since been burnt, but which was so filled with books of every kind that
the whole house was a library, each bookcase being filled with a
different subject--the French Revolution, Demonology and Witchcraft,
&c., &c. Lady Houghton was living then, a most gentle, kind woman, a
sister of Lord Crewe. From Lord Houghton I received constant kindness
and protection from my first entering upon a literary life, and, in
spite of his excessive vanity, I was always sincerely attached to him.
“Butterfly to the hasty eye, he was firm in his friendships, firmest of
all in his fearless championship of the weak, the strugglers, the
undeservedly oppressed.” As Johnson says of Garth--“he communicated
himself through a very wide extent of acquaintance.” His conversation
was always interesting, but I have preserved scarcely any notes of my
visit to Fryston, and chiefly remember his mentioning that Sydney Smith
had said to him, what I have so often thought, “It is one of the great
riddles of life to me why good people should always be so dreadfully
stupid.” He also spoke of the many proverbs which discouraged exertion
in “doing good,” from the Persian “Do no good, and no harm will come of
it,” to the French--
“Pour faire du bien
Ne faites rien.”
Talking of the Baroness Burdett Coutts, Lord Houghton said, “Miss
Coutts likes me because I never proposed to her. Almost all the young
men of good family did: those who did their duty by their family
_always_ did. Mrs. Browne (Miss Coutts’ companion) used to see it
coming, and took herself out of the way for ten minutes, but she only
went into the next room and left the door open, and then the proposal
took place, and immediately it was done Miss Coutts coughed, and Mrs.
Browne came in again.”
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Dec. 10, 1872._--Went to visit the Ralph Duttons at Timsbury near
Romsey. The house is in a flat, and sees nothing but clipped laurel
hedges. Mr. Dutton is a sporting politician: Mrs. Dutton a politician
too, but _on the other side_. Both are full of pleasant conversation,
and most kind. Regarding English country-houses, however, it is as
Carlyle truly says, ‘Life may be as well spent there as elsewhere by the
owners of them, who have occupations to attend to. For visitors, when
large numbers are brought together, some practice is required if they
are to enjoy the elaborate idleness.’
“We drove to visit Mr. Cowper Temple at Broadlands--a pleasant liveable
house with beautiful flowers and pictures, the most remarkable of the
latter being Guercino’s ‘Hagar and the Angel’--an angel which poises and
floats, and Sir J. Reynolds’ ‘Infant Academy’ and ‘Babes in the Wood.’
In Mr. Cowper Temple’s room upstairs is Edward Clifford’s family group
of the ‘Maimed and Halt’ being called in to the feast, the figures being
those of the Cowper-Temples, Augustus Tollemaches, Lord Roden, Lady
Palmerston, and Clifford’s favourite drummer. They are wonderful
likenesses, but it is a strange picture, with our Saviour looking in at
the window.”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 13._--I arrived at Hatfield in the dark. A number of carriages
from the house met the guests at the station. As I emerged from it, a
little groom touched his hat and said, ‘Please, sir, are you the Lord
Chancellor?’ I thought I must have grown in dignity of aspect. The Lord
Chancellor was expected, and came later in the evening.
“I found Lord and Lady Salisbury in the library, lined with Burleigh
books and MSS. Mr. Richmond the artist was with them. He has the most
charming voice, which, quite independently of his conversation, would
make him agreeable. He talked of the enormous prices obtained for
statues and pictures at the present time, while Michelangelo only got
£90 and a block of marble for the great David at Florence, and Titian
the same for his Assumption at Venice. He spoke of the amount of
chicanery which existed amongst artists even then--how the monks, and
the nuns too, would supply them with good ultra-marine for their
frescoes, and how they would sell the ultra-marine and use smalt. He
described how Gainsborough never could sell anything but portraits:
people came to him for those, but would not buy his other pictures, and
his house was full of them when he died. Gainsborough gave two pictures
to the carrier who brought his other pictures from Clifton to London:
the carrier would take no fare, so he painted his waggon and horses and
another picture and gave them to him: these two pictures have been sold
lately for £18,000.
“Besides the Lord Chancellor Selborne with his two pleasant unaffected
daughters, Miss Alderson was here the first day, and Sir Henry and Lady
Maine. With the last I rambled in search of adventures in the evening,
and we walked in the long gallery, which is splendid, with a gilt
ceiling, only it is incongruous to see the old panelled wall brilliantly
lighted with gas.
“Lord Salisbury is delightful, so perfectly easy and unaffected: it
would be well if little great men would take pattern by him. Lady
Salisbury is equally unassuming, sound sense ever dropping from her lips
as unconsciously as Lady Margaret Beaumont’s bon-mots.”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 14._--Lady Salisbury showed us the house. In the drawing-room,
over the chimney-piece, is a huge statue of James I. of bronze. It is
not fixed, but supported by its own weight. A ball was once given in
that room. In the midst of the dancing some one observed that the bronze
statue was slowly nodding its head, and gave the alarm. The stampede was
frightful. All the guests fled down the long gallery.
“In the same room is a glorious portrait of Lord Salisbury’s grandmother
by Reynolds. It was this Lady Salisbury who was burnt to death in her
old age. She came in from riding, and used to make her maid change her
habit and dress her for dinner at once, as less fatiguing. Then she
rested for two or three hours with lighted candles near her, and read or
nodded in her chair. One evening, from the opposite wing of the house,
the late Lord Salisbury saw the windows of the rooms near hers blazing
with light, and gave the alarm, but before anybody could reach his
mother’s rooms they were entirely burnt--so entirely, that it would have
been impossible to identify her ashes for burial but for a ruby which
the present Lady Salisbury wears in a ring. A little heap of diamonds
was found in one place, but that proved nothing, as all her jewels were
burned with her, but the ruby her maid identified as having put on her
finger when she dressed her, and the ashes of that particular spot were
all gathered up and buried in a small urn. Her two favourite dogs were
burnt with her, and they are probably buried with her.[32] It was this
Lady Salisbury who was inadvertently thrown down by a couple waltzing
violently down the long gallery, when Lord Lytton, who was present,
irreverently exclaimed:
‘At Hatfield House Conservatives
Become quite harum-scarum,
For Radical could do no more
Than overturn Old Sarum.’[33]
[Illustration: HATFIELD.]
“In ‘Oliver Twist,’ Bill Sykes is described as having seen the fire at
Hatfield as he was escaping from London.
“In the dining-room there is a portrait by Wilkie of the Duke of
Wellington, painted when he was here after the battle of Waterloo. There
is also at Hatfield a beautiful picture of Mary Queen of Scots at
fifteen.[34] This, however, is not the authentic portrait. There is
another, a replica of that at Hardwicke, taken in a widow’s dress
shortly before her execution, which is one of the three portraits
certainly painted from life. It was sent by the Queen to the Duke of
Norfolk and intercepted by Lord Burleigh. One of the other two
portraits belonged to Louis Philippe. As Sir Henry Bulwer was waiting
for an audience of the king, another gentleman was in the room with him.
The portrait of Queen Mary hung on the wall. The stranger looked at it,
walked backwards and forwards to it, and examined it again and again. At
last he walked up to Sir Henry Bulwer and said, ‘Can you tell me, sir,
whom that portrait represents?’--‘Yes, I can,’ said Sir Henry; ‘but will
you tell me why you ask?’--‘Because it is the lowest type of criminal
face which is known to us.’ The stranger was Fouché the famous
detective.
“In Lady Salisbury’s own room is a picture of Miss Pine, Lord
Salisbury’s other grandmother, by Sir Joshua; also the Earl and Countess
of Westmoreland and their child, by Vandyke; also a curious picture of a
lady.
“‘She looks dull but good,’ said Miss Palmer.
“‘She looks clever but bad,’ said I.
“‘She _was_ desperately wicked,’ said Lady Salisbury, ‘and therefore it
is quite unnecessary to say that she was very religious. She endowed
almshouses--‘Lady Anne’s Almshouses,’--they still exist, and she sent
her son to Westminster with especial orders that he should be severely
flogged, when he was seventeen, and so soured his temper for life and
sent him to the bad entirely; and none but ‘a thoroughly
highly-principled woman’ could do such a villainous action as that. The
son lived afterwards at Quixwold, and led the most abominably wicked
life there, and died a death as horrible as his life. He sold everything
he could lay hands on, jewels and everything, all the old family plate
except one very ugly old flat candlestick and six old sconces, which
were painted over mahogany colour, and so were not known to be silver.
His is the phantom coach which arrives and drives up the staircase and
then disappears. Lord Salisbury heard it the other night when he was in
his dressing-room, and dressed again, thinking it was visitors, and went
down, but it was no one.’
“There is a picture of Elizabeth by Zucchero in the famous dress, all
eyes and ears, to typify her omniscience, and with the serpent of wisdom
on her arm: she loved allegorical dress. Her hat is here--an open-work
straw hat--and in the recess of the gallery her cradle, with A. R. for
Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth hated Hatfield. She was here in her childhood and
all through Mary’s reign, and she constantly wrote from hence complaints
to her father, to Mary, and to the Ministers, and they told her she must
bear it; but she hated it, and after she became queen she never saw
Hatfield again. The relics of her remain because James I. was in such a
hurry to exchange Hatfield for Theobalds, on account of the hunting
there, that he did not stop to take anything away.
“In the afternoon we had games, charades--Pilgrim, Pirate, Scullion, and
stories.”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 15._--Breakfast at a number of little round tables. I was at one
with Miss Palmer, the Attorney-General, and his daughter Miss Coleridge.
The Attorney-General told a story of a Mr. Kerslake, who was 6 feet 8
inches in height. A little boy in the Strand, looking up at him, said,
‘I say, Maister, if you was to fall down, you’d be halfway t’ome.’
“My cough prevented my going out, but we had Sunday-afternoon service in
the chapel, with beautiful singing. In the evening Lady Salisbury asked
me to tell stories to all the party, and it was sufficiently alarming
when I saw the Lord Chancellor in the first row, with the
Attorney-General on one side of him and Lord Cairns on the other. In
repeating a story, however, I always think of a bit of advice Mr. Jowett
gave me long ago--‘Try to say everything as well as you can say it.’ The
Attorney-General afterwards told us--
“There is at Clifton a Mr. Harrison, who is the second medical authority
there, a man of undoubted probity and reputation. He told me this.
“At Clifton lived a Mrs. Fry with her brother-in-law and his two
daughters, Elizabeth and Hephzibah. These were persons who, like many
Bristol people, had large property in the West Indies--the Miles’s, for
instance, made their fortunes there. The elder daughter, Elizabeth, had
been born in the West Indies, and when she fell into bad health, her
father took the opportunity of taking her back to benefit by her native
air, when he went to look after his West Indian property, leaving his
younger daughter, Hephzibah, with Mrs Fry.
“They had not been gone long when Hephzibah took a chill, and in a very
few days she died. Mr. Harrison attended her. Some days after he called
as a friend upon Mrs. Fry, when she said, ‘I want to tell you something
which has happened to me: I have seen Elizabeth.’--’ Impossible,’ said
Mr. Harrison. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it was so. I was sitting reading the
“Promise”’ (so I believe ‘Friends’ always call the Bible), ‘when I fell
into a state which was neither sleeping nor waking, and in that state--I
was not asleep--I saw Elizabeth standing by me. I spoke to her, and,
forgetting what had happened in my surprise, I told her to call her
sister. But she said to me that she had seen her sister already, and
that she was in a box, and had a great deal of sewing about her chest.
She especially used the word “sewing:” then she vanished away, and the
place in the Promise where I had left off was changed: some one had
turned it over.’ Mr. Harrison noted all this.
“Some time after came a letter from the father to Mrs. Fry, written
before he had heard of Hephzibah’s death. After speaking of other
matters he said, ‘I must now tell you of a very curious circumstance
which has occurred, and which is much on my mind. The other day
Elizabeth, who had been much better, and who is now nearly well,
surprised us by falling into a stupor, and when she came to herself she
would insist upon it that she had been to Clifton, and that she had seen
you and Hephzibah, and that Hephzibah was in a long box, with a great
deal of sewing upon her chest: and she says so still.’ The dates were
precisely the same.
“Hephzibah’s death was so sudden that there was a post-mortem
examination, though it was not considered necessary to distress Mrs. Fry
by telling her of it. On this occasion Mr. Harrison was unable to be
present. He went afterwards to the student of the hospital who was
there, and who remembered all about it, and he said--what Mr. Harrison
had not previously known--that after the examination the body was sewn
up, with a great deal of sewing upon the chest.”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 16._--The Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs. Tait arrived before
afternoon-tea, at which there was much lively conversation. Apropos of
Radicalism and the conversation of Bishops, Lord Salisbury mentioned
Sydney Smith’s saying that he would ‘rather fall a victim to a
democratic mob than be sweetly and blandly absorbed by a bishop.’
“In speaking of Jenny Lind, Mr. Richmond said that she had ‘none of the
warm ruddy glow of the sunny South in her character, it was rather the
soft calm beauty of Swedish moonlight.’ He spoke of the faces he had
drawn--of the interest of the ugly faces, if the lines had character; of
the difficulty of translating a face like a moon or a footstool; that
still such faces were quite the exception, and that he believed the
reason why he succeeded better than some others of his confraternity was
that he was better able to realise to himself the good in the character
of his subjects.”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 17._--Mr. Richmond was at the same little table at breakfast. He
talked of great writers and talkers, how their art was not the creation
of something new, but the telling of old things well in a new dress--the
bringing up the thoughts long bedridden in the chambers of their own
brain.
“He talked of Carlyle--of how his peculiarities began in affectation,
but that now he was simply lost in the mazes of his own vocabulary. One
night, he said, he met a man at Albert Gate at 12 P.M., who asked for a
light for his cigar. He did not see who it was till, as he was turning
away, he recognised Carlyle, who gave a laugh which could be heard all
down Piccadilly as he exclaimed, ‘I thought it was just any son of Adam,
and I find a friend.’ It was soon after the Pope’s return to Rome, and
Mr. Richmond spoke of him. ‘The poor old Pope,’ said Carlyle, ‘the
po-o-r old Pope! He has a big mouth! I do not like your button-holes of
mouths, like the Greek statues you are all so fond of.’
“Our third at the breakfast-table was a Mr. Jeffreys. Mr. Richmond said
afterwards that he was a conchologist, which he regarded as the very
tail of science--the topmost twig of the tree looking up at the sky.”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 19._--Yesterday I drew the gallery and chapel. There is something
mediæval in the band playing all dinner-time, yet without the sound
being overwhelming, from the great size of the room; in the way the host
and hostess sit in the middle like royalty, and in the little lovely
baskets of hot-house flowers given to each lady as she goes down the
staircase to dinner.”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 20._--The last collection of guests have included the Duke of
Wellington, the Cowleys, Lord and Lady Stanhope, and M. and Madame de
Lavalette--all full of interest. Certainly Hatfield is magnificent and
grandly kept up. I had much talk with Mrs. Lowe,[35] who delights in
tirades against Christianity. She said how absurd it was to expect
belief in the Bible, when no one could agree upon so recent a subject as
Lord Byron: that half the Bible was contrary to all reason: that it was
monstrous to suppose that the Deity could enjoin a murder like that of
Isaac, &c.”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 27, East Sheen._--Mrs. Stuart Wortley came to luncheon. She
remarked how that which was most striking in Italy was not the effect of
light, but of shadow. Into the shadows of England you could not
penetrate, but the shadows of Italy were transparent; the more you
looked into their cavernous depths, the more you saw there, discovering
marvels of beauty which existed there in repose.
“She told us that the secret of ‘the Haunted House in Berkeley Square’
is that it belonged to a Mr. Du Pré of Wilton Park. He shut up his
lunatic brother there in a cage in one of the attics, and the poor
captive was so violent that he could only be fed through a hole. His
groans and cries could be distinctly heard in the neighbouring houses.
The house is now to be let for £100 the first year, £200 the second,
£300 the third, but if the tenant leaves within that time, he is to
forfeit £1000. The house will be furnished in any style or taste the
tenant chooses.”
* * * * *
To MISS WRIGHT.
“_Holmhurst, Jan. 10, 1873._--I have had a pleasant visit at Battle
Abbey. The Duchess (of Cleveland) received me very kindly. The house is
comfortable and the library is first-rate, and there is always a
pleasure in a house which has ruins, cloisters, haunted yew
walks--history, in fact--in its garden. The Duke, who is one of the few
living of my father’s old friends, was very cordial; and Lord and Lady
Stanhope, whom I am devoted to, arrived with me. The rest of the guests
were Harry Stanhope, a clergyman, Colonel and Mrs. Heygarth, Colonel and
Mrs. Byng, Mr. Newton the Lycian archæologist, Mr. Planché the Somerset
Herald, and Mr. Campbell of Islay--a party which had plenty of good
materials. We drew, acted, and all tried to make ourselves agreeable.
The Duchess was a perfect hostess, amused us all very much, and was
intensely amused herself.”
* * * * *
My book “Wanderings in Spain,” came out in the autumn of 1872, and met
with a more enthusiastic reception from the public than anything I have
ever written. Three editions were called for in six weeks, but there the
sale ended.[36] The reviews were rapturously laudatory, but I felt at
the time how little reliance was to be placed upon their judgment,
though for the moment it was agreeable. The _Times_ declared that no
one ought to go to Spain without the book; the _Athenæum_, that only in
one instance had pleasanter sketches fallen under its notice; while the
_Spectator_ blew the loudest trumpet of all:--
* * * * *
“In this least commonplace, and yet most comprehensive of works of
travel, we find everything we have previously learnt of that
comparatively unworked mine of history, art, poetry, and nature, Spain,
as well as a great deal which is entirely novel. But the old is placed
in a dazzling light of fancy, association, and suggestion, and the new
is captivating. The skies of Spain shine, the wide-sweeping breezes
blow, the solemn church music swells, the ancient grandeur, gravity, and
dignity of the history and life of the country, the old Moorish
magnificence, the splendid chivalry, the religious enthusiasm, the stern
loyalty and narrow pride of the races of Arragon and Castile, all live
again in the vivid pages of this book.”
* * * * *
The unusual success which was attending my “Walks in Rome,” and the many
notes which I already possessed for a similar work in the neighbourhood,
made me now devote my time to “Days near Rome,” and in January I left
England to make Rome a centre from whence to revive my recollection of
the towns I had already visited in the Campagna and its surrounding
mountains, and to examine and sketch those I had not yet seen.
Altogether, “Days near Rome” is the one of my books in the preparation
of which I had the greatest enjoyment, and from which I have had least
disappointment since its publication.[37] I was, however, terribly ill
soon after my arrival at Rome, and nearly died there.
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Paris, Jan. 19, 1873._--I have felt most dolorous on the journey, and
often repented having decided to come abroad: I so dread seeing Rome
again. Still, as last year I added £252 to my income by small writings
exclusive of the ‘Memorials,’ I must look upon it as a profession, and
of course as _such_ it is very pleasant. This morning I am cheered by
George Sheffield’s pleasure at seeing me, and I am going to dine with
the Comte and Comtesse de Clermont-Tonnerre.”
* * * * *
“_Florence, Jan. 23._--All descriptions of ‘sensations’ in the Mont
Cenis tunnel must be pure imagination. It is exactly like any other
tunnel. I came all the way from Paris with two American ladies, one of
them very handsome, but the sort of person who said, ‘I guess I am
genteelly well satisfied’ when she had finished her dinner, and that she
had read ‘Walks in Rome,’ which ‘was a very elegant book, a very elegant
book indeed.’”
[Illustration: FIDENAE.][38]
* * * * *
“_81 Via della Croce, Rome, Jan. 27._--I left Florence on a still,
mizzly morning. How familiar all the dear places seemed on the way, and
yet how changed the feeling with which one saw them--Thrasymene,
Perugia, Assisi, Spoleto--all so much to _us_, so woven into _our_
lives, and I was thankful for the twilight obscurity before the steep of
Fidenae rose beside us, and then the towers of the beloved city crested
the hill, the hill down which my darling drove so often in her little
carriage to the Ponte Salario and the Ponte Nomentano, drinking in the
full beauty of the historic loveliness. On Saturday I removed to these
rooms in the house of Voight, a German artist, much beloved by the
Bunsens, and indeed married to his old still-existing Signora from their
house. I think that the rooms will answer sufficiently, though, as the
Voights have never let rooms before, there is a terrible amount of
talking over everything I need. The whole family, of three generations,
were called into council the first time I desired to have an egg for
breakfast, and then it came in raw, and yesterday the scene was
repeated. However, ‘_pazienza_.’
“On Sunday I went up first to the Pincio, and I cannot say--indeed no
one could understand--all that that walk is to me, where day after day,
for so many feeble winters, we helped my darling along; whence she
looked down upon the windows so sacred to her in the San Sebastianello;
where every shrub was familiar and commented upon, as not even those in
the garden at Holmhurst have ever been. Nothing has been more _our_
garden. It seemed almost sacrilege to see the changes, and they are not
many. In the afternoon I went again with my old friend Stopford
Sackville.
“It has been a great effort--a gasp--coming here, but I am thankful now
that I came. There is something in the simple greetings of all our poor
friends--‘Lei stá solo adesso--ahi poverino!’--far more to me than
anything else could be, and the very trees and ruins talk to me, only
that as _she_ saw her Augustus’s, so I see my Mother’s name engraven on
every stone. In some ways I seem every day to make fresh acquaintance
with my solitary life.
“It is perfect summer here, the Villa Doria a sheet of flowers, anemones
of every hue, violets almost over. ‘How full of sources of comfort has
God made this lovely woe-world,’ as Mrs. Kemble says.”
* * * * *