long and openly of all the temptations of his life, and endlessly about
himself. I urged that the best way of ennobling his own nature must be
through others, that self-introspection would never do, and could only
lead to egotism and selfishness, but that in trying to help others he
would unconsciously help himself. I find it most difficult to say
anything of this kind without making illustrations out of my own life,
which I have certainly no right to think exemplary.
“As we were going away, a lady who had stared long and hard at us, and
whom I thought to be some waif turned up from my Roman lectures, came up
to me. ‘I think, sir, that you were standing close to my sister just
now, and she has lost her purse.’--‘I am very sorry your sister has lost
her purse; it is very unfortunate.’--‘Yes, but my sister has _lost_ her
purse, and you, _you_ were standing by her when she lost it.’--‘I think
after what you have said I had better give you my card.’--‘Oh, no, no,
no.’--’ Oh, yes, yes, yes: after what you have said I must _insist_ upon
giving you my card.’ What an odd experience, to be taken for a
pickpocket! R. thought the lady had really picked _my_ pocket, but she
had not.”
* * * * *
“_Jan. 22._--An anonymous letter of apology from the lady of the picked
pocket; only she said that if I had been as flurried as she was, and had
been placed in the same circumstances as she was, I should have acted
exactly as she did; in which I do not quite agree with her.”
* * * * *
“_Monk’s Orchard, Jan. 23._--This is a fine big house, be-pictured,
be-statued, with a terraced garden, a lake, and a great flat park. A Mr.
and Mrs. Rodd are here with their son Rennell, a pleasant-looking boy,
wonderfully precocious and clever, though, as every one listens to him,
he has--not unnaturally--a very good opinion of himself: still one feels
at once that he is the sort of boy who will be heard of again some day.
“Our host, Mr. Lewis Loyd, is in some ways one of the most absent men in
the world. One day, meeting a friend, he said, ‘Hallo! what a long time
it is since I’ve seen you! How’s your father?’--‘Oh, my father’s
dead.’--‘God bless me! I’m very sorry,’ &c. The next year he met the
same man again, and had forgotten all about it, so began with, ‘Hallo!
what a long time since I’ve seen you! How’s your father?’-‘Oh, _my
father’s dead still_!’
“We have been to church at Shirley--one of Scott’s new country churches.
In the churchyard is a cross to poor Sir John Anson, and beside it a
granite altar-tomb with an inscription saying that it is to Ruskin’s
father--‘a perfectly honest merchant,’ and that ‘his son, whom he loved
to the uttermost, and taught to speak the truth, says this.’
* * * * *
“_69 Onslow Square, Jan. 28._--A long visit to F. and S. It is quite a
new phase of life to me. They are perfect gentlemen, at least in heart,
and one cannot be with them long without seeing a kindly, chivalrous
nature, which comes to the surface in a thousand little nothings. Yet
they are what the world frowns upon--beginning to seek fortune on the
stage, neglected or rejected by unsympathetic relations, living from
hand to mouth, furnishing their rooms by pawning their rings and
watches, &c. S. in terrible illness, totally penniless, ignored by every
one, is taken in, nursed, doctored, and paid for by F., upon whom he has
no claim whatever. F., abused, snubbed, and without any natural charm in
himself, is henceforth loved, defended, regarded with the most loyal
devotion, by his more popular companion.
“I dined on the 26th with Lady E. Adeane. Mr. Percy Doyle was very
amusing. Talking of the anxiety of ministers in America to change their
posts, he said, ‘If my father had bequeathed to me Hell and Texas, I
should have lived in Hell and let Texas.’
“Yesterday I went to luncheon with the Vaughans at the Temple, and met
there Miss Rye, who has a home for homeless children at Clapham, and
takes them off by batches to America, to establish them there as
servants, &c. She produced from her pocket about a hundred
cartes-de-visite of the children, wild, unkempt, and wicked-looking, and
of the same children after they had been under cultivation. Certainly
the change was marvellous, but then she had employed a good photographer
for the redeemed children and a very bad one for the little ruffians.”
[Illustration: FOUNTAIN COURT, TEMPLE.][188]
* * * * *
“_Feb. 5._--Dined at Lady Sarah Lindsay’s. Sir Robert Phillimore was
there, whom I had not seen since I was a child. He is most agreeable
and has a noble nature. There was a young man there, a Bridgeman, just
entering the law, and I thought the picture quite beautiful which Sir
Robert drew without effort for his encouragement, of all that the
profession of the law might become and be made by any one who really
took to it,--of all the great aims to be fulfilled, of all the ways of
making it useful to others and ennobling to one’s own nature. I felt so
much all that I should have felt that sort of encouragement, drawn from
practical experience, would have been to myself.”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 8._--The opening of Parliament. I went to Lord Overstone’s. At a
quarter to two the procession passed beneath--the fine old carriages and
gorgeous footmen, one stream of gold and red, pouring through the black
crowd and leafless trees. We all counted the carriages
differently--eight, twelve, fifteen; and there were only six! All one
saw of royalty was the waving of a white cap-string, as the Queen,
sitting well back in the carriage, bowed to the people.”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 13._--Dined at the Dowager Lady Barrington’s--the great topic
being dinner past, present, and prospective. George, Lord Barrington,
said that he had dined at the Brazilian Minister’s, and he was sure the
cookery was good and also the wine, for he had eaten of every dish and
drunk fourteen kinds of wine, and had passed a perfectly good night and
been quite well the next morning. He also dined with Mr. Brand the
Speaker, and complimented Mrs. Brand upon the dinner. She told her cook.
He said, ‘We are three, Lord Granville’s, Mr. Russell Sturgis’s, and
myself; there are only three cooks in London.’ When Lord Harrington
afterwards saw Mrs. Brand, she told him the cook had asked who had
praised him, and ‘when he heard,’ continued Mrs. Brand, ‘he also gave
you his little meed of praise.’ ‘Ah, M. Barrington,’ he said, ‘c’est une
bonne fourchette.’ He had been at Kinmel, but said he had ‘dismissed Mr.
Hughes.’”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 14._--Dined at Lord Halifax’s to meet Lord and Lady Cardwell.
They are most pleasant, interesting, interested company, and it was
altogether one of the happiest dinners I remember. The conversation was
chiefly about the changes in spelling and their connection with changes
in English history and customs.
“Lord Cardwell was in the habit of using the Church prayers at family
prayers. One day his valet came to him and said, ‘I must leave your
lordship’s service at once.’--‘Why, what have you to complain
of?’--‘Nothing personally, but your lordship _will_ repeat every
morning--“We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and
have left undone those things which we ought to have done:”--now I
freely admit that I have often done things I ought not, but that I have
left undone things that I ought to have done, I utterly deny: and I will
not stay here to hear it said.’”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 19._--A charming walk with Charlie Wood to St. Paul’s, along the
Embankment and then a labyrinth of quaint City streets. He called it his
half-holiday, and I am sure it was so to me to mount into his pure
unworldly atmosphere even for two hours. He is really the only young man
I know who at once thinks no evil, believes no evil, and does no evil.”
* * * * *
“_Sunday, Feb. 20._--Luncheon with Mrs. Harvey of Ickwellbury, meeting
Colonel Taylor, the Whip of the House of Commons--a very amusing man. He
talked a great deal about Ireland. He said that when he congratulated
Whyte-Melville upon the engagement of his daughter to Lord Massereene,
he said, ‘Yes, I have every reason to be satisfied: first, my future
son-in-law is an Irishman, and then he speaks his native tongue in all
its purity.’
[Illustration: IN FRONT OF ST. PAUL’S.][189]
“He spoke of landing in former days at Kingstown, how the car-drivers
fought for you, and, having obtained you, possessed you, and made all
out of you that they could. Passing a mile-post with G. P. O. upon it,
the ‘fare’ asked its meaning. ‘Why, your honour,’ said the driver, ‘it’s
aizy to see that your honour has never been in ould Ireland before--why,
that’s just God preserve O’Connell, your honour, and it’s on ivery
mile-post all through the country.’ It was of course ‘General Post
Office.’
“Coming to a river, the ‘fare’ asked, ‘What do you call this
river?’--‘It’s not a river at all, your honour; it’s only a
strame.’--‘Well, but what do you call it?’--‘Oh, we don’t call it at
all, your honour; it just comes of itself.’”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 24._--Dined at Lord Strathmore’s, and went on with Hedworth and
Lizzie Williamson to Lady Bloomfield’s, where sixty-eight cousins
assembled to take leave of Lord and Lady Lytton on their departure for
India.”
* * * * *
If any one has ever the patience to read this memoir through, they will
have been struck by the way in which, for many years before the time I
am writing of, the persons with whom I lived were quite different from
those amongst whom my childhood was spent. Arthur Stanley had never got
over the publication of the “Memorials of a Quiet Life,” though he was
always at a loss to say what he objected to in it, and Mary Stanley I
never saw at all. From Lady Augusta alone I continued to receive
frequent and affectionate messages.
In 1874 Lady Augusta represented the Queen at the marriage of the Duke
of Edinburgh, and she never really recovered the effects of the cold
which she then endured in Russia. In the summer of 1875 she was
alarmingly ill in Paris, was brought home with difficulty, and from that
time there was little hope of her recovery. She expired early in March
1876. I had not seen her for long, but had always a most affectionate
recollection of her, and the last letter she was able to dictate was
addressed to me.
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Holmhurst, March 12._--I have been again up to London for dear Augusta
Stanley’s funeral on the 9th. It was a beautiful day. All the approaches
to Westminster were filled with people in mourning.
“It seemed most strange thus to go to the Deanery again--that the doors
closed for six years were opened wide by death, by the death of one who
had always remained my friend, and whom no efforts of others could
alienate. Red cloth showed that royalty was coming, and I went at once
to the library, where an immense crowd of cousins were assembled. As I
went down the little staircase with Kate Vaughan, four ladies in deep
mourning passed to the dining-room, carrying immense wreaths of lovely
white flowers: they were the Queen and three of her daughters. The Queen
seemed in a perfect anguish of grief. She remained for a short time
alone with the coffin, I believe knelt by it, and was then taken to the
gallery overhanging the Abbey.
“Soon the immense procession set out by the cloisters, and on entering
the church, turned so as to pass beneath the Queen and then up the nave
from the west end. The church was full of people: I felt as if I only
saw the wind lifting the long garlands of white flowers as the coffin
moved slowly on, and Arthur’s pathetic face of childlike bewilderment.
The music was lovely, but in that vast choir one longed for a village
service. It was not so in the second part, when we moved through one
long sob from the poor of Westminster who lined the way, to the little
chapel behind the tomb of Henry VII., where the service was
indescribably simple and touching.
“The procession of mourners went round the Abbey from the choir by a
longer way to the chapel on account of the people. As it passed the
corner of the transept, the strange little figure of Mr. Carlyle slipped
out. He had been very fond of Augusta, was full of feeling for Arthur,
and seemed quite unconscious of who and where he was. He ran along,
before the chief mourners, by the side of the coffin, and in the chapel
itself he stood at the head of the grave, making the strangest
ejaculations at intervals through the service.”
* * * * *
Arthur stood at the head of the grave with his hands on the heads of
Thomas Bruce’s two children. When the last flowers fell into the grave,
a single voice sang gloriously, “Write, saith the Spirit.” Then we moved
back again to the nave, and, standing at the end, in a voice of most
majestic pathos, quivering, yet audible through all that vast space,
Arthur himself gave the blessing. “The Queen was waiting for him upon
the threshold as he went into the house, and led him herself into his
desolate home.”
I insert some poor lines which I wrote “In Memoriam.”
“Lately together in a common grief
Our Royal mistress with her people wept,
And reverently were fairest garlands laid
Where our beloved one from her sufferings slept.
Seeing the sunshine through a mist of tears
Fall on the bier of her we loved so well,
Each, in the memory sweet of happy years,
Some kindly word or kindlier thought could tell.
And tenderly, with sorrow-trembling voice,
All sought their comfort in a meed of love,
Unworthy echoes from each saddened heart
Seeking their share in the great loss to prove.
For she so lately gathered into rest
Was one who smoothed this stony path of ours,
And beating down the thorns along the way,
Aye left it strewn and sweet with summer flowers.
In the true candour of a noble heart,
She never sought another’s fault to show,
But rather thought there must be in herself
Some secret failure which she did not know.
While if all praised and honoured, she herself
Meekly received it with a sweet surprise,
Seeking henceforth to be what now she deemed
Was but a phantasy in loving eyes.
When the fair sunshine of her happy home
Tuned her whole heart and all her life to praise,
She ever tried to cheer some gloomier lot,
From the abounding brightness of its ways.
And many a weary sufferer blest the hand
Which knew so well a healing balm to pour;
While hungry voices never were denied
By her, who kept, as steward, a poor man’s store.
Thus when, from all the labour of her love,
She passed so sadly to a bed of pain,
And when from tongue to tongue the story went,
That none would see the honoured face again:
It was a personal grief to thousand hearts
Outside the sphere in which her lot was cast,
And tens of thousands sought to have a share
In loving honour paid her at the last.
E’en death is powerless o’er a life like hers,
Its radiance lingers, though its sun has set;
Rich and unstinted was the seed she sowed,
The golden harvest is not gathered yet.”
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_March 25._--A ‘Spelling Bee’ at Mrs. Dundas’s. I was plucked as I
entered the room over the word Camelopard.
“Dined at the Tower of London with Everard Primrose; only young Lord
Mayo there. At 11 P.M. the old ceremony of relieving guard took place. I
stood with Everard and a file of soldiers on a little raised terrace. A
figure with a lanthorn emerged from a dark hole.
“‘Who goes there?’ shouted the soldiers.
“‘The Queen.’
“‘What Queen?’
“‘Queen Victoria.’
“‘And whose keys are those?’
“‘Queen Victoria’s keys.’
“Upon which the figure, advancing into the broad moonlight, said ‘God
bless Queen Victoria!’ and all the soldiers shouted ‘Amen’ and
dispersed.”
* * * * *
“_March 28._--My lecture on ‘The Strand and the Inns of Court’ took
place in 41 Seymour Street. I felt at Tyburn till I began, and then got
on pretty well. There was a very large attendance. I was very much
alarmed at the whole party, but had an individual dread of Lord
Houghton, though I was soon relieved by seeing that he was fast asleep,
and remained so all the time.”
* * * * *
“_April 4._--My lecture on Aldersgate, &c. Dinner at the Miss Duff
Gordons, meeting the Tom Taylors.[190] He talks incessantly.”
* * * * *
“_April 6._--Dined with Lady Sarah Lindsay, where I was delighted at
last to meet Mrs. Greville.[191] She recited in the evening, sitting
down very quietly on the sofa with her feet on a stool. Her voice is
absorbing, and in her ‘Queen of the May’ each line seems to catch up a
fresh echo of pathos from the last.”
* * * * *
“_April 7._--Dined at Sir Stafford Northcote’s.[192] Mrs. Dudley Ryder
was there, who told me she had paralysis of the throat, yet sang
splendidly. Sir Stafford told a capital story in French in the evening,
something like that which I tell in Italian about the Duke of Torlonia.”
* * * * *
“_April 14._--Dined at the Shaw-Lefevres’. Dear Sir John talked much,
when we were alone, of the great mercies and blessings of his life--how
entirely he could now say with Horne Tooke, ‘I am both content and
thankful.’ He described his life--his frequent qualms at having
sacrificed a certain position at the bar to an uncertain post under
Government: then how the Governorship of Ceylon was offered to him, and
how he longed to take it, but did not, though it was of all things what
he would have liked, because an instant answer was demanded, and he
could not at once find any means of providing for the children he could
not take with him: how through all the year afterwards he was very
miserable and could apply to nothing, it was such a very severe
disappointment; and then how he was persuaded to stand for Cambridge,
and how, though he did not get in, the effort served its purpose in
diverting his thoughts. Eventually the place in the House of Lords was
offered, in which he worked for so many years.
[Illustration: CHAPEL AND GATEWAY, LINCOLN’S INN.][193]
“Sir John spoke most touchingly of his boy’s death. ‘We had another
little boy once, you did not know perhaps. It died. It was the dearest,
most engaging child. When it died it took the shine out of life.’ Then
he dwelt on the law of compensations, how the anxiety for his eldest
girl Rachel, so very ill, ‘brought in on a cushion, and suffering so
much, poor thing,’ diverted his thoughts from the great loss. In his old
age he said, ‘And now at eighty all is blessing--_all_ ... but it is
difficult to remember how old one is. The chief sign of age I feel is
the inability to apply regularly to work, the having no desire to begin
anything new.’ One could not but feel as if it was Sir Thomas More who
was speaking, so beautiful his spirit of blessed contentment, so perfect
the trust and repose of his gentle waiting for what the future might
bring.”
[Illustration: STAPLE INN, HOLBORN.][194]
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, April 30._--Lea has been in saying, ‘It’s May Day
to-morrow, the day to turn the cows out to grass. The poor things must
have a bit of a treat then, you know; they always have done. But there’s
not the good clover now-a-days there used to be. Eh! what a fuss there
used to be, to be sure, putting the cows out in the clover; and we used
to watch that they did not eat too much, and to see that they did not
swell; if they did, they had to be pricked, or they’d have burst. And
then next day there was the making of the first May cheese.... Old John
Pearce at Lime used to take wonderful care of Mr. Taylor’s oxen, and
proud enough he used to be of them. “Well, you give them plenty to eat,
John,” I used to say. “Yes, that’s just about it, Miss Lea,” he said; “I
do put it into them right down spitefully, that I do.”’
“Here are some more of her sayings:--
“‘Here’s a pretty how-d’ye-do! It’s the master finding fault!--it’s one
day one thing and one another. Old bachelors and old maids are all
alike. They don’t know what they want, _they_ don’t; but _I_ know: the
old maids want husbands, and the old bachelors want wives, that’s what
they want.’
“‘It’s the mischief of the farming now-a-days that the farmers always
say ‘Go.’ ... My father used to say a farmer never ought to say ‘Go;’ if
he did, the work was sure to be neglected: a farmer should always say
‘Come, lads,’ and then the work would be done.’
“‘It’s hailing is it? then there’ll be frost, for
“Hail, hail,
Brings frost at its tail!”
as the saying is.’
“‘Why, girl, the moon’s waning. I would never kill a pig when the moon’s
on the wane. Why, it would not break out; it would shrivel up. No, you
must kill a pig with the new moon. I daresay folks laugh at me, but I
know what’s what.’
“‘How you do make him (a sick young man) laugh!
“‘Well, and there’s nothing does him so much good. He’d mope, mope,
mope, and that’s nothing. It makes him fat, like babies. Boys must
laugh, or they won’t get fat. Girls may cry: it always does them good:
it stretches their muscles and such like: but boys mustn’t cry; it’s bad
for them: that’s how the old saying goes.’
“‘How do you like them?
“‘Eh! how do I know? We must summer ’em and winter ’em afore we can
tell, must’na we, wench: aye, and a good many summers and winters it
must be too, and then they may deceive ye. I have’na lived more than
twenty years over half a century, but I’ve found that out.’
“I have’na heard the cuckoo this spring. I don’t know what’s come over
the things. Heathfield fair is over ever so long, and “The old woman
lets the cuckoo out of her basket at Heathfield fair,” that’s the old
saying.’”
* * * * *
“_May 6._--In London again, which is full of interest as ever, and now
especially beautiful from its trees just bursting into leaf with
indescribable wealth of lovely young green. It is certainly a most
delightful time. People think I ought to feel dreadfully depressed by a
most spiteful paragraph upon ‘Cities of Italy’ in the _Saturday_, and a
more spiteful review in the _Athenæum_, but I do not a bit: they are
most disagreeable doses to take, but I believe they are most wholesome
medicine for one’s morals and capital teachers of humility.”
* * * * *
“_May 7._--An amusing tea at the Duchess of Cleveland’s--young Lord
Stanhope and Mr. Bourke there. The Duchess talked of Pimlico, the bought
property of Lord Grosvenor, formerly called ‘The Five Fields.’ The Court
wished to buy it because it was so close to Buckingham Palace, but
thought the sum asked was too much. Lord Grosvenor gave £30,000 for it.
Lord Cowper had wished to buy it, and sent his agent for the purpose,
but he came back without having done so, and when Lord Cowper upbraided
him, said, ‘Really, my lord, I could not find it in my heart to give
£200 more for it than it was worth.’ Cubitt afterwards offered a
ground-rent of £60,000.”
* * * * *
“_May 8._--Dined with Mrs. Thellusson to meet Lady Waterford. Whistler
the artist was there. He has a milk-white tuft growing out of his black
hair, a peculiarity which he declares to be hereditary in his family, as
in that of the Caëtani.”
* * * * *
“_May 10._--I was ‘at home’ in the morning to a sketching-party in
Bunhill Fields Cemetery. It was very sunny there and very quiet, till
the Militia and a troop of attendant boys found us out. One of the
latter stole my umbrella, but I pursued him and captured it again as he
passed through the gate.
“A very pleasant gathering in the afternoon in the beautiful new room of
Lowther Lodge, where the great characteristics are the white Queen Anne
chimney-pieces, and the vast space of floors, not parquetted, but of
closely fitted oak boards. Dined at the Peases’ to meet Woolner the
sculptor, &c.”
[Illustration: JOHN BUNYAN’S TOMB, BUNHILL FIELDS.][195]
* * * * *
“_May 11._--A lovely day. My ‘Excursion’ to the Tower. Forty-six people
met me there. All the curious chambers and vaults were open to us in
turn. In the White Tower we saw the prisons of Little Ease. I had given
my little explanation and returned into the sunshine with the greater
number of the party, when Mrs. Maxwell Lyte, who had arrived late, went
in. Being told that the cell of Sir Thomas More was to be seen, and
seeing a railing by the flickering torchlight, she thought that marked
the place, and went underneath it, and stepped out into--nothing! With a
piercing shriek she fell into a black abyss by a precipice of fourteen
feet. Every one thought she was killed, but after a minute her voice
came out of the depths--‘I am not seriously hurt.’ It was a tremendous
relief.
[Illustration: TRAITOR’S GATE, TOWER OF LONDON.][196]
“We went on to the Queen’s Head Restaurant, Emily Lefevre and I running
before to order luncheon. When we arrived, we found volleys of smoke
issuing from the house and the kitchen-chimney on fire. However, we
waited, the party bore the smell, and eventually we had our luncheon.
Tom Brassey wanted to order wine, &c., but Emily stopped him with,
‘Remember, Mr. Brassey, we are limited to fourpence a head.’