Chapter VI: Oxford Life (2)

The Bishop of St. David's, Thirlwall, was staying at the Rectory when I was at home. Excellent as he was, I was horribly afraid of him, for a more repellent, freezing manner than his I never saw. I hated the Rectory now more than ever, but was more than ever devoted to Lime. What a vision I have now of its quietude in those hot summer days, only the wind whispering in the old abele-trees and rippling the waves upon the pool, and of the fresh morning smell of the pinks and roses and syringa, bowed down by the heavy dew. Our intensely quiet life would have suited few young men, but when my dear mother was well, and the Rectory not too aggressive, I was always happy. Each day was a routine. Called by our fat John at seven, when Fausty's black nose was poked in my face, I woke to see the sun shining on the little pictures on the wall and the old-fashioned china ornaments, and to hear Joe Cornford whetting his scythe on the lawn under the windows. I was downstairs before my mother appeared in her lilac dress to breakfast and prayers. Then we walked on the terrace. I read--first aloud to her, then to myself--then went with her round the field and to the girls' school. At one was dinner; at half-past two we drove out--Fausty with us. Then my mother lay on the sofa and I read: then came our tea-supper, and I read aloud again, and mother sang such old songs as "Hohenlinden," "Lord Ullin's Daughter," "Auld Robin Gray," or the Russian "Pojalite." Then, after prayers, I helped her upstairs, and, at her little round table, she would say a little short prayer with or for me out of her own heart, and I came down to write till the melancholy sound of the mice in the wainscot drove me to bed also. On my return to Oxford in October, I published in "The Penny Post" my first story--"The Good Landgravine," about Elizabeth of Thuringia--quite as important to me then as the publication of one of my large books is now--and I obtained ten shillings for it with great pride! I had much pleasure in a visit from Arthur Stanley this term, and Mr. Jowett--"the great Balliol tutor"--continued his kindness and his voluntary lessons to me, though I must often sorely have tried his patience. I was, no doubt, a terrible little prig, and I have just found, amongst old letters, a very kind one from him, written in the vacation, urging me to make an effort to conquer "my conceit, which was not vanity, but a constant restlessness about myself."[92] Jowett was--tiresome perhaps, in some ways, but--one of the most unselfish persons I have ever known. By his own life, as in his sermons, he constantly inculcated disinterestedness, sympathy, and the love of God. The Christian doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, &c., he utterly ignored, out of the pulpit as in it, and I believe Arthur Stanley quite agreed with him in his heart, though he had not quite "the courage of his opinions."

"Reading men" used to congratulate me upon my intimacy with Jowett, little knowing of how admonitory a nature were all his conversations with me. Amongst the freshmen of the term were two with whom I became great friends afterwards. One was Frederick Forsyth Grant,[93] whom we always called "Kyrie," because when he went to spend the long vacation at Athens (of all places in the world), he was called from his generosity "Kyrie Dora"--the lord of gifts. The other was a peculiarly boyish-looking fellow, with a remarkably lithe, graceful figure, and a little Skye-terrier to which he was devoted. I remember the shy longing I had to make friends with him, and my first visit after dinner--finding him drinking coffee with his little dog by his side: it was George Sheffield, my constant friend afterwards for very many years.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_University College, Nov. 18, 1853._--This morning I was asked to
breakfast with the Master, whose courteous placidity is such that
he looks as if turmoil, contradiction, and reform could never
approach him. He received us kindly but very solemnly, with an old
Miss Plumptre in a rich satin gown by his side. There was an awful
pause at first, while we stood in a row, and the Master and his
sister addressed an observation in turn to each of us, never going
out of the regular line. At breakfast I thought they talked
pleasantly, though the others pronounced it '_very_ flat.' When he
considered we had stayed long enough, the Master[94] pulled out his
watch and said, holding it in his hand, 'Good-bye, Mr. Gregson,'
when Mr. Gregson felt he must get up and walk out, and we all
followed. The Masters of colleges are really almost nonentities,
but have an absurd idea of their own dignity. The Provost of Oriel
the other day wrote--'The Provost of Oriel[95] presents his
compliments to the Dean of Christ Church,[96] and wishes to know
what time the examination will be;' and in answer was snubbed by
'Alexander the Great presents his compliments to Alexander the
Coppersmith, and informs him that he knows nothing about it.'

"I breakfasted the other day at Wadham with a most extraordinary
man called R., whose arms and legs all straggle away from his body,
and who holds up his hands like a kangaroo. His oddities are a
great amusement to his friends, who nevertheless esteem him. One
day a man said to him, 'How do you do, R.?' and he answered, 'Quite
well, thank you.' Imagine the man's astonishment at receiving next
day a note--'Dear Sir, I am sorry to tell you that I have been
acting a deceptive part. When I told you yesterday that I was quite
well, I had really a headache: this has been upon my conscience
ever since.' The man was extremely amused, and showed the letter to
a friend, who, knowing R.'s frailties, said to him, 'Oh R., how
could you act so wrongly as to call Mr. Burton "Dear Sir"--thereby
giving him the impression that you liked him, when you know that
you dislike him extremely?' So poor R. was sadly distressed, and a
few days later Mr. Burton received the following:--'Burton, I am
sorry to trouble you again, but I have been shown that, under the
mask of friendship, I have been for the second time deceiving you:
by calling you dear sir, I may have led you to suppose I liked you,
which I never did, and never can do. I am, Burton, yours &c.!'"

The winter of 1853 was a very sad one. I found my dearest mother very feeble and tottering, and it was a constant grief to me to see the patient, worn look of illness in her forehead as she leant back in her chair. She would occupy herself, however, as usual in cutting out clothes for the poor, saying that her own sufferings from the cold forbade her not trying to prevent theirs. I scarcely ever ventured to leave her for a moment as long as we stayed at home, always inventing an excuse to walk behind her whenever she went upstairs, for fear she should suddenly fall. On the 20th of December, the Stanleys being absent at Canterbury, we went up to their empty house in Grosvenor Crescent. Here the winter was much preferable to that at Lime, and on the whole my mother suffered less; but my life was that of a constant sicknurse, scarcely ever away from her. When I was, I generally went in the dusk to the National Gallery--too late to see the pictures, but I liked to wander about in the almost empty rooms, and to feel that they were there, and knowing no one in London myself, to make imaginary histories about the one or two figures which still lingered, finding the same odd refuge as myself from the turmoil of the town. In reading my journal of this winter, I can recall the days of intense anguish I went through, seeing before me, as I thought, the realisation of Dr. Chapman's verdict that softening of the brain had definitely set in for my dearest mother. As the year closed in gloom, I looked forward with terror to what the next would bring, to the probability of not having another year to _surround_ her with my love, to ward off every sorrow. Whilst conscious that my character had certainly expanded under the happier life I had been leading at Oxford, and that the interests of my friends there had become as near my heart as my own, I realised that all I could be and do for my own mother was no mere duty, it was the outpouring of my whole soul; for I did not entertain an angel _unawares_. At the New Year my mother's attacks increased; often she was unable to see and became almost unconscious. Yet by the 21st of January she had rallied so much that I was able to return in tolerable comfort to Oxford.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_University College, Jan. 22, 1854._--My dearest mother will often
have thought of her child in his college home: and _how_ often have
I thought of my own mother, and longed to be by her to watch and
take care of her still. I feel the blank on the staircase, now my
hand has nothing to do in helping you. It is a comfort that you
have plenty of nurses to take care of you; but the great comfort of
all is that you now no longer _want_ me.

"I have new rooms now in the 'New Buildings.' They are not very
large, but the sitting-room has the charm of a beautiful oriel
window overhanging the High Street, with a cushioned seat all round
and a small writing-table in the middle: and the view is
delightful."

I think it was during the Easter vacation of this year that a day of national humiliation was appointed on the outbreak of the Crimean War. Severely indeed was the fast-day observed at Hurstmonceaux. At Lime we had nothing to eat but bread, and for dinner some boiled sea-kale, a vegetable which I have ever since associated with that time; and I have a vivid remembrance of the serio-comic face of our butler, John Gidman, when we were ushered into the dining-room, with the table laid out as usual, and, when the covers were taken off, only that amount of food was displayed. In theory Aunt Esther was always urging the duty not only of a saintly, but of an ascetic life, and it was not her fault that the only cell where she could herself carry out in practice her austere views was an orange-scented library lined with rare folios or precious works of art.

This, the second year of my Oxford life, was very enjoyable. Not intending to read for honours, for which I had no ambition (as my mother, unlike many parents, would have had no pleasure whatever in my obtaining them, but, on the contrary, would have regarded them as a most undesirable "snare"), I had plenty of time for other things, and pursued those studies of French, Italian, History, and Archæology which have been far more really useful to me than any amount of Latin and Greek. My devotion to George Sheffield showed itself, amongst other ways, in writing a story every week, which was presented to him on Sunday. Many of these stories, though I forget them, must, I now believe, have been rather interesting. Lady Sheffield used to keep them, and, as they all referred to things and people long past, George and I used to make schemes of publishing them some day in a black cover adorned with a white skull and cross-bones, under the title of "Dead Dust,"--an idea which, I am thankful to say, was never carried out. With Troutbeck and Duckworth I used to attend and make copious notes of the lectures of Professor Philips on Geology, which sometimes assumed a peripatetic form.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Oxford, June 9, 1854._--At half-past ten yesterday, Troutbeck,
Duckworth, Bowden, and I, met the Professor and twenty-eight
fellow-geologists at the station. The Professor was dressed in a
queer old brown suit, and we were all armed with hammers, and
baskets to carry provisions and bring back fossils. We took the
train to Handbro', on the outskirts of Blenheim Park, and no sooner
arrived there than the Professor, followed by his whole lecture,
rushed up the railway bank, where he delivered a thrilling
discourse on _terrebratulæ_, which are found in that place, and for
which we all grubbed successfully immediately afterwards. And in
that extraordinary manner we perambulated the country all
day--getting on a few yards, and then stopping to hear a lecture on
some stone the Professor had spied in the hedge, or which one of
the party had picked up in the road. Greatly did we astonish the
villages we passed through. 'What _be's_ you all come
professionising about, zur?' said one old man to me. We had
luncheon in the remains of a Roman villa with mosaics."

"In the evening we went to the Professor's 'Soiree.' Here I found
it much more amusing to listen to his sister's discourse about
'poor dear Buckland--my friends Whewell and Sedgwick--my dear
friend Faraday--my very celebrated uncle, and my also celebrated
brother,' than to attend to the Professor himself, who was
exhibiting photographs of the scenery and geology of the moon."

Amongst the remarkable persons whom I frequently saw in my earlier Oxford life was the venerable Dr. (Martin Joseph) Routh, President of Magdalen, born 1755, who died in 1854, in his hundredth year. He would describe his mother as having known a lady who had met Charles II. walking round the parks at Oxford with his dogs. He had himself seen Dr. Johnson "scrambling up the steps of University." In him I myself saw a man of the type of Dr. Johnson, and of much the same dress, and even ponderous manner of speaking. I remember Goldwin Smith once asking him how he did, and his replying, "I am suffering, sir, from a catarrhal cold, which, however, sir, I take to be a kind provision of Nature to relieve the peccant humours of the system." His recollections of old Oxford extended naturally over the most immense period. Sir George Dasent has told me that the President once asked him, "Did you ever hear, sir, of Gownsman's Gallows?"--"No, Mr. President."--"What, sir, do you tell me, sir, that you never heard of Gownsman's Gallows? Why, I tell you, sir, that I have seen two undergraduates hanged on Gownsman's Gallows in Holywell--hanged, sir, for highway robbery."

A few years before the President's death, when he was at Ewelme, his living in the country, his butler became insane and had to be sent away. When he was leaving, he begged to see the President once more, "to ask his blessing," as he said. The President received him in the garden, where the man, stooping as if to kiss his hand, bit it--bit a piece out of it. "How did you feel, Mr. President," said Sir G. Dasent afterwards, "when the man bit your hand?"--"Why, at first, sir," said the President, "I felt considerably alarmed; for I was unaware, sir, what proportion of human virus might have been communicated by the bite; but in the interval of reaching the house, I was convinced that the proportion of virus must have been very small indeed: then I was at rest, but, sir, I had the bite cauterised." It was often observed of Dr. Routh that he never appeared on any occasion without his canonicals, which he wore constantly. Some ill-disposed undergraduates formed a plan which should force him to break this habit, and going under his window at midnight, they shouted "Fire." The President appeared _immediately_ and in the most terrible state of alarm, but in full canonicals.

It was only forty-eight hours before Dr. Routh died that his powers began to fail. He ordered his servants to prepare rooms for a Mr. and Mrs. Cholmondeley, who had been long since dead, and then they felt sure the end was come. They tried to get him upstairs to bed, but he struggled with the banisters as with an imaginary enemy. He then spoke of pedigrees, and remarked that a Mr. Edwards was descended from two royal families: he just murmured something about the American war, and then he expired. He left his widow very ill provided for, but the college gave her a handsome income.

On reaching home in the summer of 1854, all the anxieties of the previous winter about my mother's health were renewed. She was utterly incapable of either any physical or any mental effort, and my every minute was occupied in an agony of watchfulness over her. I felt then, as so often since, that the only chance of her restoration was from the elasticity of foreign air, and then, as so often since, was my misery and anxiety increased by the cruel taunts of my aunts, who protested that I was only trying to drag her away from home, at a sacrifice to her comfort, from a most selfish desire for my own amusement. However, when a short stay at Southborough and Eastbourne seemed rather to increase than cure the malady, the absolute decision of her doctor caused the talked-of journey to be accomplished, and we set out for Switzerland, accompanied by Charlotte Leycester,--my mother, as usual, being quite delighted to go abroad, and saying, "I have no doubt as soon as I reach Boulogne I shall be quite well,"--a result which was very nearly obtained. We lingered first at Fontainebleau, with its pompous but then desolate château, and gardens brilliant with blue larkspurs and white feverfew--the commonest plants producing an effect I have seldom seen elsewhere. A pet trout, certainly of enormous age, and having its scales covered with a kind of fungus, was alive then, and came up for biscuit: it was said to have belonged to Marie Antoinette. At Chalons we took the steamer down the Saône, and a picture that dwells with me through life is that of the glorious effect, as we entered Lyons, of the sun suddenly bursting through the dark thunderclouds and lighting up every projection of roof and window in the tall houses which lined the quay and the bright figures beneath. I have often been at Lyons since, but have never cared for it as I did then, when we stayed long enough to enjoy S. Martin d'Ainay, and the picturesque ascent to the Fouvières and noble view from its terrace, and to marvel at the vast collection of votive offerings, memorials of those who prayed to the Virgin in danger and were protected by her, while we wondered where the memorials of those were who invoked her and whose prayers were _not_ answered. My mother went straight from Lyons to Aix-les-Bains by _voiturier_, but I lingered to see the beauties of Vienne, and followed by steamer up the Rhone and Lac de Bourget with my Southgate friend Walter Portman.[97] We found Aix terribly hot, and generally spent the evenings by or on the lake, where one day my mother, Lea, and I were in some danger, being caught in a tremendous _burrasco_. Thence a most wearisome journey _voiturier_ took us from Aix to Geneva, a place for which I conceived the most intense aversion, from its hot baking situation, and the illiberal and presumptuous "religion" of its inhabitants. While there, in a hotel facing the lake, I was called up in the middle of the night to Lea, who was very alarmingly ill, and while attending to and trying to calm her, was roused by shrieks of "Fire" in the street, and saw the opposite house burst into flame. Alarm-bells rang, engines were summoned, crowds arrived, and only a change in the wind saved us from destruction or flight. We moved afterwards to the Hôtel des Etrangers, a house in a damp garden near the lake. Here we were seated almost alone at the little _table-d'hôte_ when we heard the most extraordinary hissing and rushing sound, like a clock being wound up, and a very little lady entered, who seemed to be impelled into the room, followed by her husband. On reaching her chair, several loud clicks resulted in her being lifted into it as by invisible power! It was Mrs. Archer Clive, the then celebrated authoress of "Paul Ferroll," who had no legs, and moved by clock-work.

While at Geneva, I saw many of its peculiar celebrities, especially M. Gaussen and M. Merle d'Aubigné, the historian of the Reformation, whose real name was only Merle, the sequence having been adopted from his former residence. He had a very striking appearance, his hair being quite grey, but his shaggy eyebrows deep black, with a fine forehead and expression. Another person we saw was M. Berthollet, with an enormous head. It was with difficulty that any of these persons could be convinced that our sole object in coming to Geneva was not to see a certain pasteur, of whom we had never even heard. We visited Ferney, which thrives upon the unpleasant memory of Voltaire, who had a villa there, in which we saw the tomb of--his heart! The inn has as its sign a portrait of him in his French wig.

We spent a pleasant afternoon at Colonel Tronchin's lovely villa. He was a most excellent man, and one could not help seeing how nobly and unostentatiously he employed his large fortune for the good of others. Yet one could not help seeing also how many of his followers put up their religious scruples like an umbrella to ward off whatever was not quite to their liking--how "No, I could not think of it; it would be against my conscience," became at Geneva, as elsewhere, very liable to be said in pure selfishness.

My mother's sufferings from the heat led to our going from Geneva to Chamounix. On the way we slept at St. Martin. As I was drawing there upon the bridge, a little girl came to beg, but beggars were so common that I paid no attention to her entreaties, till her queer expression attracted me, and a boy who came up at the same time described her as an "abandonnée," for her father was in prison, her sister dead, and her mother had deserted her and gone off to Paris. The child, who had scarcely an apology for being clothed, verified this in a touching and at the same time an elf-like way--grinning and bemoaning her sorrows in the same breath. Charlotte Leycester gave her four sous, with which she was so enchanted that she rushed away, throwing her hands into the air and making every demonstration of delight, and we thought we should see no more of her. However, in going home, we found her under a wall on the other side of the bridge, where she showed us with rapture the bread she had been able to buy with the money which had been given her. An old woman standing by told us about her--how wonderfully little the child lived on, sleeping from door to door, and how extraordinary her spirits still were. It was so odd a case, and there was something so interesting in the child, that we determined to follow her, and see where she really would go to sleep. To our surprise, instead of guiding us through the village, she took her way straight up the woods on the mountain-side, by a path which she assured us was frequented by wolves. It was very dark, and the place she led us to was most desolate--some châlets standing by themselves in the woods, almost at the foot of the mountain; the glass gone from the windows, which were filled up with straw and bits of wood. Meantime we had made out from the child that her name was Toinette, daughter of François Bernard, and that she once lived in the neighbouring village of Passy, where her home had been burnt to the ground, a scene which she described with marvellous gesticulations. She seemed to have conceived the greatest affection for Charlotte. When asked if she knew that it was wrong to lie and steal, she said, "Rather than steal, I would have my head cut off, like the people in the prisons. I pray every day, and my prayer shall be always for you, Madame."

A great dog flew out of the cottage at us, but Toinette drove it away, and called out a woman who was standing in the doorway. The woman said she knew nothing of Toinette, but that she had implored to sleep there about three weeks before, and that she had slept there ever since; and then the child, caressing her and stroking her cheeks, begged to be allowed to do the same again. The woman offered to go with us to another house, where the people knew the child better. On arriving, we heard the inmates at prayers inside, singing a simple litany in responses. Afterwards they came out to speak to us. They said it was but for a very small matter François Bernard was imprisoned, as he had only stolen some bread when he was starving, but that, if he came back, he could do nothing for Toinette, and as her uncles were idiots, there was nobody to take care of her: if we wished to do anything for her, we had better speak to the Syndic, who lived higher up the mountain; so thither we proceeded, with Toinette and all her female friends in our train.

It was a strange walk, by starlight through the woods, and a queer companionship of rough kind-hearted people. Toinette, only seven years old, laughed and skipped over the stones, holding Charlotte's gown, and declaring she would never leave her. We had expected to find the magistrate living in a better house than the others, but it was like its neighbours--a little brown châlet by the side of a torrent. The Syndic was already in bed, but Madame, his wife, speedily got him up, and we held a parley with him on the wooden staircase, all the other people standing below. He said that there were no workhouses, no orphan asylums, and that though it was a bad case, the commune had no funds; school did not open till October, and even if Toinette got work there was no lodging for her at night. However, when Charlotte promised to clothe her, he was so much enchanted with the "grandeur de sa charité," that he said he would consult with the commune about Toinette. Meantime, in the morning Charlotte bought her some clothes, and settled something for her future; but before we left we saw that she must not be too much indulged, as she asked Charlotte, who had given her a frock, shoes, and hat, to give her also some bonbons and a parasol!

We heard of Toinette Bernard for some years afterwards, and Charlotte Leycester sent annual remittances for her; but eventually she absconded, and utterly disappeared like a waif.

On the 1st of August I left my companions at Chamounix to make the circuit of Mont Blanc, but the weather was horrible, and most of the time the mountain-tops were hidden in swirl and mists; the paths were watercourses, and the châlets where I slept with my guide, Edouard Carrier, were piercingly cold and miserable--especially that of Motets, where there was nothing to eat but potatoes; no furniture whatever, nothing but some rotten straw to lie upon; no glass and no shutter to the window, through which an icy blast blew all night from the glacier, though the air of the filthy room was quite dense with fleas. Travelling in these parts is quite different now, but I have a most wretched recollection of the long walks in the cold mist, no sound but the cry of the marmots--yet one always had a wish to go on, not back.

Delightful was the change as we descended upon Courmayeur, with its valleys of chestnut-trees and its noble view of Mont Blanc, and Aosta with its Roman ruins. In returning, I was overtaken by a tremendous snowstorm at the top of the St. Bernard, and detained the whole of a most tedious day in the company of the kind priests (monks they are not) and their dogs. During this time sixty travellers arrived in turn and took refuge. We all dined together, and saw the hospice and the Morgue, which is a very awful sight: the snow has so perfectly embalmed the bodies, that they retain all their features, though quite black; the hair also remains. In one corner was a woman hugging her baby to her breast as the death silence overtook her. We all went down through the snow in a regular caravan, and I joined my mother at Villeneuve and went with her to Clarens.

Railways make travelling in Switzerland, as elsewhere, so easy now, that it is difficult to realise how long and tedious the journey to Visp was when I next left my mother to go to Zermatt. On my way I visited the old mountain-perched cathedral of Sion, then one of the most entirely beautiful and romantic churches in the world, now utterly destroyed by a "restoration," from which one might have hoped its precipitous situation would have preserved it. I walked in one day from Visp to Zermatt, and thence made all the excursions, and always alone. The Gorner Grat is much the finest view, all the others being only bits of the same. It is a bleak rock, bare of vegetation, far from humanity. Thence you look down, first by a great precipice upon a wilderness of glaciers, and beyond, upon a still greater wilderness of mountains all covered with snow. They tell you one is Monte Rosa, another the Weiss Horn, and so on, but they all look very much alike, except the great awful Matterhorn, tossing back the clouds from its twisted peak. It is a grand view, but I could never care for it. The snow hides the forms of the mountains altogether, and none of them especially strike you except the Matterhorn. There is no beauty, as at Chamounix or Courmayeur: all is awful, bleak desolation. In memory I fully echo the sentiment I find in my journal--"I am very glad to have seen it, but, if I can help it, nothing shall ever induce me to see it again."

It was a long walk from the Riffel Berg to Visp (34 miles), whence I proceeded to the Baths of Leuk, where the immense tanks, in which a crowd of people, men, women, and children, lead an every-day life like ducks, up to their chins in water, were a most ridiculous sight. Sometimes you might find a sick and solitary old lady sitting alone in the water on a bench in the corner, with her hands and feet stretched out before her; but for the most part the patients were full of activity, laughter, and conversation. They held _in_ the water the sort of society which once characterised the pump-room at Bath: the old people gossipped in groups, the young people flirted across their little tables. Each person possessed a tiny floating table, on which he or she placed handkerchief, gloves, flowers, smelling-bottle, newspaper, or breakfast. In one of the tanks some nuns were devoutly responding to a priest who was reciting the litany; but generally all the people were mingled together during their eight hours of daily simmering--sallow priests, fat young ladies, old men with grey beards, and young officers with jaunty little velvet caps stuck on the back of their heads. Generally they sate quite still, but sometimes there was a commotion as a whole family migrated to the other side of the bath, pushing their little tables before them; and sometimes introductions took place, and there was a great bowing and curtseying. The advent of strangers was a matter of great excitement, and you saw whole rows of heads in different head-dresses all uniformly staring at the new-comer: but woe betide him if he came upon the causeways between the tanks with his hat on his head. I had been warned of this, however, by the _conducteur_ of the omnibus. "Oh! qu'ils crient! qu'ils crient! qu'ils crient!"

I left Leuk on the 18th of August to cross the Gemmi Pass, with a boy carrying my knapsack. It was very early morning. The Gemmi is a grass mountain with a perpendicular wall of rock overhanging it, up which the narrow path winds like a corkscrew, without railing or parapet--at least it had none then--and an appalling precipice below. On this path it is most unnecessary to take a false step, but a false step must be fatal. It was an exquisitely clear, beautiful morning, and high up on the mountain-side a large party might be seen descending towards us. I did not see them, but I believe the boy did. We had just reached the top of the grassy hill and were at the foot of the precipice when there was a prolonged shouting. The whole mountain seemed to have broken out into screams, which were echoed from the hills on every side. I said, "Is it a hunt?"--"Nein, nein," said the boy with great excitement, "es ist ein Pferd--ein Pferd muss übergefallen sein." But then, in a moment, came one long, bitter, appalling, agonising shriek, which could be uttered for no fall of a horse--there was a sudden flash--not more--of _something_ between the light and the precipice, and a crash amid the stones and bushes beside us--and "Oh, ein Mensch--ein Mensch!" cried the boy, as he sank fainting on the ground.

Another moment, and a French gentleman rushed wildly past, his face white as a sheet, his expression fixed in voiceless horror. I eagerly asked what had happened (though I knew too well), but he rushed on as before. And directly afterwards came a number of peasants--guides probably. The two first looked bloodless, stricken aghast: it is the only time I ever saw a person's hair stand on end, but then _I did_, though they neither cried nor spoke. Then came one who sobbed, and another who wrung his hands, but who only said as he passed, "Ein Mensch--ein Mensch!" One of the peasants threw a cloak over the remains, and two guides cried bitterly over it. Strange to say, the body was that of a "garçon des bains" serving as a guide: he had jumped over a little stone in his descent, had jumped a little too far, and fallen over. For one awful moment he clung to the only fir-tree in the way--the moment of the screams--then the tree gave way, and all was ended.

I knew that if I did not go on at once the news would arrive at Thun before me and terrify my mother; but it was terrible, with the death-shriek ringing in one's ears, to follow the narrow unprotected path, and to pass the place where trampled turf and the broken fir-tree bore witness to the last struggle. An old German professor and his wife had left Leuk before us, and had heard nothing of what had happened. When I told them at the top of the mountain, they knelt on the grass, and touchingly and solemnly returned thanks for their safety. Then I met Theodora de Bunsen with Sir Fowell and Lady Buxton going down, and was obliged to tell them also. Awfully in sympathy with our sensations is the ghastly scenery at the top of the Gemmi--the black lake, which is frozen all the year round, and the dismal, miserable inn beside it, which is the scene of Werther's horrible tragedy, of which I have so often since told the foundation-story.

My Uncle Penrhyn paid us a visit at Thun, with his daughter Emmie and a cousin, and I afterwards joined them at Lucerne, and was their guest in a most happy excursion to Andermatt. Afterwards I went alone to Engelberg, the village and great Benedictine convent in the green Alps under the Tetlis mountains. Thence I made my way to Stanz, and penetrated into the valleys connected with the strange story of the Swiss pilgrim-saint, Nicholas von der Flue, ending in the great church of Sachselen, which contained his hideous skeleton, with diamond eyes and jewel-hung bones. Thence it was a very long walk over the Brunig (there was then no carriage-road) to Meyringen, and thence, the same day, over the Scheideck to Gründelwald; for my mother was expecting me there, and if I did not appear by the promised day, she might have been anxious; and in those days I was far too poor to have a mule: if I had money enough to pay for some luncheon, my utmost ambition was fulfilled.

In returning to England, we went to Freiburg in Breisgau, and visited the Bunsens at Heidelberg, greatly delighting in their beautifully situated villa of Charlottenberg, and the view of the castle and bridge from their terrace, with its oleanders and pomegranates. Afterwards we saw Meaux and its relics of Bossuet.

Uncle Julius, whose health was rapidly declining, received my mother with many tears on our return. I have a vivid recollection of that first evening. My mother read "Bless the Lord, O my soul," at evening prayers, and said she always read that after a journey, with "He healeth all thy diseases"--so true of her. We went to Hastings for Uncle Julius's Charge to the clergy, which produced much enthusiasm amongst them, very different from his lengthy sermons in Hurstmonceaux, under which the whole congregation used quietly to compose themselves to sleep, probably well aware that they would not understand a word, if they tried to attend. The effect was sometimes most ridiculous of the chancel filled with nodding heads, or of heads which had long since done nodding, and were resting on their elbows locked in fastest slumber. I believe Mrs. Sherwood describes a similar scene in one of her stories. Aunt Esther and the curate would try in vain to keep themselves awake with strong lavender lozenges during Uncle Julius's endless discourses. And then "There's Mrs. Hare asleep on one side of the Archdeacon and the curate on the other," the people would say, and he would go droning on with a sermon preached fifty times before. There were, however, days on which Uncle Julius would emerge from the vestry with clenched hands and his face full of pale enthusiasm, and then I would whisper to my mother: "Look, Uncle Julius is going to do Lady Macbeth!" There were no slumbers then, but rapt attention, as Uncle Julius in his most thrilling (and they were _thrilling_) tones went through the whole of the sleep-walking scene, wrung his hands over the pulpit-cushion, unable to wash out the "accursed spot" of sin. This was generally about once a year. Though Hurstmonceaux did not comprehend them, there are, however, many fragments, especially similes, in Uncle Julius's ordinary parish sermons which will always have an effect, especially that of grief at a death--the heavy plunge when the person goes down, and the circles vividly apparent at first, then gradually widening, till they are lost and disappear altogether. And though they did not understand him, his parishioners loved Uncle Julius, for he always acted up to his own answer to a question as to the value of a living--"Heaven or hell, according as the occupier does his duty."

Uncle Julius had published a versified edition of the Psalms. He thought his Psalter would be adopted by the whole Church, and it was never used in a single church except Hurstmonceaux. During the service, he had the oddest way of turning over the pages with his nose. "The sixteenth morning of the month," he gave out one day. "No, 'tain't," called the voice of Martin the clerk from below, "'tis the seventeenth." "Oh, the seventeenth morning of the month."

From a portrait by G Richmond]

There certainly was a curious absence of ritual in the services at Hurstmonceaux. Yet one felt that Uncle Julius's whole heart was in the way he read the prayers. What was wanting arose from his personal characteristics, the same which made him always hopelessly unpunctual, which caused him to waste his mornings in hopeless dawdling just when there was most to be done, which so often sent him off for his afternoon walk just as the dinner-bell rang.

I was more than usually tried during the weeks spent at home this autumn by the way in which Mrs. Alexander was set up on a pinnacle of worship by Uncle Julius and Aunt Esther--everything and everybody, especially my mother, being expected to give way to her. My journal, however, has many touching reminiscences of quiet evenings in our home life at this time--when I read aloud to my dearest mother, and she played and sang "Comfort ye," I sitting on the little sofa by her side, the light from the candles falling upon "the Reading Magdalen" over the pianoforte--and of her simple, earnest prayers aloud by the little round table in her own room that "the pleasures given us in this world might not draw us out of the simple way of God." Especially touching to me is the remembrance of our last evening together this summer, for it was then almost first that she began to allow the part my life bore in hers. "O God," she prayed, "be with us at our parting: and oh! prepare us to meet when parting will be at an end." As I kissed her afterwards she said, "You are a dear good child to me, darling. I may blame you sometimes, and find fault with your opinions, but you are a dear, good, dutiful child to me."

As I was returning to Oxford I paid a visit to Hugh Pearson at Sonning.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Sonning, Oct. 21, 1854._--The thought that my mother is well now
and does not need me enables me to bear having only
paper-conversation again for a little while. But how I long to know
each hour of the day what my dear mother is doing, and wish that
she could see me--very happy here in this peaceful little spot.

"H. P. was dressing when I arrived, but came to my room to welcome
me, most warmly, as he always does. There was a party at dinner,
but they left early, and I had a long talk afterwards with my host
over the fire. There is really no one I like so much. He gave an
amusing description of his church-restoration, very gradual, not to
shock people's prejudices. At last, when he put up a statuette of
the patron saint--St. Andrew--over the entrance, Bishop Wilberforce
came in high delight--'No other man in my diocese would have dared
to do such a thing.'[98] Bishop Blomfield rather admired his stone
pulpit, but said, 'I don't usually like a stone pulpit; I _usually_
prefer a wooden one, something more suited to the preacher
inside.'

"After breakfast we went out to pick up apples to feed H. P.'s pet
donkey with. What a pretty place Sonning is! The river winding
round, with old willows and a weir; the site of the palace of the
Bishop of Sarum marked by an old ash-tree; and the church--'all as
like naughty Rome as it dares,' says H. P., but very beautiful
within.... 'What a rate you do write at, child,' he says as he is
working tortoise-pace at his sermon by my side."

My mother was never given to being alarmed about me at any time, but I think she must have had some anxieties this autumn; Oxford was so dreadfully unhealthy--suffering from a perfect "wave of cholera," while typhus fever and small-pox were raging in the lower parts of the town. But the excitement of Aunt Kitty and Arthur about Mary Stanley, who had taken great part in preparing nurses for the victims of the Crimean War, and who eventually went out to Scutari herself as the unwelcomed assistant of Miss Nightingale, kept the family heart fixed in the East all through the autumn and winter.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Oxford, Oct. 23, 1854._--There was a special cholera service last
night. It is very bad still, and the cases very rapid. Those taken
ill at five die at seven, and for fear of infection are buried at
seven the next morning."

"_Oct. 24._--Typhus fever has broken out in the lower town in
addition to everything else, and there are 1000 cases of small-pox,
besides cholera. This morning I met two men at breakfast at Mr.
Jowett's. There was nothing to eat but cold mutton and some heavy
bread called 'Balliol bricks,' but Mr. Jowett was in his best
humour, and though he would not utter a word himself, he assisted
us into uttering a good many. He is certainly at once the terror
and the admiration of those he wishes to be kind to: as for myself,
I love him, though I often feel I would go round three streets any
day to avoid him."

"_Nov. 1._--The usual Oxford rain is now varied by a yellow fog and
stifling closeness, the consequence of which is that cholera has
returned in all its force to the lower town, and in the upper
almost every one is ill in one way or other. Duckworth and I walked
to Headington Common yesterday, and thinking that such a high open
place was sure to be free from illness, asked if there had been any
cholera there, in a cottage where we often go to buy fossils.
'Yes,' said the young woman of the house, 'father died of it, and
baby, and seven other people in this cottage and those joining--all
those who seemed the healthiest and strongest. I saw them all
seized with it in the morning, and before night they were all
gone.'--'What,' I said, 'did you nurse them all?' The young woman
turned away, but an old woman who came up and heard me said, 'Yes,
she _were_ a good creature. There were no one took but she went to
them. She were afeard of nothing. I used to think as God wouldna'
let the cholera come to her because she werena' afeard, and no
more He did.'"

"_Dec. 2._--Mrs. Parker[99] has just been telling me the beautiful
story of 'Sister Marion's' labours in the cholera. Her real name
was Miss Hughes. Mrs. P. was walking with her one day, when their
notice was attracted by Greenford, the landlord of the Maidenhead
inn, putting his beautiful little child on his great horse, while
the child was laughing and shouting for joy. Next day they heard
that the child was ill. Sister Marion went at once and nursed it
till it died, and it was buried the same evening. Then came the
rush of cholera. When any one was seized, they sent for Sister
Marion--she rubbed them, watched them, prayed with them; no cases
were too dreadful for her. She often had to put them in their
coffins herself. When all were panic-stricken, she remembered
everything. Mrs. Parker described one deathbed, where it required
two men to hold a woman down in her agonies, and her shrieks and
oaths were appalling. Little Miss Hughes came in, and taking both
her hands, knelt down quietly by the side of the bed, and, though
the doctors and others were standing round, began to pray aloud.
Gradually the face of the woman relaxed, and her oaths ceased,
though her groans were still fearful. At last Sister Marion said,
'Now your mind is easier, so you have more strength, and we can try
to help your body;' and when she began the rubbings, &c., the
woman took it quietly, and though she died that night, it was quite
peacefully.

"Then the cholera camp was made. There was one house for the
malignant cases, another for the convalescents, a third for the
children of those taken or for those in whom there was reason to
expect the disease to appear. Almost every nurse had to be
dismissed for drunkenness; the people were almost alone, and the
whole town seemed to depend on Sister Marion. Nine-tenths of those
who took the cholera died. Mrs. P. took it herself, and was saved
by constantly swallowing ice.

"I have just been to dine with the Master--a large party of
undergraduates and very dull, the Master every now and then giving
utterance to a solemn little proposition apropos of nothing at
all--such as 'A beech-tree is a very remarkable tree, Mr.
Hare'--'It is a very pleasant thing to ride in a fly, Mr.
Bowden'--which no one attempted to contradict."

"_Dec. 11._--Yesterday I went to the service at St. Thomas's, where
three-fourths of the congregation were in mourning owing to the
cholera. The sermon began with three strange propositions--1. That
the reading of the Scriptures is not necessary to salvation. 2.
That the Gospel consists not in the written Word, but in certain
facts laid down and elucidated by the Church. 3. That the
Scriptures ought not to be used as a means of converting the
heathen. I suppose the sermon was directed against the Bible
Society."

I insert a few paragraphs from my written winter-journal. They scarcely give an idea of the stagnation of our Hurstmonceaux life.

"_Dec. 14._--A solemn tea-drinking of parish ladies at the Rectory.
My mother very ailing with trembling, and almost deaf."

"_Dec. 15._--A bitter drive to Hailsham through the bleak ugly
lanes. Mother very poorly, and unable to show interest in or
comprehension of anything. Entirely thrown on my own resources."

"_Dec. 16._--Intense cold and misery at church. Ill with this, and
felt the great usual Sunday want of anything to do, as I did not
like even to open any book which might offend mother; but at last,
finding 'Arnold's Life' would not be taken ill, settled to that.
Mother not able to speak or hear; felt the great solitariness of
loneliness _not alone_, and longed to have some friend who would
enter into my odd little trials--surely singular at twenty--but I
never have one."

"_Dec. 17._--Bitter cold and a great gale. Siberia can scarcely be
colder than Hurstmonceaux. Went by mother's wish to collect
'Missionary Pence' from the poor. No words can say how I hate this
begging system, especially from the poor, who loathe it, but do not
dare to refuse when 'the lady sends for their penny.' Sate a long
time with Widow Hunnisett, and wondered how I shall ever endure it
when I am in Orders, and have to sit daily in the cottages boring
the people and myself."

At the end of December, partly probably in consequence of the cold to which I was constantly exposed, I became very ill with an agonising internal abscess, and though this eventually gave way to application of foxglove leaves (digitalis), just when a severe surgical operation was intended, I was long in entirely recovering. My mother's feeble powers, however, soon urged me to rouse myself, and, as soon as I could bring it about, to remove her to London, as Uncle Julius was failing daily, and I knew even then by experience how easily an invalid can bear a great sorrow which is unseen, while a great sorrow witnessed in all its harrowing incidents and details is often fatal to them.

JOURNAL.

"_Jan. 1, 1855._--With mother to the Rectory this afternoon,
wrapped up in the carriage. I went to Uncle Julius in his room. He
does seem now most really ill: I have never seen him more so. He
bemoaned his never being able to do anything now. Looking at his
mother's picture[100] hanging opposite, he said what a treasure it
was to him. His face quite lighted up when he saw my mother, but
(naturally perhaps) he had not the slightest pleasure in seeing me,
and his tone instantly altered as he turned to me from wishing her
good-bye."

"_Jan. 2._--Mother and I walked towards the school, but clouds
gathering over the downs and level warned us home again. In the
afternoon I was too ill to go out in the damp, but the crimson
sunset cast beautiful gleams of light into the room, and mother
went out to enjoy it in the garden."