“I have had an interesting hour with the Duchess in her own sitting-room, where she showed me all the treasures in her cabinet—two miniatures of Elizabeth, contemporary, for they are painted without any shadow, which she forbade, upon her face, and two others, evidently painted afterwards, and naturally much more becoming; a miniature of Mary Queen of Scots painted in prison, with the fat face and thick neck which want of exercise caused in one used to so much riding; some of the hair of Charles I., cut off by Sir Henry Halford when the king’s coffin was opened at Windsor; miniatures of James I., Anne of Denmark, and three of their children; the splendid ‘George’ of the fifth Earl of Northumberland, made with the blue enamel which is now a lost art; one of the amber snuff-boxes which Queen Charlotte had constructed in Germany for her ladies, with her miniature on the outside, her dog inside the lid, and her monkey at the bottom of the box; the pencil-case of Lord Chesterfield, with a diamond at the end, being the pencil mentioned by Pope. Not less interesting is a little (Dutch) silver woman, which runs by clockwork, because it was the means of saving all the family plate. For when burglars broke into Sion, it scampered about the floor when they were going to pack it up, which made them think the plate was possessed, and they took to flight, leaving all their booty behind, with the baskets in which they had intended to carry it off.”
“Nov. 6.—All this morning I was left to ‘browse in the library,’ as Dr. Johnson expresses it. In the afternoon I had a walk with the Duke and Percy to Alnwick Abbey—utterly unknown to history, and with only the ruin of its fine gateway standing, yet which must have been one of the most important buildings in the North of England. Its substructions were sought and dug for in exact accordance with the rules laid down for building a Premonstratensian abbey, and so they were found. The church must have been grand as any cathedral.”
ToMiss LEYCESTER.
“Holmhurst, Nov. 27, 1887.—I am greatly enjoying a little solitude in this time so congenial for hard work, when all nature seems wrapped in a swampy mist-cloud. There are great improvements in the garden. Along that little upper walk to the field, where the frames were, is now a rockery with rare heaths, and behind it a bed of kalmias, and then the cypress hedge of my especial little garden. Rock and fern are also put on the steep descent to the pond, opposite the line of tree-fuchsias.
“I wonder if you remember hearing of the extraordinary visitation of crickets on the night of (my mother’s death) Nov. 12-13, seventeen years ago—the uproar, like the sea in a storm, all night, scarcely allowing a voice to be heard: then heard no more till the night, twelve years after, in which dear Lea passed away. I was so struck by coming across an allusion to it when reading the last chapter of Ecclesiastesas the lesson in church last Sunday—‘And the grasshopper shall become a burden, because man goeth to his long home.’”
enlarge-imageHOLMHURST FROM THE SHRUBBERY.HOLMHURST FROM THE SHRUBBERY.
“Dec. 24.—The dreary Christmas season of damp and dyspepsia, bills and bother, is less odious than usual this year, as the day itself is swallowed up in Sunday. I have, however, also had a real pleasure in a present from the Duchess of Cleveland of her Life of Everard Primrose, only printed for his friends. It is most beautifully, touchingly, really nobly done, andthe most perfect memorial of a high-minded single-hearted young man’s life. I think I never read so perfect a biography. The story is entirely told in Everard’s own admirable letters, but the Duchess has not shrunk from her own part, and the little touches from her own life, the Duke’s, &c., are indescribably simple, graceful, and sincere. The book gives one a far higher opinion ofher(of Everard I had always the very highest), and makes one regret many hasty judgments. I have been quite engrossed with the book, so perfectly delightful is it.”
After a busy six weeks of work, I spent the New Year again at Cobham, always charming in its quiet home life, but was glad to return soon again to work.
Journal.
“Holmhurst, Feb. 10, 1888.—The news of Lady Marian Alford’s sudden death removes from the cycle of life one whom I had felt to be a true friend for more than thirty years. Our meetings were at long intervals, but when we met, it was as more than mere acquaintances. With a grace which was all her own, she often unfolded beautiful chapters in her own life to me, and she was one of the very few persons who have read in manuscript much of these written volumes of my past. She was a perfectgrande dame, unable to harbour an ignoble thought, incapable of a small action. Regal, imperious, andextravagant,[474]she was generous, kind, and personally most unselfish, and, had the real greatness and goodness that was in her been regulated and disciplined by the circumstances of her early life, she would have been one of the noblest women of her century. Alas! only yesterday she was! How soon one has to school oneself to say ‘would have been.’ Thus, however, it will certainly be with oneself. The day after one dies people will say—and how few with even a pang—‘He would: he might have been.’”
“March 14.—Met Lady Fergusson Davy (néeFortescue). She told me that when Lady Hills Johnes, the friend of Thirlwall, was twenty-four, she was once in society with the late Lord Lytton, who was talking of second-sight, and of his own power of seeing the future of those he was with. She urged him very much to tell her future, but he was very unwilling to do so. Still she urged it so much that at last he did. He did it after the manner of the Chaldees—told it to her, and wrote it down at the same time in hieroglyphics. He said, ‘You will have a very great sorrow, which will shake your faith in man: then you will have another even greater sorrow, which will come to you through an old and trusted servant: you will marry late in life a king among men, and the close of your existence will be cloudlessly happy.’ All the first part of the prophecy has come true—the breaking off of herfirst engagement; the terrible murder of her father by his servant; her marriage with Sir James Hills; all that remains now is happiness.”
“Holmhurst, May 14.—I have just returned from an interesting month in London, seeing many people delightfully and making some pleasant new acquaintance. At Lady Delawarr’s I was presented to the young Duchess of Mecklenbourg, very pretty and full of life and animation. No one else came up to talk to her, and I was left to make conversation from five till a quarter to seven! by which time I think we had both exhausted all possible topics, though she was very charming. At last she said, ‘I always go at six to read to the Duchess of Cambridge.’—‘Well, ma’am,’ I answered, ‘you will certainly be terribly late to-day.’—‘What very odd things you do say to me!’ she said. The next day I sent her my ‘Walks in London,’ and as her speaking of the Duchess of Cambridge convinced me of her identity, I directed to the ‘Hereditary Grand Duchess of Mecklenbourg-Strelitz.’ The next time I saw her I had found out, and said, ‘I am sorry, ma’am, that I have made three mistakes in one line in directing to you—that you are not ‘Hereditary,’ not ‘Grand,’ and not ‘Strelitz;’ for she was the Duchess Paul of Mecklenbourg-Schwerin; but she laughed heartily.
“In going to London, I first saw, on a placard at the station, that Matthew Arnold was dead. It seemed to carry away a whole joyous part of life in a moment—for I have known Matthew Arnold ever since I remember anything, though I did not know till I lost him thathis happy personality and cordial welcome had made a real difference to me for years, especially in the rooms of the Athenaeum, where I have spent so much time of late years. He had an evergreen youth, and died young at sixty-six, and he was so impregnated with social tact and courtesy, as well as with intellectual buoyancy, that he was beyond all men liveable with. Herman Merivale has written some lines which seem to express what I shall always remember—
‘Thrice happy he, whose buoyant youthIn light of Beauty sought for Truth,. . . . . . . . . .And to the longing listener showedHow Beauty decks the ugliest road.’
‘Thrice happy he, whose buoyant youthIn light of Beauty sought for Truth,. . . . . . . . . .And to the longing listener showedHow Beauty decks the ugliest road.’
“All who knew Matthew Arnold well loved him, though ‘the Apostle of Moderation in Criticism’ would certainly have been shocked by some of the fulsome articles which have followed his death; and I doubt of any of his writings surviving his generation, especially his refined and delicate verses, which surely lack the fire of a poet whose work is to be eternal. I went on April 19, with Montagu Wood, to his funeral in the graveyard of the ancient church at Laleham, where his father was vicar before he went to Rugby, and where his children are buried. It was a day of pitiless rain, which pelted upon the widow and sisters and crowd of mourners round the grave, and on the piles of exquisite flowers beneath which his coffin was hidden. As Alfred Austin says in a beautiful article upon him, ‘Wherever he lies, there will be a Campo-Santo.’ I was glad in going downto the funeral to make friends with Edward Arnold, a charming fellow, who is the present editor ofMurray’s Magazine.
“At dinner at the Miss Monks’ I was interested to find myself sitting next to Lady Sawle, who told me that she was niece of the Rose Aylmer who was the love of Landor’s youth. It was on her that he wrote the lines which Archbishop Trench declared to be better than many an epic, and which Charles Lamb said he lived upon for a fortnight. Lady Sawle was herself one of the three Roses to whom Landor afterwards addressed a poem, the third Rose being her mother. She described the death, when she was at Rome, of Miss Bathurst—beautiful, radiant, and a splendid horsewoman, riding along the narrow path between the Acqua Acetosa and the Ponte Molle. The horse suddenly slipped backwards into the Tiber. She called out to Lord Aylmer, ‘Uncle, save me!’ but he could not swim, nor could any of the gentlemen or the groom who was present. Another groom, who was a good swimmer, had been sent back to Rome with a restive horse. She sank in her long blue habit, and her body was never found. All Rome mourned ‘La bella Inglesa,’ and the little party of friends, closely united and present at her death, dispersed sadly. One of them alone, Mr. Charles Mills (of the Villa Mills), returned to Rome in the autumn. As he was about to enter the city, he sent his carriage on to the gate from the Ponte Molle, and walked slowly along the Tiber bank by what had been the scene of the accident six months before. As he walked, he saw twopeasants on the other side of the river catch at something which looked like a piece of blue cloth on the mud, and pass on. A sudden impulse seized him, and he got some men to come at once with spades and dig there in the Tiber bank. There Miss Bathurst was found as if she were embalmed, in her blue riding-habit, perfectly beautiful, and with her long hair over her shoulders. There was only one little mark of a wound in her forehead. For a minute she was visible in all her loveliness—a minute only. She was buried in the English cemetery.”[475]
enlarge-imageS. FLOUR, FROM THE SOUTH.S. FLOUR, FROM THE SOUTH.[476]
enlarge-imageCHÂTEAU DU ROI, S. EMILION.CHÂTEAU DU ROI, S. EMILION.[477]
On 28th May 1888 I went abroad to my French work, feeling as usual greatly depressed at leaving home and going off into solitude, but soon able to throw myself vigorously into all the interests of my foreign life and its work. How full each week seemed!—the two first alone amongst quiet villages and churches in Picardy and afterwards in Auvergne, and many others after my friend Hugh Bryans joined me at wild S. Flour, in the hill country of Auvergne, at beautiful Obazine, and atRocamadour again, then at beautiful S. Emilion, in wandering amongst the innumerable historic relics of La Vendée; lastly by the Loire and its surroundings. Three places especially come back to me with pleasant memories—the home-like inn at S. Emilion, its beautiful old buildings radiant with the blossom of pinks and valerian, and the sunset walks on its old walls looking into the vineyards and cornfields:—the little fishing port of Le Croisic, with its gay boats, its snow-white houses, and its windy surroundings:—and charming Clisson, with itspleasant inn and its balconies overhung with roses and wistaria. Hugh was a capital companion, and full of interest in what he saw, though—like so many at twenty-four—hepretended to hate all the historic detail. However, I am sure my endless archaeological inquiries must have sorely tried his patience, and he was always unweariedly good to me.
ToMiss Leycester.
“Beauvais, June 1, 1888.—A number of friends wrote urging me to give up what was ‘entirely an imaginary duty.’ However, I felt it was a duty to finish what I had worked at so long, though perhaps it had not been a duty to begin it; and so, much as I hated coming, I am here! It is no use thinking of all one has left, and there is a great deal in what onehas, most of allle grand airfor hours and hours, and the marvellous light and shade, which is in itself such a beauty in this pellucid atmosphere. Then the peasants in Western France are delightful, and I have not much fear of being taken up here; and I come so well primed and informed that I know exactly what to look for everywhere, and where to find it, and almost what to say about it.
“I left dear Holmhurst at 6.30P.M.and at 2.30A.M.was carrying my own portmanteau down the desolate moonlit streets of Abbeville, where the old town struck me more than ever, such a complete change from England, and so romantically picturesque.”
“Clermont Ferrand, June 9.—Oh, it has been so hot! Never in my life have I been so grilled, roasted, boiled, and melted down; and it has been hard having to work on all day, whatever the intense exhaustionfrom the heat. But I have kept up to exactly the tale of work measured out for each day before I left home.”
“Le Puy, June 13.—We had an exquisite journey on Tuesday by rail down the valley of the Alagnon to Neussargues, the quantity of old castles on the rocky hills as striking as those on the Rhine were forty years ago, and the mountain flowers lovely. Then we drove up through the cool forests to the high plateau which is under snow nine months of the year, and which was quite chilly even now. Here, in the evening, we reached the old episcopal town of S. Flour, on a great basaltic rock, the most wonderfully placed of all French cities, and much recalling Orvieto. Everything seemed to belong to another world. From my window I could throw anything sheer down the most tremendous of quite perpendicular precipices, and the view was magnificent. The house had been in the same family for four hundred years, and the landlady showed with pride the dark passage where her ancestor intercepted the Protestants when they were trying to take the city by stealth, the stone on which they were beheaded, and the drain by which their blood flowed away. The other side of the house opened into a great square, with the cathedral standing amongst trees as in an English close, and houses with sixteenth-century colonnades. I saw the huge modern viaduct bridge of Garrabit, most extraordinary certainly, but though much more interesting to most people, less so to me than the glorious views of S. Flour itself, on its black and orange rocks, backed by the great purple towers of the cathedral.”
enlarge-imageAugustus J. C. Hare 1888Augustus J. C. Hare1888
enlarge-imageS. NECTAIRE.S. NECTAIRE.[478]
“S. Nectaire le Haut, June 28.—It was dark and raining in torrents before we arrived here, and the driver suddenly announced not only that he had lost his way, but that one of our wheels was likely to come off! We were skirting a precipice by a rocky road without any parapet, and at last, by holding the carriage lamps low, found that we had somehow got into a very ancient churchyard, where stone coffins were strewn all about. At last we knocked up awoman at a farmhouse, who guided us back to the hotel, which we had long passed in the dark. This is an enchanting place, beautifully situated in a wooded gorge below the old romanesque church, where the Sunday congregation—from many far-away villages—winding up the hill with baskets of food for the day, has been most picturesque. There are lovely walks in all directions, and Switzerland at its best never had more beautiful flowers, fields covered with lilies, orchis, narcissus, globe ranunculus, pansies, pinks, &c.”
“Le Croisic, July 17.—At this little fishing-town there is no fine scenery, but it is most artistically lovely, with wide views over the grey reaches of sea and yellow sandy flats to the soft hills, and endless fishing-boats with red sails and nets.
“Yesterday we spent the day at La Guerande, a little unaltered mediaeval town above the salt-flats; a very superior Winchelsea, described in Balzac’s wonderful novel of ‘Beatrix.’”
I returned to England on August 7th, just in time to attend Alwyne Greville’s wedding in London. In September I paid the Eustace Cecils a visit, and then went to the Spencer Smiths at Kingston near Wareham.
ToMiss Leycester.
enlarge-imageGATE OF LA GUERANDE.GATE OF LA GUERANDE.[479]
“Sept. 17.—It was a great pleasure to find Sir Howard and Lady Elphinstone at the Eustace Cecils’. I like them both so very much. They say the Queenis much occupied in learning Hindustanee and speaks it now quite well—a great delight to her Indian subjects. She has three Indian servants in constant attendance, and converses fluently with them. This afternoon has been delightful, with Mrs. Spencer Smith and her children, at St. Alban’s (St. Aldhelm’s) Head. In the little hollow with stone cottages on the way thither a boy opened a gate for us whose name was Sagittary Clump. The name came from his parents’ lodger, but it must have had its origin in Sagittarius. Mrs. Spencer Smith spoke to the boy’s father about his daughter’s misconduct. ‘I can’t help it,’ he said; ‘I’d given herher documents,’ meaning that he had spoken to her seriously: Shakspeare uses ‘documents’ in the same sense. Walking up the hill, we were terribly bitten by harvest-bugs, which little Michael Smith poetically called ‘Ces petites bêtes rouges dans les fleurs bleues’ (harebells). Close to the coastguard station, near the edge of the cliff, is a tiny chapel, perfectly square, supported by a single pillar, and with only one wee romanesque window, so that almost all the light comes from the open door: however, there is only service here in summer. A monk of Sherborne Abbey was always kept here to toll a bell to warn off ships, whilst he prayed for the shipwrecked. Seven little children aged from three to four came up to us while we were drawing. ‘We be going to throw ourselves over the cliff, we be: we be going to smash ourselves quite up, we be,’ the little monsters announced to their mothers, as they all seven marched away arm-in-arm to the edge of the cliff. Then ‘little sister’ made ‘Ernest’ sit down upon a thistle, at which ‘Ernest’ roared; and finally the mother caught up Ernest and carried it off, ‘little sister’ whacking its little naked behind with a stick all the way as they went. Then a young Palgrave appeared, who took the Spencer Smith children down to a wreck in Chapman’s (Shipman’s) Bay, to their great delight. There were seven parrots saved from that ship, but one was lost which was prepared for death by being able to say the Lord’s Prayer straight through. We went afterwards to the desolate village of Worth, where, in the wind-stricken rectory, the clergyman and his wife see no one for five months of the year, and have to shout into each other’s earsto be audible in the roaring winter blast. The church has a Saxon arch, and in its graveyard two stone sarcophagi, one that of a child-abbot, with an incised crosier lying upon it; also the gravestone, of Mr. ‘Jessy,’ ‘who, by his great courage, innoculated his wife and two sons from the (cow)’—sic.He rode up to London with saddle-bags to give his experience to the Government. The Dorsetshire here is pure Anglo-Saxon: King Alfred spoke Dorsetshire. The people are very long-lived; at Steeple in Purbeck there have only been four rectors since the time of Charles I. Three Messrs. Bond have lasted 160 years, and an old Mrs. Ross of 101 drives up this hill in a dogcart to visit her old servant of ninety-four in the village. In church the clerk said ‘Stand in a wee (awe) and sin not!’”
ToLouisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
“Cadland, Sept. 21.—This comfortable house stands in a park, which is a piece of enclosed forest full of noble oaks and hollies, with glints of blue sea and shipping between. The passages are entirely clothed with fine prints and drawings, and in the rooms are many fine portraits, especially that by Zoffany of the Drummond who founded the Bank. The collection of autographs is priceless, and includes many by early kings of France, letters of Marie Antoinette, a charming one of the little Dauphin, and the execution-warrant of Madame du Barry. Amongst the drawings is the touching sketch which Severn made ‘to keep himself awake’ sitting by the death-bed of Keats.... We have driven to ‘the Cottage,’ a charming house where Lady Elizabeth Drummond lived, in woods of ilex and fir above the Solent.... The company has included Valletort; Harry Forster, a very good-looking fellow; Robert Scott, Lord Montagu’s second son; and Christopher Walsh, a very nice son of Lord Ormathwayte.”
“Malshanger, Sept. 25.—I came here on the 22nd to visit Mr. Wyndham Portal, and (in her grandmotherhood) his most beautiful as well as charming wife. After luncheon we drove to the Vyne, admirable in the rich colour of its old red brick and grey copings, and greatly beloved by Horace Walpole, who used to stay there with his friend John Chute, to whom he gave many pictures, and whose ‘Chutehood’—depression of spirits and gout—he often deplored. It was to him that Gray wrote ‘suavissime Chuti.’ The house has always been cared for and never allowed to ‘run down,’ and there is much of interest in its fine old rooms, especially in its two stories of ‘gallery,’ lined with busts and portraits. Four of these were brought hither by Lady Dacre of Hurstmonceaux, upon her second marriage with Challoner Chute of the Vyne, and include a portrait of Chrysogona Baker, afterwards Lady Dacre; of the widow of the Lord Dacre who was executed, with his picture hanging behind her, and two of the Chute Lady Dacre herself, one of them copied from a picture now at Belhus, the place of the Lennards. The present owner of the Vyne, who married Miss Eleanor Portal, showed it all admirably, and has written a capital bookon the place.[480]He educates his own beautiful boys, making scholars of them before they are ten years old.
“This district—‘Portalia,’ as people call it—is quite peopled with Portals and their connections. They were a French Protestant family, greatly persecuted under Louis XIV., when they took refuge at La Cavalerie in the Larzac. Jean François de Portal escaped to Holland, and his eight children, concealed in barrels and smuggled out of the kingdom by faithful nurses, reached England. The eldest of these became tutor to George III., and the second, Henri, obtained the monopoly of the manufacture of bank-notes, which the family have enjoyed ever since. The last Portal left his vast landed estates to his eldest son, Melville, and his mills to his second son, Wyndham: now the land is only a burden, but, police-guarded, the mills at Laverstoke constantly increase in value, and turn out daily 50,000 Bank of England notes, 12,000 Indian notes, and 100,000 postal orders. By the process of one beautiful machine, the linen rags (nothing but new rags of the best linen being used) are reduced to pulp, the pulp is flattened into paper, stamped, drained, dried, and behold! before it leaves the machine, a bank-note ready for the printer. All the machinery is turned by the transparent Teste, which is full of trout almost up to its source. The workmen, who live in comfortable cottages near the mills and receive high wages, arehereditary, and always fulfil their quota of duty from father to son. Mr. Portal throws open his fine gardens here every Saturday to the people of Basingstoke, who play tennis and generally enjoy themselves, and do no harm whatever.”
Journal and Letters to Miss Leycester.
“Ford Castle, Northumberland, Nov. 23.—I set out to come here on Wednesday evening, after attending Miss Higginson’s wedding at Marlow. When we—two other guests, Mr. and Mrs. Bellairs, and I—reached the desolate station amongst the bleak moorlands, we found only one little gig in waiting, and no chance of anything else. Mrs. B. and I struggled into it, and came through the howling raging storm for seven miles here; Mr. B. walked; but our reception in these fine old rooms made us forget all else, and to-day has been like all days at Ford and Highcliffe—drawing, reading aloud with talking at intervals, and walks in the glen and gardens.”
“Nov. 26.—A delightful walk, combating with the wind, to the Devil’s rocks, ‘where,’ say the Northumbrians, ‘the devil hanged his grandmother.’ Mr. Neville (the rector) dined. He says the old rectory here was haunted. His sister came to stay with him in the spare room that looked out on the castle. The second day she said very quietly but firmly that she could not sleep in that room again; another must be given her or she must leave. Then she described that, on two successive nights, the curtain of her bedhad been drawn, and a strange voice had distinctly said to her, ‘This is not a spare room.’
“Mr. Neville said—
“‘I belong to the Neville-Rolfes of Hitcham in Norfolk. After my cousin, Charles Neville-Rolfe, who was beloved by every one, died, his boxes were all found to be fastened with letter-locks, and the family were a long time before they were able to get them undone, as he had not left the clue. My cousins suggested to me afterwards that I should ask Crisp the carpenter how he had discovered it at last; so, as I was rubbing an inscription on a stone in the church, I got him to come and move part of a pew which covered it, and I asked him about it. He said, “Whilst we were puzzling over those locks, I heard in a dream the voice of Mr. Charles, and he said, ‘Crisp, come and walk and talk,’ and I said, ‘Yes, sir, gladly;’ and then he turned to me and said, ‘Crisp, guess!’—and I woke, and ‘guess’ was the word we wanted.” I told my cousins afterwards what Crisp had told me, and they said, “Yes, but the really curious part was that only three letters were wanted. Crisp thought ‘guess’ was spelt ‘ges,’ still we acted on what he said, and it was right.’”
“Lady Waterford says—‘My maid is very good, very good: her only fault is that she has three hands, she has a right hand and a left hand, and a little behind-hand.’
“Mr. Bellairs, the Highcliffe agent, who is here, said—
“‘My grandfather was both at Trafalgar and Waterloo, for he was wounded as a middy at Trafalgar,and then went into the army. It was odd when, long afterwards, some one said about Trafalgar, “It was so and so” and he said, “No, it was not, forIwas there,” and that the conversation then went on to Waterloo, “It was so and so.”—“No, I beg your pardon, but I wasthere.”
“‘Afterwards he fell in love with Miss Mackenzie, one of two heiress sisters. He had nothing to marry upon, and the father forbade him the house, but he was allowed one interview, and in that he found out that the butler was just leaving, and the family would be wanting another. He dressed up and came and applied for the place. He got it, and it was three weeks before he was found out, and then Mr. Mackenzie allowed that he was too much for him, and allowed that he should marry his daughter. But he insisted that my grandfather should leave the army. “Very well,” he said, “if you like I will go into the Church.” So that was agreed to, and in time he became a Canon. He was as earnest in the Church as everywhere else. Soon after his appointment to a country living, as he was crossing some fields on a Sunday, he found a number of miners crowding round some prize-fighters. “Come,” he said, “I can’t have this: I shall not allow this.” “But you can’t prevent it,” they cried. “Can’t prevent it! you’ll soon see if I can’t fight for my God as well as for my king: I’ll fight you all in turn,” and he polished off the two strongest miners in fair fight, and then the others were so pleased, they chaired him, and carried him through the village to his church, which they filled from that time forward.’
“Most delightful and full of holiest teaching have been the many quiet hours I have spent with the lady of the castle. There is a sentence of Confucius which says—‘If you would escape vexation, reprove yourself liberally and others sparingly.’ It is exactly her case. And there is another sentence of Confucius which applies to her—‘The wise have no doubts, the virtuous no sorrows, the brave no fears.’ Being here so quietly, I have seen even more of her than on other visits, and more than ever has she seemed to be a fountain of original, interesting, noble, and elevating words and thoughts. She is wonderfully well now, and able to walk, and take all her old energetic interest in the place and people, and oh! how we have talked!”
“Littlecote, Wilts, Dec. 3.—A charming visit to this beautiful old house, which mostly dates from Henry VII., and has a noble hall hung with armour and the yellow jerkins of the Commonwealth, a long gallery filled with fine Popham portraits, and a charming old pleasaunce with bowling-green and long grass walks. I sleep in the ghost-room, and just outside my door is the ante-chapel where Wild Darrell roasted the baby as described in the notes to ‘Rokeby,’ but the grandfather of the present possessor was so bored by inquiring visitors that he burnt the old hangings of the bed by which the nurse identified the room of the crime, and the bed itself, with much other old furniture, was sold to provide the fortunes of the younger children in the presentgeneration. Nothing can be more delightfully comfortable, however, than the house as it now is, and my young host—Frank Popham—is most pleasant and genial. It has been a great pleasure to find Lady Sherborne domesticated here, and to listen once more on a Sunday evening to her exquisite singing of ‘Oh rest in the Lord’—so delicate and touching in its faintly vanishing cadences as to draw tears from her audience. Very pleasant too has it been to meet charming Mrs. Howard of Greystoke and her daughter again.”
“Dec. 11.—My old cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Thurlow, who had often invited me before to their house of Baynards, wrote that this week was my last chance of going, as Baynards was just sold, so I have been for one night. The house is partly modern, but the place was an ancient royal residence, and was part of the dower of Katherine Parr. A pretty statue of Edward VI. was discovered there walled up, and Margaret Roper lived there afterwards, and long kept her father’s head in a box, which still exists at the foot of the staircase. There are also numbers of fine portraits, the dressing-box and travelling trunk of Elizabeth, and I slept in a magnificent old tapestried room and in Henry VIII.’s bed.
“Mrs. Thurlow says that Cardinal Wiseman went to dine with some friends of hers. It was a Friday, but they had quite forgotten to provide a fast-day dinner. However, he was quite equal to the occasion, for he stretched out his hands in benedictionover the table and said, ‘I pronounce all this to be fish,’ and forthwith enjoyed all the good things heartily.”
“Dec. 12.—Henry Lyte says that Porson was told to write a Latin theme as to whether Brutus did well or not in killing Cæsar—‘Si bene fecit aut male fecit.’ He wrote—‘Non bene fecit, nee male fecit, sed interfecit.’
“The Stuart Exhibition is most indescribably interesting. A glorious Vandyke hangs there representing Henrietta Maria in radiant youth and happiness, with husband and children. Close by hangs the most touching portrait in the gallery—Henrietta Maria, the same person exactly, with the same curls, only grey, the same features sunken and worn by sorrow, in her old age at Chaillot, by Le Fevre.”[481]
“Cobham, Jan. 3, 1889.—Drove with Lady Kathleen Bligh, Lady Mary, and Lady Lurgan to Rochester to see the interesting old hospice for ‘six poor travellers, not rogues or proctors,’ where that number are still daily received and cared for. They are given half a loaf, boiled beef, and porter for supper, have six small clean comfortable rooms lighted by a street gas-lamp outside, and are sent away with fourpence each in the morning. On Christmas Day a lady sends the travellers of the day some tobacco, a pipe, and a sixpence each, and quaint are their letters of thanks.‘May you live for ever and a day after,’ was the good wish of one of them this year.
“Lord Darnley went himself into the village of Cobham to engage lodgings at a poor woman’s cottage for a man who wanted to come there. Lady Kathleen went to see the poor woman afterwards, and found her greatly delighted. ‘As soon as my Lord was gone,’ she said, ‘up I went to my room, and down upon my knees I dropped to return thanks to the Almighty, because the Lord above, and the Lord below, were working together for my good.’”
“Jan. 10.—To tea with Mrs. Humphry Ward, almost a celebrity now as authoress of ‘Robert Elsmere,’ at her house in Russell Square. She said it tried her somewhat to receive from an American ‘Whiteley’ his circular with—‘for economy in literature we defy anything to beat our Elsmere at six cents.’”
On Shrove Tuesday, March 6, I left home for the south, and spent a fortnight at Mentone in the Hotel d’Italie, which I remembered—one of the few houses then existing—as the residence of Mrs. Usborne when we were living close by in 1869-70. My cousin Florentia Hughes was at Mentone with her youngest daughter, and we had many pleasant excursions together. In the hotel were Lord Northbrook and his daughter, with whom I dined several times, meeting the excessively entertaining Lord Alington and his pleasant daughters. On the22nd I reached Rome, where I spent six weeks in the Hotel d’Italie, seeing many friends, correcting my “Walks in Rome,” and drawing a great deal.
enlarge-imagePONT S. LOUIS, MENTONE.PONT S. LOUIS, MENTONE.[482]
Journal.
“April 7.—On Friday I went with some friends to Albano, and, whilst they drove to Neni, drew in the glen at Ariccia, and never was I so tormented by children as by a beautiful little cowherd—Amalia Maria—who, on my refusing her demand forsoldi, vowed she would ‘lead me a life,’ which she did by fetching six other little demons worse than herself, when they all joined hands and danced round me and my campstool, kicking and screaming with all their might. Then they fetched a blackpecorello, and having tried to make it eat my paints, danced again, thepecorello, held by a string, prancing behind them. Happily at last the cow which Amalia Maria was supposed to be chaperoning made its escape over a hedge, and whilst she was pursuing it over the country, I fled, and joined my companions at a little caffè, where we had a delicious luncheon of excellent bread, hard-boiled eggs—painted purple for Lent—and sparkling Aleatico, for fourpence a head. Afterwards we sat to draw, looking down upon that loveliest of lakes and woods full of cyclamens and anemones.
“The crowds in the Roman galleries are endless. Whole families arrive together, every member of them carrying a campstool, and they will sit down opposite each of the statues in turn, and move onwards gradually, whilst the father reads aloud from a guidebook, and they all drink it in. He often begins the description at the wrong end, but they do notfind it out, and ... it does not signify! An American, a Mrs. Ruggles, coming to the Apollo Belvidere, said, ‘Isthatthe Apollo Belvidere?’—‘Yes, that’s the Apollo Belvidere.’—‘Well, then, if that’s the Apollo Belvidere, I don’t think much ofhim: give me Ruggles.’”
“April 18.—Caught in tremendous rain and hail near a warehouse at the back of the Palatine, and took refuge under a rude porch with a number of peasants and was kept there an hour. One of the men described his life as a soldier when his battalion was sent against the brigands near Pescara. Of these, the famous Angelo Maria was so horrible a monster, that his own mother determined to rid the world of such a fiend and to deliver him up. He discovered this, seized his mother, laid her on a table, ripped her up, and taking out her steaming heart—ate it! Words cannot describe the horrible gestures with which the peasant told this story, or the dramatic power with which he described the sister seeing the terrible scene through a chink in the door, and coming afterwards to the guard-house, saying that she wished to betray her brother. ‘Oh,’ said the officer, ‘you need not suppose that we trust you; this is a trap you have laid for us.’—‘Yesterday,’ she answered, ‘I might have laid a trap, but I had not then seen that monster eat my mother’s heart.’ And he was taken.
“But Capolo Roscia was worse. He came one night to amasseria. The doors were barred, but he forced his way in with his band. The head of the farm hid himself in the straw, but he was found anddragged out. All the men in themasseria, eighteen in number, were brought out and made to sit in a row. ‘Now you must all be shaved,’ said Capolo Roscia, and he cut all their eighteen heads off and put them in a basket.
“‘Oh, in that time when we were brigand-hunting we did not stop much to inquire how far they were guilty. “A ginocchio: avete cinque minuti,” we shouted to a peasant if we caught him. “Oh, ma signori, signori!” he would say. “A ginocchio! Un minuto, due, tre, cinque—bo-o-o-ah!” and he was done for; for he had given the brigands provisions, and so he was as bad as themselves. Even withi sindaci, well, we often did the same; but—we got rid of the brigands.’”
“Easter Sunday, April 21.—To St. Peter’s. The service was under the dome, but the group around the shrine would not call up even a reminiscence of the glorious services under the Papacy. The relics were shown afterwards from a high gallery—the spear-head of Longinus, the bit of the true cross, the napkin of Veronica, to the sight of which seven thousand years’ indulgence is attached. I gazed hard, but could only see its glittering frame, nor could any other member of the congregation see any more.”
enlarge-imageIN S. FRANCESCO NEL DESERTO.IN S. FRANCESCO NEL DESERTO.[483]
After leaving Rome, I spent ten days with a pleasant party of friends at beautiful Perugia, and then went on to Venice, where I saw much of Ainslie Bean, who took me in his gondolato many places I wanted to see, and much also of the Comte and Comtesse de Lützow, on the eve then of the great but still unforeseen sorrow of losing the dear daughter Maude who was the sunshine of their lives. I was at thePension Anglaise, crowded with lively, kindly ultra-English people, whose mistakes were amusing. “Gesu-Maria!” suddenly exclaimed the gondolier on narrowly escaping a concussion at a sharp corner. “Why on earth does he say ‘Je suis marié’?” said a Mrs. R. Afterwards I had a week’s hard work in intense heat in Eastern France, and reached home on May 27.
ToMiss Leycester.
“Holmhurst, May 27, 1889.—How quiet it is here! how shady! how thankful I am to be back! The heat yesterday at Amiens was appalling, but I reached the green retreat this morning at nine, a telegram announcing my advent having only been delivered five minutes before, so that I had the amusement of seeing Holmhurst as I had never done before, in completeun-dress.... I never saw such foliage. Charles II. might easily hide this year in any of the oak trees.”
Journal.
“July 16.—Dined at Lord Chetwynd’s, taking down a Mrs. Severn. She talked of the difficulties of faith; of the comfort she had received from Farrar’s ‘Justice and Mercy;’ of the simple impossibility of eternal punishment; of the verse ‘The Lord shallsave all men,especiallysuch as are of the household of faith,’ as especially indicating gradations of happiness in a future state.”
enlarge-imageTHE ROCKY VALLEY, HOLMHURST.THE ROCKY VALLEY, HOLMHURST.
“July 18.—With troops of the London ‘world’ to a garden-party at Hatfield to meet the Shah of Persia (Nasr-ed-Din), who looks most savage and unimpressionable. He is, however, preferred to his servants, who give themselves endless airs, refusing the rooms prepared for them, &c., and their hosts are afraid to complain of them to the Shah, for fear he shouldcut off their heads! He is a true Eastern potentate in his consideration for himself and himself only: is most unconcernedly late whenever he chooses: utterly ignores every one he does not want to speak to: amuses himself with monkeyish and often dirty tricks: sacrifices a cock to the rising sun, and wipes his wet hands on the coat-tails of the gentleman next him without compunction. He expressed his wonder that Lord Salisbury did not take a new wife, though he gave Lady Salisbury a magnificent jewelled order. He knows no English and very few words of French, but when the Baroness Coutts, as the great benefactress of her country, was presented to him by the Prince of Wales, he looked in her face and exclaimed, ‘Quelle horreur!’”
“July 22.—A wonderful speech (at the Aberdeens’) on Christian work from the Bishop of Ripon (Boyd Carpenter)—eloquent, elevating, touching beyond description. He pictured the system of work going on through all creation—some one resting under a tree as under an object in repose, and then, if the senses could be quickened, hearing the pulse, the ever-labouring pulse which sends the sap through its every fibre: of how fallacious is the ordinary view of God as a sovereign in contemplative repose—how inconsistent with the description given us, ‘My Father worketh and I work:’ of the way in which every practical worker might be a particle of the Spirit of God: of the way in which the Christian life of every individual might radiate on others and permeate theirexistence, like the halos—unseen by the wearers—on the brows of saints: of the way in which the impression of a visit carried away from each country-house might influence a life, and the duty of leaving the right impression—never by ‘religious talking,’ but by loving action: that the usual saying was ‘Omnia vincit labor,’ but a truer one would be ‘Laborem vincit amor.’”
ToMiss Leycester.
“Holmhurst, August 15, 1889.—I wish you were here this morning. A delicate haze softens the view of the distant sea, sprinkled over with vessels, and the castle-rock rises up pink-grey against it. Far overhead, the softest of white clouds float in the blue ether. In the meadows, where the cows are ringing their Swiss bells, the old oak-trees are throwing long deep shadows across lawns of the most emerald green, and the flower-beds and the terrace borders are brimming with the most brilliant flowers, over which whole battalions of butterflies and bees are floating and buzzing; the little pathlet at the side winds with enticing shadows under the beech-trees, whilst the white marble Venetian well, covered with delicate sculpture of vines and pomegranates, standing on the little grassy platform, makes a point of refinement which accentuates the whole. Selma steals lazily round the corner to see if she can catch a bird, but finds it quite too hot for the exertion; and Rollo raises himself now and then carelesslyto snap at a fly. The doves are cooing on the ledge of the roof, and the pigeons are collecting on the smokeless chimneys. Upstairs Mrs. Whitford and Anne are dusting and laughing over their work, with the windows wide open above the ivied verandah, and Rogers is planting out a box of sweet-scented tobacco-plants which has come by the post.
enlarge-imageFROM THE WALKS, HOLMHURST.FROM THE WALKS, HOLMHURST.
“Such is little Holmhurst on an August morning. You would be amused with my hearing the other day that one of the servants had said, ‘Our master’s a gentleman as knows his place,’ which meant that I never find fault with an under-servant except through an upper, or cast even the faintest shadow upon anupper-servant if an under-servant is present. After all, it is only another form of Landor’s observation—‘The spider is a gentleman, for he takes his fly in secret.’”
ToLouisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
“St. Michael’s Mount, Sept. 7, 1889.—This is a wonderful and delightful place. It was nearly 10P.M.when I reached the Marazion station. The day had been very hot, and the evening lights and reflections perfectly lovely; but night had quite closed in. Lord St. Levan’s carriage met me at the station, and stopped at the head of a staircase leading to the sea, where four sturdy boatmen took possession of me and my things, and rowed away on a waveless sea, following up the long stream of brilliant light which fell from one of the upper windows of the castle on the sacred mount, grim and black in the still night. An old man with a lanthorn met me at the landing-place, and guided me up a steep pathlet in the rocks. At the door a maid received me, for the family were all at dinner, but I found a pleasant meal ready for me in a small sitting-room, and then was ushered in to the large party—Lord and Lady St. Levan, six daughters, a son, a niece—Lady Agnes Townshend, Hugh Amherst, two Misses Tyssen Amherst, Mr. and Lady Harriet Cavendish, Miss Hill Trevor, Mr. Stewart, a young Manners, and Mrs. and Miss Lowther. With the latter I have spent many pleasant mornings in drawing on the rock (really improving greatly, I think, in knowledge of the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of everything), whilst the wholefamily has gone out fishing, and most glorious are the subjects. Mrs. Lowther’s enthusiastic energy makes her a first-rate companion. ‘Elle est au-dessus de l’ennui et de l’oisiveté, deux vilaines bêtes,’ as Madame de Sévigné would have said.
enlarge-imageST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT.ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT.
“It is a life apart. The chapel-bell rings at nine, and I always meet Mrs. Lowther on the staircase hurrying up to the service, which is reached by an open-air walk at the top of everything. Then, before breakfast in the ‘Chevy Chase Hall’ (surrounded by old stucco hunting scenes), we linger on the grand platform, looking down into the chrysoprase waveswith sea-birds floating over them, and across to the mainland with its various bays, and its fleeting golden lights and purple shadows.
“On Friday we went a long drive, passing St. Buryan’s, one of the three parishes of the Deanery of St. Levan. A Mr. Stanhope was long the rector here, having also a rich living, where he resided, in Essex. At St. Buryan’s he kept a curate, to whom it was only necessary to give a very small stipend indeed, because he was—a harmless maniac! He used to be fastened to the altar-rail by a long chain, which allowed him to reach either the altar or the reading-desk. When once there, he was quite sane enough to go through the service perfectly! On week-day evenings he earned his subsistence by playing the fiddle at village taverns; but he continued to be the officiating clergyman of St. Buryan’s till his death in 1808.
“This truly aquatic family bathe together from a raft at 7A.M.most mornings. To-day they were all rowed in their scanty bathing costumes, looking like Charon’s souls being ferried to purgatory, into the little port, and there (at twelve mid-day) one after the other took a header into the sea, and swam—many of the guests with them—to the main-shore at Marazion, to the great astonishment of the natives on the beach there. The parents followed or accompanied their mermaid-daughters in safety-boats, but instead of being anxious about those who became exhausted, encouraged them to hold on. George Manners was almost choked by a butterfly flying down his throat, mistaking his head for an unexpected islet.
“The place is beyond everything poetical: even I have been unable to refrain from some verses, which I send you.