Chapter XIX: Whilst Writing the Bunsen Memoirs (3)

“Lord Houghton’s vanity is amusingly natural. Something was said of one of Theodore Hook’s criticisms. ‘You know even _I_ never said anything as good as that,’ said Lord Houghton, and quite seriously. Yet how truly kind Lord Houghton is, and how amusing, and he does most truly, as Johnson said of Garth, ‘communicate himself through a very wide set of acquaintance.’ In his _histoires de société_ he is unrivalled.”

* * * * *

“_March 12._--Yesterday Lord Houghton and I sat very long after breakfast with the Duke, who talked of his diplomatic life. He was appointed from St. Petersburg to Paris, and the revolution which enthroned Louis Philippe occurring just then, he hurried his journey. When he reached Frankfort, Chad, who was minister there, assured him that he would not be allowed to enter France, but, provided with a courier passport, he pushed on, and crossed the frontier without difficulty. At Paris the barricades were still up. The town was in the hands of the Orleanists (they bore the name then). On the evening of his arrival the Duke was introduced to Lafayette, ‘quite a grand seigneur in manner.’ Lafayette asked him if he did not know Lord and Lady Holland, and on his answering in the affirmative, begged that he would write to assure Lord Holland that he meant to save the lives of the late ministers, because he was accused of intending to have them executed.

“The Duke talked much of the wonderful gallantry of the Emperor Nicholas--how when the rebel troops were drawn out opposite his own in the square at St. Petersburg, he stalked out fearless between them, though the Governor of St. Petersburg was shot dead at his feet. The rebel troops were only waiting to fire till they saw a rocket, the signal from Prince Troubetskoi, whose courage failed him at the last. Troubetskoi was sent to Siberia, whither his wife insisted upon following. He was sentenced for life, so was legally dead, and she might, had she preferred it, have married any one else.

“We drove to Normanhurst in the afternoon. Mrs. Brassey showed her Japanese and Pacific curiosities; the house is full of them, like a bazaar. We returned through a very lovely bit of Ashburnham.”

* * * * *

“_April 3._--I came to London on the 19th, and dined that day with Lady Margaret Beaumont, hearing there of the dear kind old Lord Ravensworth being found dead that day on the floor of the Windsor rooms at Ravensworth, when his daughter Nellie sent for him because he did not come in to luncheon.”

* * * * *

“On Monday, March 25, as I was breakfasting at the Athenæum, I glanced into the paper, and the first thing which met my eyes was the news of the total loss of the _Eurydice_, with dear good Marcus Hare and more than three hundred men. It was a terrible shock, and seemed to carry away a whole mass of one’s life in recollections from childhood.... It is many days ago now, and the dreadful fact has seemed ever since to be hammering itself into one’s brain with ceaselessly increasing horror. How small now seem the failings in Marcus’s unselfish and loving character, how great the many virtues. It is difficult also to realise that there is now scarcely any one left who really cares for the old traditions of the Hare family, the old portraits, the old memorials, which were always so much to him, and which I hoped, through him, would be handed down to another generation.”

* * * * *

“_April 14._--On the day on which the _Eurydice_ was lost, Sir J. Cowell and Sir John McNeill were standing together in a window of Windsor Castle which overlooks a wide extent of country. Suddenly Sir J. McNeill seemed to be dreaming and speaking aloud. ‘What a terrible storm,’ he said. ‘Oh, do you see that ship? It will be lost: oh, how horrible! Good God, it’s gone!’ It was at that moment that the _Eurydice_ went down.[277]

“I have little to tell of London beyond the ordinary experiences, except perhaps having been more than ever shocked by the slanderous malignity of so-called ‘religious people,’ as I have been charmed by the chivalrous disinterestedness of many who do not aspire to that denomination. One often finds Archbishop Whately’s saying too true--‘The God of Calvinists is the devil, with God written on their foreheads.’ Of the many dinner-parties I have attended, I cannot recollect anything except that some one--I cannot remember who--spoke of D’Israeli as ‘that old Jew gentleman who is sitting on the top of chaos.’

“Last Sunday I went to luncheon at Mrs. Cavendish Bentinck’s. I arrived at two, having been requested to be punctual. No hostess was there, and the many guests sat round the room like patients in a dentist’s anteroom, or, as a young Italian present said, when I made his acquaintance--‘like lumps of ice.’ Lady Waterford came in and Mr. Bentinck, and we went in to luncheon. There was a table for about forty, who sat where they liked. Mrs. Bentinck came in when all were seated, greeting nobody in particular. The lady next me, a perfect stranger, suddenly said, ‘I want you to tell me what I must do to get good. I do not feel good at all, and I want to be better: what must I do?’

“‘That depends on your peculiar form of badness,’ I replied.

“‘Well, I live where I have a church on each side of me, and a church on the top of the hill under which my house is situated. But they do me no good. Now I wonder if that is owing to the inefficiency of the churches, or to the depravity of my own heart?’

“‘Probably half to one and half to the other,’ I said.

“I asked afterwards who the lady was, but neither her hostess nor any one else had an idea.

* * * * *

“Yesterday I dined with the Pole-Carews. Mrs. Carew told me that Dr. Benson, Bishop of Truro,[278] told her:--

“‘At my table were two young men, one of them a Mr. Akroyd. He began to talk of a place he knew in one of the Midland counties, and how a particular adventure always befell him at a certain gate there.

“‘Yes,’ said the other young man, ‘your horse always shies and turns down a particular lane.’

“‘Yes,’ exclaimed Mr. Akroyd, ‘but how do you know anything about it?’

“‘Oh, because I know the place very well, and the same thing always happens to me.’

“‘And then I come to a gateway,’ said Mr. Akroyd.

“‘Yes, exactly so,” said the other young man.

“‘And then on one occasion I drove through it and came to a house.’

“‘Ah! well, _there_ I do not follow you,’ said the other young man.

“‘It was very long ago,’ continued Mr. Akroyd, ‘and I was a boy with my father. When we drove down that lane it was very late, quite dark, and we lost our way. When we reached the gateway, we saw within a great house standing on one side of a courtyard, brilliantly lighted up. There was evidently a banquet inside, and through the large windows we saw figures moving to and fro, but all were in mediaeval dress: we thought it was a masquerade.

“‘We drove up to the house to inquire our way, and the owner came out to speak to us. He was in a mediaeval dress. He said he was entertaining his friends, and he entreated us, as chance had brought us there that night, to come in and partake of his hospitality. We pleaded that we were obliged to go on, and that to stay was impossible. He was excessively civil, and said that if we must really go on, we must allow him to send a footman to guide us back into the right road. My father gave the footman half-a-crown. When we had gone some distance I said, “Father, did you see what happened to that half-crown?”--“Yes, my boy, I _did_,” said my father. It had fallen _through_ the footman’s hand on to the snow.’

“‘The gateway really exists in the lane. There is no house, but there was one once, inhabited by very wicked people who were guilty of horrible blasphemies--a brother and sister, who danced upon the altar in the chapel, &c.’”

* * * * *

“_Seaton, Devon, May 7._--I came here on Friday to visit Lady Ashburton, but found that erratic hostess gone off to Torquay, so had two days here alone with Mrs. Drummond’s two pleasant, lively boys. This is an enchanting little paradise, looking down over the sea from a cliff. Delightful walks ramble along the edge through miniature groves of tamarisk and ilex. On one side rises the bluff chalk promontory and high down of Bere Head; on the other, one looks across a bay to the cliffs near Lyme Regis, and Portland is seen in the blue haze.”

* * * * *

“_May 7._--Drove with Lady Ashburton and her daughter to Shute, a beautiful old house of the Poles, now a farmhouse, with a gateway like a college gate at the entrance of the park. We sat to draw in the courtyard, full of colour and beauty, and afterwards had a delicious tea in the farmhouse kitchen. In returning, we went to an old ruined house which was the original homestead of the great Courtenay family.”

* * * * *

“_May 8._--We were off at 7 A.M. into Somersetshire by train. We got out at Yeovil, in a lovely country of orchards in full bloom, and drove first to Brympton, the lovely old house of the Ponsonby Fanes. They inherited it from Lady Georgiana Fane, who is represented in the church, having had her own head added to the body of an ancestress who was headless. The place is perfectly delightful--such a broad staircase winding endlessly away, and quaint but fresh and airy rooms opening upon a terrace with balustrades and a staircase, and close by the most picturesque of churches.

“We went on to Montacute, Mrs. Phelips’s--a most grand old house of yellow-grey stone, partly of Edward VI.’s time.”