found married to his sweet wife (Christina Fraser Tytler) and living in
the Rectory in Wimpole Park in Cambridgeshire, close to the great house
of our cousin Lord Hardwicke, which is very ugly, though it contains
many fine pictures.[23] In the beginning of October I was at Ford with
Lady Waterford, meeting the Ellices, Lady Marion Alford, and Lady
Herbert of Lea, who had much to tell of La Palma, the _estatica_ of
Brindisi, who had the stigmata, and could tell wonderful truths to
people about their past and future. Lady Herbert had been to America,
Trinidad, Africa--in fact, everywhere, and in each country had, or
thought she had, the most astounding adventures--living with bandits in
a cave, overturned on a precipice, &c. She had travelled in Spain and
was brimful of its delights. She had armed herself with a Papal permit
to enter all monasteries and convents. She had annexed the Bishop of
Salamanca and driven in his coach to Alva, the scene of S. Teresa’s
later life. The nuns refused to let her come in, and the abbess
declared it was unheard of; but when Lady Herbert produced the bishop
and the Papal brief, she got in, and the nuns were so captivated that
they not only showed her S. Teresa’s dead body, but dressed her up in
all S. Teresa’s clothes, and set her in S. Teresa’s arm-chair, and gave
her her supper out of S. Teresa’s porringer and platter. “Can you see
Lady Jane Ellice’s face,” I read in a letter from Ford to Miss
Leycester, “as Lady Herbert ‘goes on’ about the Blessed Paul of the
Cross, the holy shift of S. Teresa, and the saintly privileges of a
hermit’s life?” The first evening she was at Ford Lady Herbert said:--
* * * * *
“Did you never hear the story of ‘La Jolie Jambe’? Well, then, I will
tell it you. Robert, my brother-in-law, told me. He knew the old lady it
was all about in Paris, and had very often gone to sit with her.
“It was an old lady who lived at ‘le pavillon dans le jardin.’ The great
house in the Faubourg was given up to the son, you know, and she lived
in the pavillon. It was a very small house, only five or six rooms, and
was magnificently furnished, for the old lady was very rich indeed, and
had a great many jewels and other valuable things. She lived quite alone
in the pavillon with her maid, but it was considered quite safe in that
high-terraced garden, raised above everything else, and which could only
be approached through the house.
“However, one morning the old lady was found murdered, and all her
jewels and valuables were gone. Of course suspicion fell upon the maid,
for who else could it be? She was taken up and tried. The evidence was
insufficient to convict her, and she was released, but every one
believed her guilty. Of course she could get no other place, and she was
so shunned and pointed at as a murderess that her life was a burden to
her.
“One day, eleven years after, the maid was walking down a street when
she met a man, who, as she passed, looked suddenly at her and exclaimed,
‘Oh, la jolie jambe!’ She immediately rushed up to a sergeant-de-ville
and exclaimed, ‘Arrêtez-moi cet homme.’ The man was confused and
hesitated, but she continued in an agony, ‘Arrêtez-le, je vous dis: je
l’accuse, je l’accuse du meurtre de ma maîtresse.’ Meanwhile the man had
made off, but he was pursued and taken.
“The maid said at the trial, that, on the night of the murder, the
windows of the pavilion had been open down to the ground; that they were
so when she was going to bed; that as she was getting into bed she sat
for a minute on its edge to admire her legs, looked at them, patted one
of them complacently, and exclaimed, ‘Oh, la jolie jambe!’
“The man then confessed that while he had been hidden in the bushes of
the garden waiting to commit his crime, he had seen the maid and heard
her, and that, when he met her in the street, the scene and the words
rushed back upon his mind so suddenly, that, as if under an irresistible
impulse, his lips framed the words ‘Oh, la jolie jambe.’ The man was
executed.”
* * * * *
Lady Herbert also told us that--
* * * * *
“Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, had a sheep-dog to which he was quite
devoted, and which used to go out and collect his sheep. One day in
winter a thick snow came on, and Hogg was in the greatest anxiety about
his flocks. He called his dog and explained all the matter to him,
telling him how he was going all round one side of the moors himself to
drive in his sheep, and that he was to go the other way and collect. The
dog understood perfectly. Late in the evening the Shepherd returned
perfectly exhausted, bringing in his flock through the deep snow, but
the dog had not come back. Hour after hour passed and the dog did not
return. The Shepherd, who was devoted to his dog, was very anxious about
it, when at last he heard a whining and scratching at the door, and
going out, found the dog bringing all his sheep safe, and in its mouth a
little puppy, which it laid at its master’s feet, and instantly darted
off through the snow to seek another and bring it in. The poor thing had
puppied in the snow, but would not on that account neglect one iota of
its duty. It brought in its second puppy, laid it in its master’s lap,
looked up wistfully in his face as if beseeching him to take care of it,
and--died.”
* * * * *
Lady Marion Alford is a real _grande dame_. Some one, Miss Mary Boyle, I
think, wrote a little book called the “Court of Queen Marion,”
descriptive of her and her intimate circle. At Ford she talked much of
the pleasure of Azeglio’s _Ricordi_, how he was the first Italian
writer who had got out of the ‘_conciosiachè_ style,’ and she was
delightful with her reminiscences of Italy:--
* * * * *
“Once when I was spending the summer in Italy I wanted models, and I was
told by an old general, a friend of mine, that I had better advertise,
send up to the priests in the mountains, and tell them to send down all
the prettiest children in their villages to be looked at: the lady
wanted models; those she chose she should pay, the others should each
have sixpence and a cake. I was told I had better prepare for a good
many--perhaps a hundred might come. When the day came, I never shall
forget our old servant’s face when he rushed in--‘Miladi, Miladi, the
lane is full of them.’ There were seven hundred. It was very difficult
to choose. We made them pass in at one door of the villa and out at the
other. Those we selected we sent into the garden, and from these we
chose again. Some were perfect monsters, for every mother thought her
own child perfection. Those we selected to come first were a lovely
family of three children with their mother. They were to come on a
Wednesday. The day came, and they never appeared: the next, and still
they did not come. Then we asked our old general about it, and he said,
‘The fact is, I have kicked my carpenter downstairs this morning because
he said you were sending for the children to suck their blood, and they
all think so.’ They none of them ever came.
“Our old maid Teresa was of a very romantic turn of mind. We used, when
I was a child, to live in the Palazzo Sciarra, where the ‘Maddalena
della Radice’ is. She used to stand opposite to the picture and exclaim
in gulpy tones, ‘Sono bestia io, e non capisco niente, ma questo me
pare--pittoresco.’ My little sister, when our father was away, stood one
day at the top of the stairs and said, ‘Io son padrona di casa, e no son
padrona di casa: voi siete la servitu, e non siete la servitu.’ Teresa
exclaimed, ‘Questa diavola, com’ é carina.’ We used to hear Teresa
talking to our other maid, and they boasted of the number of times they
had been beaten by their husbands. One day--it was during the French
occupation, when the bread was doled out--Teresa took her tambourine
with her when she went to get it, for they all loved flirting with the
soldiers; and when her husband asked her what it was for, she said it
was to bring back the bread in. But when she got inside the circle of
soldiers, they had a merry _saltarello_. The husband was kept back
outside the circle, and stood there furious. At first she laughed at
him, but then when he went away and came back again, she got really
frightened. And when she came out of the circle he flogged her with a
whip all the way back to the Trastevere, and she ran before him
screaming.
“How curious it is that ‘_Est locanda_’ is still to be seen in Roman
windows of houses to be let--the one little relic of Latin: and how odd
the word for lodgings being the same in all languages--Quartier,
Quartos, Quartiere, Quarter, &c.”
Lady Marion also said:--
* * * * *
“As we were leaving Gibraltar, three of the shells from the practising
fell quite close to our yacht. ‘Are you not very much frightened?’ said
a French gentleman on board. ‘Not in the least,’ I said. ‘How could I
be? our men are such perfect marksmen;’ but of course I was dreadfully.”
* * * * *
This story is wonderfully characteristic of the speaker: the Empress
Catherine might have given such an answer. About ghosts Lady Marion was
very amusing:--
* * * * *
“When I went to Belvoir with Lady Caroline Cust, they danced in the
evening. I went upstairs early, for I was tired. As I was going to my
room, Lady Jersey--it was wrong of her, I think--said, ‘Oh, I see you
are put into the ghost-room.’ I said, ‘I am quite happy; there are no
real ghosts here, I think.’--‘Well,’ said Lady Jersey, ‘I can only say
Miss Drummond slept there last night, and she received letters of
importance this morning and left before breakfast.’ Well, I went into my
room, and lit the candles and made up the fire, but very soon I gave a
great jump, for I heard the most dreadful noise close at my
elbow--Oh-o-oo-oo!’ I thought of course that it was a practical joke,
and began to examine every corner of the room, thinking some one must be
hidden there; then I rang my bell. When my maid came in I said, ‘Now
don’t be frightened, but there is some one hidden in this room
somewhere, and you must help me to find him.’ Very soon the noise came
again. Then Lady Caroline came, and she heard it: then her maid came.
The noise occurred about every five minutes. We examined everything and
stood in each corner of the room. The noise then seemed close to each of
us. At last Lady Caroline said, ‘I can stand this no longer, and I must
go,’ and she and her maid went away and shut themselves into the next
room. Then I said to my maid, ‘If you are frightened you had better go,’
but she protested that she would rather stay where she was; after what
she had heard, anything would be better than facing the long lonely
passages alone. However, just at that moment ‘Oh-o-oo-oo!’ went off
again close to her ear, and with one spring she darted out of the room
and ran off as hard as ever she could. I went courageously to bed and
determined to brave it out. But the thing went to bed too, and went off
at intervals on the pillow close to my face. And at last it grated on my
nerves to such a degree that I could bear it no longer, and I dragged a
mattress into Lady Caroline’s room and slept there till dawn. The next
morning I also received letters of importance and left before breakfast.
“Before I left, I sent for the housekeeper, and said, ‘You really should
not put people into that room,’ and told her what had happened. She was
much distressed, and told me that there really was no other room in the
house then, but confessed it had often happened so before. Some time
after I went over to Belvoir with some friends who wanted to see the
castle, and the housekeeper then told me that the same thing had
happened again in that room, which was now permanently shut up.”
* * * * *
Other guests at Ford were Mrs. Richard Boyle (known as E. V. B.), and
her daughter--very quaint and original, and the mother a capital artist.
We went to the Rowting Lynn, a beautiful spot surrounded with rocks
overhung by old oak-trees. “Did you enjoy your walk?” said Lady
Waterford to Mrs. Boyle as we came in. “Yes, excessively. You never told
me you had a waterfall. You offered me a coal-pit, but the waterfall you
forgot to mention.”
Lady Waterford was herself more delightful than ever. As Marocetti said
of her, “C’est un grand homme, mais une femme charmante.” Here are some
scraps from her conversation:--
* * * * *
“That is a sketch of L. H. She did not know I was drawing her. She looks
sixteen, but is quite middle-aged. Mama used to say she was like
preserved green peas. Preserved green peas are not quite so good as real
green peas, but they do very nearly as well.’
“I always take a little book with me in the train and draw the things as
I pass them. That is some railings against a sunset sky when it was
almost dark: I thought it was like a bit of Tintoret.
“How trying it is to be kept waiting for people. Don’t you know the
Italian proverb?--
‘Aspettare e non venire,
Star in letto e non dormire,
Vuol piacer, e non gradire.’
Miss Boyle had a much better one, though--
‘To do, to suffer, is a glorious state,
But a more noble portion is to _wait_.’
“How beautiful the singing was in our young days--Grisi and Mario and
Lablache, who went straight to one’s heart and fluttered there.
“Some one, old Madame de Flahault I think it was, asked what she could
give as a present. It must be ‘très rare et pas coûteux,’ and it was
suggested that she should give a lock of her hair.
“You are like the old lady who said she had never had a ripe peach in
her life, because when she was young all the old people had them, and
when she grew old all the young people had them.
“I am longing to read ‘Marjory,’[25] but I cannot when I have my house
full--my novel _en action_. When people are here and tell me their
little stories, that is what I like best to read.”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
“_Crook Hall, Lancashire, Oct. 20, 1872._--My visit at Ford was
perfectly enchanting, and I made several new friendships there in what
you think my sudden way, especially one with Lord Ronald Gower, which I
think may become a pleasure. I much enjoyed, too, making friends with
Mr. Beaumont and Lady Margaret B., one of the very best types of a fine
lady it is possible to meet, almost funnily aristocratic in all her
ideas, and high-minded in proportion. Her little person is arrayed in
gowns which were as much things of beauty _in their way_ as a mountain
landscape; there is such a difference between ‘smart dress,’ and such a
lovely harmony of shade and colour, as one can scarcely think of as mere
clothing. Then I saw a great deal of the dear Lady Waterford, and am
more than ever instructed and touched by her beautiful, noble, holy
life. It is absolutely impossible to her to ‘think any evil,’ and so, to
her, the best side of every one comes out. As an easier ‘let down’ than
anything else, I accepted an invitation from thence to Lord and Lady
Grey for three days at Howick on the wild sea-coast, and enjoyed my
visit immensely. No one has more completely ‘l’art de narrer’ than Lady
Grey, and he is full of old-fashioned courtesy and kindness, such
winning manners and heart-whole goodness.
“My ‘Memorials’ are out! Ere this all will have it. I know there will be
much abuse and many varieties of opinion, but I am conscious of having
carried out the book as I believe to be best for others, not for myself,
and in this consciousness can bear what is said. ‘Je laisse couler le
torrent,’ as Mme. de Sevigné used to say. One thing I dread is, that
people should think I am a better person than I am, on reading the book:
for I suppose it is always the fact that a man’s book is the best of
him, his thought better than his life. But in any case, it is a relief
to have it out (as Arthur and Mary Stanley, at the last moment,
persuaded Mr. Murray to go to my publishers to try to stop the
publication), yet it is also a wrench to part with the occupation and
chief thought of two desolate years.”
* * * * *
“_Dalton Hall, Oct. 28._--A second edition of the ‘Memorials’ was called
for before it had been out three days. I have had many letters about
it--charming ones from Mrs. Arnold and the old Baroness de Bunsen. The
olive-bearing dove has gone out with healing on his wings, and all the
mists are cleared off and the long-standing feuds of the Hare family
healed by the book. Still the Stanleys make no sign.
‘Alas! how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too much or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.’[26]
“I certainly do suffer very much when people mean me to do so, to a
degree which must be quite satisfactory to them; but then in
compensation I always enjoy very much when it is the reverse. It is as I
read somewhere--‘He who is the first to be touched by the thorns is
soonest awake to the flowers.’
“From the Oswald Penrhyns’ at Huyton I saw in the same day two great
houses--the vast and hideous Knowsley, which interested me from its
connection with my Mother’s youth, and the glorious old hall of Speke,
which has an air of venerable beauty quite unrivalled. Then I went for
some days to Lord Brougham’s, a delightful place, full of tapestry and
pictures, but though it looks old, really a modern castle, with the
ruins of the truly ancient castle on the river-bank hard by.”
* * * * *
In November I went north again to stay for the first time at Bretton
near Wakefield, a great house in the Black Country, built by the famous
“Madam Beaumont,” who followed the example of her ancestors in making an
enormous fortune by her skilful management of her lead-mines. It is
recorded that when Mr. Pitt was dining with her, and all her magnificent
plate was set out, she exclaimed, with pardonable pride, “That is all
the lead-mines,” when he replied, “Oh, really, I thought it was silver,”
and would talk on, to her great annoyance, and never allow her a moment
to explain. I had made friends with her grandson, Wentworth Beaumont, at
Ford, when he was there with his wife Lady Margaret, whom I have always
regarded as the most thoroughly pleasant specimen in existence of a
really fine lady. Her powers of conversation were boundless, her gift of
repartee unequalled, and her memory most extraordinary. She was the
daughter of Lady Clanricarde, celebrated for her conversational talents,
and whom I remember Lady Carnarvon describing as “the most agreeable
woman in England, because she was not only massive, but lively.” Lady
Margaret was like a little queen amongst her guests, entertaining with
the simplicity of real kindness and thoughtfulness for others, whilst
her manner was equally agreeable to all, and she never usurped
attention, but rather exerted herself to draw others out and to show the
best side of them. She could be alarming as an enemy, but she was a most
faithful friend, and would exert herself to take definite trouble for
her friends, never deserting them unless they were proved to be really
unworthy. She was not exactly pretty, but her animation was more
charming than mere beauty. Dress with her was not a mere adjunct, but
was made as much a thing of poetic beauty as a landscape or a flower.
She was devoted to her husband, but theoretically she disapproved of
love in a general way. Still she was only worldly in principle and not
in practice, and she was ever a devoted mother to her children, seeking
their real happiness rather than their advancement before the world.[27]
I have often been at Bretton since my first visit there, and always
enjoyed it from the constant animation which the hostess shed around
her; the excessive comfort of the house and of the thoroughly
well-regulated household; the plenty of time for work and writing, and
yet the constant variety afforded by the guests coming and going: while
with the children of the house I was very intimate, and with the
youngest, Hubert, long on terms of almost elder-brotherly affection.
Lady Francis Gordon was generally at Bretton when I have been there,
rather an amusing than an agreeable person, but an immense talker. One
of her first remarks to me was characteristic--“I am quite past the age
of blushing: when I want to do anything of that kind, I what they call
_flush_ now.” I have frequently seen Colonel Crealock[28] at Bretton,
who drew animals so splendidly. He told me once--
* * * * *
“Old Lady Selby of the Mote at Ightham had been out to some grand party
in all her diamonds and jewels. She slept in a room which still remains
the same, hung all round with tapestry representing events in the life
of Julius Caesar. Through this room was the dressing-room, in which she
kept her jewels and valuables. On the night of her return from the
party, as she was undressing and taking off her jewels, she looked up at
the figure of Julius Caesar in the tapestry, and thought she saw
something peculiar in one of his eyes. She looked again, and felt sure
the eye moved. She quietly proceeded, however, to take off her jewels
and put them away. Having done that, she locked the jewel-case, left it
in the dressing-room, and went to bed.
“She had not been in bed long when a man appeared in the room with a
candle and a knife. Coming up to the bed, he passed the light again and
again close before her eyes. She bore it without flinching in the least,
only appeared to become restless and turned over in her sleep. Then he
proceeded to the dressing-room and became occupied over the jewels. As
soon as she was aware that he was entirely engrossed, she darted out of
bed, banged to the door of the dressing-room, locked it on the outside,
and rang violently for assistance. When help came, and the door was
opened, they found the man strangled from trying to get through the iron
bars of the window.
“The portrait of old Lady Selby still remains at the Mote.”[29]
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Bretton Park, Nov. 21, 1872._--To-day we went--Lady Francis Gordon,
Mrs. Lowther, Mr. Doyle, and I--to luncheon at Walton, an extraordinary
house in the middle of a lake, which belonged to the Roman Catholic Mr.
Waterton, the great ornithologist. It is approached by a long drawbridge
and is most curious. A Mr. Hailstone lives there now, a strange man,
who spends his large fortune on antiquities, and has a wife who writes
on lace, and wonderful collections.[30] Their son has never eaten
anything but buttered toast, cheese, and port-wine (has never tasted
meat, vegetables, or fruit), but is eight years old and very
flourishing.
“Lord and Lady Salisbury are here. The latter can only be described by
the word ‘jocund,’ except when she does not wish to make acquaintance or
desires to snub people, when she becomes hopelessly impenetrable. There
is a party of fourteen, all new to me, but I get on very well. They look
upon me as an aboriginal from another hemisphere, and indeed they are
that to me; but it is too new a set to feel the least shy in. There is
great satisfaction in being only a _background_ figure, and Lady
Margaret is quite charming, the house handsome, and the park pretty. We
all went to church this morning in a sort of family drawing-room in the
grounds, the vulgar herd screened off by red curtains, only the
clergyman in his pulpit visible above the screen.”
* * * * *
I made a very interesting excursion with Lady Margaret and some of her
guests to Haworth, the wild weird home of the Brontës on the Yorkshire
fells, where the steep street with the stones placed edgeways, up which
the horses scramble like cats, leads to the wind-stricken churchyard,
with its vast pavement of tombstones set close together. On one side of
this is the dismal grey stone house where the three unhappy sisters
lived, worked, and suffered, with the window at the side through which
Patrick Brontë used to climb at night. Not a tree is to be seen in the
neighbourhood except the blackened lilac before the Rectory door. Nature
is her dreariest self, and offers no ameliorations. The family were
buried beneath their pew in the church,[31] so that Charlotte, the last
survivor, sat in church over the graves of her brothers and sisters. The
people seemed half savage, most of all the Rector, who violently hurled
Lady Margaret and Lady Catherine Weyland from his door when they asked
to see the house, being bored, I suppose, by the pertinacity of
visitors.
The Brontës were really Pronty--Irish--but when old Mr. Brontë went to
college, he did the wise thing of changing his name, and the family kept
to it.