Chapter XXIII: In the Furrows of Life (1)

“Days--when gone--
Gone! they ne’er go; when past they haunt us still.”
--EDWARD YOUNG.

“What used to be joy is joy no longer: but what is pain is easier because they have not to bear it.”--GEORGE ELIOT.

“To live for the shorter or longer remainder of my days with the simple bravery, veracity, and piety of her that is gone, that would be a right learning from her death, and a right honouring of her memory.”--CARLYLE.

“Dieu donne la robe selon le froid.”--PASCAL.

JOURNAL.

“_Dec. 1882._--With what a numbed feeling of desolate sadness do I look back upon the last chapter. My home existence is so intensely changed by the blank which the dear old friend of my whole life has left. It was long before I could bear to go into her changed rooms, and I still wake nightly with the sad inward outcry, ‘Can it be--can it be? Is every one gone who shared _our_ home life? Is there no one left who is associated with all our wealthy past?’ ‘Entbehren sollst du--sollst entbehren.’ And when my friends urge me to marry, I feel the utter desolateness of attempting to make new ties with any one who knows nothing and cares nothing of those with whom all my earlier life was bound up. I have happily still a great power of enjoyment when anything pleasant comes to me, but oh! how seldom it happens. Griefs and worries--griefs and worries come round with wheel-like recurrence. I often think of Aubrey de Vere’s lines:--

‘When I was young, I said to Sorrow,
“Come, and I will play with thee.”
He is near me now all day;
And at night returns to say,
“I will come again to-morrow,
I will come and stay with thee.”

“Archbishop Tait, long a kind friend, is dead. I hear that at his funeral, in the beautiful churchyard at Addington, a little robin perched on an adjoining tombstone and poured forth a flood of song, apparently unconscious of all present. ‘How our father would have liked to have seen it,’ said one of the daughters.”

* * * * *

“_Jan. 12, 1883._--Tea with Dowager Lady Donoughmore,[386] who was very pleasant. She described walking in Ireland with a stingy old gentleman. A beggar came up to them, and he said, ‘I have not got a penny to give you.’ The beggar retorted, ‘You’ve got an awful ugly face: I hope you may die soon, but I pity the worms that will have to eat you.’

“Lady Donoughmore, however, said that she had boundless experience of the natural poetry in the Irish peasantry. On receiving a shilling, an old woman said to her, ‘May ivery hair of yer honour’s head become a torch to guide yer sowle to heaven.’”

* * * * *

“_June 19._--Dined with Lady Airlie, only meeting Mrs. Duncan Stewart and Lady De Clifford. Mrs. Stewart talked much of Mr. Carlyle.

“‘Mr. Hannay knew Carlyle very well, and often went to see him, but it was in his poorer days. One day when Mr. Hannay went to the house, he saw two gold sovereigns lying exposed in a little vase on the chimney-piece. He asked Carlyle what they were for. Carlyle looked--for him--embarrassed, but gave no definite answer. “Well, now, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Hannay, “neither you nor I are quite in a position to play ducks and drakes with sovereigns: what _are_ these for?”--“Well,” said Carlyle, “the fact is, Leigh Hunt likes better to find them there than that I should give them to him.”

“‘I was sitting once by Mr. Bourton,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘and he was talking of Leigh Hunt. He said, “He is the only person, I believe, who, if he saw something yellow in the distance, and was told it was a buttercup, would be disappointed if he found it was only a guinea.”’

“Lady Airlie said she had known Leigh Hunt very well when she was a child. He had taken her into the garden, and talked to her, and asked her what she thought heaven would be like, and then he said, ‘I will tell you what I think it will be like: I think it will be like a most beautiful arbour all hung with creepers and flowers, and that one will be able to sit in it all day, and read a most interesting novel.’

“Of her early acquaintance with Washington Irving, Mrs. Stewart said, ‘It was at Havre. My guardian was consul there. People used to say, “Where is Harriet gone?” and he answered, “Oh, she is down at the end of the terrace, busy making Washington Irving believe he is God Almighty, and he is busy believing it.”’

“Mrs. Stewart told of Miss Ruth Paget, one of many sisters, who went down at night to the kitchen to let out her little dog for a minute, and found her brother Marco, who was a midshipman in the Mediterranean, sitting on the kitchen-table, swinging his legs, but pouring with wet. She said, ‘Good heavens, Marco, how did you come here?’ He looked at her, and only said, ‘Do not tell any one you have seen me.” She looked round for an instant to see if any one was coming, and when she turned, he was gone.

“Ghastly pale, she went upstairs. Her sisters said, ‘You look as if you had seen a ghost,’ and they tried to insist on her telling them what had happened to her. She put them off by complaining of headache and faintness; but she was terribly anxious.

“Three months afterwards she heard her brother was coming home, then that he had arrived at Portsmouth, then he came. The first time she was alone with him she said, ‘I must tell you something,’ and she told him how he had appeared to her, and then she said, ‘I wrote it down at the time, and here is the paper, with the date and the hour.’

“He looked shocked at first, and then said, that at that very moment, being absent from his ship without leave, his boat had been upset, and he had been as nearly drowned as possible--in fact, when he was taken out of the water, life was supposed to be extinct. His first fear on recovering was that his absence without leave would be detected by his accident and become his ruin, and his first words were, ‘Do not tell any one you have seen me.’”

* * * * *

“_June 21._--At Madame du Quaire’s I met Oscar Wilde and Mrs. Stewart. He talked in a way intended to be very startling, but she startled him by saying quietly, ‘You poor dear foolish boy! how can you talk such nonsense?’ Mrs. M. L. had recently met this ‘type of an aesthetic age’ at a country house, and described his going out shooting in a black velvet dress with salmon-coloured stockings, and falling down when the gun went off, yet captivating all the ladies by his pleasant talk. One day he came down looking very pale. ‘I am afraid you are ill, Mr. Wilde,’ said one of the party. ‘No, not ill, only tired,’ he answered. ‘The fact is, I picked a primrose in the wood yesterday, and it was so ill, I have been sitting up with it all night.’ Oscar Wilde’s oddities would attract notice anywhere, but of course they do so ten times more in the _plein midi_ of London society, where the smallest faults of manner, most of all of assumption, are detected and exposed at once.”

* * * * *

“_July 2, 1883._--I have just heard again the ghost story so often told by Mrs. Thompson Hankey:

“Two beautiful but penniless sisters were taken out in London by an aunt. A young gentleman from the north, of very good family and fortune, fell in love with one of them, and proposed to her, but she was with difficulty persuaded to accept him, and afterwards could never be induced to fix a date for their marriage. The young man, who was very much in love, urged and urged, but, on one excuse or another, he was always put off. Whilst things were in this unsettled state, the young lady was invited to a ball. Her lover implored her not to go to it, and when she insisted, he made her promise not to dance any round dances, saying that if she did, he should believe she had ceased to care for him.

“The young lady went to the ball, and, as usual, all the young men gathered round her, trying to persuade her to dance. She refused any but square dances. At last, however, as a delightful valse was being played, and she was standing looking longingly on, she suddenly felt herself seized round the waist, and hurried into the dance. Not till she reached the end of the room, very angry, did she succeed in seeing with whom she had been forced to dance: it was with her own betrothed. Furious, she said she should never forgive him. But, as she spoke, he disappeared. She begged several young men to look for him, but he could not be found anywhere, and, to her astonishment, every one denied altogether having seen him. On reaching home, she found a telegram telling her of his death, and when the hours were compared, he was found to have died at the very moment when he had seized her for the dance.

“Mrs Thompson Hankey knew all the persons concerned.

“Catherine Vaughan has just been taken to see an old woman in Scotland, whose daughter was married last year. She asked if she was getting on well. ‘Aye, she’s gettin’ on varra weel, varra weel indeed. She’s got a pig, and she’s got a cock, and she’s got a son: it’s true that she hates her mon, but one must aye have ae thing.’”

“Charlotte Leycester is to be left in possession of my little Holmhurst whilst I am away, and has such complete enjoyment of it, that I shall have no sense of wasting my home by a long absence, as would otherwise be the case.”

During the summer of 1883, I left England to join my oft-times travelling companions, the Miss Hollands, for a tour in Russia. I did not greatly enjoy this tour, partly because I felt so terribly knowing almost nothing of the language of the country, not being able to read even the names of the streets. I also suffered from not having had time to teach myself anything of the country before I went there: for, after I came home, and tried to instruct my mind by every book I could get hold of about Russia, I found my travels had been much more interesting than, from the very intensity of my ignorance, I believed them to be at the time.

At Kieff I left my companions, and found my way home alone by Warsaw and by Cracow, with its curious monuments and odious Jew population. After the great discomforts of Russia, a very few days in Germany seemed very charming, and I was especially glad to see beautiful old Breslau, and afterwards Wilhelmshohe near Cassel, in a perfect conflagration of splendid autumnal tints, truly realising Hood’s lines--

“How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky
The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fled.”

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_St. Petersburg, August 22, 1883._--A rest in the interesting group of North-German cities, Dantzic, Marienburg, Königsberg, prepared us for the thirty-six hours’ journey through monotonous fir-woods and cornfields, unvaried through 1000 miles, till two great purple domes rose on the horizon--St. Alexander Newski and the Cathedral of St. Isaac.

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“It was difficult to believe we were in Europe on emerging from the station and seeing the endless droskies--sledges on wheels--drawn up, with their extraordinary-looking drivers, in long blue dressing-gowns (wadded like feather-beds, so as to make the wearer look like a huge pillow), with a girdle, and low cap. Then the gigantic streets, each about as broad as St. James’s Square, and the huge squares, in which the palaces, however vast, are so disproportioned to the immensity of space, that their architectural features are lost. Then the utter desolation, one carriage and two or three foot-passengers in the apparently boundless vistas. Altogether, St. Petersburg is quite the ugliest place I ever saw, even the Neva, huge as it is, so black and grim, and the smoke of the steamers giving the worst aspects of London. But yesterday evening we had a delightful drive of four hours on the islands in the Neva, which answer here to the Park, and are exquisitely varied--lovely winding alleys, bosquets of flowering trees, green meadows, little lakes, rushing brooks, every variety of cottage and villa and garden and bridge, at least twenty miles of them. Coming back, we stopped at the fortress-church to see the royal tombs--stately marble sarcophagi in groups; first Peter the Great and his family, then two groups of intermediate sovereigns, then the present family, surrounded (inside the church) by a grove of palms and laden with flowers. Close by is Peter the Great’s cottage, and the tiny early church in which he worshipped, and, at the former, the famous ‘icon’ which he carried in his wars, before which crowds of people were incessantly prostrating and kissing the pavement.”

* * * * *

“_Sept. 4._--We returned last night from Finland, of which I am glad to have visited a specimen, though there is not much to see, except gloomy little lakes, flat country, hundreds of miles of monotonous forests of young firs and birch, and little wooden villages. All is very much like an inferior Sweden, and the people understand Swedish, and have the Swedish characteristics of honesty and civility, which, at so short a distance off, make them an extraordinary contrast to the Russians. Our journey was amusingly varied by endless changes of rail, steamer, walk, char-a-banc, as the country allowed. At Imatra, our destination, a lake tumbles into a river by curious rapids.”

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* * * * *

“_Moscow, Sept. 9._--We left St. Petersburg on Monday, and went to Novgorod the Great, one of the oldest cities in Russia, once enormous, but now dwindled to a large village, with a decaying kremlin and a wonderful cathedral like a mosque, a blaze of beautiful ancient colour within, quite splendid in its gold and silver decorations, and the shrines of sixteen famous saints (the Greek saints are most puzzling) who are buried there, and whose mummified hands, left outside their cerecloths, are exposed to the kisses of the faithful. A journey of nineteen hours’ rail brought us here on Thursday morning. The first impression of Moscow is disappointing--commonplace omnibuses at the station, ugly vulgar streets like the back-streets of Brighton, and, as the town is above twenty miles round and nine miles across, they seem endless. But you enter the Chinese town, in which we are now living, by gates in the strangest walls imaginable, and the street has all the crowd and clamour of Naples. Another series of very tall battlemented red walls and lofty gates announces the Kremlin. This is more striking than I expected--the three mosque-like cathedrals (there are five cathedrals and three hundred churches in Moscow), and the splendid view from the high terrace in front of them, which recalls that from the Pincio at Rome, only the Moskva is a very broad river, and every church has the strangest of towers--like bulbs, pine-apples, melons, fir-cones, gilt or blue or brightest green, covered with network, with stars, discs, moons, hung with chains like veils, every device that the wildest dream or maddest imagination can invent, and yet in this clear atmosphere of intense burning heat and with the arid low hills or burnt plains which surround the town, it all looks right. Inside, the cathedrals put all the churches in Italy and Spain to shame by their splendour, but one is sorry not to know more of their history. I can speak enough Russian now to get on humbly; but the alphabet beats me still: it is not only that there are so many letters, but that the old familiar forms of written letters mean something new.”

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* * * * *

“_Kieff, ‘The Holy City,’ Sept. 21._--We made excursions from Moscow to all the great monasteries. There are few other sights of importance, but these, in Russia, are quite unique--immense spaces surrounded by walls, towers, and gates, which have stood many a siege, and which are like the towns in old woodcuts, and contain gardens, cemeteries, cathedrals, usually six churches with gilt domes and minarets, besides accommodation for 600 or 800 monks and nuns, who have their wells, gardens, farms, &c. One of those which I thought most attractive was Novo Devichi, rising from an arid sandy plain close to the town, but full of lovely flowers, which a kind old prioress came and gave us handfuls of. Then we went to the New Jerusalem, where the famous Nikon lived and is buried--many hours jolting along a no-road through the forests in a rough tarantass, but a beautiful place when you get there. Nikon chose it because he thought it so like the real Jerusalem, and changed the name of its river to Jordan, and _made_ a Kedron. It was a quiet countrified spot, and the only one I have seen which the Mother and Lea would have enjoyed in the old days, and there was a primitive inn with kindly, gentle people. We also went to the famous Troitsa, the home and grave of Philaret. In all these excursions, as everywhere else, we found the ‘difficulties’ of Russian travel entire imagination: nothing can be easier.

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“Nevertheless, the journey to Kieff by a slow train was terrible, lasting two days and a night, and awfully hot--across a hideous brown steppe the whole way, with scarcely a tree to vary it. (There are forests _till_ Moscow, only steppes afterwards.) I was ill and wretched enough before this interesting place rose on its low hills above the Dnieper.

“To-day, however, has quite satisfied me that it was worth while to come. It is a most unique and beautiful place, the vast town, or rather three great towns, so embosomed in trees and gardens, that the houses are almost lost. But the greatest charm lies in the constant view over the glorious Dnieper, and the immense aërial plain beyond, with its delicate pink lights and blue shadows. Then Kieff is the Mecca of Russia, full of tombs of saints and holy images, and, though this is no special season, the thousands and thousands of pilgrims are most extraordinary--in sheep-skins and goat-skins, in fur caps, high-peaked head-dresses and turbans; in azure blue, bright pink, or pale primrose colour. I never could have believed without seeing it the reverence of the Russian religion, and it has seemed the same everywhere and in all classes. The bowing and curvetting and crossing before the icons is most extraordinary, and still more so the three prostrations which all make on approaching any holy place, bending down and kissing the dust in a way worthy of an acrobat, though treated as a matter of course by the devotees themselves. But the intense expression of devotion borne by these pilgrims (who have often _walked_ from Archangel!) is such as I have never seen on other faces, and some of the old men and women especially would make the grandest studies for pictures of saintly apostles and matrons. To see a smart young officer unhesitatingly prostrate himself and kiss the ground on sight of an icon (in the mud of this morning even), in the presence of equally smart companions, has something deeply touching in it, and one wonders if any young guardsman in England would do the same if and because he thought it right.”

* * * * *

“_In the Warsaw train, Sept. 25._--In this smoothly gliding train, which takes one in fifty-four weary hours across the steppes, it is as easy to write as in the study at home. I should be most comfortable if it were not that my companion (in the compartment for two) is the most odious type of American I ever came across. ‘I guess you will not want to have the windows of this carriage opened till you get to Warsaw, because I will not submit to it: I am in my right, and I will _not_ submit to it.’

“We were arrested again yesterday at Kieff, though then only by priests--veiled priests--for daring to sketch the outside of one of their sacred chapels; but after being hurried about from place to place for an hour, and shut up in a courtyard, with a wooden bench to sit upon, for another, we were regaled with a pile of beautiful grapes and apples, and sent about our business. This constant worrying when drawing has really made Russia very tiresome; but for those who do not want to draw, I do not see what difficulties travelling in the country can present, and Russians are always civil, even when arresting you.”

* * * * *

“_Warsaw, Sept. 27._--We arrived at the junction station of Brest more than two hours late, for on some of the Russian lines no hours are obligatory, and you are quite at the mercy of conductors and their whims for spending ten, thirty, or even forty minutes in gossiping at side stations. So the Warsaw train had left Brest, and we had five hours to wait for another. Ill and wretched, I left the horrible room where a crowd of people were smoking, spitting, and _smelling_, and made my way to a sort of deserted public garden, where cows were browsing on the lilacs. Here, from mere want of something to do, I began to sketch some cottages and bushes, when I was suddenly seized by two soldiers and carried off to the guard-house. Here a very furious bombastical old major cross-examined me, and went into a passion over each sketch in my book, with volleys of questions about each, and then he sent me with a military escort to the station to fetch my passport. It was right, of course, and at last, after several hours, I was dismissed with ‘Maintenant c’est fini;’ but after a quadruple walk of two miles each way, and over such a pavement as only Russia can supply.

“I never was at Warsaw before, and should not care to stay. The Vistula divides the town, which is full of palaces and gardens, but has older quarters full of Jews, which are like the old streets of Paris. This afternoon I drove to the old Sobieski palace of Villanov. Two horses were necessary, for just outside this capital city the roads are like the roughest of ploughed fields.”

* * * * *

I spent the autumn of 1883 very quietly at Holmhurst, but paid some visits in the winter.

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_Palace, Lichfield, Jan. 1, 1884._--After a pleasant Christmas at Kinmel, I came here yesterday to dear Augusta Maclagan. The immense quantity of work she does suits her, though it seems too much to those who do not know her. Town, Diocese, Chapter, and the society of the neighbourhood all work the willing horse alike. I cannot sufficiently admire the marvellous versatility of the Bishop, or his wonderful power of conversation, recalling that of Dean Alford in its simplicity and vivacity. He has led the most varied of lives, and has much of interest to tell of each part of it. He was for three years a soldier. When he was born, the whole house was disturbed by the most fearful row, and when they inquired what it was, the servant said, ‘Eh, it’s just Sandie and Nellie fighting over the bit bairnie.’ Sandie, who had been military servant to the father, an army doctor, said it must be brought up as a soldier. Nellie said, ‘Nay, it’s the seventh bairn, and if it’s a soldier, it must be the Lord’s soldier: the bairn must aye be a minister;’ and he was both. The Bishop is still passionately fond of riding and driving, and as soon as he gets out of Lichfield, mounts the box of his carriage and drives his own horses, ‘Pride’ and ‘Prejudice.’ He says people may consider it a terrible thing for a Bishop to be drawn hither and thither by these passions, but then it is assuredly a fine thing to have them well under control.

“The Lonsdales dined last night, and afterwards we sat up for a touching little midnight service in the palace chapel, in which the Bishop preached, but very briefly, saying just what I have so often felt, that it is not the expected, but the _unexpected_ events which come with the New Year--that God’s hand is full of ‘surprises.’

“Augusta has written so admirable, so intensely interesting a Memoir of her dear mother, that I cannot say how delightful I find it, or how beautifully it portrays that lovely and lovable life from life to death. It is only in MS., though one of the best biographies I ever read--‘the history of a life, not a stuffed animal.’

“The cathedral is most uniform in its beauty, even the modern monuments so fine. Of the older ones, the most interesting is that of Bishop Hackett, who was appointed by Charles II. after the destruction caused by the Puritans. He found the church a ruin, and it is touching to hear how he called his choir and the one remaining canon into the only bit which had still a roof, and prayed that he might have life and energy to restore it. Going back to his palace, he harnessed his coach-horses to the first cart that drew materials for the cathedral, and, though his income was so small, he spent £8000 upon it.

“The statue of our Lord over the west front was put up by the present Bishop in the place of a statue of Charles II., which was due to a Mrs. Wilson. She was of an old Lichfield family, and married far beneath her, a mere mason; but she said to him, ‘Now you are a clever man: you know how to carve; make a good statue of his Majesty for the cathedral, and it will be heard of at court, and you will be knighted, and I shall die “my lady.”’ And all this actually happened. When the statue of Charles was being taken down, the present Dean gave a groan of ‘Poor King Charles!’--‘Why do you call him poor King Charles?’ said the Bishop. ‘Because he is being dethroned by a _restoration_.’

“Bishop Selwyn always desired that he might not be buried in the cathedral, so a little mortuary chapel on the outside was restored for him, and you look from the church through arches upon his beautiful sleeping figure by Adams. When the Maori chiefs were in England, they came down especially to see it, and gazed upon it with their eyes streaming with tears. ‘They have laid him on a New Zealand mat, as a chieftain should lie,’ they said.”

* * * * *

“_Fawsley, Jan. 8, 1884._--I came here from Lichfield to find a very large party in this large and most comfortable house, with a hall of Henry VII.’s time. Sir Rainald Knightley, its owner, is a splendid type of an English gentleman, very conservative, very courteous, very clever, and devoted to country sports and interests, which alternate with the politics in which his more serious moments are spent. The only blemish on his perfectly happy married life with Miss Bowater, who enters into all his pursuits, whether duties or pleasures, politics, country business, hunting, &c., is that they have no children. He is surrounded by cousins--Charleses and Valentines--repeating in actual life the many Charleses and Valentines to whom there are monuments in the fine old church near the house. In the autumn, rheumatism takes him to Homburg, but he refuses to learn German, ‘the grinding gibberish of the garrulous Goth.’

“The parish has a population of fifty-eight, and there is only service once on Sundays, performed by the cousin who is in orders. It is alternately in the morning and afternoon, the difference being that the morning service begins at noon, and the afternoon service at a quarter past.

“Mrs. Charles Knightley drove me to Canons Ashby, the beautiful and romantic old place of the eccentric and impoverished Sir H. Dryden. I thought it looked like the background of a novel, and afterwards found that it was the background of--‘Sir Charles Grandison’!

“Lady Knightley took me to Shackborough--a pretty place. When Charles I. was going to the battle of Edgehill he met its proprietor of that day merrily hunting. He had never heard that there was a civil war going on, such was the paucity of political news! But he turned about and went with the king into the fight and was wounded there.

“At the beginning of this century, the daughter of the house became engaged to be married to an officer quartered at Weedon--a mésalliance which was greatly disapproved by her family. At last she was induced to break it off. But the officer persuaded her to grant him one last interview at the summer-house on the hill that he might give her back her letters. He gave her the letters with one hand, and with the other he shot her dead, and then shot himself.

“At Marston St. Lawrence, near this, is an old house, beautiful and moated. Here a Mrs. Blencowe was one day being dressed by her maid before the toilet-table. Suddenly she said, ‘Did you see anything’--‘Yes,’ said the maid. A hand had come out from behind the curtain. They had both seen it, and both screamed violently. Help came, and the room was searched, but no one was there.”

* * * * *

“_Ickwellbury, Jan. 27._--A man here, being asked by Mrs. Harvey how he liked going to church, said, ‘Well, I like it very much: I goes to church, and I sits down, and I thinks o’ nowt.’”

* * * * *

“_London, Feb. 23._--My dear Mrs. Duncan Stewart is dead. She never rallied from the sudden death of her son-in-law Mr. Rogerson. But she was able to see several people, to whom she spoke with that all-majestic charity which was the mainspring and keynote of her life. Her last words were ‘Higher, higher!’ and we may believe that she has passed into those higher regions where her thirst after life, not repose, meets its full fruition. I went to see her in the solemn peace of the newly dead, and last Thursday I saw her laid in a grave of flowers at Kensal Green, many faithful hearts mourning, many sad eyes weeping beside her coffin.[394]

“There were few equal to her. Mrs. Procter is most so. I met her the other day, and some one made her a pretty speech. She said, ‘When I was very young, Sydney Smith said to me, “My dear, do you like flattery?”--“Very much indeed,” I answered, “but I do not like it put on with a trowel.” What I really do like is--in the words of Sterne--a few delicate attentions, not so vague as to be bewildering, and not so pointed as to be embarrassing.’”

* * * * *

“_Firle, Lewes, April 18, 1884._--I came here to find a party of twenty in the house, including Sir Rainald and Lady Knightley. It is a large house, like a French château, close under the downs, but as my kind but singular little host, Lord Gage, likes every window open in these bitter winds, the cold is ferocious. On Wednesday I got Lady Knightley to walk with me (the inhabitants of this place had never heard of it!) 2½ miles across the marshes to Laughton Place, the ancient and original residence of the Pelhams--a moated grange, having an old red brick tower with terra-cotta ornaments, and many other curious remains, looking--stranded in the desolate fen, and with an abundance of animal life--like an old Dutch picture.

“Yesterday I walked with Sir Rainald to Glynde. It is a curious old house, approached through a gateway and stableyard and by clipped yew hedges, having a pleasant view over upland country and high gardens. A fine black oak staircase leads to a noble gallery-room, with deep alcoves, so pleasantly furnished with fine pictures, &c., that, though suitable to an enormous party, a single individual would never feel solitary in it. Miss Brand did the honours of the many good portraits very pleasantly, and, before we left, Lady Hampden came in from walking, and I was very glad to see her in her country home, having so often been in her house in the palace at Westminster.”

* * * * *

Ill-health in June made a happy excuse for my spending a delightful month abroad. I saw first the group of towns around Laon, charming old-fashioned Noyon, beautiful Soissons, and Coucy with its grand castle. Then Alick Pitt met me at Thun, and we spent a delightful time, joining the Husseys of Scotney Castle at Mürren and Rosenlaui, sketching and flower-picking, and reawakening every slumbering sense of the delights of Switzerland.

* * * * *

_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.

“_Pension Baumgarten, Thun, June 25, 1884._--You will be wishing to hear from this well-remembered place, where the mountains are quite as rugged and purple, the lake as limpid and still, the river as green and rushing, and the old town and castle as picturesque, as any youthful recollection could paint them. This pension, too, is perfectly delightful, with its coloured awnings over the wide terrace, its tubs of pomegranates and oleanders, its garden of roses, and its meadows behind, with the wooden châlets and the women making hay, and the delightful pathlets through the dark woods on the mountain-side.

“I had a calm crossing on Friday, and reached Laon by seven. On Saturday morning I saw the stately cathedral at St. Quentin, and spent the afternoon at Noyon, which has an exquisite cathedral, Calvin’s curious old house, and a most attractive little inn. Sunday I was at Coucy, where there is the finest ruined château in existence after Heidelberg, beautifully situated amongst wooded hills, in scenery so pretty, you would take it for the Vosges, not Picardy. Monday morning I spent at Soissons, with two fine cathedrals, one in ruins, and an interesting town, and then came on by night to Berne.

* * * * *

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* * * * *

“The last night I was in London I dined with the Reptons to meet the Kildares--Lady Kildare quite the most beautiful creature I ever saw.”

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* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Oct. 10._--Since I returned from Switzerland, my home life has been quite happy and uneventful. Only ten days ago I had a telegram from ‘my Prince’ (of Sweden and Norway), asking me to come and spend Sunday afternoon and evening with him at Eastbourne, as he was only there for two days. He met me most cordially and affectionately, making me feel as if the seeming neglect of several years was only ‘royalty’s way,’ and pleasantly taking up all the dropped threads of life. We were several hours together, and while we were talking a sweet-faced young lady looked in. ‘I must come in: you are such a friend of the Prince: I have heard of you, too, all my life. I am so very glad to see you at last,’--and I felt at once that the Crown-Princess was a friend.

“She wanted to know what I thought of the Prince--the Prince wanted to know what I thought of her: I was glad to be able to answer both most satisfactorily.

[397]

* * * * *

“I saw her again at dinner, and she talked most delightfully, and was full of animation and interest. I came away with a happy feeling that my affectionate occupation of many months for the Prince had, after all, not been thrown away.”

* * * * *

“_Highcliffe, Oct. 26, 1884._--Lady Waterford says that the father of that Thérèse Longworth who called herself Lady Avonmore was a young clerk at Bordeaux at the time of the Noyades. Two beautiful young girls were tied together, and were going to be drowned. Suddenly a poissarde, seized with compassion from their looks, jumped upon a barrel and shouted, ‘Are there no young men here who will save the lives of these two beautiful girls by marrying them?’ Longworth and another young fellow were looking out of a window at the time and heard it, and said to one another, ‘Shall we do it?’ It was rather a gulp, for they were both very young at the time; but they went down and said they would, and they were both married there and then, by joining hands after the fashion of the Commune. The daughter of one of those marriages was Thérèse Longworth.”

* * * * *

Early in October I paid a visit to my distant cousins, Mrs. Quin and her brother, Edmund Boyle, who were staying at Ramsgate. The health of Sir Moses Montefiore, at the great age of one hundred, was then a great topic of the place. Mrs. Quin said something to him about another year at his age being only a waiting time, when he answered sharply, “What do you mean by feeling old? I only feel forty.” He said no one had ever mentioned the name of Christ to him except one person, and that was Cardinal Antonelli!

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Ruxley Lodge, Oct. 30._--I am enjoying a pleasant visit to Lady Foley and her sons; only Lady Jane Repton here besides. It is a charming house, full of books and pictures, in a beautiful country, with fine views of Windsor and Claremont. Once there was an old priory here, but only the fishponds are left. We went to-day to see the tomb of Pamela, mother of my Uncle Fitzgerald, at Thames Ditton. It was brought there from Montmartre, where it was broken by a bomb in 1870. It is inscribed, ‘Pamela, Ladye Edward Fitzgerald, par son ami dévoué, L. L.;’ and no one now knows who L. L. was. Close by are the graves of her daughter, Lady Campbell, and several of her grand-daughters.

“The Foleys are said to descend from ‘Foley the Fiddler,’ a mechanic who determined to make his fortune by finding out the secret of making nails by machinery in Sweden. Up to that time the secret had been successfully kept: the ironfounders had shut every one out, and let no one see their process. But Foley the Fiddler, pretending to be half-witted, went and played in the neighbourhood of the manufactory. The Swedish workmen danced to his music, and eventually were so delighted with him that they could not resist taking him to play inside the factory. When he had been there some time, he fancied he had seen all he wanted, and went home. He set up ironworks on the plan of what he had seen, but when he came to completing them, found that, after all, he did not understand the process perfectly. He went back, and the Swedish workmen were quite delighted to find him again fiddling outside the factory--‘a daft fiddler’--and they brought him in, and he learnt all he wanted, and went home and made a great fortune.”

* * * * *

_“Goldings, Herts, Nov. 20._--Isabel Smith says that a lady in Wales, a friend of Miss Frances Wynne, looked up suddenly one day after reading the obituary in the _Times_, and exclaimed, ‘Now, at last, my lips are unsealed.’ Then she told this:--

“One day she had been alone at her country-house in Wales, with her son and a friend of his. She had received all the money for her rents that day--a very large sum--and put it away in a strong box. Being asked, she said she did not mind the least having it in her room, and should sleep with the key under her pillow.

“When she had been in bed some time, she was aware that her door opened, and that a man in a cloak came into her room with a candle. He passed the candle before her face, but she lay with closed eyes, perfectly motionless. Then he felt for the key; he felt for a long time, but somehow he failed to find it. At last he went away.

“As soon as the door closed, she sprang out of bed, intending to go to her son’s room to warn him that a robber was in the house. But his room was a long way off, and she thought it would be better to go instead to the friend, whose room was nearer.

“As she opened the door suddenly, she saw a figure muffled up in a long cloak put down the candle. It was the same figure who had come into her room. She looked at him fixedly. ‘To-morrow at 9 A.M.,’ she said, ‘the dogcart will come to the door which was to have taken my strong box to the bank: you will go in that dogcart, and you will never enter my door again. If you never attempt to do this, I will never say a word on what has happened as long as you live.’ And she never did, even to her son.”

* * * * *

“_Nov. 21._--We have spent the day at Knebworth, an interesting place, though full of shams--a sham old house, with a sham lake, sham heraldic monsters, sham ancient portraits, &c. Lord Lytton, with his velvet collar and gold chains, recalled his father, who is represented on the walls, with his boots pointed like a needle, in a picture by Maclise. The ‘old’ rooms are chiefly modern in reality, but there is one really ancient bedroom--a room in which Queen Elizabeth once slept. Lady Lytton, beautiful, charming, and courteous, looked like a queen in the large saloons and galleries. We found Lady Marian Alford, Lady Colley--the pretty widow of Sir George--and Lady Paget, with her nice son Victor, amongst the guests.

“I wish one did not know that the real name of the Lyttons is Wiggett. William Wiggett took the name of Bulwer on his marriage with Sarah Bulwer in 1756, and his youngest son (the novelist) took the name of Lytton on succeeding to his mother’s property of Knebworth, she being one Elizabeth Warburton, whose very slight connection with the real Lytton family consisted in the fact that her grandfather, John Robinson was cousin (maternally) to Lytton Strode, who was great-nephew of a Sir William Lytton, who died childless in 1704.

“I have had the small trial of another ‘call’ of £300 on those unfortunate Electric Lights in which St. George Lane Fox involved me. I had saved up the money, so it was there, but it was provoking to have to pay what is almost certain to be lost, yet to be obliged to do so, as the only chance of seeing again any part of the £7000 which had gone before it. However, I am never more than very temporarily troubled by such things--there is no use. All I have ever made by my writings in fourteen very hard-worked years is gone now through St. G. Lane Fox--there is nothing else left to lose.”

* * * * *

“_Thoresby Park, Dec. 12._--This has been a most delightful visit at one of the great houses I like the best. Its inmates are always so perfectly brimming with kindness, goodness, and simplicity, and every surrounding is so really handsome, even magnificent, without the slightest ostentation. I arrived with Lord and Lady Leitrim--he quite charming, so merry, pleasant, and natural, and she one of the delightful sisters of charming Lady Powerscourt. It has been a great pleasure to find the Boynes here, and Lady Newark, who is an absolute sunbeam in her husband’s home--perfect in her relation to every member of his family. I have been again to Welbeck and Clumber, only remarking fresh at the former a fine Sir Joshua of a Mr. Cleaver, an old man in the neighbourhood, dressed in grey, and the melancholy interesting portrait of Napoleon by Delaroche, given by the Duc de Coigny.

“A Mrs. Francklin (sister of Lord St. Vincent), staying here, says that a young man, going to stay with Millais, saw distinctly a hand and arm come out of the fireplace in his room, and do it repeatedly. At last he told Millais, who said it had often happened before, and they had the hearthstone taken up, and found the bodies of a woman and child.”

* * * * *

“_Babworth, Dec. 14._--Mrs. Drummond Baring has been most agreeable in her talk of the society at Paris under the Empire, the _soirées intimes_, at which all etiquette was laid aside, and Prosper Merimée, Théophile Gautier, &c., were seen at their best. No one knew so much about the Empress as Merimée. He had known her well as a girl, and all the letters about the marriage had passed through his hands. Nothing could be more naïve than the Empress in her early married days. She _would_ go shopping. She clapped her hands with delight at the opera-bouffe, and the Emperor took them and held them, to the great delight of the people, who applauded vehemently.

“In the last days at the Tuileries, all the court ladies were only occupied in packing up their own things; all deserted their mistress except Madame le Breton. She and the Empress stayed to the last. The Empress asked General Tronchin how long the palace could hold out. He said, ‘Certainly three days.’ It did not hold out three hours. They fled as the people entered, fled precipitately by the long galleries of the Louvre, once in agony finding a door locked and having to look for the key. The Empress had no bonnet. Madame le Breton, with a bit of lace, made something for her head. They reached the street and hailed a cab. ‘Eh! ma petite mère,’ said the driver, ‘il parait que nous nous sauvons: où est le papa donc?’ But he took them and did not recognise them. They went in the cab to the Boulevard Haussmann. Then they found that they had no money to pay it, and Madame le Breton took off one of her rings. ‘We have forgotten our money,’ she said, ‘but you see how suffering my friend is. I _must_ take her on to the dentist, but I will leave this with you; give me your address and I will redeem it.’ And he let them go.

“They took a second cab to the house of Evans, the American dentist, and there found he was gone to his villa at Passy. They followed him there, but when they reached the villa, the servant said he was out, and positively refused to let them in. But Madame le Breton insisted--her friend was so terribly ill: Mr. Evans knew her very well: she was quite certain that he would see her: and at length she almost forced her way in, and, moreover, made the servant pay the cab. At last Mr. Evans came in. He had been to Paris, in terrible anxiety as to the fate of the Empress, knowing that the mob had broken into the Tuileries.

“Mrs. Baring said that when Plonplon, commonly called ‘_Fatalité_,’ was ill, the people said he was ‘_Fat alité_.’”

* * * * *

“_Hickledon, Dec. 17._--No words can say how glad I am to be here with the dearest friend of my young life--dearer still, if possible, with all his six children around him, who are learning also to be fond of me. We walk and talk, and are perfectly happy together in everything.

“We have been to visit Barnborough Church. A man met a wild-cat in Bella Wood, some distance off. He and the cat fought all the way along the hillside, and they both fell down dead in this church porch.

“Yesterday we went to Sprotborough to visit old Miss Copley. It is a very pretty place, a handsome house on a terrace upon a wooded bank above the river. Sir Joseph Copley and his wife Lady Charlotte (Pelham) quarrelled early in their married life. He overheard her at Naples, through a thin wall of a room, telling a friend that he was mad, and he never forgave it. They were separated for some years, then they lived together again, but there was no cordiality. They were really Moyles. A Moyle married a Copley heiress, and the Copleys long ago had married the heiress of the Fitzwilliams, for Sprotborough was the old Fitzwilliam place, and many of the family are buried there in the church. The Copleys divided into two branches, of Sprotborough and Wadsworth, and it is a pretty story that when the Copley of Sprotborough had nothing but daughters, he left the estate to the Copley of Wadsworth, and then, when the Copley of Wadsworth had nothing but daughters, he left it back to the representative of the other branch. Not far from Sprotborough, Conisborough stands beautifully on the top of a wooded hill: in ‘Ivanhoe’ its castle is the place where Athelstan lies in state when supposed to be dead.

“The Bishop of Winchester told Charlie Wood that his predecessor, Bishop Wilberforce, had always very much wished to see a portrait at Wotton (the Evelyns’ place) of Mrs. Godolphin, whose life he had written whilst he was at Alverstoke. This wish he had often expressed; but Mr. Evelyn had not liked the Bishop, and he had never been invited.

“On the day on which the Bishop set off with Lord Granville to ride to ‘Freddie Leveson’s,’ Mr. Evelyn, his brother, and a doctor were sitting late in the dining-room at Wotton, when the brother exclaimed, ‘Why, there is the Bishop of Winchester looking in at the window.’ They all three then saw him distinctly. Then he seemed to go away towards some shrubs, and they thought he must have gone round to the door, and expected him to be announced. But he never came, and an hour after a servant brought in the news that he had been killed only two miles off.

“Mrs. George Portal of Burgclere told Charlie Wood that when Allan Herbert was so ill at Highclere--ill to death, it was supposed--the nurse, who was sitting up, saw an old lady come into the room when he was at the worst, gaze at him from the foot of the bed, and nod her head repeatedly. When he was better, and after he could be left, the housekeeper, wishing to give the nurse a little distraction, showed her through the rooms, and, in Lord Carnarvon’s sitting-room, the nurse suddenly pointed at the portrait over the chimney-piece and said, ‘That is the lady who came into the sick-room.’ The portrait was that of old Lady Carnarvon, Allan Herbert’s mother, and the servants well recollected her peculiar way of nodding her head repeatedly.

“Mrs. George Portal was niece of Lady Anne Townshend, who was also aunt of that young Lord George Osborne who was killed at Oxford when wrestling with Lord Downshire in 1831. On the day of his death, she saw him pass through the room; she called to him, and he did not answer; she rang the bell for the servant, who declared he had never entered the house, and then she wrote the fact of having seen him to her husband, who was absent. Next morning came a messenger to tell Lady Anne of the death of her nephew, with whom she had been very intimate, and to beg her to break it to her sister--his mother, the Duchess of Leeds. Years after, when Mrs. George Portal was sorting her aunt’s letters after her death, she found amongst them the very letter to her husband in which she told what she had seen.”

* * * * *

“_Mount St. John, Dec. 20._--To-day was Lord Halifax’s birthday. The hounds met at Hickledon, wishing to do him honour, but it was almost too much for him. With me, I think it has been a pleasure to him to go back into old days, old memories, old sketch-books, &c. I cannot say how much I enjoyed my visit to the kind old man, as well as to my own dear Charlie--better, dearer, more charming than ever, and more in favour, one feels sure, with God as well as with man.

“Yet Charlie does not wish to die: his life here is so perfectly happy and useful, but he says that it must be ‘very unpleasant to God to feel that His children never wish to come home: he is sure _he_ should feel it so with his children.’ He says he is quite certain what the pains of Purgatory will be--‘they will be the realising for the first time the love of God, and not being able to do anything for Him: this life is our only chance.’ He says he is ‘sure that the next life will be in a more beautiful world, like this, only glorified, and so much, oh! so much better in everything. “Such cats!” my Uncle Courtenay says, “_such_ cats!”’