and ought to ought till it reaches to London, and it will all come to
nothing at last if you don’t put another figure to it’--apropos of Mr.
G. P. neglecting to do his duty.”
* * * * *
“_Battle Abbey, Jan. 26, 1875._--The news of dear Lady Carnarvon’s death
came yesterday as a shadow over everything. Surely never was there a
more open, lovable, unselfish, charming, and truly noble character. She
was the one person in England capable ‘tenir salon,’ to succeed--in a
far more charming way--to Lady Palmerston’s celebrity in that respect.
‘Sat vixit, bene qui vixit spatium brevis aevi:
Ignavi numerant tempore, laude boni.’
Apparently radiant with happiness, and shedding happiness on all around
her, she yet had often said latterly that she ‘did not feel that the
compensations made up for the anxieties of life,’ and that she longed to
be at rest.
“In the agreeable party at Battle it has been a great pleasure to find
the French Ambassador and the Comtesse de Jarnac. Lord Stanhope is here,
and has talked pleasantly as usual. Apropos of the custom of the living
always closing the eyes of the dead, he reminded us of the admirable
inscription over the door of the library at Murcia, ‘Here the dead
_open_ the eyes of the living.’
“He said how the Pineta at Ravenna was really a change in gender from
the original name Pinetum in the singular: first it had become the
plural of that; then Pineta itself had become a singular word.
“He described a dreary Sunday spent in Sabbatarian Glasgow, and how,
everything else being shut up and forbidden, he had betaken himself for
hours to examining the epitaphs in the churchyard, and at length found a
single verse which atoned for the badness of all the rest:--
‘Shed not for me the bitter tear,
Nor pour for me the vain regret,
For though the casket is not here,
The gem within it sparkles yet.’”
* * * * *
“_Jan. 27._--Count Nesselrode has come. He has been describing to the
Duchess how parents are always proposing to him for their beautiful
young girls of fifteen or sixteen. He says that he answers, ‘Est que à
mon âge je puis songer à me marier?’ and that they reply, ‘Avec le nom
que vous portez, M. le Comte, on est toujours jeune.’ ... ‘et ça me
donne le chair de poule.’
“On the Duchess asking Count Nesselrode after his sons, he said they
were at a tutor’s, ‘pour former le cœur et l’esprit.’
“There used to be a ghost at Battle Abbey. Old Lady Webster told Mr.
Hussey of Scotney Castle how she saw it soon after her marriage, an old
woman of most terrible aspect, who drew the curtains of her bed and
looked in. Immediately after, Sir Godfrey came into the room. ‘Who was
that old woman?’ she said. ‘There could have been no old woman.’ ‘Oh,
yes, there was, and you must have met her in the passage, for she has
only just gone out of the room.’ In her old age Lady Webster would
describe the pattern on the old woman’s dress, and say that she should
recognise it anywhere.”
[Illustration: THE PINETA, RAVENNA.][165]
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, Feb. 1._--A long visit to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe in
Lady Jocelyn’s singular house at St. Leonards, which you enter from the
top story. Lord Stratford is a grand old man with high forehead and
flowing white hair. He can no longer walk, and sits in his
dressing-gown, but his artistic daughters make him very picturesque,
hanging his chair with a shade of purple which matches the lining and
cuffs of his dressing-gown, &c. He talked of many different people he
had seen, of Goethe, ‘who had a very high forehead’ (but ‘the highest
forehead known was that of the immortal Shakspeare, who had every great
quality that could exist phrenologically’), and then he spoke of
Mezzofanti, whom he had known personally in Italy, and who had told him
the story of his life. He had been a carpenter’s apprentice, and had one
day been at his work outside the open window of a school where a master
was teaching. Having a smattering of Greek, which he had taught himself,
he felt sure that he detected the master in giving a wrong explanation.
This worried him so much that he could not get it out of his head, and,
after the school and his own work were both over, he rang the bell and
begged to see the master. ‘I was at work, sir, and I heard you speaking,
and I think you gave such and such an explanation in Greek.’--‘Well, and
what do you know about Greek?’--‘Not much, sir; but, if you will forgive
my saying so, I am sure you will find, if you examine, that the
explanation was not the correct one.’ The master found that the young
carpenter was right, and it led to his obtaining friends and being
educated. Lord Stratford said that Mezzofanti spoke English perfectly to
him, and excellent modern Greek to his servant, and yet that, apart from
his wonderful versatility in languages, he seemed to be rather a dull
man than otherwise, utterly wanting in originality.
“Lord Stratford described going to dine one day with his agent, and
meeting there a lady whose name he did not catch, but whom he was told
to take down to dinner. In the course of dinner the conversation turned
upon some subject of mathematics, ‘And then,’ said Lord Stratford, ‘I
did what I have never done at any other time on a mathematical
question. I tried to explain it and make it easy for my companion, who
listened with polite attention. When I went upstairs I inquired her
name, and it was ... Mrs. Somerville! I knew her intimately afterwards,
and she told me something of her early life, which I regret should not
have appeared in her memoirs. Her childhood was passed in Burntisland,
whither her brother returned for his holidays, having some school-work
to do whilst at home. One day, when he was called out, she took up the
Euclid he had been studying. ‘Ah! what curious little designs! let me
see if I can understand what it is about.’ And she found that she could,
and devoured Euclid with avidity. Afterwards she got hold of her
brother’s Æschylus and taught herself Greek in order to read it.
“Lord Stratford talked much of the extraordinary change, not only in
politics, but in ‘the way of carrying on politics,’ since he was young.”
* * * * *
“_69 Onslow Square, Feb. 4._--Aunt Sophy[166] had a pleasant party
yesterday of Theodore Martins, Lady Barker, &c. Mrs. Theodore Martin’s
is a fine illuminative face, like that of Madame Goldschmidt. As Helen
Faucit she was celebrated as an actress and as having done her utmost to
elevate the stage; but I do not admire her reading of Shakspeare, in
which I think there is too much manner. He is evidently most excellent.
He talked perfectly simply, but only when asked, of his intercourse with
the Queen, with whom he must be on happy terms of mutual confidence.
* * * * *
“_Feb. 7, 1875._--Yesterday, when I was with Louisa, Lady Ashburton, at
Kent House, which is being beautifully arranged, Lady Bloomfield came in
and then Mr. Carlyle--weird and grim, with his long coat and tall
wizard-befitting hat. He talked in volumes, with fathomless depths of
adjectives, into which it was quite impossible to follow him, and in
which he himself often got out of his depth. A great deal was about
Garibaldi, who was the ‘most absolute incarnation of zero, but the
inexplicable perversity and wilfulness of the human race had taken him
up, poor creature, and set him on a pedestal.’ Then he went on about
‘the poor old Pope, so filled with all the most horrible and detestable
lies that ever were conceived or thought of.’ He was like the man who
asked his friends to dinner and said, ‘I am going to give you a piece of
the most delicious beef--the most exquisite beef that ever was eaten,’
and all the while it was only a piece of stale brown bread; but the host
said to his guests, ‘May God damn your souls for ever and ever, if you
don’t believe it’s beef,’ so they ate it and said nothing.
“Then he talked of the books of Mazzini, which were ‘well worth
reading,’ and of Saffi, ‘made professor of something at Oxford, where he
used to give lectures in a moth-eaten voice.’”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 11._--Sir Garnet and Lady Wolseley, Miss Thackeray, and others
dined. I was not prepared to like Sir Garnet much, a hero is usually so
dull, but he is charming, so frank and candid, and most natural as well
as good-looking. He has a very young face, though his hair is grey,
almost white. Lady Wolseley is remarkably pretty and attractive; Sir
Garnet was quite devoted to drawing, and had a great collection of
sketches, the work of his life. In the Crimea he drew everything, and it
was a most precious collection; but in returning it was all lost at sea.
The rest of his drawings he put into the Pantechnicon, where they were
every one of them burnt. Miss Thackeray has a sweet voice, which is
music in every tone.
“I have frequently seen lately, at the Lefevres’, old Lord Redesdale,
with whom we have some distant cousinship through my Mitford
great-grandmother. He is very kind, clever, old-fashioned, and always
wears a tail-coat. He took us into the far-away by telling us of having
heard his father, Speaker Mitford, describe having known a man in
Swaledale named Rievely, whose earliest recollection was of being
carried across the Swale by Henry Jenkyns (who lived to 160), who
recollected having gone as a boy, with a sheaf of arrows and his elder
brother on a pony, from Ellerton in Swaledale to Northallerton, to join
the army before the battle of Flodden. He would tell all about the
battle in a familiar way--‘the King was not there; but the Duke of
Suffolk was there,’ &c.
“Much of the conversation in certain houses is now about Moody and
Sankey, the American ‘revivalists,’ who are supposed to ‘produce great
effects.’ Moody preaches and Sankey sings. They are adored by some,
others (including most Americans) think them ‘mere religious
charlatans’--and altogether they offer a famous opportunity for all the
barking and biting which ‘truly religious people’ often delight in.”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 20._--Dined with the Rafe Leycesters in Cheyne Walk, where they
have a charming old manor-house with a stone gateway, flagged walk,
ancient bay-trees, a wide staircase, and panelled rooms. Mrs. Leycester
was picturesquely dressed like a picture by Millais. The company were
Mr. and Mrs. Haweis, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Taylor, and the Augustus
Tollemaches. It was an agreeable party, and a pleasant dinner in a room
redolent of violets.”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 21._--Dined with Lady Margaret Beaumont, who talked of dress and
the distinction of a gown by Worth, which ‘not only looked well, but
_walked_ well.’”
* * * * *
“_Thorncombe, Feb. 27._--This place is a dell in the undulating hills
about five miles from Guildford, very pretty and pleasant; and our new
cousin, Edward Fisher, to whom it belongs, is one of the kindest,
cheeriest, pleasantest fellows who ever entered a family.
“We have been to see Loseley, which belongs to my old college
acquaintance Molyneux--a grand old house, gabled and grey, with a great
hall, and richly carved chimney-pieces of white chalk, which looks like
marble. It has three ghosts, a green-coated hunter, a sallow lady, and a
warrior in plate-armour. The last appeared to the kitchen-maid as she
was drawing some beer in the cellar, and almost frightened her out of
her wits.”
* * * * *
“_London, March 7, Sunday._--Breakfast at Lord Houghton’s, who has
adopted Rogers’ custom of social breakfasts. It was a very amusing
party--Joaquin Miller[167] the American writer, Henry Cowper, Lord
Arthur Russell, &c. There was a young man there whom I did not notice
much at first, but I soon found that he was very remarkable, and then
that he was very charming indeed. It was Lord Rosebery. He has a most
sweet gravity almost always, but when his expression does light up, it
is more than an illumination--it is a conflagration, at which all around
him take light. Joaquin Miller would have been thought insufferably
vulgar if he had not been a notoriety: as it was, every one paid court
to him. However, I ought not to abuse him, as he suddenly turned round
to me and said, ‘Do you know, I’m glad to meet you, for you write books
that I can read.’ Quantities of good stories were told--one of a party
given by George IV. as Prince Regent to the Irish peer Lord Coleraine.
Smoking was allowed. After supper, when Lady Jersey drank, the Regent
kissed the spot upon the cup where her lips had rested: upon which the
Princess took a pipe from Lord Coleraine’s mouth, blew two or three
whiffs, and handed it back to him. The Prince was quite furious, but it
was a lesson.”
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, March 14._--Went to see Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who
talked incessantly and most agreeably for an hour. He said how surprised
he had been to read in the ‘Greville Memoirs’ of himself as
ill-tempered; he always thought he was ‘rather a good-tempered sort of
fellow.’ It was Madame de Lieven who said that, and she had always
hated him. She prevented him having an embassy once, but they made
peace afterwards through a compliment he paid her at Paris. He talked of
Madame de Lieven’s extraordinary influence, arising chiefly from our
inherent national passion for foreigners.
“I asked Lord Stratford which he thought the most interesting of the
many places in which he had lived. He said, ‘Oh, England is the most
interesting by far.’ He described his first going out to Constantinople,
before he had taken his degree, only going for four months, and staying
for four or five years in a position equal to a Minister. He took his
degree afterwards, and by literary merit, though there was a way then of
giving degrees to those who were employed in the public service, and
since then they had made him a doctor of both Universities. Now, in his
helplessness, he amused himself by writing Greek verses. Once, walking
about his room, he thought, ‘Well, I have often written Latin verses;
let me see if I can write Greek.’ And his Greek has all come back to
him.”
* * * * *
The enormous circulation of the “Memorials of a Quiet Life” in the two
years which had elapsed since its publication astonished those who were
opposed to it; and in America the sale had been even greater than in
England. Numbers of Americans had come to England entirely from the
desire to visit the different scenes of my mother’s quiet life, and had
gone in turn to Toft, Stoke, Alton, Hurstmonceaux, Holmhurst, and some
even to the distant grave of Lucy Hare at Abbots Kerswell. At Holmhurst
there were frequently many sets of visitors in a day--“pilgrims” we used
to call them,--and even if I was at home I could never bear to refuse
them admittance, while to my dear old Lea, who was in very poor health
at this time, they were a positive benefit, in rousing her from dwelling
upon sad recollections. It was in answer to a constantly expressed
desire that, in the autumn of 1874, I occupied myself with the third
volume of the Memorials, containing more of my mother’s thoughts upon
especial subjects, and photographs from family portraits and of the
places described in the first two volumes. The book was, as it were, a
gift to the public. It had a large circulation, but no remuneration
whatever was ever looked for or obtained. Soon after the publication of
the volume, a review appeared in the _Spectator_ (July 8, 1876),
speaking of “the veiled self-conceit” with which Mr. Hare had placed
himself “upon the voluminous records of his family as upon a pedestal;”
that Mrs. Hare was far from being honoured by “the capital” her adopted
son had made of her, though, “if his public likes and is willing to pay
for the contents of the family album, there is nothing more to be
said.... Here, however, let us be thankful, is, so far as anything can
be predicated safely on such a subject, the last of the ‘Memorials,’ and
that is so grateful a thought as to justify tolerance of what already
is.” It seemed a singular review to have been admitted by the
_Spectator_, which, four years before (December 11, 1872), had written
of the “Memorials” as containing “passage after passage worthy of
comment or quotation,” and as “an interesting record of spiritual
conflicts and spiritual joy, free from narrowness and fanaticism, and
marked throughout by the most guileless sincerity.” I suppose that
editors of reviews, when biassed by intense personal feeling, often
trust to the public having forgotten what has appeared before in their
pages.
Annually, I had tried to make my dearest mother’s home as useful as
possible to all those in whom she was most nearly interested, as well as
to keep up her charities, especially at Alton. It had also been a great
pleasure, with what my books produced, to fit up a cottage close to
Holmhurst as a Hospice for needy persons of a better class. These I have
always invited to come for a month at a time, their travelling expenses
being fully paid, and firing, linen, farm and garden produce, with an
outfit of grocery, being supplied to them. Many are the interesting and
pleasant persons whom I have thus become acquainted with, many the
touching cases of sorrow and suffering with which I have come in
contact. In the month of October the Deaconesses of St. Peter’s, Eaton
Square, for several years occupied the Hospice, and they generally
remained over All Saints’ Day, when they sang the Te Deum in the field
round the twisted tree where the dear mother used to sit--“the Te Deum
tree.”
In the spring of 1875 I was obliged to go to Italy again, to continue
collecting materials for my “Cities of Northern and Central Italy.”
* * * * *
_To_ MARY LEA GIDMAN.
“_Rimini, April 4, 1875._--I made my first long lonely expedition from
Turin, going for an hour by rail to the town of S. Ambrogio, and then
walking up through the forests to the top of the high mountain of S.
Michele, where there is a famous monastery in which the sovereigns of
the country--Dukes of Savoy--used to be buried many hundreds of years
ago. It is a wonderful place, quite on the highest peak, looking into
the great gorges of snow. As I was sketching, the old Abbot was led by
on his mule, and stopped to speak to me. I found he was a famous
missionary preacher--Carlo Caccia--and had been in England, where he
knew Lord Bute well, and was very glad to hear of him. So we made great
friends, and as he was going to Turin for Easter, we travelled back
together.
[Illustration: IL SAGRO DI S. MICHELE.][168]
“From Turin I went to Parma, where I had a great deal of work to finish.
The cold there was ferocious, but I made the great excursion I went
for--to Canossa, where the Emperor Henry IV. performed his famous
penance, though it is a most dreadfully fatiguing walk, either in snow
above the knees, or in the furrows of streams from the melted snow. At
Bologna I never saw anything like the snow--as high as the top of the
omnibus, and darkening the lower windows, with a way cut through it
down the middle of the street. I had the same room at the Hotel S. Marco
which you and the dear Mother had for those anxious days in 1870, and of
course I seemed to _see_ her there, and it was a very sad visit. The
Librarian told me that hundreds of people had been to look at the
portrait of Clotilda Tambroni since reading the ‘Memorials.’
[Illustration: CANOSSA.][169]
“We slept here once in 1857, but did not appreciate Rimini properly
then, I think, for it is a charming place, with a delightful seashore
and interesting old town; but the country is strange and wild, and
there is not a sign of vegetation on the hedges; so that when I remember
the buds on the deutzia opposite your window at Holmhurst, it seems most
dismal in Italy.”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
[Illustration: URBINO.][170]
“_Citta di Castello, April 12, 1875._--It is very cold in Italy, but
glorious weather now--ceaseless sunshine and the pellucid skies of
Perugino. I have been many great excursions already; to the Sagro di S.
Michele, to desolate Canossa, and to S. Marino and the extraordinary S.
Leo near Rimini. Then from Forli I paid an interesting visit to Count
Saffi, one of the Roman triumvirate, whom I had known well at Oxford,
and who lives, with his wife (Miss Craufurd of Portincross) and many
children, in a farmhouse-like villa near the town. At Ancona, Charlie
Dalison came to meet me, a pleasant change after much silence and
solitude. We went together to Loreto, and next day a dreary journey to
Urbino, which is more curious than beautiful, though there is a noble
old palace of its Dukes. It was a thirteen hours’ drive thence through
hideous country to Gubbio, where the inns are wretched, but the town
full of interest. Charlie left me at Perugia, and I came on here into
the Piero della Francesca country, which is more instructive than
captivating.”
[Illustration: GUBBIO.][171]
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Forli, April 2._--In one of the old churches here is the tomb of
Barbara Ordelaffi, wife of the Lord of Forli, who was one of the most
intensely wicked women of her own or any other age. But her tomb is
indescribably lovely, her figure, that of quite a young girl, lying upon
its marble sarcophagus with a look of innocence and simplicity which can
scarcely be equalled.
“The tomb is in a side-chapel, separated by a heavy railing from the
church. Inside this railing, in an arm-chair, with his eyes constantly
fixed upon the marble figure, sat this morning a very old gentleman,
paralysed and unable to move, wrapped in a fur cloak. As I looked in at
the rails, he said, ‘And you also are come to see Barbara; how beautiful
she is, is not she?’ I acquiesced, and he said, ‘For sixty years I have
come constantly to see her. It is everything to me to be here. It is the
love and the story of my life. No one I have ever known is half so
beautiful as Barbara Ordelaffi. You have not looked at her yet long
enough, but gradually you will learn this. Every one must love Barbara.
I am carried here now; I cannot walk, but I cannot live without seeing
her. My servants bring me; they put me here; I can gaze at her figure,
then I am happy. At eleven o’clock my servants will come, and I shall be
taken home, but they will bring me again to see Barbara in the
afternoon.’
“I remained in the church. At eleven o’clock the servants came. They
took up the old gentleman and carried him up to the monument to bid it
farewell, and then out to his carriage; but in the afternoon, said the
Sacristan, they would come again, for he always spent most of the day
with Barbara Ordelaffi; when he was alone with the marble figure, he was
quite quiet and happy, and as they always locked him into the chapel, he
could never come to any harm.”
* * * * *
_To_ MARY LEA GIDMAN.
“_Florence, April 28._--On Monday I went to the excellent inn at Lucca,
and on Tuesday to the Bagni. Never was a place less altered--only one
new house, I think, and very pretty and rural it all looked. I went up
to the dear old Casa Bertini, and into the little garden looking down on
the valleys, quite as pretty as my recollection of it. Quintilia (our
maid) was enchanted to see me, but has grown into a very old woman,
though only sixty-three.
“I liked Lucca better than all the other places. It was the festival of
S. Zita when I was there, who was made a saint because she had been such
a good servant for forty years. I thought, if my dear Lea had lived in
those days, how she would have had a chance of being canonised.”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS WRIGHT.
“_Florence, May 2, 1875._--No words can express the fatigue or
discomfort of my Tuscan tour. The food, in the mountain convents
especially, was disgusting--little but coarse bread with oil and garlic;
the inns were filthy and the beds damp; and the travelling, in carts or
on horseback, most fatiguing, often sixteen hours a day. And yet--and
yet how thrilling is the interest of Monte Oliveto, S. Gemignano,
Volterra, La Vernia, Camaldoli!”
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
[Illustration: LA VERNIA.][172]