Chapter XVIII: London Walks and Society (4)

“Before luncheon, Mr. Warburton took me away to see some prints in the library. We found there a Mr. Yates, a clergyman, and there was a most animated and interesting conversation between him and Mr. Gladstone on the logical difference between ‘Obedience’ and ‘Submission,’ which Mr. Yates considered to be the same and I thought so too, but quite see from Mr. Gladstone’s explanation that it is not so. He illustrated it by Strossmeyer, who was quite willing to _submit_ to the doctrine of Papal infallibility, but turned restive at _obedience_, which involved subscription, and prevented any power of antagonistic action on his own faith any more. They spoke much of obedience to the decrees of a judge in Church matters. Mr. Gladstone said that while clergy were bound to _submit_ to a judge’s decree, and while they had no right to inquire his reasons (two judges often arriving at the same decision from perfectly different reasons), he did not see why they might not state that the views they maintained, according to their own conscience, were at variance with the decision, though, as members of the Church of England, they were bound to submit to it.

“Altogether, it was a very interesting visit, and I was glad Mr. Gladstone said he wished it had not been such a short one. He and Mrs. Gladstone were both most cordial.

“Here, at Tatton, is a number of pictures set into panels round the staircase, full-lengths of Cheshire gentlemen, moved hither from Astbury Hall, where the originals met to decide whether they should rise for Prince Charlie, and finally elected not to risk their estates. In the dining-room is a picture of a hand shaking out an empty purse by Rubens, signed; it was sent to Charles V. when he had forgotten to pay the painter for his work, to remind him. Lord Egerton has many charming miniatures in his room, and--a gift to one of his ancestors--Queen Elizabeth’s ‘horn-book,’ being the alphabet and the Lord’s Prayer set in a frame of silver filagree and covered with talc (horn). He told us of some one who, wishing effectually to protect his land from poachers, put up--‘Aspleniums and Polypodiums always on these premises.’”

* * * * *

“_Dec. 6._--Yesterday we drove to Wythenshawe.[246] It is a most engaging old house, very well restored, all the historical points retained--the low narrow door inside the other, through which the defenders forced the conquerors to pass as their condition of surrender after their siege by the Commonwealth, when the family was heavily fined: the ghost-room, where a soldier shot in the siege still appears: the difference in the panelling of the oak drawing-room, where the panels were smashed in by a cannon-ball. There is another ghost--a ghastly face of a lady, who draws the curtains and looks in upon a bride on the first night she sleeps in the house after her marriage: the late Mrs. Tatton saw it.”[247]

* * * * *

“_Betton House, Dec. 9._--Wednesday morning was lovely. We drove to Rostherne Manor, Lady Mary Egerton’s charming modern house, with a lovely view over the wide shining mere to the Derbyshire hills; on the right, the church tower on a wooded hill, and in the foreground the terraced garden with an old leaden figure of Mercury.

“I came away to Hodnet, where the great new house perfectly swarmed with Heber Percy cousins, and next morning I went with Ethel Hood to Stoke. There is nothing but the ghost of our memories there now--even the church pulled down, all that made the place touching or beautiful to us swept away.”

* * * * *

“_Betton, Dec. 10._--It has been a great pleasure to go to church with the Tayleurs at dear old Market Drayton, and to sit in the great green baize room in the family gallery, with a large fire burning in an open hearth--a pleasant contrast to the wretched open seats which are the fashion now, though it might recall the exclamation of a Frenchman on seeing a similar pew--‘Pardi! on sert Dieu bien à son aise ici.’ Yet even at Drayton the respectable red-cloaked singers have given place to bawling choristers.

“I always feel, in the neighbourhood of the winding Terne, as if I were carried back into my child-life with my dear adopted grandparents, the one happy part of my boyhood, so different from the many bitter days at Hurstmonceaux.”

* * * * *

“_Sherborne Park, Dec. 12._--At Bourton-on-the-Water were many people waiting. In the dark I recognised Lord and Lady Denbigh, and then a young lady came up with her husband and spoke to me. ‘I cannot see in the least who you are.’--‘Oh, then I shall leave you to guess, and you will find out by-and-by.’ It was Sir Garnet and Lady Wolseley. With him and Lord Powerscourt, and a fat old gentleman much muffled up, whom I took for Sir Hastings Doyle, and who turned out to be Mr. Alfred Denison, I travelled in a carriage to Sherborne. It is a very fine house of Inigo Jones, of rich yellow stone, with short fluted columns between the windows; but in effect it is overwhelmed by the church, which is close upon it, and crushes it with its spire. The living rooms are delightfully large, airy, and filled with books, flowers, and pictures.

“I had a pleasant dinner, seated by Mr. Denison, who told me much about his curious collection of books on angling, of which he has some of the early part of the fifteenth century, and about 500 editions of Izaak Walton. He has even a Latin treatise on the Devil’s fishery for souls. He was just come from Chatsworth, and had seen there a volume for which £12,000 had been refused, the original of Claude’s ‘Liber Veritatis.’

“Lord Sherborne is both very fond and very proud of his wife, but her music he pretends to detest, though her singing is quite lovely--not much voice, but intense pathos and expression.

“This afternoon I have been with Miss Dutton and charming Miss Ruth Bouverie to the old chase and the deer-park, in which there is a beautiful deserted hunting-lodge by Inigo Jones. Lady Sherborne wanted to make a garden in front of it, but was only allowed by her lord to have grass instead of potatoes. We also went into the church adjoining the house, which contains many family monuments. The most remarkable is that of John Dutton, who was ‘possessed of large estate and of mind æquall to his fortune;’ yet he lost a great part of his estates by gambling, and staked Sherborne too, and would have lost it if he had not been carried off to bed by his butler.

“Speaking of concealment of the whole truth, Miss Dutton related a story her uncle, John Dutton, used to tell of the French governess sliding on the ice, when one of the children said to her, ‘Mr. Lentil said, Mademoiselle, that he hoped the boys would trip you up upon the ice, and I really could not tell you what Mr. Davis said.’ Mr. Davis had said _nothing_, but the intended impression was conveyed.

“I forget how, apropos of Bible ignorance, Miss Dutton told of an American, who, entering a coffee-house at New York, saw a Jew there, and seized him violently by the throat. ‘What, wh--at do you do that for!’ exclaimed the nigh strangled Jew.--‘Because you crucified my Lord.’--‘But all that happened more than 1800 years ago.’--‘That does not matter; I have only just heard of it.’”

* * * * *

“_Dec. 14._--Yesterday we went to Biberry, a beautiful old house of Lord Sherborne’s. Mr. and Lady Augusta Noel joined the party in the evening, she a Keppel,[248] the authoress of ‘Wandering Willie,’ and very pleasant. Several neighbours came to dinner. The astronomical conversation of Mr. Noel was very engaging. I deduced from it that the flames in the sun were 96,000 miles long, and that we were all liable to meet our end in three ways--_i.e._, by going fizz if a particle of the sun (‘as big as this room’) broke off and struck the earth in any direction: by being slowly consumed, the pools drying and the trees shrivelling up: or by being gradually frozen under an ice-wave. The earth has already perished once by the last-named contingency, and there are geological features, especially at Lord Lansdowne’s place in Ireland, which prove it.”

* * * * *

“_Osterley, Dec. 16._--I came here about tea-time to what Horace Walpole calls ‘the Palace of Palaces.’ It is a magnificent house. Sir Thomas Gresham was the original builder, and entertained Queen Elizabeth here. Then it passed through various hands till it fell to the Childs, for whom it was partially rebuilt and splendidly fitted up by the brothers Adam. An immense flight of steps leads through an open portico to a three-sided court, beneath which is the basement storey, and from which open the hall and the principal rooms. There is a gallery like that at Temple Newsam, but much longer and finer, and in this case it is broken and partitioned by bookcases into pleasant corners--almost separate rooms. The walls and ceilings are ornamented with paintings (let in) by Zucchi and Angelica Kauffmann, but the great charm lies in the marvellous variety, delicacy, and simplicity of the wood carvings, each shutter and cornice a different design, but a single piece. In one room are exquisite pink Gobelins, the chairs quite lovely; one of them represents a little girl crying over the empty cage of her lost bird; on its companion a little boy has caught the bird and is rushing to restore it to her. There is a fine picture of Lady Westmoreland, Robert Child’s daughter. When Lord Westmoreland, whom he considered a hopeless ne’er-do-weel, asked for her hand, he had firmly refused it; but when Lord Westmoreland some time after took him unawares with the question, ‘Now, if you were in love with a beautiful girl, and her father would not consent to your marrying her, what would you do?’ answered, ‘Run away with her, to be sure.’ Lord Westmoreland took him at his word, and eloped with Miss Child in a coach-and-four from Berkeley Square; and when, near Gretna Green, he saw that the horses of his father-in-law, in hot pursuit, were gaining upon him, he stood up in the carriage and shot the leader dead, and so gained his bride.

“The Duchess Caroline (of Cleveland) was often here with Lady Jersey, and, when she sold her own place of Downham, determined to rent Osterley. Since then, though only a tenant, she has cared for it far more than its owner, Lord Jersey, and has done much to beautify and keep it up. Only Miss Newton and Mr. Spencer Lyttelton[249] are here, the latter with tremendous spirits, which carry him he knows not where. The Duchess is very amusing. Ordering a very good fire to be made up in church, she added drily to the servant, ‘Just such a fire as you make up on a very hot day, you know.’ She mentioned a clever _mot_ of Count Nesselrode. Speaking of Sir William Wallace’s marriage he said, ‘Il avait une mauvaise habitude, et depuis il a épousé cette habitude.’”

* * * * *

“_Dec. 17._--The Duchess is a most interesting remnant of bygone times. She is so easily put out by any one doing too much, that every one at luncheon was afraid to get up and ring the bell for her, till she was close to the bell herself, when a nervous young man jumped up and rang it before she could reach it. ‘Sir, officiousness is not politeness,’ she said very slowly and forcibly.

“To young ladies she frequently says, ‘My dear, _never_ marry for love: you will repent it if you do; I _did_:’ and yet she was fond of her Lord William.

“Mr. Spencer Lyttelton rails at everything supernatural, so we spoke of the story in his own family, and he told us the _facts_ of the Lyttelton ghost, declaring that everything added to them about altering the clock, &c., was absolutely fictitious.

“‘Thomas, Lord Lyttelton, my father’s first cousin, was at Peel House, near Epsom, when a woman with whom he had lived seemed to appear to him. He spoke of it to some friends--the Misses Amphlett--and said that the spirit had said he should die in three days, and that he believed that he should certainly do so. Nevertheless, on the following day--he went up to London, and made one of his most brilliant speeches, for he was a really great speaker--in the House of Lords. He was not well at the time. On the third evening, his servant, after the custom of that time, was in his room assisting him to undress. When the clock struck twelve, Lord Lyttelton counted the strokes, and when it came to the last, exclaimed, “I have cheated the ghost,” and fell down dead: he must have had something the matter with his heart.’”

* * * * *

“_Hinchinbroke, Dec. 26._--Lord Sandwich is a charmingly courteous host, and Lady Sandwich a warm, pleasant friend. The three sons, Hinchinbroke, Victor, and Oliver, are all cheery, kindly, and amusing. ‘You see what a set you’ve landed amongst,’ said Lord Sandwich; ‘it will take you some time to know them.’ Agneta Montagu is here with her charming children; Lady Honoria Cadogan; Miss Corry, a handsome, natural, lively lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Edinburgh; and the kind old Duchess Caroline, with relays of walking-sticks, which she changes with her caps for the different hours of the day.

“Yesterday I went with Miss Corry and Hinchinbroke to Huntingdon, a picturesque old town on the sleepy Ouse. In the market-place, opposite the principal church, is the old grammar-school where Oliver Cromwell was educated. Mr. Dion Boucicault, of theatrical fame, is going to restore it in memory of his son, killed hard by in the Abbots Repton railway accident, and is going to destroy the one characteristic feature of the place--the high gable front of twisted and moulded brick, which recalls Holland and records the Flemish settlers in the Fen country.”

* * * * *

“_Christmas Day._--The damp, sleepy weather is far from an ideal Christmas, but I have liked being here in spite of a miserable cold, and being accepted as a sort of relation by this warm-hearted family.”[250]

* * * * *

“_Ascot Wood, Jan. 22, 1877._--I have been working quietly at home for nearly three weeks--a halt in life as far as the outer world is concerned; and how good these silences are, when, from the turmoil of the living present, one can retire into the companionship of a dead past--past associations, past interests, passed-away friends, who, though dead, are living for ever in the innermost shrines of one’s heart, of which the general world knows nothing, at which very few care to knock; which, even to those who knock, are so seldom opened.

“I have almost a pang when one of these breaks comes to an end, and the outside world rushes in. ‘On ne se détache jamais sans douleur.’[251] But it was a great pleasure to come here again to the companionship of this perfectly congenial cousinhood. Sir John Lefevre, as usual, is full of interesting conversation--not general, but with the one person next him, and that one is generally myself! He described a visit in Sussex at Sir Peckam Micklethwait’s (‘a man with other and more wonderful names’).[252] When the Princess Victoria was at Hastings with the Duchess of Kent, their horses ran away. They were in the greatest peril, when Mr. Micklethwait, who was a huge and powerful man, stood in the way, and seized and grappled with the horses with his tremendous strength, and they were saved. One of the first things the Queen did when she came to the throne was to make him a baronet.

“Sir John said how few people there were now who remembered the origin of the word ‘fly’ as applied to a carriage. In the last century people almost always went out to parties in sedan-chairs--a great fatigue and trouble to their bearers. Gradually the sedans had wheels, and were drawn. Then it began to dawn upon people to substitute a horse for a man. At that time the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was being acted and very popular, and, in allusion to a line in it, the new carriages were called ‘Fly-by-Night.’ Then the sobriquet was abridged--‘by night’ was omitted, but ‘fly’ remained. Sir John remembered, when flys were first invented, meeting a man who said he had just ‘encountered’ a fly with a wasp inside and a bee (B) outside. It was Lord Brougham’s carriage.

“We went this afternoon to Lady Julia Lockwood’s.[253] Her odd little house is quite full of relics of her sister, the Duchess of Inverness--the Queen’s ‘Aunt Buggin,’ wife of the Duke of Sussex.

“To-night, talking of my little diaries, Sir John said that he had a name for them--‘Seniority’--adapted from Nassau Senior’s journals. When Senior went about, however, people knew that what they said would be taken down, so acted accordingly, and produced their sentiments and opinions as they wished them to be permanently represented. The Khedive was told what Mr. Senior would do before he was admitted to his interview. ‘Oh, yes, I quite understand,’ said the Khedive; ‘Mr. Senior is the trumpet, and I am to blow down it.’

“Sir John described how in the Upper House of Convocation the members amused their leisure moments by suiting each of the bishops with texts. That for the Archbishop of York[254] was, ‘And _she_ was a Greek;’ for Bishop Wilberforce, ‘She brought him _butter_ in a lordly dish.’”

* * * * *

“_Jan. 24._--When I arrived at the Ascot station, a little lady was there, with glistening silver hair, waiting to go up to the house. It was Mrs. William Grey. She was here two days and very pleasant--a bright, active, simple mind, which finds its vent in excitement for the superior education of women.

“Yesterday we went to Windsor for the day. We went to the castle library, where Natalli, the sub-librarian, showed us everything. It is very interesting regarded merely as a building--not one room, but a succession of rooms, irregularly added as space allowed and comfort dictated, by a succession of sovereigns. Queen Elizabeth’s library (the only part of the castle unaltered outside) has an old chimney-piece of her time, into which the Prince Consort cleverly inserted a bust from her figure by Cornelius Cure, and it once had a ceiling painted by Verrio, which was destroyed by William IV., who put up a stucco ceiling instead. Of Anne there is the charming little boudoir, where she was sitting with the Duchess of Marlborough when a letter (a facsimile of which is preserved there) was brought in from the Duke telling of the victory of Blenheim. The later rooms are of George III. and William IV. We saw Miles Coverdale’s Bible, all the early editions of Shakspeare, Charles I.’s Prayer-book, Elizabeth’s Prayer-book, Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’ with his corrections and alterations; but better far was the view from the end window, with the terrace and its final tower standing out in burly shadow against the misty and flooded country.”

* * * * *

“_Thorpe, Jan. 26._--We went to-day to St. Anne’s Hill. Lady Holland was sitting in the innermost of the richly furnished bright warm little rooms, but was bandaged up still from a frightful fall she had received by mistaking a staircase for a passage in the dark. One always feels one’s own talk on waggon-wheels with a person who has the conversational reputation she has, and I was glad when Madame de Jarnac came in and undertook to show us the house. Lady Holland followed, and took us to her bedroom, which is charming, with a view towards Chobham. Then we went to the gardens, with a temple to Friendship (_i.e._, to Lord Holland’s friendship), and the summer-house in which the preliminaries of the Peace of Amiens were signed. Other summer-houses are paved with encaustic tiles from Chertsey Abbey.”

* * * * *

“_69 Onslow Square, Jan. 27._--Mr. Byng preached a capital sermon to-day upon ‘religious hypochondriacs’--people who say, ‘You know I was always so spoilt when I was a child, you must make allowance for my being a little selfish now,’ &c.”

* * * * *

“_6 Bury Street, Feb. 13._--Last night I dined with the Haygarths, to meet the Woods and Leslies. The Dowager Lady Spencer[255] was there, who gave an amusing account of her Irish experiences, when her stepson was Lord Lieutenant. One day he was hunting, and had just leapt a hedge into a lane, when he was aware that a funeral was coming up. He thought it might hurt the feelings of the mourners if he passed them hunting, so he hid himself. But as the funeral came by the hounds appeared, and instantly, setting the coffin down in the road, mourners, pall-bearers, and all started in hot pursuit, and Lord Spencer found himself left alone with the body.

“Lady Spencer talked of one Irish gentleman, a Master of Hounds, who, being very much puzzled by the two Lady Spencers, and how to distinguish them, settled the matter by calling them, like dogs, one ‘Countess,’ and the other ‘Dowager.’ ‘The absurdity never struck me much,’ she said, ‘till the last day of all, when Charlotte’s eyes were so red with crying, and he, coming in, exclaimed, “Dowager, Dowager, what can we do to comfort Countess?”’

“I have just been with Lady Halifax and the Corrys to see the Duke of Suffolk’s head at the church in the Minories--a most awful object.

“Mr. Bodley[256] told us last night that when he was staying at St. John’s College, Oxford, he saw a ghost. He could swear to it. He was in a room which was in the broad moonlight of a summer’s night, for it had no shutters. Suddenly he heard a movement like that of a man under the bed, and then something thrown on the floor like a stick. He jumped up, but there was nothing. He then went to bed again, when out of the floor in the moonlight rose the head and shoulders of a man. He saw it against the chest of drawers. It hid two of the handles of the drawers, but not more. Farther than that out of the ground it did not rise. He is quite certain that he saw it, and quite certain that he was awake.”

* * * * *

“_Feb. 14._--Luncheon at Miss Davenport Bromley’s to meet Mr. Portal. Lord Houghton and his son and daughter were there. Mr. Portal has a scheme for educating the unfortunate Americans of gentle birth who have fallen from wealth to poverty owing to the changes on the cessation of the slave trade in South Carolina, and he has been eminently successful. He described the South Carolina reverses of fortune as most extraordinary. One of his friends died in his house who had once possessed an estate worth £300,000; yet, when his will was opened, it only contained these words--‘I leave to the old and tried friend of my youth, the Rev. ---- Portal, my only son!’ He had nothing else whatever to leave except £9 towards his funeral expenses. Mr. Portal described how the ‘darkies’ had been ‘done’ since the change by those who had too much of the theory of religion to have any power left for the practice of it. Being at a place on the border, where some of the greatest battles were, he asked some of the ‘darkies’ why, when they saw the Northerners gaining the upper hand, they did not join them. A ‘darkie’ said, ‘Mossieu, did you ever see two dogs fighting for a bone?’--‘Yes, very often.’--‘But, Mossieu, did you ever see the bone fight?’

“The conversation fell on Philadelphia, ‘the most conservative place in America, with its narrow streets and narrow notions.’ Lord Houghton said that his son Robin had been shocked by the non-observance of Sunday in the native city of Moody and Sankey. Mr. Portal said that Moody and Sankey were utterly unknown, entirely without influence in their own country; that it could only be the most enormous amount of American cheek which had enabled them to come over to England, ‘exactly as if it was a heathen country, to bring the light of the Gospel to the English;’ that America had heard with amazement and _shock_ how they were run after; that they owed their success partly to their cheek, and partly to their music.

“Mr. Portal described his feeling of desolation when he first arrived in England--‘not one soul he knew amongst all these millions;’ that the next day a lady asked him to conduct her and her child to a pantomime. He consented, without understanding that a pantomime meant Drury Lane Theatre, and his horror was intense when he ‘found himself, a clergyman of forty years’ standing,’ in such a place. This, however, was nothing to what he felt ‘when a troop of half-naked women rushed in and began to throw up their legs into the air;’ he ‘could have sunk into the ground for shame.’ ‘Was not the mother of our Lord a woman? was not my mother a woman? is not my wife a woman? are not my daughters women? and what are these?’

“Mr. Knowles, the ex-editor of the _Contemporary Review_, who was at luncheon, said that he had taken Alfred Tennyson to see a ballet with just the same effect. When the ballet-girls trooped in wearing ‘une robe qui ne commence qu’à peine, et qui finit tout de suite,’ Tennyson had rushed at once out of the box, walked up and down in an agony over the degradation of the nineteenth century, and nothing would induce him to go in again. Mr. Knowles said, however, that a general improvement in the stage had dated from a climax of impropriety in ‘Bedel and Bijou:’ it had since been much leavened by Irving. Lord Houghton described how much of Irving’s success had been due to the entirely original view he had taken of his characters; that in Hamlet he had taken ‘the domestic view, not declaiming, but pondering, saying things meditatively with his legs over a chair-back.’”

* * * * *

“_Feb. 24._--I have been seeing a great deal of Willie Milligan lately, and cannot help thinking of the characteristics so distinctive of him whom for twenty-six years I have never ceased to feel _honoured_ in being allowed to call my intimate friend.

“He is a thorough-bred gentleman in all the highest senses of the term. Always without riches, he has never complained of having less than was sufficient for his wants, which are most modest. Without being cultivated, he is very clever. He never talks religion, but his life is thoroughly christian. He is the soul of honour, pure, truthful, blameless, and without reproach; yet in conversation no one is more witty, original, and amusing. He is celebrated as a peace-maker, and never fails to show that chivalry is the truest wisdom. He has never done a selfish act, and never omitted to do a kind one.”

* * * * *

“_Feb. 25._--A visit to Mrs. Lowe. She talked of the contemptible state of politics now; that it was all only playing at the old game of brag; that the object with every one seems to be who can tell most lies, and who can get any one to believe his lies most easily. If she ‘was minister it would be different; she would nail men down to a point--what will you do and what will you not do? and have a direct answer; _then_ one would know how to act.’

“Mr. Lowe described his life in Australia. Money then scarcely existed there: payments were made either in kind or in bills of exchange. He said, ‘When we played whist, we played sheep, with bullocks on the rubber; and when a man won much, he had to hire a field next morning to put his winnings in.’”

* * * * *

“_Feb. 28._--A charming visit to old Lord John Thynne, who told me many of his delightful reminiscences of Sydney Smith, Milman, and others.

“Then to Mrs. Duncan Stewart, who was sitting almost on the ground, covered with an eider-down. She talked of our ‘Memorials’ and of Mrs. Grote, who said, when she read of the dear mother’s marvellous trances, ‘My dear, she was thinking more than was good for her; so God in His great mercy gave her chloroform.’ She spoke of the difficulties of a like faith, of the effort of keeping it up when prayer was _not_ answered, believing in the power of prayer just the same. She told how, when her child was dying--she knew it must die--the clergyman came (it was at Wimbledon) and used to kneel by the table and pray that resignation might be given to the mother to bear the parting, and resignation to the child to die; and how she listened and prayed too; and yet, at the end, she could not feel it. She did not, and--though she knew it was impossible--she could not but break in with, ‘Yet, O Lord, yet _restore_ her.’

“‘Do you know,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘that till I was thirty, I had never seen death--never seen it even in a poor person; then I saw it in my own child, and I may truly say that then Death entered into the world for me as truly as it did for Eve, and it never left me afterwards--_never_. If one of my children had an ache afterwards, I thought it was going to die; if I awoke in the night and looked at my husband in his sleep, I thought--“He will look like that when he is dead.”

“‘Do not think I murmur, but life _is_ very trying when one knows so little of the beyond. The clergyman’s wife has just been, and she said, “But you must believe; you must believe Scripture literally; you must believe all it says to the letter.” But I cannot believe literally: one can only use the faith one has, I have not the faith which moves mountains. I have prayed that the mountains might move, with all the faith that was in me--_all_; but the mountains did not move. No, I cannot pray with the faith which is not granted me.

“‘I think that I believe all the promises of Scripture; yet when I think of Death, I hesitate to wish to leave the certainty here for what is--yes, must be--the uncertainty beyond. Yet lately, when I was so ill, when I continued to go down and down into the very depths, I felt I had got so far--so very far, it would be difficult to travel all that way again--“Oh, let me go through the gates now.” And then the comforting thought came that perhaps after all it might _not_ be the will of God that I should travel the _same_ way again, and that when He leads me up to the gates for the last time, it might be His will to lead me by some other, by some quite different way.’”

* * * * *

“_March 4._--Breakfast with Lord Houghton--a pleasant male party--Dr. Ralston, Henry James the American novelist, Sir Samuel Baker, and three others. Harriet Martineau’s Memoirs had just arrived, and were a great topic. Lord Houghton, who had known her well, said how often he had been sent for to take leave of Miss Martineau when she had been supposed to be dying, and had gone at great personal inconvenience; but she had lived for thirty years after the first time. Her fatal illness (dropsy) had set in before she went to America. Her friends tried strongly to dissuade her from going, suggesting that she would be very ill received in consequence of her opinions. ‘Why, Harriet,’ said Sydney Smith, ‘you know, if you go, they will tar and feather you, and then they will turn you loose in the woods, and the wild turkeys will come and say, “Why, what strange bird are you?”’

“Of course, much of politics was talked, especially about the Turkish atrocities. Sir S. Baker said that at the old Duchess of Cleveland’s he had met Lord Winchester, now quite an old man. He said that he had ridden from Constantinople to the Danube in 1832, and had passed thirty impaled persons on the way. He himself (Sir Samuel) had seen the impaling machine on the Nile--a stake tapered like a pencil, over which a wheel was let down to a certain height, and when the man was impaled, he was let down on the wheel and rested there; he often lived for three or four days; if the machine was in the market-places of the country towns, the relations of the victims gave them coffee. ‘It is not worse,’ said Lord Houghton, ‘than the stories we are told every Sunday: “he destroyed them all, he left not one of them alive;” especially of the cruelties of David, who made his enemies pass under the harrow, a punishment much worse than impalement. How grateful David would have been for a steam-roller! what a number of people he would have been able to despatch at once!’

“At Mrs. Tennant’s I saw the three girls who have been so much admired, and painted by Millais and so many others; their chief beauty consisting in their picturesqueness as a group.”

* * * * *

“_March 5._--To Mr. Brandram’s recitation of the ‘Merchant of Venice’ at Lord Overstone’s. He said the whole play by heart, giving different character and expression to each person--an astonishing effort of memory. Hearing a play in this way certainly fixes it in the mind much more than reading it, though not so much as seeing it.”

* * * * *

“_March 8._--Luncheon at charming old Mrs. Thellusson’s, where I met Madame Taglioni, the famous _danseuse_. She is now an old lady, with pretty refined features, perfect grace of movement, and a most attractive manner. She has begun in her old age to give lessons again for the benefit of her family, though she is, at the same time, presenting her princess grand-daughter--the Princess Marguerite Trubetskoi, a simple natural girl. Madame Taglioni spoke of her dancing as ‘un don de Dieu,’ just as she would of music or any other art. We asked her if she would like to be young again. ‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ she said; ‘how I _should_ dance!’ She said her father, a ballet-master, made her practise nine hours a day; ‘however great a talent you may have, you never can bring it to perfection without that amount of practice.’

“Lady Charlemont was there, and after luncheon we asked her to recite. She made no difficulties, but said nothing; only, while we had almost forgotten her, she had glided round the room to where there was a red curtain for a background, and suddenly, but slowly, she began. It was only a simple ballad of Tennyson--‘Oh, the Earl was fair to see’--but she threw a power into it which was almost agony, and the pauses were absolute depths of pathos. You felt the power of her unfaltering vengeance, you _heard_ the raging of the storm ‘in turret and tree;’ and, when the moment of the murder came, you quivered in every nerve as she stabbed the Earl ‘through and through.’ It was absolutely awful.

“Afterwards Mrs. Greville recited ‘Jeanne d’Arc.’ It is her best part. She cannot look refined, but an inspired French paysanne she can look and be thoroughly.

“Sir Baldwin Leighton made himself so pleasant, that when he asked me to go to their box at the Lyceum in the evening, I promised to go, though I never like seeing any, even the very best plays, twice. However, the nearness of the box to the stage enabled me to see many details unobserved before. Richard III. will always, I should think, be Irving’s best part, for he looks the incarnation of the person. In Shakspeare, Richard III. is most anxious to become king, and perfectly determined to remain king when he has become so; but Irving carries out far more than this. Irving’s Richard is perfectly determined that vice shall triumph over virtue, and utterly enraptured when it does triumph, in a way which is quite diabolical. The night before Bosworth Field is most striking and beautiful. You are with the king in his tent. He draws the curtain and looks out. On the distant wind-stricken heath the camp-fires are alight, and the lights in the tents blaze out one by one, eclipsing the stars overhead. Richard says little for a time; your whole mind is allowed the repose of the beauty. The king, who has been through the last acts trying (you feel him striving against his personal disadvantages) to be kingly, is all-kingly on that night, in the immediate face of the great future on which everything hangs. He gives his orders--simply, briefly, royally. He lies down on the couch, folding himself in the royal velvet robe, which, like Creusa’s cloak, is associated with all his crimes. He falls asleep. Then, out of the almost darkness, just visible as outlines but no more, rise the phantoms; and, like a whiffling wind, the voice of Clarence floats across the stage. As each spirit delivers its message in the same faint spiritual harmonious monotone, the sleeping figure shudders and groans, moans more sadly.

[257]

“Then there is a powerfully human touch in the way in which he, so coldly royal as he lay down, turns human-like for sympathy in his great horror and anguish to the first person he sees, the soldier who wakens him.”

* * * * *

“_March 10._--Went with Victor Parnell down the river in search of the old houses at Limehouse and Stepney. We found them, but the accounts in the _Daily News_, which had led us to the excursion, were so exaggerated that the houses were scarcely to be recognised. We came back by Ratcliffe Highway. It all looked very clean, and thriving, and decent, very different indeed from the descriptions in religious magazines.”

* * * * *

“_March 11._--Luncheon with Sir Robert and Lady Cunliffe, who showed me a volume of portrait sketches by Downman, a little-known master of George III.’s time, but a wonderfully charming artist.”

END OF VOL. IV.

_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO

_Edinburgh and London_

ERRATA

_Page_ 60, _for_ “Marocetti” _read_ “Marochetti.”

“ 136, “ “Curramore” _read_ “Curraghmore.”

“ 232, “ “Keats” _read_ “Keate.”

“ 435, “ “vieillir être heureuse” _read_ “vieillir pour être
heureuse.”

“ 478, “ “Bedel and Bijou” _read_ “Babil and Bijou.”

“Story of my Life.”--End of Vol. IV.

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

VOL. V

from a miniature by Barber.]

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

BY

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE

AUTHOR OF “MEMORIALS OF A QUIET LIFE,” “THE STORY OF TWO NOBLE LIVES,” ETC. ETC.

VOLUME V

LONDON GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD 1900

[_All rights reserved_]

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.

At the Ballantyne Press

CONTENTS

PAGE

WHILST WRITING THE BUNSEN MEMOIRS 1

ROYAL DUTIES AND INTERESTS 75

A HALT IN LIFE 241

HOME SORROWS 326

IN THE FURROWS OF LIFE 382

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. V

MARY LEA GIDMAN. _From a miniature by Barber._ _Photogravure_ _Frontispiece_

PAGE
CHANTRY OF HENRY V., WESTMINSTER 12

LOWTHER LODGE 23

HOLMHURST, THE POULTRY-YARD 31

TITTENHANGER 51

SOPHIE, QUEEN OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY. _Photogravure_ _To face_ 80

THE ROSENBORG PALACE, COPENHAGEN 100

ROESKILDE 101

CASTLE OF ELSINORE 102

THE JUNCTION OF LAKE MALAR AND THE BALTIC, STOCKHOLM 103

RIDDARHOLMEN 104

THE CHURCH OF OLD UPSALA 105

GRIPSHOLM 107

BOLKESJÖ 111

THE CHURCH OF HITTERDAL 112

THRONDTJEM FIORD 114

THRONDTJEM CATHEDRAL 115

S. OLAF’S WELL, THRONDTJEM 116

IN THE ROMSDAL 117

GUSTAF, CROWN PRINCE OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY. _Photogravure_
_To face_ 138

CORNETO 142

CATHEDRAL OF CORNETO 143

PERUGIA 154

ASSISI 155

IN THE ENTRANCE-HALL, HOLMHURST 165

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. (_Full-page woodcut_) _To face_ 176

IN THE FIR-WOOD, HOLMHURST 189

LA SAINTE BAUME 192

THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER 197

THE LOLLARDS’ PRISON, LAMBETH 206

THE WAKEFIELD TOWER, TOWER OF LONDON 207

IN THE VERANDAH, HOLMHURST 235

VERANDAH STEPS, HOLMHURST 236

FROM S. GREGORIO, MESSINA 245

TAORMINA 246

ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE, SYRACUSE 248

FROM THE WALLS OF EPIPOLAE 249

ON THE RIVER CYANE 250

ACI CASTELLO 251

TEMPLE OF CONCORD, GIRGENTI 252

IN THE TEMPLE OF JUNO LUCINIA, GIRGENTI 254

IN THE TEMPLE OF HERCULES, GIRGENTI 255

TEMPLE OF CASTOR AND POLLUX, GIRGENTI 256

PALERMO, FROM S. MARIA DI GESU 259

SOLUNTO 261

CLOISTERS, MONREALE 263

GATE OF MOLA 267

TARANTO 268

CASTEL DEL MONTE 269

TOMB OF BOHEMUND, CANOSA 270

MRS. DUNCAN STEWART. (_Full-page woodcut_) _To face_ 288

NORWICH FROM MOUSEHOLD 331

LAKE OF AVERNUS, NEAR NAPLES 345

CAPRI 347

SCILLA 349

FROM THE CAMPO DELLA CARITÀ, VENICE 351

REV. CANON HUGH PEARSON. _Photogravure_ _To face_ 354

GATEWAY, KENSINGTON PALACE 361

SASSENPOORT, ZWOLLE 364

MILL NEAR AMSTERDAM 365

HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE GATEWAY 379

ON THE TERRACE, HOLMHURST 388

IN THE KITCHEN, HOLMHURST 389

CATHEDRAL OF ST. ISAAC, ST. PETERSBURG 391

ST. SOPHIA OF NOVGOROD 393

KREMLIN, MOSCOW 394

THE NEW JERUSALEM 395

THE DNIEPER, KIEFF 396

THE HOLY CHAPEL OF KIEFF 397

CITADEL OF CRACOW 398

NOYON 409

SOISSONS 410

CHÂTEAU DE COUCY 411

SHRINE OF ST. ERASMUS, WESTMINSTER ABBEY 429

LE CROZANT 434

SOLIGNAC 435

ROCAMADOUR 436

CLOISTER OF CADOUIN 438

ARCADES OF MONTPAZIER 439

AT FONTEFROIDE 441

CONQUES 443

CROMER 450

GATEWAY OF BUCKHURST 456