Chapter XX: Royal Duties and Interests (5)

“After a very long dinner we all went into the hall, when, from the curtains at the end, all the servants tripped in, each footman leading a maid by each hand, in most picturesque Welsh costumes, made obeisance to the Prince, went backwards, and then danced the most complicated and picturesque of reels, with ever-varying figures. Lady Llanover’s own maid was the great performer, and nothing could exceed her consummate grace and dignity. Then a board was brought in and placed in the centre of the floor and three candles upon it, around and between which the footmen and the harper’s boys performed the wonderful candle-dance with the greatest agility.

“Lady Llanover’s excess of courtesies and overwhelming deference were rather oppressive to us all, and evidently frightened the poor boyish Prince dreadfully last night; but this morning she did not come down, and we have got on splendidly, and he delighted in being talked to like other people, and was as natural and nice as he could be. He is certainly a most bewitching Prince, so full of animation and fun, so right-minded and so courteous and simple.

“In three carriages we went to Llanarth to luncheon. I went with the royal carriage, which, with its smart scarlet postillions, certainly went slow enough; for the dear old lady, to do the Prince more honour, had engaged for the occasion not only the two horses used for the weddings at Abergavenny, but also the two used at funerals, and the steeds of death outweighed those of mirth, and kept us down to a funereal pace.

“Llanarth is a sunny, well-kept place. Its great relic is the portrait of Pope’s Arabella Fermor, whose sister was a direct ancestress of the present possessors. After luncheon, we all ranged on the steps and were photographed, and then went on to Raglan, where Lord and Lady Raglan (she a very charming person) did the honours of the really beautiful ruin. To my surprise, I heard the Duke beginning to compare it to Hurstmonceaux, not knowing my connection with the latter. I drove back with him, and told him many stories, and we made pleasant friendly acquaintance. He ran after me when we came in, and kept me to talk to him quietly, and spoke very nicely and kindly of his mother’s liking for my books. He has one of the most open, frank countenances I have ever looked upon.”

* * * * *

“_Llanover, Sept. 21._--This morning the Herberts went to mass at Llanarth, and we (English Church) had a queer service in the drawing-room, with a congregation of eight, and a clergyman in a surplice, &c. He gave a capital little sermon, but illustrated his text, ‘Pray without ceasing,’ by the story of the Welsh Prince for whom all the birds sang when they were asked. He was taken captive, and the birds immediately became silent. Then his captors commanded them to sing, but still all the birds in Wales held silence. Then they asked the captive Prince to desire them to sing, and he, kneeling down, prayed that God would open the mouths of the birds, upon which they all sang lustily. This was to prove that prayer was worth while even in the smallest things of life!

“The poor Prince has been victimised to-day to see all the relics of Mrs. Delany, the fetish of this house, and was afterwards taken to the lake to see two coracles, the boats of ancient Wales, in which Ivor and Arthur Herbert besported themselves.”

* * * * *

“_Holmhurst, Sept. 27._--On Monday, all Llanover was in motion for the Prince’s departure, more scarlet cloth than ever all over the place, the Welsh harpers harping at the door, the Welsh housemaids, in high hats and bright scarlet and blue petticoats, waiting with bouquets in the park, and every guest in the house compelled to go to the station to see the Prince off. Highly comical was the scene on the platform--the yards of red cloth hurriedly thrown down by two footmen wherever the poor boyish Prince, in his brown frieze suit and wideawake hat, seemed likely to tread. I wished to have travelled to Windsor by Gloucester, which is two and a half hours’ less journey; but no, that was impossible: the Queen of England sometimes has her own way; the Queen of South Wales _always_.

“Mrs. Herbert of Llanarth was sent to travel with the Prince to Malvern, Mr. Ram to Worcester, I to Oxford. However, one could hardly see too much of him, he is such a nice Prince--kind, courteous, clever, intelligent, simple, and sincere. Captain Sommer, the gentleman in waiting, is also a most superior person.

“I reached Ronald Gower in the evening. He met me at the Windsor station, and took me to his really charming little house, which is full of lovely things. It is an odd _ménage_, with the artistic valet, Robert Stubbs, supreme. It was a great pleasure to take up with Ronald the links of a much-relaxed, never-forgotten friendship, and to find him far nicer than I had remembered him.

“We spent Tuesday at Cliveden, a pouring day, but it did not matter. The Duchess of Westminster[320] is Ronald’s favourite sister, and was very pleasant and cordial to his friend. She is gloriously handsome, though so large. We talked for four hours without ceasing, and she took us into every corner of the beautiful house full of charming pictures, and then put on an ulster and hood and walked with us through the torrents of rain to the conservatories. One felt that she was a person to whom one could say anything without being misunderstood, and who would become an increasingly true friend. Her daughter, Lady Beatrice Cavendish, was there, and the handsome young husband, Compton Cavendish, Lord Chesham’s son, came in to luncheon and tea. All saw us off at 5 P.M. in the little cart with Piggy the pony.

“On Wednesday morning we went into the castle to see Lady Ponsonby, who lives in the old prison over Edward III.’s gateway--most curious, and fitted up in admirable taste, despairing to Mr. Ayrton.”

* * * * *

“_Osterley Park, Nov. 13._--I came here yesterday, most kindly welcomed by the good old Duchess of Cleveland, who is delightful. The greatness of her charm certainly lies in the absence of charm: no one ever had less of it. But what bright intelligence, what acute perceptions, what genuine kindness, what active beneficence! I found Julia, Lady Jersey, here, and Mr. Brandling, and a Mr. and Mrs. Bramston, relations of the Cleveland family. After dinner, the Duchess made me sit exclusively by her, saying kindly that she could not waste any of my short visit. She talked in a very interesting way of the great Duke of Wellington, and then of the present Duke. She said that when she asked the latter if the great Duke had never shown him any kindness, he said, ‘No, he never even so much as patted me on the shoulder when I was a boy, but it was because he hated my mother.’

“After luncheon to-day I walked with Brandling and Colonel Bramston to Boston Hall, the fine old house of the Clitherows.

“As Lady Caroline Paulet, the Duchess of Cleveland used to be very proud of her little foot. She wore an anklet, and would often sit upon a table, and let it fall down over her foot to show it. It was inscribed, ‘La légèreté de Camille et la vitesse d’Atalante.’ One day Lady Isabella St. John, who was equally proud of her little foot, said, ‘I wish you would let me try if I can get your anklet over my foot, Lady Caroline.’ And she put it on, and, to Lady Caroline’s great disgust, _kicked it off_, to show how easily her foot would go through it.

“In those long-ago days--one cannot imagine it now--she used to be very _décolletée_, and the Duchess Elizabeth (Miss Russell), who did not like her, once flung a napkin at her across the table, saying, ‘Caroline, here is something to cover your nakedness with.’

“How many and amusing are the anecdotes remembered of that Duchess Elizabeth, who went on receiving a pension from the Duke of Bedford, as his cast-off mistress, after she was married to the Duke of Cleveland. She had been a washerwoman. She left Newton House, where she lived as a widow, to her nephew Mr. Russell, whose grandson married a Lushington. She gave £70,000 to her niece Laura when she married Lord Mulgrave, and the marriage very nearly went off because the Normanbys stuck out for £100,000. ‘Laura is not my only niece, remember that,’ she said, and then they became frightened. She used to call Lord Harry Vane ‘My ‘Arry.’ One day, with Mr. Francis Grey, the conversation turned upon Venus. ‘I do not like her,’ she said; ‘she had a bad figure, and by no means a good character.’ Her companion laughed and said, ‘She mistakes her for a living person,’ and so she did.”

* * * * *

“_Nov. 14._--Life is very pleasant in this fine old house, and its long sunny gallery full of books and pictures is a delightful resort on winter mornings. We breakfast at ten, during which Mr. Spencer Lyttelton, who is frequently here, does his best to shock people for the day, but is certainly very clever and amusing. I never saw any one who called a spade a spade as he does, but I believe he likes every one to think him worse than he is. This morning I walked with Brandling in the long shrubberies, the great trees casting perfectly blue shadows upon the park white with hoar-frost and the lake thinly coated with ice.

“In the afternoon we went to Ham House--a most curious visit. No half-inhabited château of a ruined family in Normandy was ever half so dilapidated as this home of the enormously rich Tollemaches. Like a French château too is the entrance through a gateway to a desolate yard with old trees and a sundial, and a donkey feeding. All the members of the family whom I knew were absent, but I sent in my card to Mr. Algernon Tollemache, who received us. As the door at the head of the entrance-stair opened, its handle went through a priceless Sir Joshua of Louisa, Countess of Dysart: it always does go through it. We were taken through a half-ruined hall and a bedroom to an inner room in which Mr. Algernon Tollemache (unable to move from illness) was sitting. It presented the most unusual contrasts imaginable--a velvet bed in a recess backed by the most exquisite embroidery on Chinese silk; an uncarpeted floor of rough boards; a glorious Lely portrait of the Duchess of Lauderdale; a deal board by way of washing-stand, with a coarse white jug and basin upon it; a splendid mirror framed in massive silver on a hideous rough deal scullery table without a cover; and all Mr. Tollemache’s most extraordinarily huge boots and shoes ranged round the room by way of ornament.

“The vast house is like a caravansary; in one apartment lives young Lord Dysart, the real owner; in another his Roman Catholic mother, Lady Huntingtower, and her two Protestant daughters; in a third, his great-aunt, Lady Laura Grattan; in a fourth, his uncle, Mr. Frederick Tollemache, who manages the property; in a fifth, Mr. and Mrs. Algernon Tollemache, who made a great fortune in Australia.

“We were sent over the house. All was of the same character--a glorious staircase with splendid carving in deep relief; the dismal chapel in which the different members of the family, amongst them Lady Ailesbury[321] and Lady Sudeley,[322] have been married, with the prayer-book of Charles I., in a most wonderful cover of metallic embroidery; marvellous old rooms with lovely delicate silk hangings of exquisitely beautiful tints, though mouldering in rags; old Persian carpets of priceless designs worn to shreds; priceless Japanese screens perishing; beautiful pictures dropping to pieces for want of varnish; silver grates, tongs, and bellows; magnificent silver tables; black chandeliers which look like ebony and are solid silver; a library full of Caxtons, the finest collection in the world except two; a china closet with piles of old Chelsea, undusted and untouched for years; a lovely little room full of miniatures, of which the most beautiful of all was brought down for us to examine closer. ‘Do you see that mark?’ said Mr. Tollemache. ‘Thirty years ago a spot appeared there upon the miniature, so I opened the case and wetted my finger and rubbed it: I did not know paint came off(!). Wasn’t it fortunate I did not wipe my wet hand down over the whole picture: it would _all_ have come off!’[323]

“And the inhabitants of this palace, which looks like that of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, have wealth which is inexhaustible, though they have scarcely any servants, no carriage, only bread and cheese for luncheon, and never repair or restore anything.

“All the family have had their peculiarities. The late Lord Huntingtower was at one time separated from his wife, and when he was persuaded that he ought in common justice to allow her to return to Ham, he assented, but he draped the gates and portico with black cloth for her reception, and he put a band of black cloth round the left leg of every animal on the estate, the cows in the field, the horses in the stable, even the dogs and the cats. _His_ grandfather, Lord Huntingtower, was more extraordinary still. When he bought a very nice estate with a house near Buckminster, he bought all the contents of the house at the same time. There was a very good collection of pictures, but ‘What do I want with pictures? All that rubbish shall be burnt,’ he said. ‘But, my lord, they are very _good_ pictures.’ ‘Well, bring them all down here and make a very great fire, and I will see them burnt.’ And he did.

“There is a ghost at Ham. The old butler there had a little girl, and the Ladies Tollemache kindly asked her to come on a visit: she was then six years old. In the small hours of the morning, when dawn was making things clear, the child, waking up, saw a little old woman scratching with her fingers against the wall close to the fireplace. She was not at all frightened at first, but sat up to look at her. The noise she made in doing this caused the old woman to look round, and she came to the foot of the bed, and grasping the rail with her hands, stared at the child long and fixedly. So horrible was her stare, that the child was terrified, and screamed and hid her face under the clothes. People who were in the passage ran in, and the child told what she had seen. The wall was examined where she had seen the figure scratching, and concealed in it were found papers which proved that in that room Elizabeth, Countess of Dysart, had murdered her husband to marry the Duke of Lauderdale.”[324]

* * * * *

“_Holmhurst, Nov. 24._--Here I am at home again, and we are very busy increasing the walks round the tiny property with the money which dear Aunt Sophy left. They will present quite a miniature variety of scenery now--the ilex walk recalling Italy, and the fir-wood the Black Forest, but the thick wood at the bottom, and its tiny glens and brook and bridges, could only be in England. In this wood we are trying to coax a thousand interesting flowers to ‘grow wild,’ and puzzle the botanists of the twentieth century.

“I spent the last three days of my absence with Hugh Pearson in his canonry at Windsor, a delightful old house overlooking the steep ascent of the hill, where different members of the royal family are constantly dropping in to visit the dearest man in the world, as the princesses of George III.’s time did to visit Mrs. Delany--and no wonder!

“Willie Stephens[325] and I had much interesting talk with the beloved H. Pearson; after being with other people, there is an ease in talking to him which is like exchanging a frock-coat for a shooting-coat.

“On Friday poor Prince Alemayu of Abyssinia (King Theodore’s son) was buried in Windsor Castle. After he came from Abyssinia the Queen adopted him, and he had no one else to look to, for his mother died of consumption on her way to England, and his only other near relation, his uncle, the present King, would certainly have cut his head off at once if he had returned to Abyssinia. He was at Rugby at Jex Blake’s house, and then at a private tutor’s to prepare him for the army, but he always passed his holidays in the castle with Lady Biddulph, and was like a younger brother to Victor Biddulph, her son. Every one liked him. Lately he had been at a tutor’s near Leeds, where he became ill of inflammation of the lungs, probably rapid consumption. Lady Biddulph did not believe in the danger, but Mrs. Jex Blake went to him, and her account of his last hours was most touching. He said to her, ‘No doubts: no doubts at all,’ and then he died.

“On Thursday he was brought to Windsor, and we went to look at his coffin in the little mortuary chapel, draped with black and white, in front of Princess Charlotte’s monument.

“The funeral was at twelve on Friday. The chapel was full. Most exquisitely beautiful was the singing--the gradual swell of ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life’ as the procession formed at the west door and moved slowly up the nave into the choir. The coffin was piled with flowers upon a violet and white pall. Lady Biddulph and her children knelt on one side. Prince Christian, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (as guardian of the Prince), and Mr. Lowe were amongst the mourners. The Dead March was played most grandly as the procession moved out again to the little graveyard by the west door, where the snow had fallen thick upon the flowers by which the newly-made grave was surrounded.

“I have heard a very eerie story from Lady Waterford:--There is a place in Scotland called Longmacfergus. Mr. and Mrs. Spottiswoode lived there, who were the father and mother of Lady John Scott, and they vouched for the story. The villagers of Longmacfergus are in the habit of going to do their marketing at the little town of Dunse, and though their nearest way home would be by crossing the burn at a point called ‘the Foul Ford,’ they always choose another and longer way by preference, for the Foul Ford is always looked upon as haunted. There was a farmer who lived in Longmacfergus, and who was highly respected, and very well-to-do. One night his wife was expecting him back from the market at Dunse, and he did not appear. Late and long she waited and he did not come, but at last, after midnight, when she was very seriously alarmed, he knocked violently at the door and she let him in. She was horrified to see his wild and agonised expression, and the awful change which had taken place in his whole aspect since they parted. He told her that he had come home by the Foul Ford, and that he must rue the day and the way, for he must die before morning. He begged her to send for the minister, for he must see him at once. She was terrified at his state, and implored him rather to send for the doctor, but he said, ‘No, the minister--the minister was the only person who could do him any good.’ However, being a wise woman, she sent for both minister and doctor. When the doctor came, he said he could do nothing for the man, the case was past his cure, but the minister spent several hours with the farmer. Before morning he died, and what he said that night to the minister never was told till many years after.

“Naturally the circumstances of the farmer’s, death made the inhabitants of Longmacfergus regard the Foul Ford with greater terror than before, and for a few years no one attempted to use it. At last, however, there came a day when the son of the dead farmer was persuaded to linger longer than usual drinking at Dunse, and after being twitted by his comrades for cowardice in not returning the shortest way, he determined to risk it, and set out with a brave heart. That night _his_ wife sat watching in vain for his return, and she watched in vain till morning, for he never came back. In the morning the neighbours went to search for him, and he was found lying dead on the bank above the Foul Ford, and--it is a foolish fact perhaps, but it has always been narrated as a fact incidental to the story, that--though there were no marks of violence upon his person, and though his coat was on, his waistcoat was off and lying by the side of his body upon the grass; his watch and his money were left intact in his pockets.

“After his funeral the minister said to the assembled mourners and parishioners, that now that the second death had occurred of the son, he thought that he should be justified in revealing the substance of the strange confession which the father had made on the night he died. He said that he had crossed the wooden bridge of the Foul Ford, and was coming up the brae on the other side, when he met a procession of horsemen dressed in black, riding two and two upon black horses. As they came up, he saw amongst them, to his horror, every one he had known amongst his neighbours of Longmacfergus, and who were already dead. But the man who rode last--the last man who had died--was leading a riderless horse. As he came up, he dismounted by the farmer’s side, and said that the horse was for him. The farmer refused to mount, and all his former neighbours tried to force him on to the horse. They had a deadly struggle, in which at last the farmer seemed to get the better, for the horseman rode away, leading the riderless horse, but he said, ‘Never mind, you will want it before morning.’ And before morning he was dead.”

* * * * *

It was with a feeling of strangeness that, in the autumn of 1879, I felt that my royal duties were over. I did not see the Prince of Sweden again after his return from Scotland.

I have heard since at intervals from the Prince (whose career I always follow with deepest interest), and from the beloved Queen, by the hand of Countess Rosen; but their letters have referred rather to the past than to the present or future: my part in the Prince’s life is probably over.