“‘Do not think I murmur, but lifeisvery trying when one knows so little of the beyond. The clergyman’s wife has just been, and she said, “But you must believe; you must believe Scripture literally; you must believe all it says to the letter.” But I cannot believe literally: one can only use the faith one has,I have not the faith which moves mountains. I have prayed that the mountains might move, with all the faith that was in me—all; but the mountains did not move. No, I cannot pray with the faith which is not granted me.
“‘I think that I believe all the promises of Scripture; yet when I think of Death, I hesitate to wish to leave the certainty here for what is—yes, must be—the uncertainty beyond. Yet lately, when I was so ill, when I continued to go down and down into the very depths, I felt I had got so far—so very far, it would be difficult to travel all that way again—“Oh, let me go through the gates now.” And then the comforting thought came that perhaps after all it mightnotbe the will of God that I should travel thesameway again, and that when He leads me up to the gates for the last time, it might be His will to lead me by some other, by some quite different way.’”
“March 4.—Breakfast with Lord Houghton—a pleasant male party—Dr. Ralston, Henry James the American novelist, Sir Samuel Baker, and three others. Harriet Martineau’s Memoirs had just arrived, and were a great topic. Lord Houghton, who had known her well, said how often he had been sent for to take leave of Miss Martineau when she had been supposed to be dying, and had gone at great personal inconvenience; but she had lived for thirty years after the first time. Her fatal illness (dropsy) had set in before she went to America. Her friends tried strongly to dissuade her from going, suggesting that she would be very ill received in consequence of her opinions. ‘Why,Harriet,’ said Sydney Smith, ‘you know, if you go, they will tar and feather you, and then they will turn you loose in the woods, and the wild turkeys will come and say, “Why, what strange bird are you?”’
“Of course, much of politics was talked, especially about the Turkish atrocities. Sir S. Baker said that at the old Duchess of Cleveland’s he had met Lord Winchester, now quite an old man. He said that he had ridden from Constantinople to the Danube in 1832, and had passed thirty impaled persons on the way. He himself (Sir Samuel) had seen the impaling machine on the Nile—a stake tapered like a pencil, over which a wheel was let down to a certain height, and when the man was impaled, he was let down on the wheel and rested there; he often lived for three or four days; if the machine was in the market-places of the country towns, the relations of the victims gave them coffee. ‘It is not worse,’ said Lord Houghton, ‘than the stories we are told every Sunday: “he destroyed them all, he left not one of them alive;” especially of the cruelties of David, who made his enemies pass under the harrow, a punishment much worse than impalement. How grateful David would have been for a steam-roller! what a number of people he would have been able to despatch at once!’
“At Mrs. Tennant’s I saw the three girls who have been so much admired, and painted by Millais and so many others; their chief beauty consisting in their picturesqueness as a group.”
“March 5.—To Mr. Brandram’s recitation of the ‘Merchant of Venice’ at Lord Overstone’s. He saidthe whole play by heart, giving different character and expression to each person—an astonishing effort of memory. Hearing a play in this way certainly fixes it in the mind much more than reading it, though not so much as seeing it.”
“March 8.—Luncheon at charming old Mrs. Thellusson’s, where I met Madame Taglioni, the famousdanseuse. She is now an old lady, with pretty refined features, perfect grace of movement, and a most attractive manner. She has begun in her old age to give lessons again for the benefit of her family, though she is, at the same time, presenting her princess grand-daughter—the Princess Marguerite Trubetskoi, a simple natural girl. Madame Taglioni spoke of her dancing as ‘un don de Dieu,’ just as she would of music or any other art. We asked her if she would like to be young again. ‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ she said; ‘how Ishoulddance!’ She said her father, a ballet-master, made her practise nine hours a day; ‘however great a talent you may have, you never can bring it to perfection without that amount of practice.’
“Lady Charlemont was there, and after luncheon we asked her to recite. She made no difficulties, but said nothing; only, while we had almost forgotten her, she had glided round the room to where there was a red curtain for a background, and suddenly, but slowly, she began. It was only a simple ballad of Tennyson—‘Oh, the Earl was fair to see’—but she threw a power into it which was almost agony, and the pauses were absolute depths of pathos. You felt the power of her unfaltering vengeance, youheardtheraging of the storm ‘in turret and tree;’ and, when the moment of the murder came, you quivered in every nerve as she stabbed the Earl ‘through and through.’ It was absolutely awful.
“Afterwards Mrs. Greville recited ‘Jeanne d’Arc.’ It is her best part. She cannot look refined, but an inspired French paysanne she can look and be thoroughly.
“Sir Baldwin Leighton made himself so pleasant, that when he asked me to go to their box at the Lyceum in the evening, I promised to go, though I never like seeing any, even the very best plays, twice. However, the nearness of the box to the stage enabled me to see many details unobserved before. Richard III. will always, I should think, be Irving’s best part, for he looks the incarnation of the person. In Shakspeare, Richard III. is most anxious to become king, and perfectly determined to remain king when he has become so; but Irving carries out far more than this. Irving’s Richard is perfectly determined that vice shall triumph over virtue, and utterly enraptured when it does triumph, in a way which is quite diabolical. The night before Bosworth Field is most striking and beautiful. You are with the king in his tent. He draws the curtain and looks out. On the distant wind-stricken heath the camp-fires are alight, and the lights in the tents blaze out one by one, eclipsing the stars overhead. Richard says little for a time; your whole mind is allowed the repose of the beauty. The king, who has been through the last acts trying (you feel him striving against his personal disadvantages) to be kingly, is all-kingly on that night, in theimmediate face of the great future on which everything hangs. He gives his orders—simply, briefly, royally. He lies down on the couch, folding himself in the royal velvet robe, which, like Creusa’s cloak, is associated with all his crimes. He falls asleep. Then, out of the almost darkness, just visible as outlines but no more, rise the phantoms; and, like a whiffling wind, the voice of Clarence floats across the stage. As each spirit delivers its message in the same faint spiritual harmonious monotone, the sleeping figure shudders and groans, moans more sadly.
enlarge-imageLONDON BRIDGE FROM BILLINGSGATE.LONDON BRIDGE FROM BILLINGSGATE.[257]
“Then there is a powerfully human touch in the way in which he, so coldly royal as he lay down,turns human-like for sympathy in his great horror and anguish to the first person he sees, the soldier who wakens him.”
“March 10.—Went with Victor Parnell down the river in search of the old houses at Limehouse and Stepney. We found them, but the accounts in theDaily News, which had led us to the excursion, were so exaggerated that the houses were scarcely to be recognised. We came back by Ratcliffe Highway. It all looked very clean, and thriving, and decent, very different indeed from the descriptions in religious magazines.”
“March 11.—Luncheon with Sir Robert and Lady Cunliffe, who showed me a volume of portrait sketches by Downman, a little-known master of George III.’s time, but a wonderfully charming artist.”
END OF VOL. IV.
Printed byBallantyne, Hanson & CoEdinburgh and London
“Story of my Life.”—End of Vol. IV.
THE STORY OF MY LIFEVOL. V
enlarge-imageMary Lea Gidman. from a miniature by Barber.Mary Lea Gidman.from a miniature by Barber.
BYAUGUSTUS J. C. HAREAUTHOR OF “MEMORIALS OF A QUIET LIFE.”“THE STORY OF TWO NOBLE LIVES.”ETC. ETC.VOLUME VLONDONGEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD1900[All rights reserved]
Printed byBallantyne, Hanson & Co.At the Ballantyne Press
“Here we have no communion; company enough, but no fellowship. Meanwhile, the grand perennial Communion of Saints is ever open to us. Let us enter in and worthily comport ourselves there.”—Carlyle.“Ce n’est ni le génie, ni la gloire, ni l’amour, qui mesurent l’élévation de l’âme; c’est la bonté.”—Père Lacordaire.
“Here we have no communion; company enough, but no fellowship. Meanwhile, the grand perennial Communion of Saints is ever open to us. Let us enter in and worthily comport ourselves there.”—Carlyle.
“Ce n’est ni le génie, ni la gloire, ni l’amour, qui mesurent l’élévation de l’âme; c’est la bonté.”—Père Lacordaire.
ITwas soon after the death of my dear and honoured old friend, the Baroness Bunsen, that her daughters, Frances and Emilia, wrote to consult me about a Memoir of her beautiful and helpful life. I promised all the help I could give, but did not understand, till several months later, that they wished me to undertake the whole biography myself. This, however, I rejoiced to do, being assured that beyond her own children, no one had a warmer love and appreciation for the friend of my whole life, and delighting to be raised, whilst dwelling amongst her written words and thoughts, into the serene and lofty atmosphere of her inner life.
The work which I had undertaken beganat this time to bring me into constant and intimate connection with all the branches of the Bunsen family, especially with Lady Llanover, the sister of my dear old friend.
“Llanover, March 18, 1877.—I left London on my birthday and went to the Harfords at Blaise Castle. It was bright but bitter March weather, and though the woods were full of flowers, there was no enjoyment of them. I had much talk with sweet Mrs. Harford about old days and the many passed-away things and people dear to us both. Sir George and Lady Grey were staying at Blaise, to my great pleasure.
“Yesterday I came here by the ferry over the Severn. Lady Llanover’s old ramshackle carriage met me at the Nantyderry Station, and brought me to Llanover. I had received endless solemn warnings about what I was to say and not to say here, what to do and not to do; but with a person of whom one is not likely to see much in after life, one never feels any alarm. Lady Llanover is very small and has been very pretty. We have a mutual bond in our love for her sister, whose memory is enshrined in her inmost heart with that of her mother, Mrs. Waddington, to whom she was quite passionately devoted. Of the Bunsen family she talked from 4 till 10.30P.M.‘You see I have still the full use of my lungs,’ she said.
“At eight we had tea. There is no dinner, which I like, but every one would not. After tea she gathered up all the lumps of sugar which remained and emptied them with a great clatter into a box, which she lockedup. With £20,000 a year, the same economy pervades everything. Her great idea is Wales—that she lives in Wales (which many doubt), and that the people must be kept Welsh, and she has Welsh schools, Welsh services, a Welsh harper, always talks Welsh to her servants, and wears a Welsh costume at church.”
ToMiss Wright.
“March 24, 1877.—I may tell you now, as it is no longer a secret, that I have acceded to the wish of all her family in undertaking to write the Life and edit the beautiful letters of my dear old friend the Baroness de Bunsen. How perfectly great and noble her character was, and the intense interest of all she wrote, few know better than myself, and, beyond her own family, no one loved her more; so, when my ‘London’ is done, I shall give myself gladly to this sacred task, and trust that it may be, asherwritings cannot fail to be, a blessing to many.”
Journal.
“Holmhurst, April 6, 1877.—I look back on my visit to Llanover as quite a bit apart in my life. It was important that I should please, as much of the success of the memorials of her sister, which I have undertaken to edit, must depend upon Lady Llanover’s favourable co-operation. It was equally important that I should assert my own absolute independence of will and action, and knock under in nothing. So it was a difficult course to steer. The very warnings I had received were enough to annihilate self-confidence. I was not to believe anything Lady Llanoversaid about different members of her family, for she was always guided by her own prejudices and sympathies. I was not to be guided by her opinion on any subject, yet was never to contradict her. I was not to make to her any one of the promises she was sure to attempt to exact from me: above all, I was never to leave any letter or paper about in my room, as there were always ‘tame panthers stealing about the house,’ who would master the contents and make it known to their mistress.
“I began by disregardingallthis advice, and taking Lady Llanover as if I had never heard a word about her, and I am sure that it was the best way. I listened to all she had to say, and received part of it to profit by. I left all my papers about, and if the mistress of the house learnt what was in them, I hope it was beneficial to her. I found her difficult to deal with certainly, but chiefly because, with endless power of talking and a vocabulary absolutely inexhaustible, it is next to impossible to keep her in the straight conversational path along which she ought to be travelling: she will linger to pick all the flowers that grow in the lanes diverging along the wayside. Thus, though on an average we talked for six hours a day, not more than one of those hours could be utilised.
“There is a great deal to admire in Lady Llanover: her pertinacity in what shethinksright, whether sheisright or not: her insistence on carrying out her sovereign will in all things; but chiefly her touching devotion to the memory of the mother from whom she, the youngest and favourite daughter, was scarcely ever separated. The whitewashed ‘Upper House’ inthe park is kept fresh and bright and aired, as if the long-lost mother were constantly expected. In her sitting-room a bright fire burns in winter, and fresh flowers are daily placed on the little table by her old-fashioned sofa. The plants she loved are tended and blooming in the little garden; the pictures and books are unremoved from the walls; the peacocks she used to feed, or their descendants, still spread their bright tails in the sun under her windows.
“It is in the kitchen of the ‘Upper House’ that Lady Llanover’s Welsh chaplain performs service on Sundays, for to the church she and her people will not go, as the clergyman is—undesirable. Lady Llanover on Sundays is even more Welsh than on week-days. She wears a regular man’s tall hat and short petticoats like her people, and very becoming the dress is to her, and very touching the earnestness of the whole congregation in their national costume, joining so fervently—like one person—in the services, especially in the singing, which is exquisitely beautiful. I suppose it may be only from the novelty, but this earnest service, these humble prayers on the worn benches in the brick-floored kitchen, with the incidents of manual labour in the background, and farmhouse scenes outside the windows, seemed more of a direct appeal to God than any formal prayers I ever heard in a church—the building called a church. I feel more and more that I shall probably end my days—a Dissenter!
“We had more of the Welsh music in the evening. We went and sat in the armchairs in the hall, and the household filed in above, and filled the music-gallery,and sang most gloriously, especially the burial-hymn ‘It is finished,’ which was sung in parts all the way from the house to the churchyard at the funerals of Mrs. Waddington and Lord Llanover and his son. At other times, the blind harper attached to the house came in and harped to us, and four little boys sat in a circle on the floor and sang.
“One afternoon we went to the churchyard overlooking the Usk. A great pine-tree, the seed of which was brought from Rome by Mrs. Waddington, overshadows the burial-place of the family, and, in accordance with a line in some poet she liked, her grave is covered with the simple camomile. By its side is the colossal altar-tomb of Lord Llanover. It is generally supposed to be merely commemorative, but Lady Llanover herself unlocked a door concealed beneath the carving, and we went in. There are three coffins—of Lord Llanover, his eldest son, and his grandson Stephàn, son of Mrs. Herbert of Llanarth, whom she, the Roman Catholic mother, insisted should be brought here, the priests accompanying the corpse to the churchyard gate, and there delivering it to the Welsh people, who sang their beautiful hymns over it. There was a fourth place in the tomb, which Lady Llanover, tearless in her desolation, showed me as hers, which she must soon occupy. The poor Welsh women were busy ‘dressing the graves’ in the churchyard—the graves are always dressed for Palm Sunday.
“At Llanover, in the weird house of dead associations, it was a relief when pleasant, handsome young Arthur Herbert came the last day. Almost the only other guest was Miss Geraldine Jewsbury, the intimateand faithful friend of Mrs. Carlyle. I found it difficult to trace in the ancient spinster the gifted brilliancy I had heard described, though of her strong will there was abundant evidence.[258]During an illness of Mrs. Carlyle there was a comic instance of this. Miss Jewsbury had unlimited faith in black currant jelly for a cold. Now Mrs. Carlyle’s throat was very bad, and Miss Jewsbury took some of her jelly to her. ‘But I will not take it; I will not take it, Geraldine,’ said Mrs. Carlyle, with her strong inflexion on the ‘ine.’ So Miss Jewsbury sat by the head of the bed and kept her black currant jelly well out of sight. But a moment came when Mrs. Carlyle fell fast asleep, and—if the truth must be told—opened her mouth very wide. It was Miss Jewsbury’s opportunity, and she filled a spoon full of jelly, and popped it into the open mouth. ‘Good God! Geraldine, what was that?’ exclaimed Mrs. Carlyle, waking up. ‘Thatwas the black currant jelly.’—‘Good God, Geraldine! I thought it was a leech gone the wrong way.’
“Since I returned, I have greatly enjoyed a fortnight’s halt in life at home. When here, with charming rooms full of books and pictures, inexhaustible employment within and without, and the dear Lea, the one living relic ofourpast, I wonder how I can ever go away.”
“April 14.—The other day I dined at Lord Charlemont’s. Lady Charlemont[259]is astonishing. I sat near her at dinner. First she startled me by saying what a bore her neighbour on the other side was: it was Lord Campbell. Then she said, ‘I am so happy. I have found some one who breaks the first commandment.’—‘What! “Thou shalt have none other gods but me?”’—‘Yes, and the man who breaks it is Dr. Schliemann; he adds Jupiter and Venus and a lot of others, all on the same level.’
“Sir Julius Benedict was at dinner, a most amusing person. He described how he was at Mentmore, and sat up very late in the hall reading, the rest of the gentlemen having gone to the smoking-room, and Baron Rothschild having gone to bed. He was surprised after some time to see Baron Rothschild come down again and cross the entrance hall in conversation with a strange gentleman. Soon after, when Sir Julius had gone to his own room, a guest in the house knocked at the door and apologised for disturbing him, but begged to know if he knew Sir James Fergusson by sight. He said, ‘Yes, perfectly,’ and then he remembered who the stranger was whom he had seen crossing the hall with the Baron: it was Sir James Fergusson; he had not recognised him at the moment.
“The guest said, ‘You do not know what an awkward difficulty you have relieved us from; a gentleman has arrived who seems to think he is expected, and whom nobody knows, and he says he is Sir James Fergusson.’ And it was.
“Sir James had been called out from dinner by a servant from Mentmore, who said that there had beenno time to write, but that he had been sent off to fetch him, for the Baroness was so alarmingly ill that there was not a moment to be lost. Sir James rushed off in a cab to Euston Square, and asked for a special train. It was Sunday, and there was none to be had without great delay; but the station-master, hearing the urgency of the case, and whom it was for, said that the express, just starting, should be allowed to stop at the station for Mentmore. On arriving there, Sir James was surprised to find no carriage, but procured a trap from the inn, and drove as hard as he could. As they reached the house, the servant got down and went round it, saying he was going in the other way.
“The servant was quite mad, and the insanity first showed itself in this odd form.
“Sir Julius also told us that—
“‘One day an American bishop called in his carriage at Hunt & Roskell’s. He asked to see some bracelets, mentioning that he was returning to America and wished to take a present to his wife. ‘Nothing very expensive,’ he said; ‘he could not afford that, but something about £70 or £80.’ Eventually he agreed to take a bracelet that cost £100. He said that he would pay for it with a £100 note which he had with him: it happened to be the only money he had at the moment, but he would wait while they sent it to the bank to ascertain that it was all right; he should really prefer doing this. They sent it to the bank and received answer that it was perfectly correct.
“‘Having paid for his bracelet, the bishop took it, and was just about to step into his carriage, when a policeman tapped him on the shoulder and said,‘Hallo, Jim! you’re up to your old tricks again, are you? You’ll just come along with me,’ and he brought him back into the shop. Hunt & Roskell said there was some mistake, that the gentleman was an American bishop, that he had just bought a £100 bracelet and paid for it with an excellent £100 note. ‘Just let me look at the note, will you?’ said the policeman. He looked at it and said, ‘Yes, it’s just as I thought; this note is one of a particularly clever batch of forgeries, which are very difficult to detect, and the man is no more a bishop than you are. We will go off to the police-station at once. I will take the note and go on with the prisoner in the carriage, and you must send your men in a cab to meet us and bear witness.’ So the policeman took the bishop and the bracelet and the note, but when Hunt & Roskell’s men reached the police-station, they had not yet arrived; and they have never been heard of since!’”
“April 15.—Dined with Mrs. Rogerson, daughter of my dear Mrs. Duncan Stewart. Irving was there. I ventured to tell him how I thought his play was spoilt by the changes he had recently made, andwhy, and he was quite simple, as he always is, not the least offended, and in the end agreed with me, and said he should alter the changes as I suggested, and send me a box that I might come and see the improvement. He said how, ever since he heard me tell a story at Lord Ducie’s, he had wished I should do something in public. He ‘did not know if I wanted money, but thought I could make any sum I liked.’ He ‘believed he could guarantee’ my making £8000 a year! Headvised my doing what he had intended doing himself when he had been ‘making a mere nothing of ten guineas a week, and feltthatcould not go on.’ He intended to have got Wilkie Collins to write him a story, and to take a room at the Egyptian Hall, fit it up in an old-fashioned way, sit down by the fire, and then take the audience, as it were, at once into his room and confidence. ‘But in your case,’ he said, ‘you need not apply to Wilkie Collins.’”
“April 16.—Miss Northcote’s wedding in Westminster Abbey. I had a capital place in a stall just behind Princess Louise and Princess Mary of Teck. The church was crowded, and though it was a bitter wind outside, it was quite glorious within, all the forest of arches tinted with golden sunlight. Arthur gave the blessingmagnificently, as he always does. There were 350 people at the breakfast afterwards, which was at Lord Beaconsfield’s house in Downing Street. There were endless little tables. I sat at one with Lady Aberdare, Lady Middleton, and young Lord Colchester. I was glad to see the dear little Lady Winifred Herbert again, growing up fast, but with the same sweet innocent expression, walking about with Jim Cranbourne, who is a charming boy.”
“April 23.—Dined with Lady Charlemont. Old Mr. Planché was there, and talked much about the favourable characteristics of the present Duke of Wellington; how before his father died he said how grief for his death would be aggravated by perpetual consciousness of his own name and position. ‘Thinkwhat it will be when the Duke of Wellington is announced and onlyIcome in!’ Poor Mr. Planché, celebrated as a wit and story-teller in former times, is becoming painfully aware of having outlived the patience of his auditors!
enlarge-imageCHANTRY OF HENRY V.CHANTRY OF HENRY V.[260]
“Lady Charlemont said, ‘Whenever I make averynaughty quotation from ‘Don Juan,’ I always preface it by saying, ‘As Dr. Watts touchingly observes.’”
“April 26.—Dined at Mrs. Stratford Dugdale’s. Lord Crewe was there, with the most extraordinary and diabolic-looking red flower in his button-hole. He always has one of these weird orchids, and delights to surprise people with them.”
“April 28.—A pleasant morning with Mrs. Hollond, Sir Hampton Lorraine, and others at Grosvenor House. The rooms were quite lovely, and the flowers more so—great blue-green bowls filled with cowslips; great glasses of blue bells, with a few yellow jonquils intermixed.
“Luncheon afterwards at Mrs. Duncan Stewart’s. Mrs. Rogerson told the story of a cat she had known who would lie on the rug with its head on the side of a little dog called Flossy. People said, ‘How selfish the cat is; she only lies there because it is warm.’ But Flossy died and the cat was missing. It was found on Flossy’s grave, and lay there all night. It was brought in and milk was given to it, but it refused to eat, and as soon as it was left alone in the room where it was shut up, it dashed straight through the window and went back to the grave again. If they took hot milk out to it at the grave, it ate it, but away from the grave it would eat nothing. It lay there day and night. At last they built it a little pent-house over the grave, and it lay there, partially sheltered, till, six weeks afterwards, it died.
“Mrs. Rogerson knew another story of a terrier anda cat, who were deadly foes and always quarrelling. The cat had kittens, and the kittens were all put out of the way and were buried. The cat was inconsolable and went mewing about the house. The terrier could not make it out, and followed her everywhere; he did not snap at her any more; on the contrary, he seemed to do all he could to console her. At last he had an inspiration. He found out where the kittens were buried, and scratched and scratched till he got them up, and one by one he brought the dead kittens and laid them down before the cat. It was a very small consolation to poor pussy, but she and the terrier never quarrelled again, and were the greatest friends as long as they lived.”
“May 2.—A pleasant party at Lady Leslie’s beautiful house to meet the Tecks. She looked more amenable than ever, yet the Princess all over.”
“May 4.—Dined with Sir Dighton and Lady Probyn in the strange houses built like the Tower of Babel by Mr. Hankey. Went to a quaint collection of anybodies and nobodies at Lord Houghton’s afterwards. He spoke of the ‘unexpected places in which gold is found’ in literature.”
“May 6.—To Lady Salisbury, whom I found in her bright sunny boudoir looking on the Park. Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice and Mr. Ralli came in and talked politics furiously. Lady Maude told me of Lord Sligo’s visit to Paris immediately after the siege, and how he had driven about in the same cab for some days, andthen found he had been sitting all the time on an explosive bomb which was under the seat. The cabman, when remonstrated with, as the slightest jolt might have made it explode, said he ‘had not left it at home, because he thought the children might get playing with it.’”
“May 11.—At dinner at Lady Jane Ellice’s I met Lady Waterford and Lady Folkestone.[261]The latter sang most beautifully and pathetically. Shefelt. ‘One cannot feel always,’ she said; ‘one cannot feel with an audience who say, “How sweet.” Lady Waterford told of Sir Philip and Lady Durham. Lady Durham died quite suddenly. She had been out in the garden the day before, seeing the gardener and ordering some bouquets she wanted. After her sudden death, Sir Philip found a paper in her dressing-box. It said—‘Something so very odd has happened to me, that I think I had better write it down. In the garden I saw a figure which beckoned to me and beckoned to me, and I followed it. I followed it a long way, and at last it reached the churchyard, and then it disappeared.’”
“May 12.—Dined at Mrs. Rogerson’s, where I took down the Countess Bremer, who has always lived at the Hanoverian Court. She is that ‘Margaret Bremer’ who is celebrated for her answer to the blind King, who loved to shock her by his improper stories. ‘What do you think of that, Margaret?’ he asked, after telling her one of his worst. ‘I think that your Majesty has a very clean way of telling a very dirty story,’ she replied.”
“May 15.—Dined at Sir John Shaw-Lefevre’s. Having two round tables made the party most pleasant. It included the beautiful and charming Lady Granville, Lady Russell, Lady Aberdeen, and Wallace of the Russian book.”
“May 17.—A party at Lord Houghton’s; every one there, from Princess Louise to Mrs. Anthony Trollope, a beautiful old lady with snow-white hair turned back. These crowded parties remind me of Madame de Staëls description—‘Une société aux coups de poing.’”
“May 26.—I have been for three days at Cobham, where the woods covered with bluebells were like expanses of Italian sky brought down and laid on the earth. There was a large party in the house—Lady Haddington and her bright Lady Ruth; Murray Finch Hatton and his wife, as delicate as a drooping lily; Meysey Clive, a charming natural fellow, and his Lady Catherine; Lord and Lady Pelham, &c. The life was most easy; we drew, read, talked, and showed the house to Lord and Lady Onslow, who arrived while touring in a four-in-hand.”
“May 30.—On Saturday I was at a pleasant party at Lord Houghton’s, meeting scarcely any one but authors, and a very odd collection—Black, Yates, and James the novelists; Sir Francis Doyle and Swinburne the poets; Mrs. Singleton the erotic poetess (Violet Fane), brilliant with diamonds; Mallock, who has suddenly become a lion from having written a cleversquib called ‘The New Republic,’ and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe with her daughter. I was introduced to Mrs. Howe, having asked Lord Houghton who was the charming, simply-dressed woman with the sensible face, and then found she was sister of my Roman friend Mrs. Terry. She wrote the hymn, singing which the troops took Pittsburg. We asked her about it. She said she could not help feeling the little annoyance so many felt on similar occasions—that she should be only known as the authoress of one thing, one little waif out of all her work, and that people should treat her as if she hadonlywritten that.”
“June 3.—I have dined several times with Miss Wright to meet the Charles Wilbrahams. She sings beautifully. He had much that was curious to tell about the project of a French engineer for deepening the course of the brook Kishon, so as to let in the Mediterranean. Kishon rises near Tabor, and if the Mediterranean could once pass the watershed, it would run down on the other side into the great hollow of the Dead Sea, which is now so far below its own level. The engineer, of course, had never thought of Ezekiel xlvii., in which the fishermen of Engedi, now some 3000 feet above the level of the sea, are described as casting in their nets.
“Mr. Wilbraham was amusing with some of his American experiences. He told of two young girls who were stopped going through a turnpike gate. ‘What are your charges?’—‘Half a dollar for man and horse.’—‘Well, then, just stand on one side, willyou, for we are two girls and a mare, so we’ve nothing to pay.’ He said he had asked an American at Florence what he thought of the Venus de Medicis. ‘Wal, I guess I’m not so partiklar overpowered by stone gals,’ was the reply.
“I constantly meet Froude the historian at Miss Wright’s, a somewhat shy, sardonic, and silent man. His sphinx-like character, the very doubt about him, makes him interesting: one never really knows what he would be at.”[262]
“June 4.—Dined at Lord Egerton of Tatton’s. Old Mrs. Mildmay told a rather improper story there, which was received with shouts of merriment. She was at a country-house where there was a very pleasant man named Jones, and there was also a lady who had a maid called Jones: the people in the house knew this, because there was a confusion about letters. The lady’s husband went away for the day, and, as she was going to walk to the station in the evening to meet him, the mistress of the house asked Mr. Jones to walk with her. When the train came in, the husband was not there, but just then a telegram was brought in. ‘Oh,’ said the lady, ‘Oh-o-o, I’m sure my husband is dead: I can’t open it.’—‘Nonsense!’ said Mr. Jones; ‘if he is dead, he cannot have sent you a telegram.’—‘Well, I can’t open it; I know it’s something dreadful—I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.’ So at last, Mr. Jones opened it for her and read it aloud, not seeing at once what it contained. It was—‘I amall right, unavoidably detained. If you are at all nervous,get Jones to sleep with you!’”
“June 6.—Lady Manners and her daughters drove me down to Osterley. The great wide park looked dark and dull under a leaden sky, the house gloomy and ghostly as Bleak House. The old Duchess, stumping about with her inlaid ebony stick, seemed part of the place. I dined at Sir Edward Blackett’s, a beautiful house with Raffaellesque and pink tapestry decorations, prepared for the Duke of Gloucester on his marriage with the Waldegrave, but never lived in by him.”
“June 7.—Dined with George Lefevre. Mr. Bright was there, said to be the man who reviewed me so unmercifully in theAthenæum, and I was very glad to see the kind of man he is. He talked incessantly, never allowing a word to any one else; still after a time one found out he was interesting. He talked most of Miss Martineau, then of Hawthorne with great praise—‘the kindest, most generous of men and friends.’ Of his son, Julian Hawthorne, he said that he had ‘written a book which it tookverylong to read.’”
“June 13.—An excursion with the Lefevres to the Rye House, which I knew so well in my boyhood. It was like spending an afternoon in Holland, so very Dutch are those long expanses of rich meadow-lands, those streams with their boats and tall water-plants. We sat in burning sunshine to draw the old terra-cotta tower, and then had tea and eggs and bacon in the garden of the little inn, which was covered with scarlet geranium in full flower up to the attic windows.”
“June 19.—The news of poor old Cousin Susan’s[263]death. It is the glueing down of another much-read page of life, which can never be seen again. I feel ashamed of not grieving more for one whom I have known so well, but have always more feared than loved. The agent wrote desiring me to come down at once, but, backed by Lady Barrington’s decision that I had better keep out of the way till the will was decided, I excused myself. Yet I am sorry not to be at the funeral, and the old house of many associations, and the little Beltingham chapel with its view over the gleaming Tyne, are very constantly in my mind. All the cousins are quite sure that I am the heir, but I do not think that it is so. Cousin Susan knew that I did not wish it, and I have always urged the claims of the Strathmore boys.”
“June 20.—I have received from Milligan the news of Cousin Susan’s will. It is exactly the will I begged her to make—all to Mr. Bowes for life, then to the Strathmores. These pleasant boys deserve their good fortunes. I would only rather she had selectedoneof them to have more definitely preserved her memory.”
“June 28.—After a party at Lowther Lodge, I went to Lady Marian Alford, whom I found with a very ancient aunt, Lady Elizabeth Dickens. Lady Marian showed me her drawings. There was one glorious sketch of a Roman model, yet most unlike a model. ‘She is,’ said Lady Marian, ‘the model who is so hated by the other models because of her stateliness.“She walks down the Corso as if it belonged to her,” they say. She had two beautiful children—a boy and a girl. Last time I went to Rome, I saw her alone. “Where is your boy?” I asked.—“Oh, dead,” she answered.—“And the girl?”—“Oh, dead,deadtoo,” she replied, pressing her hands to her forehead. And I pitied her, and I asked her about it, and she said, “I will tell you how it was.” And she told me how she was coming downstairs with her boy in her arms and the girl behind her, and that just as she reached the house-door, a church-bell began to toll. “E un giustiziáto!” said one of the neighbours. And then, she could not tell how, it was somehow borne in upon her that her boy—her son—might, if he grew up, also some day fall into sin, also some day, perhaps, even begiustiziáto; and she turned round to the Madonna on the wall, and prayed that, if it were to be so, if such agony were possible for her, that she would take her sonthen, that she would take him awaythen, from the evil to come. And her husband, who heard her, said angrily, “Che sono queste stragonfiáte;” and he beat her; but the Madonna had heard her, and that night her boy was taken ill, and in twenty-four hours he was dead.
“‘And then she said, “That night I went again to the Madonna, and I said, ‘You have taken my boy, and, oh! if I may ever havearrossirefor my girl, take the girl also, take her away in her innocence;’e la Madonna mi ha fatto anche questa caritá, and I, I am alone, but my children are safe.”’
“July 1.—To Holland House, most lovely in allthe freshness of new-mown hay, and the old elm avenue dewy from a shower. It was a delight to see Mrs. Augustus Craven, altered from the lovely ‘Pauline de la Ferronays,’ but still beautiful, and I had the happiness of finding that she liked to talk to me about her loved and lost ones.
“A very interesting dinner at Miss Davenport Bromley’s. Signor Francheschi described his life in Corsica, especially the weird women, who come like the Fates, as hired mourners, to bewail the dead, yet throw themselves so completely into their profession that they become quite absorbed in grief, and torrents of tears flow down their cheeks.
“One night he had to travel. In a desolate road he saw two strange ghastly horsemen approaching, with men walking on either side of their horses and holding them. The moonlight glared upon their fixed and horrid countenances. As they came near he heard the footmen talking to them. ‘We must hasten; they are waiting for you; they are even now lamenting you.’ Then he saw that the riders were dead. They were murdered men found by the highway, and had been set on horseback to be brought home. In Corsica it is the custom never to cease speaking to the dead.”
“July 7.—A capital party at Lowther Lodge to meet Princess Louise and Lord Lorne. The garden was illuminated with magnesium light, and looked both beautiful and—boundless!”
enlarge-imageLOWTHER LODGE.LOWTHER LODGE.[264]
“July 15.—Luncheon at Lady Combermere’s, whereLord Houghton described his experience of executions. He had been to numbers of those in Newgate. Up to the time of George III. the sign-manual was necessary for every execution, and it was an odd thing that George III., usually a humane man, used to hang every one. He would sit at the council-board and ask each of the ministers in turn whether a man was to suffer death. They would bow their heads in assent. Lord Melbourne was especially ready to do this when he was sitting at the council-board. One day, however, there was a case of a man who had murdered his wife under most brutal circumstances. The evidence was quite incontrovertible, and all weresurprised that Lord Melbourne, usually so ready, shrugged his shoulders and seemed to have the greatest difficulty in making up his mind to give an assent to the death-warrant. One of the ministers, in going out, asked why it was. ‘Why, poor man, those women are so damned provoking,’ said Lord Melbourne.
“Mr. Browning said he recollected seeing as many as twenty-one persons sitting together on the condemned bench in Newgate Chapel, many only for stealing a handkerchief. One day in chapel he was jostled by some one pushing in past him, and turned round annoyed. ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but I am going tosuffer,’ said the man.”
“July 12.—Monday was a most beautiful day for the party at Chiswick, for its beautiful Italian gardens with glorious cedars. All London was there, including the Prince of Wales, with his little boy George, and the Tecks.”
“July 29.—Since I wrote last the curious episode of Mrs. L. has occurred.
“On the 14th I left my lodgings in the afternoon to go to the Athenæum, when a tremendous cataract of rain came on, in which I took refuge in the covered entry of Pall Mall Place. A number of other people took refuge there also. Amongst them, I was attracted by the agonised face of a woman crouching in a corner—a lady, for so she seemed by her face, and in a certain degree by her dress; for though her gown looked as if it had been dragged through every Sloughof Despond in Europe, the rest of her dress seemed to belong to the better class. As for her expression, I cannot forget it, it was of such agonised, hopeless, bewildered despair. I suppose I looked pityingly at her, for she turned to me, and in sharp wolfish accents said, ‘I am not a beggar, I am not, I am only starving to death, I am starving todeath!’ I think I begged her to tell me what had brought her to such a pass; at any rate she told me—‘I am Mrs. L.’ To many this would not convey anything, but, from having always been occupied with architecture, it conveyed something to me, and I said, ‘What! the widow of L., the architect?’—‘Yes,’ she said, and she described in the same sharp, broken, gasping accents how she had been with her husband in Paris at the time of the siege, and how he had wished to get her away and had arranged for her escape to England, and how at the moment that he was parting with her and putting a purse into her hand to pay the expenses of her journey, a shell burst near them, and her jaw was blown off. ‘When I came to myself in the hospital,’ she said, ‘I found that the shell which had blown off my jaw, had blown my husband to pieces.’ She then described how she came to England, and how the Soane Museum, which takes care of the widows of architects, had given her a pension of £75 a year. ‘You wonder,’ she continued, ‘that, having this pension, I should have reached the condition I am in, but the fact is I have been a very wicked woman. When our pension is granted, we take a vow never to lend money, which is absolutely forbidden by the rules of the Museum; but a friend of minewas in great want, and I trusted her and became security for her, and she has absconded, and they have come upon me for the debt, and yesterday morning early all my things were seized, and I could not apply to the Museum, because then they would take away my pension, and I was turned adrift in the streets with nothing at all in the world.’ And then the poor woman corrected herself and said, ‘I have told a lie. I have not quite nothing in the world. I have a silk gown. I had that on when I was turned out, but I knew it would be worse for me to spend a night homeless in the streets in a silk gown, and I went to a servant I knew, and got her to take care of it for me, and to lend me the worst gown she had.’
“‘Since yesterday morning,’ she said, ‘I have tasted nothing whatever. You wonder I have not fainted. I have not done that because I am so dreadfully ill; I am in a burning fever. Yesterday I walked up to Hampstead, because there was a governess I knew there, and I thought she would help me; but when I arrived, I found her gone to Scotland with her family, and I walked all about Hampstead and Highgate, and the police insulted me, they did not protect me, they insulted me worst of all; and all through the day I have walked in the streets.’ I asked her, ‘Have you no friend in the world?’—‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I have one person who is a friend; at least there is one person who I think would help me if I could get to her, because my mother was once very kind to her, and that is Mrs. H. of the Mansfield Park School at Uxbridge, and to her, if I could have even a cup of coffee to strengthen me, I should set out and walk.’
“I got her to go and have some tea, which, as I foresaw, made her violently sick; and then, when she was a little better, I sent her by the train to Uxbridge. Immediately returning to the Athenæum, I wrote a lady who lives close to Uxbridge, briefly telling her the story, that Mrs. L. would probably arrive very ill, perhaps almost dying, and begging her to go at once to Mansfield Park and look after her.
“This was on Saturday. On Sunday there is no postal delivery. On Monday morning I received two letters. One was from Mrs. H., overwhelmingly grateful for what I had been able to do for Mrs. L., saying that she had received benefits from her mother which nothing could ever repay, and that she had been only too thankful to receive and care for the daughter. The other letter was from the lady to whom I had written, saying that there was no such place as Mansfield Park, that there was no such person as Mrs. L., and enclosing letters from the police and post-office at Uxbridge certifying this. I explained this in my own mind by remembering that, while telling me her story under the entry, Mrs. L. had said, ‘There is a little affectation about the name of Mansfield Park; it misleads people, for after all it is only a farmhouse.’
“On Monday evening the servant at my lodgings said that Mrs. L. herself had called: I was gone out to dinner. The next morning before I was up she came again, and waited till I was dressed.
“She was then quite calm and happy. She told how, when she got to Uxbridge, after being dreadfully ill in the train, her heart failed her—‘perhapsafter all Mrs. H. would not receive her.’ However, she described with tears the touching kindness of Mrs. H.—that she had washed her, dressed her, put her in her own bed, tended her, and finally given her a cheque for £20, which she showed me. Her brother also, a travelling wine merchant in France, whom she had not seen for years, and to whom she had written without a hope of finding him, had also telegraphed that he was on his way to her assistance.
“She was overwhelmingly grateful to me.
“Then I asked her of her past. She said she had been the daughter of a planter in Havannah, but her fine voice induced her, against the will of her family, early to take to a public life. At the Exhibition of 1851 she (as Mademoiselle Mori) sang the anthem of which Jenny Lind sang one verse. She afterwards became a sculptress, and studied under Gibson at Rome (and she described his peculiar studio accurately). She was his only female pupil, and had the charge of his studio. He taught her his mode of colouring marble, and in her statue of ‘Waiting for the Spring,’ she used it in colouring the primroses and violets in a girl’s lap. The Queen bought this statue in the Exhibition building of 1862 before the Exhibition opened. Then she married Mr. L. and went to Paris.
“‘While I was in Paris,’ she said, ‘a very curious thing happened to me. I gave birth to three boys at once. When such an event occurs in France, the sovereigns are always god-parents, and the Emperor and Empress were pleased to have the christening of my three boys in Notre Dame, where they stoodsponsors at the font.’—‘And are the boys all dead?’ I said. ‘Oh, dear no, they are all alive.’—‘Then where in the world are they?’ I said. ‘Oh, they live with the Empress: she would not part with them, and my three boys are her little pages. Now they are gone with her into Spain to see her mother.’
“She then described how the Empress often sent her money to go down to Chislehurst to see her boys, and how the Prince Imperial often called to see her, and called her ‘Grannie’ because of the boys, or left her a £10 note. ‘I should have gone at once to the Empress had she been in England,’ said Mrs. L., ‘but I would have died rather than have begged from any one: I would have died on a doorstep.’—‘Then what made you confide in me?’ I asked. ‘Oh, surely you must see that,’ she replied. ‘Of course you must see that. It was the likeness. Of course people must have told you of the great, the wonderful likeness before. I was quite prepared for death, I had made up my mind to die, and then God in His great mercy sent the likeness of my Emperor to me; and I knew then that God did not mean me to die yet.’
“She wants to paint a picture in memory of what she calls my ‘saving her.’[265]
“On the 18th, I had an interesting visit to Apsley House, for which the Duke had sent me the following order:—‘Admit Mr. Hare to see Apsley House on any dayon which the street outside is dry.’ The street was quite dry, and, moreover, I went in a cab andarrived perfectly spick and span; but the servant laughed as he produced a pair of huge list slippers to go on over my boots, before I was allowed to go into any of the rooms. ‘His Grace left these himself, and desired you should wear them when you came.’ Yet the floors of Apsley House are not even polished.
“On the 19th I went to Lady Ducie’s, to see the Macdonald family act the Pilgrim’s Progress. They go through the whole of the second part, George Macdonald,[266]his wife, his twelve children, and two adopted children. Christiana (the eldest daughter) was the only one who acted well. Nevertheless, the whole effect was touching, and the audience cried most sympathetically as Christiana embraced her children to go over the great river.