I accompanied my mother to Penrith, and forthwith devoted myself heart
and body to the preparation of our new house, and the beautifying
of the very pretty paddock in which it was situated. I put in some
hundreds of trees and shrubs with my own hands, which prospered
marvellously, and have become, I have been told, most luxuriant
shrubberies. I was bent on building a cloistered walk along the entire
top of the field, which would have afforded a charming ambulatory
sheltered from the north winds and from the rain, and would have
commanded the most lovely views, while the pillars supporting the
roof would have presented admirable places for a world of flowering
climbing plants. And doubtless I should have achieved it, had we
remained there. But it would have run into too much money to be
undertaken immediately,--fortunately; for, inasmuch as there was
nothing of the sort in all that country side, no human being would
have given a stiver more for the house when it came to be sold, and
the next owner would probably have pulled it down. There was no
authority for such a thing. Had it been suffered to remain it would
probably have been called "Trollope's folly!"
Subsequently, but not immediately after we left it, the place--oddly
enough I forget the name we gave it--became the property and the
residence of my brother-in-law.
Of my life at Penrith I need add nothing to the jottings I have
already placed before the reader on the occasion of my first visit to
that place.
My brother, already a very different man from what he had been in
London, came from his Irish district to visit us there; and I returned
with him to Ireland, to his head-quarters at Banagher on the Shannon.
Neither of this journey need I say much. For to all who know anything
of Ireland at the present day--and who does not? worse luck!--anything
I might write would seem as _nihil ad rem_, as if I were writing of
an island in the Pacific. I remember a very vivid impression that
occurred to me on first landing at Kingstown, and accompanied me
during the whole of my stay in the island, to the effect, that the
striking differences in everything that fell under my observation from
what I had left behind me at Holyhead, were fully as great as any that
had excited my interest when first landing in France.
One of my first visits was to my brother's chief. He was a master of
foxhounds and hunted the country. And I well remember my astonishment,
when the door of this gentleman's residence was opened to me by an
extremely dirty and slatternly bare-footed and bare-legged girl. I
found him to be a very friendly and hospitable good fellow, and his
wife and her sister very pleasant women. I found too that my brother
stood high in his good graces by virtue of simply having taken the
whole work and affairs of the postal district on his own shoulders.
The rejected of St. Martin's-le-Grand was already a very valuable and
capable officer.
My brother gave me the choice of a run to the Killeries, or to
Killarney. We could not manage both. I chose the former, and a most
enjoyable trip we had. He could not leave his work to go with me, but
was to join me subsequently, I forget where, in the west. Meantime
he gave me a letter to a bachelor friend of his at Clifden. This
gentleman immediately asked me to dinner, and he and I dined
_tête-à-tête._ Nevertheless, he thought it necessary to apologise for
the appearance of a very fine John Dory on the table, saying, that he
had been himself to the market to get a turbot for me, but that he had
been asked half-a-crown for a not very large one, and really he could
not give such absurd prices as that!
Anthony duly joined me as proposed, and we had a grand walk over
the mountains above the Killeries. I don't forget and never shall
forget--nor did Anthony ever forget; alas! that we shall never more
talk over that day again--the truly grand spectacular changes from
dark thick enveloping cloud to brilliant sunshine, suddenly revealing
all the mountains and the wonderful colouring of the intertwining
sea beneath them, and then back to cloud and mist and drifting sleet
again. It was a glorious walk. We returned wet to the skin to "Joyce's
Inn," and dined on roast goose and whisky punch, wrapped in our
blankets like Roman senators!
One other scene I must recall. The reader will hardly believe that it
occurred in Ireland. There was an election of a member for I forget
what county or borough, and my brother and I went to the hustings--the
only time I ever was at an election in Her Majesty's dominions. What
were the party feelings, or the party colours, I utterly forget. It
was merely for the fun of the thing that we went there. The fun indeed
was fast and furious. The whole scene on the hustings, as well
as around them, seemed to me one seething mass of senseless but
good-humoured hustling and confusion. Suddenly in the midst of the
uproar an ominous cracking was heard, and in the next minute the
hustings swayed and came down with a crash, heaping together in a
confused mass all the two or three hundreds of human beings who were
on the huge platform. Some few were badly hurt. But my brother and I
being young and active, and tolerably stout fellows, soon extricated
ourselves, regained our legs, and found that we were none the worse.
Then we began to look to our neighbours. And the first who came to
hand was a priest, a little man, who was lying with two or three
fellows on the top of him, horribly frightened and roaring piteously
for help. So Anthony took hold of one of his arms and I of the other,
and by main force dragged him from under the superincumbent mass of
humanity. When we got him on his legs his gratitude was unbounded.
"Tell me your names," he shouted, "that I'll pray for ye!" We told him
laughingly that we were afraid it was no use, for we were heretics.
"Tell me your names," he shouted again, "that I'll pray for ye all the
more!"
I wonder whether he ever did! He certainly was very much in earnest
while the fright was on him.
Not very long after my return from this Irish trip, we finally left
Penrith on the 3rd of April, 1843; and I trust that the nymph of the
holy well, whose spring we had disturbed, was appeased.
My mother and I had now "the world before us where to choose." She had
work in hand, and more in perspective. I also had some in hand and
very much more in perspective, but it was work of a nature that might
be done in one place as well as another. So when "Carlton Hill" (all
of a sudden the name comes back to my memory!) was sold, we literally
stood with no _impedimenta_ of any sort save our trunks, and
absolutely free to turn our faces in whatsoever direction we pleased.
What we did in the first instance was to turn them to the house of our
old and well-beloved cousin, Fanny Bent, at Exeter. There after a few
days we persuaded her to accompany us to Ilfracombe, where we
spent some very enjoyable summer weeks. What I remember chiefly in
connection with that pleasant time, was idling rambles over the rocks
and the Capstone Hill, in company with Mrs. Coker and her sister Miss
Aubrey, the daughters of that Major A. who needs to the whist-playing
world no further commemoration. The former of them was the wife and
mother of Wykehamists (founder's kin), and both were very charming
women. Ilfracombe was in those days an unpretending sort of fishing
village. There was no huge "Ilfracombe Hotel," and the Capstone Hill
was not strewed with whitey-brown biscuit bags and the fragments of
bottles, nor continually vocal with nigger minstrels and ranting
preachers. The "Royal Clarence" did exist in the little town, whether
under that name or not, I forget. But I can testify from experience,
acquired some forty years afterwards, that Mr. and Mrs. Clemow now
keep there one of the best inns of its class, that I, no incompetent
expert in such matters, know in all England.
Then, when the autumn days began to draw in, we returned to Exeter,
and many a long consultation was held by my mother and I, sallying
forth from Fanny Bent's hospitable house for a _tête-à-tête_ stroll on
Northernhay, on the question of "What next?"
It turned out to be a more momentous question than we either of us
imagined it to be at the time; for the decision of it involved the
shape and form of the entire future life of one of us, and still more
important modification of the future life of the other. Dresden was
talked of. Rome was considered. Paris was thought of. Venice was
discussed. No one of them was proposed as a future permanent home.
Finally Florence came on the _tapis_. We had liked it much, and had
formed some much valued friendships there. It was supposed to be
economical as a place to live in, which was one main point. For our
plan was to make for ourselves for two or three years a home and way
of living sufficiently cheap to admit of combining with it large plans
of summer travel. And eventually Florence was fixed on.
As for my mother, it turned out that she was then selecting her last
and final home--though the end was not, thank God, for many a long
year yet. As for me, the decision arrived at during those walks on
Exeter Northernhay, was more momentous still. For I was choosing the
road that led not only to my home for the next half century nearly,
but to two marriages, both of them so happy in all respects as rarely
to have fallen to the lot of one and the same man!
How little we either of us, my mother and I, saw into the
future--beyond a few immediate inches before our noses! Truly _prudens
futuri temporis exitum caliginosâ nocte premit Deus!_ And when I hear
talk of "conduct making fate," I often think--humbly and gratefully, I
trust; marvelling, certainly,--how far it could have _à priori_ seemed
probable, that the conduct of a man who, without either _oes in
presenti_, or any very visible prospect of _oes in futuro_, turns
aside from all the beaten paths of professional industry should
have led him to a long life of happiness and content, hardly to be
surpassed, and, I should fear, rarely equalled. _Deus nobis haec otia
fecit!--Deus_, by the intromission of one rarely good mother, and two
rarely good, and I may add rarely gifted, wives!
Not that I would have the reader translate "_otia_" by idleness. I
have written enough to show that my life hitherto had been a full
and active one. And it continued in Italy to be an industrious one.
Translate the word rather into "independence." For I worked at work
that I liked, and did no taskwork. Nevertheless, I would not wish to
be an evil exemplar, _vitiis imitabile_, and I don't recommend you,
dear boys, to do as I did. I have been quite abnormally fortunate.
Well, we thought that we were casting the die of fate on a very
subordinate matter, while, lo! it was cast for us by the Supernal
Powers after a more far-reaching and over-ruling fashion.
So on the 2nd of September, 1843, we turned our faces southwards and
left London for Florence.
We became immediately on arriving in Firenze la gentile (after a
little tour in Savoy, introduced as an interlude after our locomotive
rambling fashion) the guests of Lady Bulwer, who then inhabited in the
Palazzo Passerini an apartment far larger than she needed, till we
could find a lodging for ourselves.
We had become acquainted with Lady Bulwer in Paris, and a considerable
intimacy arose between her and my mother, whose nature was especially
calculated to sympathise with the good qualities which Lady Bulwer
unquestionably possessed in a high degree. She was brilliant, witty,
generous, kind, joyous, good-natured, and very handsome. But she
was wholly governed by impulse and unreasoning prejudice; though
good-natured, was not always good-humoured; was totally devoid of
prudence or judgment, and absolutely incapable of estimating men
aright. She used to think me, for instance, little short of an
admirable Crichton!
Of course all the above rehearsed good qualities were, or were
calculated to be, immediately perceived and appreciated, while the
less pleasant specialties which accompanied them were of a kind to
become more perceptible only in close intimacy. And while no intimacy
ever lessened that regard of my mother and myself that had been won by
the first, it was not long before we were both, my mother especially,
vexed by exhibitions of the second.
As, for instance:--Lady Bulwer had for some days been complaining of
feeling unwell, and was evidently suffering. My mother urged her to
have some medical advice, whereupon she turned on her very angrily,
while the tears started to her beautiful eyes, and said, "How _can_
you tell me to do any such thing, when you know that I have not a
guinea for the purpose?" (She was frequently wont to complain of her
poverty.) But she had hardly got the words out of her mouth when the
servant entered the room saying that the silversmith was at the door
asking that the account which he laid on the table might be paid. The
account (which Lady Bulwer made no attempt to conceal, for concealment
of anything was not at all in her line) was for a pair of small silver
spurs and an ornamented silver collar which she had ordered a week or
two previously for the _ceremonial knighting of her little dog Taffy_!
On another occasion a large party of us were to visit the Boboli
Gardens. It was a very hot day, and we had to climb the hill to the
upper part of the gardens, from whence the view over Florence and the
Val d'Arno is a charming one. But the hill, as those who have been at
Florence will not have forgotten, is not only an extremely steep, but
a shadeless one. The broad path runs between two wide margins of
turf, which are enclosed on either side by thick but not very high
shrubberies. The party sorted themselves into couples, and the men
addressed themselves to facilitating as best they might the not
slightly fatiguing work before the ladies. It fell to my lot to give
Lady Bulwer my arm. Before long we were the last and most lagging
couple on the path. It was hard work, but I did my best, and flattered
myself that my companion, despite the radical moisture which she was
copiously losing, was in high good humour, as indeed she seemed to be,
when suddenly, without a word of warning, she dashed from the path,
threw herself prone among the bushes, and burst into an uncontrollable
fit of sobs and weeping. I was horrified with amazement. What had I
done, or what left undone? It was long before I could get a word out
of her. At last she articulated amidst her sobs, "It is TOO hot! It
is cruel to bring one here!" Yes, it was _too_ hot; but that was all.
Fortunately I was not the cruel bringer. I consoled her to the best of
my power, and induced her to wipe her eyes. I dabbled a handkerchief
in a neighbouring fountain for her to wash her streaked face, and
eventually I got her to the top of the hill, where all the others had
long since arrived.
The incident was entirely characteristic of her. She was furiously
angry with all things in heaven above and on the earth below because
she was at the moment inconvenienced.
Here is the beginning of a letter from her of a date some months
anterior to the Boboli adventure:
"Illustrissimo Signor Tommaso" (that was the usual style of her
address to me), "as your book is just out you must feel quite _en
train_ for puffs of any description. Therefore I send you the best I
have seen for a long while, _La Physiologie du Fumeur_. But even if
you don't like it, _don't_ put it in your pipe and smoke it. _Vide_
Joseph Fume."
A little subsequently she writes: "Signor Tommaso, the only revenge
I shall take for your lecture" (probably on the matter of some
outrageous extravagance) "is not to call you _illustrissimo_ and not
to send you an illuminated postillion" (a previous letter having been
ornamented with such a decoration at the top of the sheet), "but let
you find your way to Venice in the dark as you can, and then and
there, 'On the Rialto I will rate you,' and, being a man, you know
there is no chance of my _over-rating_ you."
The following passage from the same letter refers to some negotiations
with which she had entrusted me relative to some illustrations she was
bent on having in a forthcoming book she was about to publish:--"As
for the immortal Cruikshank, tell him that I am sure the mighty genius
which conceived Lord Bateman could not refuse to give any lady
the _werry best_, and if he does I shall pass the rest of my
life registering a similar _wow_ to that of the fair Sophia, and
exclaiming, 'I vish, George Cruikshank, as you vas mine.'"
The rest of the long, closely-written four-paged letter is an
indiscriminate and bitter, though joking attack, upon the race of
publishers. She calls Mr. Colburn an "embodied shiver," which will
bring a smile to the lips of those--few, I fear--who remember the
little man.
Here are some extracts from a still longer letter written to my mother
much about the same time: "I hear Lady S---- has committed another
novel, called _The Three Peers_, no doubt _l'un pire que l'autre_!...
I have a great many kind messages to you from that very charming
person Madame Récamier, who fully intends meeting you at Venice with
Chateaubriand in October, for so she told me on Sunday. I met her at
Miss Clarke's some time ago, and as I am a bad _pusher_ I am happy to
say she asked to be introduced to me, and was, thanks to you, my kind
friend! She pressed me to go and see her, which I have done two or
three times, and am going to do again at her amiable request on
Thursday. I think that her fault is that she flatters a little too
much. And flattery to one whose ears have so long been excoriated by
abuse does not sound safe. However, all is right when she speaks of
you. And the point she most eulogised in you is that which I have
heard many a servile coward who could never go and do likewise" [no
indication is to be found either in this letter or elsewhere to
whom she alludes], "select for the same purpose, namely, your
straightforward, unflinching, courageous integrity.... Balzac is
furious at having his new play suppressed by Thiers, in which Arnauld
acted Louis Philippe, wig and all, to the life; but, as I said to M.
Dupin, '_Cest tout naturel que M. Thiers ne permetterait à personne de
jouer Louis Philippe que lui-même._' ... There is a wonderful pointer
here that has been advertised for sale for twelve hundred francs. A
friend of mine went to see him, and after mounting up to a little
garret about the size of a chessboard, _au vingt-septième_, he
interrogated the owner as to the dog's education and acquirements, to
which the man replied, '_Pour ca, monsieur, c'est un chien parfait. Je
lui ai tout appris moi-même dans ma chambre_'[1] After this my friend
did not sing 'Together let us range the fields!' ... Last week I met
Colonel Potter M'Queen, who was warm in his praises of you, and the
great good your _Michael Armstrong_" (the factory story) "had done....
Last Thursday despatches arrived and Lord Granville had to start for
London at a moment's notice. I was in hopes this beastly ministry
were out! But no such luck! For they are a compound of glue,
sticking-plaister, wax, and vice--the most adhesive of all known
mixtures."
[Footnote 1: "As for that, sir, the dog is perfect. I have myself
taught him everything _in my own room_!"]
Before concluding my recollections of Rosina, Lady Lytton Bulwer,
I think it right to say that I consider myself to have perfectly
sufficient grounds for feeling certain that the whispers which were
circulated in a cowardly and malignant fashion against the correctness
of her conduct as a woman were wholly unfounded. Her failings and
tendency to failings lay in a quite different direction. I knew
perfectly well the person whose name was mentioned scandalously in
connection with hers, and knew the whole history of the relationship
that existed between them. The gentleman in question was for years
Lady Bulwer's constant and steadfast friend. It is quite true that he
would fain have been something more, but true also that his friendship
survived the absolute rejection of all warmer sentiments by the object
of it. It was almost a matter of course that such a woman as Lady
Bulwer, living unprotected in the midst of such a society as that of
Florence in those days, should be so slandered. And were it not that
there were very few if any persons at the time, and I think certainly
not one still left, able to speak upon the subject with such
_connaissance de cause_ as I can, I should not have alluded to it.
She was an admirably charming companion before the footlights of the
world's stage--not so uniformly charming behind its scenes, for
her unreasonableness always and her occasional violence were very
difficult to deal with. But she was, as Dickens's poor Jo says in
_Bleak House_, "werry good to me!"