_MEMORIES_
[Illustration: _The Author._
_Photographed by Furley Lewis Esq._]
_Memories. :: By
Lord Redesdale, G.C.V.O., K.C.B._
_With two photogravure plates and 16 other illustrations_
VOL. I
_LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO.
PATERNOSTER ROW ... 1915_
TO MY WIFE AND CHILDREN, FOR WHOM THESE MEMORIES OF MANY YEARS HAVE BEEN
RECORDED, I DEDICATE MY BOOK
PREFACE
Now that the midnight of life is at hand, before the last chime of the
curfew must ring out, I have been busying myself in writing down memories
of the people who brightened its morning, its noon and its evening. It
was my fate long ago to be associated with men older, sometimes much
older, than myself, and so it happens that few indeed of the friends of
my early manhood are now left. Except where it is absolutely necessary
in order to tell the rest of my tale, I have not dealt with the living.
To praise them might seem sycophantic, to blame them an impertinence. It
would be overbold in me to write a chronicle of my own days were I not
able to say with Horace:
“At me cum magnis vixisse fatebitur usque
Invidia.”
My life, indeed, has been largely spent amongst men who in many
lands have made the history of their time. The story of their public
achievements is, or will be, written in the annals of their countries.
The story of their private lives is often unknown to, and therefore put
on one side by, their biographers. To rescue from oblivion here and there
some intimate feature, some petty detail which may help to make known the
real personalities of such men—perhaps to remove a wrong impression—is
the humble object of this book, and it is to the shades of those who did
so much for me that I offer it as a grateful tribute.
* * * * *
I have to thank Sir Ernest Satow for allowing me to check by his own
journals and records what I have written about the adventurous years
which we spent together in Japan. I must also express my gratitude to
Mr. Edmund Gosse for much encouragement and patient advice—without his
sympathy these pages would hardly have seen the light. To the Editor
of the _National Review_ I am indebted for permission to reproduce an
article which has appeared in his pages. Similar thanks for the use of
an article on Lord Lyons in the _Candid Review_ are due to Mr. Gibson
Bowles.
CONTENTS
VOL. I
CHAP. PAGE
I.—THE CRADLE AND THE RACE 1
II.—FRANKFORT—PARIS—TROUVILLE 30
III.—ETON 50
IV.—SUMMER HOLIDAYS 78
V.—WALES AND OXFORD 90
VI.—THE F. O. 108
VII.—LORD LYONS 131
VIII.—THE WEDDING OF THE PRINCE OF WALES 161
IX.—MY BROTHER. MUSIC AND THE DRAMA 189
X.—RUSSIA 204
XI.—THE WINTER OF 1863-1864 232
XII.—THROUGH THE WINTER 246
XIII.—MOSCOW 287
XIV.—THE FIRST CALL OF THE EAST 307
XV.—CHINA IN 1865-1866 328
XVI.—PEKING 343
XVII.—PEKING 356
XVIII.—JAPAN 373
XIX.—THE SHŌGUN OR TYCOON 386
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. I
THE AUTHOR (_photogravure_) _Frontispiece_
_Photograph by Furley Lewis, Esq._
PORTRAIT IN MEMORY OF BERTRAM ASHBURNHAM _Facing page_ 2
_From Gwillim’s Heraldry._
THE RUINS OF MITFORD CASTLE ” 4
_From a drawing, dated August, 1769, by J. Mitford
(Lord Redesdale)._
WILLIAM MITFORD ” 14
_From an oil painting by John Jackson, R.A._
THE ASHBURNHAM FAMILY ” 26
EDWARD CRAVEN HAWTREY, D.D., ETON COLLEGE ” 52
_A sketch by a sixth form boy._
FIRE-PLACE IN EVANS’ HOUSE ” 64
_From a water-colour sketch by W. Evans._
MARIO ” 192
_By Lord Leighton, P.R.A._
EMBASSY HOUSE, ST. PETERSBURG ” 206
_From a water-colour drawing by Charlemagne, 1864._
THE DEAD EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. ” 252
THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER II. ” 264
_From a sketch by Zichy._
THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER II. ” 272
_From a sketch by Zichy._
MEMORIES
CHAPTER I
THE CRADLE AND THE RACE
Nam genus et proavos et quæ non fecimus ipsi,
Vix ea nostra voco.
Of course it was not good taste in Ajax to brag so loudly of being the
great-grandson of Jupiter, but then Ulysses need not have snubbed him so
fiercely, and then gone on to show how he, too, was god-born, but on the
mother’s side as well as on the father’s. Nor was it quite consistent
in Ovid, who struggled so proudly for his privileges as _eques_ in the
theatre, to clothe these Socialist sentiments in a pair of hexameter
lines; but then, in spite of that little flirtation with a naughty
Princess, which caused his banishment, Ovid was a Radical and a poet,
which gave him a double claim to inconsistency.
The sentiment is, as it seems to me, utterly false and untrue to the
very nature of man. From the earliest times, and even in the most savage
races, men have been proud of such ancestry as they could lay claim
to, and many a poor peasant loves to tell you that he is living in the
cottage that his forebears have held for generations. Pride of Race and
Pride of Country go hand-in-hand as two forms of Patriotism.
In 1862 poor Laurence Oliphant and I—he, the most charming of companions,
just beginning to be bitten by mysticism—were travelling together on the
Continent. He was still suffering from the cruel wounds which he received
in the night attack by Rônins on the Legation at Yedo in 1861. He had
been ordered to drink the iron waters of Spa, and I agreed to go with him
for my summer holiday. The first evening at the table d’hôte dinner, I
sat next to a very agreeable gentleman with whom I speedily made friends.
After about half an hour’s talk he asked my name. I told him who I was.
“Dear me,” he said, “if you are the son of Mr. Mitford of Exbury and Lady
Georgina Ashburnham, you are descended from perhaps the two oldest Saxon
families in England. Sir, you are a very remarkable person.” I felt as
Whistler, in his quaint way, told me that he did when Carlyle used the
same words to him, “That that was about what was the matter with me!” and
when I asked who was my genealogical acquaintance, he turned out to be no
less an authority than Sir Bernard Burke.
But in matter of genealogy, as in all others, there are iconoclasts, and
now come people of much learning, who declare that the Saxon Mitfords are
really Norman Bertrams, and that the famous Ashburnhams, “of stupendous
antiquity,” are the descendants of a Norman family who were Counts of
Eu—in Domesday Book variously called Estriels, Escriol, Criol, Crieul, or
Anglicized as Kiriell, and even Cruel. That after all these centuries,
and after such countless marriages as must have taken place in them, so
curious an animal as a man of pure Saxon blood, or, indeed, of any pure
blood, should still be in existence is, of course, an impossibility.
It may be rank nonsense to talk of the Mitfords and the Ashburnhams as
two of the oldest Saxon families in England, when there can be no such
families, but there can be no doubt that they are both of very great
antiquity.
Of the Ashburnhams old Fuller says, “My poor and plaine pen is willing
though unable to add any lustre to this family of stupendous antiquitie.”
According to Francis Thynne, a herald of Queen Elizabeth’s time, “Bertram
Ashburnham, a Baron of Kent, was Constable of Dover Castle in 1066; which
Bertram was beheaded by William the Conqueror because he did so valiantly
defend the same against the Duke of Normandy.” This is quoted by the
Duchess of Cleveland in her “Battle Abbey Roll,” and she then labours
with all her might to demolish the whole story. Gwillim’s “Heraldry,”
however, takes the other view, and makes out that the second holder of
the office of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports was this same Bertram
Ashburnham, and that it was he who, on behalf of the King, raised the
troops to resist the invasion, Harold himself being away engaged in
quelling a rebellion in the North. “Since which time until now, by the
grace of God, there hath not been wanting an Ashburnham of Ashburnham in
Sussex.”
[Illustration: PORTRAIT IN MEMORY OF BERTRAM ASHBURNHAM, LORD WARDEN OF
THE CINQUE PORTS IN KING HAROLD’S TIME.
_From Gwillim’s Heraldry._]
Gwillim has a curious engraving of a portrait “in memory of” this hero
in seventeenth-century armour, and the tradition in the family is that
it was John Ashburnham, King Charles the First’s gentleman, who sat for
this very grim effigy. Then there is another story, for which I know
not the authority, if, indeed, there be any, to the effect that Bertram
Ashburnham defended the Castle so stoutly that William made terms with
him and raised the siege, allowing the Saxon to name his own conditions,
which were that he and his men should leave with all the honours of war,
and that the law of gavelkind should obtain in Kent for all time. This
brave tale, I am afraid, must be dismissed as moonshine.
So there is much complication, but on one point all the authorities are
agreed, and that is the marriage of the Norman knight, Bertram, with
the Saxon heiress of Mitford; so far as that goes, if we may not call
ourselves a Saxon family, our Saxon descent is not denied to us.
About two miles to the west of Morpeth, on a spot romantic enough to
inspire a poet’s dream, fair enough for a painter to linger over with
a lover’s delight, stand the ruins of the old Saxon castle of Mitford.
That is the Cradle of our Race. The keep, battered by storms of war and
weather, rises on a rocky eminence to the south of the river Wansbeck,[1]
close to the point where the two fords of the Wansbeck and the Font meet.
It was from this meeting that the Castle and village took their name,[2]
just as Coblenz did from the _confluentiæ_ of Rhine and Moselle. The
rivers of Northumberland, tearing their way through the rocks, between
banks fringed with the most picturesque vegetation, overhanging trees,
shrubs, ferns, docks, and all the fairy-like greenery which they wear
with such grace, are the glory of that part of the country. Such streams
as the Wansbeck and the Coquet are a haunting memory.
Not even the most audaciously inventive of antiquaries has, so far as I
know, been brave enough to fix the date of the Castle’s building; all
that can be said is that it is very old. Burke, on the authority of the
“Durham Booke,” tells the story how a certain “Robert Mitford, Esq.,
carried an old writeing to produce at Durham upon some occasion, by wch
one of ye ancestors of Mitfords, of Mitford, in ye time of K. Edwd. ye
Confessor, did assure his wife’s joynture out of Lands in Mitford, wch
writeing Sir Joseph Craddock saw and attests it under the hand, but is
since embezzled and lost.” That, since the document is lost, is but a
weak foundation upon which to base a belief. The tale, however, must be
true, for William the Conqueror’s advent followed almost immediately upon
the death of King Edward, and that the Castle was at the time of the
Conquest in the possession of Sir John de Mitford is a fact. Beyond that
time we must be content to leave the family history lost in the clouds.
Even so, the story is old enough, and we may well be proud of our old
cousin Edward Mitford, the head of the family, who fulfilled more than
his century of life in 1911, and died on the property and in sight of the
ruined Castle which belonged to our ancestors some nine hundred years ago.
Among the knights who fought at Hastings in the train of William the
Conqueror were two brothers, Sir Robert[3] and Sir William Bertram.
“Robert Bertram ki estoit tort” (crooked) was Lord of Briquebec, near
Valognes, a barony consisting of forty knights’ fees, which is said to
have taken its name from Brico, a Norwegian Viking, who was the ancestor
of the Bertram family.[4] It was the well-known policy of the Conqueror
to pacify England and consolidate his power by promoting or even
making up marriages between his followers and the Saxons whom they had
conquered—especially did this judicious match-making seem to be desirable
where there was an heiress to be won. At the time of the Conquest, Sir
John de Mitford, who owned the Castle and Barony of Mitford, had no son.
His only daughter, Sibella, was his heiress, and between her and Sir
Robert Bertram a marriage was arranged and carried into effect.
[Illustration: THE RUINS OF MITFORD CASTLE, NEAR MORPETH, NORTHUMBERLAND.
_From a drawing, dated August, 1769, by J. Mitford (Lord Redesdale), d.
August, 1769._]
I wonder what sort of a home it made, this union between the Saxon girl,
of whom I like to believe that she was as beautiful as the Lady Rowena,
and the Norman warrior? Was it altogether a _mariage de convenance_? Was
Sibella forced into it, or might he have lighted just the least little
spark of love in her breast?—and when once they were married, did she
live happily with her crooked knight? These crook-backed men are apt to
have very insinuating ways; we all know how Richard the Third, when he
made love to Lady Anne, so flattered and coaxed that her
woman’s heart
Grossly grew captive to his honey words,
and in my early diplomatic days, I had a colleague at a certain Embassy,
who, though crooked as Pope himself, was declared by all women to be
irresistible. How grateful, by the bye, we ought to be for that one and
only record “qui estoit tort,” just three words which give to the old
story of Sibella a touch perfectly human and real, such as a hundred
blazing tales of deeds of derring-do, sung by minstrels or recorded by
chroniclers, could never have conveyed. The crook must have been true, it
could hardly have been invented. Since walls have ears, what a pity it
is that stones have not tongues: these old ruins could teach us so much
about the lives that they harboured, lessons which one does so long to
learn.
These Bertrams must have been men of no little importance in their
generations. The two heroes of Hastings evidently made their mark, and
later on there is some reason to suppose that one, at any rate, of the
family, perhaps more, joined in one or other of the Crusades. For in some
excavations which were made among the ruins of the Castle in the middle
of the nineteenth century, the workmen came upon a tiny piece of that
serpentine marble which the Crusaders were wont to bring home from the
Holy Land to be set in the altars of their chapels; the relic was found
on the spot where the chapel is supposed to have stood. As should beseem
Crusaders, the Bertrams were good and loyal servants of the Church: a
pious Bertram it was that founded or endowed the Augustine Priory of
Brinkbourne in the reign of Henry the First.
Sir Roger de Bertram joined the insurrection of the Barons against King
John, and it cost him dear, for in retaliation his castle was seized and
his town of Mitford destroyed with fire and sword by the savage Flemish
hordes who then devastated Northumberland as the auxiliaries of the
King.[5] In the year 1215, then, Mitford Castle was in the hands of the
Crown, and two years later Alexander of Scotland, who had invaded England
at the instigation of France, laid siege to it with his whole army, but
he was beaten off, and went back to Scotland none the richer for his
venture. King John granted the Castle to Philip de Ulcoves, but in the
following reign it was restored to the Bertrams by Henry the Third.
The next notable Bertram was that Sir Roger who, with other northern
Barons, marched into Scotland in 1258 to rescue the young King of the
Scots, Henry the Third’s son-in-law; but he got into trouble, for six
years later he was one of the insurgents in the Barons’ War, was taken
prisoner at Northampton, and the Castle and Barony were once more
forfeited and alienated from his descendants for four hundred years. He
seems, indeed, to have speedily made his peace with the King, for in
1264 he was summoned to Parliament as Baron Bertram—but Mitford knew him
no more.[6] This Sir Roger was succeeded by his son, who had only one
daughter, and the Barony fell into abeyance between the Fitzwilliams,
Darcys and Penulburys, the representatives of his three sisters.
The learned labours of antiquaries and pedigree-mongers have so confused
the story of the younger branch of the Bertrams, the Lords of Bothal,
that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make head or tail
of their several statements. It is the more provoking in that it is from
them that we, the Mitfords of the present day, are descended. From them
also the Dukes of Portland, through a maternal ancestress, have inherited
Bothal Castle.
In the “Battle Abbey Roll” of the Duchess of Cleveland, it is stated that
William de Bertram, who founded Brinkbourne Priory, married a daughter
of Guy de Baliol by whom he had two sons, Roger, Baron of Mitford, and
Richard, the ancestor of the Lords of Bothal, who held that Barony
by the service of three knights’ fees. This is, I believe, the more
probably correct story, and it comes into line with the evidence of the
“Newminster Abbey Register Booke,” which makes the inheritance descend
to the Dukes of Portland from the Lady Sibella, wife of the first Lord
Bertram.
That Bothal should have been held by Sir William (sometimes called Sir
Richard) Bertram, the brother of the first Lord Bertram, as some have
maintained, is worthy of no credence. Why should an important portion of
Sibella de Mitford’s property have gone to her husband’s younger brother?
Burke, in his “Landed Gentry,” anxious, probably, to prove a Saxon
descent from father to son, appears to wipe out all the Bertrams in
the middle of the fourteenth century, and makes Mitford (the town or
village, not the Castle and Barony, which were forfeited) descend to Sir
John de Mitford, tenth in succession to Matthew, the younger brother of
the Sir John who was the father of Sibella. That we shall see is quite
apocryphal, for when the elder branch of the Bertrams came to an end
in 1311, the younger branch continued to flourish at Bothal, and soon
adopted the name of Mitford, taking their patronymic from the property
which the family had then held for two and a half centuries.
It was to that branch that the famous Hermit of Warkworth belonged, whose
tragic story was woven into a poem by Dr. Johnson’s friend, Bishop Percy
of Dromore, who collected the “Reliques of Ancient Poetry.” The poem,
very poor stuff, was published separately some years after the “Reliques.”
This Bertram was in love with a neighbouring Lady Isabel de Widdrington,
and she returned his love, but like a true daughter of
‘These northern counties here
Whose word is snaffle, spur and spear.’
she chose to put his mettle to the test before giving him her hand. She
sent him a helmet as her love-token, desiring him to try its temper
‘wherever blows fell sharpest;’ and Bertram, obedient to her behest, rode
with his brother-in-arms, Lord Percy, on a raid into Scotland, where he
was wounded nearly to the death in a desperate fray. The tidings were
brought to Isabel, who, struck with terror and remorse, at once set out
to go to him, but on her way was seized by some prowling moss-troopers,
and carried off to one of their secret fastnesses beyond the border.
Thus when at the downfall of the night her rescued Knight was carried
home on the shields of his followers, he found his lady gone, and all
traces of her lost. He made a vow never to rest till he had found her,
and his brother promised to help him in the quest. As soon as his health
permitted, they went forth together in a humble disguise, and the better
to conduct their search, agreed to separate, the brother going northwards
and Bertram himself to the west. For many weary days and weeks he
wandered over moss and moor in vain; till at length when he had almost
lost heart, a compassionate pilgrim directed him to a distant peel-tower
in which a lady’s voice had been heard lamenting.
Bertram found the place, and recognized the voice; but watched the tower
for two successive nights without obtaining a glimpse of his Isabel. On
the third night, however, that he lay crouched in his hiding-place, he
saw her descend a ladder of ropes thrown from an upper window, assisted
by a man muffled up in a cloak, who bore her across the little stream
and led her away, clinging fondly to his arm. Bertram, maddened at the
sight, rushed after them with his naked sword, and attacked his rival,
who defended himself manfully; but after a stubborn conflict, Bertram
succeeded in bringing him to the ground, and stabbed him to the heart,
with the words, ‘Die, traitor!’ Then, when she heard his voice the
wretched Isabel for the first time knew who he was, and sprang forward to
arrest the blow, shrieking, ‘It is thy brother!’ She was too late, for
the deed was done, and in the struggle to throw herself between them, she
slipped against Bertram’s sword, and fell pierced, by his brother’s side.
For that night’s bloody tragedy the unhappy Bertram did penance to the
end of his days. He renounced every tie that bound him to the world.
His sword and spear were hung up in his hall, his inheritance passed on
to others and his goods were given to the poor, while he himself, clad
in monastic garb, took refuge in the rocky recesses of Coquetdale, near
Warkworth Castle. No more ideal retreat could be devised for an anchorite
than this lovely, sequestered glen, where the hurrying Coquet stays its
troubled current beneath precipitous cliffs, clothed with trees that
spring from every chink and crevice of the stone; and from an overhanging
grove of stately oaks above, a runlet of the purest water comes rippling
down.
Here his dwelling-place, scooped out of the living rock, remains almost
as perfect as when he left it. It can only be reached from the river by a
long flight of steps. Over the entrance linger the traces of the original
inscription, ‘_Sunt mihi lachrymæ meæ cibo interdiu et noctu_.’ The first
cell is a miniature chapel, complete in all its details, with a raised
altar at the east end; and on a recessed altar tomb beside it is the
effigy of a woman, very delicately designed, but now broken and timeworn,
lying with her head towards the east, and her arms slightly raised,
showing that her hands have been folded in prayer. At her feet in a niche
cut in the stone, the figure of the Hermit kneels in eternal penitence,
his head resting on his hand. Beyond this, reached through a doorway,
bearing on a shield the Crucifixion and the emblems of the Passion, is
a still smaller oratory, used by the Hermit as a sleeping-place; with a
similar altar at the farther end, and near it a narrow ledge hewn out of
the rock for his couch.
Neither by night nor by day did he ever lose sight of the beloved effigy
in the adjoining chapel; for at the altar a window is contrived through
which he could see it as he knelt at his devotions; and when lying on his
bed, a niche cut slantwise through the partition wall still enabled him
to rest his faithful eyes upon it. No one knows for how many sorrowful
years he lived here in penance and contrition, nor when death came to his
release.
Such is the touching story of the Hermit of Warkworth, who was of our
blood, as it is related in the “Battle Abbey Roll” which I have so often
quoted.
Bertram’s friend, Lord Percy, kept his memory green by paying for Masses
to be sung in the Chapel, and the allowance for the purpose was continued
until the Suppression of the Monasteries, and according to Hutchinson,
“the patent is extant which was granted to the last hermit in 1532 by the
Sixth Earl of Northumberland.”
* * * * *
So the elder branch of the Bertrams disappeared in 1311, and with them
the name, for the Lords of Bothal speedily called themselves de Mitford,
which from that time forth became the family patronymic. “Happy the
minister who does not make history” is an old saying which may well be
applied to families, for if in the centuries during which our people have
been Lords of Mitford, though they produced no great soldier, no great
statesman, no Raleigh, no Drake, no Frobisher, no Sir Thomas More, no
King’s favourite, at any rate they kept their heads upon their shoulders.
Political ambition was apt to be a very deadly disease, and they had it
not. They were contented to live held in respect by their neighbours,
to act as high sheriffs when called upon to do so, and sometimes to
represent their county in Parliament.
Perhaps the most distinguished of these ancestors of ours was Sir John
de Mitford, who was Knight of the Shire for Northumberland in various
Parliaments during the reigns of King Edward the Third, King Richard the
Second and King Henry the Fourth. He was High Sheriff for two years, and
acted as Commissioner with John Widdrington and Gerald Heron to tender
the Oath of Allegiance to the King of Scotland. On the 20th of May, 1369,
at Newton Hall, he received by deed of feoffment from David Strathbolgi,
Second Earl of Athol, a grant of all his lands and tenements in the
Ville of Molesden, to be holden of the grantor and his descendants by
the annual payment of sixpence. It has been said that this transfer led
to the adoption of the three moles as the family arms, but our family
tradition, which I believe to be well founded, is that they were of much
older date and taken from the Want’s Beck, the mole’s stream, as was
the name of Molesden itself. Sir John was in 1386 Keeper of the Seal to
Edward Duke of York for the Liberty of Tyndale.
On his death he was succeeded by his elder son William, who was, like
his father, Knight of the Shire and High Sheriff in Henry the Fifth’s
reign. Then followed his son John, a pious benefactor of the Church,
living, no doubt, in the sweetest odour of sanctity, who granted
tenements in Newcastle to the Church of St. Nicholas, and gave lands in
Echewicke to the Abbot and Convent of Newminster, to pray for his soul
and the souls of his ancestors. He died in the sixteenth year of the
reign of King Henry the Sixth. The following three Lords of the Manor,
Thomas, Bertram and Cawen, were inconspicuous persons, and there is
nothing to be said of our forebears until we come to Cuthbert, who in the
sixth year of Edward the Sixth was with Anthony Mitford of Ponteland,
Commissioner for the inclosure of the Middle Marches. This said Anthony
was a rogue. Cuthbert Mitford by his first wife, Ann, daughter of one
Wallis of Akeild, had one son, Robert, and three daughters: failing
that son Robert, Anthony of Ponteland would become Lord of the Manor of
Mitford and heir to all Cuthbert’s estate. To achieve this end he hatched
a plot, seeking to prove that there had been no marriage between Cuthbert
and Ann Wallis, and that in consequence Robert was illegitimate.
He contrived to have his contention entered in the Harleian MSS., and to
have Robert described as _nothus natus_—base-born, but when he presented
the document at the Heralds’ College, it proved to be signed only by
himself. On investigation, the lie was nailed to the counter, Robert’s
legitimacy was fully proved, and his arms were certified without a
difference. He was what would be looked upon in these days as a person of
rather lax opinions and was “presented” at the Archdeacon’s Visitations
“for sufferinge divers persons to eate, drinke and play atte cardes in
time of eveninge praier.” In spite of the Archidiaconal thunders, he
lived through the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James, and died in
the first year of King Charles the First’s reign at the good old age of
eighty-eight.
He was succeeded by his grandson Robert, both of whose parents had died
in his infancy on the same day. This Robert is an ancestor of special
interest for us. In the first place it was to him that King Charles the
Second restored by grant the Castle and royalties of Mitford, which had
been forfeit in punishment of Roger Bertram’s treason by King Henry
the Third in 1264, and secondly it is from his third son, John, who
left the old home to seek his fortune as a merchant in London, that we,
the Mitfords, formerly of Exbury, now of Batsford, are descended. The
Mitfords of Pitshill are descended from William, who was a great-grandson
of the Robert of Charles the Second’s time.
The portraits of Robert Mitford and Philadelphia Wharton, his wife, are
at Batsford. The contemporary frame of her picture is surrounded by
carved oak leaves and acorns in memory of the famous escape of the King,
and to denote her loyalty to his cause.
Let us linger for a few more moments among the ruins of the old
Cradle of our Race. In the dark centuries, when even if there was no
actual war between England and Scotland, there was almost continuous
fighting between the fierce clans on both sides, feuds and raids and
cattle-lifting were the salt of northern life; hatred was a profession,
revenge the accomplishment of a gentleman. The border castles were seldom
at rest, and Mitford fared no better than its neighbours.
Dreaming on a summer’s day within the, to us, sacred precincts, one can
almost hear the grey walls ringing with the music of sword, spear and
battle-axe clashing upon hauberk and breast-plate—the shouts of the
fighting men mad with the lust of blood—clouds of arrows rattling like
hail against the battlements should a head show itself. The borderers
were gay men at fighting, and the Scots ever met with a hot welcome.
After the treason of Sir Roger Bertram in 1264, wild men succeeded one
another in the ownership of the Castle. In the year 1316 it was the home
of a freebooter of the pattern of the Rhenish robber knights, named Sir
Gilbert de Middleton. He was an old soldier of fortune, who had fought
against Lewelin in the Welsh war and probably for that service was
rewarded with the Castle and Manor of Mitford. But he was infuriated
against King Edward, on account of the appointment to the See of Durham
of Lewis de Beaumont, a cousin of the Queen’s. It was said that Queen
Isabella, “the French she-wolf,” as she was called, had knelt upon her
bare knees before the King, praying him to confer this fat Bishopric
upon her kinsman. Sir Gilbert rebelled, proclaimed himself Duke of
Northumberland, and took the occasion of a mission which the King had
sent to Scotland, headed by two Cardinals and the Bishop of Durham, to
swoop down upon the Embassy and pillage it on its return South.
It was a mistake to attack the scarlet hat; the Church ever had a long
arm. Sir Gilbert was taken prisoner by Ralph de Greystoke (or, according
to Hollinshed, by Thomas Heton and William de Fulton), fettered in
irons and carried to Newcastle, whence he was shipped to Grimsby. From
Grimsby he rode to London with his feet tied under his horse’s belly,
was imprisoned in the Tower, and dragged by horses to the gallows on the
26th of June, 1318. His property and goods and those of his brother were
confiscated. (See Hodgson’s “Northumberland.”)
In 1318 Mitford was the property of Adomar de Valence, Earl of Pembroke,
and then it was that the last and fatal attack upon the Castle by the
King of Scotland took place, and the grand old stronghold that had
withstood the buffets of so many sieges was finally laid in ruins.
When one looks at the humble little village of Mitford to-day it is hard
to realize that it was once a borough! I know not how it may be now, but
when I was a boy the old folk held firmly to their traditions and to the
legends of the ancient greatness of the place; there was an old rhyme
which they loved to quote:
“Mitford was Mitford ere Morpeth was ane
And still shall be Mitford when Morpeth is gane.”
The feeling of clanship was strongly rooted in the people. In the fifties
of last century there was still living a delightful old woman, one Bella
Harbottle, who with her brother inhabited two, or three rooms, which were
all that remained of the seventeenth-century Manor House—just a tower
in an old-fashioned garden, which the brother tended, in the beauty of
which Bacon himself would have taken delight. The brother and sister were
specimens of a grand old type of northern peasantry not yet passed away,
thank Heaven! Their beautifully chiselled features, no less than their
proud bearing and dignified manners, might have befitted the descendants
of crusaders. She was always clad in an old-fashioned lilac print gown,
with a square of shepherd’s plaid crossed over the bosom. Her delicate,
high-bred face, with blue eyes, still bright and beautiful, was framed
in the frills of an immaculate mutch covering her ears and almost hiding
the snow-white hair; her small feet were always daintily cased in grey
worsted stockings and scrupulously blacked shoes. She must have been
nearly eighty years old when I used to sit with her in her kitchen—the
aged dame on one side of the hearth, the little boy on the other,
listening to her old-world tales of the past glories of Mitford. There
were always a few old-fashioned flowers in the kitchen-parlour, and she
herself sweetly reminded one of lavender. The good soul was always stout
for the rights and honour of the family.
A gentleman who had bought a small adjoining estate built himself a
house just on the boundary. Every day, almost, old Bella would walk out,
leaning on her crutched stick, to see that there was no encroachment. The
neighbour, aware of this, and greatly amused, said to her one day, “You
see, Bella, it is all right. I am not removing my neighbour’s landmark.”
“Ah!” grumbled she, with her sweet Northumbrian burr, “I’m thinking that
you’re building your house verra high.” Even the air was sacred to the
family of her worship.
To the east of the Manor House Tower is the old Norman church. When
I first went to Mitford it was a mere wreck, just sufficiently
weather-tight for service to be held; but it was beautifully restored
some fifty years since by the piety of the last owner but one, Colonel
John Philip Mitford.
And now it is time for us to leave the north and travel southward with
those who are more immediately responsible for us.
Merchant John, then, came to London, where he seems to have prospered in
his business, so much so as to make us wish that he had been furnished
in his baptism with some other Christian name, for he became possessed
of original shares in the Royal Exchange, the building of which King
Charles the Second laid the foundation stone in 1667 to take the place
of its predecessor of Queen Elizabeth’s time, which had been destroyed
in the great fire of 1666. Unfortunately there was no mention of these
shares in his will. There is no doubt that they were the property of this
particular John, our immediate ancestor, and when my father and the late
Lord Redesdale tried to prove their claim to them nobody doubted its
justice, but they were defeated by the fact that they could not prove
that there was no other John Mitford to whom they might have belonged; so
there they lie in some mouldy old chest, more useless than dead leaves in
autumn. Be this a lesson to those who call their sons John, or Thomas, or
William, to give them some second and less usual name to make what, in
armorial bearings, the heralds call a difference.
[Illustration: WILLIAM MITFORD (HISTORIAN OF GREECE)
_From an oil painting by John Jackson, R.A._]
Of this John and his son William there is nothing to be said, but the son
of the latter was another John, whose marriage on the 13th of September,
1740, with Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of Willey Reveley, of
Newton Underwood and Throphill in Northumberland and Newby-super-Wiske in
Yorkshire, played an important part in the history of our family, for to
them were born two remarkable sons, William, the historian of Greece, and
John, the first Lord Redesdale. Indirectly, too, this marriage was the
cause of a goodly inheritance coming to Lord Redesdale in 1808.
William Mitford,[7] who was born on the 10th of February, 1744, was my
great-grandfather, and a man of many and various accomplishments, in
his youth famous as one of the handsomest men of his day. Not only was
he a profound scholar, but he had a great knowledge of art; he drew
beautifully, and I have many of his water-colour paintings, which are
of rare merit; his sketch-books recording his journeys in many parts of
England are even now a joy to look through. The Royal Academy of his day
recognized his worth by making him their historian, an office now filled
by Lord Morley of Blackburn. In music, also, he was an expert, having a
practical knowledge of several instruments, and so keen was he that when
he was an old man, past seventy, he made a journey into Wales, a matter
of several days in those posting times, in order to learn the principles
of the triple Welsh harp.
He was Member of Parliament successively for Newport in Cornwall,
Beeralston and Romney, and commanded the Hampshire Militia. It was as a
Militia-man that he made friends with Gibbon, who was a brother officer
in the same regiment, and who persuaded him to undertake the history
of Greece, so that the Hampshire Militia had the honour of producing
two classical historians—the one of the “Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire,” the other of Greece.
Mitford’s history naturally took the Tory side in Greek politics: Grote
and Thirlwall followed on the Radical side. One day Thomas Carlyle began
talking to me about my great-grandfather; Carlyle was certainly no Tory,
but he praised the so-called Tory book far above the other two. He said
“that Mitford had the talent of clothing the dry bones of history with
living flesh and blood: he made the old Greeks speak and behave like
human beings, breathing a living spirit into his work.” The other two
were so dreary and dull that they provoked no sympathy in him.
Beyond all this the old Colonel, as he was called, was a very skilful
forester and gardener. I possess an old, much-worn pruning knife with
a horn handle which he always carried about when he was engaged in his
favourite pursuit of landscape gardening. When a boy, he and his brother
had been at school at Mr. Gilpin’s academy. Later in life he was able
to present Gilpin to the living of Boldre in Hampshire. This led to the
writing of the famous “Forest Scenery,” which Gilpin dedicated to his
former pupil and subsequent patron. Gilpin’s brother was Sawrey Gilpin,
R.A., the animal painter.
It happened that in the spring of 1862 my father, having some business to
transact with his agent and being unable to attend to it himself, sent
me down to Exbury to act on his behalf. Mr. Lewis Ricardo, who was the
tenant at the time, hearing that I was going there, very kindly offered
me bed and board, saying that, though he was detained in London, his
housekeeper would look after me. She made me very comfortable, and after
a light dinner and a pint of claret I went to bed. In the dead of the
night I was awakened—as it seemed to me—by a most uncanny noise in the
room over my head. Someone was dragging a very heavy weight up and down
the floor; then I heard the door open, and the footsteps came down the
stairs pulling the weight, bump, bump, bump, until whoever it was reached
my door. Then there was silence for a minute or two, and presently the
weight was dragged up again, bumping as before, the door of the upstairs
room was opened, the weight was dragged across it, and all was still.
I must have been dreaming all the time, for, though I was in deadly fear
of I knew not what, it never occurred to me to get up and see what awful
being it was that was standing so mysteriously outside my room. But the
whole thing was so vivid that the next morning I asked the housekeeper
who had occupied the room above me that night. Her answer was that the
room had been empty and locked and the key in her possession.
When I got back to London I told my father what I had heard. He was
a good deal startled, and replied that one of his grandfather’s
eccentricities had been, after a long day’s literary work, to go up into
an empty upstairs room and pull a heavy trunk about for exercise. I had
never, so far as I knew, heard this before; but it is possible, if it be
true that in our sleep we sometimes remember things long since forgotten,
that I might in years gone by have been told of the old man’s whim, and
that the fact of sleeping in that house struck some chord of a vanished
memory; as my father spoke, it almost seemed as if my presence had roused
the spirit of the forefather to come and see what manner of creature
his great-grandson might be. I insert the story for the benefit of the
professors of oneiromancy. To me it seems a curious specimen of dream
mystification.
The historian’s eldest son, Henry, was a captain in the Royal Navy. He
was twice married. By his first wife, the daughter of Anthony Wyke,
Attorney-General of Montserrat, he had a son and two daughters, of whom
only one, Frances, was alive in my time. She married her cousin, Bertram
Mitford, the head of the family and Squire of Mitford, which she occupied
after his death as a dower house; and so it happened that as a boy I
passed many happy holidays in the old home. My grandfather’s second wife
was Mary Leslie-Anstruther, whom he married in 1803. In the same year he
was appointed to the command of H.M.S. _York_, and before commissioning
her he went down with his navigating officer—master was the title in
those days—to survey her. They reported her unseaworthy. To that, the
answer was, in effect, “Sail, or resign your commission.”
Of course they sailed, and on Christmas Eve, 1803, in a fog in the North
Sea, the _York_ went down with all hands. Her guns of distress were
heard, but no help was forthcoming. I have been told that one spar with
“York” upon it was washed ashore on the coast of Yorkshire. There were
not then the means that there are now, thanks to Lloyd’s and modern
inventions, of obtaining information as to wrecks, and that single spar
was, I believe, the solitary evidence of the fate of the _York_. It was
something very like an official murder.
My father was born on the following twenty-first of June, a posthumous
child, and lived with his grandfather and his two sisters. His mother
soon married again, her second husband being Mr. Farrer, of Brayfield
in Buckinghamshire, who had been an officer in the Blues. I am afraid
that my father had not a very happy childhood, for the historian seems
to have been rather crabbed in his old age. Besides, he was fully taken
up with his studies and his work, and cared not to busy himself with the
yearnings of a child. However, his two half-sisters, Frances and Louisa,
were devoted to their brother, and the little boy had a good friend
in his grandfather’s younger brother, John, who, in the meantime, had
come to great distinction. Having been called to the Bar in 1777, he,
three years later, published the famous book commonly called “Mitford on
Pleadings,” which speedily became a classic. Lord Eldon said that it was
“a wonderful effort to collect what is to be deduced from authorities
speaking so little what is clear”; while Sir Thomas Plumer declared
that it “reduced the whole subject to a system with such universally
acknowledged learning, accuracy and discrimination, as to have been ever
since received by the whole profession as an authoritative standard and
guide.”
It was equally well accepted in America, and when I was in the United
States in 1873 more than one well-known judge and lawyer came up to me
wanting to know what relation I was to the “Pleadings.” The success of
the book brought prosperity and a seat in Parliament, by the favour
of his cousin, the Duke of Northumberland. In 1793 he succeeded his
lifelong friend Sir John Scott (Lord Eldon) as Solicitor-General; the
Attorneyship followed as a matter of course, and in 1801 he became
Speaker of the House of Commons. This latter office he did not hold
long, for in 1802 Lord Clare, who was Lord Chancellor of Ireland, died,
and Sir John Mitford was appointed to succeed him, being raised to the
peerage as Baron Redesdale of Redesdale in Northumberland, a title which
he took from the beautiful moorland property on the southern slope of
the Cheviots which he had purchased with the idea of linking himself as
closely as might be with the border home of the ancient clan.
It was a great wrench to resign the Speakership of the House of Commons,
a post of high honour for which he was admirably fitted. He left an
assembly over which he presided with a dignity and impartial tact which
confirmed the esteem and regard in which he was held by its members,
and justified their choice. At the call of duty he parted from his
friends and severed many ties of affection, to take up a task which,
however congenial it might be professionally, carried him into a country
where he was a stranger with a surrounding of men who were to him a new
experience—men possessed of great talents and a charm peculiarly their
own, but which did not appeal to his serious and rather matter-of-fact
nature. On the bench his success was immediate and triumphant.
Sheil, who was called to the Bar in 1811, and must have known many
of the counsel who practised before Lord Redesdale, said of him that
he introduced a reformation in Irish practice “by substituting great
learning, unwearied diligence, and a spirit of scientific discussion, for
the flippant apophthegms and irritable self-sufficiency of Lord Clare,”
and Story pronounced him to be “one of the ablest judges that ever sat in
equity.”
The Irish Bar speedily recognized in him a scientific lawyer of the
first quality, but the witty barristers, bubbling over with fun and
rollicking spirits, were socially quite out of touch with him. He did not
understand them, nor they him. O’Flanagan, in his “Lives of the Lords
Chancellors of Ireland,” tells several amusing stories of the way in
which the lawyers—none too respectfully, considering the dignity of his
office—cracked jokes in his solemn presence. “I never saw Lord Redesdale
more puzzled,” says Sir Jonah Barrington, “than at one of Plunket’s
_bons mots_. A cause was argued in Chancery, wherein the plaintiff prayed
that the defendant should be restrained from suing him on certain bills
of exchange, as they were nothing but kites. ‘Kites!’ exclaimed Lord
Redesdale, ‘Kites, Mr. Plunket? Kites could never amount to the value of
these securities. I don’t understand the statement at all, Mr. Plunket.’
‘It is not to be expected that you should, my lord,’ answered Plunket.
‘In England and Ireland kites are quite different things. In England the
wind raises the kite, but in Ireland the kite raises the wind.’ ‘I do
not feel any better informed yet, Mr. Plunket,’ said the matter-of-fact
Chancellor. ‘Well, my lord, I’ll explain the thing without mentioning
those birds of prey’—and thereon he explained that in Ireland bills and
notes which are not what is termed good security are commonly called
kites, because they are used to raise money, which is termed ‘raising the
wind.’”
Great as was Lord Redesdale as a judge, there were other duties of
his office which militated against his being a success in Ireland. He
was a devoted Church of England man and a bitter opponent of Catholic
emancipation, and it was abhorrent to him that any office, even that
of justice of the peace, should be held by a Roman Catholic. A letter
addressed by him to the Earl of Fingal on appointing him to the
Commission of the Peace provoked a correspondence which inflamed the
Roman Catholics against him, and was fiercely blamed in the House of
Commons by Fox and Canning.
The final crisis was brought about by his treatment of Lord Cloncurry,
who had twice been arrested for high treason, imprisoned under the Habeas
Corpus Suspension Act in 1799, and very harshly treated in the Tower of
London. When the Habeas Corpus Act was restored, he regained his liberty
after two years all but a few days, and went abroad for four years. On
his return, a Mr. Burne, a King’s Counsel, applied on Lord Cloncurry’s
behalf for his admission to the Commission of the Peace. Lord Redesdale
resented this interference of a third person, and wrote Mr. Burne an
angry and not very judicious answer, in which Lord Cloncurry’s past
history was raked up as a ground of refusal. This drew a furious letter
from Lord Cloncurry himself, in which he recited the illegality and
cruelty under which he had suffered, and made a violent attack upon the
bigotry and prejudice of the Chancellor. The Lord Lieutenant, the Earl
of Hardwicke, at once ordered the Chancellor to insert Lord Cloncurry’s
name in the magistracy of the two Counties of Kildare and Dublin, and
further offered to recommend that nobleman for promotion in the Peerage.
The Viscount’s coronet was refused, but the indignity placed upon the
Chancellor was complete. Mr. Ponsonby was appointed to hold the Great
Seal of Ireland, and pending his arrival, the Great Seal was put in
Commission and Lord Redesdale was not even allowed to sit in the Court
of Chancery—his own court. This, in his farewell speech to the Bar, he
described as “a personal insult.”
His final letter to Lord Cloncurry was characteristic. “My Lord, I have
desired instructions with respect to the insertion of your lordship’s
name in the Commission of the Peace for the Counties of Dublin and
Kildare, and I have to request that your lordship will be pleased to
apply to Mr. Ponsonby, whom His Majesty has appointed Chancellor of
Ireland, and to whom the Great Seal will be delivered as soon as he shall
arrive in the country. I have, etc. (sgd.) Redesdale.” So the stout old
Lord stuck to his colours, and without bending left Ireland in 1806,
having held his office for four years.
It is a singular instance of the fickleness of fate that he should have
been hounded out of Ireland by the Roman Catholics of that country, when
their co-religionists in England had a few years before got up a national
subscription to present him with a magnificent piece of gold plate, in
gratitude for the determined action in the House of Commons, by which
they were relieved from those penal laws to which they had been subject
for more than two hundred years. That golden vase is a treasured heirloom
at Batsford.
There was nothing inconsistent in his conduct. His nature, essentially
humane and merciful, recoiled from anything which savoured of
persecution: at the same time, in the political government of his
country, his Protestant principles and his attachment to the existing
Constitution found no place for the professors of a form of religion
which, in his view, constituted a danger to the State.
Meanwhile, in 1803, Lord Redesdale had contracted a marriage with Lady
Frances Perceval, daughter of Lord Egmont, and sister of the Prime
Minister, Spencer Perceval, who was murdered by Bellingham in 1812.
This happy union brought him three children, two of whom, his son
who afterwards became first and only Earl of Redesdale, and Frances
Elizabeth, survived him.
Lord Redesdale’s father, John Mitford of Exbury, was married, as I have
said above, to a Miss Reveley, whose sister[8] was the wife of Thomas
Edwards Freeman,[9] a wealthy and highly respected squire in the County
of Gloucester. This Mr. Freeman had only one son,[10] who predeceased
him, as did also the son’s wife, Mary Curtis[11] that was, leaving a
daughter[12][13] who married Mr. Heathcote of Dursley in Hampshire. But
this daughter had apparently inherited the bad health of her parents;
she had no child, and it became evident to Mr. Freeman that she was not
likely to live: so in his will he made provision that failing her and
any children that she might have, since he had apparently no relations
of his own, his property should go to his wife’s nephew, Lord Redesdale.
Mrs. Heathcote did not survive her grandfather by many days, and almost
immediately after his death in 1808, the property of Batsford passed to
the ex-Chancellor of Ireland.
One fine day the old lord took his little son, aged three, to see
Mr. Freeman, who went and fetched a crazy old barrel organ, which he
proceeded wheezily to grind for the child’s pleasure: when he had
finished playing, the boy turned to his father and said with much
dignity, “Give the old man a shilling!” to the great amusement of the
benefactor whose property the child was one day to inherit.
Lord Redesdale never again held any office, though Mr. Perceval wished
him to return to the Chancellorship of Ireland. He knew how unpopular he
was in that country, and wisely declined. He preferred his independence,
and became a very useful and much consulted member of the House of Lords.
Lady Redesdale died in 1817, and Lord Redesdale thirteen years later at
the age of eighty-one.
The second Lord Redesdale, who was educated at Eton and at New College,
Oxford, speedily made his mark in the House of Lords by his diligence
and capacity for business. The Duke of Wellington appointed him to be
his Whip, and encouraged him to master all the details of the procedure
and private business of the House with a view to his becoming Chairman
of Committees, an office for which on the death of Lord Shaftesbury in
February, 1851, he was chosen unanimously and which he held until his
death in 1886.
He was a keen sportsman, master and owner of the Heythrop hounds, which
post he resigned when he found public business increasingly making
inroads upon his time, but though he ceased to be master, the hounds
remained his property until Mr. Albert Brassey, who had recently become
master, made overtures to him to buy them. At first Lord Redesdale
refused, but eventually yielded, and gave the purchase money, £2,000, to
the hunt as an endowment. He was a good shot, though he very rarely went
out with a gun; gave great attention to local affairs, never missing the
sittings of the Board of Guardians. “Give old Pensioner (his hack) his
head,” said his studgroom, “and he’ll go straight to Shipston.[14]” He
continued to hunt so long as he was able and always hacked to covert, no
matter what the distance might be.
No man was more looked up to, and I don’t believe that he had an enemy
in the world, unless it might be among certain Parliamentary agents and
promoters over whose proceedings he kept so strict a watch that he earned
the name of the Lord Dictator. It was mainly owing to his determined
action that the attempt to abolish the appellate jurisdiction of the
House of Lords fell through. His literary controversy with Cardinal
Manning on the Infallible Church and the Holy Communion is still
remembered by ecclesiastics. He wrote several pamphlets, chiefly on
doctrinal or genealogical subjects, in which his arguments were always
ingenious and well expressed. In 1877 he was created an Earl by Queen
Victoria on the recommendation of Lord Beaconsfield.
Lord Redesdale never married. He and his sister kept house together at
Batsford until her death in 1866. She was a woman of great ability, full
of sympathy with all her brother’s pursuits: her loss was a cruel blow
to him, and during the twenty years which followed between her death and
his, he never put off mourning. I was in the Far East when she died, and
after all these years I could repeat by heart much of the touching letter
which he wrote to me as being the one man to whom he could open out the
grief that was in his soul.
Batsford stands on a lovely spur of the Cotswold Hills, crowned with a
glory of oaks and elms, beeches, ashes and chestnuts, a most fascinating
spot, and here it was that, under the genial influence of the kind old
lord, whose portrait by Lawrence is the very embodiment of goodwill
towards men, the happiest days of my father’s childhood were spent.
The three little cousins were devoted to one another. It was a beautiful
friendship which strengthened as they grew up, and only ended with their
lives. No two men could have been greater contrasts than my father and
the late Lord Redesdale: perhaps their affection was all the stronger for
that; it had begun in childhood and lasted into extreme old age; they
were always happy together, and when they were parted it was rarely that
a day passed without their writing to one another. They went to the same
schools, Iver first, then Eton, but not in the same house. At Oxford Lord
Redesdale was at New College, my father at Magdalen.
My father did not stay long at college. He soon left the University
to take up an attachéship at the Legation at Florence, where Lord
Burghersh[15] was minister, in whom he had the luck to find a most
sympathetic chief, devoted to art, and especially to music, which with my
father was a passion. The musical society of Florence at that time was
brilliant, and the young attaché was speedily welcomed into its intimacy.
Of those days he had many stories, none, I think, more curious than this.
One evening after the opera there was a supper party at the house of
the Grisis, the parents of the famous prima donna. Giudetta, the elder
daughter, had been singing and the unhappy tenor had been hissed off
the stage with all the viciousness of which an Italian audience has the
secret. My father was sitting next to Giulia Grisi, then a little girl
of twelve—it was in 1827—and he happened to say to her: “Ebben Giulia, I
suppose some day you will be singing in grand opera?” “I sing in opera,”
answered the beautiful child, “and run the risk of being hissed like that
wretched man to-night!” In two years’ time, 1829, she made a precocious
début at Bologna, and was not exactly hissed! Seldom can there have been
a more triumphant career than hers from the day when, as a mere chit of
fourteen, she dazzled the world with her beauty and that lovely velvety
voice.
There was also at that time at Florence a very charming English coterie,
which gathered round Lord and Lady Burghersh. Lord and Lady Dillon were
there with their daughters, and I have often heard my wife’s grandmother,
old Lady Stanley of Alderley, who was one of them, say how agreeable
the society of the Legation then was. Among others who occupied villas
were my grandparents, Lord and Lady Ashburnham, and it was there that my
father and mother made acquaintance. They were married in February, 1828.
There is much talk nowadays about links with the past. I take it that
there are not many men who can say, as I can, that they had an uncle
whose portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds who died in 1792. My
grandfather’s first wife was Lady Sophia Thynne, and there is a beautiful
portrait of her at Ashburnham by Sir Joshua, playing with her baby boy
who lies in her lap: that boy, my uncle, was born in 1785, just one
hundred and thirty years ago. The picture was privately engraved, and I
have one of the only twenty-five copies that were struck off.
His second wife, my grandmother, was Lady Charlotte Percy, sister of the
Duke of Northumberland. She was a noted beauty, and there is a charming
portrait of her by Hoppner, which has also been engraved.
Among the treasures which are at Ashburnham is one of the two shirts worn
by King Charles the First at his execution. Everybody remembers how the
King insisted on wearing two shirts lest on that cold January morning he
should shiver, and men should think that it was from fear. The shirt was
kept as a sacred relic by our ancestor, John Ashburnham, who attended
His Majesty on the scaffold: it was deeply stained with the blood of the
Martyr, and people used to beg to be allowed to touch it as a remedy
for the King’s Evil. When my grandmother came back from Florence, she
asked the housekeeper where the shirt was. “Quite safe, Mylady,” was the
answer, “but it was so stained that I have had it washed.” The pity of
it! The second shirt is at Windsor.
My grandfather’s Garter was a great honour, if something of a
disappointment. He had been a great friend of George the Fourth when he
was Prince of Wales, and the Prince had promised him that when he should
come to the throne, he would show him some mark of his favour. Lord
Ashburnham attended his first levée. In those days, and indeed down to
the end of King William the Fourth’s reign, a levée was not what it is
now; it was a reception attended by very few people, and the King entered
into conversation with everyone present in turn. The King greeted my
grandfather most cordially, saying, “Ah! George, I see you have come to
remind me of my promise. Well, there is a Garter vacant, and you shall
have it.” (The Garter, like all other honours, was then still in the gift
of the sovereign without any reference to ministers). My grandfather was
deeply grateful, but he had a large family, and he had hoped that he
might have obtained for his second son some one of those snug offices to
which the only duty attached was the reception of the salary—sinecures
now all vanished!—and instead of that, at a moment when he was feeling
rather poor, he had to find one thousand pounds for fees.
[Illustration: THE ASHBURNHAM FAMILY.]
Of my mother’s brothers and sisters, those that I knew best were
my uncles Charles, who was in the Diplomatic Service, and Thomas,
who was first in the Coldstream Guards and, after exchanging into
the line, served in many Indian battles; his last post was that of
Commander-in-Chief at Hong Kong; he was one of the wittiest of men,
endowed with the power of giving a fantastic turn to the most commonplace
topics, and his subtle humour was enhanced by being rendered in a musical
speaking voice which was a special attraction in all his family. He was
the darling of society, and might easily have been a spoilt darling, but
that was impossible.
His last years—he died in 1872—were spent in the very able administration
of various charities. The widow of my Uncle Charles, a brilliantly clever
woman, married Sir Godfrey Webster, and became the châtelaine of Battle
Abbey, which was afterwards bought by the Duchess of Cleveland, the
authoress of the “Roll of Battle Abbey,” and the mother of Lord Rosebery.
My aunt, Lady Jane Swinburne, was the mother of the poet. She was a very
cultivated woman, to whose bringing up he owed the finest side of his
character.
I hardly knew my eldest uncle, Lord Ashburnham, the famous scholar and
bibliophile, a man of recognized learning and taste. He was a great Pasha
of whom men stood in terror. Old Mr. Quaritch, the bookseller, used to
tell a good story of him.
Like the rest of mankind, he quailed before the great man. The running
account between the two used to run into very high figures. One day Mr.
Quaritch called at Ashburnham House, and the Earl, glaring at him through
his awe-compelling spectacles, asked what he wanted. “Well, my lord, I
have come to ask your lordship if you could let me have a little money
on account.” “Money, sir!” answered my uncle, “what on earth can you
want with money?” “My lord, there is a great sale coming off at Paris
next week, and as your lordship knows these Paris sales are a question
of ready money.” “Go away, sir! Go away! You want to go to Paris and
speculate with _MY MONEY!_” A just indignation beamed through the awful
spectacles. The argument was irresistible. Mr. Quaritch was glad to make
his escape, crossed over to Paris the next day and did not “speculate
with my uncle’s money.”
And now as a last word let me brag a little after the manner of Ajax and
Ulysses as recorded in the quotation from Ovid, with which I started this
record. It is true that, unlike those heroes, I cannot claim a descent
from Jupiter, who, after all, was rather a disreputable Père Prodigue;
yet I am inclined, for my children’s sake, and as an encouragement to
them to incite their own children to prove themselves worthy “citizens
of no mean city,” to show them that they come of a goodly stock on both
sides. I have in my possession a short family tree in the handwriting of
the second Lord Redesdale, who, as I have said above, took great delight
in genealogy. That tree shows that the Lords Ogle of Northumberland, who
were our forbears, were descended both on the father’s side and on the
mother’s from Charlemagne. My cousin traced it as follows:
Charlemagne, A.D. 800.
Pepin, King of Italy.
Bernard, 818.
Pepin, Lord of Peroune and St. Quentin.
Herbert I., 902.
Herbert II., Count de Vermandois, 943.
Robert, Count de Troyes.
Adelair = Geoffrey, Earl of Anjou, 957.
Fulco II., the Black Earl of Anjou.
Ermangarde = Geoffrey, Count de Gastinois.
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Fulco IV., Earl of Anjou Judith =| Iro Tailbois,
and King of Jerusalem niece of William the | Baron of
Geoffrey Plantagenet Conqueror and widow | Kendal, 1114
Henry II., King of England of Waltheof, Earl of |
John Northumberland and |
Henry III. Lord of Hepple Barony |
Edward I. William Tailbois de Hepple, 1150.
Edward II.
Edward III. Richard.
John of Gaunt. Robert.
Joan = Neville, Earl of Westmorland Robert.
Robert, 1300
Catherine = Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk Joan Annabella = Sir Robert Ogle.
heiress of Hepple
Catherine = Sir Robert Grey Barony.
Robert = Helen, daughter of
Sir Robert Bertram.
Robert = Joan de Heton
Maud who married Sir Robert Ogle.
Constance, the daughter of Sir Robert Ogle (the first Lord Ogle), married
John de Mitford in 1437, and from them descended:
Bertram.
Gawen, 1550.
Cuthbert
Robert.
Cuthbert
Robert, b. 1612.
John.
William.
John.
William (the historian, my great-grandfather).
Captain Henry Mitford, R.N.
Henry Reveley Mitford.
Myself.
My wife’s father, David, seventh Earl of Airlie, was the lineal
descendant of the Mormaers, hereditary royal deputies of Angus. Scotland
was in ancient days divided into seven parts, each ruled by a Mormaer or
Maormor, a title which as long ago as the eleventh century was converted
into that of Earl. The story of the Ogilvys in more modern days, how
they fought for their King and were attainted as Jacobites, is too well
known to need retelling, nor need I speak of the burning by the Campbells
of the Bonnie House of Airlie. Historians have recorded it; poets and
musicians have sung it.
Lord Airlie married Henrietta Blanche, the daughter of Lord Stanley of
Alderley, a cadet branch of a family so proud that it used to be said of
them “The Stanleys do not marry: they contract alliances.” Here again are
two pedigrees tracing back to the remotest times of which there is any
record. There is no need to search out the family tree of the Stanleys to
prove their descent from Charlemagne. It is a matter of common knowledge.
It is only in the case of inconspicuous families like our own that it is
well to set down for those who come after us that which is so easily lost
sight of. When in this year, 1915, the shells are flying in the trenches,
it should be a stimulant to a man to think that he has in his veins some
of the blood of Charlemagne and of that glorious old Charles Martel, the
hammer that at the battle of Poitiers saved Europe from being overrun by
hordes of Saracens nearly twelve hundred years ago.