to do the honours of the Castle, and whom I had known in London, Mr.
Fulke Greville, and I, were wandering round the curious old-fashioned
buildings and courtyards that constitute the domain of Dublin Castle one
bright breezy day in early spring. A military band was playing opposite
the principal entrance, whilst the guard was being mounted in precisely
the same manner as at the guard mounting at St. James's. The scene was
brilliant and inspiriting in the extreme. As we passed through an
archway we came somewhat suddenly upon the massive Round Tower, from the
top of which floated the Union Jack, and which dates back to a period
not later than that of King John. Close to the Round Tower, which bears
so curious a resemblance to the still more magnificent tower of the same
name at Windsor, is the Chapel Royal. Here we found the guardian, a
quaint, and garrulous and most obliging old person, waiting to show us
over the handsome, albeit somewhat gloomy, building. Very exact and
particular was our _cicerone_ in pointing out to us the old fourteenth
century painted windows, the special pews reserved for His Excellency,
and the ladies and gentlemen of the court; the coats of arms belonging
to the various Governors of Ireland, extending over a period of many
hundreds of years--all these, I say, he carefully pointed out, drawing
especial attention to one over which, at the moment, a thin ray of
golden sunlight was falling, and which, he informed me, was the coat of
arms of the Earl of Rochester--poor Rochester, the gay, the witty, the
wicked, and the repentant. On quitting the chapel we began to ascend,
under the auspices of another guide, a tremendously steep staircase,
which is cut inside the fifteen-feet stone wall which leads to the
chamber in the Round Tower wherein the Ulster King-at-Arms preserves the
ancient records of the Castle. On our pilgrimage up this weary flight of
stairs the guide drew our attention to a gloomy little dungeon, cut out
of the thickness of the wall, in which there is but little light, and
wherein the musty smell of ages is plainly discernible. "This,"
whispered Mr. Greville in my ear, "reminds me of Mark Twain's 'Innocents
Abroad.'" After a glance at the record chamber, which was crammed with
documents, we passed, with a sense of relief, into the bright sunny air
and the large courtyard, round which are built the handsome lofty
stables in which the Castle horses--of which there are an immense
number--are kept, and which stables, Colonel Forster, the Master of the
Horse, told me, are upwards of two hundred years old.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE.]
[Illustration: CASTLE YARD. BAND PLAYING.]
"And now, Mr. Blathwayt," said Mrs. Henniker, as we passed the two
sentries on guard at the entrance to the great hall, and proceeded up a
staircase lined with rifles and through long sunlit corridors, "you must
come with me to my own special sanctum, and rest yourself, after the
object lessons in history which we have been giving you this morning."
Here, in a lofty, white-panelled room, with long windows looking down
upon the private gardens of the Castle in which His Excellency and
Captain Streatfield, one of the A.D.C.'s, were walking up and down, Mrs.
Henniker and I sat talking of the past almost more than we did of the
actual present. For, though my hostess is quite a young woman, yet as a
daughter of the celebrated Richard Monckton Milnes, the first Lord
Houghton, she cannot fail to have the most delightful reminiscences of
the many celebrities with whom her father was so fond of filling his
house.
[Illustration: GRAND STAIRCASE, DUBLIN CASTLE.]
"But," said she, "proud as I am of my father, I am quite as proud of my
grandfather, Richard Pemberton Milnes, for he was only twenty-two years
of age when he refused the choice of a seat in the Cabinet, either as
Chancellor of the Exchequer or Secretary at War. My grandmother, Mrs.
Pemberton Milnes, in her diary for 1809, says that one morning, while we
were at breakfast, a king's messenger drove up in a post-chaise and four
with a despatch from Mr. Perceval, offering my husband the choice of a
seat in the Cabinet. Mr. Milnes immediately said, 'Oh, no, I will not
accept either; with my temperament I should be dead in a year.' And
nothing could induce him to do so either," continued Mrs. Henniker, "nor
could he be induced to accept the Peerage which was offered him by Lord
Palmerston in 1856."
"But your father was not so rigid in his views as your grandfather, was
he, Mrs. Henniker?" said I.
[Illustration: HIS EXCELLENCY LORD HOUGHTON IN HIS STUDY.]
"No," she replied, "certainly he was not, although I don't think that he
quitted the House of Commons, which he always loved, without a pang of
real regret. Amongst the many kind congratulations he received--for no
man ever had more friends--was a very pretty one from his old friend,
Mrs. Proctor, in which she said:
"'He enters from the common air
Into that temple dim;
He learns among those ermined Peers
The diplomatic hymn.
His Peers? Alas! when will they learn
To grow up Peers to him?'"
"You must have met many interesting people at your father's house?" I
observed, during the course of our conversation.
[Illustration: THE HON. MRS. HENNIKER IN HER BOUDOIR.]
"Why, yes," replied she, with an amused smile, "don't you know the
ridiculous story that Mr. Wemyss Reid, in his charming biography of my
father, tells, and which, indeed, I believe was first told by Sir Henry
Taylor, in his autobiography? I will tell it you. You know my father was
acquainted with everybody, and his greatest pleasure in life was to
introduce the notoriety of the moment to the leading members of English
Society. On the particular occasion on which this story was told, it is
alleged that somebody asked whether a certain murderer--it was
Courvoisier, I think, the valet who killed his master--had been hanged
that morning, and my aunt immediately answered, 'I hope so, or Richard
will have him to his breakfast party next Thursday.' But this story, Mr.
Blathwayt, is really absolutely without foundation. I have here,"
continued Mrs. Henniker, "a very interesting book of autographs, which I
have kept for as far back as I can remember, and in which everybody who
came to our house had to write their names," and as she spoke she placed
in my hands a large volume, on every page of which was a photograph and
an autograph. There was Lecky, the historian; and Trench, the late
Archbishop of Dublin; Sir Richard Burton, the traveller; and Owen
Meredith, the poet. There was a portrait of Swinburne when quite a young
man, together with his autograph. "I have known Mr. Swinburne all my
life," remarked Mrs. Henniker. "I used to play croquet with him when I
was quite a little girl, and laugh at him because he used to get in such
a passion when I won the game." There was John Bright's signature, there
was that of Philippe d'Orleans and General Chanzy, and last, but not
least, there was that of Charles Dickens.
[Illustration: THE DRAWING ROOM, DUBLIN CASTLE.]
"My father," explained Mrs. Henniker, "was a very old friend of Dickens,
and, curiously enough, his grandmother was a housekeeper at Crewe Hall,
where my mother was born, and I have often heard her say that the
greatest treat that could be given her and her brother and sister was an
afternoon in the housekeeper's room at Crewe, for Mrs. Dickens was a
splendid story-teller, and used to love to gather the children round her
and tell them fairy stories. And so it was only natural that my mother
should feel a special interest in Charles Dickens, when she came to know
him in after life. I believe that the very last time that he ever dined
out was at my father's house, when a dinner was specially arranged to
enable the Prince of Wales and the King of the Belgians to make his
acquaintance. Even at that time, poor man, he was suffering so much from
rheumatic gout that he had to remain in the dining room until the guests
had assembled, so that he was introduced to the Prince at the dinner
table. I might mention that Dean Stanley wrote to my father, asking him
to be one of those who should place before him the proposal that Charles
Dickens should be buried in the Abbey."
[Illustration: THRONE ROOM, DUBLIN CASTLE.]
Amongst the many interesting letters and papers that Mrs. Henniker
showed me was one from Mr. Gladstone to herself congratulating her on
her first novel "Sir George," for Mrs. Henniker, notwithstanding the
rather unfortunate fact that she has many social duties to attend to,
which must necessarily hinder her in what would otherwise be a brilliant
literary career, is a remarkably fine writer of a certain class of
fiction, and notably of what may be termed the Society novel. But almost
better than her novels, of which she has produced some two or three
within the last few years, are her short stories, of which she published
one, a singularly able study of lower middle-class life, in an early
number of the "Speaker," and which many of the readers of that journal
will remember under the title of a "Bank Holiday." With reference to
"Sir George," Mr. Gladstone, who is a very old friend of her family,
wrote: "My dear Mrs. Henniker,--It is, I admit, with fear and trembling
that I commonly open a novel which is presented to me." He then goes on
to speak in strong terms of eulogy of the book which she had sent to
him. The letter was not without a special interest as giving one a
glimpse into the mind of the G.O.M. on what must be one of the most
arduous duties of his hardworking life. Referring to the publication of
her most recent novel, "Foiled," which is a depiction of Society life as
it actually is, and not, as is so frequently the case, of the writer's
imagination as to what Society is or should be, I asked Mrs. Henniker if
she wrote her stories from life.
[Illustration: THE PICTURE GALLERY.]
"Well," she replied, "of course there is a general idea in my stories
which is taken from the life I see around me, but, as a rule, I draw
from my own imagination. I am a very quick writer, and I wrote 'Sir
George' in one summer holiday. Mr. T. P. O'Connor wanted me to write a
novel to start the new edition of his Sunday paper with, but,
unfortunately, I had none ready. I find myself that, for character
sketching, next to studying people from life, the best thing is to
carefully go through the writings of such people as Alfred de Musset,
whose little _caprices_ are so delicate. I think that the best Society
novelists at present, who write with a real knowledge of the people they
are describing, are W. E. Norris, Julian Sturgis, and Rhoda Broughton."
We continued in conversation for some time longer, until the time came
for afternoon tea, when Mrs. Henniker suggested that we should join the
rest of the party in the drawing room.
Here we found a number of the A.D.C.'s engaged in merry conversation;
most of them are quite young men, immensely popular in the Dublin
Society and on the hunting field, where even in that great sporting
country they are usually to be found well in the first flight. We sat
talking for a few minutes, when the door suddenly opened, and a tall,
singularly handsome, well-groomed young man, in morning dress, entered
the room. Upon his appearance, Mrs. Henniker and her sister, Lady
Fitzgerald, and the remaining ladies and gentlemen present, rose to
their feet, for this was His Excellency the Viceroy of Ireland. It will
interest my American readers to learn that, not only do Mrs. Henniker
and Lady Fitzgerald always rise upon their brother's entrance into the
room, but it is further their custom, as it is the bounden duty of every
lady, to curtsey to him profoundly on leaving the luncheon or dinner
table. His Excellency at once joined in our conversation. We were
discussing parodies at the moment, and somebody had stated--indeed I
think it was myself--that a certain parody which had been quoted, and
over which we had been laughing very heartily, was by the well-known
Cambridge lyrist, C. C. Calverley.
[Illustration: LADY FITZGERALD.]
"No," said Lord Houghton, "it is not by Calverley, it is by----. But,"
said he, "the funniest thing I ever heard was this," and he repeated,
with immense humour, and with wonderful vivacity, a set of lines which
threw us all into fits of laughter. I regret I am unable to recall them.
The conversation drifting to memories of some of his father's celebrated
friends, His Excellency told me a delightful story of Carlyle. It
appeared that the grim old Chelsea hermit had once, when a child, saved
in a teacup three bright halfpence. But a poor old Shetland beggar with
a bad arm came to the door one day. Carlyle gave him all his treasure at
once. In after life, in referring to the incident, he used to say: "The
feeling of happiness was most intense; I would give L100 now to have
that feeling for one moment back again."
Mrs. Henniker and the Lord Lieutenant and myself drifted into quiet
conversation, whilst the general talk buzzed around us. She had told me
that her brother had written a prize poem at Harrow, and that his recent
publications, "Stray Verses," had all been done in a year.
"His verses are curiously unlike those of my father," she said. "He is
very catholic in his tastes; my father's were more poems of
reflection--they were full of the sentiment of his day. He was much
influenced by Mathew Arnold and his school. My brother's are much more
lyrical.
[Illustration: ST. PATRICK'S HALL.]
"It is a curious thing," continued Mrs. Henniker, "that one or two of my
father's poems, which were thought least of at the time, have really
become the most popular and the best known. There is a story concerning
one of them which he often used to tell. He was visiting some friends
here in Ireland, and the beat of the horses' feet upon the road as he
drove to the house seemed to hammer out in his head certain rhythmical
ideas which quickly formed themselves into rhyme. As soon as he got to
the house he went to his room and wrote the words straight out. It was
the well-known song beginning--
"'I wandered by the brookside,'
And having the refrain--
"'But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.'
"When he came down to dinner he showed these verses to his friends. They
all declared that they were unworthy of him, and advised him to throw
them into the fire. However, he did not take their advice; the moment
they were published, they caught the ear of the public, they were set to
music, and they were to be heard wherever one went. Indeed, a friend of
his who was sailing down a river in the Southern States of North
America, about a year afterwards, heard the slaves, as they hoed in the
plantations, keeping time by singing a parody of the lines which had by
then become universally familiar. And one day, in later years, my father
was walking in London with a friend; they were passing the end of a
street when they heard a man singing--he stopped and listened, and then
rushed after the man. He came back a few moments afterwards, bearing a
roughly printed paper in his hands."
[Illustration: RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES, FIRST LORD HOUGHTON.]
"'I knew it was my song that he was singing,' he said, and he was
perfectly right. He was much delighted.
"'It's a curious fact,' observed the Lord Lieutenant to me, 'and one
which Wemyss Reid specially notes in his biography, that my father
produced the greater part of his poetry between 1830 and 1840, just when
he was going most into Society.'"
"And you've gone in a good deal for writing verses yourself, following
in your father's footsteps, have you not, Mrs. Henniker?" said I. "Oh,"
she replied, "I began writing verses very early in my life, and the most
amusing part of it is that, though I was a perfect little imp, I began
with writing hymns. In fact," said she, as she showed me a letter which
her father had written to a friend when she was seven years of age, "my
father had to check my early attempts in that direction." I read with
some amusement what Lord Houghton had written about his little daughter,
and I transcribe his words the more readily that they appear to me to
give a glimpse into the mind of the poet and of his ideas on the origin
and making of poetry. He writes:
[Illustration: GROUP OF A.D.C.'S.]
"The second little girl has developed into a verse writer of a very
curious ability. She began theologically and wrote hymns, which I soon
checked on observing that she put together words and sentences out of
the sacred verse she knew, and set her to write about things she saw and
observed. What she now produces is very like the verse of William Blake,
and containing many images that she could never have read of. She
cannot write, but she dictates them to her elder sister, who is
astonished at the phenomenon. We, of course, do not let her see that it
is anything surprising, and the chances are that it goes off as she gets
older and knows more. The lyrical faculty in many nations seems to
belong to a childish condition of mind, and to disappear with experience
and knowledge."
[Illustration: DEBUTANTES ARRIVING.]
The conversation drifted into a discussion on the present system of
interviewing, and Mrs. Henniker told me, with much amusement, of a
reporter of the _St. Louis Republic_ who called upon her father when he
visited America, who, indeed, would not be denied, but forced his way
into Lord Houghton's bedroom, where he found him actually in bed, and
who, in relating what had passed between them, expressed his pleasure at
having seen "a real live lord," and recorded his opinion that he was
"as easy and plain as an old shoe!"
[Illustration: ASCENDING THE STAIRCASE.]
Lord Houghton must have been a welcome guest in a country where humour
and the capacity for after-dinner speeches are so warmly appreciated as
in America. No more brilliant after-dinner speaker ever existed than
Richard Monckton Milnes, and the capacity for public speech, which was
such a characteristic of the first Lord Houghton, exists no less
gracefully in his poetic and now Vice-Regal son; but it was, perhaps, as
a humorist that the father specially excelled, and in glancing through
the many letters and papers which his daughter showed me I soon
discovered this. Writing to his wife many years ago, he said: "Have you
heard the last argument in favour of the Deceased Wife's Sister's Bill?
It is unanswerable--if you marry two sisters, you've only one
mother-in-law." And again, on another occasion, in writing to his
sister, he quaintly remarks: "I left Alfred Tennyson in our rooms at the
hotel; he is strictly _incognito_, and known by everybody except T., who
asked him if he was a Southerner, assuming that he was an American."
[Illustration: "WAITING."]
[Illustration: "TO BE PRESENTED."]
We sat talking long, revolving many memories, until the shades of
evening darkened down upon the beautiful room, and broke up the party. I
joined the A.D.C.'s in their own special sanctum. There are nine on the
Staff, of whom two are always on duty. Their names are as
follows:--Capt. H. Streatfield, Capt. A. B. Ridley, Capt. M. O. Little,
Capt. C. W. M. Fielden, Capt. Hon. H. F. White, Lieut. F. Douglas-Pennant,
Lieut. A. P. M. Burke, Lieut. S. J. Meyrick, Lieut. C. P. Foley, and the
Hon. C. B. Fulke-Greville. From what they told me I judged that the life
at the Castle must be singularly pleasant and interesting. Capt.
Streatfield, who is a very _doyen_ among A.D.C.'s, has in that capacity
led a life full of interest and variety, for he told me that for some
years he was A.D.C. to the Governor-General of Canada, and that later on
in life he accompanied the late Duke of Clarence as his A.D.C. in India.
The evening drifted on until it was time to dress for dinner, and we
assembled, a large party of men and women, many of whom were in
uniform, and some of whom displayed the pale Vice-Regal blue of the
household facings in the long drawing room next to that room in which we
had had afternoon tea. As His Excellency appeared, preceded by the State
Steward, Capt. the Hon. H. White, and followed by Lord Charlemont, the
Comptroller, we all passed through the rooms to St. Patrick's Hall,
while the band played some well-known tunes. Capt. Streatfield had
cleverly sketched for me in the afternoon the curious device formed by
the tables, which was originally designed by Lord Charlemont himself,
the whole giving the exact effect of a St. Andrew's Cross. Two huge
spreading palms, placed in the hollows of the cross, overshadowed the
Vice-Regal party, which, together with the beautiful music, the grouped
banners upon the lofty walls, and the subdued lights, and the excellent
dinner, all went towards the making of a very delightful evening indeed.
[Illustration: THE ORDEAL.]
A little later on that night--and dinner upon this occasion was
specially early--His Excellency held a "Drawing room." The scene upon
this occasion was particularly brilliant; the long perspectives, the
subdued lighting of the rooms, and the artistic grouping of rare exotics
and most exquisite plants and flowers constituting a _tout ensemble_,
the beauty of which will never fade from my memory. The ceremony itself
was a singularly stately and graceful one. His Excellency, clad in Court
dress, stood in the middle of the throne room, surrounded by the great
officers of State in their robes of office. The _aides-de-camp_ stood in
a semicircle between the doorway and the dais. The first ladies to be
presented were His Excellency's own sisters. It was specially
interesting to notice the entry of the _debutantes_, many of whom were
very beautiful, and almost all of whom were very graceful. Each young
girl carried her train, properly arranged, upon her left arm during her
progress through the corridor, drawing-room, and ante-room, until she
passed the barrier and reached the entrance to the presence chamber;
there a slight touch from the first A.D.C. in waiting released it from
her arm, and two ushers, who were standing opposite, spread it carefully
upon the floor. I noticed that the A.D.C. was careful not to let the
ladies follow one another too quickly, which was evidently a trial to
some of them. At the right moment he would take the card which each lady
bore in her hand, pass it on to the semicircle of _aides_ who stood
within the room, who in their turn passed it on to the Chamberlain, who
stood at the Lord Lieutenant's right hand. He having received it, then
read it aloud, and presented her to the Viceroy. The Viceroy took her by
the right hand, which was always ungloved, kissed her lightly on the
cheek, whilst the lady curtsied low to him; then, gracefully backing,
she retired, always with her face to the dais, from the Vice-Regal
presence. The gentlemen attending the drawing room were not, of course,
presented. They simply passed through the throne room, several at a
time, bowing two or three times to the Viceroy, and so joined their
party waiting for them in the long gallery.
At the end of the "Drawing room," the Lord Lieutenant and the ladies and
gentlemen of the household, and some of the State officials, formed a
procession, and marched with no little grace and stateliness round the
magnificent hall of St. Patrick, whilst the strains of the National
Anthem re-echoed down the long corridors and out into the star-lit windy
night.
[Illustration: CREWE HALL.]
THE FEAR OF IT.
BY ROBERT BARR.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. S. BOYD.
The sea was done with him. He had struggled manfully for his life, but
exhaustion came at last, and, realising the futility of further
fighting, he gave up the battle. The tallest wave, the king of that
roaring tumultuous procession racing from the wreck to the shore, took
him in its relentless grasp, held him towering for a moment against the
sky, whirled his heels in the air, dashed him senseless on the sand,
and, finally, rolled him over and over, a helpless bundle, high up upon
the sandy beach.
Human life seems of little account when we think of the trifles that
make towards the extinction or the extension of it. If the wave that
bore Stanford had been a little less tall, he would have been drawn back
into the sea by one that followed. If, as a helpless bundle, he had been
turned over one time more or one less, his mouth would have pressed into
the sand, and he would have died. As it was, he lay on his back with
arms outstretched on either side, and a handful of dissolving sand in
one clinched fist. Succeeding waves sometimes touched him, but he lay
there unmolested by the sea with his white face turned to the sky.
Oblivion has no calendar. A moment or an eternity are the same to it.
When consciousness slowly returned, he neither knew nor cared how time
had fled. He was not quite sure that he was alive, but weakness rather
than fear kept him from opening his eyes to find out whether the world
they would look upon was the world they had last gazed at. His interest,
however, was speedily stimulated by the sound of the English tongue. He
was still too much dazed to wonder at it, and to remember that he was
cast away on some unknown island in the Southern Seas. But the purport
of the words startled him.
"Let us be thankful. He is undoubtedly dead." This was said in a tone of
infinite satisfaction.