Chapter XXIX: Writing the Gurney Memoirs (1)

“O thou wealthy Past,
Thine are our treasures!--thine and ours alone
Through thee: the Present doth in fear rejoice;
The Future, but in fantasy: but thou
Holdest secure for ever and for ever
The bliss that has been ours; nor present woe,
Nor future dread, can touch that heritage
Of joy gone by--the only joy we own.”
--FANNY ANNE KEMBLE.

“The stream bears us on, and our joys and our griefs are alike left
behind us: we may be shipwrecked, but we cannot be delayed: whether
rough or smooth, the river hastens towards its home, till the
roaring of the ocean is in our ears, and the tossing of the waves
is beneath our keel, and the lands lessen from our eyes, and the
floods are lifted up around us, and the earth loses sight of us,
and we take our last leave of earth and its inhabitants, and of our
further voyage there is no witness, but the Infinite and the
Eternal.”--REGINALD HEBER, _Farewell Sermon at Hodnet_.

I had frequently been urged by my friend Madame E. de Bunsen to write the lives and edit the letters of her family--the Gurneys of Earlham; but I had long declined. Much as I honoured the life-work and character of the Gurneys, I felt that I was so little in sympathy with their outward forms of religion, with their peculiar expression of it--with their religious talking, in fact--that I doubted if I could do them justice. Others seemed much better fitted for the task.

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But towards the close of 1893 it was again urged upon me--urged with great persistency; and when I had taken many of the Gurney journals and letters home, a memoir seemed gradually to unravel itself in my mind, and at length I promised to do my best. I know, however, how true it is that “in a whole imbroglio of capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and very often clutch the wrong one.”[521]

In many respects the work soon brought its own reward--inwardly, in being led to enter into the spiritual life and difficulties of so many holy departed ones: outwardly, in many visits to still living members of the family, whose life is a constant example, and has often an intellectual as well as a spiritual charm. Especially charming were some winter days at Colne House, the delightful home of Catherine, Lady Buxton, second daughter of Samuel Gurney; and a lovely spring day with Mrs. Ripley at Earlham, in the old-fashioned rooms, and on the green lawns, fragrant to the family--but also to thousands of others--with endless sacred memories.

* * * * *

_To the_ HON. G. HYLTON JOLLIFFE.

“_London, April 1894._--I have had a pleasant time here, and as usual have found that there is more to be learnt by enduring the ups and downs of social pleasures than by withdrawing from them, while in the mornings I have been very busy at the Athenaeum with a new edition of ‘Walks in London’ and the production of my little ‘Sussex.’ At Lady Wynford’s I met Miss Harynden, the authoress of ‘Ships that Pass in the Night,’ a very delicate-looking brown ‘Girton girl’--only her degree was not taken at Girton, but at the London University. She was very simple and nice, but seems to _feel_ her books too much. She said she was generally ill and fretful because she was writing, but more ill and more fretful if she was not. She did not find her lodging at Hampstead quiet enough to write in, but shut herself up by day in a desolate cottage on the Heath. She said she had received hundreds of letters about her ‘Ships that Pass.’ That very morning she had a very kind one from an unknown gentleman, saying he liked her book very much, but was disappointed because--in spite of the title--he found no information about shipping in it!

“A little Gould child said the other day, ‘Can God Almighty do everything, mother?’--‘Yes, my dear, God is omnipotent.’--‘I know one thing He couldn’t do, mother.’--‘Quite impossible, my dear.’--‘Yes, mother; God couldn’t make a stone so big that He couldn’t carry it,’--deep unconscious theology.

” ...There is no place where Death makes a stranger impression than at the Athenaeum. You become so accustomed to many men you do not know, to their comings and goings, that they become almost a part of your daily life. You watch them growing older, the dapper young man becoming grizzled, first too careful and then too neglectful of his dress: you see his face become furrowed, his hair grow grey, then white, and at last he is lame and bent. You become worried by his coughs, and hems, and little peculiarities. And--suddenly--you are aware that he is not there, and all your little annoyances immediately seem to have been absurd. For a time you miss him. He never comes. He will cough no more, no longer creak across the floor. He has passed into the unseen; gradually he is forgotten. His place knows him no more. But the wheel goes on turning; it is others; it is oneself perhaps, who is waning away.”

* * * * *

_To the_ HON. MRS. W. LOWTHER.

“_Holmhurst, May 21, 1894._--You said you would like to hear about Belvoir.

“I went with Henry Maxwell-Lyte. At Grantham was a quantity of red cloth, and crowds of people to see the Princess (Louise), and a string of carriages from the castle, and George Manners to show us which we were to go in. In mine I found a young man, who turned out to be Cecil Hanbury of La Mortola, with whom I made great friends, and found, as I always do, that it makes all the difference if one has one special friend in a large party. The Princess was already at tea when we arrived, and very gracious and kind. But though she is such a really charming person, the conversation had the effect of muffled drums, which always accompanies the presence of royalty. Lord Lorne is much improved in appearance by age--a good Rubens, as his uncle, Ronald Gower--also at Belvoir--is a bad Bronzino. The Duke, as always, was most delightful, so courteous, considerate, and full of interesting information. In the mornings we walked, drew, or sat in the gardens--a many-hued carpet of spring glories. In the evenings most of the company danced. The last day we drove, all the way through the property, to Croxton Old Park, where there was once a monastery, but nothing is left of it now. There is a quaint little house, where the Duchess Mary-Isabella, whoever she may have been, died, and in its succursale we had tea, with all possible ‘ameliorations.’ ...

“Holmhurst is now a nest of spring blossoms, the azaleas glorious, and the gold of the laburnums quite hiding the leaves.

‘A tout oiseau
Son nid semble beau:’

But my nest really _is_ ‘beau.’ I am sometimes blamed for caring so much about it, so that it was a comfort to read somewhere (I cannot remember where), ‘Every man’s proper mansion-house and home, being the theater of his hospitality, the seate of self-fruition, the comfortablest part of his own life, a kind of private princedome, nay, to the possessor thereof an epitome of the whole world, may well deserve by these attributes, according to the degree of the master, to be decently and delightfully adorned.’”

* * * * *

It had weighed upon my mind for the last two years that my “France” remained unfinished. There was still another volume which could not be written without personally visiting all the places of interest in Normandy and Brittany, and my publishers were constantly urging its completion. The book has always been utterly unremunerative, very much the contrary, which is very depressing in its way, but “on ne vit dans le mémoire du monde que par ses travaux pour le monde.’[522] So I determined to give up London and home pleasures this summer, and to set about it, taking my young cousin Theodore Chambers as my companion and guest.

We left Holmhurst together on the first of June, and spent June in Normandy and July in Brittany. It was one of the most laborious journeys I ever made--eight or nine hours a day of walking, standing, collating, correcting, simmering in the relaxing western heat, and constantly soaked by the Scotch mist which pervades that district five days out of seven. For the latter month young Inverurie, Lady Kintore’s eldest boy, was also with me, a most kind and pleasant fellow-traveller, but, though eager about drawing, neither of my companions had any more interest in architecture or history than a stone. Thus my associations with North-Western France are not transcendent. Places, even the most beautiful, are innutritious to the mind in the long run; one needs people with mental life, and enthusiasm to see them with.

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To the cloudiest days, however, come gleams of sunshine. I remember with great pleasure the Abbey of S. Waudrille near Caudebec, restored once more to the Benedictines, ejected at the Revolution. We were cordially pressed to go and stay there, and shown the charming rooms we might have, and I should really have liked it. Then five days at Mont S. Michel were enchanting, and the invigorating air, which the hundred and thirty steps to our bedrooms gave us full opportunity of benefiting by. And then from Brittany come recollections of many wonderful calvaries; of Tregastel and its golden rocks; of S. Jean du Doigt in its deep hollow, lovely in spite of soaking rain; and of Carnac and its wild moorland, redolent of sweet basil and thyme. We also saw two stately well-kept houses, Josselin of the Duc de Rohan, and Maintenon of the Duc de Noailles; but, after all, seeing houses without their owners is like seeing frames without portraits. More living to me, because I felt already so familiar with the place, was Les Rochers, pervaded by the spirit of Madame de Sévigné, and even more fragrant from the memories she has bequeathed to it than from the blossoms with which the glorious old orange-trees in its garden are covered now as in her day. It was enchanting to reach home again at the end of July. My companions said the journey had turned my hair grey, and so it really had--rather.

* * * * *

JOURNAL.

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“_August 16._--Most delightful has been the return to Holmhurst with its freedom and peace. The shades in my life now are seldom troubles, only uncongenialities, and the ‘small fretting fretfulnesses’ which accompany them: still, when these are past, the relief is enormous, and visits from such delightful young friends as Herbert Vaughan, Cecil Hanbury, and George Cockerton have been a great enjoyment. The last is indeed, in every respect, a dear and true friend. No rules of friendship, I feel, are better than those inculcated by Buddhism:--

“‘An honourable man should minister to his friends and companions by giving presents, by courteous speech, by promoting their interests, by treating them as his equals, by sharing with them his prosperity.

“‘They, in return, should show attachment, by watching over him when he is off his guard, by guarding his property when he is careless, by offering him a refuge in danger, by adhering to him in misfortune, by showing kindness to his family.’

“The natural beauty of the garden here is a never-failing delight to me. Most people seem to be so full of expectations from the future that they do not allow themselves to enjoy the present; but when I am at home, I am sure that is not the case with me. On the prettiest site in the grounds I have just finished putting up the statues of Queen Anne and her four satellites by Bird, which formerly stood in front of St. Paul’s. They were taken away four years ago, and disappeared altogether till last spring, when my friend Lewis Gilbertson discovered them in a stonemason’s yard on the point of being broken up for the sake of the marble. I found they belonged to three people--the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and the Lord Mayor, and all these were persuaded to resign their claims to me. The statues were brought down to Holmhurst at great expense, and put up, at much greater, on a home-made pedestal like their old one; and now I hope they are enjoying the verdure and sea-breezes after the smoke of the City.”

* * * * *

_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN, _and_ JOURNAL.

“_Alderley Rectory, Oct. 5, 1894._--I left home on September 29, to visit the Townshend Marshams at Frognal--the place I have so often heard of and thought of, from Lord and Lady Canning having been there so frequently as the guests of Lord and Lady Sydney, who left it to the Marshams. No wonder they loved it, and that it was one of the places poor Lady Canning most looked forward to seeing again on her return from her long Indian exile. It is an enchanting old house!--its endless succession of small sitting-rooms, all lived in, all full of pictures, books, and flowers, and opening on to a sunny terrace and broad expanse of lawn, with pine-trees beyond it. In one of the rooms Lady Sydney still presides from her picture, but as few alive now can remember her, radiant in loveliness, with a coronet surmounting her abundant and beautiful hair. Upstairs there is an oak gallery, half library, half passage, but deliciously pleasant and quaint. The boy of the family is named Ferdinand, from Ferdinando Marsham, Charles I.’s esquire, upon whose tombstone it is said that ‘he was lamented by all gentlemen.’ Amongst the many curious pamphlets in the house is an account of Charles I.’s execution, printed whilst the king’s body was still lying at Whitehall, and mentioning his famous word, ‘Remember,’ as referring to his ‘George,’ which he had desired might be given to his eldest son. A sketch by Lady Sydney represents the drawing-room at Frognal, with both the Cannings and many other habitués of the house introduced, and easily recognisable as portraits.

“Through a most picturesque and lovely bit of primeval chase belonging to Frognal we walked to Chislehurst, to see the fine tomb of Lord Sydney by Boehm, surrounded by memorials of his family, and, on the common, the Prince Imperial’s Memorial Cross. Mr. Marsham Townshend, who recollected having seen the Empress in all her splendour at Paris, happened once to come upon her here, a widowed and lonely exile, in her deep mourning, attended by a single servant, sobbing alone before this memorial of her murdered son. Often, in the years she was at Chislehurst, while the family at Frognal were sitting at tea in the hall, a carriage would dash up, and the Empress Eugénie come in to stay for two hours. She loved the Sydneys.

“It was most delightful at Frognal having old Mrs. Sackville of Drayton there--‘still constant in a wondrous excellence.’

“A longish journey took me to Bromsgrove, where a carriage met me and an old Mrs. Laurence, who is apparently ‘a power’ in American society, with her nephew, Mr. Mercer, and brought us to Hewell, the great modern house which Bodley has built for the Windsors. It has an immense hall, with open galleries round it, never a comfortable arrangement, I think, but it is handsome, has two beautiful Italian chimney-pieces, and is divided by arches into compartments at the two ends. Lady Windsor is quite as beautiful and fascinating as before she married, and her mother, Lady Paget, is rather additionally embellished than otherwise by added years. Lady De Vesci was at Hewell also, supremely beautiful in her own--a poetical way.

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“I have enjoyed being in this familiar place, where the Rector of Alderley, Mr. Bell, and his daughters, are very kind. He has just been driving me to see the Ernest Leycesters at Mobberley. Passing beneath a field on the way to Chorley, he said, ‘A curious thing happened there when I was a little boy. A farmer went out very early to look over his land, and in that field he found a place where the soil had been recently upturned. ‘Oh, poachers must have been here,’ he said to himself, ‘and have buried their game;’ so he dug, and very soon came upon a sack. ‘Here it is,’ he said, when behold! from the sack emerged the long tresses of a young woman! Pale as death, he rushed across the field to Ellen Baskerville’s house, and told what had happened. It was the body of a young woman, buried in Alderley Churchyard a few days before. Resurrection-men had dug it up, and being suddenly surprised, had hastily buried it here.

“‘When I was living as chaplain in the Infirmary at Norwich,’ said Mr. Bell, ‘I was startled by hearing what seemed to be loud and furious imprecations overhead. They did not stop, and at last I ran upstairs to see. There, in bed, was the old fat swarthy cook, screaming with all her might, and a huge monkey was sitting on the bed grinning at her. I seized a newspaper which lay there, rolled it up, and hit out at the monkey. But the beast knew better than to be afraid of that, seized it, tore it up, and made at me. Then I caught up a large ruler, which was happily lying near, to defend myself with. The monkey did not like that, and bounded across the room and out at the window, and I heard a scream from the people upon whom it had descended in the street.

“‘The woman told me how the monkey had come in at the window, and jumped straight on to her bed, where it had found the pot of ointment used for her bad leg, and eaten it all up directly. Having finished that, it made for the table, where it found her wig-box, pulled it open and began to demolish her wig. _That_ she could not stand. “Oh, ye varmint! ye varmint!” she shouted, and continued shouting till I came to the rescue.’”

* * * * *

“_Temple Newsam, Oct. 9._--This grand old house in the Black Country has been receiving the Duke and Duchess of York. They were just gone when I arrived, but the Duchess’s pleasant brother, Prince Adolphus, is here, and his future bride, Lady Sybil Grosvenor, with Lady Grosvenor and her daughter, also the William Lowthers and the beloved Halifax’s. With the Lowthers I have been two excursions--to Swillerton, Sir C. Lowther’s rather fine house, and to the beautiful old house of Ledstone, a very picturesque place.”

* * * * *

“_Ravenstone, Oct. 14._--This lovely little place of Mrs. Howard is above Lake Bassenthwayte, not considered a beautiful lake, but infinitely lovely at the spot to which she has taken me, through the garden of Sir H. Vane, where a richly wooded promontory embossed upon the still evening sky was reflected in every detail in the calm limpid waters.

“We have been for service to the most delightfully primitive little church--a Dalesman’s church--such as Wordsworth has described. At Greystoke we have spent a day, received by the little girl, daughter of the house, with the manners of a princess. Little of the old castle remains.”

* * * * *

“_Bishopthorpe, Oct. 16._--‘That is a portrait of Bishop Willmer of Louisiana,’ said the Archbishop, showing his study. ‘He was at one of the conferences at Lambeth in Archbishop Tait’s time. When he went away Mrs. Tait said to him, “Well, good-bye, Bishop; I hope you’ll come again at the next conference.”--“No, Mrs. Tait, neither you nor I will be at the next conference.”--“Oh, Bishop, but I hope we shall see you again.”--“No, Mrs. Tait,” said the Bishop very solemnly, “neither you nor I shall be at the next conference, but we shall meet again very soon.” Three months after that--one in America, the other at Edinburgh--the Bishop and Mrs. Tait died on the very same day.

“‘Bishop Willmer had the utmost simplicity of character, but he was a true apostle. One day, crossing a green at Boston, he found a little boy playing pitch-and-toss. He was very fond of little boys, and he stopped and spoke to this one--spoke to him very kindly. “Now, are you a good little boy?” he said at length. “Well, I sometimes say cuss words,” answered the boy. “Oh, I’m sorry for that,” said the Bishop; “but at any rate, I see you speak the truth.”--“Oh, only dogs tell lies,” said the boy. “Well, now,” said the Bishop, “would you like to do me a kindness?”--“Yes,” said the boy. “Well, I expect a parcel at the railway station, and I want you to go for it, and bring it to a particular house. There will be seven dollars to pay for that parcel, and here are the seven dollars, and there are fifty cents for yourself.” The boy took the $7.50 and went off.

“‘When the Bishop reached the house, he told what he had done, and was heartily jeered at--that he should trust a Boston waif like that. There was a very large party, and they all went in to dinner. Before it was over, a servant came in and said that there was a boy there who wanted to speak to the Bishop. The Bishop went out, and the whole company followed him--they followed him into the hall, and there was the boy at the door. He was not the least abashed, but, when he saw the Bishop, said, “Well, I’ve brought the parcel, but it cost seven dollars fifty cents: you did not see the fifty cents marked in the corner.”--“Well, how did you get the parcel, then?”--” Oh, I paid the fifty cents you gave me.”--“And how did you know you’d get the fifty cents again?”--“ Well, I thought as a chap as would trust me with seven dollars would never make a trouble for fifty cents.”

“‘Well,’ said the Bishop, before they parted, ‘now I should like to give you my blessing;’ and the boy knelt on the door-mat, and solemnly and episcopally, before all the company, the Bishop gave the poor boy his blessing.’

“The chapel here in the palace is thirteenth-century, and has been restored by Archbishop Maclagan. The stained windows by Kempe are beautiful, representing the Crucifixion, and the saints connected with York. ‘I wished that the Saviour should be represented without any appearance of suffering,’ said the Archbishop--‘as the offering of humanity, not the sacrifice for sin. The suffering crucifixes only grew up in mediaeval times with ideas of purgatory. The early artists wished to excite faith, not pity, and represented the Saviour’s triumph over death, even while enduring it. The earliest crucifix, in the Catacomb of Pope Julius, given by Mrs. Jameson, but which totally disappeared a few years since, represents on the cross a beautiful youth, draped from head to foot, and without suffering.’

“I have had a delightful long drive with Augusta to Bramham. The old house was burnt down sixty years ago, and has never been rebuilt. But its glorious old gardens are kept up. There is nothing like them in England. They were laid out by Le Nôtre when he laid out Versailles, and are more like that than any other place. Eighty acres are intersected by grand avenues with immense walls of clipped beech, ending in summer-houses, statues, vases, or tanks walled in with stone and surrounded by statues and vases of flowers. Mr. Fox, a most grand old man, showed me everything, and talked of the change from the old times of his youth, when Yorkshire country visits were so cheery, and the chief dissipation of the county people was a ball at York. ‘Now every man with three hundred a year and a daughter thinks he must go to London.’ He talked of the degeneracy of Temple Newsam from the time when three litters of cubs were regularly brought up in the woods near the house. His sitting-room is full of hunting pictures and caricatures of his old friends--a great enjoyment to him.

“I asked Augusta much about Mrs. (Adelaide) Sartoris, whom she had known well. She said: ‘Edward Sartoris did not go with Adelaide when she went to Vichy. Leighton, who was always as a slave to her, went with her, took her lodgings, and did everything for her. Then he said, “You will be very dull, knowing no one here; I know some young men here, and I will introduce them to you. They are Burton and Swinburne, but you know one is a believer in Buddhism, the other in nothing; so you must not mind what they say.” Then Leighton left.

“‘The next evening Adelaide was having her coffee in the gardens, when the two young men came up and sat down by her. At first they made themselves very agreeable. Then at length they began to air their opinions, and to say things evidently intended to shock. Adelaide laid down her cup, looked at Burton, and said very slowly, “You believe, I think, in _Juggernaut_, therefore, with regard to Juggernaut, I shall be very careful not to hurt your feelings. And you, Mr. Swinburne (turning to him), believe, I think, in _nothing_, but if anything is mentioned in which you _do_ believe, I shall be very careful not to hurt your feelings either, by abusing it: now I expect that you will show the same courtesy to me.”

“‘The young men laughed, and for some days all went well. Then the impression passed, and one day they began to talk as before. Adelaide again laid down her cup, and began again in the same slow tones--“You believe, Mr. Burton, I think, in Juggernaut”.... Then they burst out laughing, and they always behaved themselves in future.’

“‘When I was a girl,’ said Augusta, ‘I was with Mary at Madame de l’Aigle’s near Compiègne. There was to be a little function in the village, and some music was got up for it. We assisted at the practices, and Leighton also, who was there as a beautiful young man. But before the day of the function came he had to go. “Oh, Fay, why should you desert us? what can we do without our tenor?” said Madame de l’Aigle. But she implored him in vain; he said he _must_ go. We all continued, however, to urge him, and at last he said, “Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I must go, but I’ll come back.”--“What! all the way from London?” “Yes.” And he did. It was not long after that we found out why he thought himself obliged to go: it was because the sale of the pictures of that poor artist, Mason, who had died leaving his wife and children terribly unprovided for, was going to take place, and Leighton thought that if he were present at the sale, and seen bidding for the pictures, they would fetch higher prices. It was only one of a thousand kindnesses Leighton has done.... People have sometimes called him affected, but he was not. His manners were perfectly natural: he could not help being the spoiled darling of society.

“‘George IV., as Prince Regent, was very charming when he was not drunk, but he generally was. Do you remember how he asked Curran to dinner to amuse him--only for that? Curran was up to it, and sat silent all through dinner. This irritated the Prince, and at last, after dinner, when he had had a good deal too much, he filled a glass with wine and threw it in Curran’s face, with “Say something funny, can’t you!” Curran, without moving a muscle, threw his own glass of wine in his neighbour’s face, saying, “Pass his Royal Highness’s joke.”

“‘That story reminds me of the old Queen of Sweden. She was furious at the appointment of Bernadotte, and would have nothing to do with him; at which people congratulated him rather, because if she had seen him, they said, she would certainly have killed him. But at last she seemed to get tired of her estrangement, and she invited Bernadotte to a banquet. He was delighted--so glad to be friends; but as he was going to her palace, a paper was put into his hands inscribed--by whom he never knew--with the words, “If she offers you food or drink, as you value your life, refuse it.” He arrived, and the Queen was most affable, courtesy and kindness itself. After dinner a cup of coffee was brought on a golden salver, and, with the most exquisite grace, the Queen offered it to Bernadotte. He was just about to drink it when he remembered the warning, and he returned it to her, saying, “Après vous, Madame.” The Queen turned deadly pale, looked him full in the face, and--drank it. Next day Stockholm was agitated by terrible news. The Queen-Dowager had died in the night.’

“The dining-room here is hung with Archbishops, a very fine set of portraits. Sir Joshua painted Archbishop Harcourt, and came down with the picture to Bishopthorpe. At dinner, the chaplain, who was afterwards Archbishop Markham, said, ‘Who is the fellow who has painted that vile picture of the Archbishop?’--‘The fellow is me,’ said Sir Joshua, who was sitting by him; but he was so struck by what Markham said that he insisted on taking the picture back with him to London, and repainted it as it is now. Talking of the portraits led to Sir T. Lawrence, who was an endless time over his pictures. That was the case with his portrait of Lady Mexborough and her child. Lord Mexborough asked to have it home again and again, but it was no use. At last he said he _must_ have the picture. ‘Well,’ said Sir Thomas, ‘I’ve been a long time, I allow; but I’ve got well forward with Lady Mexborough: it’s the baby wants finishing. Now if Lady Mexborough would kindly bring the baby and give me another sitting, I really will finish.’--‘Well, Sir Thomas,’ said Lord Mexborough, ‘my wife will be happy to give you another sitting whenever you like, but _the baby’s in the Guards_!’”

* * * * *

“_Lincoln, Oct. 18._--Between York and this, I turned aside to visit Howden, a most grand church. In the vicarage garden I saw an old lady feeding chickens, and I could not help going up to her and saying, ‘Were you not once a Miss Dixon?’ She was so exactly like her sister, who was with Miss Dixon, the miniature-painter, at the little Holmhurst hospice last year. Her husband, Mr. Hutchinson, showed me all the relics, the remains of the shrine of S. John of Howden, bearing a statue of the Virgin with the dove whispering into her ear, as S. Gregory is so often represented at Rome: the Saltmarshe Chapel, with its old tombs and its stone altar with five crosses: and the lovely ruined choir, with exquisite chantry chapels opening from it. Then, in the vicarage garden, are remains of an old palace of the Bishops of Durham, with a beautiful old gateway.

“I also saw Selby, a very fine church with a Norman nave, but less interesting than Howden.

“Lincoln is altogether delightful, with its crown of yellow-grey towers rising high above the red roofs of the town. And it is most pleasant in staying with the beloved Precentor Venables to go back into the old Hurstmonceaux days, which he, and almost no one else, remembers, even though I could not join in his loyal reverence for Uncle Julius, when it was extended to Aunt Esther also. Time seems to have stood still with him and Mrs. Venables more than with any one I know, and it is difficult to believe that it is more than half a century since they came to Hurstmonceaux as bride and bridegroom--half a century of such entirely happy married life, that one cannot contemplate one surviving the other.[528]

“We visited the delightful and beautiful old Bishop King, who now has fitted up the ruins of the old palace, and lives appropriately in the heart of the cathedral society--‘very rightly placed,’ he says, ‘below the church, and far above the world.’ He has an expression of gentle benignity which I never saw equalled except by Pius IX., and a manner in which the greatest dignity of office and the most perfect personal humility are marvellously blended. He was sitting in what I thought was a purple dressing-gown, but was told it was a cassock: a jewelled cross was on his breast. I hoped to have seen him mitred in the cathedral, but he only appears thus on great festivals. He talked of the Church in France, and I urged him to visit Ars and enjoy its atmosphere of spiritual love and blessing: he said he should go there. We also visited Dean Wickham and his delightful wife, who is Gladstone’s daughter, thinking her father’s principles always right, but so full of goodness, gentleness, and beneficence herself, that it is impossible to connect her with his practice.”

* * * * *

“_Nov. 16._--At Letton, the pleasant house of the Gurdons in Suffolk, I have met a large party, including the Hamonds of Westacre, into whose courtyard an invisible horse and rider clatter whenever any death is about to occur in their family. I have been taken to see Hingham, where the church contains the very fine tomb of Thomas, Lord Morley, of 1435. Another day we went to Dereham. S. Werburga was the great saint of the place, and was stolen by the Abbot of Ely, that her body might be venerated there with her two sainted sisters. By her empty grave a miraculous spring gushed forth to console the people of Dereham. So many children died from being bathed in it, that it is now shut off by a railing. In the church is the feeble monument of Cowper and Mrs. Unwin.

“Several curious stories were told:--

“Some young men once determined to frighten the famous naturalist Cuvier. One of them got horns, hoofs, and a tail, and appeared by Cuvier’s bedside. ‘I am the devil,’ he said, ‘and I am come to eat you.’ Cuvier looked at him. ‘Carnivorous! horns--hoofs--impossible! Good-night;’ and he turned over and went to sleep.

“Mrs. Hall Dare had told of a young girl friend of hers. She was with a number of other girls, foolish and frivolous, who went to consult an old woman who had the reputation of being a witch, and who was supposed to have the power of making them see their future husbands. She said they must say their prayers backwards, perform certain incantations with water, lock their doors when they went to bed, and then they would see whom they were to marry, but they would find their doors locked in the morning.

“The girl followed all the witch’s directions. Then she locked her door, went to bed, and waited. Gradually, by the firelight, a young man seemed to come in--to come straight through the locked door--a young man in uniform; she saw him distinctly.

“He went to the end of the room and returned. As he passed the bed his sword caught in the curtain and fell upon the floor. Then he seemed to pass out. The girl fainted.

“In the morning at first she thought it was a dream, but there, though her door was still locked, lay the actual sword upon the floor! Greatly aghast, she told no one, but put it away and kept it hidden. It was a terrible possession to her.

“The following year, at a country-house, she met the very young man she had seen. They fell violently in love and were married. For one year they were intensely--perfectly--happy.

“Then her husband’s regiment had to change its quarters. As she was packing up, with horror which was an instinct, she came upon the sword put away among her things. Just then, before she could hide it, her husband came in. He saw the sword, turned deadly pale, and in a stern voice said, ‘How did you come by that?’ She confessed the whole truth.

“He was rigid. He said, ‘I can never forgive it; I can never see you again;’ and nothing she could say or do could move him. ‘Do you know where I passed that terrible night?’ he said; ‘I passed it _in hell_!’ He has given up three-quarters of his income to her, but she has never seen him since.

“A Miss Broke, a niece of our host, told me even a more curious story.

“A few years ago there was a lady living in Ireland--a Mrs. Butler--clever, handsome, popular, prosperous, and perfectly happy. One morning she said to her husband, and to any one who was staying there, ‘Last night I had the most wonderful night. I seemed to be spending hours in the most delightful place, in the most enchanting house I ever saw--not large, you know, but just the sort of house one might live in one’s-self, and oh! so perfectly, so deliciously comfortable. Then there was the loveliest conservatory, and the garden was so enchanting! I wonder if anything half so perfect can really exist.’

“And the next morning she said, ‘Well, I have been to my house again. I must have been there for hours. I sat in the library: I walked on the terrace; I examined all the bedrooms: and it is simply the most perfect house in the world.’ So it grew to be quite a joke in the family. People would ask Mrs. Butler in the morning if she had been to her house in the night, and often she had, and always with more intense enjoyment. She would say, ‘I count the hours till bedtime, that I may get back to my house!’ Then gradually the current of outside life flowed in, and gave a turn to their thoughts: the house ceased to be talked about.

“Two years ago the Butlers grew very weary of their life in Ireland. The district was wild and disturbed. The people were insolent and ungrateful. At last they said, ‘We are well off, we have no children, there’s no reason why we should put up with this, and we’ll go and live altogether in England.’

“So they came to London, and sent for all the house-agents’ lists of places within forty miles of London, and many were the places they went to see. At last they heard of a house in Hampshire. They went to it by rail; and drove from the station. As they came to the lodge, Mrs. Butler said, ‘Do you know, this is the lodge of my house.’ They drove down an avenue--‘But this _is_ my house!’ she said.

“When the housekeeper came, she said, ‘You will think it very odd, but do you mind my showing _you_ the house: that passage leads to the library, and through that there is a conservatory, and then through a window you enter the drawing-room,’ &c., and it was all so. At last, in an upstairs passage, they came upon a baize door. Mrs. Butler, for the first time, looked puzzled. ‘But that door is not in my house,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand about your house, ma’am,’ said the housekeeper, ‘but that door has only been there six weeks.’

“Well, the house was for sale, and the price asked was very small, and they decided at once to buy it. But when it was bought and paid for, the price had been so extraordinarily small, that they could not help a misgiving that there must be something wrong with the place. So they went to the agent of the people who had sold it and said, ‘Well, now the purchase is made and the deeds are signed, _will_ you mind telling us why the price asked was so small?’

“The agent had started violently when they came in, but recovered himself. Then he said to Mrs. Butler, ‘Yes, it is quite true the matter is quite settled, so there can be no harm in telling now. The fact is that the house has had a great reputation for being haunted; but you, madam, need be under no apprehensions, for you are yourself the ghost!’

“On the nights when Mrs. Butler had dreamt she was at her house, she--her ‘astral body’--had been seen there.”

* * * * *

“_Ashridge, Nov. 19._--I arrived here by tea-time, passing in the beech woods Lady Lothian, who reminded me of Lady Waterford, as I saw her in her long black dress and black hat, backed by the leafless trees against the golden sunset. Then Lady Brownlow came in, still radiant in her marvellous Bronzino-like beauty. There is much charm too in the guests--Mrs. Dallas Yorke, with her subtle refinement, Mrs. Norman Grosvenor, the Jerseys, pleasant Jack Cator, and many others. Before dark, Lady Lothian took me to the drawing-room, built entirely from designs of Lord Brownlow, and thoroughly Italian in its marble pillars, green hangings, and many fine pictures, a Mona Lisa which disputes originality with that at Paris, a beautiful Lo Spagna of a saint, and the sketch for the Tintoret of the Presentation of the Virgin. The dinner was lighted from brilliant sconces on old boiserie from a Flemish sacristy. In the evening ‘Critic’ was acted as a charade, led by Lady Jersey.

“Breakfast was at small tables. Lord Brownlow, at ours, talked of a neighbouring house where a Lady Ferrers, a freebooter, used to steal out at night and rob the pilgrims coming from St. Albans. She had a passage from her room to the stables. In the morning one of the horses was often found tired out and covered with foam: no one could tell why. At last the poor lady was found dead on her doorstep in her suit of Lincoln green. She constantly haunts the place. Mr. Ady, who lives there now, meets her on the stairs and wishes her good-night. Once, seeing her with her arms stretched out in the doorway, he called out to his wife who was outside, ‘Now we’ve caught her!’ and they rushed upon her from both sides, but caught--nothing.

“Lady Brownlow came over to our table. ‘I’ve come to join in your conversation.’--‘Well, you’ve stopped it,’ said Lord B. ‘However, I bring you this story. A man in a foreign hotel took a loaded pistol to bed with him. By-and-by he saw a terrible deformed hand brandished at the foot of the bed. “If you don’t go, I’ll fire,” he shouted. It did not go and he fired. It was at his own foot.’

“It was Sunday, but I did not go to church, and walked with Lady Lothian through the sunlit green glades and russet woods of autumn. The house is of immense length of frontage, and behind it rises the chapel like a great church. ‘Can you tell me in what part of this _village_ Lord Brownlow lives?’ asked an American when he came to Ashridge. In the evening we went to service in the chapel through the splendid conservatory, with long falling festoons of Ipomea. There was a full congregation and singing. Two panes of Holbein glass recall that Ashridge was the palace of Edward VI. and Elizabeth when young, but she hated it.

“We knew what you would say if you found Lady Waterford’s drawings all lying about,’ said Lady Brownlow, ‘so we worked hard to hang them up the day before you came.’ And they looked grand together, and such a variety--the supreme desolation of the Hagar, the self-abandonment of the Prodigal’s repentance, the proud Othello, the lovely springing, leaping children.”

* * * * *

“_Middleton, Dec. 9._--A very agreeable visit to Lord and Lady Jersey. The country is hideous, but the house pleasant and comfortable, and a large new ball-room is hung with many fine portraits--the first Duke of Buckingham by Mytens and by Van Somer; Frances, Countess of Jersey, beloved by George IV., who was sent to meet Queen Caroline and persuaded her to eat onions--‘There is nothing the king likes so much as the smell of onions’--and Sarah, Countess of Jersey, the queen of Almack’s, a huge noble picture by Lawrence. Joining the village church is the mortuary chapel which she built, with her tomb, a copy of the Scipio tomb at Rome, and lovely medallions of her daughters, Sarah, Princess Esterhazy, and Lady Clementina Villiers. The font is said to have been that of Edward the Confessor at Islip, but is of Gothic, not Saxon date.

“Conversation fell on Christine, Lady Saye and Sele, who had three husbands. When she married the first surreptitiously, she took the bull by the horns, and said to her father at dinner, ‘Father, I’m married!’--‘Well, my dear, but at least wait till Thomas has left the room.’--‘No, father, Thomas need not leave the room, for Thomas is the man I’ve married.’”

My home life this year was very quiet and uneventful, only marked by my books. The Edgeworth family had placed Maria Edgeworth’s letters in the hands of Lionel Holland, now a publisher, and desired him to find an editor. He asked me to accept the office--certainly not a remunerative one, as I only received fifty pounds for it, the whole large profits of the book falling to the publishers. I demurred at first, but eventually undertook it, and became interested in the work, and the simple, high-toned, unselfish character of the lady whose letters I was selecting; and the book at once became popular, and had a very large circulation.

But “The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth” was rather a by-play. Most of my time was given to “The Gurneys of Earlham,” which gave me plenty of very hard and anxious work. I could not help feeling, as I attacked the mines and mountains of self-introspection in the form of religious journals which each one of the Gurney brothers and sisters left behind them, how unsuited I was for the task, how little I could enter into their feelings. Indeed Catherine Vaughan had written to me--“You are unworthy even to unfasten the shoe-latchets of those saints,” and I quite agreed with her. Still, into the beauty of their _actions_, of their devoted and unselfish lives, I could fully enter, and when the peculiar shibboleth of those times is sifted from their words, they said a great deal that was most beautiful and touching. The work has brought me into contact with many good people. And the Gurneys are still, as they were in the early days of Earlham, most liberal to all who do not agree with them, if only they are trying to follow the same Lord and Saviour--the dearest friend of the Gurneys of old time, and I think of most of those of present date.

At Christmas I was with the Halifaxes.

* * * * *

_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN.

“_Hickleton, Dec. 28, 1894._--Can it be I? I say to myself, when I am called in pitch darkness in these winter mornings, and hurry in the dawn through the still dark shrubberies to the brilliantly lighted church, where, amid clouds of incense and the chanted salutation of the Blessed Sacrament, I receive ‘the mass,’ kneeling under the shadow of a great crucifix. Then, after breakfast, there is matins, what we should call early morning service, at which there are few worshippers; but when it is over, and you think you are going away, not a bit of it; there is a sound like the sea rushing in, and instantly the church is filled--thronged with people--and these come, not to receive the Sacrament, but to adore it! Charlie Halifax says, ‘How strangely things come round. My uncle, a lawyer--who had his home here with my father and mother, and died when I was five years old--used to be a great friend of Newman and Lord Devon, and others who thought as they did, and his beautiful spiritual letters and his religious sonnets remain to us. He longed for what he thought was the impossible; he longed to have it here, and now here it is. At that time there was only celebration here four times in a year; he never hoped it could be otherwise, and yet what he so longed for--what I, too, so longed for as a boy--has been all realised.

“‘Do you know that when Miss Margot Tennant (Mrs. Asquith) said to Jowett, “What do you _really_ think of God?” he said nothing for a moment, and then answered, “I think all that signifies is what God really thinks of me.”’

“I have had many delightful talks with Charlie. When I am with him I feel imperceptibly lifted heavenwards. I do not agree with him in everything, but oh! I _love_ him always. With him, as indeed with every one else, even where I most disagree, I am careful never to speak slightingly of anything he holds sacred. If it made any difference at all, it would only cause him to hold the cloak tighter.”

* * * * *

“_Hatfield, Jan. 30._--After a visit to Lord and Lady Knightley at Fawsley, in bitter cold and snow, I came here to meet a huge party--Cadogans, Iveaghs, Hampdens, and very many others. Most of the company have skated in the morning, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the equably warm passages and rooms of this immense house. Arthur Balfour is here, with charming manners, quite unspoilt. He stays in his room and does not appear till luncheon-time, so getting many quiet hours for work. Lord Warkworth was here for one night, a most promising youth, who breaks the silence of the Percies. Lord Rowton also is here, and most agreeable in his natural ripple of pleasant talk. He says that he once asked Disraeli what was the most remarkable, the most self-sustained and powerful sentence he knew. Dizzy paused for a moment, and then said, ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’

“Disraeli used to say that, _apropos_ of history, he should always remember going to a breakfast at Lord Houghton’s, and, as the door opened, hearing the loud voice of Bunsen exclaim, ‘Modern history! why, modern history begins with Abraham!’

“He described how the Duke of Wellington would always arrange everything for a battle--he did before Waterloo--and then would sleep soundly for an hour. ‘How could you sleep so soundly?’--‘Why, I had arranged everything.’

“Lady Salisbury said that her _masseuse_ went constantly to the Queen. She told Lady Salisbury that what appeared to be lameness in the Queen was merely that her feet were too small to support the weight of her body. Her hands are those of a little child.

“She gave the most graphic description of an awful storm she encountered in going to S. Tropez. ‘The rivers, you know, generally flow into the sea, but then the sea flowed into the rivers: it was such a reversion of things.’

“Describing his great-grandfather, Lord Salisbury said he swore so horribly that he used to be called ‘Blastus, the king’s chamberlain.’

“I said how one of the things I most wished to see, Lady Anne Grimston’s[529] tomb, was in Hertfordshire. ‘Oh,’ said Lady Salisbury, ‘I will drive you there in my sledge;’ and so she did, across the snow-laden roads. It is the most extraordinary sight. Lady Anne Grimston was a sceptic, and when she lay upon her deathbed in 1717, her family were most anxious to make her believe in a future state, but she wouldn’t. ‘It is as likely,’ she said, ‘that I should rise again as that a tree should grow out of my body when I’m dead.’

“Lady Anne Grimston died, and was buried in Tewin churchyard, and over her grave was placed a great altar-tomb, with a huge massive stone slab on the top of it. In a year or two, this slab showed signs of internal combustion, and out of the middle of it--out of the very middle of it--grew a tree (some say six different trees, but one could not see in winter), and increased, till, in the time which has elapsed, it has become one of the largest trees in Hertfordshire. Not only that, but the branches of the tree have writhed about the tomb like the feelers of an octopus, have seized it, and lifted it into the air, so that the very base of the tomb is high up now, one with the tree or trees, so are they welded together. Then a railing was put round the tomb, and the tree has seized upon it in the same way, has twisted the strong iron rails like pack-thread, and they are to be seen tangled and twirled high in the branches of the tree. Another railing has now been put, and the tree will behave to it just as before.

“If this tree were abroad, it would become the most popular place of pilgrimage in the world. As it is, thousands visit it--even across the snow a regular path was worn to it. Tewin churchyard preaches more sermons than a thousand clergymen.

“‘I have brought back Mr. Hare a most firm believer in a future state,’ said Lady Salisbury as we re-entered the Golden Gallery at Hatfield, where all the guests were sitting.”

* * * * *