‘Gut ist der Herr, gut ist der Herr.’
‘Gut ist der Herr, gut ist der Herr.’
“Of the New Testament scenes, the leave-taking with the family of Bethany is perhaps the most pathetic. It is an exquisite sunset scene. Huge olive-trees stretch their gnarled boughs overhead and are embossed against the amber sky, in the distance the village of Bethany stands out in the soft blue mists of evening. Through the sunset comes the Christ in lingering last words with the sisters and Lazarus, and there, under the old trees, is their last farewell, touching indescribably, after which the weeping family return to Bethany, and he goes away, a solitary figure upon the burnt hills in the twilight, to his death at Jerusalem.
“At Ober-Ammergau one for the first time realisesthe many phases of the trial—in the house of Caiaphas, of Annas, of Pilate, of Caiaphas again, of Pilate again; and all is terribly real—the three crosses, for instance, so really heavy, that none but a very strong man can support them. One thinks better of Pilate after the performance, through which one has watched his struggles—his weary, hopeless struggles to save the life of Christ. Almost every act, nearly every word, is directly taken from the Gospel history. Amongst the few touches added is that of Mary the mother, accidentally arriving at Jerusalem, meeting the other Marys in one of the side streets and talking of the condemnation of a Galilean which has just taken place. Then, as the street opens, suddenly seeing the cross-bearing in the distance, and thrilling the whole audience with anguish in her cry of ‘It is my son: it is Jesus!’ The Last Supper is an exact reproduction of Leonardo’s fresco, and many of the other scenes follow the great masters.
“How thrilling were the words, how almost more thrilling were thesilences, of Christ.[490]
“The evening shadows are beginning to fall as we see Christ raised on the cross. He hangs there for twenty minutes, and most indescribably sublime are the words given from thence. When all is over, it is so real, you think thatthis timedeath must really have taken place. The three crosses, the bound thieves, the fainting women, the mounted centurion, the soldiers drawing lots, all seem to belong to real events, enacted,not acted. The deposition of the dead Christ on the white sheet is a vast Rubens picture.[491]
“The resurrection is more theatrical, but in the final scene, where the perfect figure of the spiritual Christ is seen for the last time, he goes far away with his disciples and the Marys, and then, upon Olivet, in the midst of the group relieved against the golden sunset, he solemnly blesses his beloved ones, and whilst you gaze rapt, seems to be raised a little, and then you look for him and he is not.
“Each one of the four thousand spectators then sits in a vast sense of loneliness amid the silent Bavarian hills. The long tension is over. The day is lived out. The Master we have followed we can follow no longer with material sight. He has suffered, died, and risen from the grave, and is no longer with us: in the heavens alone can we hope to behold Him as He is.”
After leaving Ober-Ammergau, Hugh Bryans and I went with the Lowthers and Mrs. Ridley to Rothenburg, still an unaltered diminutive mediaeval city, and the most interesting place in Germany. Then I paid a delightful visit to my dear Bunsen friends at Carlsruhe and Herrenalb, and on our way backto England we saw the marvellous Schloss Eltz, going thither in a bullock-cart up the bed of the river from the attractive little inn at Moselkern, kept by a very old man and woman, sitting upon the very border-land of heaven.
During the varied occupations of this summer of 1890 I was asked to write biographies of several members of my family for the “Dictionary of National Biography,” and did so. My articles appeared, but greatly altered. The editor had a perfect right to condense them at his pleasure, but I was astonished to findadditions. Bishop Hare was saddled with a third son, Richard Hare, “an apothecary of Winchester,” who was the father of James Hare, afterwards called the “Hare with many friends.” This son of my great-great-grandfather is entirely imaginary; our family was never in the remotest degree related to Richard or James Hare. It gave one a terrible impression of how the veracity and usefulness of a work of really national importance might be spoilt by the conceited ignorance of an editor; and to add such trash to an article published with the signature of another was as unjustifiable as it was abominable.
ToMiss Leycester.
“Woodbastwick Hall, August 6, 1890.—I have enjoyed a visit at Cobham very much. We had only the usual circle of guests, but summer days in that beautiful place are a delicious halt in life. Thence I went to Osterley, which looked bewitching, with its swans floating in sunshine beyond the shade of the old cedars. Those radiant gardens will now bloom through five years unseen, for Lord Jersey has accepted the Governorship of New South Wales, which can only be from a sense of duty, as it is an immense self-sacrifice, though he and Lady Jersey can never fail anywhere to be a centre of all that is most interesting and useful. To English society her absence will be a terrible loss, as, with the utmost simplicity of high breeding, she is the one person left in England who is capable of holding asalonand keeping it filled, to the advantage—in every best sense—of all who enter it. Nothing can be more charming than the relation of Lord and Lady Jersey to their children, and the fact that the latter were always of the party, yet never in its way, was the greatest testimony to their up-bringing. The weather was really hot enough for the luxury of open windows everywhere and for sitting out all day. The party was a most pleasant one—M. de Staël, the Russian Ambassador; Lady Crawford, still lovely as daylight, and her nice daughter Lady Evelyn; Lady Galloway, brimming with cleverness; M. de Montholon, French Minister at Athens; Mr. and Mrs. Frank Parker, most amusing and cheery; Sir Philip Currie, General Fielding, &c.Everything was most unostentatiously sumptuous and most enjoyable. On Monday we were sent in three carriages to Richmond, where we saw Sir Francis Cooke’s collections, very curious and worth seeing as it is, but which, if his pictures deserved the names they bear, would be one of the finest galleries in the world. Then, after a luxurious luncheon at the ‘Star and Garter,’ we went on to Ham House, where Lady Huntingtower showed the curiosities, including all the old dresses kept in a chest in the long gallery. Finally, I told the Jersey children—splendid audience—a long story in a glade of the Osterley garden, where the scene might have recalled the ‘Decameron.’ I was very sorry to leave these kind friends, and to know it would be so long before I saw them again.
“I came here with the Lowthers, finding kind Mrs. Cator surrounded by three sons and eight daughters. This is a luxurious modern house, replacing one which was burnt. Only a lawn and trees separate it from the Norfolk Broads, and we have floated down the Bere in a delightful sailing-boat, through the huge thirsty water-plants, to the weird remains of St. Benet in the Holme, of which the Bishops of Norwich are still titular Abbots.”
“Sept. 6.—I have enjoyed a visit to Holmbury (Mr. Leveson Gower’s), now let to Mr. Knowles of theNineteenth Century—a lovely place with a delightful view over Surrey plains. I like its homelike character better than the larger place of Mr. Ralli, whither we went yesterday to a garden-party. Mr. Knowles is most delightful company, full of pertinent and neverimpertinent questions. He has talked much of Tennyson, with whom his family are very intimate, and who used often to stay with him when he first married and lived on Clapham Common. Tennyson speaks every thought without respect of persons. ‘What fish is this?’ (at dinner).—‘Whiting.’—‘Yes, the meanest fish there is.’ Yet his kindness of heart is such, that when his partridge was afterwards given him almost raw, he ate steadily through it, for fear his hostess might be vexed.
“After dinner Tennyson will sit smoking his pipe by the chimney-corner. That is his great time for inspiration, but he will seldom write anything down. ‘Thousands of lines just float up this chimney,’ he said one day. Sometimes he will go into the drawing-room and recite something he has just composed. Some of these poems Mr. Knowles has written down. If asked to repeat them again, Tennyson can never do it in the same way, something is always altered or forgotten: so hundreds of his poems are lost. One day lately, when he was unusually melancholy, his nurse, whom he greatly likes (he always has a nurse now), took him to task. ‘Mr. Tennyson, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for grumbling in this way: you ought to be expressing your gratitude for your recovery from your bad illness by giving us something—by giving it to the world.’ And he took her reproof very well, and went away to his own room, and in half-an-hour had written his lines ‘Crossing the Bar,’ which he gave to her.
“Tennyson was very rude to Mrs. Brotherton, a neighbour at Freshwater. The next day he came toher house with a great cabbage under each arm. ‘I heard you liked these, so I brought them.’ It was his idea of a peace-offering.
“My ‘France’ is just appearing, under the guardianship of Ruskin’s friend Allen. I think it is good. I have certainly worked hard at it. The woodcuts are beautifully engraved, and with the letterpress I have even more than usual followed Arthur Young’s advice to authors—‘To expunge as readily as to compose.’”
ToMiss Leycester.
“Oct. 14, 1890.—I went on the 27th to Worth, the ultra-luxurious house of the Montefiores, where the servants have their own billiard-tables, ballroom, theatre, and pianofortes, and are arrogant and presumptuous in proportion. It was a pleasure to drive over to the picturesque old manor-house of Gravetye, which belongs to Mr. W. Robinson, who wrote ‘The English Flower-Garden;’ but except the thickets of Michaelmas daisies, I was disappointed in his flowers, for he only attempts those which belong to the naturally existing soil. A far more beautiful garden is that of Mrs. Rate at Milton Court, near Dorking, whither I went afterwards. John Evelyn’s own house of Wotton is much altered, but this, which was the dower-house of the Evelyns, remains as it was in his time, and most lovely are the ranges of brilliant old-fashioned flowers relieved against the yew-hedges. Mrs. Rate took me a long drive over the back of Leith Hill, with views of unspeakable beauty: abroad, there is nothing like such radiance and wealth of woodland, such exquisitedelicacy of misty distance. I was put down at the station on my way to Highcliffe, to which I hastened in answer to an unusually urgent and affectionate invitation from its dear lady, bidding me on no account to miss coming at that time; at another time it might not be possible. I found the dear Lady Waterford sadly ailing, but I hope I was able to be useful to her during some days of extreme quietude and much reading aloud. She had lately been to the Queen at Osborne, crossing the Solent in theElfin, seated between the two great bags—‘as big as large arm-chairs’—containing the Queen’s letters for the day. ‘The Queen would have my drawings in. It was dreadful! for you know how a big portfolio slides off the table, and the Queen looked at them all so closely, and I was afraid the portfolio would slip and catch hold of her nose, and then I should have been sent to the Tower or something. There was one of the drawings she liked so much that I gave it to her. It was of Time with his scythe over his shoulder. A quantity of little children were gambolling and sporting in front and beckoning him onwards, but behind were a number of old people trying to hold him back; for one wanted to go on with his book, another to finish a drawing, and so on, and so they were clinging to his skirts as he was striding away.’
“Lady Waterford cannot understand the physical signs of age which seem to be suddenly attacking her: yet spiritually she is more than ever living in Eternity’s sunrise. Truly those who have lived much at Highcliffe or Ford can never ‘think this life a low and poorplace in which to seek the Divine Master walking to and fro.’[492]
“I felt sadder than usual in leaving Highcliffe this time, as if it might be a last visit, yet it is difficult to imagine life without what has given its greatest interest and charm. The dear lady was down before I came away, though it was very early, and I retain a beautiful picture of her standing in the conservatory under the great brugmantia laden with its orange flowers. She came with me through the rooms, and I looked back at her, and found her still looking after me, and so, somehow walked away sadly down the dewy lanes to the station, with a desolate feeling that I might see her no more.
“I went on to Babraham (the Adeanes’), whence I drove with Charlie to spend the afternoon at Audley End—what a magnificent place! Afterwards I had two days at pleasant, merry Hardwick.”
ToLouisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
“Nov. 10, 1890.—On October 20 I went to Tatton, meeting a large and pleasant party for the week, and one sees every one there to perfection, Lady Egerton knowing so well how to unlock a portal of communication—often of friendship—with just the right key. Truly, indeed, might Lady Egerton say—
‘Je suis né pour plaire aux nobles âmes,Pour les consoler un peu d’un monde impur.’[493]
‘Je suis né pour plaire aux nobles âmes,Pour les consoler un peu d’un monde impur.’[493]
The country is black but always interesting. Little Knutsford was sanded all over in patterns (as in India)for a wedding: it is a custom which dates from King Alfred, who met a wedding-party as he was passing through the town and threw down some sand, saying that he hoped the descendants of the marriage might be as numerous as its grains. The patterns of sand—flowers, love-knots, &c.—are made through the spout of a teapot. One day the conversation fell upon the little hamlet of Flash in the Cheshire hills. Pedlars from Manchester used to waste their time there in drinking on their way to London, whence the term ‘flash-goods!’ We drove to Holford Hall, passing on the outskirts of Tabley many of the brown many-horned sheep, which are said to have descended from some washed ashore from the Armada. I was glad to go again with Lady Egerton to Arley, where the beautiful gardens, really modern, have all the picturesqueness of antiquity. It is typical of the kindness which old Mr. Warburton shows in everything that all round the roads on his estate he leaves open spaces with plenty of brambles for blackberry gatherers.
“Lord Donington told Lady Egerton that when he went to live where he does now, his two young boys were taught by an admirable English governess. One day, having observed the housekeeper carefully locking the door of a spare bedroom, she casually said, ‘Do you always keep the doors of the unused bedrooms locked?’—‘No,’ said the housekeeper, ‘only this one;’ and she invited the governess to look into it, saying that there was a mystery about it. Some one always seemed to come to sleep there, whom she could not imagine, and she believed some trick was being playedupon her. As an experiment, she said she would be very much obliged if the governess would take away the key after the room was locked, and keep it till the following morning. The next day they went together to the room, which showed every appearance of having been slept in, yet the window was carefully fastened inside, and there was no other possible entrance.
“Some time after, a young man came to shoot with the boys, and was put into that room. In the morning he came down with a very scared look, and said he was very sorry, but he must leave. Being much pressed, he allowed that he had been dreadfully frightened. He had kept his candle by his bed to finish a book he had been reading, and, looking up, he saw an old man sitting by the fire, who eventually rose, came, looked into the bed, and seeing him there, walked away. ‘And,’ said the visitor, ‘thatis the man!’ pointing to a picture on the wall of an ancestor who had died centuries before.
“Amongst the guests at Tatton were a Mr. and Mrs. Crum, most delightful people. He had made a fortune as a manufacturer, and they now live at Broxton Old Hall, a dower-house and beautiful old black and white manor of Sir Philip Egerton’s, whither I went to visit them. Thence I saw Mr. Wolley Dodd’s wonderful garden, the most interesting herbaceous collection in England. Mr. Wolley, well known as an Eton master, married Miss Dodd, the heiress of Edge, and of a family which has lived there from Saxon times, and of which a member was knighted at Agincourt; and he has turned a farmyard, a quarry,a pond, a wood, &c., into the most astonishing of gardens, in which each genus of plants is provided with the exact soil it loves best, and grows as it never does elsewhere. Near Edge we saw the noble old black and white house of Carden. We also saw the once splendid church of Malpas, utterly ruined by its so-called ‘restoration’ under a Chester architect named Douglas—old pavements, old pews ruthlessly destroyed, and a vestry by Vanbrugh only spared for want of funds to pull it down. A miserable window commemorates Reginald Heber, once rector, and a lime avenue leads to his rectory. I was several days at Drayton as I returned—most beautiful and interesting.
“C. writes to me for advice, but I feel more and more diffident about giving any. I found such a capital bit about this in a novel called ‘Margaret Maliphant,’ the other day. The old servant Deborah says, ‘What you think’s the right way most times turns out to be the wrong way; and when you make folks turn to the right when they was minded to turn to the left, it’s most like the left would have been the best way for them to travel after all. I’ve done advisin’ long ago; for it’s a queer tract of country here below, and every one has to take their own chance in the long-run.’
“Howtiresome the shibboleth which many clergymen talk in church is! Mr. —— has been dwelling upon the exceedingsinfulness of sin. Wemayfind a meaning for this, but is it in fact different from thebeautifulness of beauty, which we should call nonsense?”
ToLouisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
“Nov. 30, 1890.—I had a pleasant visit at St. Audries, Sir A. Acland Hood’s beautiful place. It is a red sandstone house, enfolded amongst green hills, chiefly covered with golden or russet woods or rich growth of arbutus, and in front is the sea. In the morning-room are Turner’s water-colour pictures of Sussex (including one of Hurstmonceaux), executed for Mr. Fuller of Rosehill, of whom, with two other fortunes, Lady Hood was the heiress. In a corner of the hall are baby-clothes of three boys beneath the portrait of another remote ancestor, Edward Palmer of Ightham Mote. One Whitsunday morning a servant came in and said, ‘Sir, your lady has presented you with a son.’—‘The most joyful news you could have brought me!’ said Mr. Palmer. The following Sunday the servant came again: ‘Sir, your lady has presented you with another son.’—‘Oh, God bless my soul! you don’t say so?’ exclaimed Mr. Palmer. But the third Sunday the servant came in with ‘Sir, your lady has presented you with another son.’ It seemed quite too much; but the babies all lived, and grew up to be very distinguished men, being all knighted for their valour by Henry VIII.[494]I was delightfully taken about—to Crowcombe, where the Carew heiress has marriedCranmer Trollope, and where there are noble Vandykes and a fine Titian portrait: to Quantockshead, with a delightful old hall and carved chimney-pieces: and to Nettlecombe, where the old hall of the Catholic Sir Alfred Trevelyan nestles close to the parish church. Sir Alfred described how the ‘church restorers’ at Bideford had turned all that was worth having out of the church. A figure of a man was bought by an old woman, but she thought it was too undressed and kept it—in bed! There it was found with its head comfortably laid on the pillow, a figure of St. John Baptist. The old woman had some notion of its value, as she asked £600 for it; but it was well worth that, as it was a priceless Donatello!
“All about this neighbourhood it is the same thing. Sir A. Hood had been to see a friend of his, and remarked, ‘What a pretty and peculiar flower-stand you have.’—‘Yes,’ said the friend, ‘and an interesting one too, for it is the font of Ongar church, in which Gunthran the Dane was baptized, and by which King Alfred stood as his sponsor.’
“Mr. W. Neville, who was one of the guests at St. Audries, had been to hear Dr. Parker, of the Congregational Hall, preach. He began his sermon by saying, ‘My brethren, I have received a letter from a gentleman saying that he intends to be present to-day and to make a philosophical analysis of my discourse to you. I am sure you will all sympathise with me in the embarrassment and nervousness which I must experience on such an occasion, though certainly I may derive some little comfort from the fact that my correspondent spells “philosophical” with anf.’
“Mr. Neville told me that he had asked a boy in his parish what was the difference between the head and the stomach. ‘The head has brains in it, if the owner has any,’ replied the boy; ‘the stomach has bowels; they are five—a-e-i-o-u.’
“It was only a drive from St. Audries to Dunster, where I spent three days, and which is, as Charlie Halifax has often described it, quite the most beautiful place in the south of England. It is an old castle, of which the earlier parts are of Edward I., on a great height, rising from glorious evergreen woods, with a view of the sea on one side and russet moorland on the other: in the depth, on one side, a tossing crystalline river and old pointed bridge; on the other, the town with its ancient market-house and glorious church. I slept in ‘King Charles’s Room,’ in a great carved bed. The cottages in the villages around are covered with myrtle, coronilla, and geranium.
“Mrs. Stucley, one of the Fanes of Clovelly, was at St. Audries. She told me that one Sunday their clergyman preached entirely on Thermopylae, and wound up by saying that the Spartans were much the bravest men that ever lived; that there was never any battle like Thermopylae. Afterwards, at luncheon, Colonel Stucley said he did not agree with what the preacher had said, for all the Thespians perished, whilst the Spartans survived: had the Thespians survived, they might have proved as good as their rivals.
“Three weeks afterwards the clergyman surprised the Stucleys by saying, ‘Well, my case is proved. I’ve the opinion of the greatest Greek scholar of the age—Mr. Gladstone—that it is as I stated it, that theSpartans were the bravest.’ He had actually written to Mr. Gladstone, and produced the answer.
“Afterwards Mrs. Stucley was dining out in London, and went down with Mr. Godley, one of Gladstone’s secretaries. She said, ‘I am afraid my name may not be unknown to you?’—‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Thermopylae,’ and went on to tell that when one of the secretaries opened the letter, they all discussed the question, and not being able to agree, took it in to Mr. Gladstone, who was so excited by it that he left his finance and all else, and walked about for three hours talking of nothing but Thermopylae.
“Except the Lefevres and Brasseys, I think my Dunster visit is the only time I have ever stayed in a Radical house; but its mistress, Mrs. Luttrell, with the support of her own family twelve miles off, holds out as a Conservative.
“From Somersetshire I went to Hatfield, arriving just after sunset. You could only just see the red colouring on the majestic old house, but all the windows blazed and glittered with light through the dark walls; the Golden Gallery with its hundreds of electric lamps was like a Venetian illumination. The many guests coming and going, the curiously varied names inscribed upon the bedroom doors, give the effect of having all the elements of society compressed under one roof. It was pleasant to meet Lady Lytton, beautiful still, and with all the charm of the most high-bred refinement. Another guest was Count Herbert Bismarck. Lady Salisbury had spoken of him as a fallen power, greatly broken by his fall, and so had enlisted our sympathies for him, but he quenched them by his loud authoritativemanner, flinging every sentence from him with defiant self-assertion. He was especially opinionated about Henry VIII.’s wives, utterly refusing to allow that Anne of Cleves did not precede Anne Boleyn. He is a colossal man and a great eater, and would always fill two glasses of wine at once, to have one in reserve. At dinner he was rather amusing about the inefficiency of doctors, and said that the only time when cause follows effect was when a doctor follows the funeral of his patient. Lord Selborne, who was sitting near, spoke of Baron Munchausen, how he took the whole College of Physicians up in his balloon, and kept them there a month, and then, when he sent them down again out of pity for their patients, found all their patients had got quite well in their absence, but that all the undertakers were ruined.
“The life of a Prime Minister’s family is certainly no sinecure. Lady Salisbury and her daughter have constantly to go off to found or open charities of every description. Lord Salisbury is occupied with his secretaries to the very last moment before breakfast and luncheon, into which he walks stooping, with hands folded behind him, and a deeply meditative countenance, and by his side the great boar-hound called ‘Pharaoh’—‘because he will not let the people go;’ but when once seated as a host, he wakes up into the most interesting and animated conversation.
“How cold it is! but, as Mr. Bennett has been saying in Curzon Street Chapel, ‘Winter is like the pause of the instrument; not the paralysis, but the preparation of Nature.’ These sermons at Curzon Street are one of the greatest interests of London now. LastSunday’s was on ‘anonymous sins.’ ‘How many there are,’ said the preacher, ‘even in fashionable life, who say, “Lord, I will follow Thee, I mean to follow Thee ... but ...;”’ and proceeded to describe how ‘the future of the world depends upon its unknown saints.’ Very different are these from the nonsensical sermons one often hears about ‘the awful circumstances of the times,’ interlarded with prophetic texts.
“There has been a long and amusing Review of my ‘France’ in theSpeaker, reproaching me with my Roman Catholic tendencies, as evinced in the length of my account of Ars and its Curé, the writer being evidently unconscious that for every English traveller who lingers at Lyons, at least a hundred (Catholics) turn aside to Ars. This Review is noticed in an American paper, which says, ‘As a matter of fact, Mr. Hare is a well-known Low Church clergyman, whoposes at clerical meetings as an advanced Evangelical!’ The other Reviews seem to have been mostly written by men who knew nothing of the subject, and who have not taken the trouble to know more of the book than, at most, the first chapter. One of them asserts that ‘the illustrations, said to be taken from original sketches, are evidently all from photographs’ (!); but ‘j’ai pour principe que le radotage des sots ne tire pas à conséquence,’ as Ernest Renan says.”
ToLouisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
“Dec. 7, 1890.—I have had an interesting visit to the De Capel Brookes in the old grey Tudor house of Great Oakley Hall in Northamptonshire. ThenceI saw two of the finest houses in England. Rushton (Mr. Clarke Thornhill’s) is a great Tudor house with a screen like that of a Genoese palace. In the garden is ‘Dryden’s Walk,’ and the three-cornered lodge built by Richard Tresham (with Lyveden and the town-hall of Rothwell) as a strange votive offering to propitiate the Trinity for success in the enterprise of the Gunpowder Plot. Rockingham is even more interesting. Once the hunting-palace of King John, it was inhabited ever afterwards by the English kings till the time of Henry VII., since which the Watsons have possessed it. The position is splendid, with a wide view of map-like Northamptonshire country, and it is approached by a gateway between noble Plantagenet towers. All additions have been made in the best taste, and the great drawing-room is magnificent. King John’s treasure-chest remains in the hall. There is a noble Sir Joshua, and a most beautiful Angelica Kauffmann, probably her finest work. Other interesting pictures came to the Watsons through marriages, many of Lord Strafford and his surroundings through the marriage of his daughter with Lord Rockingham; those of Henry Pelham, the Duke of Newcastle, &c., through the daughter of the former.
“How interesting is the Parnell crisis! At Miss Seymour’s I met a Countess Ziski, who talked of how curious it was that abroad, if a woman misconducts herself, she is boycotted, but no notice is taken of the misconduct of the man: here, if a woman misconducts herself, an easy-going society makes excuses for her, but the man is cashiered for ever.
“The Dean of Chester says that a friend of his was once baptizing a child of six. All went well, till it came to making the sign of the cross, when the child exclaimed, ‘If you do that again, I’ll hit yer in the eye.’ At a recent Board-school examination ‘Education’ was defined as ‘that which enables you to despise the opinions of others, and conduces to situations of considerable emolument.’ I think it was Miss Cobbe who defined ‘Conscience’ as ‘that which supplies you with an excellent motive for doing that which you desire to do, and which fills you with self-satisfaction when you have done it.’”
ToW. H. Milligan.
“Llandaff, Dec. 18, 1890.—I was a week at Ammerdown, meeting Lord and Lady Temple, the Phelips’s of Montacute, and a charming Miss Devereux, Lord Hereford’s daughter.... The Dean of —— had been out with a shooting party in the neighbourhood. ‘I hope you sent some pheasants the Dean’s way,’ said the owner of the ground to a keeper. ‘Oh yes, that I have, and his holiness has been pepperin’ away as stiff as a biscuit.’
“Here at Llandaff it has been interesting to meet Mr. Herbert Ward of the African Stanley rearguard, a most frank, simple, and evidently most truthful fellow, who speaks with great moderation of the leader of the expedition, to whom they owed so much of suffering, misery, death, and slander.
“Have you never remarked how hypnotism is described in Wisdom xvii.?”
ToLouisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
“Honingham, Norfolk, January 8, 1891.—I enjoyed my Christmas visit to the Lowthers, though it was rather spoilt by what novelists would call the incipient agonies of a cold, which has about attained its perfection now, and I am glad to be in this warm house of the hospitable Ailwyn Fellowes’s, where I am well looked after.
“I heard such a capital story of Bishop Magee the other day. He was in a carriage on the Great Western with two young clergymen, one of whom began, and went on violently abusing the Bishop of Peterborough by name, without observing who he was. At Swindon the Bishop got out to have some soup. When he was gone, the other curate said, ‘How could you go on like that? couldn’t you see thatwasthe Bishop of Peterborough?’—‘Why didn’t you stop me?’—‘Well, I did all I could; I’m sure I kicked you hard enough.’—‘WhatcanI do?’—‘Well, if I was you, I should apologise.’ So, when the Bishop came back, the young man said, ‘I’m very sorry, my Lord, to have said all I did in your presence. I am sure I had not an idea who you were, and if there is anything you especially objected to, I should be very glad to withdraw it and apologise.’—‘Well,’ said the Bishop, ‘there was one thing, there certainly was one thing which annoyed me very much: youwouldcall me Majee; now my name is Magee!”
Alas! the shadows which I had observed during my last visit to my dear friend Lady Waterford were now gathering very thicklyaround her. She had failed rapidly from the time of her removal from Highcliffe to her Northumbrian home, and was no longer able to answer me; but I still wrote to her.
ToLouisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
“Athenaeum Club, March 1, 1891.—I am thankful still to hear of you from many common friends, and quite satisfied without hearing from yourself, and rejoice to think of you as able to enjoy drives. I think you will often find out, by carriage, points which will be almost new to you, and I can imagine how lovely the effects must have been in the hazy hollows of the Cheviots in these last days, when even here sunshine has broken through the fog in which London was shrouded for a week. It is Sunday, and I am just going to Curzon Street Chapel. I would not miss one of Mr. Bennett’s sermons on any account.... The one which struck me most was on the brief text ‘Nothing but leaves!’—so many bear those, quite a great growth of them, and no more: I am sure I do.”
“March 16.—Two days ago I ran in from this Club to luncheon at the Brownlows’ close by, and had such a pleasant visit.
“I went first into the large room they call the library on the ground floor—the most enchanting of rooms, hung all round with noble Italian pictures, some of them bequeathed by Miss Talbot, and bright with many flowers; some of your prettiest drawings on the table; Westminster Abbey, faint, grey, and impressive,beyond the leafless trees outside the window. Here I found Lord Pembroke, always as genial, pleasant, and charming as he is handsome.
“The staircase is quite beautiful, chiefly designed by Lord Brownlow, but partly taken from the old palace-inn at Parma, with friezes and alcoves, and lighted by a copy of Michelangelo’s lanthorn. In the wide gallery above we found Lady Brownlow. Her two sisters came in, and then we had luncheon.
“Afterwards we went to the pretty little sitting-room, full of beautiful things, which is called Lady Lothian’s. What an attractive group the sisters made—the pale, spiritual, abstracted Lady Lothian, the very type of refined gentleness: Lady Brownlow, with her noble Bronzino-like head and colouring, and the figure of a classic caryatide: Lady Pembroke, less interesting at first, but so intenselygrande dame; and then the two husbands leaning over them, on such happy, devoted terms with all three, were such noble specimens of humanity. The conversation there is delightful—so un-Londony, so original, so high-minded and high-meaning.
“To-day I have been to Edward Clifford’s studio to see his drawings and his Burne-Jones’s—all of the usual lean, limp, scared-woman kind. What was more interesting was the handsome, radiant, bright-eyed elderly woman who was looking over the drawings: it was the famous Madame Novikoff. I had much talk with her, and found her most simple and attractive, and not the least an alarming person.”
It was on the day after writing this that I first truly realised that my dearest Lady’s illnessmust be fatal. Our Lady was told that it must be so, that the end might come any day, any hour. At first she shed a few natural tears, and said, “I thought I should have lived to seventy-seven, as my mother did,” and then added sweetly, “But why should I mind, since God so wills it? tell me how it will be.”—“Perhaps in your chair, just as you are sitting now.”—“Oh, that will be well—so quiet, so well.” One day soon afterwards she wished to go out into the garden when it was not thought good for her. “Perhaps you might die when you are out.”—“And why should it not be like that? If God called me in the garden, it would be as well as in any other place.” I could not go to Ford, because Lady Waterford was not allowed to see any one unnecessarily, but for many weeks succeeding my whole heart was there with the faithful friend, the kind sympathiser, the constant correspondent of thirty years. One heard of the gradual increase of the disease: of her laying aside all painting and writing: of her reading prayers to her servants for the last time; but still talking in her wise and beautiful way of all things “lovely and of good report,” laughing brightly over old recollections: then of her lying constantly on a sofa, always rejoicing to see those she loved,but mistaking her younger relations for their mothers, dear to her in the long ago. Often also others, those dearest to her, who had gone before, appeared to be present with her as angel ministrants to cheer and comfort. The sweet face of old Lady Stuart, her mother, seemed visibly present: she imagined her old governess to be in the house, and bade Miss Lindsay to be sure to arrange for the drives which she knew the old lady liked. Through the flowers upon her table she constantly saw her sister Charlotte, Lady Canning, in all her loveliness. Her sense of the companionship of this beloved sister was so vivid, and she spoke of her so often, that at last one of those present thought it necessary to say to her, “Dear lady, Lady Canning died very many years ago.” “Oh, did she? How delightful! then I shall soon be able to talk to her. I see her now, but soon we shall talk as we used to do.” One evening there was a beautiful sunset. Our dear Lady sat watching it. “It is like the coming of the Lord,” she said. Surely the watchers at Ford realised General Gordon’s words—“Any one to whom God gives to be much with Him, cannot even suffer a pang at the approach of death. For what is death to a believer? It is a closer approach toHim whom, even through the veil, he is ever with.”
Mr. Neville, the rector of Ford, prayed with her daily. “How I wish that others might have the solace this is to me,” she said, with her peculiar emphasis on the word “solace.”
Lady Brownlow was with her three days, and was her last visitor: she came away saying it had been like being in a beautiful church, so pervading was the sense of holiness. “Oh, darling Adelaide! goodness and beauty, beauty and goodness: those are ever the great things!” were our dear Lady’s last words to her, as she took her hands and gazed at her earnestly. They were very characteristic.
ToLouisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
“April 12, 1891.—How often my thoughts go to Ford, and how well I can imagine all that surrounds you there—the snowy Cheviots, that pretty little garden in the bastion tower, the warm bright library; most of all the constant care of Miss Thompson and Miss Lindsay. I am so glad I know it so well, and have so many memories of happy visits—in the old castle, in the cottage with dear Lady Stuart, in the renewed castle since. I seem to see you this bright Sunday morning, and hope it is as bright with you. Inwardly I am sure the sun is shining, and that the Saviour you have loved so well is very near you in hours of weakness. I often wish I could do something—anything—for you, but I can only think of you with ever-grateful love, and pray that all may be peaceful and smooth with you.
“Lady Bloomfield is feeling the loss of her old friend Mrs. Hogg,[495]but she had the most gentle and peaceful end, just talking to her sister and daughter very calmly and quietly without any pain or fear, and then falling sweetly asleep and not waking....
“‘The Blessed Trinity have you in his keeping,’ as Margaret Paston wrote in 1461.”
“April 26.—Another week of bitter cold and biting winds, and I fear you will have been the worse for them. Your state of suspension from so much that you used to be able to do so constantly recalls that of my dearest mother—in winter—for many years; but when the limbs seemed least helpful, and eyes and hands least active, all happy memories of her wealthy past seemed brighter to her, and she was always able to find comfort in the feeling that ‘they also serve who only stand and wait.’ ... I know that, to the weakest, Christ can give such blessed assurance of His love, that in the joy of it all pain and fear are unfelt and vanish. Oh, would that I could do anything for you, but you know how much I always am your most affectionate and grateful
“A. J. C. H.”
This letter was read to our Lady: then I was told to write no more. The end was verynear, and each hour became filled with a tensity of waiting for the silent summons. There were none of the ordinary signs of an illness. Our Lady suffered no pain at all, scarcely even discomfort. Her former beauty returned to her, only in a more majestic form, the signs of age seeming to be smoothed away, except in the grey hair half hidden by soft lace. She rarely spoke, and noticed little except the beauty of the flowers by which she was surrounded. But when she did speak, those with her knew that, with entire and humblest prostration of self at the foot of the Cross, her faith and hope had never been brighter. She looked beyond the snowy hills into a sky of unearthly beauty. And so, peacefully, radiantly, our dearest Lady fell into the ever-smiling unconsciousness, in which, on May 11th, she passed away from us to join the beloved and honoured who are at rest with Christ. As I think of her, some lines come back to me which I read to her on my last morning at Ford:—
“Now for all waiting hoursWell am I comforted,For of a surety now I seeThat, without dire distressOf tears or weariness,My Lady verily awaiteth me:So that, until with her I be,For my dear Lady’s sakeI am right fain to makeOut of my pain a pillow, and to takeGrief for a golden garment unto me;Knowing that I, at last, shall standIn that green garden-land,And, in the holding of my Lady’s hand,Forget the grieving and the misery.”[496]
“Now for all waiting hoursWell am I comforted,For of a surety now I seeThat, without dire distressOf tears or weariness,My Lady verily awaiteth me:So that, until with her I be,For my dear Lady’s sakeI am right fain to makeOut of my pain a pillow, and to takeGrief for a golden garment unto me;Knowing that I, at last, shall standIn that green garden-land,And, in the holding of my Lady’s hand,Forget the grieving and the misery.”[496]
I should have gone to Ford afterwards, but our Lady only died on Monday, and it was late on Wednesday night before I heard that she was to be buried on Thursday afternoon, so to arrive in time was impossible. Miss Lindsay wrote to me how her coffin was carried on the shoulders of her own labourers to the churchyard, how all the village and all her tenantry came to her funeral, with the few intimate friends within reach, and how Helmore’s music was sung. It was well the end was at Ford. Highcliffe is a rapidly changing place, and it has already passed to comparative strangers; but at Ford she will always betheLady Waterford, “the good, the dear Lady Waterford.”
There our Lady rests, within view of her own Cheviots, surrounded by the affectionate Border people, to whom their “Border Queen” was their greatest pride and interest and joy. An aching void will remain in our hearts through life, but it is only for our poor selves. When one thinks of her, earth fades and vanishes, and if—when one is alone—one allows oneself to think, to dwell upon all the glory of what shewas, an all-pervading sense of peace and holiness comes upon one, and one seems, for the moment, almost to pass into the Land of Beulah—into the higher life, without worry or vexation, where sheis.
When her things were being distributed, the distributors were surprised to hear that “the odd man” most earnestly begged for something: it was for her old sealskin jacket. It was thought a most singular request at first, but he urged it very much: he should “treasure the jacket as long as ever he lived.”
enlarge-imageTOMB OF LADY WATERFORD, FORD.TOMB OF LADY WATERFORD, FORD.
He had been walking by her donkey-chair in the road, when they found a female tramp lying in the ditch, very ill indeed. Lady Waterford got out of her chair and made the man help her to lift the poor woman into it. Then she took off her own jacket, and put it upon the sick woman, and walked home by the side of the chair, tending and comforting her all the way. “But it was not my Lady’s putting her jacket on the woman that I cared about,” said the man, “but that she did not consider her jacket the least polluted by having been worn by the tramp;she wore it herself afterwardsas if nothing had happened.”