It has been suggested to me that an article descriptive of my ways and
doings at home might be acceptable to readers of this journal; and it
has furthermore been proposed that I should write the said article
myself. There is a straightforward simplicity of purpose about this
proposition which commends it to me. Also, it has the recommendation
of being quite novel.
As a rule, the person whose home life is to be made the subject of an
article is "interviewed" by a gentleman of the press, who
cross-examines the victim like an old Bailey counsel, and proceeds to
take an inventory of his furniture, like a bailiff.
Now, it seems to me that the conditions under which such a visit is
paid and received are radically unsatisfactory. The person interviewed
must be more or less uncomfortably self-conscious, and one cannot help
doubting whether the interviewer ever succeeds in seeing his subject
and his subject's surroundings in exactly their normal _dishabille_.
It would ask more than Roman virtue not to make the best of one's self
and one's house when both were sitting for a portrait; and difficult
as it is to look natural and feel natural in front of a photographer's
camera, it is ten times more trying _vis-a-vis_ of a reporter's
note-book. As for the temptation to "pose," whether consciously or
unconsciously, it must be well-nigh irresistible. For my own part, I
am but too certain that, instead of receiving such a visitor in my
ordinary working costume, and in a room littered with letters and
papers, I should have inevitably put on a more becoming gown, and have
"tidied up" the library, when the appointed day and hour arrived. Not,
however, being put to this test, I will do my best to present myself
literally "At Home," and in my habit as I live.
Westbury-on-Trym is a village in Gloucestershire separated from
Clifton by about a mile and a half of open down, and distant about
four miles from Bristol terminus. It lies in a hollow at the foot of
two steep hills, one of which is crowned with the woods of Blaise
Castle, and the other with a group of buildings consisting of the
parish church, a charming little Gothic structure known as "The Hall,"
and the national schoolhouse. The church is a fine perpendicular
edifice of considerable antiquity, with a square tower surmounted, in
true West of England style, by a small turret, having a tiny Gothic
spire at one corner. The parishioners are proud of their church, and
with justice. It contains some good stained-glass windows, two
interesting mediæval monuments, and an exceptionally fine organ. "The
Hall" is quite modern, having been built and endowed, in 1867, by a
generous parishioner. The large room seats three hundred people, and
is fitted up with an organ as large and beautiful as that in the
church close by. Village concerts, penny readings, Lent lectures,
charity bazaars, and the like are held here. The building also
contains a reading-room and a small library for the use of the working
classes. My own first attempts at public reading were made on this
village platform, twenty years ago.
A little river flows through the valley, and is crossed by a single
bridge in the lower part of the village. This is the Trym,--an untidy
Trym enough, nowadays,--opaque, muddy, and little better than a ditch.
Yet it was a navigable river some centuries ago, and, according to
tradition, was not unknown to trout. On leaving the village, it takes
a southwesterly course through a pleasant bottom of meadow lands, and
thence between wooded slopes and a romantic "Coombe," much beloved of
artists, till it finally empties itself into the Avon, not far from
the mouth of that tidal river.
There are still some remains of a building at the foot of Westbury
Hill, which in olden times was second only in age and importance to
the church,--namely, "The College." This "College" was a religious
house, founded as far back as A.D. 798, and probably rebuilt some five
centuries later by that famous merchant and public benefactor, William
Canynge, of Bristol, who died there as Dean of the College, and was
buried in the church. Twenty-five years ago, when I first made its
acquaintance, this "College" (a large modernized building with corner
turrets) still presented a stately front to the road. At the back was
a square bell-tower covered from top to bottom with ivy, and a
spacious garden shut in by high walls. It was then a boy's school, and
the big garden used to echo with shouts and laughter on summer
evenings. The bell-tower is the most ancient part of the building, and
according to local tradition, a subterranean passage leads from the
cellarage in the basement to the church on the hillside above. The
story is likely enough to be correct; for a passage of some kind there
certainly is, and it leads apparently in the direction of the church.
A working-man who, with some three or four others, had once tried to
explore it, told me several years ago that, beyond the first few
yards, the tunnel was completely blocked, and the air so foul that it
put the lights out. Whether any subsequent attempt has been made to
force a passage, I do not know; but the whole place is sadly changed
since the time when I used to cast longing glances at the old green
tower from the lane that skirted the garden wall, wishing that I might
some day get permission to sit in a corner under a shady tree on the
other side of that wall, and sketch the tower. The school has long
since broken up for good, and boys and masters have gone their ways.
The old house, after standing vacant for years, was bought at last by
a little local builder, who ran up a row of smart shops in front of
the old turreted façade; let off the house itself in lodgings to poor
families; and re-sold the old bell-tower to the village blacksmith.
The garden wall being pulled down on that side, the tower now stands
at the end of a row of new cottages, forlorn and solitary in the midst
of alien surroundings, a forge and anvil in the basement.
As regards the "great houses" of the place, Westbury-on-Trym
enjoys a curious monopoly of handsome private mansions. These
mansions--spacious, finely built, each standing in its own park-like
grounds--were built for the most part by wealthy Bristol merchants
during the two last centuries--men of wealth, who needed to reside
within an easy drive of the city, and who were content to amass great
fortunes without also desiring to become land-owners. The Bristol
merchants of the present day no longer care to live so near their
business. Railways and steamers enable them to go farther afield; and
so the fine old houses of Westbury, Henbury, Redland, Shirehampton,
Brislington, and other parishes round about the great commercial
centre, have gradually passed into the possession of a class of
moneyed gentry who, having neither trade nor land, are attracted by
the fine climate and beautiful scenery of this part of England. Some
few of these old mansions are renowned for the valuable collections of
paintings and other works of art which they contain; as, for instance,
at Blaise Castle, there is a fine series of specimens of the old
masters purchased at the close of the great war during the first
quarter of the present century by Mr. Harford, grandfather of the
present owner; a series which comprises a fine Guido, several
specimens of the Caracci, Salvator Rosa, etc. At Kings-Weston Park, we
find the family portraits of the de Cliffords purchased, together with
the very fine old house built by Vanbrugh in the time of Charles II.,
by the late owner, Philip Miles, Esq. At Leigh Court, the gallery,
with its famous Leonardo, is known throughout Europe, while many other
art treasures are to be found in the possession of private owners
round about the neighborhood.
It is not to be supposed that the writer and subject of this present
paper resides in semi-royal state in one of these magnificent old
houses. On the contrary, she lives, and has lived for more than a
quarter of a century, with a very dear friend, in a small, irregularly
built house, which together they have from time to time enlarged and
improved, according to their pleasure. That friend--now in her
eighty-seventh year--used, in days long gone by, to gather round her
table many of the wits and celebrities of fifty years ago; but for
her, as for myself, our little country home has been as dear for its
seclusion as for the charm of its neighborhood.
The Larches stands, with some few other houses of like dimensions, on
a space of high-level ground to the eastward of the village. It is
approached by a narrow lane, beyond which lie fields and open country.
Having at first been quite a small cottage, it has been added to by
successive owners, and is, consequently, quite destitute of external
or internal uniformity. My own library, and the bedrooms above it,
are, for the present, the latest additions to the structure; though I
hope some day to build on a little room which I shall not venture to
call a museum, but which shall contain my Egyptian antiquities and
other collections.
The little house stands in one acre of ground, closely walled in, and
surrounded by high shrubs and lofty larch trees. It is up and down a
straight path in the shade of these larch trees that I take my daily
exercise; and if I am to enter into such minor particulars as are dear
to the writers and readers of "At Home" articles, I may mention that a
dial-register is affixed to the wall of a small grape-house at one end
of this path, by means of which I measure off my regular half-mile
before breakfast, my half mile after breakfast, and the mile or more
with which I finish up my pedestrian duties in the late afternoon. To
walk these two miles _per diem_ is a Draconian law which I impose upon
myself during all seasons of the year. When the snow lies deep in
winter, it is our old gardener's first duty in the morning to sweep
"Miss Edwards' path," as well as to clear two or three large spaces on
the lawn, in which the wild birds may be fed. The wild birds, I should
add, are our intimate friends and perennial visitors, for whom we keep
an open _table d'hôte_ throughout the year. By feeding them in summer
we lose less fruit than our neighbors; and by feeding them in winter
we preserve the lives of our little summer friends, whose songs are
the delight of ourselves and our neighbors in the springtime. There
are dozens of nests every summer in the ivy which clusters thickly
around my library windows; and we even carry our hospitality so far as
to erect small rows of model lodging-houses for our birds high up
under the eaves, which they inhabit in winter, and in which many
couples of sparrows and starlings rear their young throughout the
summer.
We will now leave the garden, and go into the house, which stands high
on a grassy platform facing the sunny west. We enter by a wooden
porch, which, as I write, is thickly covered with roses. As soon as
the front door is opened, the incoming visitor finds himself in the
midst of modern Egypt, the walls of the hall being lined with Damascus
tiles and Cairene woodwork, the spoils of some of those Meshrabeeyeh
windows which are so fast disappearing both in Alexandria and Cairo.
In a recess opposite the door stands a fine old chair inlaid with
ivory and various colored woods, which some two hundred years ago was
the Episcopal chair of a Coptic bishop. The rest of the hall furniture
is of Egyptian inlaid work. Every available inch of space on the
walls is filled and over-filled with curiosities of all descriptions.
On one bracket stand an old Italian ewer and plate in wrought brass
work; on another, a Nile "Kulleh" or water bottle, and a pair of cups
of unbaked clay; on others again, jars and pots of Indian, Morocco,
Japanese, Siût, and Algerian ware. Here also, are a couple of funerary
tablets in carved limestone, of ancient Egyptian work; a fragment of
limestone cornice from the ruins of Naukratis; and various specimens
of Majolica, old Wedgewood, and other ware, as well as framed
specimens of Rhodian and Damascus tiles.
If my visitor is admitted at all, which for reasons which I will
presently state is extremely doubtful, he passes through the hall,
leaving the dining-room to his right and the drawing-room to his left,
and is ushered along a passage, also lined with lattice-work, through
a little ante-room, and into my library. This is a fair-sized room
with a bay of three windows at the upper end facing eastward. My
writing-table is placed somewhat near this window; and here I sit with
my back to the light facing whomsoever may be shown into the room.
Sitting thus at my desk, the room to me is full of reminiscences of
many friends and many places. The walls are lined with glazed
bookcases containing the volumes which I have been slowly amassing
from the time I was fourteen or fifteen years of age. I cast my eyes
round the shelves, and I recognize in their contents the different
lines of study which I have pursued at different periods of my life.
Like the geological strata in the side of a cliff, they show the
deposits of successive periods, and remind me, not only of the changes
which my own literary tastes have undergone, but also of the various
literary undertakings in which I have been from time to time engaged.
The shelves devoted to the British poets carry me back to a time when
I read them straight through without a break, from Chaucer to
Tennyson. A large number of histories of England and works of British
biography are due to a time when I was chiefly occupied in writing the
letterpress to "The Photographic Historical Portrait Gallery,"--a very
beautiful publication illustrated with photographs of historical
miniatures, which never reached a second volume, and is now, I
believe, extremely scarce. An equally voluminous series of histories
of Greece and Rome, and of translations of the Greek and Latin poets,
marks the time when I first became deeply interested in classic
antiquity. To this phase also belong the beginnings of those
archæological works which I have of late years accumulated almost to
the exclusion of all other books, as well as my collection of volumes
upon Homer, which nearly fill one division of a bookcase. When I left
London some six and twenty years ago to settle at Westbury-on-Trym, I
also added to my library a large number of works on the fine arts,
feeling, as every lover of pictures must do, that it is necessary, in
some way or another, to make up for the loss of the National Gallery,
the South Kensington Museum, and other delightful places which I was
leaving behind. At this time, also, I had a passion for Turner, and
eagerly collected his engraved works, of which I believe I possess
nearly all. I think I may say the same of Samuel Prout. Of Shakespeare
I have almost as many editions as I have translations of Homer; and of
European histories, works of reference generally, a writer who lives
in the country must, of course, possess a goodly number. Of rare books
I do not pretend to have many. A single shelf contains a few good old
works, including a fine black-letter Chaucer, the Venetian Dante of
1578, and some fine examples of the Elizabethan period. I soon found,
however, that this taste was far too expensive to cultivate. Last of
all, in what I may call the upper Egyptological stratum of my books,
come those on Egypt and Egyptian archæology, a class of works deeply
interesting to those who make Egyptology their study, but profoundly
dull to everybody else.
Such are my books. If, however, I were to show my visitor what I
consider my choicest treasures, I should take down volumes which have
been given to me by friends, some now far distant, others departed.
Here, for instance, is the folio edition of Doré's "Don Quichotte," on
the fly-leaf of which he signs himself as my "_ami affectueux_;" or
some of the works of my dear friend of many years, John Addington
Symonds, especially "Many Moods," which he has dedicated to myself. Or
I would take down the first volume of "The Ring and the Book,"
containing a delightful inscription from the pen of Robert Browning;
or the late Lord Lytton's version of the Odes of Horace, in which is
inserted an interesting letter on the method and spirit of his
translation, addressed to me at the time of its publication. Next to
this stands a presentation copy of Sir Theodore Martin's translation
of the same immortal poems. To most persons these would be more
interesting than other and later presentation volumes from various
foreign savants--Maspero, Naville, Ebers, Wiedemann, and others.
I am often asked how many books I possess, and I can only reply that I
have not the least idea, having lost count of them for many years.
Those which are in sight are attired in purple and fine linen,
beautiful bindings having once upon a time been one of my hobbies; but
behind the beautiful bindings, many of which were executed from my own
designs, are other books in modest cloth and paper wrappers; so that
the volumes are always two rows, and sometimes even three rows deep.
If I had not a tolerably good memory, I should certainly be very much
perplexed by this arrangement, the more especially as my only
catalogue is in my head.
I fear I am allowing myself to say too much about my books; yet, after
all, they represent a large part of myself. My life, since I have
lived at The Larches, has been one of ever-increasing seclusion, and
my books have for many years been my daily companions, teachers, and
friends. Merely to lean back in one's chair now and then--merely to
lean back and look at them--is a pleasure, a stimulus, and in some
sense a gain. For, as it seems to me, there is a virtue which goes out
from even the backs of one's books; and though to glance along the
shelves without taking down a single volume be but a Barmecide feast,
yet the tired brain is consciously refreshed by it.
Although the room is essentially a bookroom, there are other things
than books to which one can turn for a momentary change of thought. In
yonder corner, for instance, stands an easel, the picture upon which
is constantly changed. To-day, it will be a water-color sketch by John
Lewis; to-morrow, an etching by Albert Dürer or Seymour Haden; the
next day, an oil painting by Elihu Vedder, or perhaps an ancient
Egyptian funerary papyrus, with curious pen-and-ink vignettes of gods
and genii surmounting the closely written columns of hieroglyphic
text.
For, you see, I have no wall space in my library upon which to hang
pictures; and yet, I am not happy, and my thoughts are not rightly in
tune, unless I have a picture or two in sight, somewhere about the
room. In the corners, hidden away behind pedestals and curtains, a
quick eye may detect stacks of pictures, ready to be brought out and
put on the easel when needed. On the pedestals stand plaster casts of
busts from antique originals in the Louvre, the Uffizzi Gallery, and
the British Museum; and yonder, beside the arched entrance between the
ante-room and the library, stands a small white marble torso of a
semi-recumbent river god which I picked up years ago from amid the
dusty stores of a little curiosity-shop in one of the small by-streets
near Soho Square. It is a splendid fragment, so powerfully and
learnedly modelled, that no less a critic than the late Charles Blanc
once suggested to me that it might be a trial-sketch by a pupil of
Michael Angelo, or even by the master himself. Curiously enough, this
little masterpiece, which has lost both arms from below the shoulders
and both legs from above the knee, was wrecked before its completion;
the face, the beard, the hair and the back being little more than
blocked out, whereas, the forepart of the trunk is highly finished. On
the opposite side of the archway, in an iron tripod, stands a large
terra-cotta amphora found in the cellar of a Roman villa discovered in
1872, close behind the Baths of Caracalla.
As I happened to be spending that winter in Rome, I went, of course,
to see the new "scavo," and there were the big jars standing in the
cellar, just as in the lifetime of the ancient owner. I need scarcely
say that I bought mine on the spot.
It is such associations as these which are the collector's greatest
pleasures. Each object recalls the place and circumstances of its
purchase, brings back incidents of foreign travel, and opens up long
vistas of delightful memories. For me, every bit of old pottery on the
tops of the bookcases has its history. That Majolica jar painted with
the Medici arms, and those Montelupo plates, were bought in Florence;
those brass salvers with heads of Doges in repoussé work were picked
up in a dark old shop on one of the side canals of Venice. The tall
jars, yellow, green, white, and brown, with grotesque dragon mouths
and twisted handles, are of Gallipoli make, and I got them at a shop
in an out-of-the-way court at the top of a blind alley in Stamboul.
I have said that there are reasons why an intending visitor might,
perchance, fail to penetrate as far as this den of books and
bric-à-brac, and I might allege a considerable number, but they may
all be summed up in the one deplorable fact that there are but
twenty-four hours to the day, and seven days to the week. Time is
precious to me, and leisure is a thing unknown. If, however, the said
visitor is of congenial tastes, has gained admittance, and finds me
less busy than usual, he will, perhaps, be let into the secret of
certain hidden treasures, the existence of which is unsuspected by the
casual caller. For dearer to me than all the rest of my curios are my
Egyptian antiquities; and of these, strange to say, though none of
them are in sight, I have enough to stock a modest little museum.
Stowed away in all kinds of nooks and corners, in upstairs cupboards,
in boxes, drawers, and cases innumerable, behind books, and invading
the sanctity of glass closets and wardrobes, are hundreds, nay,
thousands, of those fascinating objects in bronze and glazed ware, in
carved wood and ivory, in glass, and pottery, and sculptured stone,
which are the delight of archæologists and collectors. Here, for
instance, behind the "_Revue Archeologique_" packed side by side as
closely as figs in a box, are all the gods of Egypt,--fantastic little
porcelain figures plumed and horned, bird-headed, animal-headed, and
the like. Their reign, it is true, may be over in the Valley of the
Nile, but in me they still have a fervent adorer. Were I inclined to
worship them with due antique ceremonial, there are two libation
tables in one of the attics ready to my hand, carved with semblances
of sacrificial meats and drinks; or here, in a tin box behind the
"_Retrospective Review_," are specimens of actual food offerings
deposited three thousand years ago in various tombs at
Thebes--shrivelled dates, lentils, nuts, and even a slice of bread.
Rings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, amulets, mirrors, and toilet
objects, once the delight of dusky beauties long since embalmed and
forgotten; funerary statuettes, scarabs, rolls of mummy cloth, and the
like are laid by "in a sacred gloom" from which they are rarely, if
ever, brought forth into the light of day. And there are stranger
things than these,--fragments of spiced and bituminized humanity to be
shown to visitors who are not nervous, nor given to midnight terrors.
Here is a baby's foot (some mother cried over it once) in the Japanese
cabinet in the ante-room. There are three mummied hands behind
"_Allibone's Dictionary of English Authors_," in the library. There
are two arms with hands complete--the one almost black, the other
singularly fair,--in a drawer in my dressing-room; and grimmest of
all, I have the heads of two ancient Egyptians in a wardrobe in my
bedroom, who, perhaps, talk to each other in the watches of the night,
when I am sound asleep. As, however, I am not writing a catalogue of
my collection, I will only mention that there is a somewhat battered
statue of a Prince of Kush standing upright in his packing-case, like
a sentry in a sentry-box, in an empty coach-house at the bottom of the
garden.
It may, perhaps, be objected to my treatment of this subject that I
have described only my "home," and that, being myself, I have not
described Miss Edwards. This is a task which I cannot pretend to
perform in a manner satisfactory either to myself or the reader. My
personal appearance has, however, been so fully depicted in the
columns of some hundreds of newspapers, that I have but to draw upon
the descriptions given by my brethren of the press, in order to fill
what would otherwise be an inevitable gap in the present article. By
one, for instance, I am said to have "coal-black hair and flashing
black eyes"; by another, that same hair is said to be "snow-white";
while a third describes it as "iron-gray, and rolled back in a large
wave." On one occasion, as I am informed, I had "a commanding and
Cassandra-like presence"; elsewhere, I was "tall, slender, and
engaging"; and occasionally I am merely of "middle height" and, alas!
"somewhat inclined to _embonpoint_." As it is obviously so easy to
realize what I am like from the foregoing data, I need say no more on
the subject.
With regard to "my manners and customs" and the course of my daily
life, there is little or nothing to tell. I am essentially a worker,
and a hard worker, and this I have been since my early girlhood. When
I am asked what are my working hours, I reply:--"All the time when I
am not either sitting at meals, taking exercise, or sleeping"; and
this is literally true. I live with the pen in my hand, not only from
morning till night, but sometimes from night till morning. I have, in
fact, been a night bird ever since I came out of the schoolroom, when
I habitually sat up reading till long past midnight. Later on, when I
adopted literature as a profession, I still found that "To steal a
few hours from the night" was to ensure the quietest time, and the
pleasantest, for pen and brain work; and, for at least the last
twenty-five years, I have rarely put out my lamp before two or three
in the morning. Occasionally, when work presses and a manuscript has
to be despatched by the earliest morning mail, I remain at my desk the
whole night through; and I can with certainty say that the last
chapter of every book I have ever written has been finished at early
morning. In summertime, it is certainly delightful to draw up the
blinds and complete in sunlight a task begun when the lamps were
lighted in the evening.
And this reminds me of a little incident--too trivial, perhaps, to be
worth recording--which befell me so long ago as 1873. I had visited
the Dolomites during the previous summer, not returning to England
till close upon Christmastime, and I had been occupied during the
greater part of the spring in preparing that account of the journey
entitled "Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys." Time ran somewhat
short towards the last, as my publishers were anxious to produce the
volume early in June; and when it came to the point of finishing off,
I sat up all through one beautiful night in May, till the farewell
words were written. At the very moment when, with a sigh of
satisfaction, I laid down my pen, a wandering nightingale on the
pear-tree outside my library window, burst into such a flood of song
as I have never heard before or since. The pear-tree was in full
blossom; the sky behind it was blue and cloudless; and as I listened
to the unwonted music, I could not help thinking that, had I been a
pious scribe of the Middle Ages who had just finished a laboriously
written life of some departed saint, I should inevitably have believed
that the bird was a ghostly messenger sent by the good saint himself
to congratulate me upon the completion of my task.