Chapter XXX: In Many Places (3)

“Just before her marriage, H. went to see Lady Burton at Mortlake, and was taken to Burton’s mausoleum as a natural part of her visit. Afterwards Lady Burton wrote to her saying that she wanted to ask a very great favour. It was that she would never wear again the hat in which she had come down to Mortlake. H. liked her hat very much--a pretty Paris hat in which she fancied herself particularly, but she said she would do as an old friend of her future husband wished, though utterly mystified. Afterwards Lady Burton wrote that when H. had come into the room on her visit, she was horrified to see three black roses in her hat; that they were the mark of a most terrible secret sect in Arabia, mixed up in every possible atrocity, and that--especially as worn by a girl about to be married--they were a presage of every kind of misfortune; that, in another case of the same kind, she had given the same warning, and the girl, who disregarded it, died on the day before her wedding. H. wore her hat again, but took out the black roses.

“Sir Richard Burton died of syncope of the heart--died twenty minutes before Lady Burton’s priest could arrive; so her report of his having been received into the Roman Catholic Church was a complete delusion.

“H. says that Count Herbert Bismarck went lately to a great function in Russia. While he wished to be incognito, he still did not see why he could not have the advantages of his cognito. ‘Stand back; you must keep the line,’ said an official as he was pushing through. ‘You do not know who I am: I am Count Herbert Bismarck.’ ‘Really? Well that quite _explains_, but it does not _excuse_ your conduct,’ rejoined the officer.

“At the silver wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales, a northern town wished to present an address, but there was a great discussion as to its wording; for some time they could not agree at all. ‘Conscious as we are of our own unworthiness,’ was universally condemned, but when some one proposed, ‘Conscious as we are of each other’s unworthiness,’ it was agreed to to a man.

“Mr. P----, Q.C., who has just been here, has called to mind that the Queen’s name is neither Victoria nor Guelf. Her real name is Victorina Wetting (pronounced Vettine). She was christened Victorina, and then there was a little girl called Victorina who played a most unpleasant part in Queen Caroline’s trial, and the Duke and Duchess of Kent changed their child’s name to Victoria, that it might not be the same. And Wetting is her husband’s--the real Saxe-Coburg name.

“H. had been at Oxford when Max Müller one day received a letter which pleased him so much that he insisted on sending a very nice letter in return, though it was evidently only written to get an autograph. It asked if there was any reason, other than coincidence, for _meche_ and _mechant_: wick, wicked. One day an American was shown in to Max Müller, saying, ‘I have come, sir, four thousand miles to see you,’ &c. The professor was terribly pressed for time, and bored too; but as to the latter, felt that in a quarter of an hour he would be released, as he had a lecture to deliver. So he was civil, and then excused himself, saying that he was afraid he must go to his lecture, but that if his visitor wished to go to hear it, he could. ‘No,’ said the American, ‘I will not go with you, for I am rather deaf; but I can make myself perfectly happy here, and you shall find me here on your return.”

“St. Clair has been talking of Mrs. Procter, whom he knew well, and how she used to say, ‘Never tell anybody how you are, because nobody wants to know.’ All her circle are gone now, Lowell, Matthew Arnold, Browning, Adelaide Sartoris. When she was dying, her nun-daughter came and tried to get a priest in, but she would not have it. She had preserved the letters of Thackeray, Dickens, and others in three tin boxes. Mrs. Procter left Browning and two others her executors, but the nun wanted all the papers to be given to a young Nottingham doctor, to be published just as she wished, and, when they would not have it so, she put the whole of the correspondence on the kitchen-fire: it was her vendetta on her mother for having refused the priest.

* * * * *

_To the_ COUNTESS OF DARNLEY.

“_Holmhurst, June 29, 1897._--I said I would tell you about the Jubilee. For the first few days I was with the hospitable Lowthers, and thence, on Sunday, went to the Thanksgiving service at St. Paul’s. Going very early, I had perhaps the best place in the choir, and enjoyed seeing the gradual gathering of so much of the bravery, learning, and beauty of England beneath the dusky arches and glistening mosaics. When the long file of clergy went out to meet the royal procession at the west door, the faint distant song was very lovely, gradually swelling, and lost in the blare of trumpets, the roll of drums, and the triumphant shout of welcoming voices as the clergy re-entered the choir. The most important figure was the Bishop of Finland in a white satin train with two gorgeous train-bearers; but the newspapers tell this, and how the lines of royal persons sate on crimson chairs opposite the entrance of the choir, and how the Bishop of London preached touchingly, not effusively, about the Queen and her reign, and officiated at the altar in a gorgeous mitre and cope.

“On Monday Miss Lowther and I went to tea with my friend (minor-canon) Lewis Gilbertson at his lovely little house in Amen Court, and then were taken, by one of the many secret staircases of the cathedral, to emerge over the portico for the rehearsal of the next day’s ceremony. Perhaps, in some ways, this was more impressive than the reality, as none of the vast surrounding space was kept clear; all was one sea of heads, whilst every window, every house-top, even every chimney-pot, was crowded with people. Never was anything more jubilant than the ‘Te Deum,’ more reverent than the solemn Lord’s Prayer in the open air--every hat off. When the appointed programme was over, the crowd very naturally asked for ‘God save the Queen,’ and after some hesitation, and goings to and fro of dean and canons, it was begun by the bands and choristers, and taken up vigorously by the mile of people as far as Temple Bar. How grand it was!

“That evening the dear Queen said to Miss ... ‘To-morrow will be a _very_ happy day for me;’ and I think it must have been. Where are anarchists and socialists before such a universal burst of loyalty--not of respect only, but of heartfelt filial _love_?--Nowhere! Their very existence seems ridiculous. I saw all from the Beaumonts’ in Piccadilly Terrace, where a most kind hostess managed all most beautifully for us, and, entering through the garden, we had neither heat nor crowd to fear. No small part of the sight was the crowd itself--the unfailing good-humour increased by the extreme kindness of the police towards fainting women and all who needed their help. The Colonial procession was charming--its young representatives rode so well, and were in themselves such splendid specimens of humanity, and so picturesquely equipped. Then the group of old English generals on horseback drew every eye, and the sixteen carriages of princesses, amongst whom the Duchess of Teck was far more cheered than any one except the Queen herself. And lastly came the cream-coloured horses with their golden-coated footmen, and the beloved Lady herself--the ‘Mother of the Land,’--every inch a queen, royal most exceedingly, but with an expression of such love, such gratitude, such devotion, such thankfulness! Oh, no one felt for and _with_ her only as a sovereign; it was a far closer tie than that.

“In the evening, Mrs. Tilt and her sister went with me to the Maxwell-Lytes on the top of the Record Tower, whence we saw the bonfires round London light up one by one, and St. Paul’s in silver light--a glorified spiritual church rising out of the darkness of the city against the deep blue sky. Far more than the illuminations of the noisy streets, it was a fitting end to so solemn and momentous a day.

“And on Wednesday I was in the Green Park, and heard the thousands of school-children sing their farewell to the Queen as she went away to Windsor.”

* * * * *

_To_ MRS. C VAUGHAN.

“_March 1897._--I think the reviews of the first three volumes of my ‘Story’ must be coming to an end now. I have had them all sent to me, and very amusing they have been, mostly recalling the dictum of Disraeli, that ‘critics are those who have failed in art and literature.’ Many criticisms have been kind. One or two, but not more, have been rather clever, and some of the fault-finding ones would have been very instructive if I had not so entirely agreed with them at the outset on all their main points--that I was a mere nobody, that my life was wholly without importance, and that it was shocking to see parts of the story in print, especially the painful episode which I called ‘The Roman Catholic Conspiracy;’ for reviewers, of course, could not know the anguish it cost when I was led to publish that chapter, by its being my _one_ chance of giving the true version of a story of which so many false versions had been given already. However, it is as Zola says, ‘Every author must, at the outset, swallow his toad,’ _i.e._, some malicious attack in the periodicals of the day; only I think my toads become more numerous and venomous as years go on.

“Some of the reviews are very funny indeed. The _Saturday Review_ of ‘A Monument of Self-Sufficiency’ contrives to read (oh! where?) ‘how sweet and amenable and clever Augustus was,’ but is so shocked by a book ‘wholly without delicacy’ that it--‘cannot promise to read any more of it’!! The _British Review_, which thinks me an absolute beast, has a stirring article on ‘Myself in Three Volumes.’ The _Pall Mall Gazette_ dwells upon their ‘bedside sentiment and goody-goody twaddle,’ and is ‘filled with genuine pity for a man who can attach importance to a life so trivial.’ The _Athenæum_ describes me as a mere ‘literary valet.’ The _New York Tribune_ finds the book ‘the continuous wail of a very garrulous person.’ The reviewer in the _Bookbuyer_ speaks of the ‘irritation and occasional fierce anger’ which the book arouses in him(!). The _New York Independent_ dwells upon my ‘want not only of all kindly sense of humour, but also of propriety.’ It is long since the _National Observer_ has met with an author ‘so garrulous or so self-complacent.’ Finally, the _Allahabad Pioneer_ (what a name!) votes that Mr. Hare’s chatter is ‘becoming a prodigious nuisance,’ and ‘if it had its deserts his book would make its way, and pretty quickly, to the pastry-cook and the trunk-maker.’

“What fun! Yet I am glad that most of the more respectable reviews say exactly the opposite, and certainly the public does not seem to agree with those I have quoted; it would be terribly expensive if it did. They are only birds of prey with their beaks cut and their claws pulled out, and if a book is found to be interesting, people read it whatever they say. They influence nobody, except just at first those who choose books for lending libraries.

“What is really almost irritating is the very ragtag and bobtail of reviews, whose writers can scarcely even glance at the books they are penny-a-lining--such as the _Table_, which ‘explains’ that ‘my grandmother was the wife of Archdeacon Hare;’ as another (I have lost it now) which speaks of ‘Priscilla Maurice, second wife of Julius Hare;’ as the _Weekly Register_, which reviews the life of ‘Esmeralda,’ or the student of the book who writes in _The Dial_ and describes my life at ‘Balliol College,’ or _Household Words_ (copied by the _Free-thinker_ and several other even inferior reviews), which ‘quotes’ in full a long story about Mr. Gladstone and Father Healy which is not to be found in the ‘Story’ at all.

“Then, did you see Mr. Murray’s letter to the _Times_, which certainly gives a touching picture of the spirit of self-sacrifice which actuates publishers in their daily life, for he announces that my ‘Handbook of Berks, Bucks, and Oxon,’ which had three editions before his father’s death, and on which the author was only paid _altogether_ £152, left, at that death, a deficit of £158!! I was sorry, all the same, that he was annoyed at my description of his father wrapt in his _enveloppe de glace_; for old Mr. Murray (who had cut me dead for all the years since the appearance of my Italian Handbooks) asked me to shake hands with him once again a few months before he died, which I did most cordially.”

* * * * *

_To_ FRANCIS COOKSON.

“_Holmhurst, August 29, 1897._-- ...With me, life has rippled on through several months, only I have been away for some days with the Lowthers to draw under Carlandi, and quite lately I have sorrowed bitterly at the early death of my dear Inverurie, kindest and most affectionate of young friends. I feel his being taken so much myself that I cannot bear even to think of what it must be to his nearest belongings; and yet--while absolutely free from all humbug--surely never was there any young man more simply and trustfully prepared for an early death.

“He cared less for ‘the world’ than any young fellow I have ever known, and was more in love with his family, his homes, and their surroundings.

‘Felix ille animi, divisque simillimus ipsis.
Quem non mordaci resplendens gloria fuco
Sollicitat, non fastosi mala gaudia luxus
Sed tacitos sinit ire dies et paupere cultu
Exegit innocuae tranquilla silentia vitae.’[581]

“Last week I was for three nights at Hurstmonceaux, actually--for the first time in thirty-seven years--at my old home of Lime. What a mixture of emotions it was; but within all is so changed, I could not recall my mother and Lea there; and the present inhabitants, the young Baron and Baroness von Roemer, were boundlessly good to me. Outside, there were many spots alive with old memories, especially in the garden, where my mother and I lived so much alone--our earthly Paradise. Did you know that the word Paradeisos means a garden?

“How I should like you to know the peculiar surroundings of Lime, different to those of any other place I have seen--the brown parched sun-dried uplands, the bosky ferny hollows, the reedy pools fragrant with mint, the eternal variety of pink lights and grey shadows on the soft downs beyond the wide Levels, which recall O’Hara’s lines--

‘Where the herds are slowly winding over leagues of waving grass,
And the wild cranes seek the sedges, and the wild swans homeward pass.’

“We made a little excursion. In my very early childhood I was once at the ever-haunted Warbleton Priory, and the recollection of its utter weirdness and of the skulls kept there had always so remained with me that I had quite longed to see it again. The many stories about it are such as ought never to be told, only whispered. The very approaches have a mystery. No one will stay there now, even by broadest daylight; so we went to an old manor near Rushlake Green for the keys, but found even that so bolted and barred that we were long in obtaining them. ‘Oh no, there is never any one there,’ said the servant, ‘but you must go on till you come to a black gate, then drive in.’ To reach this, we followed a lane with well-built cottages, but they were deserted, their windows broken and their gardens overgrown; no one could live so near the accursed spot. Through the black gate we enter dark woods. A cart-track exists, winding through thickets with fine oaks interspersed, and by reedy ponds dense with waving cotton-plants. Then we cross open fields entirely covered with thistles--enough to seed all Sussex--for no one will work there. Then, through another black gate, we enter a turf-grown space, with lovely distant view between old trees, and there, with high red-tiled roofs, golden here and there with lichen, is a forlorn and mossy but handsome old stone house, built from and rising amidst other remains of an Augustinian priory. In its little garden are roses, and box bushes which have once been clipped into shapes. Inside, the mildewed rooms have some scanty remnants of their old furniture. In one of them, where a most terrible murder was committed, the blood then shed still comes up through the floor--a dark awful pool which no carpenter’s work can efface. The most frightful sounds, cries, and shrieks of anguish, rumblings and clankings, even apparently explosions, are always heard by night, and sometimes by day. In the principal room of the ground floor, in the recess of a window, are two skulls. They are believed to be those of two brothers who fought here and both fell dead. From one, the lower jaw has fallen down, increasing its ghastly effect. Successive generations of farmers have buried them, and instantly everything has gone wrong on the farm and all the cattle have died: now they have altogether abandoned a hopeless struggle with the unseen world. Besides this there is a tradition--often verified--that if any one touches the skulls, within twelve hours they pass through the valley of the shadow of Death. So naturally Warbleton Priory is left to the undisputed possession of its demon-ghosts.”

* * * * *

JOURNAL _and_ LETTER _to_ W. H. MILLIGAN.

“_Thoresby, Oct. 22, 1897._--I began my little tour of visits at Maiden Bradley.... You know how it is almost the only remnant the title possesses from the once vast Somerset estates. The 12th Duke left everything he possibly could away, and when the present Duke and Duchess succeeded, they were pictureless, bookless, almost spoonless. Still they were determined to make the best of it. ‘He could not take away our future: we will not lament over all that is lost, but enjoy to the very utmost what we have;’ this has been the rule of their existence, and so ‘Algie and Susie,’ as they, always speak of each other, have had a most delightful life, enjoying and giving enjoyment. No one ever looked more ducal than this genial, hearty, handsome Duke: no one brighter or pleasanter than his Duchess: ‘all who have to do with her find nothing but courtesy, gentleness, and goodness,’ as Brantôme wrote of Claude of France. I liked my visit extremely. My fellow-guests were Sir E. Poynter of the Royal Academy, Lady Heytesbury, and Mrs. Kelly, an authoress. With the last I saw stately Longleat, which I had not visited since I was fourteen, and--as horses are the one indulgence the Duke gives himself--he drove us luxuriously about the country on his coach-and-four.

“The following week was delightful--with the Boynes in their beautiful hill-set home. They took me glorious excursions, and we picnicked out in beautiful places five days running. One day we went to Kinlet--a really great house, as well kept by Swedish maids (its mistress is a Swede) as if there were a dozen men-servants. And the last day we went to a real still-standing Norman farmhouse (Millichope), with its original round arched doors and windows.

“From Burwarton I went on to my pleasant cousin’s, the Francis Bridgemans, close to that beautiful church at Tong, and we spent a day with Francis’s kind old father, Lord Bradford, at Weston, and he showed us all the pictures and treasures in the house, and drove us about in his sociable to the ‘Temple of Diana’ and other points of interest in the park of a very comfortable well-to-do place.

“Next, I visited Lady Margaret Herbert (daughter of my dear Lady Carnarvon) as châtelaine at Teversal manor in Notts, a smoky wind-stricken country, but with Hardwicke and other fine houses to see. The charming aunt of my hostess, Lady Guendolen, was living with her as chaperon, none the worse in body for being a strict vegetarian, and in mind the sunniest of the sunny, delightful to be with.

‘And scarcely is she altered, for the hours
Have led her lightly down the vale of life,
Dancing and scattering roses, and her face
Seems a perpetual daybreak.’[582]

I was glad to be taken to spend the day at Bestwood, the Duke of St. Alban’s modern place, its woods an oasis in the wilderness, and its honours were charmingly done by Lady Sybil Beauclerk and her good-looking brother Burford. In the Duchess’s room were a series of albums with all the original drawings for Dickens’s works. All the best pictures were burnt in a fire.

“The Ladies Herbert sometimes, but in a far-away sense, remind me of their mother, who was quite the most perfectly brilliant person I have ever known. I have always heard that she was this even as a girl, and that it was a perpetual surprise to her parents, who were very inferior people. Lady Dufferin used to say that they were like savages who had found a watch.

“Taking stern dismal Bolsover--its delicate carvings utterly ruined by ‘trippers’--on the way, I came on to meet a large party here at Thoresby, which is in more than usual autumnal forest glory. We have just been spending the afternoon at Welbeck, shown all the improvements by Mrs. Dallas Yorke, in the absence of the tall handsome Duchess, who, however, returned before we left. One did not wonder that she is such a special joy to the old people of the place, because they had ‘been so long without a duchess, and when there was one long ago, it was only such a little one.’ She has built a delightful gallery--Florence-fashion--between the old house and the new, and hung it with a galaxy of old prints, and has made fascinating little terrace-gardens, and edged their beds with dwarf lavender, so that ‘when the ladies’ dresses brush against it, its scent may be wafted into the house.’

“And meantime my thoughts have been much at Llandaff, with the cousin[583] who was the dearest friend of my boyhood, seeming to pass with her through the closing scenes of the good Dean’s life, and to see him as she did, lying in his cathedral, dressed in his surplice, in the majesty of eternal repose.”

* * * * *

_To_ MRS. C. VAUGHAN.

“_Holmhurst, Nov. 16, 1897._--Here I am again in quietude, thinking of you very much in your last days at Llandaff; busy over the building of which I am architect, overseer, a hundred things at once, and planting a great deal, with a reminiscence of Dumbiedykes in Walter Scott--‘Be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, while you’re sleeping.’ My only companions now are the pleasant Hospitallers in the little Hospice, whom I constantly meet in the garden and wood walks. I wish you could see their little house, and the late roses lingering on their porch.

“I have been away for a week. Lady Stanhope took me from Chevening to see Lullingstone Castle in Kent, the old house of the Dykes, with a good brick gateway, a richly ceilinged upper gallery, and a chapel with interesting tombs. Two days afterwards, Lady Chetwynd took me to a finer place--Chawton in Hants, where the Knights, of Godmersham, live now, representing several old extinct families, especially the Lewknors, with whom I am very familiar through their tombs scattered all over Sussex, and who are commemorated at Chawton by many portraits and fine tapestried needlework. A little bookcase with a globe outside and a series of Elzevir Histories of the World within, was very attractive.

“Then I went to stay with ‘the richest man in the world,’ genial unassuming Mr. Astor, in his beautiful Cliveden, much improved since he bought it from its ducal owners, and enriched within by glorious portraits of Reynolds and Romney, and without by the noble terrace parapet of the Villa Borghese and its fountains, already looking here a natural part of the Buckinghamshire landscape, and replaced on its old site by a copy, which is just the same to nineteenth-century Italians! All the splendid sarcophagi and even the marble benches of the world-famous villa are now also at Cliveden, where they are more valued than at Rome. We had a charming party--Jane, Lady Churchill, retaining in advancing years ‘sa marche de déesse sur les nues,’[584] for which she was famous in her youth; the Lord Chancellor, Lady Halsbury, and a daughter; pretty gentle Princess Löwenstein; the Duchess of Roxburghe, ever wreathed in smiles of geniality and kindness, with two very tall agreeable daughters; Lord Sandwich, as bubbling with fun as when he was a young man; Lord and Lady Stanhope--always salt of the earth; with Mr. Marshall Hall and Sir Arthur Sullivan as geniuses; so, as you will see, ‘une élite très intelligente.’ Every one of these delightful people, too, was simplicity itself, rare as that virtue is to find. I see that Queen Adelaide, as Duchess of Clarence, wrote to Gabrielle von Bülow--‘How rarely you meet a really simple man or woman in our great world; they would be hard to find even with Diogenes’ lantern.’ Certainly ‘learned’ people are scarcely ever agreeable. There is a very good sentence in Hamerton about that--‘A good mental condition includes just as much culture as is necessary to the development of the faculties, but not any burden of erudition heavy enough to diminish, as erudition so often does, the promptitude or elasticity of the mind.’

“On Sunday morning we all went to the beautifully situated little church at Hedsor, arriving early and seeing the congregation wind up the steep grassy hill as to a church in Dalecarlia. In the afternoon we were driven about the grounds of Cliveden to the principal points--Waldo Story’s grand fountain in the avenue and his noble landing-place on the river. Exquisitely beautiful were the peace of the still autumn evening, the amber and golden tints of the woods, and the wide river with its reflections. Mr. Astor has attended to all the historic associations of the spot; placing a fine statue of Marlborough in the temple built by Lord Orkney, who was one of his generals, and portraits of Lady Shrewsbury and her Duke of Buckingham, and of Frederick and Augusta of Wales, in the successor of the house where they lived. Another portrait of Frederick, with his three sisters, Anne, Emily, and Caroline, all playing on musical instruments, has the old house in the background. Our host seemed to me quite absolutely frank and delightful; indeed, Surrey’s lines on Sir T. Wyatt might be applied to him--

‘An eye whose judgment no effect could blind,
Friends to allure and foes to reconcile,
Whose piercing look did represent a mind
With virtue fraught, reposèd, void of guile.’

“Now, I am enjoying the time alone at home, with its much-reading opportunity, and I often think that my natural bent would have been to enjoy it quite as much as a boy, when all the family except you treated me not only as a consummate dunce, but a _hopeless_ dunce; and when almost every book was thought wicked, or at best quite unsuited for a boy’s digestion. Now, eyes ache often, but I may say with Lady M. Wortley Montagu, ‘If relays of eyes were to be ordered like post-horses, I would admit none but silent companions.’

“Les années d’ennui et de solitude lui firent lire bien des livres’--part of Catherine II.’s epitaph on herself--is certainly true in my case. Just now I have been labouring through the two long thick volumes which are called ‘Memoirs of Tennyson,’ though, when you close them, you have less idea of what the man was like than when you began--of the rude, rugged old egotist, who was yet almost sublimely picturesque; of the aged sage, who in dress, language, manners was always posing for the adoration of strangers, and furious if he did not get it, or--if he did. The book is most provoking, for it would by no means have destroyed the hero to have truthfully described the man.

“There have been no end of hard-worked boy-friends here for Sundays, and it is no trouble, but very much the contrary. We always get on together capitally--

‘That which we like, likes us:
No need of any fuss,’

is a capital Feejee proverb.[585]

“I think it is Frederick Locker who says that one gradually finds out how much of the affection one inspires is ‘_reflected_.’ ‘Though thou lose all that thou deemest happiness, if thou canst but make the happiness of others, thou shall find it again in thine own heart,’ is a sentence of George Ebers, of which I mentally leave out as irrelevant the conclusion--‘Is not this playing at being God Almighty?’”

* * * * *

_To_ MISS GARDEN _at_ LUCCA, _and_ JOURNAL.

“_Holmhurst, August 1, 1898._--I have been much in London since I wrote last, enjoying the garden-parties at Sion, Osterley, Holland House, Hatfield, Lady Penrhyn’s, Lady Portman’s, &c., and seeing many pleasant people, mostly ‘grandes dames de par le monde.’ Yet, in the season, it is all too great a hurry; one seldom has time to become really acquainted with any one; there are few who have even sufficient personality to leave an individual impression on the mind; if any one does, he or she is ‘like a tree in the steppe’ in the monotony of London life. I dined out daily for two months, but how difficult it is to remember any dinner-party! ‘Who cares for the whipped cream of London society?’ was a saying of Walter Scott. I do recollect one dinner, however, at Mr. Knowles’s, from the fine effect of light on Leighton’s ‘Clytie,’ the principal ornament of his dining-room, all the illumination being given to one fold of the dress, and the rest effectively left in shadow. One charming person whom I remember was Lady Blake, lately returned to England with her husband, who had been governor of Jamaica. She was fond of tame animals. ‘In Jamaica,’ she said, ‘I often had a large snake coiled round my waist; my tiger-cat I generally led by a string, for I never knew what he might do, but my tame crocodile always quietly followed me.’ She was Irish--a Bernal Osborne. ‘Oh, I assure you the Irish are very good to us, quite charming, in fact.’ ‘But if you do anything they don’t like, they kill you.’--‘Naturally.’

“On July 11 I was at Miss Fleetwood Wilson’s wedding to Prince Dolgorouki, and also at Lady Mary Savile’s in the Church of the Assumption, which was a most picturesque ceremony, performed by Cardinal Vaughan--such a fine cardinal!--in a jewelled mitre, with all accompaniments of cross-bearers, incense-swingers, &c.

“The nobly Christian death of Mr. Gladstone and the almost ludicrous apotheosis of one who, in his political life, did nothing and undid so much, were events of the spring. I have personally more individual recollection of his kindness to those who needed it than of his witty sayings; but they were constant. ‘What do you think of Purcell’s Life of Manning?’ some one said to him shortly before the end. ‘I think that Manning need have nothing to fear at the day of judgment.’ He was formidable to strangers, chiefly on account of ‘those demoniac eyes of his,’ as Cardinal Alcander said of Luther; and though in his private capacity he was all goodness, it seemed inconsistent with his public one. Yet what admirers he had! I remember his saying once to Lord Houghton, ‘I lead the life of a dog,’ and the answer, ‘Yes, of a St. Bernard--the saviour of men.’ Joseph Parker used to describe him as ‘the greatest Englishman of the century, he was so massive, sincere, and majestic. If he had had humour he would have been too good to live, but eagles don’t laugh.’

“How much and long people have talked of him, and now what a silence will fall upon it all. An amusing breakfast at Mr. Leveson’s has just been recalled to me, where Lady Marian Alford said, ‘Gladstone really puts his foot in it so often, he is a perfect centipede.’ Directly after, a wasp lighted on the breakfast-table and there was some question of killing it. ‘Oh, don’t; I can’t bear killing anything,’ cried Lady Marian. ‘What! not even a centipede?’ quietly said Lord Lyons, who was present.

“I was with Mrs. John Dundas at Holt in Wiltshire, where the little village once prospered exceedingly owing to its mineral spring. Ten smart carriages used to wait round its fountain at once whilst their owners drank the waters, and a house is pointed out where some Duchess or other died. Then the fashion changed, and drainage was allowed to filter into the spring, and Holt sank into obscurity.

“We went to see Mr. Moseley, the admirable old Rector, who is half-paralysed. A farmer had been to him to ask whether he did not think he might get his hay in on a Sunday afternoon, as the weather was likely to change, and he answered, ‘Certainly; it is God’s hay; save it by all means.’ How unlike most English priests, but how Christ-like--‘personne moins prêtre que Jesus Christ.’ ‘From the fetters of spiritual narrowness, Good Lord deliver us,’ is a petition which I feel more and more ought to be added to the Litany.[586] Yet in many houses I visit I still find much of the old Sabbath-bondage remaining, though certainly it is true that ‘we almost sigh with relief when we discover that even saints can find monotony monotonous.’

“There is a perfect cordon of drawable old manor-houses round Holt, and it is only two miles from Bradford-on-Avon, from which the great town in Yorkshire was colonised, and which owes much of its foreign look to French refugees. Its houses rise high, tier above tier, on the hillside, blue-grey against the sky. Over the Avon is a beautiful bridge with a fine old bracketed mass-chapel, long used as a lock-up. A tiny Saxon church--the only real one probably in England--has been discovered walled up into cottages; and there is a noble old ‘palace’ of the Dukes of Kingston standing in high-terraced gardens. Great Chalfield is a most lovely Tudor house, with an old chapel and moat. At South Wraxhall how I recalled many visits from my miserable so-called tutors at Lyncombe, in days of penury and starvation. How indefinite the misty future seemed in the thinking-time which those long solitary rambles afforded, and how I longed to penetrate it. At fifteen ‘j’ai trop voulu, des choses infinies,’ but I was at a parting of the ways of life then, and I think I decided in those early days to try to do the best I could here, and leave the eternities and infinities--of which I heard so much more than of realities--to take care of themselves, for:--

‘Though reason may at her own quarry fly,
Yet how can finite grasp infinity?’

“But I am moralising too much and must return to my old houses, which were full of smugglers formerly--‘moonrakers’ they called them in Wiltshire, because many of the smuggled goods were concealed in the ponds, and when the excisemen caught the smugglers extracting them at night, and demanded what they were doing, they answered, ‘Oh, we are raking out the moon.’ I was working in Shropshire for some time after my Wiltshire visit, inspecting almost every church and old house for my book, and hospitably entertained by genial Fred Swete at Oswestry and the Misses Windsor Clive at beautiful Oakly Park near Ludlow.

“While in London I went for two days to Bulstrode, which the late Duke of Somerset left to his youngest daughter, Lady Guendolen Ramsden, who is the most charming of hostesses, but the place is disappointing--a very large modern villa, only one room remaining of the old house where Mrs. Delany lived so much with Margaret, Duchess of Portland, and nothing of that of Judge Jeffreys, which preceded it. It contains an early portrait of Shakspeare, and a most grand Sir Joshua of a Mrs. Weddell. We dawdled most of the day in the verandah. Oh, the waste of time in country-house visits; but Lady Guendolen had much that was pleasant to tell of her mother, the witty (Sheridan) Duchess of Somerset. ‘She was once at a bazaar selling things, and a fat, burly, plethoric farmer asked her the price of something and she mentioned it. The price seemed to him absurd. ‘Do you take me for the Prodigal,’ he said. ‘Oh, no,’ she replied; ‘I take you for the fatted calf.’ This made Graham Vivian, who was one of the party, recollect. ‘I was walking by the Duchess’s donkey-chair, and suddenly the donkey brayed horribly. “Will he do it again?” said the Duchess. “Not unless he hears another,” answered the donkey-boy. “Then mind _you_ don’t sneeze,” said the Duchess, turning to me.’

“About Mr. L., who always speaks his mind, Lady Guendolen was very amusing:--‘Mr. L. took me in to dinner, and I thought I was making myself very agreeable to him, when he suddenly said--“Talk to your neighbour on the other side.” I felt humiliated, but I thought he fancied I couldn’t, so I did, and went on, and never spoke another word to Mr. L. I told him of it afterwards, that he had hurt me so much that I dreamt of it, and I told him my dream--that I said to him that I was considered to become very amusing after I had had two glasses of wine, and he answered, ‘_Then_, my dear lady, you must have been most uncommonly sober this evening.’”

* * * * *

_To_ VISCOUNT HALIFAX.

“_Holmhurst, August 21, 1898._--I have been for three days at Hurstmonceaux, doubly picturesque in the burnt turf of this hot summer, upon which the massy foliage of the trees is embossed as in Titian’s landscapes. I always feel there, as nowhere else except in the views of the Roman Campagna from the Alban Hills, the supreme beauty of looking down upon vast stretches of flat pasture-land, reaching for ten miles or more, and iridescent in its pink and blue cloud-shadows, with here and there a ripple of delicate green in softest glamour of quivering light. Every hour one sees it change--luminous with long lines of natural shadow, purple from drifting storm-clouds--

‘Then at some angel evening after rain
Glowing like early Paradise again.’

It is a pleasure now to be there, though life there is living amongst the sepulchres. ‘La morte, l’estrema visitatrice,’[587] has come to all I knew, and the gravestones of most of them are _moss-grown_--not only of all the family of my childhood, but of all the neighbours, and all that generation of poor people. How often there comes into one’s mind something like the lines often repeated in the cemetery of Port-Royal--

‘Tous ces morts ont véçu, toi qui vis, tu mourras:
Ce jour terrible approche, et tu n’y penses pas.’

‘Ce n’est pas le temps qui passe, ce sont les hommes,’ was a saying of Louis Philippe. How different everything is to the time which Hurstmonceaux recalls; all hurry now and energy and updoing, and then such an extreme quietude of intellectual pursuits, in which every uninitiated visitor was considered an unendurable bore, if, however interesting he might be in himself, he did not fall in with the mutual admiration society of which the Rectory was the axis. I remember how Thomas Carlyle and Monckton Milnes, with his ‘gay and airy mind,’[588] were amongst those so considered, for they had naturally their outside views and intelligence, and the Rectory group never tried for a moment to penetrate ‘l’écorce exterieur de leur vie;’ and, while bristling with prejudices themselves, they always found much to be shocked at in every outside person they came across. It seemed oddly apropos in all the remembrance of the closed Hurstmonceaux life to read in Madame de Montagu--‘It is not a good thing for everybody to see each other every day and too closely; they risk becoming unconscious egoists, critics, rulers, or subjects, and exhaust themselves by revolving perpetually on a tiny axis.’ Yet in many ways how much more really interesting the life was then; how picturesque Uncle Julius’s enthusiasm, how pathetic his pathos over the books which were his realities; how interesting the conversation, and how genial the courtesy of such constant visitors as Bunsen and Landor, though the latter was such a perfect original, ‘dressed in classical adorning,’ as Arthur Young said of some one; then how unruffled my dearest mother’s temper, over which even Aunt Esther’s _strenuous_ exactions were powerless; and how ceaseless the flow of her _love_--not charity, as people use the word now--to the poor of the cottages in the hazel-fringed lanes around her, whose cares she made her own, more moved and stirred by the querulous mutterings of Mrs. Burchett or Mrs. Cornford than by the most important events of English politics or the world’s history. Certainly she had a wonderful power with the poor, and an influence which has never passed away, for she had the rare art of entering into and understanding all their feelings; and then, when with them, she always gave them her _whole_ attention. I feel that my two books give very different ideas of what Hurstmonceaux was fifty years ago, but both are quite true; only the ‘Memorials of a Quiet Life’ is the inside, and the ‘Story of my Life’ the outside view. How much of life, after sixty, consists in retrospect! It is, as Fanny Kemble says--

‘Youth with swift feet walks onward in the way,
The land of joy lies all before his eyes;
Age, stumbling, lingers slower day by day,
Still looking back, for it behind him lies.’

One great difference of feeling older is that one is afraid to put off doing anything. ‘By the street of By-and-by, you come to the house of Nowhere,’ is an admirable Spanish proverb.

“I have greatly enjoyed the vivid, charming, simple letters of Mary Sibylla Holland--‘anche oggi si sente una dolcezza d’affetto a leggere quel libro.’”

* * * * *

_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN.

“_Holmhurst, Sept. 29, 1898._--The building and changes here go on well, but very slowly, a result of having the work done with my own stone, and as much as possible by the men of our village. I think all will look well in the end. Not a chair or a book will be moved from the older part of the house, consecrated by my mother’s memory, but room will be given for the many things connected with Esmeralda, which I bought back at Sir Edward Paul’s sale, and, if I survive her, for many precious pieces of furniture, pictures, prints, and books from Norwich which Mrs. Vaughan says that she has left me. Where you will remember a steep grass bank, there is now a double stone terrace, with vases and obelisks, and luxuriant beds of brilliant flowers edged with stone, copied as a whole from the Italian Villa Lante near Viterbo. At the end are a staircase and gateway to the Solitude, the ‘Ave-Vale Gate,’ with ‘Ave’ on the outside and ‘Vale’ within. Cypresses are growing up beside it to enhance the impression of Italy, which is further carried out in a widening staircase from the centre of the terrace, with lead vases on the piers, copied in design and proportions from one at the Villa Arson near Nice. Just now, in this hot noon-day, the gorgeous flowers against the stone parapet, and background of brown-green ilex and blue-green pine are really very Italian, while below in the meadows all is as English as it can be, the cows feeding in the rich grass, the heavy rounded masses of oak foliage, and the misty sea asleep in the motionless heat. Nothing seems to move, except my little black Pomeranian spitz, Nero, frisking and barking at the butterflies. I am sure that much the happiest part of my present life is that spent at home, though there is nothing to tell about it--‘l’histoire ne se soucie pas des heureux.’

“Emmie Penrhyn is here, whose visits are always an unusual pleasure to me, and who is one of the dearest relations I have left, partly because, more than any one else, she has a distant likeness to my mother. She lives happily and most usefully at Richmond in a very little world, with a weak body but an all-sufficing soul.

“I have grieved so truly over the news of Ranulph Mostyn’s death in India, that I could not help writing to his mother. Yet I always hesitate about whether letters of condolence can be of any comfort, and can only act upon the knowledge that I like myself to have them in any great sorrow. No Christian disquisitions, however: they always seem forced and unmeaning. ‘Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief;’ that is somewhere in Shakspeare. Thirlwall’s Letters have an excellent passage about them--‘Expressions of general condolence may be welcome as tokens of goodwill, but can scarcely exert any general alleviating power. The afflicted ones stand within a circle of images and feelings of their own, which, painful as they may be, they would not part with for worlds. Any attempt to draw them out of that circle can only inflict a useless annoyance.”

* * * * *

_To_ MRS. C. VAUGHAN.

“_Holmhurst, Oct. 16, 1898._--I am alone this evening; the wind is wailing a dirge, and ‘the dark sea drinks in the greyness of the sky.’[589] But I have been away for three weeks. First to the sisters of my old friend Willie Milligan, who now live in the Barrington dower-house at Shrivenham, close to Beckett, the ideal ‘great house’ of my boyhood, so stately and luxurious. Now, so are the mighty fallen, it is let to some Australians, and the family--unless helped by an heiress--can never afford to live there again. Then I was with the delightful Boynes in the high Shropshire uplands, seeing in the most charming way many beautiful old houses. I saw two more from my next visit at Oxton in Notts--Wiverton, and Annesley where the Miss Chaworth Musters, beloved by Byron, once walked on the beautiful old terraces. Another echo from my long-ago came from my visit to Streatlam, where I so often was in my young days, and which is now inhabited by Lord Strathmore’s sister, Lady Frances Trevanion, and her pleasant cheery husband, both most kind cousins to me. The long galleries are filled with family portraits, including a great one of Mary Eleanor Bowes, whose strange story I have so often told. Lady Frances’s time is greatly taken up by the manners and morals of her dogs, the very smallest and noisiest I ever saw. They must be the sort of dogs Chaucer speaks of--

‘Of small houndes hadde she, that she fedde
With rosted flesh and milk, and wastel brede;
But sore wept she if one of hem were dead.’

“It was a short journey from Streatlam to Kiplin, the beautiful old house of Admiral Carpenter.... He told me how his grandfather had six sons, Talbots, and was fond of making them all lie down full length on the dining-room floor, joining one another, that he might see how many yards of sons he had! I saw Richmond from Kiplin: what a beautiful place, few abroad equal to it.

“But my most interesting visit was that to Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire, rising, with a fortified central gate-tower, from a deep still moat, and with an inner courtyard full of flowers. It has dark tapestried rooms, several priest’s hiding-holes, ghosts of a lady and a child, and a murder-room, stained with the blood of a priest whom a squire of Edward IV.’s time slew when he caught him chucking his wife under the chin.[590] Then there are all the refined luxuries of fast-day dinners, evening prayers in the chapel with a congregation of maids veiled like nuns, and a live Bishop (of Portsmouth), in violet robes and gold cross and chain, to officiate.

“Such a bishop he is! such a ripple of wit and wisdom! and so full of playfulness! I read and copied somewhere--“A man after God’s own heart is never a one-sided man. He is not wholly spiritual, he is not wholly natural; he is not all earnestness, he is not all play; he cannot be all things at once, and therefore he is all things by turns.”[591] Our Bishop at Baddesley was just like this in his fun, in his love of cats, and never more charming than when he gathered up all the scraps of toast left at breakfast, and throwing open one of the windows, called ‘Quack, quack!’ and crowds of ducks came rushing under the bridge over the moat to scramble for them, one brown duck, which the Bishop called ‘the orphan,’ being especially cared for. Speaking of the frequent ignorance of religious intolerance led him to tell of the people of Imola and Brigatella, who were always quarrelling. When the priest at Brigatella began the paschal mass with ‘Christus immolatus est,’ his congregation thought it was some compliment to the people of Imola, and declared they would kill him unless he began ‘Christus brigatellatus est.’

“He had been with the Calthorpes of Woodland Vale to see an old house of theirs in the Isle of Wight, which was quite deserted, and in the very room where it occurred was told the reason why. A friend who had come there to stay with Mr. Calthorpe saw there, in the dawn of the morning, an old woman sitting knitting at the foot of the bed; he even heard the click of the knitting-needles. At first he thought she had mistaken the room, but it happened again the next day. The third time it happened, he kicked out. The old woman then turned round her face towards him, and displayed--a death’s-head. Another guest met the old woman on the stairs and equally saw the death’s-head. No servant would stay in the house, and now it is pulled down.

“After the evening service in the chapel, the Bishop went to have a cigar before going to bed. When I excused myself from joining him, he told of Benedict XIV., who offered a pinch of snuff to one of his Cardinals. ‘Santo padre, non ho quel vizio,’ he answered. ‘Se fosse vizio, tu l’avrei,’ said the Pope.

“Most charming of all was the châtelaine, the widow of my cousin Heneage Dering, whose first wife was her aunt, Lady Chatterton, the well-known novelist. The niece (‘Pysie’ Orpen) was then married to Marmion Ferrers, the last of a famous Catholic family lineally descended from the Earl of Derby attainted in the Wars of the Roses, and himself legally Baron Compton and De Ferrers, though he never claimed the title on account of his poverty and having no son. He was the pleasantest and most genial of men--‘the old squire’ he used to be called in Warwickshire. One day he found an old woman stealing his wood, and, when she expected a great scolding, he only said, ‘That load of wood is a great deal too heavy for you; you must let me carry it home for you,’ and he did. Another day he caught three poachers, and said, ‘Come, now, let us have it out!’ and they pulled off their coats and had a regular set-to: he floored two of them, he was so strong, and then he let them all go.

“His life seems to have been made up of deeds of faith and charity, but his property fell into decadence and must have been sold, if Heneage Dering, who had married his wife’s aunt, had not come to the rescue. They all lived together in the old house, mediaevally, almost mediaeval even in their dress; and after Lady Chatterton died, and then Marmion Ferrers, a final break-up of the remaining links with the past was prevented by the marriage of Heneage Dering with the widowed ‘Pysie.’ They were perfectly happy for several years, but he always said ‘a sudden death is the happiest death,’ and so in 1892 it was.

“Over the chapel door is inscribed--

‘Transit gloria mundi,
Fides catholica manet,’

and the Catholic religion nourishes as much at Baddesley still as it did in the time of Sir Edward Ferrers, who founded this branch of the family in 1517, and left ‘five masses in worship of the five wounds principal that Our Lord suffered in His bitter Passion,’ and who is depicted kneeling before a crucifix, with the legend ‘Amor meus crucifixus est’ issuing from his mouth. On Sunday afternoon we went to hear the Benediction service beautifully sung by the invisible nuns of a convent close by--a convent of ‘Colettines’ from Bruges, a severe form of Poor Clares, founded here in 1850, the first of the Order since the Dissolution. A niece of Lord Clifford was their abbess. There are 250 Catholics at Baddesley.