park, redeemed by being so near the sea, and contains two great houses
close to each other, of which one--the modern one--has never been
inhabited, as sea-sand was mixed with its mortar. We found old Lady
Wemyss[144] sitting behind a screen, much like a lady-abbess in
appearance. I was most warmly received by two child-friends--little Lady
Eva Greville and her brother Sidney--a charming boy with dark eyes and
light flowing hair. Then Lady Warwick came in with Lady Jane Dundas,
and, with one hand-candle, showed us the pictures, just as Lady Elcho
did many years ago.
“Yesterday we went to Ormistoun, an attractive place, to see the
Dempsters, the uncle and aunt who brought up the authoress of
‘Vera’--charming old people. He talked much of former times in Scotland,
and said that much the most agreeable women in the country were
considered to be Lady Ruthven and Mrs. Stewart Mackenzie. He described
the attachment of one of Mrs. Stewart Mackenzie’s sisters--a certain
very untidy Frances Mackenzie--to Thorwaldsen, but they were not allowed
to marry. The last word Thorwaldsen spoke was ‘Francesca.’
“In the garden of Ormistoun is a yew six hundred years old, but with
every appearance of being still quite in its prime, growing hard, and
likely to do so for another six hundred years. John Knox is said to have
preached under it.
“I sat by Lady Ruthven at dinner. She talked of the quaintnesses of her
village people. The schoolmaster was very particular about
pronunciation. When his wife died, some one came in and said, ‘What a
very lamēntable,’ &c.--‘Oh, do say lamentable,’ interrupted the
schoolmaster. When the minister was marrying a couple he said, ‘Art thou
willing to take this woman,’ &c.?--‘Yes, I am _willing_,’ replied the
bridegroom, ‘but I had rather it had been her sister.’
“To-day Lady Ruthven walked with me to the kirk. She had neither her
‘speaking tubes’ nor her slate, so I could not answer her, but she told
me the whole story of Lady Belhaven’s death, how it was ‘all arranged as
was best for her, just a gentle passing away, almost unconscious, but
perfectly happy;’ yet how, though one glibly _said_, ‘God’s will be
done,’ it was _so_ hard to feel it. In returning, she talked of the
trees, how the forester wished her to cut one down where there were two
close together, but how she was ‘unwilling to separate friends who had
lived together so long.’
“One day Lady Ruthven had a letter asking for the character of her
footman, John Smith, who was leaving her--if he was ‘clever, honest,
sober, a Christian, a recipient of the Holy Communion,’ &c. She
answered, ‘If John Smith could answer to half your demands, I should
have married him long ago.’”
* * * * *
“_Raby Castle, Nov. 20._--A week here with a large party, which I began
to think delightful as soon as I could cure myself of the uncomfortable
sensation of being so much behind my kind, all the other people knowing
each other better, and being more in possession of their tongues and
faculties than myself. ‘Be insignificant, and you will make no enemies,’
is, however, a very good piece of advice I once received. Interesting
members of the circle have been the Fitzwilliams from Wentworth, and the
Quaker family of Pease, of whom the mother is one of the sweetest, most
charming people I ever saw, like a lovely picture by Gainsborough, and
with the expression of one of Perugino’s angels. But the great feature
of the visit has been the Butes, and I have been absorbed by them. I
never expected to make much acquaintance, but from the first Lord
Bute[145] annexed himself to me, perhaps because he thought I was shy,
and because of other people he felt very shy himself. He has great
sweetness and gentleness of manner, and a good-looking, refined face.
“Lady Bute[146] says the happiest time in her life was the winter they
spent in Majorca, because then she got away, not only from all the fine
people, but from all the people who wanted to know what they thought
must be the fine people; but that it was such a bore even there bearing
a name for which the natives _would_ raise their prices. Next winter
they mean to spend at Nazareth, where they will hire the Bishop’s house;
‘no one can get at us there.’ They are supposed to long very anxiously
for the birth of a son, for now--
‘That little something unpossess’d
Corrodes and poisons all the rest.’[147]
“I walked with Lord Bute each day. It was like reading ‘Lothair’ in the
original, and most interesting at first, but became somewhat monotonous,
as he talks incessantly--winding into his subject like a serpent, as
Johnson said of Burke--of altars, ritual, liturgical differences; and he
often almost loses himself, and certainly quite lost me, in sentences
about ‘the Unity of the Kosmos,’ &c.
“He spoke much of Antichrist--the mark 666, the question if it had been
Nero, or if Nero was only a type, and the real Antichrist still to come;
and of the other theory, that the reason why no ten thousand were sealed
of Dan was that Antichrist was to come from that tribe, the dying words
of Jacob tending to this belief.
“He talked much of fasting; that he had often fasted for twenty-four
hours, and that he preferred fasting as the practice existed ‘before
the folly of collations.’ I asked if it did not make him ill. He said
‘no,’ for if the hunger became too great he took a cigar, which allayed
it, and that he went out and ‘ate the air’ while taking plenty of
exercise; that poor people seldom became thin in Lent, because what they
did eat was bread and potatoes. I said I thought it must make him
dreadfully ill-tempered to be so hungry, and thus conduce rather to vice
than virtue. He said he did not think it made him vicious; but he agreed
with me that persons naturally inclined to be ill-tempered had better
fast _alone_.
“From what he said it was evident that he would like to give up all his
goods to the poor, and that the Island of Bute stands a chance of
becoming a vast monastery. He talked much of the Troitska in Russia,
where he had been; that the monks there were too lax, and that the
really desirable monastic life was that of those who lived in the cells
established some miles off by Philaret, which were subterranean, with a
stove, and no other furniture. When mass was celebrated in their chapel,
these anchorite monks could faintly discern, down a channel hollowed in
the rock, the glitter of the candles on the altar, and occasionally,
mingled with this, appeared a ray or two of bluish light, and this was
daylight. It was the only time they ever saw it.
“Amongst the young men here is a young Ashburnham, third son of Lord
Ashburnham, who reads Greek in his room for his amusement, and is a
lawyer, but says he has not yet been able to realise the hymn, ‘Brief
life is here our portion.’ He told me that the expression of minding
your _p_’s and _q_’s came from toupets and queues.”
* * * * *
“_Whitburn Hall, Nov. 24._--I returned here from Raby with my Williamson
cousins,[148] who are always so kind that they make one feel at Whitburn
‘où peut’on être mieux qu’au sein de sa famille?’ The place has much
interest of its own kind. There is something even fine in the vast black
cloud of Sunderland smoke, obliterating the horizon and giving such an
idea of limitless and mysterious space with the long lines of white
breakers foaming up through the gloom; while at night the ghastly shriek
of the fog-horn and the tolling of the bell, and the occasional boom of
a cannon through the storm, give such dramatic effect that one forgets
the waste inland landscape, the blackened hedges and wind-stricken
coalfields.”
* * * * *
“_Ravensworth, Nov. 29._--I was one night with poor Cousin Susan
(Davidson), much aged and altered. She lay chiefly on a sofa in her own
sitting-room, with her two favourite white dogs--the ‘boy and
girl’--Fritz and Lulu, by her side, and half the birds in the
neighbourhood pecking bread and potatoes outside the windows. It seemed
a dreary life to leave her to, but she does not feel it so; hers is one
of the cases in which only the body, and not the mind, seems to require
nourishment. Thursday, when I came away, was her rent-day, and she
wished me to go and see her tenants and speak to them at dinner, and
said to the agent, ‘I wish that all my tenants should see my cousin;’
but fortunately the train came at the right moment to save me from this
alarming encounter, which would have given a (probably) wrong
impression--at least to the tenants.
“Lord Ravensworth[149] welcomed me with such cordial kindness, and has
been so genial and good to me ever since, that I quite feel as if in him
I had found the ideal uncle I have always longed for, but never before
enjoyed. He is certainly the essence of an agreeable and accomplished
scholar, with a faultless memory and apt classical quotations for every
possible variety of subject. He told me, and made me write down, the
following curious story:--
“It is going back a long time ago--to the time of Marie Antoinette. It
will be remembered that the most faithful, the most entirely devoted of
all the gallant adherents of Marie Antoinette was the Comte de Fersen.
The Comte de Fersen was ready to lay down his life for the Queen, to go
through fire and water for her sake; and, on her side, if Marie
Antoinette had a corner in her heart for any one except the King, it was
for the Comte de Fersen.[150] When the royal family escaped to Varennes,
it was the Comte de Fersen who dressed up as coachman and drove the
carriage; and when the flight to Varennes failed, and when, one after
another, he had seen all his dearest friends perish upon the scaffold,
the Comte de Fersen felt as if the whole world was cut away from under
his feet, as if life had nothing whatever left to offer, and he sunk
into a state of apathy, mental and physical, from which nothing whatever
seemed to rouse him; there was nothing whatever left which could be of
any interest to _him_.
“The physicians who were called in said that the Comte de Fersen must
have absolute change; that he must travel for an unlimited time; that he
must leave France; at any rate, that he must never see again that Paris
which was so terrible to him, which was stained for ever with the blood
of the Queen and Madame Elizabeth. And he was quite willing; all places
were the same to him now that his life was left desolate: he did not
care where he went.
“He went to Italy, and one afternoon in November he drove up to what was
then, as it is still, the most desolate, weird, ghastly inn in
Italy--the wind-stricken, storm-beaten, lava-seated inn of Radicofani.
And he came there not to stay; he only wanted post-horses to go on as
fast as he could, for he was always restless to be moving--to go farther
on. But the landlord said, ‘No, it was too late at night; there was
going to be a storm; he could not let his horses cross the pass of
Radicofani till the next morning.’--‘But you are not aware,’ said the
traveller, ‘that I am the Comte de Fersen.’--‘I do not care in the least
who you are,’ said the landlord; ‘I make my rules, and my rules hold
good for one as well as for another.’--‘But you do not understand
probably that money is no object to me, and that time is a very great
object indeed. I am quite willing to pay whatever you demand, but I
must have the horses at once, for I must arrive at Rome on a particular
day.’--‘Well, you will not have the horses,’ said the landlord; ‘at
least to-morrow you may have them, but to-night you will not; and if you
are too fine a gentleman to come into my poor hotel, you may sleep in
the carriage, but to-night you will certainly not have the horses.’
“Then the Comte de Fersen made the best of what he saw was the
inevitable. He had the carriage put into the coach-house, and he himself
came into the hotel, and he found it, as many hundreds of travellers
have done since, not half so bad as he expected. It is a bare, dismal,
whitewashed barracky place, but the rooms are large and tolerably clean.
So he got some eggs or something that there was for supper, and he had a
fire made up in the best of the rooms, and he went to bed. But he took
two precautions; he drew a little round table that was there to the head
of the bed and he put two loaded pistols upon it; and, according to the
custom of that time, he made the courier sleep across the door on the
outside.
“He went to bed, and he fell asleep, and in the middle of the night he
awoke with the indescribable sensation that people have, that he was not
alone in the room, and he raised himself against the pillow and looked
out. From a small latticed window high in the opposite whitewashed wall
the moonlight was pouring into the room, and making a white silvery pool
in the middle of the rough boarded oak floor. In the middle of this pool
of light, dressed in a white cap and jacket and trousers, such as masons
wear, stood the figure of a man looking at him. The Comte de Fersen
stretched out his hand over the side of the bed to take one of his
pistols, and the man said, ‘Don’t fire: you could do no harm to me, you
could do a great deal of harm to yourself: I am come to tell you
something.’ And the Comte de Fersen looked at him: he did not come any
nearer; he remained just where he was, standing in the pool of white
moonlight, half way between the bed and the wall; and he said, ‘Say on:
tell me what you have come for.’ And the figure said, ‘I am _dead_, and
my body is underneath your bed. I was a mason of Radicofani, and, as a
mason, I wore the white dress in which you now see me. My wife wished to
marry somebody else; she wished to marry the landlord of this hotel, and
they beguiled me into the inn, and they made me drunk, and they murdered
me, and my body is buried beneath where your bed now stands. Now I died
with the word _vendetta_ upon my lips, and the longing, the thirst that
I have for revenge will not let me rest, and I never shall rest, I never
can have _any_ rest, till I have had my revenge. Now I know that you are
going to Rome; when you get to Rome, go to the Cardinal Commissary of
Police, and tell him what you have seen, and he will send men down here
to examine the place, and my body will be found, and I shall have my
revenge.’ And the Comte de Fersen said, ‘I will.’ But the spirit laughed
and said, ‘You don’t suppose that I’m going to believe _that_? You don’t
imagine that you are the only person I’ve come to like this? I have come
to dozens, and they have all said, “I will,” and afterwards what they
have seen has seemed like a hallucination, a dream, a chimæra, and
before they have reached Rome the impression has vanished altogether,
and nothing has been done. Give me your hand.’ The Comte de Fersen was a
little staggered at this; however, he was a brave man, and he stretched
out his hand over the foot of the bed, and he felt something or other
happen to one of his fingers; and he looked, and there was no figure,
only the moonlight streaming in through the little latticed window, and
the old cracked looking-glass on the wall and the old rickety furniture
just distinguishable in the half light; there was no mason there, but
the loud regular sound of the snoring of the courier was heard outside
the bedroom door. And the Comte de Fersen could not sleep; he watched
the white moonlight fade into dawn, and the pale dawn brighten into day,
and it seemed to him as if the objects in that room would be branded
into his brain, so familiar did they become--the old cracked
looking-glass, and the shabby washing-stand, and the rush-bottomed
chairs, and he also began to think that what had passed in the earlier
part of the night was a hallucination--a mere dream. Then he got up, and
he began to wash his hands; and on one of his fingers he found a very
curious old iron ring, which was certainly not there before--and then he
_knew_.
“And the Comte de Fersen went to Rome, and when he arrived at Rome he
went to the Swedish Minister that then was, a certain Count
Löwenjelm,[151] and the Count Löwenjelm was very much impressed with the
story, but a person who was much more impressed was the Minister’s
younger brother, the Count Carl Löwenjelm, for he had a very curious and
valuable collection of peasants’ jewelry, and when he saw the ring he
said, ‘That is a very remarkable ring, for it is a kind of ring which is
only made and worn in one place, and that place is in the mountains near
Radicofani.’
“And the two Counts Löwenjelm went with the Comte de Fersen to the
Cardinal Commissary of Police, and the Cardinal also was very much
struck, and he said, ‘It is a very extraordinary story, a very
extraordinary story indeed, and I am quite inclined to believe that it
means something. But, as you know, I am in a great position of trust
under Government, and I could not send a body of military down to
Radicofani upon the faith of what may prove to have been a dream. At any
rate (he said) I could not do it unless the Comte de Fersen proved his
sense of the importance of such an action by being willing to return to
Radicofani himself.’ And not only was the Comte de Fersen willing to
return, but the Count Carl Löwenjelm went with him. The landlord and
landlady were excessively agitated when they saw them return with the
soldiers who came from Rome. They moved the bed, and found that the
flags beneath had been recently upturned. They took up the flags, and
there--not sufficiently corrupted to be irrecognisable--was the body of
the mason, dressed in the white cap and jacket and trousers, as he had
appeared to the Comte de Fersen. Then the landlord and landlady, in true
Italian fashion, felt that Providence was against them, and they
confessed everything. They were taken to Rome, where they were tried
and condemned to death, and they were beheaded at the Bocca della
Verità.
“The Count Carl Löwenjelm was present at the execution of that man and
woman, and he was the person who told the Marquis de Lavalette, who told
Lord Ravensworth, who told me. The by-play of the story is also curious.
Those two Counts Löwenjelm were the natural sons of the Duke of
Sudomania, who was one of the aspirants for the crown of Sweden in the
political crisis which preceded the election of Bernadotte. He was, in
fact, elected, but he had many enemies, and on the night on which he
arrived to take possession of the throne he was poisoned. The Comte de
Fersen himself came to a tragical end in those days. He was very
unpopular in Stockholm, and during the public procession in which he
took part at the funeral of Charles Augustus (1810) he was murdered,
being (though it is terrible to say so of the gallant adherent of Marie
Antoinette) beaten to death with umbrellas. And that it was with no view
to robbery and from purely political feeling is proved by the fact that
though he was _en grande tenue_, nothing was taken away.”
* * * * *
“_Hutton, Yorkshire, Nov. 30._--I came here yesterday, arriving in the
dark. It was a great surprise, as I expected to find the place amid the
Middlesborough smoke, to see from the window on awaking a beautiful view
of high moorland fells beyond the terraced gardens. I laugh when I think
how the Duchess of Cleveland rejoiced in giving Mrs. Pease such a
pleasant change to Raby, to see this intensely luxurious house by
Waterhouse, filled with delightful collections of books, pictures, and
carved furniture, and its almost Arabian-Night-like conservatories.
“We have been through bitter wind to Guisborough Abbey--only a grand
church front standing lonely near a fine avenue of trees in the grounds
of Colonel Challoner.
“Mr. and Mrs. Pease are excellent. He is member for Darlington, son and
nephew of the famous Pease Brothers. She, formerly a Fox of Falmouth, is
one of the most charming people I ever saw, full of the sweetest and
simplest natural dignity. She lives in and for her children, and though
the mother of six girls and two boys, looks about six-and-twenty
herself.[152]
“There is a Mr. Stover here who is amusing. An uncle of his lives in the
haunted house at Biddick. One day when he came in from shooting, he hung
his hat on a pole-screen, and sat down by the fire to read his
newspaper. Presently, looking over his paper, he saw, to his amazement,
his hat on the top of the screen nodding at him. He thought he must be
dreaming, but watched, and it certainly nodded again. He got up and
walked round it, when it seemed still. Then he sat down again and
watched it, and it nodded again, and not only that, but the screen
itself seemed to be moving bodily towards him. He watched it, and it
certainly crossed part of the pattern of the carpet: of this there could
be no doubt. Then he could bear it no longer, and he rushed at the
screen and knocked it over. Underneath was his tame tortoise.”
* * * * *
“_Wentworth Wodehouse, Dec. 3._--This house has a very stately effect as
you approach it, with a truly majestic portico. On the first floor is an
immense hall like those in the great Roman houses, and on either side
diverge the reception rooms, hung with pictures. Amongst the portraits
are several of the great Lord Strafford, with his parents, his son, and
his two daughters--Anne and Arabella. Of these, the elder married the
Marquis of Rockingham, from whom the present owners are descended. The
picture by Vandyke of Lord Strafford and his secretary is glorious. The
rooms themselves want colour and effect. Sixty guests can stay in the
house, and a hundred and twenty can dine without any crowd, but the
place needs great parties of this kind, for smaller ones are lost in
these vast suites of too lofty rooms. Lord Fitzwilliam[153] is the very
type of a high-bred nobleman, and Lady Fitzwilliam[154] has a sweet and
gentle manner; but Lady F. is calm and placid, her two daughters calmer
and placider, and Lord F. calmest and placidest.
“To-day we were taken by Lord Fitzwilliam to the two churches. One by
Pearson is new and most magnificent; the other is old and very ugly, but
has interesting monuments. That of Lord Strafford is mural, with his
figure kneeling near the altar. The epitaph does not allude to the
manner of his death, but, after setting forth his virtues, simply says
‘he died May 8th, 1641.’ The ghost of Lord Strafford is still said to
walk down the oak staircase at Wentworth every Friday night, carrying
his head. An old gateway with several fragments of the house of his time
remain, and many of his books are preserved in the library. My bedroom
is hung with white worked with red by his daughter Lady Rockingham.”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 4._--Lady Fitzwilliam has been showing us the house. It contains
much of interest, especially in the pictures, and they are repeated so
often that one learns to know the family faces--Lord Strafford and his
three wives, his son and his two daughters by his second wife, and the
second Lord Strafford with his wife, who was the daughter of James, Earl
of Derby, and Charlotte de la Tremouille. His inscriptions in the Bibles
of her father and mother, which are here, and the many memorials he
raised to her, are so touching that it is quite a shock to find he
married again after her death; but in his will he always speaks of the
second as only his “wife,” the first as his “deare wife.” He restored
the old church in her memory, and enjoined upon his descendants always
to keep it up for her sake.
“Lady Albreda drove us about the park and to the ‘Mausoleum,’ a
commemorative monument raised to the Minister Lord Rockingham by his
son. It is copied from the Roman monument at S. Remy near Aries, and
contains, in a kind of Pantheon, a statue by Nollekens of Lord
Rockingham surrounded by his friends. The face is from a mask taken
after death, and the figure is full of power and expression, with a
deprecatory ‘Oh, pray don’t say such a thing as that.’”
“_Temple Newsam, Dec. 6._--This great house is four miles from Leeds, by
a road passing through a squalid suburb of grimy houses and muddy lanes,
with rotten palings and broken paving-stones, making blackened pools of
stagnant water; then black fields succeed, with withered hedges,
stag-headed trees, and here and there a mountain of coal refuse breaking
the dismal distances. It was almost dark as I drove up the steep park to
the house.