Chapter XXIX: Writing the Gurney Memoirs (2)

“_London, Feb. 2._--I dined with my two friends, Lewis Gilbertson and Frank Cookson, who live so happily together in the charming little canonical house of the former in Amen Court. Gilbertson told me how Mr. Spooner of Oxford, celebrated for his absence of mind, was one evening found wandering disconsolately about the streets of Greenwich. ‘I’ve been here hours,’ he said. ‘I had an important appointment to meet some one at “The Dull Man, Greenwich,” and I can’t find it anywhere; and the odd thing is no one seems to have heard of it.’ Late at night he went back to Oxford. ‘You idiot!’ exclaimed his wife; ‘why, it was the Green Man, Dulwich, you had to go to.’”

* * * * *

_To_ HERBERT VAUGHAN OF LLANGOEDMORE.

“_April 21._--My visit at Elton has been most pleasant, Lord and Lady Carysfort so kind, the house a climax of comfort, and the party one of old friends, Knightleys, Peels, Lady Tollemache, and beautiful Lady Claude Hamilton the elder. Then the gardens and groves are quite beautiful, especially at this time--

‘When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight.’[530]

But what I really cared for most was that I accomplished my long-wished-for pilgrimage to Little Gidding.

“It is a most attractive spot, a bosky hollow in the uplands, with a pool and an oak-wood. The monastic house is gone, but probably stood where a farmhouse stands now, and whence the raised path which led to the still existing chapel is yet visible in the turf. An ancient box-tree with a stem like an oak, contemporary with the old house, stands on the grass. An old contemporary book in the library at Elton had made me even more familiar than ‘John Inglesant’ had done with Nicholas Ferrar, his sister--‘a tall ancient gentlewoman about eighty years of age, she being matron of the house’--and with Mrs. Collet and her sixteen children, including the seven sisters named after the Christian virtues--the Patient, the Cheerful, the Affectionate, the Submiss, the Moderate, and the Charitable--who spent their home hours in making such wonderful books of Christian Harmonies.

“To me the chapel was of most touching interest, backed by the oak-wood--‘the fine grove and sweet walks’ which the little book describes. A broad paved path leads to the door, but in the midst of the path rises a high grey altar-tomb--Nicholas Ferrar’s, I suppose--and on its paving-stones are inscriptions over graves, in which you may still make out the oft-repeated names of Ferrar and Collet. Inside, the chapel is lined by stalls of Charles I. date, with round-headed canopies and divided by oak pillars. Below is the open space where the sisterhood, who kept the six canonical hours, ‘prayed publicly three times a day after the order of the Booke of Common Prayer,’ and where the writer of my little book himself saw ‘the mother-matron with all her traine, which were her daughters and daughters’ daughters, who, with four sonnes, kneeled all the while in the body of the half-space, all being in black gownes and round Monmouth capps, save one of the daughters, who was in a friar’s grey gowne.’ There are brasses on one side of the chancel arch to John Ferrar, 1637, and John Ferrar, 1719; and on the other side to Susanna Collet, daughter of Nicholas Ferrar, who ‘had eight sons and eight daughters, and who died at the age of 76;’ below this is a brass to ‘Amy, wife of John Ferrar, 1702.’ And within is the chancel, where, with the sacrament, Inglesant received stillness and peace unspeakable, and life and light and sweetness filled his mind; where in the misty autumn sunlight and the sweeping autumn wind, heaven itself seemed to have opened to him.’

“There were many minor relics of those who did not wish it, but were called ‘the Nuns of Gidding’--an embossed book-cover of their gold-thread work, and tapestry cases to hold the sacred books; and in the farmhouse some old church plate, given to Nicholas Ferrar, and a chalice inscribed ‘What Sir Edmund Sandys bequeathed to the remembrance of friendship, his friende hath consecrated to the honour of God’s service,’ and on the handle--‘For the church of Little Gidding of Huntington Shire.’

“The owner of the property came to dinner at Elton, and told me that Charles Fitzwilliam, Lord Fitzwilliam’s brother, was lost many years ago in the wilds of America. When at the very last gasp, he saw the lights of a farmhouse, to which he made his way. The woman of the house received him most kindly, warmed and dried him, and made him some tea. ‘It will do you good; it’s Gidding tea: I had it over from Gidding.’--‘What! Gidding in Huntingdonshire.’--‘Yes.’--‘Why, that’s where I come from: I’m a Fitzwilliam!’”

* * * * *

_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN.

“_July 20, 1895._--I have come away from London because all that was interesting in the season seemed to be at an end; but I enjoyed it to the last, though certainly what I find to delight in would not please many others. Most of all I have liked my quiet writing-table at the Athenæum, and the silence, not the society, of the club, where no one, except Lord Acton and myself, seems to work in the mornings. Then, after two o’clock, I never go back, but see people for the rest of the day. The garden-parties make this delightful, and I had charming afternoons at Osterley, at Roehampton, and at Sion, where the brilliant groups of people are so picturesque under the great cedar-trees. It was a great pleasure once more, to be welcomed to Holland House, and to find how much those who possess it appreciate its great interest and charm. Once a week the writing-time was broken into, and I went with drawing-parties to the garden at Lambeth, to Waltham Abbey, and to the roof of the Record Office, whence we tried to paint St. Paul’s and all the satellite City churches reared up against an opal sky. In the evenings there was less of interest, and a great party at Devonshire House left more to recollect than the daily dinners, with little real conversation. I think it is Bacon who says, ‘A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is not love.’ The last day, however, a dinner at Lady Audrey Buller’s was most pleasant. It was in honour of her cousin Captain Townshend, the hero of Chitral, who gave me a most graphic description of lying all day smoking behind a barrier of earth, with a spyhole through which he could fire at any man who showed himself, hearing the thud of the return shot against his barrier afterwards. Returning to England, he was shocked to find no one but boys at the balls--‘boys who shake hands with a movement like that of kangaroos.’ I sat by ---- the widow of the historian, who talked of other historians, especially of Mr. Freeman--how he had the head of a Jupiter on the body of a gorilla: how he did not eat, but devour; it was no use to put anything less than a joint before him: how scenery never gave him the power of realising an event which he could not read of. One day at dinner Mr. Parker was within one of him. To him Freeman talked incessantly across the lady who was next him. At last there was a pause. The lady thought she would have her innings. ‘It has been very hot weather lately, Mr. Freeman,’ she said. ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said Freeman. ‘Parker, you were saying,’ &c. His biographer misses all his characteristics, but errs most in speaking of him as a typical Teuton, when he was undoubtedly a typical Celt.

“I grumbled very much at being engaged to spend a Sunday in the country during my London time, but never enjoyed a visit more than that to Mr. and Mrs. Tower at the Weald, in Essex. It is only seventeen miles from London, but wild and most beautiful, with glorious trees, a delightful old house, and a still more delightful walled garden, with the curious brick chapel of Mary I., a long tank, and an acre of splendid roses. We ate rather too much and long, but the company was charming. I went and came back with young Lord Abinger, whom I like particularly.

‘How delightful the elections are, and the blatant, self-seeking hypocritical Radicals getting the worst of it. Do you know Luttrell’s lines?--

‘Oh, that there might in England be
A duty on Hypocrisy,
A tax on humbug, an excise
On solemn plausibilities.”’

* * * * *

_To_ VISCOUNT HALIFAX.

“_Penrhyn Castle, Sept. 22, 1895._--I left home in the case of one

‘Chi per lungo silenzio parea fioco,’[531]

and have much enjoyed my holiday talking-time. How many delightful people there are in the world. I so seldom see any one I cannot care in the least about. One side, one aspect, seems unprepossessing, but then, if one takes the trouble to go round on the other side, one is sure to find something. Was it not Socrates who said, ‘It is impossible to lead a quiet life, for that would be to disobey the Deity.’ And I am sure no one can carry their eyes about with them through a variety of people as I do, without learning fresh lessons of compensating qualities to be traced in most, and the uniform case of all in the fight to be fought, however different the enemies with which each has to contend. I saw no end of people in Shropshire when I was at Buntingsdale--so familiar in my long-ago--for Gertrude Percy’s wedding at Hodnet. After that I was in quieter scenes, but oh! how lovely, on Wenlock Edge, that eighteen-mile long strip of craggy wooded hill which stretches from Wenlock to Craven Arms, with such fine views over the rich plain below. Wenlock Abbey I saw the evening I arrived, with its grand ruin, and the curious cloistered abbot’s house, so well restored as a residence by the Milnes-Gaskells. Lutwyche, which Lord and Lady Chetwynd have hired, is a charming old house in the very centre of all the beauty, and each day we went to some wonderful old grange, manor, or mansion--Langley, Shipton, Stokesay, Wilderhope, but I think you would have liked best of all Pitchford, the gem of old black and white houses, though you would not have enjoyed as I did the untouched pews of the church, where there is a gigantic oaken effigy of a thirteenth-century De Pitchford. At Condover we saw Miss Mary Cholmondeley the authoress,[532] who looks a genius, which most authoresses I have met do not. Even in conversation, ‘les gens d’esprit sont bêtes’ is usually as true as possible.

“Penrhyn Castle has been delightful, and my room, with its exquisite views over sea and mountains, the most delightful thing in it. Lady Penrhyn presides over the great place with the calm of perpetual moonlight: sunlight is left to her beautiful and impulsive step-daughter Miss Alice (Pennant), who orders out no end of carriages to take guests up into the hills or wherever they want to go. And of course I longed to go to Ogwen Bank and Capel Curig, connected with my mother’s childhood, and more than ever admired these rude savage purple mountains, which have so much individual character that height is quite a secondary consideration. Then yesterday we went to that island in the Menai Straits, where there is an old chapel of great sanctity, to which Welsh funerals still wind along a narrow causeway, singing their beautiful hymns as they go.

“Do you know that ‘The Gurneys of Earlham’ is out? You will not like it, I think, and indeed I feel myself, that Carlyle would be justified in saying it was ‘a very superfluous book.’ Still, I will anticipate your asking me, and tell you that, up to its lights, it is not a bad piece of work. The whole family are a singular instance of unity without uniformity. While I have worked at the book, I have become irresistibly and most strongly attracted by such characters as Catherine Gurney and Richenda Cunningham, though for the great fetish of the family, the self-opinionated, self-parading, egotistical Joseph John, I never could have any warm feeling. Yet a descendant of one of his cousins (Lady Fry) assures me that she was so distressed on hearing of his death in her childhood, that she pulled down all the blinds of her doll’s house. So he must have had his attractive points.

“The book is certainly better reading than the earlier memoirs of those it concerns. Of those memoirs I heard an amusing story the other day. Mr. Parke of Andover, a great American philosopher and thinker, at one time quite lost the power of sleep. He said he had long tried all remedies in vain, but at last found a remedy which never failed. It was to have a book read to him, the story of a woman’s life. It always took effect at once, and soothed him into the sweetest slumbers. If he was nervous, his wife would take the book and begin--‘Elizabeth Fry was born’--‘But,’ said Mr. Parke, ‘she has begun that book constantly for two years, and I have never found out where she was born yet, for with the first words I am in dreamland.’

“Here are two little stories for you. Miss R. told me how the Bishop of Winchester and the Dean of Windsor were walking together down the street of Windsor, when they saw a little boy struggling to reach a bell. ‘Why, you’re not tall enough, my little man; let me ring the bell for you,’ said the Bishop. ‘Yes, if you please, sir,’ said the boy modestly. So the Bishop gave the bell a good pull. ‘Now then, sir, run like the devil,’ shrieked the boy, as he made off as hard as he could.

“Little E. L. was very naughty indeed the other day, and not only scratched her governess, but spit at her. ‘How can you have been so naughty?’ said her mother, ‘it can only have been the devil who made you do such a thing.’ ‘Well, perhaps it was the devil who told me to scratch her,’ replied little E----, ‘but, as for the spitting, it was entirely my own idea.’”

* * * * *

_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN.

“_Garrowby, Yorkshire, Oct. 4._--The glorious weather which illuminated Wales continued at Lyme, which was still in the full splendour of summer flowers. I drew with Lady Newton each day, one day at Prestbury, where there is a wonderful old Norman mortuary chapel, like those in Brittany. Mrs. Mitford was at Lyme, and it was a pleasure to talk with her of the dear Lady Egerton, whom we both so much appreciated, and who preserved her sunny nature to the last. ‘How sad to see you suffering so!’ said Mrs. M. to her in her last terrible illness. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but then, you know, I have _enjoyed every day of my life_.’ Thinking of her, it is a difficult endeavour to be ‘doux envers la mort,’ as Bossuet said after Henrietta Maria’s death.

“I went on to flattest Lincolnshire, to Revesby Abbey, to visit my distant cousin, dear Edward Stanhope’s widow. It is delightful to see how, by making the effort at once, it is no effort to her now to talk of him, and indeed he is so often spoken of, that he seems to have a part still in the family life, and his cheerful grave, like a little garden, under the east window of the church which he built, has nothing sad. It is as if he had gone from this room into the next. Yet how delightful he was, how truly lovable! I was taken, by my urgent desire, to Mavis Enderby; but it is a little inland village with an insignificant church, which could by no possibility have given any tidal warning; so I suppose Jean Ingelow only took the name[533] because of its musical sound. On the way we passed some grassy mounds. ‘What are those?’--‘The remains of Bolingbroke--of the castle of Bolingbroke.’ How Arthur Stanley would have loved them; yet they are amongst the things which are worth seeing but not worth going to see. Another day we went by the remains of the old house of Eresby, which gave its name to Willoughby d’Eresby, to visit the grand tombs of the Willoughbys at Spilsby. They are all of alabaster, the last representing a mother who died in childbirth, with the infant which cost her life by her side in its cradle. Sir John Franklin was born at Spilsby, and he and his two brothers have monuments in the church. Their father was a small farmer close by, and when his farm failed, he settled in the village itself, and kept its shop, grocery on one side the door, drapery on the other. And, coming from thence, John Franklin became the most famous of those Arctic travellers whom Wilkie Collins aptly describes as ‘the men who go nowhere and find nothing.’ In this drive we passed by Keil, where the church tower had suddenly collapsed. ‘Well, now, how was it? was it a hurricane, or did the soil give way, or what?’ said Mrs. Egerton to the sexton, who for a minute answered nothing, and then, ‘Well, mum, ‘twere this way; her just squatted and settled.’

“The house at Revesby was full of interesting objects. Amongst them was a magnificent repeater watch which belonged to the old Lord Stanhope.[534] One night, when he was out late, a man pounced upon him with pistols and ‘Your money or your life.’ Always imperturbable, Lord Stanhope replied very slowly, ‘My friend, I have no money with me.’--‘No,’ said the robber, ‘but you have your watch; I must have your watch.’--‘My friend, this watch was given to me by one very dear to me, and I value it extremely. It is considered to be worth £100. Now, if you will trust me, I will this evening place a hundred-pound note in the hollow of that tree.’ And the highwayman trusted him and Lord Stanhope placed the note there.

“Very many years after, Lord Stanhope was at a public dinner in London, and opposite him sat a City magnate of great wealth and influence. They conversed pleasantly. Next day Lord Stanhope received a letter from him, enclosing a hundred-pound note, and saying, ‘It was your Lordship’s kind _loan_ of that sum many years ago that started me in life, and enabled me to rise to have the honour of sitting opposite your Lordship at dinner.’

“When I was a child, ‘Marmion’ made me long passionately to see Whitby, and ‘Sylvia’s Lovers’ afterwards increased the longing. Now I have been there, and what a wonderful place it is. I think nothing on the English, or French, or Spanish, or German coasts is equal to it. The first morning was a thick fog--a most blessed fog. I felt a presentiment of what would happen. I was certain where the abbey was, and through the dim streets, up the slippery steps, and between the gravestones of the churchyard dripping with wet, I made my way to a certain field, which I was sure was the right place, and there I waited. Soon out of the thick mists rose, bathed in sudden sunlight, the grand ruin of an abbey, all glorious in the heavens, but no earth visible. It was as the summit of Mont Blanc is sometimes seen, but a New Jerusalem, in splendour beyond words--‘And the building of the wall of it was of pure gold.’ And then suddenly the fog came down again and it vanished, and in a few minutes, when the veil drew up the second time, a noble ruined abbey stood there, every arch and pillar reflected in the waters of a lonely tarn, but it was only the bones of the glorious vision which had been.

“The old courthouse of the Cholmondeleys was the abbot’s house, and in it was ‘Lady Anne’s Chamber,’ terribly haunted. A figure used to come down from a picture over the chimney, and was seen by many still living. Close by was a passage with an oubliette, down which ‘the nuns used to throw their babies.’ All, except the offices, has been cleared away by Sir C. Strickland, and a hideous modern house built. Down the steep way below the house Sir Nicholas Cholmondeley used to drive his four-in-hand furiously.

“The fog was fainter all the rest of that day, and oh! how I luxuriated in the winding ways upon the cliffs, in the dark red roofs piled one upon another, and the delicate grey distances of buildings or sea.

“Here, at Garrowby, I have been very happy with the Halifaxes. I always feel better for the life with them, and I have especially liked the spiritual part of it here, where there is no chaplain, as at Hickleton, and where the services in the beautiful little chapel are led by Charlie Halifax himself. Everybody joins, and a footman sings gloriously at the very pitch of his voice. In everything Charlie recalls to me something which I have read with a higher reference--‘Not by his doctrines has Christ laid hold upon the heart of men, but by the story of his life.’[535] He has ‘under all circumstances that just admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity’ which Marcus Aurelius speaks of. Unlike everything else is the simplicity and singleness of heart and purpose written so distinctly on everything he says and does. Action is easy and natural where faith is so absolute. ‘At all times a man who would do faithfully must believe firmly,’ was a saying of Carlyle. And though religion pervades everything, no house was ever so gay as that of which Charlie is master. What merriment we have had over our games in the evening: what fun over the mysterious disappearances by day into the four secret chambers which make this house so curious: what admirably good stories have been told; and while the loss of the dear boys who are gone ever leaves a blank in the parents’ hearts, how happy life is made for the children who remain! ‘La joie est très bonne pour la santé: ce qui est sot, c’est d’être triste’[536]--this seems to be one of the minor guides of action. The place is not very interesting, but the house delightfully full of books and pictures. In the park are African cows, Japanese deer, emus, and kangaroos. Lady Ernestine Edgecumbe and Lady Beauchamp are here. It is a little society of those who feel that ‘we may not only know the truth, but may live even in this life in the very household and court of God.’”[537]

* * * * *

_To_ GEORGE COCKERTON.

“_Holmhurst, Oct. 9._--My return home was saddened by finding dear old Harriet Rogers--Lea’s niece--in a dying state at her little cottage in the grounds. She was just able to recognise me, and whispered touchingly, ‘I thank you! I thank you!’ As in the many other people I have now seen enter the shadow of death, there was no fear and no joy; the power of mental emotion seemed past. Yesterday, whilst I was with her, she died, passing the barrier quite painlessly. Yet what a change for her! There is always something very awe-striking in it.

‘And her smooth face sharpened slowly,’

is a line of the ‘Lady of Shalott’ which Tennyson afterwards removed, as giving too painful an image of death; but it is exactly what happens. To-day I feel it--yes, _odd_ to see the same farm and garden life, in which she was interested and had a share, going on the same, and that her part in it should be so suddenly over--snapped. How she must be longing to tell one now what she felt at that momentous moment. I am exactly like the person in ‘Hitherto’--‘I can’t get over expectin’ her to come in and talk it all over. It seems as though she couldn’t do nothin’ without tellin’ folk how!--But there, I dare say,--if ‘tain’t wicked to think of it,--it’s half over heaven by this time.’

“‘Il faut mourir et rendre compte de sa vie, voilà dans toute sa simplicité le grand enseignement de la maladie. Fais au plus tôt ce que tu as à faire; rentre dans l’ordre, songe à ton devoir; prépare-toi au départ; voilà ce que crient la conscience et la raison.’[538]

“My ‘North-Western France’ is now ready to appear. It has been an immense labour, one compared with which ‘The Gurneys of Earlham’ is as a drop to a river; but I have no doubt the latter will be more read, and certainly more reviewed, for scarcely any Englishmen know enough of France to be critical about descriptions of it. I have another little book ready too--‘Biographical Essays’--which is sure to meet with plenty of abuse, but does not deserve much, all the same. In it I have tried to give such a picture of Arthur Stanley as may make people love him as a friend, whilst they shrink from following him as a guide.”