl of the famous Terraceat Dresden, the friend of Augustus of Saxony, who had been ruined by the Prince Regent, and had sunk lower and lower, till he came to be a farm labourer, unrecognised and unnoticed for years.
“Talking of dreams, General Stanhope said—
“‘Lady Andover, who was the daughter of Lord Leicester, was with her husband[237]at Holkham, and when one day all the other men were going out shooting, she piteously implored him not to go, saying that she had dreamt vividly that he would be shot if he went out. She was so terribly eager about it, that he acceded to her wishes, and remained with her in her painting-room, for she painted beautifully in oils, and was copying a picture of the “Misers” which was at Holkham. But the afternoon was excessively beautiful, and Lady Andover’s strong impression, which had been so vivid in the morning, then seemed to wear off, till at last she said, “Well, really, perhaps I have been selfish in keeping you from what you like so much because of my own impressions; so now, if you care about going out, don’t let me keep you in any longer.” And he said, “Well, ifyoudon’t mind, I should certainly like to go,” and he went.
“‘He had not been gone long before Lady Andover’s impression returned just as vividly as ever, and she rushed upstairs and put on her bonnet and pursued him. But, as she crossed the park, she met her husband’s own servant riding furiously without his coat. “Don’t tell me,” she said at once; “I know what has happened,” and she went back, and lockedherself into her room. His servant was handing him a gun through a hedge, it went off, and he was killed upon the spot.’
“‘The same Lady Andover had a dream of a minor kind which came curiously true. She said to her sister that she had dreamt most vividly that she was standing with her under the portico at Holkham; that they were both dressed in deep mourning—thick black bombazine; and that they were watching a great funeral leave the house, but that it was not going in the natural direction of the churchyard, but the other way, up the avenue.
“‘A month after, the two sisters were standing under the portico, dressed in deep mourning for old Queen Charlotte, and the funeral of Lady Albemarle, who had died in the house, was going away up the avenue. Lady Andover said to her sister, “Don’t you remember?”’
“Apropos of second sight, General Stanhope said—
“‘Did you ever hear of a man they used to call Houghy White? When I was young, I went with him down to Richmond on a water-party, which was given by Sir George Warrender. Houghy was then engaged to be married to a niece of Beau Brummel, as he was called, and when we returned from Richmond, we went to spend the evening at her mother’s house, and there Houghy told this story.
“‘He was aide-de-camp to the old Duke of Cambridge when he was in Hanover, and was required by the Duke to go with him on a shooting-party into the Hartz Mountains. He, and indeed two of the Duke’s other aides-de-camp, were then, I am sorry to say, very much in love with the wife of a fourth—a very beautiful young lady—and they were all much occupied by thoughts of her. At the place in the Hartz to which they went, there was not much accommodation, but there was one good room with an alcove in it and four beds. The two German equerries slept in the alcove, and the two English aides-de-camp in two beds outside it. In the night White distinctly saw the lady they all so much admired come into the room. She came up to both of the beds outside the alcove and looked into them; then she passed into the alcove. He immediately heard the equerry on the right cry out “Was haben sie gesehn?” and the other—the husband—say, “Ach Gott! Ich habe meine Frau gesehn?”
“‘White was terribly impressed, and the next day entreated to excuse himself from going out shooting with the Duke. The Duke insisted on knowing his reason, upon which he told what he had seen, and expressed his conviction that his friend was dead. The Duke was very much annoyed, and said, “You are really, as a matter of fact, so much occupied with this lady that you neglect your duties to me: I brought you here to shoot with me, and now, on account of whimsical fancies, you refuse to go: but I insist upon your going.” However, White continued to say, “I must most humbly beg your Royal Highness to excuse me, but I cannot and will not go out shooting to-day,” and at last he was left at home. That evening, the mail came in while they were at dinner, and the letters were handed to the Duke. Heopened them, and beckoned White to him. “You were quite right,” he said; “the lady died last night.”’
“Lizzie Williamson said:—
“‘I remember quite well how a very charming young surgeon came into this neighbourhood, a Mr. Stirling; he was beloved by everybody, and though he was as poor as a church-mouse, he had not an enemy in the world. After his medical rounds, he was in the habit of riding home through a lovely wooded lane which there is near Gibside, with trees on each side and the river below. One day—one Friday—as he was riding home this way, he was shot by some men concealed amongst the bushes. His body was dragged into the wood and was searched and rifled; but he was very poor, dear man; he had nothing but his watch, and the brutes took that: and that is all I have to say about him.
“‘On the night before, the wife of Mr. Bowes’s agent, who was in the habit of going every week to receive money at the lead-mines, some miles distant from Gibside, awoke dreadfully agitated. She told her husband that she had had a most terrible dream, and conjured him, as he loved her, to stay at home that day, and not to go to the mines. She said she did not know the place herself, but she saw a wooded lane above a river and some men hiding in bushes, and she saw him come riding along, and the men shoot at him from behind, and drag him into the bushes. He laughed at her, and said of course he could not neglect his duty to his master for such an idle fancy as that, and that he must go to the mines.
“‘She fell asleep again, and she dreamt the samething, and she urgently entreated and implored him not to go. He said, “I must; the men will be expecting me; they are to meet me there, and I have really no excuse to give.”
“‘She fell asleep the third time, and she dreamt the same thing, and awoke with agonised entreaties that her husband would accede to her wishes. Then he really began to be frightened himself, and at last he said he would make a concession; he would go to the mines, but he would not go by the wooded lane at all (for he was obliged to allow there was such a place), but would both go and return by the high moorland way on the other side the river.
“‘So the agent was saved and the poor young surgeon was murdered in his place.
“‘The watch which had been taken was found afterwards in a pawnbroker’s at Durham, and the men who pawned it were traced and taken: Cain and Rain were their odd names. In the hand of the murdered man was found a button of pink glass, imitation amethyst, which exactly matched those on Cain’s waistcoat, with a bit of the stuff hanging to it, as if the dead man’s hand had clenched it in a struggle. But Cain’s friends got hold of the discovery, and sowed the wood with similar pink buttons, which were found; sothatevidence went for nothing and Cain got off, but every one believed that he and Rain did it.
“‘Years afterwards, Cain was ill and sent for Harry,[238]and confided a secret to him under strict vows of secrecy, and no one knows what that secret was.’”
“Kinmel, Nov. 30.—I left Ravensworth early on Monday to go to Ridley Hall. In a few minutes after arriving, White the butler came to say that Cousin Susan would see me. She was in her little sitting-room, half sitting up on her sofa before an immense fire. At above eighty, her face and figure have still the look of youth which they had at thirty-five, and that quite unaided by art, though not by dress. She has now quite lost the use of her feet, and is cut off from all her usual employments, her garden, her walks, her china, and, if it were not that she is so long inured to solitary habits, her life would be indeed most desolate. She talked all afternoon and evening, chiefly about Tyneside politics or family reminiscences. She asked me whomIthought she had better leave her fortune to. I said, ‘After Mr. Bowes, to one of the Strathmore boys.’ She would not take leave of me at night, pretending she should see me next day, but I knew then that she did not mean to do it. She said, as I went out, ‘You may think that you have given meonehappy day.’
“I slept at Chester on Tuesday, and walked round the walls by moonlight, most picturesque and desolate, with only the tramp of an occasional wanderer making the night more silent by its echoes.
“Yesterday I came here. A beautiful ascent through woods leads from the seaboard to this house, magnificent in the style of a Louis XIV. château externally, with Morris paper and colour inside. There is a man party here—Lord Colville, Sir Dudley Marjoribanks, Lord de Lisle, Hedworth Williamson, Lord Delamere.Hedworth is most amusing, and Lord de Lisle not without a quaint humour.”
“Dec. 1.—To-day being a hunting day, most of the men breakfasted in pink in the hall. We drove with the Harringtons to the old Shipley house of Bodryddan,[239]where young Mrs. Conwy received us. The fine old house has been altered by Nesfield—‘restored’ they call it—but, though well done in its way, the quaint old peculiar character is gone. This generation, too, has sent its predecessors into absolute oblivion. Only the pictures keep the past alive at all, and they very little. There was a lovely portrait of a little girl with a dog in Mrs. Conwy’s sitting-room. ‘Who was it?’ I asked. ‘Oh, somebody, some sort of great-aunt,’ she supposed, ‘the dog was rather nice.’ It was Amelia Sloper,[240]Dean Shipley’s most cherished niece, the idol of that house and of all that lived in it in a past generation. One could not help remembering how that child’s little footsteps were once the sweetest music that house ever knew, and now her very existence is forgotten there, but her picture is preserved because ‘she had rather a nice little dog.’”
“Tatton Park, Dec. 2.—This is a very pleasant, roomy country-house in an ugly park. The great feature is the conservatories, in one of which a gravel walk winds between banks of rock and moss and groves of tree-fern like a scene in Tasmania.
“Lady Egerton[241]shows to great advantage in her own house. On small subjects her conversation is frivolous, but on deeper subjects she has acute observation and a capital manner of hitting the right nail on the head, and she certainly gives her opinion without respect of persons. Yesterday, Wilbraham Egerton and Lady Mary[242]dined, the latter most attractive. Lady Egerton was very amusing, especially about old Lady Shaftesbury and her having ‘established a lying-in hospital for cats.’”
“Dec. 4.—Yesterday we went to church at Rostherne. Going through the park gates, Mrs. Mitford (Emily Egerton) told the story of Dick Turpin—whose propensities were not known to his neighbours, and who constantly dined with her grandfather—having been terrified at that gate one night as he rode away, by thinking that he saw the ghost of one of his victims, and that it was believed to be haunted ever since.
“Rostherne Church stands on a terrace above the mere, into which one of its bells is said to have slipped down, and a mermaid is supposed to come up and ring it whenever one of the family at Tatton is going to die. It is the most poetical legend in Cheshire. Old Mrs. Egerton[243]told it one day at dinner. A short time after, the butler rushed into the drawing-room, and begged the gentlemen of the house to come and interfere, for two of the under-servants were murderingone another. Mrs. Egerton’s special footman had told the story of the mermaid in the servants’ hall, and another servant denied it. The footman declared that it was impossible it should not be true, for his mistress had said it, and a desperate fight ensued.
“Miss Wilbraham[244]is here from Blyth—a most pleasant, easy, natural person, who draws beautifully, and makes herself most agreeable.
“To-day we have been to luncheon at Arley. It is a noble house, raised by the present Mr. Warburton[245]on the site of an old moated building, which was, however, spoilt before his time. In front is a leaden statue of a Moor, like those at Knowsley and Clement’s Inn. The blind Mr. Warburton wrote the well-known hunting songs. He lived through his eyes, but bears the loss of them with a noble cheerfulness. All around are devoted to him, not only his own family, but tenants and workmen, and it is a touching proof of this, that, when anything new is to be constructed, the workmen always make a ‘blind plan’ of it, that he may feel and know it—a bit of wood representing one kind of wall, a ridge of sealing wax another: and so he is still the adviser and soul of it all.
“Mr. Gladstone is an old friend of his, and, with silence as to politics, was come to cheer and amuse him.
“Lady Egerton was most comical with Mr. Gladstone. ‘I told you you would never rest,’ she said; ‘how could you be so stupid as to think it? A man with brains cannot rest. Now how can you have come to do sucha number of foolish things? However, if I was you, I would quiet down: indeed I do not despair of you yet.’ At luncheon Mr. Gladstone said she did a good deal of work in a very short time, for she totally demolished the Board of Education and the Church of England, and eventually established the Pope as the head of Christianity throughout the world.
“Before luncheon, Mr. Warburton took me away to see some prints in the library. We found there a Mr. Yates, a clergyman, and there was a most animated and interesting conversation between him and Mr. Gladstone on the logical difference between ‘Obedience’ and ‘Submission,’ which Mr. Yates considered to be the same and I thought so too, but quite see from Mr. Gladstone’s explanation that it is not so. He illustrated it by Strossmeyer, who was quite willing tosubmitto the doctrine of Papal infallibility, but turned restive atobedience, which involved subscription, and prevented any power of antagonistic action on his own faith any more. They spoke much of obedience to the decrees of a judge in Church matters. Mr. Gladstone said that while clergy were bound tosubmitto a judge’s decree, and while they had no right to inquire his reasons (two judges often arriving at the same decision from perfectly different reasons), he did not see why they might not state that the views they maintained, according to their own conscience, were at variance with the decision, though, as members of the Church of England, they were bound to submit to it.
“Altogether, it was a very interesting visit, and I was glad Mr. Gladstone said he wished it had not beensuch a short one. He and Mrs. Gladstone were both most cordial.
“Here, at Tatton, is a number of pictures set into panels round the staircase, full-lengths of Cheshire gentlemen, moved hither from Astbury Hall, where the originals met to decide whether they should rise for Prince Charlie, and finally elected not to risk their estates. In the dining-room is a picture of a hand shaking out an empty purse by Rubens, signed; it was sent to Charles V. when he had forgotten to pay the painter for his work, to remind him. Lord Egerton has many charming miniatures in his room, and—a gift to one of his ancestors—Queen Elizabeth’s ‘horn-book,’ being the alphabet and the Lord’s Prayer set in a frame of silver filagree and covered with talc (horn). He told us of some one who, wishing effectually to protect his land from poachers, put up—‘Aspleniums and Polypodiums always on these premises.’”
“Dec. 6.—Yesterday we drove to Wythenshawe.[246]It is a most engaging old house, very well restored, all the historical points retained—the low narrow door inside the other, through which the defenders forced the conquerors to pass as their condition of surrender after their siege by the Commonwealth, when the family was heavily fined: the ghost-room, where a soldier shot in the siege still appears: the difference in the panelling of the oak drawing-room, where the panels were smashed in by a cannon-ball. There is another ghost—a ghastly face of a lady, who draws thecurtains and looks in upon a bride on the first night she sleeps in the house after her marriage: the late Mrs. Tatton saw it.”[247]
“Betton House, Dec. 9.—Wednesday morning was lovely. We drove to Rostherne Manor, Lady Mary Egerton’s charming modern house, with a lovely view over the wide shining mere to the Derbyshire hills; on the right, the church tower on a wooded hill, and in the foreground the terraced garden with an old leaden figure of Mercury.
“I came away to Hodnet, where the great new house perfectly swarmed with Heber Percy cousins, and next morning I went with Ethel Hood to Stoke. There is nothing but the ghost of our memories there now—even the church pulled down, all that made the place touching or beautiful to us swept away.”
“Betton, Dec. 10.—It has been a great pleasure to go to church with the Tayleurs at dear old Market Drayton, and to sit in the great green baize room in the family gallery, with a large fire burning in an open hearth—a pleasant contrast to the wretched open seats which are the fashion now, though it might recall the exclamation of a Frenchman on seeing a similar pew—‘Pardi! on sert Dieu bien à son aise ici.’ Yet even at Drayton the respectable red-cloaked singers have given place to bawling choristers.
“I always feel, in the neighbourhood of the winding Terne, as if I were carried back into my child-lifewith my dear adopted grandparents, the one happy part of my boyhood, so different from the many bitter days at Hurstmonceaux.”
“Sherborne Park, Dec. 12.—At Bourton-on-the-Water were many people waiting. In the dark I recognised Lord and Lady Denbigh, and then a young lady came up with her husband and spoke to me. ‘I cannot see in the least who you are.’—‘Oh, then I shall leave you to guess, and you will find out by-and-by.’ It was Sir Garnet and Lady Wolseley. With him and Lord Powerscourt, and a fat old gentleman much muffled up, whom I took for Sir Hastings Doyle, and who turned out to be Mr. Alfred Denison, I travelled in a carriage to Sherborne. It is a very fine house of Inigo Jones, of rich yellow stone, with short fluted columns between the windows; but in effect it is overwhelmed by the church, which is close upon it, and crushes it with its spire. The living rooms are delightfully large, airy, and filled with books, flowers, and pictures.
“I had a pleasant dinner, seated by Mr. Denison, who told me much about his curious collection of books on angling, of which he has some of the early part of the fifteenth century, and about 500 editions of Izaak Walton. He has even a Latin treatise on the Devil’s fishery for souls. He was just come from Chatsworth, and had seen there a volume for which £12,000 had been refused, the original of Claude’s ‘Liber Veritatis.’
“Lord Sherborne is both very fond and very proud of his wife, but her music he pretends to detest, thoughher singing is quite lovely—not much voice, but intense pathos and expression.
“This afternoon I have been with Miss Dutton and charming Miss Ruth Bouverie to the old chase and the deer-park, in which there is a beautiful deserted hunting-lodge by Inigo Jones. Lady Sherborne wanted to make a garden in front of it, but was only allowed by her lord to have grass instead of potatoes. We also went into the church adjoining the house, which contains many family monuments. The most remarkable is that of John Dutton, who was ‘possessed of large estate and of mind æquall to his fortune;’ yet he lost a great part of his estates by gambling, and staked Sherborne too, and would have lost it if he had not been carried off to bed by his butler.
“Speaking of concealment of the whole truth, Miss Dutton related a story her uncle, John Dutton, used to tell of the French governess sliding on the ice, when one of the children said to her, ‘Mr. Lentil said, Mademoiselle, that he hoped the boys would trip you up upon the ice, and I really could not tell you what Mr. Davis said.’ Mr. Davis had saidnothing, but the intended impression was conveyed.
“I forget how, apropos of Bible ignorance, Miss Dutton told of an American, who, entering a coffee-house at New York, saw a Jew there, and seized him violently by the throat. ‘What, wh—at do you do that for!’ exclaimed the nigh strangled Jew.—‘Because you crucified my Lord.’—‘But all that happened more than 1800 years ago.’—‘That does not matter; I have only just heard of it.’”
“Dec. 14.—Yesterday we went to Biberry, a beautiful old house of Lord Sherborne’s. Mr. and Lady Augusta Noel joined the party in the evening, she a Keppel,[248]the authoress of ‘Wandering Willie,’ and very pleasant. Several neighbours came to dinner. The astronomical conversation of Mr. Noel was very engaging. I deduced from it that the flames in the sun were 96,000 miles long, and that we were all liable to meet our end in three ways—i.e., by going fizz if a particle of the sun (‘as big as this room’) broke off and struck the earth in any direction: by being slowly consumed, the pools drying and the trees shrivelling up: or by being gradually frozen under an ice-wave. The earth has already perished once by the last-named contingency, and there are geological features, especially at Lord Lansdowne’s place in Ireland, which prove it.”
“Osterley, Dec. 16.—I came here about tea-time to what Horace Walpole calls ‘the Palace of Palaces.’ It is a magnificent house. Sir Thomas Gresham was the original builder, and entertained Queen Elizabeth here. Then it passed through various hands till it fell to the Childs, for whom it was partially rebuilt and splendidly fitted up by the brothers Adam. An immense flight of steps leads through an open portico to a three-sided court, beneath which is the basement storey, and from which open the hall and the principal rooms. There is a gallery like that at Temple Newsam, but much longer and finer, and in this case it is broken and partitioned by bookcases into pleasantcorners—almost separate rooms. The walls and ceilings are ornamented with paintings (let in) by Zucchi and Angelica Kauffmann, but the great charm lies in the marvellous variety, delicacy, and simplicity of the wood carvings, each shutter and cornice a different design, but a single piece. In one room are exquisite pink Gobelins, the chairs quite lovely; one of them represents a little girl crying over the empty cage of her lost bird; on its companion a little boy has caught the bird and is rushing to restore it to her. There is a fine picture of Lady Westmoreland, Robert Child’s daughter. When Lord Westmoreland, whom he considered a hopeless ne’er-do-weel, asked for her hand, he had firmly refused it; but when Lord Westmoreland some time after took him unawares with the question, ‘Now, if you were in love with a beautiful girl, and her father would not consent to your marrying her, what would you do?’ answered, ‘Run away with her, to be sure.’ Lord Westmoreland took him at his word, and eloped with Miss Child in a coach-and-four from Berkeley Square; and when, near Gretna Green, he saw that the horses of his father-in-law, in hot pursuit, were gaining upon him, he stood up in the carriage and shot the leader dead, and so gained his bride.
“The Duchess Caroline (of Cleveland) was often here with Lady Jersey, and, when she sold her own place of Downham, determined to rent Osterley. Since then, though only a tenant, she has cared for it far more than its owner, Lord Jersey, and has done much to beautify and keep it up. Only Miss Newton and Mr. Spencer Lyttelton[249]are here, the latter with tremendousspirits, which carry him he knows not where. The Duchess is very amusing. Ordering a very good fire to be made up in church, she added drily to the servant, ‘Just such a fire as you make up on a very hot day, you know.’ She mentioned a clevermotof Count Nesselrode. Speaking of Sir William Wallace’s marriage he said, ‘Il avait une mauvaise habitude, et depuis il a épousé cette habitude.’”
“Dec. 17.—The Duchess is a most interesting remnant of bygone times. She is so easily put out by any one doing too much, that every one at luncheon was afraid to get up and ring the bell for her, till she was close to the bell herself, when a nervous young man jumped up and rang it before she could reach it. ‘Sir, officiousness is not politeness,’ she said very slowly and forcibly.
“To young ladies she frequently says, ‘My dear,nevermarry for love: you will repent it if you do; Idid:’ and yet she was fond of her Lord William.
“Mr. Spencer Lyttelton rails at everything supernatural, so we spoke of the story in his own family, and he told us thefactsof the Lyttelton ghost, declaring that everything added to them about altering the clock, &c., was absolutely fictitious.
“‘Thomas, Lord Lyttelton, my father’s first cousin, was at Peel House, near Epsom, when a woman with whom he had lived seemed to appear to him. He spoke of it to some friends—the Misses Amphlett—and said that the spirit had said he should die in three days, and that he believed that he should certainly do so. Nevertheless, on the following day—he went upto London, and made one of his most brilliant speeches, for he was a really great speaker—in the House of Lords. He was not well at the time. On the third evening, his servant, after the custom of that time, was in his room assisting him to undress. When the clock struck twelve, Lord Lyttelton counted the strokes, and when it came to the last, exclaimed, “I have cheated the ghost,” and fell down dead: he must have had something the matter with his heart.’”
“Hinchinbroke, Dec. 26.—Lord Sandwich is a charmingly courteous host, and Lady Sandwich a warm, pleasant friend. The three sons, Hinchinbroke, Victor, and Oliver, are all cheery, kindly, and amusing. ‘You see what a set you’ve landed amongst,’ said Lord Sandwich; ‘it will take you some time to know them.’ Agneta Montagu is here with her charming children; Lady Honoria Cadogan; Miss Corry, a handsome, natural, lively lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Edinburgh; and the kind old Duchess Caroline, with relays of walking-sticks, which she changes with her caps for the different hours of the day.
“Yesterday I went with Miss Corry and Hinchinbroke to Huntingdon, a picturesque old town on the sleepy Ouse. In the market-place, opposite the principal church, is the old grammar-school where Oliver Cromwell was educated. Mr. Dion Boucicault, of theatrical fame, is going to restore it in memory of his son, killed hard by in the Abbots Repton railway accident, and is going to destroy the one characteristic feature of the place—the high gable front of twisted and mouldedbrick, which recalls Holland and records the Flemish settlers in the Fen country.”
“Christmas Day.—The damp, sleepy weather is far from an ideal Christmas, but I have liked being here in spite of a miserable cold, and being accepted as a sort of relation by this warm-hearted family.”[250]
“Ascot Wood, Jan. 22, 1877.—I have been working quietly at home for nearly three weeks—a halt in life as far as the outer world is concerned; and how good these silences are, when, from the turmoil of the living present, one can retire into the companionship of a dead past—past associations, past interests, passed-away friends, who, though dead, are living for ever in the innermost shrines of one’s heart, of which the general world knows nothing, at which very few care to knock; which, even to those who knock, are so seldom opened.
“I have almost a pang when one of these breaks comes to an end, and the outside world rushes in. ‘On ne se détache jamais sans douleur.’[251]But it was a great pleasure to come here again to the companionship of this perfectly congenial cousinhood. Sir John Lefevre, as usual, is full of interesting conversation—not general, but with the one person next him, and that one is generally myself! He described a visit in Sussex at Sir Peckam Micklethwait’s (‘a man with other and more wonderful names’).[252]When the Princess Victoriawas at Hastings with the Duchess of Kent, their horses ran away. They were in the greatest peril, when Mr. Micklethwait, who was a huge and powerful man, stood in the way, and seized and grappled with the horses with his tremendous strength, and they were saved. One of the first things the Queen did when she came to the throne was to make him a baronet.
“Sir John said how few people there were now who remembered the origin of the word ‘fly’ as applied to a carriage. In the last century people almost always went out to parties in sedan-chairs—a great fatigue and trouble to their bearers. Gradually the sedans had wheels, and were drawn. Then it began to dawn upon people to substitute a horse for a man. At that time the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was being acted and very popular, and, in allusion to a line in it, the new carriages were called ‘Fly-by-Night.’ Then the sobriquet was abridged—‘by night’ was omitted, but ‘fly’ remained. Sir John remembered, when flys were first invented, meeting a man who said he had just ‘encountered’ a fly with a wasp inside and a bee (B) outside. It was Lord Brougham’s carriage.
“We went this afternoon to Lady Julia Lockwood’s.[253]Her odd little house is quite full of relics of her sister, the Duchess of Inverness—the Queen’s ‘Aunt Buggin,’ wife of the Duke of Sussex.
“To-night, talking of my little diaries, Sir John said that he had a name for them—‘Seniority’—adapted from Nassau Senior’s journals. When Senior went about, however, people knew that what they saidwould be taken down, so acted accordingly, and produced their sentiments and opinions as they wished them to be permanently represented. The Khedive was told what Mr. Senior would do before he was admitted to his interview. ‘Oh, yes, I quite understand,’ said the Khedive; ‘Mr. Senior is the trumpet, and I am to blow down it.’
“Sir John described how in the Upper House of Convocation the members amused their leisure moments by suiting each of the bishops with texts. That for the Archbishop of York[254]was, ‘Andshewas a Greek;’ for Bishop Wilberforce, ‘She brought himbutterin a lordly dish.’”
“Jan. 24.—When I arrived at the Ascot station, a little lady was there, with glistening silver hair, waiting to go up to the house. It was Mrs. William Grey. She was here two days and very pleasant—a bright, active, simple mind, which finds its vent in excitement for the superior education of women.
“Yesterday we went to Windsor for the day. We went to the castle library, where Natalli, the sub-librarian, showed us everything. It is very interesting regarded merely as a building—not one room, but a succession of rooms, irregularly added as space allowed and comfort dictated, by a succession of sovereigns. Queen Elizabeth’s library (the only part of the castle unaltered outside) has an old chimney-piece of her time, into which the Prince Consort cleverly inserted a bust from her figure by Cornelius Cure, and it oncehad a ceiling painted by Verrio, which was destroyed by William IV., who put up a stucco ceiling instead. Of Anne there is the charming little boudoir, where she was sitting with the Duchess of Marlborough when a letter (a facsimile of which is preserved there) was brought in from the Duke telling of the victory of Blenheim. The later rooms are of George III. and William IV. We saw Miles Coverdale’s Bible, all the early editions of Shakspeare, Charles I.’s Prayer-book, Elizabeth’s Prayer-book, Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’ with his corrections and alterations; but better far was the view from the end window, with the terrace and its final tower standing out in burly shadow against the misty and flooded country.”
“Thorpe, Jan. 26.—We went to-day to St. Anne’s Hill. Lady Holland was sitting in the innermost of the richly furnished bright warm little rooms, but was bandaged up still from a frightful fall she had received by mistaking a staircase for a passage in the dark. One always feels one’s own talk on waggon-wheels with a person who has the conversational reputation she has, and I was glad when Madame de Jarnac came in and undertook to show us the house. Lady Holland followed, and took us to her bedroom, which is charming, with a view towards Chobham. Then we went to the gardens, with a temple to Friendship (i.e., to Lord Holland’s friendship), and the summer-house in which the preliminaries of the Peace of Amiens were signed. Other summer-houses are paved with encaustic tiles from Chertsey Abbey.”
“69 Onslow Square, Jan. 27.—Mr. Byng preached a capital sermon to-day upon ‘religious hypochondriacs’—people who say, ‘You know I was always so spoilt when I was a child, you must make allowance for my being a little selfish now,’ &c.”
“6 Bury Street, Feb. 13.—Last night I dined with the Haygarths, to meet the Woods and Leslies. The Dowager Lady Spencer[255]was there, who gave an amusing account of her Irish experiences, when her stepson was Lord Lieutenant. One day he was hunting, and had just leapt a hedge into a lane, when he was aware that a funeral was coming up. He thought it might hurt the feelings of the mourners if he passed them hunting, so he hid himself. But as the funeral came by the hounds appeared, and instantly, setting the coffin down in the road, mourners, pall-bearers, and all started in hot pursuit, and Lord Spencer found himself left alone with the body.
“Lady Spencer talked of one Irish gentleman, a Master of Hounds, who, being very much puzzled by the two Lady Spencers, and how to distinguish them, settled the matter by calling them, like dogs, one ‘Countess,’ and the other ‘Dowager.’ ‘The absurdity never struck me much,’ she said, ‘till the last day of all, when Charlotte’s eyes were so red with crying, and he, coming in, exclaimed, “Dowager, Dowager, what can we do to comfort Countess?”’
“I have just been with Lady Halifax and the Corrysto see the Duke of Suffolk’s head at the church in the Minories—a most awful object.
“Mr. Bodley[256]told us last night that when he was staying at St. John’s College, Oxford, he saw a ghost. He could swear to it. He was in a room which was in the broad moonlight of a summer’s night, for it had no shutters. Suddenly he heard a movement like that of a man under the bed, and then something thrown on the floor like a stick. He jumped up, but there was nothing. He then went to bed again, when out of the floor in the moonlight rose the head and shoulders of a man. He saw it against the chest of drawers. It hid two of the handles of the drawers, but not more. Farther than that out of the ground it did not rise. He is quite certain that he saw it, and quite certain that he was awake.”
“Feb. 14.—Luncheon at Miss Davenport Bromley’s to meet Mr. Portal. Lord Houghton and his son and daughter were there. Mr. Portal has a scheme for educating the unfortunate Americans of gentle birth who have fallen from wealth to poverty owing to the changes on the cessation of the slave trade in South Carolina, and he has been eminently successful. He described the South Carolina reverses of fortune as most extraordinary. One of his friends died in his house who had once possessed an estate worth £300,000; yet, when his will was opened, it only contained these words—‘I leave to the old and tried friend of my youth, the Rev. —— Portal, my only son!’ He had nothing else whatever to leave except £9towards his funeral expenses. Mr. Portal described how the ‘darkies’ had been ‘done’ since the change by those who had too much of the theory of religion to have any power left for the practice of it. Being at a place on the border, where some of the greatest battles were, he asked some of the ‘darkies’ why, when they saw the Northerners gaining the upper hand, they did not join them. A ‘darkie’ said, ‘Mossieu, did you ever see two dogs fighting for a bone?’—‘Yes, very often.’—‘But, Mossieu, did you ever see the bone fight?’
“The conversation fell on Philadelphia, ‘the most conservative place in America, with its narrow streets and narrow notions.’ Lord Houghton said that his son Robin had been shocked by the non-observance of Sunday in the native city of Moody and Sankey. Mr. Portal said that Moody and Sankey were utterly unknown, entirely without influence in their own country; that it could only be the most enormous amount of American cheek which had enabled them to come over to England, ‘exactly as if it was a heathen country, to bring the light of the Gospel to the English;’ that America had heard with amazement andshockhow they were run after; that they owed their success partly to their cheek, and partly to their music.
“Mr. Portal described his feeling of desolation when he first arrived in England—‘not one soul he knew amongst all these millions;’ that the next day a lady asked him to conduct her and her child to a pantomime. He consented, without understanding that a pantomime meant Drury Lane Theatre, and his horror was intensewhen he ‘found himself, a clergyman of forty years’ standing,’ in such a place. This, however, was nothing to what he felt ‘when a troop of half-naked women rushed in and began to throw up their legs into the air;’ he ‘could have sunk into the ground for shame.’ ‘Was not the mother of our Lord a woman? was not my mother a woman? is not my wife a woman? are not my daughters women? and what are these?’
“Mr. Knowles, the ex-editor of theContemporary Review, who was at luncheon, said that he had taken Alfred Tennyson to see a ballet with just the same effect. When the ballet-girls trooped in wearing ‘une robe qui ne commence qu’à peine, et qui finit tout de suite,’ Tennyson had rushed at once out of the box, walked up and down in an agony over the degradation of the nineteenth century, and nothing would induce him to go in again. Mr. Knowles said, however, that a general improvement in the stage had dated from a climax of impropriety in ‘Babil and Bijou:’ it had since been much leavened by Irving. Lord Houghton described how much of Irving’s success had been due to the entirely original view he had taken of his characters; that in Hamlet he had taken ‘the domestic view, not declaiming, but pondering, saying things meditatively with his legs over a chair-back.’”
“Feb. 24.—I have been seeing a great deal of Willie Milligan lately, and cannot help thinking of the characteristics so distinctive of him whom for twenty-six years I have never ceased to feelhonouredin being allowed to call my intimate friend.
“He is a thorough-bred gentleman in all the highestsenses of the term. Always without riches, he has never complained of having less than was sufficient for his wants, which are most modest. Without being cultivated, he is very clever. He never talks religion, but his life is thoroughly christian. He is the soul of honour, pure, truthful, blameless, and without reproach; yet in conversation no one is more witty, original, and amusing. He is celebrated as a peace-maker, and never fails to show that chivalry is the truest wisdom. He has never done a selfish act, and never omitted to do a kind one.”
“Feb. 25.—A visit to Mrs. Lowe. She talked of the contemptible state of politics now; that it was all only playing at the old game of brag; that the object with every one seems to be who can tell most lies, and who can get any one to believe his lies most easily. If she ‘was minister it would be different; she would nail men down to a point—what will you do and what will you not do? and have a direct answer;thenone would know how to act.’
“Mr. Lowe described his life in Australia. Money then scarcely existed there: payments were made either in kind or in bills of exchange. He said, ‘When we played whist, we played sheep, with bullocks on the rubber; and when a man won much, he had to hire a field next morning to put his winnings in.’”
“Feb. 28.—A charming visit to old Lord John Thynne, who told me many of his delightful reminiscences of Sydney Smith, Milman, and others.
“Then to Mrs. Duncan Stewart, who was sittingalmost on the ground, covered with an eider-down. She talked of our ‘Memorials’ and of Mrs. Grote, who said, when she read of the dear mother’s marvellous trances, ‘My dear, she was thinking more than was good for her; so God in His great mercy gave her chloroform.’ She spoke of the difficulties of a like faith, of the effort of keeping it up when prayer wasnotanswered, believing in the power of prayer just the same. She told how, when her child was dying—she knew it must die—the clergyman came (it was at Wimbledon) and used to kneel by the table and pray that resignation might be given to the mother to bear the parting, and resignation to the child to die; and how she listened and prayed too; and yet, at the end, she could not feel it. She did not, and—though she knew it was impossible—she could not but break in with, ‘Yet, O Lord, yetrestoreher.’
“‘Do you know,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘that till I was thirty, I had never seen death—never seen it even in a poor person; then I saw it in my own child, and I may truly say that then Death entered into the world for me as truly as it did for Eve, and it never left me afterwards—never. If one of my children had an ache afterwards, I thought it was going to die; if I awoke in the night and looked at my husband in his sleep, I thought—“He will look like that when he is dead.”