Chapter XXVIII: A Knocking at the Door

“Let us try to see, try to do, better always and better. No
honourable, truly good and noble thing we do or have done for one
another, but will bear its good fruit. That is as true as truth
itself, a faith that should never fail us.”--CARLYLE’S _Letters_.

“What I must do is all that concerns me, and not what the people
think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual
life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and
meanness.

“It is the harder because you will always find those who think they
know what your duty is better than you know it. It is easy in the
world to live after the world’s opinion: it is easy in solitude to
live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of
the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of
solitude.”--EMERSON.

“On parent knees, a naked new-born child,
Weeping thou sat’st, while all around thee smiled:
So live, that, sinking in thy last long sleep,
Calm thou may’st smile while all around thee weep.”
--SIR W. JONES, _from the Persian_.

The summer of 1892 was full of quiet pleasures. Visits to Cobham, Chevening, and to Mrs. Rycroft at Everlands, leave little to be remembered except the pleasant parties and the extreme kindness of hosts and hostesses everywhere. I am indeed glad that my visiting-lines are cast in such pleasant places, that I so seldom have to consort with the drearier part of human nature--the “Hem-haw, really, you don’t say so” sort of people. In these houses, where the conversation is perfectly charming, yet where no evil is spoken of any one or by any one, one sees truly how a christian spirit will christianise everything it touches, and one learns--as, indeed, when does one not learn?--that the best shield against slander is to live so that nobody may believe it.

In September I was at gloriously picturesque Montacute in Somersetshire, a noble house of yellow grey stone, where all the surroundings, terraces, vases, flowers, chime into the most harmonious whole. With its charming owner, Mrs. Phelips, I made an excursion to Ford, a grand old abbey altered into a luxurious dwelling-house by Inigo Jones, and where Time has blended the new work with the old, till they are equally picturesque. The great hall has its gothic roof of abbatial times, and in the stately saloon are noble Mortlake tapestries, said to have been presented by Charles I. to his Chancellor, but more probably the gift of Anne. Then I was with Lord Zouche, a pleasant friend of late times, at his fine old haunted house and ferny deer-park at Parham, meeting, with others, Lord Robert Bruce, called “the King of Hayling Island,” where he lives and brims over with fun and anecdote. I saw from Parham the new castle at Arundel, magnificently uncomfortable and containing little of interest. But there was something touching in looking into the open grave in which Cardinal Howard was to be laid in a few days, and remembering the different phases in which I had known him well--as the smartest of young Guardsmen, as a priest, where he seemed so unnatural, and finally as Cardinal. The recollection came back of how, when the other cardinals were shuffling along St. Peter’s, Cardinal Howard marched along in stately complacency, holding back his train on one side as a lady does her dress. “E troppo soldato,” said the other cardinals.

At Petworth I saw the magnificent Vandykes, Turners, and Reynoldses in the waste of its dreary saloons. Then with Mary Hare I went to Woolbeding, a drive through loveliest lanes, across an open common covered with fern turned brown by the early frost, and then down an avenue of magnificent Scotch firs, to where lines of gorgeous flowers led up to the house, like a French château with high roof and dormer windows. I had always wished to see its charming owner, Lady Lanerton, who was just what I expected--a beautiful old lady, quite unable from rheumatism to move out of the chair in which, put upon wheels, she can be taken to the services in the little church in the garden, filled with memorials of those she has loved and outlived. In her face was the satisfied and restful expression of one waiting in grateful patience and humblest hope upon the borderland. She seemed to say, what I have just read as amongst Mrs. Stowe’s last words, “I feel about all things now as I do about the things that happen in a hotel after my trunk is packed to go home. I may be vexed and annoyed--but what of it? I am going home soon.” In the garden, amongst the splendid profusion of old-fashioned flowers, I was glad to find Lady Bagot, linked with many memories of my long ago.

* * * * *

_To the_ HON. G. H. JOLLIFFE.

“_Nov. 1._--I have had an interesting and most pleasant visit to Sir John Lubbock, one of the most delightful of men, so entirely captivating in his simplicity of true wisdom, that no one could fail to be fond of him. His home of High Elms, near Orpington, is a beautiful place, quite near London, but with glorious woods and an entirely country aspect. Professor Forster and many other clever men were there, all far too learned for me, but I did not even try to ‘live up to them,’ and so enjoyed myself thoroughly. I went on from High Elms to Sir George Higginson’s at Great Marlow, and he--a very dear old friend--with all the manly straightforwardness of a splendid soldier and the chivalry of the most refined gentleness, is almost as attractive as Sir John, doing far more than many cleverer people to make life pleasant, and verifying Madame Swetchine’s words, ‘C’est par l’esprit qu’on s’amuse, c’est par le cœur qu’on ne s’ennuie pas.’ Thence, I was taken to see my Dashwood cousins at West Wycombe House, which is full of curious pictures and furniture, recalling a French château of the beginning of the eighteenth century, even in the peculiarly refined and delicate loveliness of its chatelaine.”

* * * * *

_To_ VISCOUNT HALIFAX.

“_Nov. 9._--I have been very ill. It was a bad chill at first, followed by most terrible pains, which I thought were part of the chill, and struggled against, moving about when I ought to have kept perfectly still. When at last I sent for a doctor, he said I had been in most imminent danger for several days, and that I must have died before another forty-eight hours were over if he had not come just then. A slight operation was necessary at once to re-arrange an internal misplacement, and this relieved the agonising pain. I have not often been before so immediately, never so suddenly, face to face with possible death. For some hours no one knew how it would go, yet I have often _felt_ more ill. There was constantly in my mind a text which I believe is in the Old Testament somewhere, ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’ and I rested upon it somehow. There seems something almost cowardly in the way in which, when very ill, one turns for comfort to texts and hymns and prayers, which one seldom thinks of at other times. But I _do_ find them a comfort, and I suppose it is partly the natural transition from active to contemplative life.... Still I cannot say what my extreme thankfulness was when it was pronounced that all was going on well and that I was likely to recover. I suspect that I shall have to ‘go softly’ for a long time to come, perhaps always, and never be quite as well as I have been: still, in the many mercies which are left to me, I shall never have time to think of the disagreeables.

“How strange it is when one knows, when one is told, that one is almost in the valley of the shadow of death! I felt more surprised than frightened; indeed, I do not think I felt frightened at all, I could leave it so completely in wiser Hands. But I know that I looked very wistfully at all the little familiar pictures on the wall, feeling how sorry I should be to see them for the last time, and to part from all ‘the boys’ and my many interests here, and go into the unknown, of which one knows so little; only that I do, absolutely and entirely, trust in the mercy of God, and know that it will be well somehow; as to the how, God will know best how to settle it.

“Perhaps it may be, as in Michelangelo’s sonnet--

‘Not death indeed, but the dread thought of death saveth and severeth.’

“I may not always go on feeling so; but I feel now as if I had left my long youth on the other side of this illness. Andersen says, ‘The stem of the pine-tree forms knots which betray the age of the tree: human life has also its perceptible rings;’ I suspect this illness will be a perceptible ring to me.”

* * * * *

_To the_ HON. G. H. JOLLIFFE.

“_Dec. 21, 1892._--You know how ill I was in November, but you do not know all the serious thoughts it awakened. ‘Il est ennuyeux de vivre dans la grâce de Dieu, mais tout le monde veut y mourir;’ is that what you would answer? I have a great deal to say about it, but as you will like facts better, I will only tell you that since I recovered I have been quite a tour of visits, beginning with Lady Beauchamp,[507] and meeting charming Lady Granville and a party of sixteen young men and maidens at Madresfield Court, a moated house with a lovely view of the Malvern Hills, and full of precious collections of every kind--old books, old music, old miniatures, ivories, enamels, &c. In my room, ‘the Stuart Room,’ it was a pleasure to live with portraits inscribed ‘Mary Stewart, Princess of Orange,’ and ‘King James III.’ There is a chapel, where Lady Mary Lygon watches over the musical part of the services, aided by a footman who sings splendidly and plays five instruments well!

“I was several days at Moor Park near Ludlow, the stately house of Mrs. Johnston Foster and her pleasant heiress-daughters. They have built a huge and handsome church near their present home, and another in Yorkshire. Mrs. Foster took me to spend the day at the curious old house of Kyre, where there is a hiding-place in the hall behind a picture on a sliding panel, and an oubliette in the floor beneath a trap-door. Amongst the pictures was a curious portrait of Lady Pytts, whose daughter married Sir Thomas Stanley, the first baronet of Alderley, and planted the Alderley wood with beech-nuts from her old home, for before that ‘there were no beech-trees in Cheshire.’ The lady of the house, Mrs. Childe, has a wonderful power of making slight sketches from all such old portraits in the houses where she visits, and has many volumes of them.

“At Hereford I spent a most pleasant day with kindly Dean Herbert, who showed me all the details of his cathedral, which is beautiful still, though somewhat spoilt by Wyatt. Nothing was more interesting than the slab tombs of a bishop and dean, who were such friends, that their hands are represented as clasping each other from their adjoining gravestones. How seldom this can have been possible!

“I was one day with my Biddulph cousins at Ledbury, and was even more struck than before with their delightful old house of 1590, ‘entre cour et jardin,’ like the houses of the Faubourg S. Germain, entered by a court from the little town, and with a delicious garden and an old deer-park--perhaps the smallest in England--on the other side. I was at Shakspeare’s Charlecote afterwards, and at Warwick, and oh! so bitterly cold!

“It has been almost constantly bad weather, but I do not mind that as I used. I think it was Caroline Fox who first reminded us of ‘A wet day and all its luxuries, a fine day and all its liabilities.’

“Then I had a happy week at beautiful old Blickling, with Constance, Lady Lothian, who--though no blood relation to her--reminded me more than any one else of my dear Lady Waterford, with much the same charm of manner and power of enjoyment of all the smallest things of beauty. The park, gloriously wild, belonged to Harold, and endless illustrious owners since. The house is a dream of beauty externally, and is full of ghost-stories. It was the family home of the Boleyns, and in the tapestried drawing-room Anne Boleyn is still supposed to walk at night with her head in her hand. In the present serving-room the devil appeared to Lord Rockingham, who threw an inkstand at him, which missed, and marked the wall. When Lord and Lady Lothian first came to Blickling, they altered the house and pulled down partitions to make the present morning-room. ‘I wish these young people would not pull down the partitions,’ said an old woman in the village to the clergyman. ‘Why so?’--‘Oh, because of the dog. Don’t you know that when A. was fishing in the lake, he caught an enormous fish, and that, when it was landed, a great black dog came out of its mouth? They never could get rid of that dog, who kept going round and round in circles inside the house, till they sent for a wise man from London, who opposed the straight lines of the partitions to the lines of the circles, and so quieted the dog. But if these young people pull down the partitions, they will let the dog loose again, and there’s not a wise man in all London could lay that dog now.’

“Lady Lothian took me to Mannington, Lord Orford’s[508] curious little place. The garden, with its clipped hedges, statues, and vases, is surrounded, with the house, by a wide moat. The house is full of old pictures and furniture. In the dining-room is a sculptured skeleton whispering to a monk. It was here that Dr. Jephson saw his much-talked-of ghost. He had been sitting up late over the MSS., when an old man appeared to him. He spoke to the figure, and, though it did not answer, he was for some time quite certain of the apparition. Whilst I was at Blickling, however, Dr. Jephson was one of my fellow-guests, and he now thinks the vision was an optical delusion.

“On the outer wall of the house of Mannington are a number of Latin inscriptions, put up by the present owner. They are all most bitter, vehement, and incisive against women. But in a distant part of the grounds there is also a monument to ‘Louise,’[509] with ‘Pensez à lui, et priez pour elle.’ This is in a little wood, close to an old ruined chapel, within which Lord Orford has already placed his own sarcophagus, with an inscription (saying nobody else would ever do it), and around which he has collected a vast number of architectural fragments from destroyed churches. Lord Orford seldom comes to Mannington now, but till five years ago he was much here in strictest seclusion, with his adopted son and his wife, who were much tried by the dinner at half-past six, always of exactly the same food, after which he would talk to the lady with incessant quotations from the Latin poets, of which she did not understand a word. Every Saturday he used to pass Blickling on his way to Norwich, where he used to see his doctor, play a game of whist, and hear a mass, returning next day.

“I was two days at Titsey with Granville Leveson Gower, who is a delightful archaeologist. I remember him at Oxford. Now he has six sons of his own, several of them very handsome.

“And all this time dear Lady Egerton’s death has been a shadow. She was a most kind friend to me, and ‘La Mort laisse souvent plus de vide que la Vie ne prenait de place.’ It was characteristic of her great unselfishness that, when she knew her illness must be a very suffering one and certainly fatal, she insisted upon being removed from the home she loved so devotedly to a hired house at Eastbourne, in order that Tatton might not be left with any distressing association for her husband. Truly of her may be said--

‘But by her grave is peace and perfect beauty,
With the sweet heaven above,
Fit emblems of a life of Work and Duty
Transfigured into Love.’”

* * * * *

_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN _and_ JOURNAL.

“_Belvoir Castle, Jan. 6, 1893._--‘Be firm with the weather, and it’s sure to clear up,’ said old Miss Hammersley, and, after the terrible early winter, the weather, though bitterly cold, is most glorious. My arrival at this stately castle was a fiasco. The Duchess had forgotten that she had told me to come to their little station of Redmile, and when I arrived at that desolate place, with deep snow on the ground and night fast closing in, there was nothing to meet me. The stationmaster sent his little boy to the next village, and in an hour he returned with an open waggonette, agonisingly cold across the open plain. But I was repaid when we entered the still loveliness of the ice-laden woods, every bough sparkling in the moonlight like crystallised silver; and still more when we emerged upon the plateau at the top of the hill, and the mighty towers of the castle rose pale grey into the clear air, looking down into the wooded frost-bound gorges like the palace of the ice-queen. I found the Duchess waiting for me in the corridor, with that genial solicitude for one’s comfort which goes straight to the heart when one does meet with it, which is so seldom.

“It was a great pleasure to find the all-delightful Speaker here, with his pleasant daughters, also my friend Wilfrid Ricardo. The rest of the party are Lady Bristol and her daughter, Lady Clancarty and hers, pleasant Fred Henniker and his sister, Mr. Macalmont, Mr. G. H. Smith, Miss De la Brosse, &c., besides the sons and daughters of the house.

“How I like all the mediaeval ways--the trumpeters, who walk up and down the passages and sound the dressing-time: the watchman, who calls the hours through the night; the ball-room, always ready in the evenings for those who want to dance: the band, in uniform, which plays soft music from an adjoining room during dinner, at which all the hunting men appear in their red coats, and add brilliancy and colour to the immensely long table with its glorious old silver ornaments.

“On the first morning, the Speaker and I went after breakfast with the Duchess to her private rooms, filled with comfort and sunshine, where she fed thousands of birds upon the little platform outside her windows, and the Duke, amongst other treasures, showed me a deed of King John conferring Haddon upon Richard Manners.

“At 12, I met the Duke and Duchess again, and walked alone with them on the terraces and along the exquisitely beautiful wood walks, all glistening in silvered splendour, whilst the sun was bright and the air quite still. The Duke told me how he had the bill--at £60 a piece--of those curious statues by Cibber which are such an ornament to the garden. Nothing could be more delightful than the way in which he talked about the place, and with great affection of his brother the late Duke. When we reached a little garden where there is a slab inscribed with verses by Mrs. Kemble, he was tired and returned. I went on with the Duchess, a long and most attractive path through the woods, and she talked of her real devotion to the Queen, and of the Queen’s extreme kindness to her, especially in insisting on the Duke’s going to Wiesbaden to the doctor who cured his eyes when he seemed upon the verge of total blindness. After luncheon, the Duke took the Speaker and me to see in detail the miniatures, which are so beautifully arranged in little panels on the drawing-room walls, with movable glasses in front. Wonderful are those portraits of Sir Philip Sidney, of his friend Prince Henry (with pearl earrings), and of Charles I. as a boy, with an inscription speaking of him as ‘the Hope of England.’ Then we saw those two little tables; one a sort of shrine to the Duke of Wellington, with the (framed) letter which he wrote to the then Duchess after her son Lord Robert was wounded in Spain--the prettiest, kindest letter ever written: the other a shrine to the Duke of York, with his little bust, part of his famous Protestant speech on yellow satin, and part of the famous Cheshire cheese presented to him after it, and a bit of which he sent, with a letter, to the Duchess of Rutland.

“In an exquisite old case worked by the Duke’s great-grandmother, and beneath a heart of pearls enclosing his hair, is the last letter of her son, Lord Robert Manners, who fell as captain of the _Resolution_ in action under Rodney. The letter is addressed to the captain of another ship, asking him to come to see him, and is written in the utmost cheerfulness--‘though one leg is off, the other shattered, and one arm broke.’ He died immediately afterwards of lockjaw. The beautiful portrait of this very handsome young hero hangs in the ball-room.

“Yesterday the Duchess was ill, and I went out alone with the Duke to the kitchen-garden and to the fine stables, of Charles II.’s time, where there are still sixty horses, over which Edward Manners presides as ‘field-master.’ The Government gives £5 annually as a retaining fee for ten of the best horses being always entered to serve in case of an invasion. I cannot say how delightful I think the Duke, what a noble old man in every truest sense.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Jan. 1893._--Mrs. Kemble was certainly the living person I most wished to see, but I have let too many opportunities slip, and she has passed away without my knowing her. She must have been a great and generous woman, and those who knew her always loved though they feared her. Miss Hosmer has often told me how dearly she and her companions loved Mrs. Kemble when she was at school in America near the place where she lived. She would come voluntarily and read to the school-girls half a play in the morning and would finish it in the evening. Once, when she was reading, snow came on, and when she was to go home it was quite deep; so all the school-girls turned out with spades and brooms and cleared it away before her.

“But her severe manner terrified those who were given that way. ‘We had some private theatricals,’ Mrs. Story told me, ‘and Mrs. Kemble came to look on at the rehearsal, at which a girl was acting who was supposed to do it very well. Afterwards, when she came in, Mrs. Kemble walked up to her, and ‘_Are_ you a fool?’ was all she said.

“Dr. Silas Bartol, the Unitarian minister at Boston, took his girl to see Mrs. Kemble. He was nervous, and said, ‘My daughter wished so much to have the honour of knowing--rather of hearing--rather of seeing Mrs. Kemble, that I have ventured to bring her.’ Mrs. Kemble bowed stiffly, and motioned them to sit down, but she said nothing. The girl only sat and stared at her. Then the father[510] tried again--‘My daughter is very young--is very nervous--is very shy.’ Then Mrs. Kemble looked at them both, and, in her most sepulchral accents, said, ‘Shy! I also am shy. And since your daughter has nothing to say to me, and since most assuredly I have nothing to say to her, I will wish you good morning.’

“To some Americans she met she said, ‘We hate you for your politics: we hate you for your prosperity: we hate you for your manners: and ... I don’t wonder at it.’

“Mrs. Sartoris had more talent, but Mrs. Kemble had the greater genius. Those who met her recognised it at once. I heard one who loved her best say, ‘She married Mr. Butler because, for once in her life, she was a fool. He was very faulty as a husband, but she was so imperious, _no one_ could have lived with dear Mrs. Kemble.’

“When Mr. Cummings was taking the duty in the chapel at Dresden, they lived in the same house. Mrs. Cummings wishing to be civil, after some time sent her card, and asked if she might wait on Mrs. Kemble. The daughter came up at once and explained, very civilly, that her mother now saw no one, so Mrs. Cummings thought no more about it. But some time after, as she was sitting alone in her room, came a tap at the door, and on her opening it, she saw a lady in black velvet and lace, closely veiled, who startled her by saying in sepulchral accents, ‘I’m come to say that I shall never come again.’--‘Oh, is that really you, Mrs. Butler?’ said lively little Mrs. Cummings, and the sound of her real name, unheard for years, made her quite pleasant, and she came in, and was glad to hear of many mutual friends in the Berkshire of Massachusetts. But unfortunately Mrs. Cummings made some allusion to Shakspeare, and ‘I did not come here to speak of Shakspeare,’ said Mrs. Kemble in her most awful accents, and the charm was broken.

“When in Boston long ago, while she was reading in public, she ordered dresses, pink and blue satin, at the great shop, the Marshall & Snelgrove of the town, but gave no address. The shopmen were afraid to ask her. The manager felt he must run after her and ask where the things should be sent. Unfortunately, to attract her attention, he touched her. ‘Unhand me, ruffian,’ she shouted in her most ferocious tone. ‘And such was the man’s terror,’ said my informant, ‘that, though he was quite young, his hair was turned white that night.’

“From personal vanity she was absolutely free. Miss Hosmer once expressed her regret that she had been photographed in a hat--‘We would so much rather have seen your head.’--‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Kemble, ‘my sister, and my friends, and you yourself expressed a wish to possess my photograph, so, as I was passing a photographer’s shop, I just went in and flopped down and was photographed as I was.’

“A lady was once alluding to the hope she entertained of reducing her figure. In her most tragical voice Mrs. Kemble said, dwelling on every syllable, ‘With a hereditary tendency to fat, nor exercise, nor diet, nor grief may avail.’”

* * * * *

_To_ MRS. C. VAUGHAN _and_ JOURNAL.

“_Longford Castle, Salisbury, Jan. 18._--I have been five days in this magnificent old place, and it has been a very interesting visit--and weird, from being with people to whom the other world is so very near, who seem to be as intimate with the dead as with the living, and who think no more of ‘receiving a message’ from one of their ‘guiding spirits’ than we should of a note from an ordinary acquaintance. These spirits, the wise ‘Huldah,’ the scientific ‘Iganesis,’ the sympathetic ‘Echord,’ the evangelistic ‘Ernest,’ and ‘Semirus,’ the wise physician, are the friends of the Radnors’ daily life. There comes a rap, such a noise as we should speak of as ‘only the furniture,’ and then it is supposed that one of the spirits has something to say, and a pencil is put into the hand of a medium. One cannot say that she writes, for she often even goes fast asleep! but _it_ writes, frequently volumes--not the sprawling incomprehensible stuff which I have often seen before from ‘Planchette,’ but clear MS. in different handwritings, and purporting to come from one of the spiritual friends. Personally, I should say that most of these communications were not the least worth the immense amount of time and thought given to them. The letters--‘messages’--from Echord and Ernest, are excellent certainly, but mild and affectionate religious platitudes, such as might be written by an Evangelical clergyman of rather poetical tendencies. They all, however, speak of the dead as not asleep, but in action: of there being no ‘place,’ but ‘a state’ after death: of existence after death being a process through gradations. None of the spirits have seen ‘God,’ but ‘the dear Master,’ ‘the sweet Master,’ is ever with them and amongst them. The communications from Semirus are more important. He is the great physician, and his advice has provided means of healing and safety for numbers, where earthly physicians have proved powerless or helpless. The Bishop of Salisbury has been scandalised at the state of things at Longford and felt impelled to come and testify against it. He recognised all that happened as fact, as every one must, but denounced it as ‘devilry,’ saying that the owners of the castle were risking their own souls and all the souls around them. They answer: ‘It was said to Christ, Thou hast a devil.’

“The great medium is Miss K. Wingfield, now aged about twenty-six. The Radnors have known her and her family most intimately for many years, and are certain of her absolute trustworthiness with regard to what she hears or writes. She is almost as a daughter to them, and they have watched the development of her psychical powers, through various steps, with the greatest interest. Her most remarkable gift is automatic writing, which has been given in many languages, several with which she is wholly unacquainted (including a very old form of Chinese, only decipherable at the British Museum), and in many different handwritings. When her hand writes, or rather the pencil in her hand, she has never the least idea of what is being written. A divining rod has unfailing power in her hands.

“The really remarkable communications are those which have reference to History. In August 1889, Sir Joseph (then Mr.) Barnby, came down to Longford to play the organ at Lady Skelmersdale’s marriage. One day at this time Miss Wingfield’s hand wrote a communication in strange old-fashioned characters, which purported to come from one ‘John Longland.’ When asked why he came, he said that he had been brought ‘by the influence of Mr. Barnby, whose music he had heard in Eton College Chapel, where he was buried.’ Later in the day, the party went to Salisbury Cathedral, and while Lady Radnor and Miss Wingfield were sitting in the Hungerford Chapel (the freehold family pew of the Radnor family), Mr. Barnby played. Whilst he was playing, Miss Wingfield saw, as in a vision, various scenes enacted, culminating in a procession of monks and other ecclesiastics with banners and canopies: one of these, a grave-faced man, came up to the chapel and looked in at her through the bars. At the same time he announced (by loud raps on the wainscot, which is the ordinary means of communication) that he was John Longland, that it was he who had written in the morning, and that he had come to the cathedral because he had been Dean there in 1514, and that he had more to tell. Another vision in the cathedral showed the gorgeous ceremonial of a consecration, which was announced to be that of one Brian Duppa, Bishop of Salisbury: in a third vision, Brian Duppa was again seen, lying dead in his coffin.

“On reaching Longford, Miss Wingfield received more writing from John Longland, who described himself as anxious to confess how faithless he had been to his intimate friendship with Thomas Bullen (Anne’s father); that he had been instrumental in persuading Henry VIII. to divorce Catherine and to marry Anne, thus advancing his friend’s daughter, and that afterwards--entirely from motives of personal pique against his former friend--he had influenced Henry against Anne, and fostered suspicions which led to her execution. He again said that he was buried in Eton College Chapel.

“Anxious to verify these statements, Mr. Wingfield (Coldstream Guards) purposely went to Eton to search for the tomb of John Longland, and nowhere could it be found. The Radnors and Miss Wingfield then thought that John Longland must be a ‘lying spirit,’ and not finding any record of his being Dean of Salisbury either, they tore up his writings.

“After Mr. Barnby had left Longford, John Longland came again, but no one would listen to him. He was, however, so persistent, that the Radnors decided to have a hunt for a list of officers of the cathedral. In a lobby cupboard they discovered some old volumes of county history, uncut and covered with dust. In one of these they found that John Longland had been Dean of Salisbury at the date mentioned, and that he was translated to Lincoln in 1521. Turning to ‘Britton’s Lincolnshire,’ equally covered with dust, showing it had not been moved for months (so that there was no possibility of Miss Wingfield having seen the statement), it was found that Bishop John Longland was a person of great learning and piety, &c., that he was confessor to Henry VIII., and suspected of having unduly influenced the King with regard to Catherine and Anne, &c. He died at Woburn, and was privately buried in Eton College Chapel, of which he was ‘visitor,’ his heart being sent to Lincoln.[511] The Radnors afterwards learnt that the tombstone of Longland was removed from Eton College Chapel during a ‘restoration.’

“Some time after, when Miss Wingfield went for the first time to the Palace at Salisbury with Lady Radnor, she exclaimed, ‘There is my Bishop that I saw!’ and went straight up to a portrait on which the name of Brian Duppa was found to be inscribed in very small characters.

“The day after I came was Sunday--thick snow without, with bright sunshine, which together threw a glorious light on the pictures. Lady Radnor showed them all delightfully. Amongst those which remain in one’s mind are a delightful full-length of his boy by Rubens in the Long Parlour, which the family chiefly inhabit, and the ‘Child Feeding Chickens,’ and Mrs. Edward Bouverie and her child, by Reynolds, in the great saloon. In the Long Gallery are two grand Claudes and a steel chair of enormous value, the delicate work of one Thomas Ruker, given by the city of Augsburg to Rudolph II. in 1577. This gallery opens on one side toward the chapel, with the font in which little Lucius Hare, son of Lord Coleraine, who once lived here, was baptized; and on the other to a sort of ‘Tribune’ with the choicest pictures--the Egidius of Quentin Matsys, the Erasmus of Holbein, a fine Sebastian del Piombo, and a glorious Paris Bordone of a scornful beauty--‘Violante’--in a red velvet dress. In a passage is the curious portrait of Mrs. Honeywood, aged ninety-three, who had 367 descendants at the time of her death. She is represented with a glass goblet. In her great age she was sure she was doomed to eternal damnation. ‘I am as certain to be lost,’ she said, ‘as that goblet is to be broken to pieces,’ and she dashed it to the ground, and it rolled away quite unhurt. So after that she remained perfectly satisfied that all would be well with her. But the pictures which interested me most personally were the noble Vandyke of my great-great-great-great-grandmother, Margaret Carey, Countess of Monmouth, and the Holbein of Mary Boleyn, who married William Carey, and was also my grandmother by just ten removes.

“The house is built in a triangle, with three round towers at the angles, known as the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Lord Radnor told me how, when he walked out with his father every summer evening, as they neared the house he always saw his father take off his hat, look up at the windows, and bow three times. When his father died he often regretted that he had never liked to ask him why he did this. But now he _had_ asked his father’s spirit through a medium, and the spirit answered that he had always repented not having told him the cause, in an old distich, which he wrote:--

‘Owner of Longford, whoe’er you be,
Turn and bow with bends full three,
And call on the name of the Trinitie,
Or castle and lands will pass from thee.’

And since that he had always done the same.

“In one of the round towers is a pleasant room with ancient panelling of white and gold. This is now Lady Radnor’s boudoir, and here she has often sung to us delightfully. The grounds, with their two rivers, and the garden with its terraces and vases and yew-hedges, are enchanting. The younger son, Stuart Bouverie, called ‘Toby’ in the family, is, at fourteen, a clever mechanician.”

* * * * *

On the 17th of February 1893, my dear old cousin Charlotte Leycester died peacefully at her house in London. For months past she had been failing in her great age (ninety-five) as to physical powers, but her mind was as much alive as ever, and her affection and sympathy as warm and ready. “She seemed,” as I have read in the novel “Diana Tempest,” to “have reached a quiet backwater in the river of life, where the pressure of the current could no longer reach her, would never reach her again.” In the last days of her own life, my dearest mother begged me always to be all I possibly could to this dear cousin and friend of her whole life, and I believe that I have been able to fulfil her wishes. She has had a home at Holmhurst every summer, and I have never allowed a week, generally not three days, to pass without writing to her. She carries away with her my closest link with the past, but no one could wish to keep her here. Better that she should go in her great age before the suffering of age came.

Just when her gentle life flickered out in sleep, I read in Grinnell’s “Pawnee Hero Stories”--“The sun was glad. He gave them great age. They were never sick. When they were very old, one morning their children said, ‘Awake, rise and eat.’ They did not move. In the night, in sleep, without pain, their shadows had departed for the sandhills.”

* * * * *

_To_ HUGH BRYANS.

“_June 20, 1893._--I was in London a long time, but saw and heard little of interest. At Mr. Knowles’s one day I met the honest sturdy Miss Octavia Hill, and another day Bret Harte, a young-old man, with white hair and an unwrinkled rosy face. It was odd to hear him called ‘Mr. Harte.’ After luncheon Mr. Knowles read Tennyson’s ‘Boadicea’ in a weird monotonous kind of chaunt, imitating him exactly, I should think. He said that was the way Tennyson always wished his poems to be read--straight on, without emphasis or any change of voice. One day I went with the Lowthers to draw at Fulham, and we had tea delightfully in the open air with the Bishop and Mrs. Temple, he helping his boy meanwhile to do Latin verses. George Lefevre had a great pleasant party at the old palace at Kew, to which we went by the river, and where we saw the Tecks with their daughter and the Duke of York a very little while before their marriage. For this I saw the picturesque procession capitally.”

* * * * *

_To_ VISCOUNT HALIFAX.

“_October 20, 1893._--I have been little away from home all summer, being so busy with my Waterford Memorial, at which I have certainly worked _con amore_.

“One little frisk I have had to Montacute, whence Mrs. Phelips took me to see two fine old houses, Barrington, and Wolferton near Dorchester. Then I was three pleasant days with Lord Arthur Hervey, the delightful old Bishop of Bath and Wells, in his moated fortified palace, as picturesque and as beautiful as it could possibly be. How attractive is all the apple-filled neighbourhood of Avalon--‘the Apple Island’--and how delightful its legends of Arthur if one seeks them.

“‘As Arthur ever still in British memory lives,’ says the inscription at Cardeña on the tomb of the Cid, but I fear few think of him where he lived. The Bishop took me to Cheddar. How very grand it is! We mounted by a coombe into the hills, and so descended upon the gorge. ‘Imagine yourself a river working its way down,’ said the Bishop, as the narrow ravine opened beneath us with its great purple rocks in labyrinthine windings of inexpressible beauty. Very lovely, too, I thought the little lake at the bottom, covered with a kind of ranunculus unknown elsewhere.

“The Bishop talks freely on all subjects with perfect ease and simplicity, in the repose of a mind at rest and the humility of real knowledge. He was much occupied with the question as to whether the children of Israel were 200 or 400 years in the wilderness, all depending upon where a stop ought to be placed. He was also full of derivations of names, and mentioned several interesting ones--Bevan, ap Evan; Bethel, ap Ithil; Coblentz, confluence; and Snowdon and Ben Nevis, meaning the same thing. He talked of having known Madame de Gontaut long ago, and how, when Louis XVIII. did something she could not approve, she always turned his portrait to the wall. The last time he went to see her, the servant said, ‘Depuis qu’elle est en enfance, Madame la Duchesse ne reçoit pas.’ He told of having been in his childhood at the ball which George IV. gave to children, and how a little girl being asked there what she would like to have, said, ‘I should like to have too much.’ In his room hung a beautiful engraving from Millet’s ‘Angelus,’ which he aptly called ‘the picture of the good lout’[512]

[513]

“Later, for my little ‘Sussex’ book, I was four days wandering about the deep sandy lanes and semi-forest tracts in the central part of the county. One of the prettiest places was Broadhurst, near Horsted Keynes, where the saintly Archbishop Leighton passed the last years of his life, and taught his sister’s children and grandchildren under the old oaks. I slept two nights at Groombridge Place, a delightful house, little altered since it was built in James I.’s time, and with three terraced gardens, and peacocks innumerable sunning themselves on the grey parapet of the wall above the moat.

[514]

“At Holmhurst I have been much alone, and I feel, with Carlyle, that ‘the memory of many things which it is not at all good to forget rises with strange clearness on me in these solitudes, very touching, very sad, out of the depths of old dead years.’”

* * * * *

The only incidents of my autumn were visits to Sir Raymond and Lady Burrell at Knepp Castle, containing one of the finest collections of portraits to be found at any small place in England; and to the Palace at Chichester, where the noble old Bishop Durnford seemed at ninety-one more full of tireless energy than ever, and whence I was taken to visit the site of the original bishopric, Selsey, with its lichen-covered walls and storm-beaten gravestones.

In December, whilst staying at ever-pleasant Thorncombe with my cousin Victoria Rowe, I sat for my portrait to Mr. Eddis.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

“_Dec. 5, 1893._--I had a delightful morning with Mr. Eddis, now eighty-three, but full of vigour and vivacity, and still more of reminiscence. He said, ‘You would not have been here now having your portrait painted if it had not been for the Athenaeum. When I was a very young man, one Magrath, who was secretary there, told me he wanted a sketch made of himself, and that he would give me £5 for one. So I did it, and it was such a success, that no fewer than sixty members of the club put their names down to be drawn by me. I was doubtful if I should do them, for I wanted to study, and I had not studied enough, but I asked Hilton, who was a very good artist then, and he told me it would be folly to refuse what came so easily; and so I did the portraits, and from that time orders have poured in all through my long life, and so I have never had time for real study since: I have only learnt through my work.’

“‘What one learns most by experience is the value of reflected light. I once had a discussion with Gladstone about what was the brightest colour in Nature. He maintained red was: he was perfectly certain, and very determined in his opinion. I said blue was. I told him how, in the evening, when all was mysterious, the red flowers in the garden disappeared, but the blue remained visible. But he was unconvinced. Then I showed him how, in a photograph of a flower-bed, the red flowers remained dead, undetached from the leaves, but the blue flowers were light and visible in all their forms. Then--“Good night, Mr. Eddis,” he said.’

“‘Did you know D’Israeli?’ said Mr. Eddis. ‘No, he must have been before your time, but I used to meet him often. He always struck me as _lying in wait for points_: to make a point was what he cared for most.

“‘James Croker had much to do with the building of the Athenaeum. They wanted him--the members did--to make an icehouse for them, but he wouldn’t. Afterwards some one found in a waste-paper basket a couplet he had written--

‘My name is James Croker, I’ll do as I please;
You wish for an ice-house, I’ll give you a frieze.’

“‘Sydney Smith did not make at the time all the jokes which were attributed to him: he thought of them afterwards, and circulated them. He told me once, for instance, that Landseer had asked him to sit for his portrait, and that he had answered, “How could I possibly refuse a chance of immortality,” which was perhaps a very natural thing to say. But it was reported afterwards in London, and reported with at least his consent, that he had answered, “Is thy servant a dog, that I should do this thing?”

“‘One of his best real sayings was of Dr. Whewell--“Science is his forte, omniscience his passion.”

“‘Macaulay, it is true, talked incessantly--talked like a machine, but he had his attractive points. I found this out especially when he brought the present Lady Knutsford, as a very little girl, to me to be painted, and talked nonsense to her the whole time, but it was always nonsense which had a lesson in it.

“‘Lady Waterford was the most glorious specimen of womanhood I ever saw. She came in with Lady Canning when I was drawing the Archbishop of Armagh[515]--“the Beauty of Holiness,” as he was called. Lady Canning had the lovelier face and the more beautiful eyes, but Lady Waterford was always the more striking from the grand pose of her head and her majestic mien. In seeing her, one felt as if one looked upon a goddess.’

“This afternoon Victoria took me to see Mr. Watts.[516] A drive through wooded lanes and water-meadows; then the carriage stopped at the foot of a wooded knoll, and we walked up little winding paths through the bracken and Scotch firs to the house--a rustic hermitage. You enter directly upon the principal dwelling apartment--two low rooms, with old carved furniture and deep windows, and much colour and many pictures. The ceiling is in panels, decorated in stucco by Mrs. Watts (_née_ Fraser Tytler). At least she has finished one room, and is going to do the other with an epitome of the religion of all the nations of the earth--‘A work,’ she said, ‘which gives me much study.’

“Soon Mr. Watts came in, like a pilgrim, like a mediaeval hermit-saint, in a brown blouse and slippers, with a skull-cap above his white hair and beard, and his sharp eager features, in which there is also boundless tenderness and refinement. He sat by me on the window-sill, and began at once to talk of Lady Waterford--of her wonderful inspirations, her unrivalled colouring, her utter unconsciousness of self, and her majestic beauty--how, when he first saw her out walking at Blickling, with her grand mien, he could not but exclaim--‘It is Pallas Athene herself!’

“He regretted that she should never have been painted in later life. ‘When she came into a studio, it was like a glorious vision.’ His wife said how often he spoke of Lady Waterford, and that to herself it was a lifelong regret that she should never have looked upon one who so occupied his thoughts and admiration.

“Mr. Watts took us into his studio, an immense and beautiful room added to the cottage. Here were many of his pictures, the work of years, on which, from time to time, he adds a few touches. He likes to have many of his works around him, and to add to them thus.

“At the end of the room hangs his vast ‘Court of Death,’ which can be lowered by pulleys whenever he wishes to add to it. He was greatly pleased with a photograph of it, which has the effect of a Tintoretto, and which, while preserving the grand masses, blots out the detail. ‘Death’ is throned in the upper part of the picture. ‘I have given her wings,” said Mr. Watts, ‘that she may not seem like a Madonna. In her arms nestles a child--a child unborn, perhaps, who has taken refuge there. By her side the angels of silence guard the portals of the unseen. Beneath is the altar of Death, to which many worshippers are hastening: the old mendicant comes to beg; the noble offers his coronet; the warrior does not offer--but surrenders--his sword; the sick girl clings for refuge to the feet of Death. I have wished to paint Death entirely without terrors.

“‘You wonder what that is, that other picture of a figure of a rich man in Eastern dress whose face is half-hidden, buried away in the folds of his garment. I meant that for the man who was “very sorry, for he had great possessions.” He cannot give them up. He has tried, but he _cannot_. He is going out into the world again, and yet--and yet he is very sorry. I have only got to give him a number of rings and to put a gold chain round him, and I think his story will be told.’

“‘And that great picture?’ we asked. ‘Oh, that is the Angel of Rest. He has come to that old man, by whom all the instruments of music and science are lying, that weary old man, and he is touching his hand and bidding him come with him and rest.’

“Besides these, Mr. Watts produced from a corner a grand chalk portrait of Lady De Vesci--a most noble picture, giving all the dignity and all the sympathy and pity of her expression. Mr. Watts said he was going to give it to her little girl.

“He said, ‘I am within two years of eighty, and I have worked all my life, but I do not feel old or feeble. I do not even use a maul-stick, and I intend to do my best work yet.’

“On the walls were photographs from Lady Waterford’s drawings, placed beside Titians, and in their ideas as fine.

“Mr. Watts took me to the window of the other room to look out into ‘the half-clothed trees of the winter world.’ In the foreground, a number of cocoa-nuts, open at the ends, were hung up, and wrens and other tiny birds were fluttering in and out of them. ‘They like cocoa-nut,’ he said, ‘and I like to see them enjoy it.’

“He said he had no wish to go into the world again. Living was outliving. Holland House, the second home of many years, was swept away for him, and all its intimates were passing away, and its memories perishing. Nothing else in London could attract him.

“He had wished to make large pictures of Hope, Charity, and Faith. With the two first he had no difficulty, but he lingered long over the third. He showed us the picture he had done--of a woman seated, looking upwards, an Amazonian woman, sheathing her sword, and bathing her blood-stained feet in a brook of clear water. ‘She had found out that all that was no use--no use at all.’ His words, his thoughts, his works, all seemed imbued with the truest spirit of religion. ‘With theology,’ he said, ‘I have nothing to do.’

“He said he had no models. ‘Models are well as studies to draw from, but they check inspiration.’ He rejoiced in Lady Waterford’s using no models for her smaller pictures, and said she would not have been so truly great had she done so.”

* * * * *

“_Dec. 7._--Another delightful sitting with Mr. Eddis. I told him of our visit to Watts, and he said how he felt, on seeing his pictures and those of Alma Tadema, that Watts was the head, while Tadema was only the hand.

“He talked of his own early life as a student. At that time, Fuseli[517] had recently been the head of the Academy--the very fierce head. He used to say to his pupils, ‘You may be very good buttermen, you may be very good cheesemen, but students of Art you will never be; and now, give me my umbrella, and I’ll go and look at Constable’s pictures.’

“‘Turner[518] often used to come in and look at us and our work. There was a student amongst us who had painted in a red background, and he painted it the crudest, brightest red he could manage. Turner came in and said, “Come now, this will never do; give me your palette and brush,” and in a few minutes he had toned and mellowed it down with a hundred delicate gradations of tint. “Well now, don’t you think it’s improved?” said Turner. “No, I don’t,” answered the man; “I think it was much better before,” which annoyed Turner rather.

“‘I remember that he came to me that day. I was copying a Vandyke, and he looked at my work. “Part of that is very good,” he said; “why isn’t all the rest as good?”--“Because,” I said, “all the rest is me, and that part is an accident.”--“Well, let that accident to-day become principle to-morrow,” said Turner, and we were always rather friends afterwards.

“‘Turner was proud of his picture of Carthage. He had received many mortifications about his pictures, and people had haggled about the prices--very small prices too--that he asked for them. When Lord Francis Egerton came and told him that a subscription was on foot to buy that picture from him and present it to the National Gallery, he burst into tears, he was so moved. But he said, “No, I will not sell it, but I will leave it to the National Gallery.”

“‘Afterwards, however, he changed his mind, and wished to be buried in that picture. He spoke of it to Chantrey, who was his executor, and begged that he would see that it was done, urging him to promise that it should be done. “Yes, since you wish it, I’ll see you buried in that picture,” said Chantrey, “but, as sure as you’re alive now, I’ll see you dug up again.”

“‘Eventually the picture was left to the National Gallery.

“‘I was very near becoming an Academician,’ said Mr. Eddis, ‘but I never did. I had painted a picture of the “Raising of Jairus’s Daughter,” which was considered a good thing, and my election was thought certain. I was advised to call upon some of the principal members, not to ask them to vote for me, but to conciliate them by the attention. It went rather against the grain with me, and I asked Stanfield about it. “Your election is as certain,” said Stanfield, “as that I am sitting upon this sofa, but you may perhaps hasten it a little if you call as you’ve been advised.” I never did, however; I let it slip, and I was never elected. Then younger men cropped up, and I was forgotten: it was all as well, perhaps.’

“In the afternoon Victoria took me to Lady Sligo’s new house, to which, instead of the suitable name of Altamont,[519] she has insisted on giving that of Mount Brown. It is beautifully situated on a wooded platform above the town of Guildford. I thought the inside of the house very charming, but Frank Thomas, the architect, who was with us, objected because ‘there was too little of the architect, and too much of Lady Sligo in it,’ which seemed to me just its greatest recommendation.

“‘May I tum in?’ said a little boy, knocking at his little sister’s door. ‘No, oo mayn’t,’ answered the little sister. ‘May I tum in now?’ said the little boy. ‘Yes, oo may,’ answered the little sister. ‘And why mightn’t I tum in before?’ said the little boy. ‘Because Mammy said oo wasn’t to see me in my chemise, and now I’ve taken it off,’ answered the little sister.”

* * * * *

“_Dec. 8._--‘I see some pictures by amateurs,’ said Mr. Eddis this morning, ‘which produce the same effect that _we was_ does in conversation: it is because they have never studied the grammar of art.

“‘You would scarcely remember Chantrey, I think. He was always a kind friend to me. He rose quite from the ranks, and began as a carver of wood. Rogers was always said to have a table which had been carved by Chantrey.

“‘Lord Eldon sat to me three times, and, while he sat, told me all the story of his life, so when that Life was published, it was all familiar to me: he had told it all. He was unsuccessful as a lawyer in early life, had no practice whatever, and his friends advised him to throw up the profession altogether. Only two friends urged him to wait just a little longer, and he took their advice, and in that “little longer” the tide turned, and carried him on to the Chancellorship: “And then,” said Lord Eldon, “I was able to provide those two friends with very good places.’”

* * * * *

In December 1893 my “Story of Two Noble Lives” appeared, and was warmly welcomed by the upper classes of society--“the public” for whom it was especially written. The last time I had gone out with Lady Waterford, we walked up and down the little ilex avenue by the churchyard at Highcliffe. She spoke then of the great and increasing desolation of her life, and said, “If I survive Charles Stuart, there will not be any one left who would even put up a monument to me.” At the time I inwardly said, “I will,” and held firm to that resolution; and from what people say of the book, I feel that I may venture to regard it, though very unworthy, as a memorial of my dear Lady and her so-beloved sister. Lady Canning’s is the better portrait, for her letters remained; the destruction of all Lady Waterford’s best letters has prevented an equally good picture of her life being produced. General Stuart and many other of Lady Waterford’s friends assured me that a detailed memoir of her was impossible; but no good work was ever successfully carried through which has not at one time seemed impossible.

It was curious, on going to London, to see how opinions differed about the book--how one heard, “Oh, all the interest is confined to Lady Canning,” or, “Of course all one’s sympathies are with Lady Waterford; it is only Lady Waterford one cares for,” or, “The old French history is the only point of interest.” The Reviews were just the same, wishing that the first, or the second, or the third volume were excluded--“the general public would have been sure to welcome the book if it had been much shorter.” But that was exactly the welcome I did not care that it should receive. The general public had no interest in, could not understand, and was not constituted to benefit by such “noble lives,” while the inner circle for whom they were intended could always skip--skip a whole volume if it pleased, just as suited the reader. “Le plus grand malheur d’un homme de lettres n’est peut-être pas d’être l’objet de la jalousie de ses confrères, la victime de la cabale, le mépris des puissants du monde; c’est d’être jugé par des sots.” I was, however, very grateful for the letter of “a Radical,” well known, though quite unknown to me, who wrote that the book had shown him that he had often talked and written of what he had known nothing about, of a class he had misjudged or judged only from individuals, and that “the Story” had taught him what noble, devoted, unselfish lives might belong to the class he had maligned, and that he would never speak against it--in generalities--again. Lady Cork was furious because the married life of Lord and Lady Canning had not been painted as cloudlessly, beatifically happy. But how could I do this with all the written evidence before me? And, after all, what made Lady Canning’s so perfectly “noble” a life was that, however much she suffered, she allowed her mother and sister to live and _die_ under the impression that she was the happiest of wives.

A very large first edition--5300 copies--was produced. I felt these would be called for, and that such an edition would probably cover the very heavy expenses. But the sale of the book is not likely to go on; the generation contemporary with the two sisters will have passed away. For myself, if I like a book, I prefer that it should be very long. It enables you to make a real acquaintance with the people described, to learn to love them perhaps, and to be very sorry to part with them. I wonder if it will be so if some of these--very long--journals are ever made public.

From a photograph by Elliott & Fry]