Chapter XXI: A Halt in Life (3)

“_May 29._--All has gone well and smoothly, and there is great interest in the Holyrood life--the moving diorama of people, with the varying lights and shades of character which they display, the old-world aspect of all that has to be done, with the pages in their crimson and white liveries, the chaplain and purse-bearer in their court dresses, and the mounted guard. It has all been made especially pleasant by being on such thoroughly friendly terms with the ladies-in-waiting and with one of the aides-de-camp, Ally Gordon: the extreme goodness of the other, who has been vehemently ‘converted,’ being a sort of barrier to intimacy.

“Old Miss Louisa Hope has been amongst the people who have come to Holyrood. She talked much of her friendship with Lord Brougham, with whom she corresponded constantly for many years. She had many religious conversations with him, and he often used to dwell with her, as in his public lectures, on the sublimity of that description of God, ‘eternal, immortal, invisible,’ which has been spoilt in the revised translation by changing the word ‘immortal’ into ‘incorruptible.’ After he had been betrayed into especially bad language in her presence, she wrote a strong remonstrance to him. He said nothing definite in answer, but thenceforth always addressed her as ‘Dearest Miss Hope.’ When she heard that he was not likely to live, Miss Hope wrote to him, saying that she trusted that, if he was able to write himself, he would give her some sign of his assurance as to a future life; but that, if he were not able to write himself, he would not notice her request. Lord Brougham wrote, ‘I trust entirely in the _graciousness_ of Him who died for me,’ and she was satisfied.

“Yesterday we drove out to Winton to Lady Ruthven. It was a lovely day, the sea deep blue, and the trees, especially the sycamores, in their richest foliage. We found the house just set in order after its devastation during the fire which consumed the dining-room three weeks ago, when everything was thrown out of the windows. Dear old Lady Ruthven herself sat all the time on a chair on the lawn watching the flames. She asked if every one was out of the castle, and being assured that it was so, said, ‘Is Peppy (her dog) safe?’--‘Yes, my lady.’--‘Is my blue vase safe?’--‘Yes, my lady.’--‘Then I am quite satisfied.’ And she bade every person on the property go to church the next day to return thanks for her preservation. She received me with the greatest affection, and bade me kiss her.[357]

“At the great dinner at Holyrood in the evening I took in a Mrs. Murray, who talked pleasantly about the old phase of Edinburgh society which she remembered. ‘There were three subjects--wine, law, and contradiction: wine is extinct now as a topic, but the other two, and especially the last, are as much to the fore as ever.’ She said that she had studied law herself, because it was the subject on which her husband was most interested, and she liked him to be able to discuss all his occupations with her.

“Another day I took in Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin, the marvellous amateur actress. She described her home life and the reading aloud to her boys. She read Landor, Alison, Scott. Only Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’ was a failure. They got through the first two cantos, then the youngest boy said, ‘Did the Childe never cheer up?’ and she was obliged to allow that he did not: so the book was closed.

“Yesterday I talked much with Mrs. Fraser--Professor Fraser’s wife. She described her visit to Hurstmonceaux--a week spent at the Rectory after her wedding tour, and going down twice to Lime, and my dear Mother sitting by the open window looking on the sunny lawn and flowers and the sparkling water.

“To-day, at St. Giles’s, Professor Flint preached a magnificent sermon on ‘I am the True Witness,’ describing how the doctrine which Christ preached was that of the kingdom; ‘that of the Church He left to others.’ His whole teaching was that inculcated by Diderot--‘Elargissez Dieu, montrez-lui à l’enfant, non dans le temple, mais partout et toujours.’”[358]

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“_May 30._--Our stay is nearly at an end, and I am very sorry.... It is impossible to live with the two charming old sisters (Lady Aberdeen and Lady Ashburnham), so one in every thought and act, without being impressed by their extreme simplicity and goodness; and Scottish ideas of clanship are more captivated by the fact of ‘His Grace’ being followed everywhere by his mother and aunt, and their going hand in hand with him in every good work, than they could be by the most brilliant court. Yesterday the preaching and praying were tremendous. Now we are just off to a luncheon, then to visit the castle in state, then a soldiers’ home, a sculptor’s studio, an artist’s studio, a dinner of a hundred, and the Assembly again in state at 10 P.M. I cannot say how kind every one is to me at Edinburgh.”

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“_London, July 10._--With Lady Paget to hear Spurgeon preach at his great Tabernacle near the Elephant and Castle. The vast congregation, the united sound of the thousands of voices in the hymn, the earnestness and zest of everything, were very striking: but far more so the strange, common, coarse preacher. The text was from Rev. xxii. 17, ‘Let him that heareth say Come.’ He described a sinner as like Leviathan, in whom there must be some weak spot betwixt its thousand scales, between which the dart of the exhorters could penetrate before death intervened and set the ‘wax-tablet’ of his character for ever. He spoke of the different ways of saying ‘Come,’ and acted them: that a ‘plain English, not half Dutch-Latin-Hebrew way of speaking,’ should be employed: that ‘prayer was as necessary as that a servant should tell her master who had called: that no servant was equal to answering for herself without referring to her master.’

“The rough similes just suited the congregation, and also the jokes, at which the people laughed aloud, but not irreverently. ‘A friend of mine was preaching in the street the other day, and one of those fellows passed by who has felt the hand touched by a bishop’s lawn sleeve upon his blessed pate (not that I think there is any good in that; I do not know if you do), and asked him by what authority he was preaching, and my friend answered, ‘By the authority of Jesus Christ, who said, “Let him that heareth say Come.”’ ‘Popes were represented sometimes with a dove whispering the words which they should speak into their ears--they were represented with a dove; I hope it was not really a raven.’”

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I was suddenly called away in the middle of the season by the alarming illness of my dearest old nurse, and for several weeks was at Holmhurst with her, in the mysterious solitude of the shadow of death, in which so many of my earlier years were passed, and then I had the intense thankfulness of seeing life return into the dear old face connected with so much that no one else remembers.