Chapter 37

‘That which we like, likes us:No need of any fuss,’

is a capital Feejee proverb.[585]

enlarge-imageTHE AVE-VALE STEPS, HOLMHURST.THE AVE-VALE STEPS, HOLMHURST.

“I think it is Frederick Locker who says that one gradually finds out how much of the affection one inspires is ‘reflected.’ ‘Though thou lose all that thou deemest happiness, if thou canst but make the happiness of others, thou shall find it again in thine own heart,’ is a sentence of George Ebers, of which I mentally leave out as irrelevant the conclusion—‘Is not this playing at being God Almighty?’”

ToMiss GardenatLucca,andJournal.

“Holmhurst, August 1, 1898.—I have been much in London since I wrote last, enjoying the garden-parties at Sion, Osterley, Holland House, Hatfield, Lady Penrhyn’s, Lady Portman’s, &c., and seeing many pleasant people, mostly ‘grandes dames de par le monde.’ Yet, in the season, it is all too great a hurry; one seldom has time to become really acquainted with any one; there are few who have even sufficient personality to leave an individual impression on the mind; if any one does, he or she is ‘like a tree in the steppe’ in the monotony of London life. I dined out daily for two months, but how difficult it is to remember any dinner-party! ‘Who cares for the whipped cream of London society?’ was a saying of Walter Scott. I do recollect one dinner, however, at Mr. Knowles’s, from the fine effect of light on Leighton’s ‘Clytie,’ the principal ornament of his dining-room, all the illumination being given to one fold of the dress, and the rest effectively left in shadow. One charming person whom I remember was Lady Blake, lately returned to England with her husband, who had been governor of Jamaica. She was fond of tame animals. ‘In Jamaica,’ she said, ‘I often had a large snake coiled round my waist; my tiger-cat I generally led by a string, for I never knew what he might do, but my tame crocodile always quietly followed me.’ She was Irish—a Bernal Osborne. ‘Oh, I assure you the Irish are very good to us, quite charming, in fact.’ ‘But if you do anything they don’t like, they kill you.’—‘Naturally.’

“On July 11 I was at Miss Fleetwood Wilson’s wedding to Prince Dolgorouki, and also at Lady Mary Savile’s in the Church of the Assumption, which was a most picturesque ceremony, performed by Cardinal Vaughan—such a fine cardinal!—in a jewelled mitre, with all accompaniments of cross-bearers, incense-swingers, &c.

“The nobly Christian death of Mr. Gladstone and the almost ludicrous apotheosis of one who, in his political life, did nothing and undid so much, were events of the spring. I have personally more individual recollection of his kindness to those who needed it than of his witty sayings; but they were constant. ‘What do you think of Purcell’s Life of Manning?’ some one said to him shortly before the end. ‘I think that Manning need have nothing to fear at the day of judgment.’ He was formidable to strangers, chiefly on account of ‘those demoniac eyes of his,’ as Cardinal Alcander said of Luther; and though in his private capacity he was all goodness, it seemed inconsistent with his public one. Yet what admirers he had! I remember his saying once to Lord Houghton, ‘I lead the life of a dog,’ and the answer, ‘Yes, of a St. Bernard—the saviour of men.’ Joseph Parker used to describe him as ‘the greatest Englishman of the century, he was so massive, sincere, and majestic. If he had had humour he would have been too good to live, but eagles don’t laugh.’

“How much and long people have talked of him, and now what a silence will fall upon it all. An amusing breakfast at Mr. Leveson’s has just been recalled to me, where Lady Marian Alford said, ‘Gladstonereally puts his foot in it so often, he is a perfect centipede.’ Directly after, a wasp lighted on the breakfast-table and there was some question of killing it. ‘Oh, don’t; I can’t bear killing anything,’ cried Lady Marian. ‘What! not even a centipede?’ quietly said Lord Lyons, who was present.

“I was with Mrs. John Dundas at Holt in Wiltshire, where the little village once prospered exceedingly owing to its mineral spring. Ten smart carriages used to wait round its fountain at once whilst their owners drank the waters, and a house is pointed out where some Duchess or other died. Then the fashion changed, and drainage was allowed to filter into the spring, and Holt sank into obscurity.

“We went to see Mr. Moseley, the admirable old Rector, who is half-paralysed. A farmer had been to him to ask whether he did not think he might get his hay in on a Sunday afternoon, as the weather was likely to change, and he answered, ‘Certainly; it is God’s hay; save it by all means.’ How unlike most English priests, but how Christ-like—‘personne moins prêtre que Jesus Christ.’ ‘From the fetters of spiritual narrowness, Good Lord deliver us,’ is a petition which I feel more and more ought to be added to the Litany.[586]Yet in many houses I visit I still find much of the old Sabbath-bondage remaining, though certainly it is true that ‘we almost sigh with relief when we discover that even saints can find monotony monotonous.’

“There is a perfect cordon of drawable old manor-houses round Holt, and it is only two miles from Bradford-on-Avon, from which the great town inYorkshire was colonised, and which owes much of its foreign look to French refugees. Its houses rise high, tier above tier, on the hillside, blue-grey against the sky. Over the Avon is a beautiful bridge with a fine old bracketed mass-chapel, long used as a lock-up. A tiny Saxon church—the only real one probably in England—has been discovered walled up into cottages; and there is a noble old ‘palace’ of the Dukes of Kingston standing in high-terraced gardens. Great Chalfield is a most lovely Tudor house, with an old chapel and moat. At South Wraxhall how I recalled many visits from my miserable so-called tutors at Lyncombe, in days of penury and starvation. How indefinite the misty future seemed in the thinking-time which those long solitary rambles afforded, and how I longed to penetrate it. At fifteen ‘j’ai trop voulu, des choses infinies,’ but I was at a parting of the ways of life then, and I think I decided in those early days to try to do the best I could here, and leave the eternities and infinities—of which I heard so much more than of realities—to take care of themselves, for:—

‘Though reason may at her own quarry fly,Yet how can finite grasp infinity?’

“But I am moralising too much and must return to my old houses, which were full of smugglers formerly—‘moonrakers’ they called them in Wiltshire, because many of the smuggled goods were concealed in the ponds, and when the excisemen caught the smugglers extracting them at night, and demanded what they were doing, they answered, ‘Oh, we are raking out the moon.’ I was working in Shropshire for sometime after my Wiltshire visit, inspecting almost every church and old house for my book, and hospitably entertained by genial Fred Swete at Oswestry and the Misses Windsor Clive at beautiful Oakly Park near Ludlow.

“While in London I went for two days to Bulstrode, which the late Duke of Somerset left to his youngest daughter, Lady Guendolen Ramsden, who is the most charming of hostesses, but the place is disappointing—a very large modern villa, only one room remaining of the old house where Mrs. Delany lived so much with Margaret, Duchess of Portland, and nothing of that of Judge Jeffreys, which preceded it. It contains an early portrait of Shakspeare, and a most grand Sir Joshua of a Mrs. Weddell. We dawdled most of the day in the verandah. Oh, the waste of time in country-house visits; but Lady Guendolen had much that was pleasant to tell of her mother, the witty (Sheridan) Duchess of Somerset. ‘She was once at a bazaar selling things, and a fat, burly, plethoric farmer asked her the price of something and she mentioned it. The price seemed to him absurd. ‘Do you take me for the Prodigal,’ he said. ‘Oh, no,’ she replied; ‘I take you for the fatted calf.’ This made Graham Vivian, who was one of the party, recollect. ‘I was walking by the Duchess’s donkey-chair, and suddenly the donkey brayed horribly. “Will he do it again?” said the Duchess. “Not unless he hears another,” answered the donkey-boy. “Then mindyoudon’t sneeze,” said the Duchess, turning to me.’

“About Mr. L., who always speaks his mind, Lady Guendolen was very amusing:—‘Mr. L. took me in todinner, and I thought I was making myself very agreeable to him, when he suddenly said—“Talk to your neighbour on the other side.” I felt humiliated, but I thought he fancied I couldn’t, so I did, and went on, and never spoke another word to Mr. L. I told him of it afterwards, that he had hurt me so much that I dreamt of it, and I told him my dream—that I said to him that I was considered to become very amusing after I had had two glasses of wine, and he answered, ‘Then, my dear lady, you must have been most uncommonly sober this evening.’”

ToViscount Halifax.

“Holmhurst, August 21, 1898.—I have been for three days at Hurstmonceaux, doubly picturesque in the burnt turf of this hot summer, upon which the massy foliage of the trees is embossed as in Titian’s landscapes. I always feel there, as nowhere else except in the views of the Roman Campagna from the Alban Hills, the supreme beauty of looking down upon vast stretches of flat pasture-land, reaching for ten miles or more, and iridescent in its pink and blue cloud-shadows, with here and there a ripple of delicate green in softest glamour of quivering light. Every hour one sees it change—luminous with long lines of natural shadow, purple from drifting storm-clouds—

‘Then at some angel evening after rainGlowing like early Paradise again.’

It is a pleasure now to be there, though life thereis living amongst the sepulchres. ‘La morte, l’estrema visitatrice,’[587]has come to all I knew, and the gravestones of most of them aremoss-grown—not only of all the family of my childhood, but of all the neighbours, and all that generation of poor people. How often there comes into one’s mind something like the lines often repeated in the cemetery of Port-Royal—

‘Tous ces morts ont véçu, toi qui vis, tu mourras:Ce jour terrible approche, et tu n’y penses pas.’

enlarge-imageIN THE CHURCHYARD, HURSTMONCEAUX.IN THE CHURCHYARD, HURSTMONCEAUX.

‘Ce n’est pas le temps qui passe, ce sont les hommes,’ was a saying of Louis Philippe. How different everything is to the time which Hurstmonceaux recalls; all hurry now and energy and updoing, and then such an extreme quietude of intellectual pursuits, in which every uninitiated visitor was considered an unendurable bore, if, however interesting he might be in himself, he did not fall in with the mutual admiration society of which the Rectory was the axis. I remember how Thomas Carlyle and Monckton Milnes, with his ‘gay and airy mind,’[588]were amongst those so considered, for they had naturally their outside views and intelligence, and the Rectory group never tried for a moment to penetrate ‘l’écorce exterieur de leur vie;’ and, while bristling with prejudices themselves, they always found much to be shocked at in every outside person they came across. It seemed oddly apropos in all the remembrance of the closed Hurstmonceaux life to read in Madamede Montagu—‘It is not a good thing for everybody to see each other every day and too closely; they risk becoming unconscious egoists, critics, rulers, or subjects, and exhaust themselves by revolving perpetually on a tiny axis.’ Yet in many ways how much more really interesting the life was then; how picturesque Uncle Julius’s enthusiasm, how pathetic his pathos over the books which were his realities; how interesting the conversation, and how genial the courtesy of such constant visitors as Bunsen and Landor, though the latter was such a perfect original, ‘dressed in classical adorning,’ as Arthur Young said of some one; then how unruffled my dearest mother’s temper,over which even Aunt Esther’sstrenuousexactions were powerless; and how ceaseless the flow of herlove—not charity, as people use the word now—to the poor of the cottages in the hazel-fringed lanes around her, whose cares she made her own, more moved and stirred by the querulous mutterings of Mrs. Burchett or Mrs. Cornford than by the most important events of English politics or the world’s history. Certainly she had a wonderful power with the poor, and an influence which has never passed away, for she had the rare art of entering into and understanding all their feelings; and then, when with them, she always gave them herwholeattention. I feel that my two books give very different ideas of what Hurstmonceaux was fifty years ago, but both are quite true; only the ‘Memorials of a Quiet Life’ is the inside, and the ‘Story of my Life’ the outside view. How much of life, after sixty, consists in retrospect! It is, as Fanny Kemble says—

‘Youth with swift feet walks onward in the way,The land of joy lies all before his eyes;Age, stumbling, lingers slower day by day,Still looking back, for it behind him lies.’

One great difference of feeling older is that one is afraid to put off doing anything. ‘By the street of By-and-by, you come to the house of Nowhere,’ is an admirable Spanish proverb.

“I have greatly enjoyed the vivid, charming, simple letters of Mary Sibylla Holland—‘anche oggi si sente una dolcezza d’affetto a leggere quel libro.’”

ToW. H. Milligan.

enlarge-imageTHE AVE-VALE GATE, HOLMHURST.THE AVE-VALE GATE, HOLMHURST.

“Holmhurst, Sept. 29, 1898.—The building and changes here go on well, but very slowly, a result of having the work done with my own stone, and as much as possible by the men of our village. I think all will look well in the end. Not a chair or a book will be moved from the older part of the house, consecrated by my mother’s memory, but room will be given for the many things connected with Esmeralda, which I bought back at Sir Edward Paul’s sale, and, if I survive her, for many precious pieces of furniture, pictures, prints, and books from Norwich which Mrs. Vaughan says that she has left me. Where you will remember a steep grass bank, there is now a double stone terrace, with vases and obelisks, and luxuriant beds of brilliant flowers edged with stone, copied as a whole from the Italian Villa Lante near Viterbo. At the end are a staircase and gateway to the Solitude, the ‘Ave-Vale Gate,’ with ‘Ave’ on the outside and ‘Vale’ within. Cypresses are growing up beside it to enhance the impression of Italy, which is further carried out in a widening staircase from the centre of the terrace, with lead vases on the piers, copied in design and proportions from one at the Villa Arson near Nice. Just now, in this hot noon-day, the gorgeous flowers against the stone parapet, and background of brown-green ilex and blue-green pine are really very Italian, while below in the meadows all is as English as it can be, the cows feeding in the rich grass, the heavy rounded masses of oak foliage, and the misty sea asleep in the motionless heat. Nothingseems to move, except my little black Pomeranian spitz, Nero, frisking and barking at the butterflies. I am sure that much the happiest part of my present life is that spent at home, though there is nothing to tell about it—‘l’histoire ne se soucie pas des heureux.’

“Emmie Penrhyn is here, whose visits are always an unusual pleasure to me, and who is one of the dearest relations I have left, partly because, more than any one else, she has a distant likeness to my mother. She lives happily and most usefully at Richmond in a very little world, with a weak body but an all-sufficing soul.

“I have grieved so truly over the news of Ranulph Mostyn’s death in India, that I could not help writing to his mother. Yet I always hesitate about whether letters of condolence can be of any comfort, and can only act upon the knowledge that I like myself to have them in any great sorrow. No Christian disquisitions, however: they always seem forced and unmeaning. ‘Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief;’ that is somewhere in Shakspeare. Thirlwall’s Letters have an excellent passage about them—‘Expressions of general condolence may be welcome as tokens of goodwill, but can scarcely exert any general alleviating power. The afflicted ones stand within a circle of images and feelings of their own, which, painful as they may be, they would not part with for worlds. Any attempt to draw them out of that circle can only inflict a useless annoyance.”

ToMrs. C. Vaughan.

“Holmhurst, Oct. 16, 1898.—I am alone this evening; the wind is wailing a dirge, and ‘the dark sea drinks in the greyness of the sky.’[589]But I have been away for three weeks. First to the sisters of my oldfriend Willie Milligan, who now live in the Barrington dower-house at Shrivenham, close to Beckett, the ideal ‘great house’ of my boyhood, so stately and luxurious. Now, so are the mighty fallen, it is let to some Australians, and the family—unless helped by an heiress—can never afford to live there again. Then I was with the delightful Boynes in the high Shropshire uplands, seeing in the most charming way many beautiful old houses. I saw two more from my next visit at Oxton in Notts—Wiverton, and Annesley where the Miss Chaworth Musters, beloved by Byron, once walked on the beautiful old terraces. Another echo from my long-ago came from my visit to Streatlam, where I so often was in my young days, and which is now inhabited by Lord Strathmore’s sister, Lady Frances Trevanion, and her pleasant cheery husband, both most kind cousins to me. The long galleries are filled with family portraits, including a great one of Mary Eleanor Bowes, whose strange story I have so often told. Lady Frances’s time is greatly taken up by the manners and morals of her dogs, the very smallest and noisiest I ever saw. They must be the sort of dogs Chaucer speaks of—

‘Of small houndes hadde she, that she feddeWith rosted flesh and milk, and wastel brede;But sore wept she if one of hem were dead.’

“It was a short journey from Streatlam to Kiplin, the beautiful old house of Admiral Carpenter.... He told me how his grandfather had six sons, Talbots, and was fond of making them all lie down full length on the dining-room floor, joining one another, that hemight see how many yards of sons he had! I saw Richmond from Kiplin: what a beautiful place, few abroad equal to it.

“But my most interesting visit was that to Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire, rising, with a fortified central gate-tower, from a deep still moat, and with an inner courtyard full of flowers. It has dark tapestried rooms, several priest’s hiding-holes, ghosts of a lady and a child, and a murder-room, stained with the blood of a priest whom a squire of Edward IV.’s time slew when he caught him chucking his wife under the chin.[590]Then there are all the refined luxuries of fast-day dinners, evening prayers in the chapel with a congregation of maids veiled like nuns, and a live Bishop (of Portsmouth), in violet robes and gold cross and chain, to officiate.

“Such a bishop he is! such a ripple of wit and wisdom! and so full of playfulness! I read and copied somewhere—“A man after God’s own heart is never a one-sided man. He is not wholly spiritual, he is not wholly natural; he is not all earnestness, he is not all play; he cannot be all things at once, and therefore he is all things by turns.”[591]Our Bishop at Baddesleywas just like this in his fun, in his love of cats, and never more charming than when he gathered up all the scraps of toast left at breakfast, and throwing open one of the windows, called ‘Quack, quack!’ and crowds of ducks came rushing under the bridge over the moat to scramble for them, one brown duck, which the Bishop called ‘the orphan,’ being especially cared for. Speaking of the frequent ignorance of religious intolerance led him to tell of the people of Imola and Brigatella, who were always quarrelling. When the priest at Brigatella began the paschal mass with ‘Christus immolatus est,’ his congregation thought it was some compliment to the people of Imola, and declared they would kill him unless he began ‘Christus brigatellatus est.’

“He had been with the Calthorpes of Woodland Vale to see an old house of theirs in the Isle of Wight, which was quite deserted, and in the very room where it occurred was told the reason why. A friend who had come there to stay with Mr. Calthorpe saw there, in the dawn of the morning, an old woman sitting knitting at the foot of the bed; he even heard the click of the knitting-needles. At first he thought she had mistaken the room, but it happened again the next day. The third time it happened, he kicked out. The old woman then turned round her face towards him, and displayed—a death’s-head. Another guest met the old woman on the stairs and equally saw the death’s-head. No servant would stay in the house, and now it is pulled down.

“After the evening service in the chapel, the Bishop went to have a cigar before going to bed. When Iexcused myself from joining him, he told of Benedict XIV., who offered a pinch of snuff to one of his Cardinals. ‘Santo padre, non ho quel vizio,’ he answered. ‘Se fosse vizio, tu l’avrei,’ said the Pope.

“Most charming of all was the châtelaine, the widow of my cousin Heneage Dering, whose first wife was her aunt, Lady Chatterton, the well-known novelist. The niece (‘Pysie’ Orpen) was then married to Marmion Ferrers, the last of a famous Catholic family lineally descended from the Earl of Derby attainted in the Wars of the Roses, and himself legally Baron Compton and De Ferrers, though he never claimed the title on account of his poverty and having no son. He was the pleasantest and most genial of men—‘the old squire’ he used to be called in Warwickshire. One day he found an old woman stealing his wood, and, when she expected a great scolding, he only said, ‘That load of wood is a great deal too heavy for you; you must let me carry it home for you,’ and he did. Another day he caught three poachers, and said, ‘Come, now, let us have it out!’ and they pulled off their coats and had a regular set-to: he floored two of them, he was so strong, and then he let them all go.

“His life seems to have been made up of deeds of faith and charity, but his property fell into decadence and must have been sold, if Heneage Dering, who had married his wife’s aunt, had not come to the rescue. They all lived together in the old house, mediaevally, almost mediaeval even in their dress; and after Lady Chatterton died, and then Marmion Ferrers, a final break-up of the remaining links with the past was prevented by the marriage of Heneage Dering withthe widowed ‘Pysie.’ They were perfectly happy for several years, but he always said ‘a sudden death is the happiest death,’ and so in 1892 it was.

“Over the chapel door is inscribed—

‘Transit gloria mundi,Fides catholica manet,’

and the Catholic religion nourishes as much at Baddesley still as it did in the time of Sir Edward Ferrers, who founded this branch of the family in 1517, and left ‘five masses in worship of the five wounds principal that Our Lord suffered in His bitter Passion,’ and who is depicted kneeling before a crucifix, with the legend ‘Amor meus crucifixus est’ issuing from his mouth. On Sunday afternoon we went to hear the Benediction service beautifully sung by the invisible nuns of a convent close by—a convent of ‘Colettines’ from Bruges, a severe form of Poor Clares, founded here in 1850, the first of the Order since the Dissolution. A niece of Lord Clifford was their abbess. There are 250 Catholics at Baddesley.

“As we drove to Warwick, we passed through a village where the learned Dr. Parr was rector. ‘He took pupils,’ said the Bishop. ‘They were not very bright. One of them said, “I make a point of never believing anything I do not understand.” “Then your creed must be most uncommonly brief,” said Dr. Parr.’

“In returning home, I lingered one day with my kind friend E. Mathews at Sonning. I had often longed to go there on a pilgrimage to dear Hugh Pearson’s grave, and never before been able. Whata lovely village it is, with its old red roofs nestling under tufted trees, and how fragrant is the beloved memory of the true pastor who gave himself so royally for his people. ‘Go and break it to my family,’ were his first words when told he could not live, meaning by his family his parishioners, the people in the village, who loved him so, and amongst whom he was almost ideally happy, for he was not only always striving to do good for the poor and helpless, but was successful in doing it.

‘His virtues walked their humble round,Nor knew a pause, nor felt a void,And sure the Eternal Master foundHis single talent well employ’d.’[592]

“My volume on ‘Shropshire’ has come out—another book-child launched into public life.”

ToW. H. Milligan,andJournal.

“Belvoir Castle, Nov. 18, 1898.—I have been with my dear Lowthers at Campsea Ashe, enjoying their large party of pleasant musicianers, Countess Valda Gleichen, radiant Mrs. Arkwright of the lovely voice, &c., but enjoying much more two quiet days with the family when the others were gone. Mrs. L. took me to Crowe Hall, a moated house with a delightful old lady-farmeress, of the hard-working high-thinking type, so familiar in my boyhood, but almost extinct in these days of over-dressed, gig-driving, pianoforte-strumming minxes.

“One of those kind and characteristic telegrams of the Duchess of Rutland, extending over a whole page, has brought me here, where there is a large party too, almost entirely composed of the Duke’s innumerable nephews and nieces. As I do not either shoot or care for the regular evening ball in the gallery, what I like best is the daily walk with the Duke and Duchess, meeting them in the hall as the clock strikes 12.15, and wandering in the wood walks or on the nearer terraces, already fragrant with violets, listening to the Duke’s reminiscences of his own past and Belvoir’s past, always of endless interest. How I pity my host and hostess in their over-anxious cares about their immense estates; but they must be comforted themselves by the pleasure they are able to give. Sightseers are admitted always, and the great Midland towns daily pour their legions into these beautiful woods: they do no harm and behave wonderfully well, but one almost feels as if the public, who most enjoy it, ought to help to keep up the place. In the case of Belvoir, the scourge of the death-duties affects what is the pleasaunce of thousands.

“I went with Mrs. G. Drummond to Bottesford, where there is such a grand series of monuments of the Earls of Rutland and their families, including one of some children who died by witchcraft. Their nurse was condemned to be burnt for it, but said, ‘If I am guilty, may this bit of bread choke me,’ and it did! The Duchess Elizabeth, who made all the charming walks here, moved all the Dukes to her new mausoleum in the Belvoir woods, but she left the Earls at Bottesford.

“Hearing of her again here has recalled much that Lady Waterford used to tell me of the Duchess Isabella, who was called ‘Was a bella’ in her later years. She used to describe the painting of her fine portrait by Sir Joshua, how he would rush forward and look closely into her eyes, take her well in, and then go as far back as possible and look at the general effect in a distant glass, chiefly making his picture from that. Lady Adeliza Manners once met a very beautiful peasant girl near Belvoir, very beautiful except that she had lost one of her best front teeth. ‘What a misfortune,’ said Lady A.; ‘how could it have happened?’—‘Oh, the Duchess (Isabella) had lost one of her front teeth, so she forced me to have mine taken out to replace it.’

“I wonder if you went to Harlaxton when you were here—the immense modern house by Blomfield, of which a most pleasant Mr. Pearson Gregory suddenly found himself the heir from a godfather. He was staying at the castle and took me there. When the Empress Frederick was here, she admired it beyond words, but I did not: it is magnificent, but too heavy, and the staircase very dark. Outside there are garden-staircases and fountains, which are really beautiful, almost worthy of the Villa Aldobrandini. There is a picture of a De Ligne baby, the heir of the place, whose cradle was put too close to the fire: a coal flew out, and it was burnt to death. The village is rendered infinitely picturesque by stone wells and portals made from fragments of a recently destroyed moated manor-house, of which only the gateway is left.

“There is a great charm in being made a sharer in what Disraeli called ‘the sustained splendour of a stately life,’ but much of the pleasure of a great country-house depends upon whom it falls to your lot to take down to dinner, and the Duchess attends to this with careful cleverness. I was especially amused by one sentence in that delightful ‘Isabel Carnaby’—‘There is one good thing in getting married. You know then that, whatever happens, there is one woman you will never have to take in to dinner again as long as you live.’

“And what funny things people say at dinner. Lately—not here—a very ‘great lady’ said to me, ‘I can assure you that the consciousness of being well dressed gives me an inward peace which religion could never bestow.’”

Journal.

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

“Holmhurst, Jan. 21, 1899.—I sit alone on my hilltop, amid the swirling mists, and howling winds, and swelching rain, and am often very desolate and full of melancholy thoughts, which require active work to drive them away. But I ought not to complain, for before Christmas I was a week with the kind Llangattocks at the Hendre in beautiful Monmouthshire, seeing much that was interesting, and driving with four horses and postillions, to Raglan, and through the beautiful brown billowy country of the Forest of Dean. Then I had a quietly happy fortnight at Torquay with my kind Thornycroft cousins; and went from them to Mount Ebford to Pamela Turner,a very pleasant first cousin I had not seen for years; paying, lastly, a sad visit—because probably the last ever possible—to beautiful Cobham.... Yet I am alone now, and perhaps it is as well that my thoughts should be always turning to the ‘undiscovered country’ which will be so much to us, and of which we know nothing, even though we may be very near its shores.I work on, I enjoy on, but I feel more that life is becoming a waiting time.

‘I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;My master calls me, I must not say no.’[593]

And there is a sentence of Epictetus which seems to demand thinking about. ‘If the Master call, run to the ship, forsaking all these things, and looking not behind. And if thou be in old age, go not far from the ship at any time, lest the Master should ask, and thou not be ready.’ ... It was Adrienne de Lafayette who said, ‘Must we not all die? The great thing is to be always ready; as for the kind of death, that is only a detail.’ I think and think, as so many millions have thought, how it can be after death, and such inquiries and searchings have no answer. Still, as Jowett wrote towards the close of life, ‘Though we cannot see into another life, we believe, with inextinguishable hope, that there is still something reserved for us.’

“I feel the view usually held now on these subjects is wholesomer than that of my childhood, when ‘good people’ talked with such dogmatic assurance, in all ‘le bel air de leur devotion,’ of how glorious their life in another world would be, whilst definitely condemning so many of their neighbours to the hell which, in their imagination, was their God’s vindictive retaliation for His injuries. I often remember her words, and I think I realise the feeling with which my dear old friend Mrs. Duncan Stewart once said to me, ‘I should say,like Dr. Johnson, I am speaking in crass ignorance, according to the failings of my fallible human nature; and yet, may we not all, whilst acting like fallible human beings as we are, trust respectfully to God’s mercy, though speaking of no glorious future as reserved for us, lest He should say, “What hast thou done to deserve this?”’

“Lord Llangattock writes urging me to join the Anti-vivisection Society; but I answer I am not competent to judge of it. Then he sends me its pamphlets, which seem to me rather blasphemous, asserting that ‘Christ died just as much for all animals as for all human beings.’ What! for bugs, lice, ringworms, mosquitoes? ‘Don’t kill that flea; Christ died for it.’ Then how about cobras and puff-adders? Surely it must have been the Devil that died for those. What nonsense people, especially ‘religious people,’ write in these little pamphlets, almost as great nonsense as most country clergy preach in the dreary Sahara of their endless sermons. ‘Long texts, short sermons,’ was John Wesley’s maxim, and what a good one!”

JournalandLetters.

“Rome, March 10, 1899.—I was very ailing, and Catherine Vaughan insisted on my seeing Dr. Sansom, who found me so ‘run down’ that he insisted on my coming out here to my ‘native air;’ therefore here I am, and already it has done me good. I found my dear old friend Miss Garden rather better than I left her three years ago, and full of her sister Mrs. Ramsay’s escape, having been upset in a carriage closeto the edge of the Tarpeian rock. ‘If the horse had not beenassolutamente pecora,’ said the coachman, ‘she must have gone over.’

“The other day I was with a circle of old friends who were discussing the ‘Story of my Life.’ ‘Surely the early part must have been exaggerated,’ said one of them, ‘that story of Aunt Esther hanging the cat, for instance,[594]because the child loved it.’ ‘I can testify that that story was absolutely true, forI was there,’ said an old clergyman present, ‘and I have shuddered over the cruel recollection ever since.’ It was Canon Douglas Gordon. I had quite forgotten that he was a pupil of Mr. Simpkinson, curate of Hurstmonceaux, at the time. Mr. Gordon also said, ‘I can vouch, too, for the truth of the story of the bullying at Harrow, forI was myself the victim;’ and he told how a brutal bully got a dead dog, and cut off its feet, ears, &c., and forced him to drink them in coffee. That day he ran away. ‘Alexander Russell’ went with him. They had only four miles to go to his father Lord Aberdeen’s house at Stanmore. He and Lord Abercorn were governors of the school. They happened to be together, and they sent him back in a carriage that evening with a letter to the head-master saying that, in the interests of the school, what had happened had better be hushed up; but that it was so dreadful, that he—the master—must be compelled to take the awful bullying in the school seriously in hand. And he did. Mr. Gordon says that the wickedness of Harrow at that time was quite appalling: things which could never be mentioned were then ofnightly occurrence all over the school. The masters were as bad, and would come into the very pupil-rooms humming obscene songs.

“What an age of independent criticism it is! An acquaintance here said to me the other day, ‘I have a horror of the patriarchs, and how any one can set up such wicked, low, mean men as an example, I cannot understand—Jacob and the rams, for instance. No wonder the Jews were bad with such examples to follow.... I believe in Christ thoroughly and cling to the thought of Him: of course the story of His birth and all that is very difficult, but “autre pays, autres mœurs,” that is what I say.’”

“March 24.—We have been to Tivoli on the most glorious day—a pellucid sky, and exquisite blue shadows flitting over the young green of the Campagna. From the station I went to S. Antonio, the old hermitage and shrine bought by the Searles. Mrs. Searle met me most kindly. I said, ‘Whata beautiful home you have!’ ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘and the really delightful thing is thatthe Lordhas given it to us.’ I could hardly help saying, ‘I suppose that means you bought it.’ Afterwards I found she was one of the very few ladies who belong to the Salvation Army. She is kind and Christian beyond words—‘vraie marchande de bonheur’—and her lovely home is a centre of thoughtful charity; but being in this Catholic country gives her many qualms and shocks. One day lately she was alone in a lane near her home, and came upon a shrine of the Virgin with her little statue, and was filled with righteous indignation at ‘that doll.’ As she stood there, a number of peasant women came up and knelt before the shrine and prayed most devoutly. When they got up she said, ‘How could you pray to that graven image? I wonder what you were praying for.’ ‘Why, we were asking the Madonna to send us rain; our land needs it so much,’ said the women, much surprised at her wrath. ‘How can you pray toherfor that?’ said Mrs. Searle; ‘let me show you how to pray,’ and then and there she knelt down in the dusty road and prayed aloud, prayed with her whole heart to her Lord, that He would send them the rain they needed; and immediately, though the sky had been quite clear till then, itpoured!

“The women went away to their priest and told him that they had seen a lady who reviled the Madonna, but who was a powerful witch and had been able to bring the rain by her enchantments.”

“March 29.—To Sutri with Mrs. Ramsay. In the early morning the dew was like crystal, every leaf glistening. The mountains rose pale blue against an opal sky, but were hidden at their base by the delicate mists of the plain. It was a long, long drive before we reached the great solid rock, which is hewn away within into all the circular steps of a vast amphitheatre overhung by mighty ilexes. Behind it, is an Early Christian church, also hewn out of the rock,—pillars, font, and altar all one with it.

“Se voi pensate sedere sopra una cittadina Americana, voi vi sbagliate,’ was heard by Gery Cullum from an American lady here in altercation with her cabman.”

“April 1.—I have had one of my Palatine lectures quite in the old way, and a luncheon with the charming Crown Princess of Sweden has been a great pleasure.

“Dining at Palazzo Bonaparte, M. de Westenberg told me that one day when Madame Mère was living there, a stranger came to the palace and insisted upon seeing her on a matter of vital importance. He was evidently a gentleman, but would not tell his name or errand. At last his urgency prevailed, and Madame Mère admitted him. He gave her a crucifix and said it belonged to her son in St. Helena, and then he said, ‘You need no longer be unhappy about him, for he has just entered into rest: his sorrows are over.’ It was on that day that Napoleon died in St. Helena.

“Miss Garden says, ‘Lanciani came to me one day. He was not married then, and he said, “I am too miserably dull; it cannot go on; I must either take a wife or a cat.” “Well, and which should you prefer, Signer Lanciani?”—“Oh, a me sono tutte due eguale,” he said. “But la signora madre, which would she prefer?”—“Oh, la madre,” he said meditatively, “il gatto.”

“‘All life has its sorrows,’ says Miss Garden, ‘only they are unequally distributed. Do you know what Eddie Baddeley’s sorrow is? He is only three, you know. It is that the turkey-cock at the Villa Borghese will not make friends with him. “But don’t you think he will ever like me?” he said to his mother. “No, my dear,” she said, “I don’t think he ever will.” But it was just one of those cases in which I think a lie would have been permissible; she had better have held out hopes.’”

“Palazzo Guadagni, Florence, April 17.—I have been here ten days as the guest of the ever-kind Duchess Dowager of Sermoneta, and found Mrs. and Miss Lowther here. It is an unusual life. We scarcely see our hostess till dinner-time, unless she asks us to drive with her, and we have each a most comfortable apartment, with excellent food and service, and the whole day to employ as we like. Many are the old friends we have seen, but most frequently the Marchesa Peruzzi, Story’s daughter, who has all his agreeable power of narration. ‘The reason why we loved Mrs. Browning so much as children,’ she says, ‘is because she always treated us as her equals, and talked to us as such. Pen and I used to sit at her feet, and she was just as courteous to us as to any of the grown-up people.’”

“Arco in Sud Tyrol, April 27.—I came here with the Lowthers, and we have been some days with two delightful Misses Warre, sisters of the head-master of Eton. It is an exquisitely beautiful place, with glorious excursions. One day we have spent most deliciously at Castel Toblino, a grand old castle which looks at itself in a glassy lake surrounded by mountains. General Baratieri, a hero, though a most unfortunate one, is one of those of whom we have seen something here.”

“Holmhurst, May 10.—Reached the dear home with great thankfulness, after a most severely hard-worked fortnight for a new edition of my ‘Paris.’”

enlarge-imageTHE PORCH, HOLMHURST.THE PORCH, HOLMHURST.

“June 14, 1899.—At luncheon at Lady Constance Leslie’s I met Mr. Holman Hunt, a charming, simple, natural man. He spoke of the great difficulty of getting any one to do such work as is wanted for St. Paul’s Cathedral; that few would give up the high prices paid now for other work for the small pricesthe Government would pay. He talked of Leighton, whom he had known intimately in early life. Three tailors in Bond Street, thinking it might be a good speculation, clubbed together to buy one of his first pictures. They offered £100 for it: he stuck out for £200. Eventually it was arranged that they should pay £150, but a suit of clothes was to be thrown in. Then came the violent abuse of all Leighton’s work, and the tailors got alarmed, and sold the picture for £100 without any suit of clothes. That picture was afterwards bought for thousands by the Gallery at Liverpool, and there it is now, unlikely ever to come to the hammer again.

“After this, when Leighton’s pictures were accepted for the Academy and he was hard at work for the next year, he was told by his studio-man that some one wanted to speak to him. He sent out word that he was very busy and could not see any one; but the man was pertinacious and would not go away. At last Leighton said, ‘Well, he had better come in for a minute and say what his business is.’ So he was let in. But it was a man who stood by the door and did not come further. ‘Well,’ said Leighton, ‘what do you want?’ ‘To come straight to the point at once,’ said the man, ‘I want that picture’ (pointing to the work upon the easel). ‘You get £300 now for your pictures, don’t you? Well, I will give you £700.’ ‘But you have not even seen the picture,’ said Leighton; ‘you don’t even know what the subject is.’ ‘No, I don’t,’ said the man, ‘and, if I did, I should know no more about it than I do now.’ That man was Agnew. He acquired the picture: it was his first venture.

“Mr. Holman Hunt said, speaking of the bad results of Board Schools, that he had been away lately. When he came back, a boy came to him as a model, a very good boy, whom he had not seen for some time. ‘Well,’ he said to the boy, ‘it’s a long time since I’ve seen you; I’ve been away; I’ve been at Stratford-on-Avon.’ ‘Ah,’ said the boy slowly, ‘so you’ve been at Stratford-on-Avon, have you? That’s where Shakspeare lived, him as married Anne Hathaway, and him as they called the Swan of Avon and the smooth-tongued liar (lyre). It’s well I didn’t live in them times, or they might have been calling me some such beastly names as that.’”

“Holmhurst, Sept. 8.—Early on the morning of July 29 I was summoned from home by telegraph to the dying bed of my dear cousin Catherine Vaughan, perhaps more than any one else still left bound up with all my life in the long-ago. She had forbidden any one to come to her when ill, but desired that, if it was known she was dying, I should be sent for. I found her terribly ill and suffering, though delighted to see me. That Saturday was a day of great anguish, both for herself and those with her. But she grew calmer in the night, and was with us still for four days and nights, during which I seemed to go back into my old life with my mother, constantly by her side, fanning her, wiping the poor brow, trying to help her to bear through. Almost her very last words were ‘Dear, dear Augustus.’ Then, the day before she quite left us, she was unconscious, and we sate in a great calm, only waiting for the coming of the angel. A majesticbeauty had come back to her in the shadow of death, a likeness to her mother, to her brother Arthur Stanley at his best, to the ‘Curly Kate’ of sixty years ago, only now they were snow-white curls which rippled over the pillow. I think it was the so frequent sight of this life-long friend, more intimate and dearer than ever in the last few years, yet so much older than myself, which has always made me feel young, and that, with her passing away, a bridge is broken down. It has been since quite a small added pain to take leave of the old furniture and pictures, the inanimate witnesses of our lives—‘auld nick-nackets’ somebody called them—but still silent and sacred memorials of the dear Alderley and Norwich family homes, which have now passed almost to a stranger. They could still recall to those familiar with them so much that only Kate and I knew, and so much more that only Kate and I cared about.

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