Chapter 36

‘O wad some power the giftie gi’e usTo see oorsels as ithers see us,’[573]

is what I would often say. Lately, a wonder whether I can have misjudged or exaggerated my remembrance of the long-ago has made me give many solitary evenings to old-letter reading; yet contemporary letters only confirmallI have expressed. How interesting they are! It is as Archbishop Magee says, ‘Old letters are like old ghosts, coming often uncalled for and startling us with their old familiar faces—pleasant some of them, and some of them very ugly, but all of them dead and bearing the stamp of death—and yet they will survive ourselves.’

“Most extraordinarilyvirulentcertainly reviews can be! Really, ‘hurricanes of calumny and tornados of abuse’[574]have been hurled at me. As Cardinal Manning said, ‘To write anonymously is always a danger to charity, truth, and justice.’Blackwood(i.e.the Maurice spirit inBlackwood), in an article which breathes of white lips, after dwelling scornfully upon ‘the sickening honey of the “Memorials,”’ writes:—

“What is Mr. Augustus Hare? He is neither anybody nor nobody—neither male nor female—neither imbecile nor wise.... As we wade through this foam of superannuated wrath ... this vicious and venomous personal onslaught ... Mr. Hare’s paragraphs plump like drops of concentrated venom over the dinted page.... Such a tenacity of ill-feeling, such a cold rage of vituperation, is seldom to be met with.’

“I wonder a little if any one can really from his heart have offered such ‘a genuine tribute of undissembled horror,’ or whether these sentiments wereonly written to order? And then I look at Dante and read:—

‘Vien dietro a me, e lascia dir le genti;Sta come torre ferma che non crollaGiammai la cima per soffiar de’ venti’[575]

And so—

‘I, painting from myself and to myself,Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blame,Or their praise either.’”[576]

Journal.

“Jan. 31, 1897.—Saw Lady Delawarr, and heard all about her marvellous escape. Lady Mary (Sackville) first heard a crackling noise between two and three in the morning, and, looking out of her room door, saw that the staircase[577]was in flames. She rushed into her sister Margaret’s room, roused her, shrieked to the maids and governess, and finding a fiery gulf separated them from their mother’s room, the sisters flew in their night-dresses down the stairs, already in flames, and into the street. Lady Delawarr, stupefied by smoke, slept on heavily, though for twenty minutes her old servant Vincent, who occupied a room off the garden, threw stones at her window. He dragged his mattress beneath it, and strained it across the garden area. At last he roused her, and she rushed to the door, but closed it again as the flames poured in. Then she threw up the window. ‘Jump, my lady, jump!’ shouted Vincent; ‘there is not a moment to lose.’ There was not time even to throw out her diamonds, but she knotted her sheetsfirmly together, and sliding down them, dropped upon the mattress. With her it held, but the fat cook, who had not had courage to face the fiery staircase, leapt from the fourth floor, and under her great weight the mattress gave way and she fell into the area, breaking her leg in three places and fracturing her skull, and now she is dead. For a whole hour Lady Delawarr crouched behind the lilac bushes in the ice-bound garden, with the blazing house between her and all else. Then she succeeded in breaking the window of a carpenter’s shop which adjoined the garden, and was dragged through it, and reached a friend’s house in a four-wheel cab.

“This cab she sent back to fetch her daughter Mary, but the horse fell on the ice in Grosvenor Square, and Lady Mary, as she was, had to walk up Upper Brook Street to the house where her mother had taken refuge.”

“Jan. 28.—Dined at Lady Hope’s to meet Dr. Tucker, Bishop of Uganda, who had walked 10,000 miles in his bishopric; there were no other means of locomotion. He said Africa as a whole was more swamp and thicket than desert. ‘Were not the lions alarming?’ ‘Not very; they seldom attacked unless irritated.’ Once he saw five at the same time around him, but ‘they all had their own affairs to attend to.’ Snakes were worse, especially puff-adders, which would attack whenever they could.”

“Feb. 2, 1897.—Dreadful news has come of the terrible murder in the Benin expedition of my dearKenneth Campbell (of Ardpatrick), than whom no one was better, braver, more attractive to look upon, or more pleasant to live with.

‘I loved him, and love him for ever: the dead are not dead, but alive.’[578]

Yet a shadow is thrown over everything, and when even his friend feels as if he could never write or speak of him without tears, what must not it be to his parents! One had felt that he, if any one, had ‘i pensieri stretti ed il viso sciolto’ which would ‘go safely over the whole world,’ as Alberto Scipioni said to Sir Henry Wotton, and which the latter recommended to Milton when asked for advice as to his travels.”

ToMrs. C. Vaughan.

“May 8, 1897.—Do you remember the article on my book, or rather on me, headed ‘A Monument of Self-Sufficiency,’ which amused us both so much? Dining at Lady Margaret Watney’s, I sate opposite to Mr. E. G. who wrote it—a pleasant man and much liked—and longed to make acquaintance with him, but had not the chance. Last night I dined with Lady Ashburton, a quiet party, with all the beautiful Kent House pictures lighted up. Mr. Henschel whistled like a bullfinch at dinner, and sang gloriously ‘Der Kaiser’ afterwards. Mrs. F. Myers, who sate by me, was most agreeable, and is one of those with whom one soon penetrates ‘l’écorce extérieur de la vie,’ as our dear S. Simon calls it. Amongst a thousand interesting things, she told me that, at Cambridge, shefound Lord De Rothschild’s son especially difficult to get on with, till one day he startled her by asking, ‘Have you got any fleas?’ She was surprised, but found that special point of Natural History was just the one thing he cared about, knew about, and would talk on for ever; and she was able to get him some rare fleas from a friend in India, with which he was greatly delighted.

“I also sate at dinner by ...whose father was ambassador at Vienna. He rented Prince Clary’s house. One day, as a little girl, she was at the end of the drawing-room with her mother, when they both saw a chasseur—their own chasseur, they supposed—standing in an alcove at the end of the room. ‘Oh, there is Fritz,’ said her mother. ‘What can he be doing there? Run and tell him to go downstairs.’ She ran across the room, but as she came up to the alcove the chasseur seemed to vanish. This happened three times; then the mother said, ‘If we were superstitious we might say we had seen a ghost, but it can be only a question of angles.’ Soon afterwards her father met Prince Clary at dinner and began, ‘Have you ever been troubled by any appearance?’ &c. ‘Oh, don’t speak of it,’ exclaimed Prince Clary; ‘it is a most painful subject: the fact is, that, in a fit of anger, my father killed his chasseur on that spot.’ Sir Augustus Loftus, who succeeded at the Embassy, took the same house, and reproached them much for not warning him of the apparition, on account of which he soon left and went to live in a hotel.

“At Easter I was with the Carysforts at Elton, and was taken to see Castor, with its fine Roman andNorman remains, and Stobbington, a very interesting old house, with a most curious collection of rare living fish, the pets of its owner. Lady Alwyn Compton, who was at Elton, told me a curious story. It was one of the great commentators—Calamy, she thought—who had occasion to go to a market-town in Devonshire, and take a lodging there whilst the assizes were going on. In the evening a servant came to his room and said that the master of the house hoped that he would do him the honour of coming down to supper with him. He said, ‘Oh, pray thank him very much, but say that I never take supper.’ But the servant came three times with the same message, and at last he said to himself, ‘Well, he seems so anxious to have me that it is rather churlish not to go,’ and he went. There were many people in the room, quite a number of guests, and a great supper prepared. But, being a religious man, before sitting down he said grace aloud, and, as he said it, the whole thing vanished.

“Archbishop Benson told Lady Alwyn that two Americans were talking to each other about spiritualism. Said one to the other, ‘You do not believe in ghosts, do you?’—‘No, certainly not!’ ‘You would not believe even if you saw one?’—‘No, certainly not.’ ‘Well, I am one!’ and he vanished on the spot.

“Afterwards I saw Higham Ferrers on my way to stay at Ecton, such a pleasant old house; and the next week I was with the George Drummonds at Swaylands, which has the finest rock-garden in England, and drew with Miss Henniker in the delicious old gardens of Penshurst Place.”

ToHugh BryanandJournal.

“Castle Hale, Painswick, June 17.—‘Voici venir les longs crépuscules de juin,’[579]and I will employ one of them in writing to you. I have had a Whitsuntide of visits, beginning with the Deanery of Hereford. Mrs. Leigh[580]was full of her visit to Butler’s Island, from which she was lately returned—her last visit, she thinks, but I expect she will not long be able to keep away from the old home in the rice-swamps which she loves so dearly. Before she left, she had a little feast for all the older negroes, who had been slaves, and whose ancestors had been on the place since her great-grandfather’s time. She thanked them for coming in a little speech, expressing her attachment to them, but saying that as her years were advancing, she might not meet them often again on earth, but that she trusted to see them again hereafter. She was much moved herself, and many of the negroes wept; then, as by a universal impulse, they all sprang up and sang the Doxology! Her daughter Alice had a supper for the younger negroes in another room. One of them, a young man, made a speech, and ended it by saying, ‘I am sure that this festival will be remembered by our offspring long after their forespring are dead and gone.’

“‘Old Sie is my foreman,’ said Mrs. Leigh. ‘His grandfather lived with my great-grandfather, the first of our family who established himself on Butler’s Island. He was a very clever, efficient slave. Once,when all the other slaves were out at another island trying to cultivate it—it is called “Experiment” still—there came on one of those tremendous hurricanes which are, happily, very rare with us. The slaves, who are like sheep, all wanted at once to take to the boats and get home. Had they succeeded in embarking, they would all have been lost, as many other negroes were then, when all boats were swamped. But, at the point of the whip, Sie’s grandfather drove them all back inland to a hut where they could take refuge. Afterwards Sie was offered his freedom, but he would not take it; so my grandfather had a silver cup made for him, with an inscription recording what he had done. Last winter I said to Sie, “I think you had better let me buy that cup from you; you are all free now, and your children are not likely to care for it.” He considered awhile, then he said, “No, Missus, I tink not: I keep cup;” and then he thought a little more and said, “Missus, when I be gone done dead, you have de cup.”’

“I went with the Leighs to see the wonderful old church of ‘Abbeydore in the Golden Valley,’ as romantic as its name, and Kilpeck, a marvellous old Norman building.

“I went next to Madresfield, a first visit in a new reign, and very different it looked in its long grass and flowers, with the lovely Malvern hills behind, from the frost-bound place I remember. Its young master has spent all the time of his possession in beautifying it, planting glorious masses of peonies, iris, and a thousand other flowers in the grass, and making a herbaceous walk—winding—with a backgroundof yew hedge, which is a very dream of loveliness. I was very happy at Madresfield, liking Beauchamp and Lady Mary so much, and all the many guests were charming, especially the Arthur Walronds, genial Dick Somerset, delightful Lady Northcote, the evergreen Duchess of Cleveland—‘Aunt Wilhelmine’—and three pleasant young men, Charlie Harris, Victor Cochran, and Lord Jedburgh. What a pleasure there is in thoroughly well-bred society! There is a capital passage in Ouida’s last book about this—‘You are always telling me that I wear my clothes too long: you’ve often seen me in an old coat—a shockingly old coat; but you never saw me in an ill-cut one. Well, I like my acquaintance to be like my clothes. They may be out at elbows, but I must have ’em well cut.’

“One afternoon we drove to Eastnor, which was in great beauty, and the castle—hideous outside—a palace of art treasures within, infinitely lovely from the flowers with which Lady Henry Somerset fills it.

“But most I liked the rambles about the inexhaustible gardens of Madresfield itself, with my charming young host and hostess, and one or other of the guests, and the practice inculcated by the oft-repeated questions which they ask so cheerily—‘Is it wise? is it kind? is it true?’ the very thought of which stops so much scandal; yet one has to consider all the three questions together, for the last would so often bring an affirmative where there would be a negative for the two others. The house itself is full of interesting and precious things, old furniture, miniatures, enamels, &c.

“Now I am with Mrs. Baddeley, whom you willremember as Helen Grant, the second of the three beautiful sisters whom all the great artists wanted to paint, but who have been such dear friends of mine from their earliest childhood, and often at Holmhurst, whether I were there or not. Helen’s husband, St. Clair Baddeley, is full of amusing stories, and his adopted father, Mr. Christie, with whom they live, is the dearest of old gentlemen. Just behind this house is the old courthouse where Charles I. lodged in most troublous times, and whence he fled. Many of his Cavaliers took refuge in the church, and numbers of them were afterwards shot in the churchyard, where old helmets are still dug up, and where a row of yews are said to mark their graves. There are ninety-nine yews altogether, and it is said that a mystic power guards this number; if any one tries to plant more, the old yews destroy them. In their shadow are a number of fine tombs, executed by Italian workmen, who left the place because they were not allowed to have their own chapel, but who were brought over when Painswick was a very flourishing town from its cloth factories, now transferred to Yorkshire.

“Just before her marriage, H. went to see Lady Burton at Mortlake, and was taken to Burton’s mausoleum as a natural part of her visit. Afterwards Lady Burton wrote to her saying that she wanted to ask a very great favour. It was that she would never wear again the hat in which she had come down to Mortlake. H. liked her hat very much—a pretty Paris hat in which she fancied herself particularly, but she said she would do as an old friend of her future husband wished, though utterlymystified. Afterwards Lady Burton wrote that when H. had come into the room on her visit, she was horrified to see three black roses in her hat; that they were the mark of a most terrible secret sect in Arabia, mixed up in every possible atrocity, and that—especially as worn by a girl about to be married—they were a presage of every kind of misfortune; that, in another case of the same kind, she had given the same warning, and the girl, who disregarded it, died on the day before her wedding. H. wore her hat again, but took out the black roses.

“Sir Richard Burton died of syncope of the heart—died twenty minutes before Lady Burton’s priest could arrive; so her report of his having been received into the Roman Catholic Church was a complete delusion.

“H. says that Count Herbert Bismarck went lately to a great function in Russia. While he wished to be incognito, he still did not see why he could not have the advantages of his cognito. ‘Stand back; you must keep the line,’ said an official as he was pushing through. ‘You do not know who I am: I am Count Herbert Bismarck.’ ‘Really? Well that quiteexplains, but it does notexcuseyour conduct,’ rejoined the officer.

“At the silver wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales, a northern town wished to present an address, but there was a great discussion as to its wording; for some time they could not agree at all. ‘Conscious as we are of our own unworthiness,’ was universally condemned, but when some one proposed, ‘Conscious as we are of each other’s unworthiness,’ it was agreed to to a man.“Mr. P——, Q.C., who has just been here, has called to mind that the Queen’s name is neither Victoria nor Guelf. Her real name is Victorina Wetting (pronounced Vettine). She was christened Victorina, and then there was a little girl called Victorina who played a most unpleasant part in Queen Caroline’s trial, and the Duke and Duchess of Kent changed their child’s name to Victoria, that it might not be the same. And Wetting is her husband’s—the real Saxe-Coburg name.

“H. had been at Oxford when Max Müller one day received a letter which pleased him so much that he insisted on sending a very nice letter in return, though it was evidently only written to get an autograph. It asked if there was any reason, other than coincidence, formecheandmechant: wick, wicked. One day an American was shown in to Max Müller, saying, ‘I have come, sir, four thousand miles to see you,’ &c. The professor was terribly pressed for time, and bored too; but as to the latter, felt that in a quarter of an hour he would be released, as he had a lecture to deliver. So he was civil, and then excused himself, saying that he was afraid he must go to his lecture, but that if his visitor wished to go to hear it, he could. ‘No,’ said the American, ‘I will not go with you, for I am rather deaf; but I can make myself perfectly happy here, and you shall find me here on your return.”

“St. Clair has been talking of Mrs. Procter, whom he knew well, and how she used to say, ‘Never tell anybody how you are, because nobody wants to know.’ All her circle are gone now, Lowell, Matthew Arnold, Browning, Adelaide Sartoris. When she was dying, her nun-daughter came and tried to get apriest in, but she would not have it. She had preserved the letters of Thackeray, Dickens, and others in three tin boxes. Mrs. Procter left Browning and two others her executors, but the nun wanted all the papers to be given to a young Nottingham doctor, to be published just as she wished, and, when they would not have it so, she put the whole of the correspondence on the kitchen-fire: it was her vendetta on her mother for having refused the priest.

To theCountess of Darnley.

“Holmhurst, June 29, 1897.—I said I would tell you about the Jubilee. For the first few days I was with the hospitable Lowthers, and thence, on Sunday, went to the Thanksgiving service at St. Paul’s. Going very early, I had perhaps the best place in the choir, and enjoyed seeing the gradual gathering of so much of the bravery, learning, and beauty of England beneath the dusky arches and glistening mosaics. When the long file of clergy went out to meet the royal procession at the west door, the faint distant song was very lovely, gradually swelling, and lost in the blare of trumpets, the roll of drums, and the triumphant shout of welcoming voices as the clergy re-entered the choir. The most important figure was the Bishop of Finland in a white satin train with two gorgeous train-bearers; but the newspapers tell this, and how the lines of royal persons sate on crimson chairs opposite the entrance of the choir, and how the Bishop of London preached touchingly, not effusively, about the Queen and her reign, and officiated at the altar in a gorgeous mitre and cope.

“On Monday Miss Lowther and I went to tea with my friend (minor-canon) Lewis Gilbertson at his lovely little house in Amen Court, and then were taken, by one of the many secret staircases of the cathedral, to emerge over the portico for the rehearsal of the next day’s ceremony. Perhaps, in some ways, this was more impressive than the reality, as none of the vast surrounding space was kept clear; all was one sea of heads, whilst every window, every house-top, even every chimney-pot, was crowded with people. Never was anything more jubilant than the ‘Te Deum,’ more reverent than the solemn Lord’s Prayer in the open air—every hat off. When the appointed programme was over, the crowd very naturally asked for ‘God save the Queen,’ and after some hesitation, and goings to and fro of dean and canons, it was begun by the bands and choristers, and taken up vigorously by the mile of people as far as Temple Bar. How grand it was!

“That evening the dear Queen said to Miss ... ‘To-morrow will be averyhappy day for me;’ and I think it must have been. Where are anarchists and socialists before such a universal burst of loyalty—not of respect only, but of heartfelt filiallove?—Nowhere! Their very existence seems ridiculous. I saw all from the Beaumonts’ in Piccadilly Terrace, where a most kind hostess managed all most beautifully for us, and, entering through the garden, we had neither heat nor crowd to fear. No small part of the sight was the crowd itself—the unfailing good-humour increased by the extreme kindness of the police towards fainting women and all who needed their help.The Colonial procession was charming—its young representatives rode so well, and were in themselves such splendid specimens of humanity, and so picturesquely equipped. Then the group of old English generals on horseback drew every eye, and the sixteen carriages of princesses, amongst whom the Duchess of Teck was far more cheered than any one except the Queen herself. And lastly came the cream-coloured horses with their golden-coated footmen, and the beloved Lady herself—the ‘Mother of the Land,’—every inch a queen, royal most exceedingly, but with an expression of such love, such gratitude, such devotion, such thankfulness! Oh, no one felt for andwithher only as a sovereign; it was a far closer tie than that.

“In the evening, Mrs. Tilt and her sister went with me to the Maxwell-Lytes on the top of the Record Tower, whence we saw the bonfires round London light up one by one, and St. Paul’s in silver light—a glorified spiritual church rising out of the darkness of the city against the deep blue sky. Far more than the illuminations of the noisy streets, it was a fitting end to so solemn and momentous a day.

“And on Wednesday I was in the Green Park, and heard the thousands of school-children sing their farewell to the Queen as she went away to Windsor.”

ToMrs. C Vaughan.

“March 1897.—I think the reviews of the first three volumes of my ‘Story’ must be coming to an end now. I have had them all sent to me, and veryamusing they have been, mostly recalling the dictum of Disraeli, that ‘critics are those who have failed in art and literature.’ Many criticisms have been kind. One or two, but not more, have been rather clever, and some of the fault-finding ones would have been very instructive if I had not so entirely agreed with them at the outset on all their main points—that I was a mere nobody, that my life was wholly without importance, and that it was shocking to see parts of the story in print, especially the painful episode which I called ‘The Roman Catholic Conspiracy;’ for reviewers, of course, could not know the anguish it cost when I was led to publish that chapter, by its being myonechance of giving the true version of a story of which so many false versions had been given already. However, it is as Zola says, ‘Every author must, at the outset, swallow his toad,’i.e., some malicious attack in the periodicals of the day; only I think my toads become more numerous and venomous as years go on.

“Some of the reviews are very funny indeed. TheSaturday Reviewof ‘A Monument of Self-Sufficiency’ contrives to read (oh! where?) ‘how sweet and amenable and clever Augustus was,’ but is so shocked by a book ‘wholly without delicacy’ that it—‘cannot promise to read any more of it’!! TheBritish Review, which thinks me an absolute beast, has a stirring article on ‘Myself in Three Volumes.’ ThePall Mall Gazettedwells upon their ‘bedside sentiment and goody-goody twaddle,’ and is ‘filled with genuine pity for a man who can attach importance to a life so trivial.’ TheAthenæumdescribes meas a mere ‘literary valet.’ TheNew York Tribunefinds the book ‘the continuous wail of a very garrulous person.’ The reviewer in theBookbuyerspeaks of the ‘irritation and occasional fierce anger’ which the book arouses in him(!). TheNew York Independentdwells upon my ‘want not only of all kindly sense of humour, but also of propriety.’ It is long since theNational Observerhas met with an author ‘so garrulous or so self-complacent.’ Finally, theAllahabad Pioneer(what a name!) votes that Mr. Hare’s chatter is ‘becoming a prodigious nuisance,’ and ‘if it had its deserts his book would make its way, and pretty quickly, to the pastry-cook and the trunk-maker.’

“What fun! Yet I am glad that most of the more respectable reviews say exactly the opposite, and certainly the public does not seem to agree with those I have quoted; it would be terribly expensive if it did. They are only birds of prey with their beaks cut and their claws pulled out, and if a book is found to be interesting, people read it whatever they say. They influence nobody, except just at first those who choose books for lending libraries.

“What is really almost irritating is the very ragtag and bobtail of reviews, whose writers can scarcely even glance at the books they are penny-a-lining—such as theTable, which ‘explains’ that ‘my grandmother was the wife of Archdeacon Hare;’ as another (I have lost it now) which speaks of ‘Priscilla Maurice, second wife of Julius Hare;’ as theWeekly Register, which reviews the life of ‘Esmeralda,’ or the studentof the book who writes inThe Dialand describes my life at ‘Balliol College,’ orHousehold Words(copied by theFree-thinkerand several other even inferior reviews), which ‘quotes’ in full a long story about Mr. Gladstone and Father Healy which is not to be found in the ‘Story’ at all.

“Then, did you see Mr. Murray’s letter to theTimes, which certainly gives a touching picture of the spirit of self-sacrifice which actuates publishers in their daily life, for he announces that my ‘Handbook of Berks, Bucks, and Oxon,’ which had three editions before his father’s death, and on which the author was only paidaltogether£152, left, at that death, a deficit of £158!! I was sorry, all the same, that he was annoyed at my description of his father wrapt in hisenveloppe de glace; for old Mr. Murray (who had cut me dead for all the years since the appearance of my Italian Handbooks) asked me to shake hands with him once again a few months before he died, which I did most cordially.”

ToFrancis Cookson.

“Holmhurst, August 29, 1897.— ...With me, life has rippled on through several months, only I have been away for some days with the Lowthers to draw under Carlandi, and quite lately I have sorrowed bitterly at the early death of my dear Inverurie, kindest and most affectionate of young friends. I feel his being taken so much myself that I cannot bear even to think of what it must be to his nearest belongings; and yet—while absolutely free from allhumbug—surely never was there any young man more simply and trustfully prepared for an early death.

enlarge-imageIN THE WALPOLE CORRIDOR, HOLMHURST.IN THE WALPOLE CORRIDOR, HOLMHURST.

“He cared less for ‘the world’ than any young fellow I have ever known, and was more in love with his family, his homes, and their surroundings.

‘Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis.Quem non mordaci resplendens gloria fucoSollicitat, non fastosi mala gaudia luxusSed tacitos sinit ire dies et paupere cultuExegit innocuae tranquilla silentia vitae.’[581]

“Last week I was for three nights at Hurstmonceaux, actually—for the first time in thirty-seven years—at my old home of Lime. What a mixture of emotions it was; but within all is so changed, I could not recall my mother and Lea there; and the present inhabitants, the young Baron and Baroness von Roemer, were boundlessly good to me. Outside, there were many spots alive with old memories, especially in the garden, where my mother and I lived so much alone—our earthly Paradise. Did you know that the word Paradeisos means a garden?

“How I should like you to know the peculiar surroundings of Lime, different to those of any other place I have seen—the brown parched sun-dried uplands, the bosky ferny hollows, the reedy pools fragrant with mint, the eternal variety of pink lights and grey shadows on the soft downs beyond the wide Levels, which recall O’Hara’s lines—

‘Where the herds are slowly winding over leagues of waving grass,And the wild cranes seek the sedges, and the wild swans homeward pass.’

enlarge-imageWARBLETON PRIORY, ON APPROACHING.WARBLETON PRIORY, ON APPROACHING.

enlarge-imageWARBLETON PRIORY, SEEN FROM BEHIND.WARBLETON PRIORY, SEEN FROM BEHIND.

“We made a little excursion. In my very early childhood I was once at the ever-haunted Warbleton Priory, and the recollection of its utter weirdness and of the skulls kept there had always so remained with me that I had quite longed to see it again. The many stories about it are such as ought never to be told, only whispered. The very approaches have a mystery. No one will stay there now, even by broadest daylight; so we went to an old manor near Rushlake Green forthe keys, but found even that so bolted and barred that we were long in obtaining them. ‘Oh no, there is never any one there,’ said the servant, ‘but you must go on till you come to a black gate, then drive in.’ To reach this, we followed a lane with well-built cottages, but they were deserted, their windows broken and their gardens overgrown; no one could live so near the accursed spot. Through the black gate we enter dark woods. A cart-track exists, winding through thickets with fine oaks interspersed, and by reedy ponds dense with waving cotton-plants. Then we cross open fields entirely covered with thistles—enough to seed all Sussex—for no one will work there. Then, through another black gate, we enter a turf-grownspace, with lovely distant view between old trees, and there, with high red-tiled roofs, golden here and there with lichen, is a forlorn and mossy but handsome old stone house, built from and rising amidst other remains of an Augustinian priory. In its little garden are roses, and box bushes which have once been clipped into shapes. Inside, the mildewed rooms have some scanty remnants of their old furniture. In one of them, where a most terrible murder was committed, the blood then shed still comes up through the floor—a dark awful pool which no carpenter’s work can efface. The most frightful sounds, cries, and shrieks of anguish, rumblings and clankings, even apparently explosions, are always heard by night, and sometimes by day. In the principal room of the ground floor, in the recess of a window, are twoskulls. They are believed to be those of two brothers who fought here and both fell dead. From one, the lower jaw has fallen down, increasing its ghastly effect. Successive generations of farmers have buried them, and instantly everything has gone wrong on the farm and all the cattle have died: now they have altogether abandoned a hopeless struggle with the unseen world. Besides this there is a tradition—often verified—that if any one touches the skulls, within twelve hours they pass through the valley of the shadow of Death. So naturally Warbleton Priory is left to the undisputed possession of its demon-ghosts.”

JournalandLettertoW. H. Milligan.

“Thoresby, Oct. 22, 1897.—I began my little tour of visits at Maiden Bradley.... You know how it is almost the only remnant the title possesses from the once vast Somerset estates. The 12th Duke left everything he possibly could away, and when the present Duke and Duchess succeeded, they were pictureless, bookless, almost spoonless. Still they were determined to make the best of it. ‘He could not take away our future: we will not lament over all that is lost, but enjoy to the very utmost what we have;’ this has been the rule of their existence, and so ‘Algie and Susie,’ as they, always speak of each other, have had a most delightful life, enjoying and giving enjoyment. No one ever looked more ducal than this genial, hearty, handsome Duke: no one brighter or pleasanter than his Duchess: ‘all who have to do with her find nothing but courtesy, gentleness, and goodness,’ as Brantôme wrote of Claude of France. I liked my visit extremely. My fellow-guests were Sir E. Poynter of the Royal Academy, Lady Heytesbury, and Mrs. Kelly, an authoress. With the last I saw stately Longleat, which I had not visited since I was fourteen, and—as horses are the one indulgence the Duke gives himself—he drove us luxuriously about the country on his coach-and-four.

“The following week was delightful—with the Boynes in their beautiful hill-set home. They took me glorious excursions, and we picnicked out in beautiful places five days running. One day we went to Kinlet—a really great house, as well kept by Swedish maids (its mistress is a Swede) as if there were a dozen men-servants. And the last day we went to a real still-standing Norman farmhouse (Millichope), with its original round arched doors and windows.

“From Burwarton I went on to my pleasant cousin’s, the Francis Bridgemans, close to that beautiful church at Tong, and we spent a day with Francis’s kind old father, Lord Bradford, at Weston, and he showed us all the pictures and treasures in the house, and drove us about in his sociable to the ‘Temple of Diana’ and other points of interest in the park of a very comfortable well-to-do place.

“Next, I visited Lady Margaret Herbert (daughter of my dear Lady Carnarvon) as châtelaine at Teversal manor in Notts, a smoky wind-stricken country, but with Hardwicke and other fine houses to see. The charming aunt of my hostess, Lady Guendolen, was living with her as chaperon, none the worse in bodyfor being a strict vegetarian, and in mind the sunniest of the sunny, delightful to be with.

‘And scarcely is she altered, for the hoursHave led her lightly down the vale of life,Dancing and scattering roses, and her faceSeems a perpetual daybreak.’[582]

I was glad to be taken to spend the day at Bestwood, the Duke of St. Alban’s modern place, its woods an oasis in the wilderness, and its honours were charmingly done by Lady Sybil Beauclerk and her good-looking brother Burford. In the Duchess’s room were a series of albums with all the original drawings for Dickens’s works. All the best pictures were burnt in a fire.

“The Ladies Herbert sometimes, but in a far-away sense, remind me of their mother, who was quite the most perfectly brilliant person I have ever known. I have always heard that she was this even as a girl, and that it was a perpetual surprise to her parents, who were very inferior people. Lady Dufferin used to say that they were like savages who had found a watch.

“Taking stern dismal Bolsover—its delicate carvings utterly ruined by ‘trippers’—on the way, I came on to meet a large party here at Thoresby, which is in more than usual autumnal forest glory. We have just been spending the afternoon at Welbeck, shown all the improvements by Mrs. Dallas Yorke, in the absence of the tall handsome Duchess, who, however, returned before we left. One did not wonder that she issuch a special joy to the old people of the place, because they had ‘been so long without a duchess, and when there was one long ago, it was only such a little one.’ She has built a delightful gallery—Florence-fashion—between the old house and the new, and hung it with a galaxy of old prints, and has made fascinating little terrace-gardens, and edged their beds with dwarf lavender, so that ‘when the ladies’ dresses brush against it, its scent may be wafted into the house.’

“And meantime my thoughts have been much at Llandaff, with the cousin[583]who was the dearest friend of my boyhood, seeming to pass with her through the closing scenes of the good Dean’s life, and to see him as she did, lying in his cathedral, dressed in his surplice, in the majesty of eternal repose.”

ToMrs. C. Vaughan.

“Holmhurst, Nov. 16, 1897.—Here I am again in quietude, thinking of you very much in your last days at Llandaff; busy over the building of which I am architect, overseer, a hundred things at once, and planting a great deal, with a reminiscence of Dumbiedykes in Walter Scott—‘Be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, while you’re sleeping.’ My only companions now are the pleasant Hospitallers in the little Hospice, whom I constantly meet in the garden and wood walks. I wish you could see their little house, and the late roses lingering on their porch.

“I have been away for a week. Lady Stanhope took me from Chevening to see Lullingstone Castle inKent, the old house of the Dykes, with a good brick gateway, a richly ceilinged upper gallery, and a chapel with interesting tombs. Two days afterwards, Lady Chetwynd took me to a finer place—Chawton in Hants, where the Knights, of Godmersham, live now, representing several old extinct families, especially the Lewknors, with whom I am very familiar through their tombs scattered all over Sussex, and who are commemorated at Chawton by many portraits and fine tapestried needlework. A little bookcase with a globe outside and a series of Elzevir Histories of the World within, was very attractive.

enlarge-imagePORCH OF HOSPICE, HOLMHURST.PORCH OF HOSPICE, HOLMHURST.

“Then I went to stay with ‘the richest man in theworld,’ genial unassuming Mr. Astor, in his beautiful Cliveden, much improved since he bought it from its ducal owners, and enriched within by glorious portraits of Reynolds and Romney, and without by the noble terrace parapet of the Villa Borghese and its fountains, already looking here a natural part of the Buckinghamshire landscape, and replaced on its old site by a copy, which is just the same to nineteenth-century Italians! All the splendid sarcophagi and even the marble benches of the world-famous villa are now also at Cliveden, where they are more valued than at Rome. We had a charming party—Jane, Lady Churchill, retaining in advancing years ‘sa marche de déesse sur les nues,’[584]for which she was famous in her youth; the Lord Chancellor, Lady Halsbury, and a daughter; pretty gentle Princess Löwenstein; the Duchess of Roxburghe, ever wreathed in smiles of geniality and kindness, with two very tall agreeable daughters; Lord Sandwich, as bubbling with fun as when he was a young man; Lord and Lady Stanhope—always salt of the earth; with Mr. Marshall Hall and Sir Arthur Sullivan as geniuses; so, as you will see, ‘une élite très intelligente.’ Every one of these delightful people, too, was simplicity itself, rare as that virtue is to find. I see that Queen Adelaide, as Duchess of Clarence, wrote to Gabrielle von Bülow—‘How rarely you meet a really simple man or woman in our great world; they would be hard to find even with Diogenes’ lantern.’ Certainly ‘learned’ people are scarcely ever agreeable. There is a very good sentence in Hamerton about that—‘A good mental condition includesjust as much culture as is necessary to the development of the faculties, but not any burden of erudition heavy enough to diminish, as erudition so often does, the promptitude or elasticity of the mind.’

“On Sunday morning we all went to the beautifully situated little church at Hedsor, arriving early and seeing the congregation wind up the steep grassy hill as to a church in Dalecarlia. In the afternoon we were driven about the grounds of Cliveden to the principal points—Waldo Story’s grand fountain in the avenue and his noble landing-place on the river. Exquisitely beautiful were the peace of the still autumn evening, the amber and golden tints of the woods, and the wide river with its reflections. Mr. Astor has attended to all the historic associations of the spot; placing a fine statue of Marlborough in the temple built by Lord Orkney, who was one of his generals, and portraits of Lady Shrewsbury and her Duke of Buckingham, and of Frederick and Augusta of Wales, in the successor of the house where they lived. Another portrait of Frederick, with his three sisters, Anne, Emily, and Caroline, all playing on musical instruments, has the old house in the background. Our host seemed to me quite absolutely frank and delightful; indeed, Surrey’s lines on Sir T. Wyatt might be applied to him—

‘An eye whose judgment no effect could blind,Friends to allure and foes to reconcile,Whose piercing look did represent a mindWith virtue fraught, reposèd, void of guile.’

“Now, I am enjoying the time alone at home, with its much-reading opportunity, and I often think thatmy natural bent would have been to enjoy it quite as much as a boy, when all the family except you treated me not only as a consummate dunce, but ahopelessdunce; and when almost every book was thought wicked, or at best quite unsuited for a boy’s digestion. Now, eyes ache often, but I may say with Lady M. Wortley Montagu, ‘If relays of eyes were to be ordered like post-horses, I would admit none but silent companions.’

“Les années d’ennui et de solitude lui firent lire bien des livres’—part of Catherine II.’s epitaph on herself—is certainly true in my case. Just now I have been labouring through the two long thick volumes which are called ‘Memoirs of Tennyson,’ though, when you close them, you have less idea of what the man was like than when you began—of the rude, rugged old egotist, who was yet almost sublimely picturesque; of the aged sage, who in dress, language, manners was always posing for the adoration of strangers, and furious if he did not get it, or—if he did. The book is most provoking, for it would by no means have destroyed the hero to have truthfully described the man.

“There have been no end of hard-worked boy-friends here for Sundays, and it is no trouble, but very much the contrary. We always get on together capitally—

Back to Index Next