Chapter XXII: Home Sorrows (1)

“Faire le bien, connaître le vrai, voilà ce qui distingue un homme
d’un autre; le reste n’est rien. La durée de la vie est si courte,
ses vraies besoins sont si étroits, que quand on s’en va, il
importe si peu d’avoir été quelqu’un ou personne. Il ne faut à la
fin qu’un mauvais morceau de toile et quatre planches de
sapin.”--DIDEROT.

“Happy are they to whom the solemn angel comes unannounced and
quietly, and who are mercifully spared a long baptism of
suffering.”--WHITTIER.

“There is a melancholy in sunbright fields
Deeper to me than gloom: I am ne’er so sad
As when I sit amid bright scenes alone.”
--GEORGE DARLEY, “_Sylvia_.”

It was on the 11th of July, after I had returned to London, that I was drawing in the cloisters of Westminster with Alethea Grenfell, when Miss Johnes (the charming correspondent of Bishop Thirlwall) passed by, and told me that Arthur Stanley was ill. I thought little of it at the time, as he was so often sick, and I had lately seen him looking better and happier than he had done since his sister Mary’s death. On Thursday 14th there was a great dinner-party at the Deanery. Catherine Vaughan dined, and as, at the last moment, Arthur was not well enough to appear, she went in to sit with him after dinner, and finding him very dispirited and unwell, gave up her intention of going to Llandaff next day, and moved to the Deanery instead. That day erysipelas came on, and she was prevented seeing him till 3 A.M. on the morning of Monday the 18th, when the doctors called her, saying that an alarming change had come on. Canon Farrar was then summoned, and administered the Sacrament, but when he came to the blessing, Arthur motioned him to silence, and gave the words of the longer Benediction himself, with the same solemnity with which he spoke them at Augusta’s funeral. Then also Arthur spoke some farewell words--of grateful affection for the Queen, of trustful exhortation for his successor in the Deanery, of thankful appreciation of the fidelity of his housekeeper, Mrs. Waters, and the services of his butler and Charlotte the housemaid. Those who surrounded him then thought that he was sinking, but he rallied, and in the morning all the symptoms were favourable.

At 10 A.M. on Monday, I broke through the cordon which surrounded the Deanery, and made my way up to Catherine, who was glad to have me with her. The large rooms were silent and hushed, though many persons, chiefly Bruces and Baillies, were moving in and out. It was the dead heat of July, not a leaf stirring. In the afternoon, Arthur was so much better that I went away, and even kept an engagement to dine out. But next morning came the shock of his death--Arthur--the “Cousin Arthur” of my childhood. He had become worse at 9.30 P.M. The Archbishop read prayers in the room; they all knelt around; he never spoke more; and before midnight it was over.

Catherine and I both took leave of the Deanery for ever the next morning, but I went back to Westminster for the sad services of Sunday and Monday. The funeral sermons were much more affecting than the funeral itself; _that_ was far less touching than Augusta’s, for _he_ was not there to be felt with and for; and yet the number and the unusual variety of true mourners made it a very remarkable sight.

To me it was a reopening of many beloved memories, and then a sealing them away for ever. On the day after his death his sister and Hugh Pearson, his dearest friend, wrote to me, asking me to undertake his biography, to which I gladly assented, feeling sure that I could do it well, and that no one could possibly know his life as well as myself. But Sir George Grove, one of his literary executors, did not permit my undertaking it.

The following weeks at Holmhurst were occupied on an article which I wrote upon Arthur in _Macmillan_[359] (Sept. 1881), or rather in hunting up material for it amongst the few papers I myself possessed, as the literary executors allowed me access to nothing else. Yet, in doing it, I could feel that, though somewhat estranged from him in late years, there was no other who knew _all_ his life, its surroundings, motives, and interests as I did. I went afterwards to Catherine, but first paid a short visit in Suffolk to the ever-kind and pleasant Mrs. Paterson and her husband at their charming Rectory of Brome. I extract from my journal.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Brome Rectory, Sept. 15, 1881._--On Tuesday I came here ... into thickly wooded Suffolk, which thoroughly needs its shelter of trees from its exposure to the north-east winds, for they say there is not a hill between it and the Ural Mountains. I only just missed meeting two Mr. Tyrrells, who have been building a church, not uncalled for, they said, as an expiatory offering, for one of their ancestors murdered William Rufus, and another the Princes in the Tower. We saw Eye, with its fine church and pretty black and white grammar-school. The magnates of this neighbourhood are Sir Edward and Lady Caroline Kerrison, who possess two places, of which Brome Hall has delightful old gardens, while Oakley contains the trunk of the tree under which St. Edward was said to have been shot by the Danes, and in which, when it was cut down, an arrow-head was found imbedded. Sir E. Kerrison has just demolished a fine old wooden bridge, the successor of that under which the king concealed himself, and where he was discovered to a newly married couple by the light gleaming on his spurs. They betrayed him to the Danes, who shot him. Dying, he cursed all persons who should cross that fatal bridge over the Waveney on their way to or from a marriage, and on such occasions the country people will always go two miles round to avoid it. Close by is a spot where the discovery of flint weapons in a pre-historic stratum has compelled an entire re-arrangement of geology, as proving the existence of the world some millions of years before it was supposed to have been created.

“Yesterday I went to Norwich, and how many memories were awakened by the first sight of its beautiful spire! The river, the gateways, the ferry, the cathedral were the same: only the beautiful palace was turned into a common fifth-rate house. All who met there have now passed away except Catherine Vaughan and Lea; but one seemed to see them all--the venerable white head of my uncle the Bishop in his stall; Sedgwick emerging from his house; Aunt Kitty in the broad garden-walk; my dearest Mother in the Abbey Room; Sarah Burgess[360] in her still existing little room down the steps; Arthur and Mary, Owen and Charlie--all gone!”

[361]

* * * * *

“_Sept. 25._--We went from Brome to see Roydon. Mr. G. E. Frere is squire there, an eccentric man of old family, who has planted the churchyard with flowers appropriate to each of the graves near them. One is covered with wormwood: it is that of two old sisters in the parish, horribly ill-tempered, who both became bedridden, but each was provided with a stick that she might whack her companion as she lay in the bed near her. We met Mr. H., an ugly man, intensely. proud of his worthless pictures. Warren, the son of ‘Ten Thousand a Year,’ the clergyman who preached such a capital sermon on the single word ‘but,’ dined with him, and when Mr. H. pointed out what he calls a Murillo, said, ‘Really a Gorillo--a family portrait, I suppose!’ We also went to see Wingfield, an interesting old fortified manor of the De la Poles, and their magnificent tombs in the church. One of them married Chaucer’s grand-daughter and was murdered at Calais in the time of Henry VI.; another married the sister of Edward IV.

“On leaving Brome, I made a tourette into Norfolk--to dilapidated Walsingham, once the most celebrated shrine in England: to Lynn, with a custom-house worthy of Flanders: to Castle Rising, a Norman tower almost hidden in its green ballium: to Wymondham, with a splendid semi-ruined church, perpendicular outside, but Norman within: and to the glorious ruins of Castle Acre. The Coke of Elizabeth’s time bought so much land in Norfolk, that the Queen ordered him to be told that he must not buy any more, he would own too much for a subject. He petitioned, however, that he might just buy three acres more, which would complete his estate. The Queen said, ‘Yes, he might certainly do that;’ and he bought Castle Acre, West Acre, and South Acre, three huge properties, only the nucleus of which has descended to Lord Leicester.

* * * * *

“On the 20th I came to Llandaff.... We have been to see the ruins of a deserted manor-house which belonged to Sir George Aubrey. It was abandoned on account of a family tragedy. Sir George’s only son, a little boy, one day refused to eat his pudding. ‘You must,’ said the father. The child said he really could not, and implored with strange anguish to be excused, but the father insisted. Three hours after the child died in frightful agonies. That day the cook, by mistake, had put arsenic into the pudding instead of sugar.

“Yesterday Lord and Lady Romilly[362] fetched me to their pretty little house of Porthkerry, overhanging the Bristol Channel, and to-day we have driven through pouring rain to visit Fon Mon (pronounced Fun-Mun), a very curious old house of the thirteenth century.”

* * * * *

“_Penrhos, Anglesea, Oct. 9._--From Llandaff I went to Tenby, an indescribably delightful place, with its varied coast, its wonderful caves, its rich festoons of clematis hanging over the cliffs, and its sapphire and chrysoprase seas. A girdle of old castles and abbeys surrounds the place, affording an endless variety of excursions. I saw something at Tenby of many members of the kindly respectable family of Allen, and the Dean of the same name welcomed me to St. Davids, which is truly marvellous in charm and interest--the cathedral, richly, exquisitely beautiful; the ruined palace and college; and the village, with its fine old cross, isolated in the solitude of a hollow in the vast swooping hills, sixteen miles from a railway, almost from any other inhabited place. It is said that if you take a sod from the churchyard and stand upon it on the shore of the neighbouring sea, you look across the mist of waters into all the glories of fairyland; and truly this seems almost the case without the assistance of the churchyard sod, all is so wondrously, uniquely, weirdly beautiful.

“On my way to this Stanley home of many memories, I went to visit the Williams’s of Parcian, in central Anglesea, where the very savageness of the country gives it an interest, and the desolate coves of its sea-shore, in one of which, with the beautiful name of Moelvra, the _Royal Charter_ was lost.

“Mr. (William) Stanley[363] is very kind, and has a great deal of shrewd cleverness of its own sort; but a great deal has been written about the charms and moral advantages of the life of a country gentleman who never leaves his own place; nothing of its still more evident disadvantages. Surely no life has so strong a tendency to generate self-importance, exclusive possession, tenaciousness of authority, jealousy of interference, hatred of independence in others.”

* * * * *

“_Kinmel, Oct. 14._--A kind invitation from Lord and Lady Penrhyn took me from Penrhos to Penrhyn Castle, which is a very stately building outside, though the huge stone corridors and richly decorated Norman rooms are very unsuited for home comfort. A regiment of young ladies, Miss Pennants--daughters, step-daughters, and step-grand-daughters of Lady Penrhyn[364] appeared at every meal. The lady of the castle herself is one of the most natural and unworldly women in the world; and Lord Penrhyn[365] was most agreeable with his personal reminiscences. He described the coronation of George IV., where he stood close to Queen Caroline as she entered the carriage to drive away, and he said the expression of her countenance was the most diabolical thing he ever looked upon. Lord Penrhyn rode after Lord Anglesea, the Waterloo hero, when he was followed by a hooting mob through St. James’s Park. Lord Anglesea backed his horse between the trees, set his teeth, and hissed back at the yelling people. Then he said, ‘If every man of you were a hundred men, and each of them had a hundred hands, and a bayonet in each hand, I should still do my--_duty!_’ Then the people cheered him.

“Lord and Lady Penrhyn took me to Pennisinant, Ogwen Bank, and the slate quarries. The two first cannot be much altered since my mother’s descriptions of them in her childhood, except by the growth of trees, and are very lovely, with mossy rocks breaking the cascatelle of the Ogwen, and old sycamores--now glorious in colour--on the grassy knolls, relieved against a wild background of purple mountains. At Ogwen Bank, the representation of our Lady Penrhyn’s pugs remains over the chimney-piece.

“The life at Penrhyn Castle was most easy and agreeable, with the freedom which only exists in very great houses, the plenty of time to oneself, and yet interesting society. The same may be said of Kinmel, which is like a great château in France.

“And here it has been a real pleasure to meet my sweet cousin Lizzie, Lady Loch,[366] and her charming husband, Sir Henry, Governor of the Isle of Man: she is really one of the best people I ever saw, as well as one of the pleasantest.”

* * * * *

“_London, Nov. 1._--Dined with Lady Lyndhurst in Eaton Square. She talked of her early life. ‘I lived in Paris with my father, and I saw nobody. I never expected to marry; why should I? I had no fortune and no attractions. The first time I saw my Lord was when he came to Paris with his first wife. He came to see my father, and we went out driving with him. He and my father sat forward, and another young lady and I sat back, and most terribly afraid I was of him, and not a word did I speak--a shy, awkward girl sitting bolt upright.

“‘When my Lord was a widower, he came to Paris again. I was seven-and-twenty then, and was keeping my father’s house. Lord Lyndhurst came to breakfast with my father, and I gave them their coffee and whatever they wanted, and then sat there reading my _Galignani_, and not thinking a bit about them. Suddenly Lord Lyndhurst asked me if I knew of any very sunny apartment to let. “Oh, yes,” I said; “there is a friend of mine who wants to let just what you wish for, and, if you will wait a minute, I will run and get the keys, and can show it you.” So I got the keys, and he went with me, and the apartment was a capital one and suited him very well; and then, to my surprise, he asked me if I should be at home in the afternoon, and I thought, “What on earth can the old man want to come again for?”--and I answered him that I did not know. And, in fact, I forgot all about it, and went out driving to the Bois; and when I came in, the servant said Lord Lyndhurst had been. It gave me a sort of shock, and I went to my room, and said to myself, “What on earth can this mean?” But the next day before I was up--_before I was up_, if you please--I had a note from Lord Lyndhurst asking when I should be at home; and he came at that hour, and he came twice a day for three months, and it became quite awkward, every one talked of it--Paris is so small a world. However, at the end of that time he proposed. Afterwards I said, “Now do tell me what the dickens made you want to marry me--a woman without family, without fortune, and most decidedly without beauty?” and he said he did not know. After he had engaged me to marry him, he had to go back to England to his law-courts, and my father told me that I had better begin to get my things ready and buy my trousseau; but I said, “No, I should most certainly do nothing of the kind, for I did not believe for an instant that my Lord would ever come back again.”

“‘But he did come back, and we were married, and I had twenty-six years of the most perfect happiness ever allotted to woman. My Lord had the most perfect temper in the world, and in all the years we were together, we never had even a difference of opinion. He never came in to breakfast, and he never took luncheon, so he never appeared in our rooms till dinner-time, but I trotted in and out of his library, and the oftener I went in, the better he was pleased.

“‘I had seen nothing of the world before I was married, but I saw plenty of it afterwards: indeed, a few years after, he was made Lord Chancellor, and that was the top of everything. The world was the one drawback to my happiness, for through almost the whole time of my married life I had to go out. My Lord’s eldest daughter was married three years after I married my Lord, and four years after, Soph, his second girl, was married; and then very soon there was my own girl to take out. Oh, how I hated it, but I never let my Lord know what I felt. We dined with him, and afterwards there was his whist, or people came to see him, and at ten o’clock he went to bed; then I went to my daily task of dressing to take the girls out, and sometimes I fairly cried as I was dressing.

“‘I was always up so late at night that I breakfasted in my own room, but there was always breakfast downstairs for the girls and Auntie--for my Lord’s elder sister, Miss Copley, always lived with us. Auntie was no trouble in the house, and I was very fond of her, for she perfectly adored my Lord. When I married, people wondered at my wishing to have my sister-in-law to live with me, but I said, “Bless you, have I not been brought up in France, where whole families live together, and have to accommodate themselves to each other? and it would be hard indeed if I could not get on with poor old Auntie, when she is so fond of my Lord.”

“‘It was at the marriage of my daughter to Sir Charles Du Cane that my Lord said he had nothing left to live for, his work was done. He comforted me by telling me that he was so very old--and so he was,--and that if he lived he must become helpless, and so perhaps would be unhappy, and then perhaps even his mind might go. He said, “You will take care of Auntie?” and I said, “Of course I will,” and Auntie was always with me afterwards, and I loved her dearly, and she died in this very room at ninety-three. She was always well and cheerful, but one day she asked for her cup of tea as usual, and afterwards she--fell asleep,--she was so very old.

“‘My dear Lord was very old too when he died, but to me he was always like a young man, he was so bright and cheerful and so kind--always the pleasantest of companions. However, I could believe it was time that he should go, because _he_ told me so.

“‘That is the story of my life, Mr. Hare, and now I am only waiting, hoping that some day,--perhaps some day not very far off,--I may see my dear Lord again.’”

* * * * *

“_Athenæum Club, Dec. 13._--Sir G. Dasent, sitting at the next table at breakfast this morning, said, ‘I see you always sit in the historical corner.’--‘Do I? how?’--“Why, it is the place where Sam Wilberforce always sat (behind the door leading to the kitchen), and so did Theodore Hook. It was from that corner that, when he had finished two bottles of port, he used to be heard calling out “Waiter, lemonade: bring more _lemonade_.” And they all knew what it meant: he hadn’t the face to ask for another bottle of port.’”

* * * * *

“_Heckfield Place, Dec. 30._--I have had a pleasant visit here, meeting Sir Erskine May, a most winning and agreeable person. He revived for me the old story of Mrs. Blomfield, who forgot her Royal Academy ticket for the ‘private view,’ and, when they tried to prevent her coming in, said, ‘Oh, but you must let me pass: I am the Bishop of London’s lady.’--‘No, Ma’am, I could not let you in,’ said the doorkeeper, ‘if you were the Bishop of London’s _wife_.’

“We went with Lord Eversley to see Bramshill, one of the places intended for Prince Henry, a most noble and beautiful old house.”

* * * * *

“_Jan. 13, 1882._--With Ronald Gower and Hugh Pearson over the three great houses of London in the same morning. Grosvenor House is the pleasantest to live in, but Stafford House the most magnificent. When the Queen was being received there by the late Duchess, she said, with her happy power of expression, ‘I come, my dear, from my house to your palace.’

“Hugh Pearson talked of Archbishop Longley’s singular tact in saying the right thing. Some one asked him what tact was. He said, ‘It will be difficult for me to describe what it is, but I will give you an instance of what it is _not_. This morning I received a letter from a clergyman beginning--“In consideration of your Grace’s many infirmities and failing powers.” Now the beginning of that letter was not tact.’”

* * * * *

“_Jan. 14._--To Lady Lyndhurst, whom I found in her room ill, and in great grief for the death of General Macdonald, her oldest friend, ‘who was the pleasantest, frankest, and handsomest of young men when I first came to England, and whom everybody has liked ever since. He was so well known, that when Mrs. Norton directed a letter to him “Jem at his Club,” the postman made no difficulties at all, but took it straight to him at White’s. There have been several pleasant notices of him in the papers since his death, but they have all committed the fatal blunder of calling him “Jim,” the thing of all others he would have disliked--he was always Jem with an _e_.’”

* * * * *

“_Athenæum, Feb. 3._--Sir G. Dasent sat by me at breakfast. He described how he had almost bought the famous Vercelli MS. for £150, when ‘a stupid old canon interfered, and thought it ought not to be taken out of the place. It was taken to Italy from England by a Cardinal S. Andrea, who was tutor to Henry II., and who collected everything relating to St. Andrew, because of his name, and the MS. begins with the legend of St. Andrew. It ought some day to be restored to England by an interchange, England sending over some Italian MSS.; and now that it has been removed to the National Collection, this has been facilitated.’

“Sir G. Dasent talked of St. Olaf again. ‘He is what I call a good wearing saint, for he has lasted nine hundred years. It was just when St. Olaf was “coming up” that Earl Godwin and his sons were banished for a time. Two of them, Harold and Tosti, became Vikings, and in a great battle they vowed that, if they were victorious, they would give half their spoil to the shrine of St. Olaf, and a huge silver statue which they actually gave existed at Throndjem till 1500, and, if it existed still, would be one of the most important relics in archaeology. The old kings of Norway used to dig up the saint from time to time and to cut his nails. When Harold Hardrager was going to England, he declared he must see St. Olaf again--“I must see my brother,” he said: and he also cut the saint’s nails. But then he thought that from that time it would be better that no one should see his brother any more--it would not be for the good of the Church; so he took the keys of the shrine and threw them into the fiord; but at the same time he said that it would be a good thing for men who came after to know what a king was like, and he caused St. Olaf’s measure to be engraved upon the wall of the church at Throndjem--his measure of six feet.’”

* * * * *

“_Feb. 21._--I sat at dinner by Mrs. Duncan Stewart, who talked with her usual power. ‘When I was young, I lived with my guardian and his wife at Havre de Grâce, and thence I married Mr. Duncan Stewart, who was a Baltic merchant, a prosperous and well-to-do man then, though he was ruined afterwards. We lived in Liverpool; but my husband loved hunting and fishing, and at certain times of the year he was “away after the grouse,” as every Scotchman is. I stayed with my children then, but I too had my time of the year for going away, and I always went to London, where I became very intimate with Lady Blessington and all that set--a very bad set, it must be allowed.

“‘One day when I was sitting alone in my house in Liverpool, and my husband was away with the grouse, a note of introduction was brought in for me from Mrs. Milner Gibson, whom I had known in London, with the cards of Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli. He was a young man then, all curly and smart, and his wife, though so much older than himself, was a very handsome, imperial-looking woman. I told them that I should be delighted to show them everything in Liverpool, as Mrs. Milner Gibson asked me.

“‘When I went to see them next day at the hotel, I asked Mrs. Disraeli how she had slept, and she said, “Not at all, for the noise was so great.” Then I said, “Why not move to my house, for my house is very quiet, and I am alone, and there is plenty of room?” And they came, and a most delightful ten days I had. We shut out Liverpool and its people, and we talked, and we became great friends, and when we parted it was with very affectionate regard on both sides; and afterwards they wrote to me every week, and when I went to London, my place was always laid at their table, and if I did not appear at their dinner, they always asked me why I had not come to them.

“‘After she died, we drifted apart, he and I, and though I saw him sometimes, it was never in the old intimate way. The last time I saw him though, we had a really good talk together. It was not till we were parting that I said to him, “I hope you are quite well,” and I shall never forget the hollow voice in which he said to me, “_Nobody_ is quite well.” After that I never saw him again, but I had a message from him through William Spottiswoode. “Tell Mrs. Stewart always to come to talk to me when she can: it always does me good to see her.”’

“Mrs. Duncan Stewart described Lady Beaconsfield as originally a factory-girl. Mr. Lewis first saw her going to her factory, beautiful, and with bare feet. He educated her and married her, died, and left her very rich, and then she married Disraeli. When asked _why_ she married her second husband, she would say, as if it was a feather in her cap, ‘My dear, he made love to me whilst my first husband was alive, and therefore I know that he really loved me.’

“It was at ‘Greenmeadow,’ a house four miles from Llandaff, that Disraeli served his apprenticeship as secretary to Mr. Lewis, living in the house with him and Mrs. Lewis in the position of a dependant. When the house overflowed with visitors from London, as was often the case, he was sent out to sleep at ‘The Holly Bush,’ a little public-house in the village. Both Greenmeadow and the Holly Bush exist still.”

* * * * *

On the 11th of March I again left England for Italy. I could not endure leaving Holmhurst and my dear old nurse, but it seemed necessary to go to finish collecting materials for my book on Southern Italy, as there were still so many places which I had not seen. At Rome I paid an interesting visit to the blind Duke of Sermoneta, still full of mental vigour, and of indignation at “la stupidézza del Vaticano e l’infámia del Quirinale.” Miss Garden had been to see him, and defended the policy of the Quirinal, saying Italy was a young country, would come round, &c. He retorted, “If you say that from politeness, as I think you do, you are wrong; but if you really think so, you must be an idiot.” This was my last visit to the kind old Duke, for he died in the following autumn.

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[368]

At Naples, returning at night from the hotels in the lower town to those on the ridge of the hill, a gentleman engaged me in conversation and strolled along by my side. Suddenly, in the most desolate part of the road, he blew a whistle, and another man leapt out of the bushes, and both rushing upon me demanded “L’orológio e la bórsa.” I declared that I had neither watch nor purse. They insisted on my turning out all my pockets, which contained only three francs in paper and sixteen soldi in copper. Then they demanded my ring. I refused, and said it was no use for them to try to get it; it had not been off my finger for more than thirty years: it would not come off. They struggled to get it off, but could not. Then they whispered together. I said, “I see what you mean to do: you mean to cut off my finger and then drop me into the sea (which there--opposite the Boschetto--is deep water); but remember, I shall be missed and looked for.”--“No, we took good care to ascertain that first,” said my first acquaintance; “you said you had only been two days in Naples (and so I had): people who have been only two days in Naples are never missed.”--“But I do know Naples well--bisogna esaminarmi sopra Napoli,” I protested. “Dunque chi fu la Principessa Altamonti?”--“Fu figlia del Conte Cini di Roma, sorella della Duchessa Cirella.”--“E chi è il Principe S. Teodoro.”--“Fu Duca di S. Arpino, se maritava con una signora Inglese, Lady Burghersh, chi sta adesso Lady Walsingham.” After this they decided to let me go! But the strangest part of all was that the first brigand said, “After this scene you will not be able to walk home, and a carriage from the _guardia_ costs sixty centesimi; therefore that sum I shall give you back,” and they counted twelve soldi from the sum they had taken. It is this fact which makes me speak of the men who attacked me at Naples as brigands, not as robbers.

I spent a few days delightfully in beautiful Capri, but most miserable were my after travels in the desolate wind-stricken plains or malaria-teeming swamps of wretched Calabria, of which I had formed a lofty estimate from Lear’s almost wholly imaginary drawings. Each place I had to visit seemed uglier and more poverty-stricken than the last, but perhaps came to a climax at Cotrone, where the windowless prison-van (being the only vehicle in the town) was sent to meet us, arriving by the night-train at the distant desolate station, and where the stairs of the hotel were crowded with beggars, who had nowhere else to sleep, lying in heaps, and swarming with vermin.

I see that I wrote to Miss Leycester--“Calabria was indescribably horrible, its poisonous swamps and arid plains too hideous for words: nothing whatever but dry bread to eat: the so-called inns the filthiest of hovels: the people ruffians: the remains of the Greek cities a few stones apiece.” I pushed on to Reggio and Scilla. But soon I became so ill that I fled to Venice, where I was fit for nothing but to float in a gondola on the breast of ocean till I grew better.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

[369]

“_Venice, April 25, 1882._--It was by a happy accident that I found myself here on St. Mark’s Day. Madame von Usedom[370] called for me in her gondola, and we went together to S. Marco at 10 A.M. Most glorious it looked, glints of sunlight falling here and there on the golden walls and waving peacock-hued pavement, and violet shadows resting on all the inner recesses of arcades and cupolas, through which the grand mosaic forms of the saints were dimly visible. Crowds of people were present, yet in that vast space many thousands can move with ease. It is only a few days since the Patriarch, newly elected and a cardinal, entered Venice in triumph, followed by three hundred gondolas, standing at the prow of his barge, in his new scarlet robes, blessing the people. He is a young man, but is greatly beloved,[371] and every eye followed him as the grand procession swept chaunting round the church, and he was almost borne along by his huge golden robes, held up by the white-mitred attendant bishops of Chioggia and Torcello.

“I returned afterwards with the Usedoms to luncheon, and Madame von Usedom talked, as usual, of the great change which is sweeping over religious belief, but of how, in most thinking minds, the great essentials remained untouched. She had told Tholuck that she was troubled about her belief in the Trinity. He replied that in being so she confounded Religion with Theology: that the doctrine of the Trinity was a purely theological question, and not the least necessary to religion.

“In the afternoon the Comtesse de Lützow took me to see Besarel, a very remarkable self-taught genius, and a very good simple man and sculptor in wood and marble: and then we floated peacefully for hours through the labyrinthine streets of this wonderful water-city. In the evening, as I was sitting with the Lützows and Lady Augusta Cadogan at one of the tables in the piazza in front of Florian’s caffè, a table near was occupied by a party in which the conspicuous figures were a lady, not old, but with snow-white hair, and a very beautiful young woman, sipping _graniti_ and listening to the music: they were Queen Mary and Princess Mary of Hanover.

[372]

“And all this late evening, as I am sitting up writing, a monotonous song is wafted through the windows from the boats on the canal--

‘One sombre sweet Venetian slumbrous tune,’

as J. A. Symonds calls it.”

* * * * *

I returned to England by way of Nüremberg, which seemed to me strangely smaller and less interesting than when I saw it as a boy, and was more thankful than ever before to find myself again, on the 10th of May, at Holmhurst, where my dear old Lea’s most sweet and beautiful old face welcomed me with a brighter smile than ever, and where I spent a happy month alone with her, going back into our “wealthy past,” and living again in memory many happy scenes in our long-ago.

At Venice a great sorrow had come to me--another blank in the narrowing circle of my beloved ones. It was the sort of sorrow from which “all at once one awakes and finds a whole wing of one’s palace has fallen,” as Emerson says. Dearest Hugh Pearson was dead. He was altogether the most perfectly good man I have ever known, and, strange to say, at the same time the most perfectly charming. He was, from his earliest youth, as free from self-consciousness as he was from selfishness, but rippled over with geniality, cordiality, warmth of interest, affection to all around him. He was really, not nominally, the father of his parish, and I believe there was scarcely one of his parishioners who was not fonder of him than of most of their own nearest relations. To the children of his village he was simply adorable, and his manner to them, his fun, his sympathy, his solicitude, the prettiest and most enchanting thing imaginable. “He was like James amongst the Apostles, who wrote nothing at all, and said nothing we know, and yet was one of the chosen three who were with the Master that day when His glory was revealed, and that night when His soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Trust came to him; he never sought it. He was at home in the human heart, but he never seemed to probe it.”[373]

I suppose dear Hugh Pearson was very ugly, but one loved him so much, one thought there was no face like his. Though he was so very much older than I was, there was no one with whom I was more intimate, and nothing I would not have confided to him. His goodness, his religion, were equally attractive and charming to all. One never felt with him as if God had been rather unfortunate in His good intentions. His christian spirit christianised everything it came in contact with. His memory is a possession, and I may exclaim like the Duke of Ormonde, “I would not exchange my dead friend for any living friend in Christendom.” In the later years of his life, he had yielded to urgent request in accepting a canonry at Windsor, where I had delighted to visit him; but his heart was always in his country vicarage of Sonning on the Thames, and with his dear people there. He had refused the Queen’s persistent offer that he should succeed Arthur Stanley at Westminster, saying that he wished to die as he had lived--“a private person.”

The end came suddenly. On Easter Sunday (April 9) he told his people that it was his fortieth Easter Sunday amongst them, but he was taken ill whilst he was preaching, and two days after mortification came on. On Wednesday, the last evening of his life, when it was known that there was no hope of saving it, he desired that all his people--his true children--might be admitted to see him once more, and for three hours multitudes of his parishioners, men, women, and children, passed weeping through his room. He was able to speak separately to many of them, to give them all his blessing, and with a message of peace--the last effort of his great loving heart--upon his lips, he passed into the perfect life.

From a Photograph.]

He has left the most undimmed memory it is possible for man to leave. To none of those who knew him is it possible that there can be even a breath upon the mirror of his perfectly beautiful and lovable life. To no one could the words of Dante be applied with greater truth:--

“E se’l mondo sapesse il cor ch’ egli ebbe,
Assai lo loda e più lo loderebbe.”

“O ye holy and humble men of heart, praise Him and magnify Him for ever.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_London, June 4, 1882._--In the last week I have spent three pleasant days with the Husseys at Scotney, a lovely place, where an old tower of Richard the Second’s time and a ruined house by Inigo Jones stand in a wooded hollow, surrounded by a moat so clear that its reflections are even brighter than the reality. On the hill above is a handsome modern house with a glorious garden of azaleas and herbaceous flowers formed out of an old quarry. Here at this season ‘tout fourmille de vie,’ as Buffon would say. In the Roman Catholic persecution a priest was long imprisoned in the dungeon of the old tower, but escaped by persuading his gaolers that robbers had broken into the stables and were carrying off the horses, and by swimming across the moat whilst they were gone to the rescue.

“The whole country-side is full of traditions of smuggling days. Goudhurst church, which crowns a steep hill-set village on the horizon of hills opposite Scotney, was fortified by smugglers, who held out there for three days against the military sent against them in George the Third’s time. They were forced to capitulate at last and a number of them were executed, one of them, no one knows why, being afterwards buried under the hearthstone in one of Mr. Hussey’s cottages. This siege of Goudhurst church is described in James’s novel. One of the best remembered instances of successful smuggling was when a great funeral was announced as arriving from the Continent. A gentleman, who had died in France, and who had lived far on the other side of London, was being taken home to be buried with his ancestors. A hearse with four horses met the coffin at Dover. Relays of horses were ordered, and they were changed at Ashford, at Lamberhurst, and several other places. But the funeral never went beyond London, for the coffin was full of lace, which was soon dispersed over the city.

“To the same wild times belongs the story of the outlawed Darrell, a former owner of Scotney. News came that he had died abroad, and his body was brought home to be buried at his native place. Great was the concourse of neighbours and acquaintance at his funeral, but amongst the mourners was a tall figure wrapped in a cloak, who, as the body was lowered, said, ‘That is not me!’ to the mourner who stood nearest to the grave, and immediately disappeared.

“A few years ago, Mr. Hussey mentioned the tradition that Darrell had attended his own funeral to the old sexton, and asked if he could throw any light upon it. He said, ‘Yes, forty years ago, when your uncle was buried, the coffin next to which he was placed was that of Mr. Darrell, which was falling to pieces, and so I looked into it, and was surprised to see no remains whatever of a body, but only fragments of stone.’

“On the first day of my visit an old Lady Smith Mariott dined, bringing with her a magic crystal ball, in which she was very anxious that we should ‘see something,’ and was greatly disappointed when we did not. The ball was given to her by the old Lord Stanhope,[374] a firm believer, and many strange things had been seen in it--figures, and sometimes figures in armour. Mr. Hussey heard of a curious sixteenth-century MS. on magic balls in the British Museum, and went to look at it, and it was strange to find it say that ‘men in armour frequently appeared, especially on Sundays.’

“In the evening the conversation turned on witchcraft, and on Mr. Maitland, author of the ‘Church in the Catacombs,’ chaplain of Archbishop Howley, who undertook to prove the absurdity of belief in witchcraft, but, on examination, found such incontrovertible evidence of its reality, that he abandoned the subject. Talk of strange relics led to mention of the heart of a French king preserved at Nuneham in a silver casket. Dr. Buckland, whilst looking at it, exclaimed, ‘I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before,’ and, before any one could hinder him, he had gobbled it up, and the precious relic was lost for ever. Dr. Buckland used to say that he had eaten his way straight through the whole animal creation, and that the worst thing was a mole--that was utterly horrible.[375]

“Speaking of Lady Waterford, led Mr. Hussey to recall some of the wild escapades which he remembered in Lord Waterford’s youth. At one time, when he was living in Dublin with his uncle the Primate, coming home late at night, he had a great quarrel with his carman about the fare, and left the man swearing outside the door. Coming into the hall, he found his uncle’s gown and trencher lying on the side-table, and putting them hastily on, and going out with a stick and gruff voice, said, ‘What do you mean by coming here and trying to cheat my nephew? I’ll teach you not to do such things for the future,’ and he thrashed him soundly. The man went away, saying that he had been thrashed by the Archbishop of Armagh in person.”

* * * * *

“_London, June 22._--Tea with Mrs. Duncan Stewart, who, talking of her youth, recounted how Washington Irving had taken her eleven nights consecutively to see Talma act, and of the acting of Madame Rachel; how, in the ‘Cinna’ of Corneille, she sat quietly in a chair whilst all the people were raging round her, and of the wonderful power with which she hissed out--

‘Je recevrois de lui la place de Livie,
Comme un moyen plus sur d’attenter à sa vie.’

“Mr. and Mrs. Kendal were there, a pleasant handsome pair; and Madame Modjeska came in, and taking a live chameleon, which was clinging to the breast of Miss Thompson, her pet, posed with it perched on her finger, though it looked the very incarnation of devildom.”

* * * * *

“_June 23._--Drew with Windsor and the Husseys at Ham House. Lady Huntingtower had said to us the other day, ‘You have heard about the poor Duke of Richmond?’ We thought it was the live Duke, and inquired anxiously after him, but she said, ‘No, it is the portrait at Ham: we can see nothing but the Duke’s legs now.’ And thus at Ham we saw it--the utter ruin of a glorious Vandyke. They had sent for a common upholsterer from Richmond to varnish it, and he had covered it with something which had annihilated it altogether.

“An American being urged to go to see the Park at mid-day as a typical London scene, returned saying, ‘I was disappointed, the attendance was so slim.’”

* * * * *

“_July 5, 1882._--Dined with Miss Courtenay. Kinglake of the Crimea sat close to me--old now and very feeble, but apparently greatly beloved by those who know him well. Mr. Burton was on the other side, receiving congratulations on his purchases at the Hamilton sale. We had all been reading and generally enchanted with Mrs. Kemble’s ‘Later Reminiscences,’ and Mr. Reeve of the _Edinburgh Review_ was delighted to have much to say of his personal remembrance of her, much that certainly was not favourable. She says little of the separation from her husband (Mr. Butler) in her book, but Mr. Reeve remembered her intensely overbearing manner to him. Once when he was travelling with them in Belgium, Mr. Butler, with great difficulty, procured a very beautiful bouquet for her for the evening. He gave it to her. ‘I have been all over the town, my dear, to get this bouquet for you,’ he said. She sniffed at it, said contemptuously, ‘There are no gardenias in this bouquet,’ and threw it to the back of the fire.

“‘One day,’ said Mr. Reeve, ‘I was talking to Mr. Butler at a party, when she came up with “Pearce, I want to go.”--“In a minute, my dear.” In another moment she came again with “Pearce, I want to go directly.”--“Very well, my dear,” and he prepared to order the carriage. I said, “It is cruel of you to take him away just now; we were having a very deep conversation,” and I shall never forget the contemptuous tone in which she said, “Deep, with--Pearce!”

“‘Mrs. Kemble always disliked those who were afraid of her, but she hated those who were not.

“‘She loved scenic effect, and so did her sister Adelaide, who was her superior in many ways. When their father took his leave of the stage, all the audience wept; but Fanny and Adelaide, who had the stage-box, leant forward as much as possible over the side and wept copiously with their pocket-handkerchiefs.

[376]

“‘No one could do the Semiramide now, but Adelaide was sublime in it. She was very grand in the Norma, but in the Semiramide no one ever came up to her. Passion she understood, but in softer and quieter parts she was a failure.’”

* * * * *

“_July 10._--Luncheon in Sir Francis Seymour’s apartments at Kensington Palace to meet Don Carlos. He is an immense man, almost gigantic, and very handsome, and had a magnificent boar-hound with him--a very prince amongst dogs. He asked if I spoke Spanish. I said that I had spoken it in Spain, but was afraid of venturing upon it in London. So then he proposed Italian, in which it was easy to get on with him.”

* * * * *

“_Chevening, July 15._--Yesterday I came here to a house where I have much memory of past kindness, and where I find the young Lord and Lady Stanhope eminently desirous of carrying it on. Lochiel and his Lady Margaret are here; she a daughter of the Duke of Buccleuch, and most unusually natural and pleasant.”

* * * * *

“_July 16._--After luncheon, we had a pleasant walk to Knockholt Beeches--Lady Northcote, the two Stanhope brothers, Mr. Banks Stanhope, Lady Margaret, and I. Afterwards, sitting on the stone platform in front of the house, Sir Stafford Northcote told us--

“‘The great A. B. was tremendously jostled the other day in going down to the House. A. B. didn’t like it. “Do you know who I am?” he said; “I am a Member of Parliament and I am Mr. A. B.”--“I don’t know about that,” said one of the roughs, “but I know that you’re a damned fool.”--“You’re drunk,” said A. B.; “you don’t know what you’re saying.”--“Well, perhaps I am rather drunk to-night,” said the man, “but I shall be sober to-morrow morning; but you’re a damned fool to-night, and you’ll be a damned fool to-morrow morning.”’

* * * * *

“_July 18._--Dined with Lady Ossington, the most charming, kindest, and richest of old ladies, to meet the Duchess of Sermoneta. Lady Enfield was there, with white hair turned back high on her head, like a Sir Joshua in real life. Mr. Newton was very amusing with his riddles:--

‘My first Gladstone loves,
My second Gladstone hates:
My whole, pronounced slow, is what Gladstone wishes:
My whole, pronounced quick, is where Gladstone ought to be.’
Answer, _Reformatory_.

“On the Greeks sending marble for a bust of Gladstone, he related the lines:--

‘When Woolner’s hand, in classic mood, carving the Premier’s pate is,
Hellas, to show her gratitude, sends him the marble gratis.
Oh, could this nation, but in stone, repay the gift genteelly,
This country would send back her own Glad-stone to Hell-as freely.’”

[377]

In the beginning of September, my friend Harry Lee came to Holmhurst as usual for his autumn holidays, and, with the wish of giving him change and pleasure, I took him with me for a fortnight to Holland. We saw the whole of that little country, and enjoyed several of the places very much, especially the so-thoroughly Dutch Dort; quiet Alkmaar, with its charming old weigh-house; and Zwolle, with its fine old gateway. But the tour is not one which leaves much interest behind it. There is such a disadvantage in not being able to understand what people say, and all the Dutch we had anything to do with were so unaccommodating, so excessively grasping and avaricious. Besides, all my luggage, registered through to Brussels, disappeared and could not be traced, so that I had the odd experience of traversing a whole country with nothing more than a comb and a tooth-brush. Two months afterwards the luggage arrived quite safe at Holmhurst, covered with labels, quite intact, having made a long tour by itself quite in a different direction from the one we took, and without any explanation or any expense.[378]

[379]

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Babworth Hall, Notts, Oct. 7, 1882._--I have been spending four pleasant days with kind Mrs. Bridgeman Simpson, to meet old Lady Westminster,[380] who is the most winning, courteous, and charming of old ladies, finding something pleasant to say to every one, putting every one at their ease, and possessing that real dignity of simplicity which is so indescribably charming. On Wednesday I went with her to Clumber, where we saw the new and very ugly hall, with Italian artists putting down a mosaic pavement.