‘Christ in every eye that sees me,Christ in every ear that hears me.’
‘Christ in every eye that sees me,Christ in every ear that hears me.’
Yet this visit leaves nothing especially to remember except a story of Lord Waterford pursuing a robber who had broken into his house, finding him in a public-house some four miles off, and convicting him amongst a number of other men by insisting upon feeling all their hearts; the man whose heart was still beating quickly was the one who had just done running.
“On Saturday I came to Wells, the lovely old city of orchards and clear running brooks, whence Lord Hylton fetched me to Ammerdown. Sir Augustus Paget and all his family are here, the daughter a lovely, bright, natural girl,[350]and the sons, Victor and Ralph, most charming, kind-hearted, winning fellows. We have been to Mells—an overgrown park with pretty natural features, which was the favourite manor of the Abbot of Glastonbury. At the dissolution, Mr. Horner was sent to take up the parchments of the abbatial lands to Windsor, and for better security took them in a pasty. On the way he put in his thumb and pulled out for himself the title-deeds of Mells, the best plum of all, which has ever since remained in the family of ‘Little Jack Horner.’”
“Ryde, Oct. 10.—I have spent a quiet, peaceful summer: so little from the outer world seems to ruffle me now, and the storms of four terrible years have been succeeded by six years of calm. It has been a constant pleasure to visit the dear Mrs. Grove, now confined to the upper floor of her house. Charlotte Leycester has been long at Holmhurst, and other guests have come and gone, relics from my dearestMother’s life, and waifs and strays from my own, by many of whom I am sadly overrated; the moral of which is, I suppose, that one should try really to clamber up to that high shelf on which one is placed in imagination. Of original work I have done little enough, except one article on ‘Lucca’ forGood Words.
“One of my chief occupations has been editing the life of the nun Amalie von Lassaux, translated from the German by Fräulein von Weling. As ‘Sister Augustine,’ her story possesses that interest which is always attached to a struggle in the cause of truth amid many persecutions and torments, rather mental than physical.
“I was away twice for a few days—first with young Mrs. Hamilton Seymour at Aylesford, a charming little old town on the sluggish Medway, with ‘The Friars’ close by, where pleasant Lady Aylesford lives in a beautiful old house, with oak staircase, gateway, water-gate, clipped yew-trees and terraces. Then I was two days at Hampton Court with witty old Lady Lyndhurst, and greatly delighted in the glories of the old palace and its gardens. And now I am with dear old George Liddell,[351]enjoying this otherwise dull watering-place through his genial hospitality.”
“Melchet, Hants, Oct. 23.—From Ryde I went to Amesbury to stay with Sir Edmund and Lady Antrobus, who are some of the kindest and most hospitable people in London, and have a fine house in Piccadilly.Their house in Wiltshire is very fine too, though it has never been finished. Gay’s Duchess of Queensberry lived there, and in the grounds are a cave and summer-house where the poet wrote verses to her. But the great interest of Amesbury lies in its being the scene of Guinevere’s penance, and it recalls Tennyson’s poem in the swirling mists which arise with morning and evening. Each morning we drew at Stonehenge amongst the hoary and mighty stones standing out against the ethereal lights and shadows of the plain.
“Next, I went to Rushmore, to which the Lane Fox’s have succeeded, with the name of Pitt Rivers and £36,000 a year, since the death of the 6th Lord Rivers. It is a dull country-house on Cranbourne Chase—swooping moors sprinkled with thorn-trees or thick woods of hazel. I was taken to see Shaftesbury; Cranbourne, the fine old house of the Salisburys; and Wardour, with noble cedars too closely overhanging the ruins of its castle. Lord Arundel lives in the Park at Wardour, in an immense house which he is too poor to keep in repair. He has another place somewhere near the sea, where his grandfather went to reside, to the great discomfiture of a gang of smugglers, who had previously had sole possession, and who tried to frighten him away by ghostly sights and sounds, but in vain. One night Lord Arundel was sitting in his room, having locked the door, when some one knocked. He demanded who was there, when a voice said, ‘Open and you will see:’ He opened it, and found a very rough-looking man with a keg of spirits under his arm. The man said, ‘Well,my Lord, we’ve done our best to frighten you, but you won’t be frightened, so I’ve, come to make a clean breast of it, and I’ve brought you a little offering. I only hope you won’t be hard on us.’ ‘Oh, dear no, I won’t be hard on you,’ said Lord Arundel; and Lady Marian Alford, to whom he told the story at Rome when she was four years old, vividly remembers his vigorous assertion, ‘And the smuggler gave me the very best Hollands I ever had in my life.’
“From Rushmore, after a visit to the old Shipley home at Twyford, I came here to Lady Ashburton. Melchet is a magnificent house in a beautiful country, and is filled with art-treasures of every kind. Lady Marian is here, always pleasant with her ripple of conversation and anecdote. She has been very amusing about her mother’s parrot, which used to hop about upon the lawn. One day it was carried off by an eagle. Old John Tooch, one of the dynasty of John Toochs who worked in the garden, was mowing the lawn, and as the parrot, in the eagle’s gripe, was sailing over his head, he heard a voice in the air call out, ‘We’re ridin’ noo, John Tooch, we’re ridin’ noo;’ at which strange sound the eagle was so dreadfully frightened that he let the parrot fall, so that John Tooch took it home to its cage again.”
“Melchet, Oct. 28.—Yesterday we went to Longford—Lord Radnor’s—a great castellated house in a dull park, with no view, but very fine pictures.
“In the morning the (Melchet) footman woke me with the news that the house had been broken into.The robbers had entered through the drawing-room window, perambulated the lower apartments, drunk up all the wine in the dining-room, and found all the valuables too big to carry off!”
“Oct. 29.—A charming visit to Broadlands, Lord Mount-Temple’s—the people so full of genial goodness, the house most comfortable and gardens lovely. Lady Mount-Temple—in whom, as Miss Tollemache, Ruskin saw such statuesque severity with womanly sweetness joined—a marvellous union of beauty, goodness, and intelligence. The grounds, with fountain, river, well-grouped trees, and a Palladian summer-house, are like a beautiful Claude-Lorraine picture. The same landscape—of a river, winding amongst cedar-shadowed lawns—forms the predella to Rossetti’s picture of ‘The Blessed Damozel.’”
“Holmhurst, Nov. 13.—Mr. and Mrs. Paterson have been here for the day. He told me two stories:—
“A lady was awoke in the night with the disagreeable sense of not being alone in the room, and soon felt a thud upon her bed. There was no doubt that some one was moving to and fro in the room, and that hands were constantly moving over her bed. She was so dreadfully frightened that at last she fainted. When she came to herself, it was broad daylight, and she found that the butler had walked in his sleep and had laid the table for fourteen upon her bed.
“A lunatic, who had escaped for some time from his asylum, was eventually captured. When he came in and saw the keeper who was accustomed to takecare of him, he said, ‘Well, I’ve been very much occupied since I went away: I’ve been occupied in being married.’—‘Well, and whom have you married?’ said the keeper. ‘Oh, I’ve married the Devil’s daughter.’—‘Well, I hope it’s a happy union?’—‘Oh, very, thank you,’ said the lunatic; ‘only I don’t much like the old people.’”
“Holmhurst, Nov. 24.—Last week I was for two days at Cambridge as the guest of Jock Wallop, the best and kindest of hosts, under whose popular auspices I saw the present undergraduate life to perfection. There is a most charming set of fellows there now, all delighted to be young, and not aiming at juvenile senility, as was the fashion in my day at Oxford.”
“Dec. 16.—Several Midland county visits afford nothing to recollect. Certainly country-house visits are a lottery. One old lady said, ‘My dear, Iamso glad to see you. It is so delightful to see any oneat allpleasant. In London one can have any agreeable company one likes, but you know God Almighty fills one’s house in the country.’
“I have, however, been to George Curzon at Oxford. He is most delightful, and sure to become distinguished. At the meeting of the Conservative ‘Canning Club’ I heard a most capital paper on Ireland by young Edward Arnold. Afterwards I was three days at Sherborne, meeting, amongst other less interesting elements, the ever-charming Dowager Lady Craven. Lady Sherborne sang in a way which would move the heart of a basilisk. The country around Sherbornewas the scene of innumerable battles in Saxon times, commemorated in the names of the fields and farms, which are supposed to owe their fertility to the carnage with which they had been covered. This supposition makes the peasants eager for the use of bone-dust, which they believe to be imported from the plains of Waterloo. If a field, after having been thus manured, still yields no crop, they say ‘Waterloo bean’t no use here!’”
I spent the Christmas of 1880 again with the kind Lowthers at Ampthill, meeting, as before, Louisa, Lady Ashburton, and going, as before, to spend a day at Woburn. In January 1881 I was at Bretton with the Beaumonts, meeting Julia, Lady Jersey, and a large party.
We went to see Nostell, a very grand but little known house of the Winns, full of splendid things, glorious tapestries, china, Chippendale furniture, but, most remarkable of all, a doll’s house of the last century, with miniature fairy furniture, exquisitely carved and painted, a doll trousseau with point lace, and a Liliputian service of plate.
We also went a long drive to Stainborough (Wentworth Castle), through a country which may be pretty in summer clearness, but which is hideously black in winter. The house is a great Italian palace, half Queen Anne, halfolder, with little temples in the grounds, the building of one of which is described by Evelyn. Inside there are fine tapestries, and many pictures of the Stuarts, ascribed to Vandyck, but probably copies. Lady Harriet Wentworth, who showed us everything herself, gave us the characteristic of her life when she said “I do so hate thethraldomof civilisation.” Her stately rooms have no charm for her, and, though they are so immense, she declares she cannot breathe in them, and she lives entirely and has all her meals in the conservatory, with a damp, warm, marshy climate, from which she does not scruple to emerge through the bitter winds of the Yorkshire wolds (for the conservatory does not join the house) with nothing extra on. From Bretton I went to Tortworth—Lord Ducie’s—in Gloucestershire.
Journal.
“Jan. 11, 1881.—There is a large party here (at Tortworth), but one forgets all its other elements in dear Mrs. Duncan Stewart. ‘L’esprit pétille sur son visage.’ Never was there a more marvellous coruscation of wit and wisdom; and she not merely evades ever saying an ill-natured thing of any one, but, where there is positivelynothingof good to be said, has some apt line of old poetry or some proverb to bring forward urging mercy—‘Mercy, so much grander than justice.’
“Last night she wanted to introduce me to Mrs. Grey, an American lady who is staying here. ‘I cannot do it better,’ she said, ‘than in the words of Alfred d’Orsay when he brought up Landseer to me, saying, “Here, Mrs. Stewart, is Landseer, who can do everything better than he can paint,”—so here, Mrs. Grey, is Mr. Hare, who can do everything better than he can write.’
“To-day, at luncheon, Mrs. Stewart talked much of Paris, and of her intercourse with a French physician there. Dr. —— spoke to her of the happy despatch, and unhesitatingly allowed that when he saw a patient condemned to hopeless suffering, he practised it. ‘But of course you insist on the acquiescence both of the patients and of their families,’ said Mrs. Stewart. ‘Never,’ shouted Dr. ——. ‘I should be a mean sneak indeed if I waited forthat.’
“She talked much of George Sand and of her journey to Italy, from which three books resulted,her’s, ‘Elle et Lui:’his, ‘Lui et Elle,’ and ‘Lettres d’un Voyageur.’
“She said his was most horrible.
“Afterwards Lord —— was in a box at the opera in Paris with a number of other young men. There was a knock at the door, and George Sand came in. ‘Il y a place pour moi?’—‘Certainly,’ they said. By-and-by one of them inquired, ‘Et Musset?’—‘Oh, il voyage en Italie,’ she replied. Presently the door opened, and a man came in—haggard, dishevelled, worn to a degree. It was Musset. He shook hands with one and other of the young men. ‘Et pas un mot pour moi?’ said George Sand. ‘Non,’ he exclaimed.‘Je vous haïs, je vous deteste! c’est que vous avez tué le bonheur de ma vie.’
“Mrs. Stewart talked of the great want of appreciation of Byron—of his wonderful satire, evinced by the lines in the ‘Age of Bronze’ on Marie Louise and Wellington: of his philosophy, for which she cited the lines on Don Quixote: of his marvellous condensation and combination, for which she repeated those on the burning of Moscow.
“She also talked of Trollope’s novels, and said how Trollope had told her of the circumstances which led to the death of Mrs. Proudie. He had gone up to write at the round table in the library at the Athenaeum, and spread his things all over it. It was early in the morning, and there is seldom any one there at that time. On this occasion, however, two country clergymen were sitting on either side of the fire reading one of his own books: after a time they began to talk about them. ‘It is a great pity Trollope does not get some fresh characters,’ said one. ‘Yes,’ said the other, ‘one gets so tired of meeting the same people again and again, especially of Mrs. Proudie.’ Then Trollope got up, and planting himself on the rug between them with his back to the fire, said, ‘Gentlemen, I do not think it would be honest to listen to you talking about my books any more, without telling you that I am the victim; but I will add that I quite agree with what you have been saying, and that I will give you my word of honour that Mrs. Proudie shall die in the very next book I write.’”
“Jan. 12.—Dr. Asa Grey, who is here, a Professorof Harvard University, is one of the most famous botanists living; but he is also a very charming person. Lowell describes how his
‘indefatigable hoursHave been as gaily innocentAnd fragrant as his flowers.’[352]
‘indefatigable hoursHave been as gaily innocentAnd fragrant as his flowers.’[352]
“Mrs. Stewart talked of Madame Jerome Bonaparte,néePaterson—her beauty, her cleverness, her father to whom she always wrote of hersuccès de société, looking down upon him; but he could always avenge himself; he could always write to her, ‘My dear Betsy.’ ‘She would tell him how she had been received at this court and at that, and then would come his answer with “My dear Betsy.” Oh, it was a terrible revenge.’
“She talked of the society of her youth, when it was real society, for people were never in a hurry. ‘One of the marked figures then was Lady Cork,[353]who, after eighty, always dressed in white, with a little white pulled bonnet and a gold-headed stick. Another, whom you are none of you old enough to remember, was Lady Morgan, a little old lady, who used to rouge up to the eyes. M. Fonblanque—he was the editor of theExaminer—used to say, “She is just a spark of hell-fire, and is soon going back to her native element.”
“‘I wonder,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘what has become of an early picture which I remember of Leighton’s. A lady went to all the great artists in London to get them to paint a dream of hers, and they refused, andLeighton, who was quite a young man, undertook it. She dreamt that she had died, and that she had gone up—up to Christ, and that He had turned her back, and she said, “Why, Lord?” and He replied, “Because your work on earth is not yet done.”
“‘Leighton painted the Saviour in a glory of yellow light, and the woman being turned back by Him.’
“This reminiscence led to one of a different kind from Mr. Ashley Ponsonby.
“‘Creswick the actor was once at a dinner where Irving absorbed all the conversation and allowed no one else to speak. At last he could stand it no longer, and turning round to his next neighbour, said, “I had such an extraordinary dream last night.” Of course, the whole party were attention at once.’
“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I dreamt that I was dead, and that I went up to the gates of heaven and knocked at them. ‘Who are you?’ said St. Peter. ‘I am Mr. Creswick.’—‘What, Creswick the Academician?’—‘No, Creswick the actor.’—‘Oh, then I can’t let you in here; we don’t admit any actors here,’ said St. Peter, and he turned me away. Dreadfully crestfallen, I went and sat down under a juniper-tree, and watched other people arriving at the gates. Many of my friends came and were let in. Then I took heart and went and knocked again, and when St. Peter said again that I must go away, for he could not admit any actors, I said, ‘But really that is not the case, for you have let in Mr. Irving.’—‘That is true,’ said St. Peter, ‘but—hewas no actor.’”
“‘Take care,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘or you will become that most dreadful of all things, a self-observantvaletudinarian. I was once in the house with a lady, who, after talking of nothing else for an hour, said, “I won’t speak of my own health, for, when I was young, a dear old wise and judicious woman said to me, ‘When anybody asks you how you are, always say you are very well, for nobody cares.’”
“‘Many people fall into sin,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘merely because they are tired of the monotony of innocence.’
“‘He was very fallible,’ she said, ‘and yet capable of becoming that greatest of all things—a good man.’
“‘I think it was a bishop who said, “Most people now go to seek their ancestors at the Jardin des Plantes; for my part, I am content with the Garden of Eden.”’
“‘Mr. Pigott is a finished critic, but with the innocence of a child picking daisies.’
“‘It was one of the cases in which the highest and the lowest motives combine, and oh! in life there are so many of those cases.’”
“January 12.—Mrs. Stewart has been talking of the cases in which a lie is justifiable. Of herself she said, ‘There was once a case in which I thought I ought to tell a lie, but I was not sure. I went to Dr. and Mrs. Bickersteth, and I asked them. They would only answer, “We cannot advise you to tell a lie;” they would not advise it, but they did not forbid it. So when a husband came to question me about his wife, I equivocated. I said, “She was certainly not seduced by that man.” He said to me very sternly and fiercely, “That is no answer; is my wife innocent? I will believe you if you say she is.” AndI said, “She is.” I said it hesitatingly, for I knew it was false, andheknew it was false; he knew that I had lied to him, and he did not believe me in his heart; but he was glad to believe me outwardly, and he was grateful to me, and that husband and wife lived together till death. I believe that was one of the cases in which it is right to tell a lie. You will say that it might lead me to tell many others, but I don’t think it has. Stopford Brooke once said that strict merciless truth was the most selfish thing he knew.”
“Mrs. Stewart also told us—
“Dudley Smith, as a very young man, went out to China, and was employed in the opium trade. He then married and had several children. When he was thirty-three his conscience began to work, and he felt the abuses of opium. He left the trade and became a wharfinger, in which profession he made some money, though it was not nearly so lucrative as the occupation he had given up, in which he had made £12,000.
“When he was thirty-five, though he had then a wife and several children, Dudley Smith brought the £12,000 to his man of business, saying that it burnt a hole in his pocket, and desiring him to so invest it as to realise £500 a year for a mission to the Chinese, from whom it was taken. This story is delightful to me. It reminds me of a saying of old Mr. Planchet’s, which meant, though I cannot remember the exact words—
‘Of heroes and heroines I am sick grown;The only real ones are those that are unknown.’
‘Of heroes and heroines I am sick grown;The only real ones are those that are unknown.’
We have been to luncheon at Berkeley Castle to-day. Lady Fitzhardinge, fat to a degree, is charming, andhas the most wonderful knowledge of all the delicatefinessesof form and colour, and the application of them to furniture. Her rooms are quite beautiful, everything composing the most harmonious picture, down to a string of blue beads suspended from a yellow vase. Lord Fitzhardinge came in to luncheon with Lord Worcester, Lord Guildford, and another man—four statues! Not one of them spoke a word, I believe because not one of them had a word to say, except about racehorses, about which we none of us could say anything. The castle relics are most interesting—Sir Francis Drake’s furniture, Queen Elizabeth’s plate, bequeathed to her cousin Lord Hunsdon, and the last prayer of Edward VI., written out by his sister herself, in the tiniest of little jewel-embossed volumes.”
“Jan. 15.—Mrs. Stewart has been talking much of her great delight in the works of Ampère, and of the intense devotion, the passionate love of the younger Ampère for Madame Recamier. She was guilty of atrahisonto him, though. When he was at Weimar, he wrote to her a private letter, telling her particulars about all the people there, which he had better not have told, but he wrote them in strict confidence. She made that letter public. ‘My dear Mr. Hare,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘I have never read any letter more exquisitely, more tenderly pathetic than that which Ampère wrote her when he heard this—a letter struggling between his old respect and admiration and the feeling that his idol had fallen, that he could not but reproach her.
“When Lowell (the American poet and minister)was describing his wife’s terrible illness, he said, ‘My dear Mrs. Stewart, I would have given Job ten and won.’
“After Lady Fitzhardinge came, Mrs. Stewart talked much of her acquaintance with Brother Ignatius. She was at the place of her son-in-law, Mr. Rogerson, in Scotland. One day out walking, Mrs. Rogerson met a young man, of wonderful beauty, dressed as a monk, with bare feet and sandals. He asked her whether they were near any inn, and said, ‘The fact is, I have with me two sisters, Sister Gertrude and another, and a brother—Brother Augustine. And the brother is very ill, possibly ill to death, and we cannot go any farther.’ So Mrs. Rogerson made them come to her house, and showed them infinite kindness, ‘giving them at once water for their feet and all Scripture hospitality.’ Brother Augustine was very ill, very ill indeed, and they all remained at Mrs. Rogerson’s house three weeks, during which Mrs. Stewart became very intimate with them, especially with Brother Ignatius and Sister Gertrude. They used to go out for the day together, ‘and then, in some desolate strath, Brother Ignatius would sing, sing hymns like an archangel, and then he would kneel on the grass and pray.’
“Many years afterwards, Mrs. Stewart heard that Brother Ignatius was going to preach in London—‘some very bad part of London,’ and she went. The room was packed and crowded, but she was in the first row. He preached, a beautiful young monk, leaning against a pillar. ‘There were at least a hundred of his attitudes worth painting,’ but therewas nothing in his words. At last a little girl thought he looked faint, and brought him a smelling-bottle, which she presented to him kneeling. ‘He smelled at it, and then seeing me, an old woman, near him, he sent it on to me, and I smelled at it too. Afterwards I stayed to see him, and we talked together in a small room, talked till midnight. Then he gave me his blessing, gave it me very solemnly, and afterwards I said, ‘And God bless you too, my dear young man.’
“In the evening Mrs. Stewart spoke much of the Sobieski Stuarts—their gallant appearance when young, and their change into ‘the mildew of age.’
“Apropos of the last words of St. Evremond, ‘Je vais savoir le grand peut-être,’ Mrs. Stewart mentioned Mrs. Grote having said to her at their last meeting, ‘I trust, dear, that you are living, as I am, inrespectful hope.’
“This led to much talk of Mrs. Grote, who had died (Dec. 29, 1878) when I was away at Rome with the Prince Royal, and Mrs. Stewart described how, when she returned from Hanover after the fall of the royal family, and was quite full of events there, she went down at once to visit the Grotes in the country. ‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Grote, ‘I cannot enter into your feelings about all your princesses and duchesses, but as regards your king, I can enter into them fully: he has lived “as it is written.”’ Mrs. Stewart wrote this to the King, who knows Shakspeare to his finger-ends, and he said it did him more good than anything else anybody wrote or said to him. As long as he lived, he and Mrs. Grote exchanged stories and messages afterwards, through Mrs. Stewart.
“Lady William Russell said with much truth of Mr. and Mrs. Grote, ‘He is ladylike, and she is such a perfect gentleman.’
“When Lady Catherine Clive was painting her town-hall at Hereford, she was very anxious to find new, not conventional, attributes for some of her allegorical figures; she especially wished for something instead of the scales of ‘Justice.’ Mrs. Stewart wrote this to Mrs. Grote: ‘Tell your friend,’ she answered, ‘not to try to struggle against conventionalities. Tell her to be content with the scales: she will come to find the cross conventional next.’
“When Lady Eastlake undertook to write Mrs. Grote’s life after her death, she asked Mrs. Stewart for all her ‘jottings’ of Mrs. Grote’s conversations, but she made no use of them. She was so anxious that every one should find the book too short, that she really omitted almost everything characteristic. She wrote her regrets afterwards to Mrs. Stewart, who answered, ‘You are suffering, my dear, from a granted prayer,’—for, in fact, the book was so short and dry that it passed almost unnoticed.
“Mrs. Stewart spoke again of how far a lie might be made right by circumstances—giving a wrong direction to a man who was in pursuit of another to kill him, &c., and, when some one objected, dwelt upon its being far greater to be noble for others than holy for one’s self. Some one said that in this case all should follow the inner voice, which would tell them truly what their real duty was. She replied, ‘Yes, having formed your character by the Master without, you may then act in a crisis by the voice within, whichwill never be false to your life’s teachings.... But perhaps,’ she added, ‘I should say, like Dr. Johnson, “I have been speaking in crass ignorance, according to the failings of my fallible human nature”’ (and she repeated some lovely lines on Mary Magdalen, from Moore’s ‘Rhymes of the Road’);[354]‘and yet, may we all, whilst acting like fallible human beings as we are, trust respectfully in God’s mercy,—though speaking of no glorious future as reserved for us, lest He should say, “What hast thou done to deserve that?”’
“The letters written to theMorning Postfrom Hanover during the last days of the monarchy, and signed H. S., were by Mrs. Stewart: those in theTimes, bearing the same signature, were by another lady.
“After being for a time with Mrs. Stewart and hearing her talk, I feel how great the decay of conversation is since my childhood, when there were many people who knew how toconverse, not merely toutter. Scarcely any one now ever says what they really think, and there is an unwholesome striving after aestheticism, Louis Quatorze, blue china, &c., whichanother age, if it remembers it, will think most ridiculous.”
“London, Jan. 24.—To Miss Bromley, who had been on Saturday to take leave of Carlyle, to whom she has been the most faithful of friends for many years. He has been sinking for some time, full of power, pathos, and patience. He woke out of what was supposed to be a death stupor to recognise her, and pressed her hand to his lips.”
“Feb. 26.—Went by appointment to see the Queen of Sweden, who is at Claridge’s Hotel for two nights. She was most kind and gracious, and said that she was glad to thank me in person for all that I had been to the Crown Prince. She talked of her illness and its anxieties; but there were many other people waiting for an audience, and there was no time for any real conversation.”
“March 1.—Met Lady Lyveden at dinner at General Higginson’s. She described Mrs. Grote saying one day, ‘I have to go out this morning, my dear; it’s not my usual time, and in fact it’s very inconvenient to me, but then you know, my dear, it’san affliction job.’
“Mrs. Grote, to the last, was very proud of her appearance. Her hands and feet she was especially proud of. One day Lady Lyveden asked her to come in the evening to meet some pleasant people in her neighbouring house in Savile Row. She would not do it. ‘I shall not come, my dear,’ she said, ‘because I never go out; but besides that, Icouldnot come, for,if I did, I should have to put my well-formed figure into one of your abominably low arm-chairs.’[355]
“There was a charm about her primitive household. There was not one of her servants who spoke of her otherwise than ‘the Missis.’
“After dinner, she would leave ‘the historian,’ as she called him, in his study, and come up to the drawing-room, where she would talk to her guests and be most entertaining. At nine o’clock, tea would be brought up—such a tea as one never sees now, with tablecloth, muffins, cakes, &c. Then she would say to the servant, ‘Bring up the historian’—and the historian was ‘brought up.’ He was vastly civil, of the old school, and wore a great deal of frill. He would take his place opposite the table, and immediately taking a large clean pocket-handkerchief from his pocket, spread it very deliberately over his knees, after which a dog jumped up and sat upon it. Then he would say, as to a perfect stranger, ‘And now, Mrs. Grote, will you kindly favour us with a sonata?’ and Mrs. Grote, who was an admirable musician, would play a very long sonata indeed; after which he would say, ‘Thank you, Mrs. Grote. I am sure Lady Lyveden joins with me in being very much obliged to you for your beautiful sonata.’[356]
“Lady Eastlake’s written portrait misses all the wit,all the acted comedy of Mrs. Grote’s real life. She made, however, a capital pencil sketch (which Lady Lyveden has) of Mrs. Grote, who was greatly pleased with it.”
“March 9.—Met Princess Mary at luncheon at Lady Harrington’s, who only presented me by ‘Here is Augustus.’ The Princess was good enough to talk to me for a long time afterwards.”
“March 22.—Dined at Lady Airlie’s, sitting by Lady Herbert of Lea, who talked much of her long residence in Sicily, with which she was connected through her mother. She went about a great deal amongst the poor at Palermo, generally accompanied by a Sister of Charity, and on one occasion nursed a sick brigand. Soon afterwards, her children, going to the Bay of Mondello to pick up shells, were seized by brigands, but as soon as they found whose children they were, they sent them back to her safe. Another day, Lady Herbert was returning from a village, whither she had been on some office of charity, to Palermo, as it was almost dark. There were high walls on either side of the way. Suddenly the Sister of Charity who was with her began to go so fast that she could not keep up with her. ‘Non posso, Sorella mia, non posso cammináre più,’ she said. ‘But look behind you,’ said the Sister. She looked, and saw three brigands following them. It would have been impossible to get away, so she waited till they came up and said, ‘Che vuole?’ They begged her to excuse them: they were sent by their chief to protect her as far as thewalls of Palermo:theyknew her, but others might not, and they were ordered to ascertain that she came to no harm.
“A Hungarian Count and Countess were at dinner. He talked of fashion very amusingly. He said he had learnt much from his herdsman, a very clever man (‘he was hung afterwards, poor man, but he was very clever’), who chose the animal to bear the bell, which was accustomed to go in the centre of the herd. He asked why this was, and the herdsman answered, ‘Because the one who goes first naturally runs first into all dangers, and when he has done it once or twice, the herd begin to find it out, and they cease to follow him; and the one who goes last is constantly left behind, and the herd begin to find it out, and they cease to followhim; but the one that is in the middle, and chooses the safest place, that is the one they know to be wise, and so, in any time of danger, they will assuredly follow him. The Count spoke of the mania for husband-murder which prevailed at Marseilles till it became quite a fashion. Six women were tried at the same assizes for murdering their husbands. In some of these cases there seemed something of reason or excuse, but at last there came a lady whose husband had been all that was most charming and delightful, and where the crime seemed incomprehensible. The judge pressed her as to her motive, and at first she said, ‘Ces dames me l’ont mis dans l’esprit,’ and, when urged further, ‘Mais, cela se fait à Marseilles!’
“The London world has been full of the ‘Reminiscences of Carlyle,’ published with furious haste by Froude a fortnight after his death. They havedwarfed their subject from a giant into a pigmy. His journal and letters speak well of no one except his own family, and assail with the utmost vituperation all who differed from him. For his wife there is a long wail of affection, which would be touching if the devotion had not begun after her death. ‘Never marry a genius,’ she said to Lady Ashburton; ‘I have done it, and suffered from it; but then, after my death I shall have an apotheosis’—and she has had it. Much of Carlyle’s virulence arose from the state of his health: he used to say, ‘I can wish the devil nothing worse than that he may have to digest with my stomach to all eternity; there will be no need of fire and brimstone then.’”
“March 28.—Dined at Lady Lyveden’s. Sat by Lady S., who was very pleasant. She talked of Tennyson, who had been to stay with her. He desired his sons to let her know that he should like to be asked to read some of his poems in the evening. Nevertheless, when she asked him, he made a piece of work about it, and said to the other guests, ‘I do it, but I only do it because Lady S. absolutely insists upon it.’ He read badly and with too much emotion: over ‘Maud’ he sobbed passionately.
“Afterwards, at Lady Ridley’s party, Lord Houghton talked to me about Carlyle—of how his grimness, which was unrelieved in the ‘Reminiscences,’ was relieved in themanby much kindly humour. He said that he and Lady Houghton were almost the only people spoken well of in the book. Mr. Spedding used to say that Carlyle always needed that kind ofindulgence which most of us need in a fit of violent toothache.”
“April 3.—Dined with old Lady Combermere, who declared that only two people ever had any excuse for living in the country, and they were Adam and Eve!”
“April 8.—An amusing luncheon at Lady Sebright’s, with an immense party of actors, actresses, painters, literati, and ‘great ladies.’ It seemed a reversion of the old order of things when the actresses had said they ‘must inquire a little into the characters of the great ladies’ they were asked to meet!”
“Holmhurst, April 9.—Lea says, ‘It’s seven weeks from Guttit to Aaster, and seven weeks from Aaster to Whissuntide.... You needna’ to tak’ any trouble about the clocks, for when Lady Day comes it ‘ull mak’ ’em all right, for there’s just twelve hours of sunshine on Lady Day.’
“‘After New Year’s day every day is just a cock’s ted longer than the last: a cock’s ted, you know, is just the time a cock stops between its crowings.’
“‘When we were any ways contrairy, my father used to say, “Yes, it’s always too wet or too fine: it’s always too hot or too cold: that’s the way of the world.’”
“London, May 12.—To Mrs. Duncan Stewart, whom I found, after her severe illness, sitting in a picturesque wrapper reading oldFigaros. ‘So much in them, you know, so much more than in any other newspaper.’ They called up reminiscences of LadyBlessington, whom she thinks Lady Airlie like, though without her perfect beauty: then of the trial of ... for forgery, she being a grand-daughter of Stephanie Lafitte, ‘whom I remember, not in her wedding-dress, but in one of her trousseau dresses, for it was velvet. All French girls—and I was a French girl then—are brought up to observe and think a great deal about dress, and it is terrible, quite horrible to them, that an unmarried girl should have a velvet dress: thus the remembrance clings to me.’
“Mrs. Stewart had been most alarmingly ill, but said she had rallied from the moment Alfred Denison paid her a visit. She had said to him that she had a presentiment she should not recover, and he had answered her that he had never been ill without such a presentiment, and that it had never come true.
“Yesterday I went to the Hollands to meet Princess Louise, and to tell her some stories which she had graciously wished to hear. I knew that I was to do this, but it was sufficiently formidable notwithstanding. The Princess felt that it must be so, and was very sympathetic, and as nice as she could be, talking first of my books, and saying that my Italian volumes were never out of her hands when she was in Italy, &c. I had been allowed to choose the rest of the audience, and the Childers, Northcotes, Goschens, Lady Taunton, and Mrs. Dundas were there.”
“May 18.—Luncheon with Catherine Vaughan at the Temple. She was very full of a story of Sir F. Gore Ouseley. He took a house near London, and a young man went to stay with him, an atheist and areprobate. The next morning this man came down an altered person, saying that he had heard a supernatural voice in the night, which had so horrified him that it would change his whole life—the voice had blasphemed in the most awful language. That day was November 22. The young man went away, and he really did change his life.
“The following year, on November 22, Sir F. Gore Ouseley suddenly opened his door at night, and saw at the end of the passage a brilliant light, and in the light the figure of an old man in a dressing-gown—luminous, and all the rays of light issuing from his figure. Suddenly the light went out: there was nothing more to be seen.
“Some time after, Sir F. Gore Ouseley went to visit the owner of the house he had rented, who lived at a distance. Whilst waiting for him, he was attracted by the picture of an old gentleman over the chimney-piece, and recognised the very man he had seen. When the master of the house came in, he said, ‘Pray excuse me, but whom does that portrait represent?’—‘Oh,’ answered the owner, ‘that is no one you are likely to have heard of: it is a grandfather of mine, who was a very bad man indeed: so bad, that, in fact, we never mention him.’ Afterwards, Sir Frederick found that he had strangled his wife in the very passage where he appeared, and had then committed suicide.
“Mr. Austen, Rector of Whitby, was present when Catherine told this. He said that Professor Owen had gone to stay at a house in Essex, where the hostess apologised for putting him into the hauntedroom. The next morning he was asked if he had heard anything. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have heard something, but I should like to say nothing about it till I have slept in that room again.’ The second morning he said that each night he had heard loud cries of a child proceeding from the hearthstone, and begged that a mason might be sent for and the stone removed. This was done, and the skull of a child was found beneath the stone. They buried it in the garden, and the cries have never been heard since.”
“Holyrood Palace, May 27.—On the evening of the 14th, at Cleveland House, first Lady Aberdeen, and then Aberdeen, asked me to come hither with them as equerry, during their residence for the Lord High Commissionership. I stayed in London for Miss Beaumont’s wedding with Coplestone Bampfylde, and joined them on Friday, arriving at 9P.M., when ninety guests were at dinner in the brilliantly lighted picture gallery, in which all the kings of Scotland were, painted to order by the same hand and from the same model. After dining by myself in a small room, I joined the party in the reception-rooms, where I entered at once upon my duties, which, for the most part, seem to be to talk right and left to every one I see. Each evening the Synods of the different districts dine, some eighty or a hundred clergymen, and I have generally found from my clerical neighbours that they regard it as their carnival, looked forward to throughout the whole year, and giving them much to talk of when they return home. Sometimes military, legal, or other classes are mixed with them. In the afternoons we have generallygone in state to visit institutions of one kind or other, the most interesting being the really beautiful Infirmary, built entirely by the people of Scotland, and the marvellous printing establishment of Messrs. Nelson. When we were at the latter, most hands were busy over the revised New Testament, in which there are 7000 alterations from the older edition, 2000 of them being important.”
“Holyrood Palace, May 28.—It is an interesting life here, but a very fatiguing one—the hours and hours of standing, as for real royalty; the etiquette of always addressing Aberdeen as ‘Your Grace,’ and getting up when he comes into a room; the whirlpool of invitations to be sent, in which one is always being swallowed up.
“I have had little enough of individual conversation, except with Ally Gordon, the very pleasant aide-de-camp, and with Dr. Russell the chaplain, who has talked much of Carlyle. He said to a friend who visited him a short time before his death, ‘We are both old men now, and I daresay you find, as I do, that it is well to rest upon the simple answer to the first question in our Shorter Catechism—‘What is your object in life?’—‘To glorify my Maker and to enjoy Him for ever.’
“On Sunday we were at St. Giles’s in the morning, and in the afternoon had a long service and sermon in the picture-gallery. These Scotch services are most wearisome, and the long prayers,informingthe Almighty upon subjects on which He is all-wise and we are utterly ignorant, are most revolting.
“One especially feels the length of these prayers in standing, in great heat, in the General Assembly, where we occupy places near the throne, which is raised in a gallery: the Moderator and ex-Moderator sit at a table beneath, and the five hundred members occupy the body of the house. The Moderator, Dr. Smith, is a most beautiful and benign old man, full of simple and true Christianity, who looks, with his courtly manners, as if he never could wear anythingbuthis court dress. To-day we and about a hundred other guests breakfasted with him at his hotel.
“The Holyrood which struck such ‘dismay and terror’ into the hearts of the French emigrant princes is to me most captivating. I am often reminded of Hogg’s admirably descriptive lines:—