London. Exactly as the clock struck twelve he passed the headmaster’s
door in a fly. Both he and the friend who was with him were at that
moment attracted by seeing a hackney-coach at the door--a most unusual
sight at that time of night, and a male figure, wrapped in black,
descend from it and glide into the house, without, apparently, ringing,
or any door being opened. He spoke of it to his friend, and they both
agreed that it was equally mysterious and inexplicable. The next day,
the circumstance so dwelt on Mr. Merivale’s mind, that he returned to
Harrow, and going to the house, asked if the headmaster, Dr. Butler, was
at home. ‘No,’ said the servant. Then he asked who had come at twelve
o’clock the night before. No one had come, no one had been heard of, no
carriage had been seen; but Dr. Butler’s father had died just at that
moment in a distant county.
“Sir Charles Russell told us--
“When the 34th Regiment was quartered at Gibraltar, it had the stupidest
and dullest set of officers that can possibly be imagined; they not only
knew nothing, but they preferred to know nothing; and especially were
they averse to learning anything of Spanish, which was certainly very
short-sighted of them, as it cut them off from so many social pleasures.
But nevertheless they all very much admired a beautiful young Spanish
señorita who was living at Gibraltar, and pretended that they were not
otherwise than in her good graces, which of course was simply bombast,
as none of them knew a word of Spanish and scarcely a word of French, so
that not one of them had ever spoken to her.
“One day, while the regiment was at Gibraltar, a young ensign came to
join, who had never been abroad before, and who knew even less of any
foreign language than his comrades. Nevertheless, in a short time he
had taken cue by them, and pretended more than all the others to be in
the good graces of the young lady, and was well laughed at accordingly.
“One evening at mess one of the officers mentioned that the señorita was
going to Cadiz. ‘No, she is not,’ said the young ensign. ‘Oh, you young
jackanapes,’ said his fellow-officers, ‘what can you know about it? You
know nothing about her.’--‘Yes,’ he said sharply, ‘I do. She is not
going to Cadiz; and what is more, I beg that her name may not be brought
forward in this way at mess any more: I am engaged to be married to
her.’
“There was a universal roar, and an outcry of ‘You don’t suppose we are
going to believe that?’ But the ensign said, ‘I give you my word of
honour as an officer and a gentleman that I _am_ engaged to be married
to her.’
“Then the Colonel, who was present, said, ‘Well, as he represents it in
this way, we are bound to believe him.’ And then, turning to the young
ensign, said, ‘Now my dear fellow, as we do accept what you say, I think
you need not leave us up in the clouds like this. Will you not tell us
how it came about? You cannot wonder that we should be a little
surprised, when we know that you do not speak a word of Spanish and only
two or three words of French, that you should be engaged to be married
to this young lady.’
“‘Well,’ said the ensign, ‘since you accept what I say, yes, I do not
wonder that you are a little surprised. I do not mind telling you all
about it. It is quite true I do not understand a word of Spanish,
* * * * *
and only three or four words of French, but that does not matter. After
the ball at the Convent the other day (the house of the Governor of
Gibraltar is called ‘the Convent’) we went out upon the balcony, and we
watched the moonlight shimmering on the waves of the sea, and I looked
up into her eyes, and I said, “Voulez vous?” and she said, “Quoi?”--and
I said, “Moi;” and she said, “Oui”--and it was quite enough.’
“In the churchyard here is an epitaph ‘To the memory of J. T. C., a man
of great uprightness and integrity, and, as far as is consistent with
human imperfection, an honest man.”[69]
* * * * *
“_Sonning, Nov. 17, 1873._--It is quite curious how intimately this
parish and its Rector (Hugh Pearson) are bound together. The Rectory is
less his house than that of all his parishioners, and it is perfectly
open to them at all times. The choir is most amusing, the ‘poor dear
chicks,’ as the Rector calls them, combing each other’s hair in the
vestry before coming into church. A number of young men are constant
intimates of the house, especially ‘Ken,’ Kenneth Mackenzie; ‘Spes,’
Hope; and ‘Francis,’ Lord Francis Harvey. There was once a bishopric
here, a fact which was disputed by Professor Stubbs at Oxford, who said
it was at Ramsbury, upon which the Vicar immediately left his card on
him as ‘Bishop of Sonning.’
“Speaking of Arthur Stanley’s absence of mind, H. P. has been
describing how one day driving from Monreale to Palermo with their
carpet-bags on the seat before them, Arthur suddenly complained of the
cold. ‘Well, you had better put something on,’ said H. P. ‘I will,’ said
Arthur. H. P. went on with his book, till, after some time, suddenly
looking up, he saw Arthur, who was also busily engaged in reading,
entirely clothed in white raiment. He had put on his night-shirt over
all his other clothes, without thinking what he was doing, and they were
just driving into the streets of Palermo!”
* * * * *
“_Ascot Wood, Jan. 5, 1874._--I came to London three weeks ago in a
thick fog, such as Charles Lamb would have said was meat, drink, and
clothing. One day I went with Lady Ashburton to visit Mr. Carlyle. It
was most interesting--the quaint simple old-fashioned brick house in
Cheyne Row; the faded furniture; the table where he toiled so long and
fruitlessly at the deification of Frederick the Great; the workbox and
other little occupatory articles of the long dead wife, always left
untouched; the living niece, jealous of all visitors, thinking that even
Lady Ashburton must have either testamentary or matrimonial intentions;
and the great man himself in a long grey garment, half coat, half
dressing-gown, which buttoned to the throat and fell in straight folds
to the feet or below them, like one of the figures in Noah’s Ark, and
with the addition, when he went out with us, of an extraordinary tall
broad-brimmed felt hat, which can only be procured at a single village
in Bavaria, and which gave him the air of an old magician.
“He talked of Holman Hunt’s picture of the Home at Nazareth, ‘the most
unnatural thing that ever was painted, and the most unnatural thing in
it the idea that the Virgin should be keeping her “preciosities” in the
carpenter’s shop.
“He talked of Landor, of the grandeur and unworldliness of his nature,
and of how it was a lasting disgrace to England that the vile calumnies
of an insolent slanderer had been suffered to blight him in the eyes of
so many, and to send him out an exile from England in his old age.
“He complained much of his health, fretting and fidgeting about himself,
and said he could form no worse wish for the devil than that he might be
able to give him his stomach to digest with through all eternity.
“We walked out with him in the street, one on each side. I saw the
cab-drivers pointing and laughing at the extraordinary figure, and
indeed it was no wonder.
“At Mrs. Thornton’s I met Miss Thackeray at dinner, and have seen her
since. She is charming, well worthy to be the authoress of her books.
She said till the money for ‘Old Kensington’ was spent, she should rest.
She spoke of the happiness of bringing up her little niece, of the
surroundings of young life which it gave her. She talked much of the
‘Memorials,’ and of the problem how far it was well to be contented with
a quiet life as God sent it, and how far one ought to _seek_ for work
for Him. When I said something of her books and their giving pleasure;
she said, ‘Now let us skip that last sentence and go back to what we
were saying before.’
“Colonel and Mrs. Henderson (of the Police Force) were at dinner. He
said his father had been executor to old Lord Bridport, who had a box
which no one was ever allowed to open, and of the contents of which even
Lady Bridport was ignorant. After Lord Bridport’s death, the widow sent
for Colonel Henderson to look into things, and then said, ‘I wish you
would open that box; one ought to know about it.’ Colonel Henderson did
not like doing it, but took the box into the library and sat down before
it, with candles by his side. Immediately he heard a movement on the
other side of the table, and, looking up, saw old Lord Bridport as
clearly as he had ever seen him in his life, scowling down upon him with
a furious expression. He went back at once to Lady Bridport and
positively refused to open the box, which was then destroyed unopened.
He said, ‘I shall never to my dying day forget the face of Lord Bridport
as I saw him after he was dead.’
“In Wilton Crescent I saw Mrs. Leycester, who was just come from
Cheshire. She said:--
“A brother of Sir Philip Egerton has lately been given a living in
Devonshire, and went to take possession of it. He had not been long in
his rectory before, coming one day into his study, he found an old lady
seated there in an arm-chair by the fire. Knowing no old lady could
really be there, and thinking the appearance must be the result of an
indigestion, he summoned all his courage and boldly sat down upon the
old lady, who disappeared. The next day he met the old lady in the
passage, rushed up against her, and she vanished. But he met her a third
time, and then, feeling that it could not always be indigestion, he
wrote to his sister in Cheshire, begging her to call upon the Misses
Athelstan, sisters of the clergyman who had held his living before, and
say what he had seen. When they heard it, the Misses Athelstan looked
inexpressibly distressed and said, ‘That was our mother: we hoped it was
only to us she would appear. When we were there, she appeared
constantly, but when we left, we hoped she would be at rest.’
“About ‘ghost-stories’ I always recollect what Dr. Johnson used to
say--‘The beginning and end of ghost-stories is this, all argument is
against them, all belief is for them.’
“I have had a charming visit here at Ascot to the Lefevres, the only
other guest being old Mr. Cole of South Kensington, the incarnation of
‘Father Christmas’ or of ‘Old King Cole.’ He talked of the facility of
getting money and the difficulty of keeping it. He said that when he
wanted money for a Music School, he asked Sir Titus Salt for a
subscription. Sir Titus asked him what he wanted him to give. ‘Whatever
you think will look best at the day of judgment,’ said Mr. Cole. Sir
Titus signed a cheque for £1000.
“Sir John Lefevre described a place in Essex belonging to a Mr. (now Sir
William) and Mrs. Stephenson. When they first went there, the
housekeeper said there was one room which it was never the custom to
use. For a long time it continued to be unoccupied, but one day, when
the house was very full and an unexpected arrival announced, Mrs. S.
said she should open and air it, and sent for the key. All the people
staying in the house, full of curiosity, went with her when she visited
the room for the first time. It was a large panelled room containing a
bed like a catafalque, with heavy stuff curtains drawn all round. They
drew aside the curtains, and there was the mark of a bloody hand upon
the pillow! The room was shut up again from that time forward.”
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, Jan. 22._--George Sheffield is here. He says that the
Russian Minister’s wife at Washington called her dog ‘Moreover,’ because
of ‘Moreover the dog came and licked his sores.’”
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, Jan. 24._--‘No,’ says Lea, ‘everything is not improving. I
always say that everything has been going to the bad since the pudding
lost its place.’
“‘Why, what can you mean?’
“‘Oh, in the old days, the good old days, the pudding always used to be
before the meat, and then people were not so extravagant at the
butcher’s. Why, old Mr. Taylor[70] used to say to me, “You know, marm,”
says he, “we used to tak’ a bit of the dough when the bread was rising,
and slip in an apple or two without peeling ’em, and bake ’em in the
oven, and that was our dinner you know, marm.”’
* * * * *
JOURNAL (The Green Book).
“_Jan. 25, 1874._--Somehow I have felt as if this volume was closed for
ever--closed away with the sweet presence which was so long the sunshine
of my life. Yet to-day, while I am alone, sitting once more in the
sacred chamber where I have watched her through so many days and nights,
I feel constrained to write once more.
“How all is changed to me since then: I can hardly feel as if the two
lives were related--hardly as if they _could_ belong to the same person.
“Wonderfully, mysteriously, time has healed--no, not healed, but
soothed, even this wound. At first I felt this must always be
impossible, life was _too_ blank, but imperceptibly, stealthily, other
interests asserted their power, and though the old life is always _the_
life to me, yet I feel all is not over.
“I have always talked of my Mother, and it has been a great comfort. At
first it almost shocked people that I should do it. Perhaps the very
fact of talking and writing about her myself, and her life being now so
much talked of by others, has dried up the agony of my own inner
desolation by force of habitude. Yet, oh, my darling! there is never a
day, seldom an hour, in which I do not think of her; and sometimes when
I am alone,
‘When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past,’
I take one of her sketch-books, one of her journals or mine, and with
them go back into our old life--thus she looked--thus she spoke--thus
she smiled.
“At first I was kept up by the sacred work of the ‘Memorials,’ and the
necessity of fighting against the violent family opposition to them.
This seemed a duty which rose out of her grave, the one duty for which
I was prepared to sacrifice everything else in the world. I was
determined to fulfil it at whatever cost to myself. And I have fulfilled
it--not so well perhaps as I might have done if Arthur and Mary Stanley
had not tried to trample and stamp all the spirit out of it. They
condemned the book violently and furiously before they read it, and,
after reading it, they never had the courage to rescind opinions
expressed so frequently and publicly. Still, the world says that it is
well, and it will still keep her lamp burning brightly, so that her
earthly work is not over yet, and she can still guide others heavenward
through the darkness. Besides, not only in the ‘Memorials,’ but in all
else, I have felt the truth of Joseph Mazzini’s advice--‘Get up and
work; do not set yourself apart. When the Evil One wanted to tempt
Jesus, he led Him into a solitude.’
“I was one winter in Spain with Miss Wright. Then not much more than my
first desolate year had passed, and I had still that crushed lacerated
feeling of utter misery; but I tried to be as bright as I could for my
companion’s sake. Last year I was in Italy, and though very ill, and
though I felt poignantly the first return to the old scenes, it was
better, and all old friends were most kind.
“The dear cousin of my mother’s life, Charlotte Leycester, has been here
each year for some months, and other guests come and go through the
summer, so that little Holmhurst still gives pleasure.
“At first I was very, very poor, and it was a struggle to have a home;
but latterly my books have brought in enough to keep the house, and a
great deal to give away besides, which has been most opportune, as
several members of the family have sorely needed helping. I have also a
little Hospice, where I receive those whom I hear of as in need of
thorough change, mental and physical, for a month, sets of
sunshine-seekers succeeding each other. My dear Lea is still left to me,
and is my greatest comfort, so associated with all that is gone.
“My books have made me almost well known after a fashion, and people are
very kind, for, with what Shakspeare calls ‘the excellent foppery of the
world,’ many who used to snub me now almost ‘make up to me,’ and all
kinds of so-called ‘great people’ invite me to their houses. Sometimes
this is very pleasant, and I always enjoy being liked. I do not think it
is likely to set me up; I have too strong a feeling of my own real
inferiority to the opinion formed of me. Intellectually, I am so ill
grounded that I really know nothing well or accurately; and if I am what
is called ‘generous,’ certainly that is no virtue, for it pleases myself
as well as others. I think it is still with me as George Sand says of
herself, ‘Je n’ai pas de bonheur dans la vie, mais j’ai beaucoup de
bonheurs.’
“To-morrow I am going abroad again. It is almost necessary for my books;
and though I feel bitterly leaving Lea and the little home, I like my
mother’s adopted son to earn a reputation; that is all I care for,
except that it is always a pleasure to give pleasure. There is a
sentence, too, of Carlyle’s which comes back to me--‘We are sufficiently
applauded and approved, and ought now, if possible, to go and do
something _deserving_ a little applause.’”
XVII
LITERARY WORK AT HOME AND ABROAD
“Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast.”--GOETHE.
“Leisure and I have taken leave of one another. I propose to be
busy as long as I live, if my health is so long indulged to
me.”--JOHN WESLEY.
“To seek fame is even a solemn duty for men endowed with more than
ordinary powers of mind. First, as multiplying the ways and chances
by which a useful work comes into the hands of such as are prepared
to avail themselves of it; secondly, as securing for such a work
that submissiveness of heart, that docility, without which nothing
really good can be really acquired; and lastly, because the
individuality of the author, with all the associations connected
with his name and history, adds greatly to the effect of a
work.”--COLERIDGE _to_ SIR G. BEAUMONT.
“For ever I wrastle, for ever I am behind.”--GOWER, _Confessio
Amantis_.
“’Tis not in mortals to command success;
But we’ll do more, Sempronius--we’ll deserve it”
--ADDISON, _Cato_.
The success of “Walks in Rome,” and the great pleasure which I had
derived from the preparation of my “Days near Rome,” made me undertake,
in the spring of 1874, the more ambitious work of “Cities of Northern
and Central Italy,” in preparation for which I left England at the end
of January, accepting on the way an oft-repeated invitation from Mr. and
Mrs. de Wesselow to their beautiful home at Cannes.
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Villa La Cava, Cannes, Jan. 30, 1874._--What a view I look upon here
from my beautiful room!--a pure blue sky all around, fading into the
softest most delicate golden hues where it meets the waveless expanse of
sea, upon which the islands seem asleep in the sunshine; on one side the
old town of Cannes, with its pier and shipping and the white sails of
its boats; on the other, the endless villas, and Mougins, and the
mountains--all rising from a wealth of orange and cypress groves; and,
close at hand, masses of geraniums and roses and the ‘sunshine tree’
(golden mimosa) in full blossom,--and thus, they say, it has been all
winter.
“Paris was at its ugliest. I had a pleasant dinner at the Embassy, and I
went to see old Madame Dubois at the top of a house, in her room which
is at once sitting-room, bedroom, and kitchen. She was full of the
wretchedness of living in a country where your servant had no scruple in
telling you she was your equal, and that she was jealous of your being
richer than herself. She showed her household treasures, especially a
little silver owl, ‘qui est restée longtemps sans se marier, et puis a
fait un petit hibou.’
* * * * *
“I left in the evening for my four-and-twenty hours’ journey. The train
was crowded, every place full, but, in spite of my seven companions and
their twenty-eight handbags, which obliged me to sit bolt upright the
whole way, I rather enjoyed it. There is something so interesting in the
rapid transitions: the plains of Central France: the rolling hills of
Burgundy in the white moonlight: the great towns, Dijon and Lyons, deep
down below, and mapped out by their lamps: the dawn over the Rhone
valley: the change to blue sky melting into delicate amber: the first
stunted olives: the white roads leading, dust-surrounded, to the white
cities, Avignon and Tarascon and Arles: the desolate stone-laden Crau:
the still blue Mediterranean, and Marseilles with its shipping, and then
the granite phase of southern Provence and its growth of heath and
lavender and pines.
“On this, the eastern side, Cannes is a new world to me, but on Sunday,
with Marcus Hare and G., I went up to the other side, to the Villa S.
François and our beloved pine-wood, alive still with sacred memories,
where the dear form still might seem to wander with her sunshade and
camp-stool, and where we sat on the very stone she used to rest on in
‘the Shepherdesses’ Walk.’ G. is too matter of fact to enjoy this
country. When I exclaimed over the glorious beauty and variety of the
view of the Rocher de Bilheres, standing out as it does from the supreme
point of the forest promontory, with the purple shadows behind it in the
deep rift, she could only say, ‘I should be better satisfied if I could
ascertain exactly what it is mineralogically.’
“I went with Frank de Wesselow to Vallauris, the walk a perfect series
of pictures--the winding road with its glorious sea-views; then, at the
chapel, the opening upon all the Alpine range; then the deep hollow ways
overhung by old gnarled olives, and peopled by peasants with their mules
and baskets.
“Yesterday I had a visit from George Sutherland, whom I looked after in
his fever at Rome, full of his spiritualism, of his drawings made under
the influence of spirits, who ‘squeeze out just the amount of colour to
be used and no more,’ and of his conversations with his dead mother,
whom he described as ‘touching him constantly.’
“In the evening we talked of the De Wesselows’ faithful servant Mrs.
Manning, of her wonderful power of making people understand her, and how
her appreciation of foreigners was entirely in proportion to their doing
so. Frank was standing by her one day in the garden when their maid
Thérèse passed by. Mrs. Manning said quickly, ‘Teresa, acqua fresca
pully, and these things want lavering,’ and, without giving another
moment’s attention, went on with what she had been doing. Thérèse, in
her slow way, said ‘Yees,’ thinking that she talked English very well,
and understood perfectly that she was to give some water to the chickens
and that the things wanted washing.”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Villa Heraud, Cimies, Feb. 6, 1874._--I am writing from a beautiful
country villa, where, in sweet Mary Harford,[71] I find the friend of my
childhood quite unchanged, though it is fifteen years since I have seen
her. In spite of being the mother of six daughters and two sons, she
looks still as young as the Mary Bunsen who was carried quite helpless
into Hurstmonceaux Place twenty-three years ago. It is a most united
family, and you would admire the ‘way in which the six daughters take
arms and sing a hymn behind their mother (who plays) after family
prayers.”
* * * * *
“_Parma, Feb. 12, 1874._--I had so many kind invitations at Nice, I
rather longed to remain there. On Sunday I went home after church with
Lady Jocelyn and her little grand-daughter. I had not seen her since the
loss of her children. Her sweet sad face quite haunts me. I said to her,
‘Do you often drive out.’--‘No,’ she said; ‘I must always walk, or else
the days would be _too_ long.’
“I had an interesting railway journey on Monday with Madame Franzoni,
who lives in the house at Taggia described in ‘Dr. Antonio.’ She was
Swiss. Her husband, of an old Swiss-Italian family, was disinherited on
becoming Protestant, and was obliged to become an engineer. His father,
still living, has been prevented by his priests from speaking to him for
five-and-twenty years, though devotedly fond of him. She took her two
little children and made them sing a hymn beneath the tree in which
their grandfather was sitting. Tears streamed down the old man’s cheeks,
but he would not look at them; he said it must be a lesson to his other
children. The mother offered her whole fortune if her son would consent
to hear one mass; she believed that one mass would reconvert him. Since
then the Protestant part of the family have been dreadfully poor, whilst
the rest are immensely rich. Madame Franzoni said that the priests of
Taggia were very kind to them privately, but would not recognise them in
public.