at the Spottiswoodes’ house in Grosvenor Place to see him, and saw
nothing but the flash of light on his bald head. It was a pleasant
party, but how seldom in London society does one hear anything one can
carry away. Most people are like those Mme. du Deffand describes--‘des
machines à ressort qui vont, viennent, parlent, vivent, sans penser,
sans réfléchir, sans sentir, chacun jouant son rôle par habitude.’”
* * * * *
“_May 12._--Trouble with Murray the publisher, who insists on believing
that because some points in my ‘Cities of Italy’ resemble his Handbooks,
they must be taken from them, which they most assuredly are not. I had
no Handbooks with me when I was writing, but where there is only one
thing to say about places, two people sometimes say it.”
* * * * *
“_May 13._--A delightful morning, drawing in the Savoy Churchyard.”
* * * * *
“_May 15._--Drawing-party in dirty, picturesque St. Bartholomew’s. For
the first time this year no one asked me to dinner, and I was most
profoundly bored.”
* * * * *
“_May 16._--Dined at Sir Charles Trevelyan’s. Old Lord Hatherley was
very interesting. He said much that was curious about the Milton houses
in the City, and how as a boy he used to go to study at the Williams
Library in Redcross Street: how Lady Hatherley had property in the City,
in an ancient conveyance of which there was a signature of Shakspeare. I
never saw people whose every word breathed more of old-fashioned
goodness than Lord and Lady Hatherley.”
[Illustration: THE SAVOY CHURCHYARD.][197]
* * * * *
“_May 17._--A sketching-party in the City. The going thither down the
river, with its varieties of huge barges with their sails, quite as
striking as many things abroad. In the great Church of St. Mary Overy
we drew the wonderful figures of the ‘Sisters’--sleeping deeply with
their rakes and prongs over their shoulders while waiting for the great
final harvest.”
[Illustration: RAHERE’S TOMB, ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S, SMITHFIELD.][198]
* * * * *
“_May 26._--Dined at Lord Ducie’s. Lord Henry Scott talked of his place
on the Solent, and his different rights to flotsam, jetsam, and lagam;
that it never arrived at the third: that the second had only brought
him two dead sailors to bury.”
[Illustration: THE SLEEPING SISTERS, ST. MARY OVERY.][199]
* * * * *
“_May 27._--Dined at Lord Egerton of Tatton’s, Old General Doyle was
very amusing with his stories of duels in which he had a personal share.
He also told of his visit to Ireland as a young man with the present
Lord Enniskillen as Lord Cole. At the first house they went to, his
friend escaped after dinner, but he had not time. The host locked the
door, and they began to drink at seven, and went on to eleven. At
eleven his host fell under the table, and he then picked his pocket of
the key and got out. The next day his host seriously consulted Lord Cole
as to whether it was not his duty to call him out, because he would not
stay for another drinking bout.
“He told the story of a man in France, condemned to death for the murder
of his father and mother, who, when asked if he could give any reason
why he should not undergo the extreme penalty of the law, clasped his
hands, and said, ‘Ayez pitié d’un pauvre orphelin.’”
* * * * *
“_May 31._--An evening party at Lord Houghton’s, an omnium-gatherum, but
very amusing. It recalled Carlyle’s speech, who, when some ecclesiastic
gloomily inquired in his presence ‘What would happen if Jesus Christ
returned to earth _now_?’ retorted--‘_Happen!_ why Dickie Milnes would
ask him to dinner, to be sure, and would ask Pontius Pilate to meet
him.’
“It took half-an-hour to get up the staircase. Miss Rhoda Broughton was
there, beautifully dressed, pressed upon by bishops and clergy: Salvini
and Irving were affectionately greeting: Lady Stanley of Alderley, under
a perfect stack of diamonds, was declaiming very loud in her unknown
tongue to an astonished and bewildered audience; and through all the
groups upstairs the young King of the Belgians was smiling and bowing a
retreat to his escape by a back-staircase.”
* * * * *
“_June 6._--Left London for Devonshire, struck more than usual with the
interest of the Great Western Railway, which has no exceptional beauty,
but most characteristic changes of scenery, even the botany along the
banks showing in its different plants the varied conformations of the
soil.
“First, close to London, the endless brick-kilns, and the last streets
stretching out into the blackened fields like fingers of a skeleton
hand. Then across the green meadows, all intersected by elms, branchless
and tufted like great brooms, the grey coronal of Windsor. Then the red
houses and pretentious prison of Reading and the glassy reaches of the
Thames, with its vigorous growth of sturdy water-plants at Pangbourne
and Maple Durham.
“Next we enter Berkshire, bare and featureless except near the river and
where the White Horse appears, a scraggy creature rudely scratched in
the turf above a soft hollow in the downs. Chippenham is a little town
in a wooded hollow, with a grey spire and stone bridge over the Avon.
Then one reaches a stony country. The houses are no longer of brick, but
all of stone. The Box tunnel is a result of the hills. The villas near
Bath, of grey stone, cling to the sides of the heights from whose
quarries they were taken. In the valley are Hampton church and ferry.
“Bath, an entirely stone city, has a consequent greyness of its own. The
streets have a desolate stateliness, and are still the abode of old
maids and card-playing dowagers as when described by Miss Austen; so
Bath-chairs are still the popular mode of conveyance to the frequent
tea-parties. Beechen Cliff is a fine feature. In the centre of the town
the Abbey tower shows the poverty of perpendicular architecture.
“By Kelsey Oaks we rush on to smoky Bristol, all energy and ugliness:
then a great strange rift in the hills shows where the Avon winds
beneath the rocks and hanging bridge of Clifton.
“Now there is a change to softer scenery at Clevedon, Woodspring Priory,
the odd hill of Weston. The houses grow warmer as well as the
country--no longer of grey, but of red sandstone: the Somersetshire
churches, proverbially fine, have pink-grey towers, their projections
gilded with lichen. Now we pass through apple-orchards, and the thorns,
snow-drifted with bloom, stand knee-deep in the long mowing grass. In
the flats rises Bridgewater, then Taunton with its beautiful and
picturesque towers standing out against the low grey hills; Exeter,
capped by the stumpy towers of its cathedral; and then the salt estuary
of the Teign laps the bank of the railway and we enter the woods of
Powderham.”
* * * * *
“_Powderham, June 9._--I found the door open last night and walked
straight into the hall. Charlie Wood and Lady Agnes were there at tea,
and people kept dropping in--a very pleasant party.... Lord Devon[200]
is the kindest of hosts, full of small courtesies; but he is a great
deal away, flying up to London after dinner and returning next day: they
say he performs the circumference of the globe every year, and chiefly
on his own lines of railway.
“Lord Devon’s only son, Lord Courtenay, is seldom here, but when he is,
amuses every one. One evening ‘Mademoiselle Bekker’ arrived late at
Powderham, coming in the hope to obtain a chairman for a meeting which
was going to be held at Exeter in favour of the Rights of Women. There
was a very distinguished party in the house--the Bishop of Winchester,
Lord Halifax, the American Minister (Motley), &c., and they each, while
refusing, made a speech in answer to hers, which was most eloquent.
Eventually Mademoiselle Bekker declared herself so indignant as to be
led to unsex herself: she was Lord Courtenay.”
* * * * *
“_June 12._--On Saturday we were called at daybreak, and went to Totness
by rail, and thence in waggonettes eighteen miles through deep bosky
lanes, and then over breezy uplands to the Moult, Lord Devon’s
enchanting little place near Salcombe. Here the blue-green transparent
sea glances through the thick foliage deep below the windings of the
road, and the quiet bay is encircled by rocky hills tufted with wood,
which in parts feathers down into the water. We rested at North Sands
Cottage, a lovely wee place of Lord Devon’s, and then walked through the
grounds of his larger place of the Moult. Aloes grow and flourish here
to an immense size. Beyond this a path--‘Lord Courtenay’s Walk’--runs
half-way up the steep precipices above the sea.
“It was an enchanting day, white wreaths of cloud drifting above in the
blue, deep below the sea gloriously transparent, with all its
weed-covered rocks visible through the waters, great white gulls
swooping around with their wild outcries, and the pathlet winding up and
down the cliff, bordered by cistus and thrift in masses of pink
luxuriance. On the steep descent to a cove, we were met by a welcome
luncheon, and ate it high above some rock caverns which are very curious
at that point.
“One of the principal farmers belonging to an agricultural club near
this lost his wife lately, and in his kind way Lord Devon alluded to her
at the annual club dinner,--speaking of her as an admirable, kind, and
industrious woman, and saying how he could feel with such a loss, having
had himself a bereavement which was ever present to him. But at last the
farmer interrupted him--‘I doan’t know what his Lordship be a talking
about; but I du know that she was an awful cranky, tiresome old woman,
and God Almighty’s very welcome to she.’
“Yesterday was Sunday. I went to the service at Powderham with Lord
Devon and Lady Mary Fortescue in a chapel opposite the white recumbent
marble figure of Lady Devon. The afternoon was spent in the ‘plantation
garden,’ where an Australian gum-tree was in full flower. In the evening
there were prayers--‘Compline,’ they called it--a very living, earnest
service in the chapel.... Truly I felt, as I took leave of Charlie, that
above the door of every house that is his home might be inscribed the
words of S. Bernard engraved over the threshold of many Cistercian
houses--‘Bonum est nos hic esse, quia homo vivit purius, cadit rarius,
surgit velocius, incedit cautius, quiescit securius, moritur felicius,
purgatur citius, praemiatur copiosius.’”
* * * * *
“_Abbots Kerswell, June 15._--Yesterday Sir Samuel and Lady Baker dined
here. He is most agreeable, and possesses _‘l’art de narrer’_ to
perfection. He told a ghost-story in the evening, without either names,
dates, or any definite material, and yet it was quite admirable, and
kept the company breathless for three-quarters of an hour.”
* * * * *
“_June 16._--Yesterday we paid a long visit to Sir Samuel Baker. He has
bought and made his place with the money he received from the Khedive
for his African discoveries.[201] The house is full of skeleton heads,
horns, &c. Many others were destroyed in the African depot by an insect
which forces out the bone as with a gimlet, but fortunately it will not
live in England.”
* * * * *
“_Charlton Hall, June 17._--I spent several hours in Bath on my way
here. It was an exquisite day, and everything was in great beauty. Bath
seems a town exclusively intended for the rich. Everything being built
of stone gives it a foreign character, and the height of the surrounding
hills causes you to see green down every street. I felt age in the way
in which everything looked so small in proportion to my recollection.
“At Chippenham a dogcart from Lord Suffolk’s was waiting for me, and we
rolled away down the dull lanes to Malmesbury. It was curious in one day
to revisit, as it were, six years out of my former life. At Bath I had
walked up the hill to where I could look down upon Lyncombe, and what
memories it awakened of miserable longings after a fuller, more
interesting life, which lasted through the whole of two years and a half
of wasted, monotonous, objectless time. Now in my full life, looking
down upon that richly wooded glen, it seemed quite beautiful; but in the
wretched bondage of those weary years, how hideous it all was!
[Illustration: CHARLTON HALL.]
“At Chippenham, as I passed the park at Harnish, I went back farther
still to three years and a half of private school imprisonment and the
pettiest of petty miseries. They do not matter much now certainly, but
one does grudge six years of youth denuded of all that makes life
pleasant and beautiful.
“Charlton is a magnificent old house of yellow-grey stone, Jacobean,
open on all sides, a perfect quadrangle. Inside, there was once a
courtyard, but a former Lord Suffolk closed it in. It remained for many
years a mere gravelled space: lately Lady Suffolk has had it paved, and
to a certain extent furnished. The rooms are handsome in stucco
ornaments, but not picturesque. The pictures are glorious. There is one
of the noblest known works of Leonardo da Vinci--‘La Vierge aux
Rochers,’ the figures all with the peculiar Leonardo type of face,
grouped in a rocky valley--strange, wild, and fantastic.[202] The
picture which to me is most charming is ‘Le Raboteur,’ attributed to
Annibale Carracci. The Virgin, a sweet-looking peasant woman, yet with
an expression of ‘pondering these things in her heart,’ is sitting
outside her cottage door with her work-basket by her side. The boy
Jesus, in a simple blue tunic, is standing at the end of the carpenter’s
table--‘subject to his parents’--doing some measuring for old Joseph,
who is at work there. It is a quiet village group such as one has often
seen, only elevated by expression.
“There is a glorious old gallery with a noble ceiling, full of portraits
and of old and interesting books. In the ‘rose parlour’ are more
pictures, and a ceiling the design of which is repeated in the
flower-garden. Many of the pictures belonged to James II. When he fled,
he sent them to be taken care of by Colonel Graham, who had married the
Earl of Berkshire’s daughter, and William III. afterwards allowed them
to remain.”
* * * * *
“_June 18._--Yesterday it rained at intervals all day. I drew the
gallery, and enjoyed talking to Lady Suffolk,[203] who sat by me, with a
charm of face and manner and mind which recalls Donne’s lines--
‘No spring or summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen on one autumnal face.’
She lives so far more in the heavenly than the earthly horizons, that
one feels raised above earth whilst one is with her. She spoke of the
impossibility of believing in eternity of punishment, yet of the mass of
difficulties besetting all explanations. She talked of a woman in the
village in failing health and unhappy. Being asked if she was not
troubled in her mind, she confessed that she was, but said, ‘It is not
for want of light; I have had plenty of light.’ She said her father had
said to her, ‘Now if you go to hell, Hannah, it will not be for want of
light.’
“Some one had urged Lady Suffolk to go and hear Moody and Sankey,
because their sermons on heaven were such a refreshment and rest: she
had gone, and the sermon had all been about hell.
“Lady Victoria drove me to Malmesbury. The town cross is beautiful. The
Abbey is a gigantic remnant of a colossal whole; the existing church
being about two-thirds of the nave of the original abbey-church, entered
by a magnificent Norman door. By the altar is a tomb to King Athelstan,
erected some centuries after his death, and there is a gallery like
Prior Bolton’s in Smithfield.”
* * * * *
“_June 18._--I sleep at Charlton in the ‘king’s room,’ so called from
James II. It is hung with tapestry and old pictures. As we were going to
bed, Andover said, ‘You sleep in the haunted room.’ Consequently every
noise, which I had never observed before, troubled me through the night.
One ought never to be _told_ that a room is haunted.
“Conversation has been much about Mrs. Wagstaff, a homœopathic
clairvoyant, wife of an allopathic doctor at Leighton Buzzard. She comes
up to London if desired, and works wonderful cures. _In_ her trances her
conversation is most remarkable, but out of them she is a very ordinary
person. She never remembers when awake having seen any one (with her
eyes half-open) in a trance, but meets as a perfect stranger the person
she has just been talking to for half-an-hour.
“It was odd on Sunday having no service in church till six in the
evening, but certainly very pleasant. We walked in the park beforehand
to Sans Souci, a pretty wood in which a clear stream has its source,
throwing up the sand in the oddest way in a large round basin. Numbers
of trees were lying about, cut down, as Andover said, ‘to meet the
annual demand for the needy.’”
* * * * *
“_June 19._--The Andovers’ little girl is most amusing. At six, if she
catches a new word, she uses it without the slightest idea as to its
meaning. Her maid Sabina went to her to-day and said, ‘Now, Miss Howard,
I must put on your things, for you must go out.’--‘No, Sabina, you must
not,’ promptly said ‘Tiny-Wee.’--‘But I really must, Miss Howard,’ said
Sabina.--‘No, Sabina, you must not,’ persisted Tiny-Wee.--‘And why, Miss
Howard?’ said Sabina.--‘Because, Sabina, it is _co-eternal_,’ said
Tiny-Wee very solemnly; and Sabina was utterly quelled and gave way at
once. It is needless to say that Tiny had been to church and heard the
Athanasian Creed.
“Andover has been describing a clergyman who preached on the fatted
calf, and sought his words as well as his ideas as he proceeded
extempore, and said, ‘He came home, my brethren, he came home to his
father, to his dear father, and his father killed for him the fatted
calf, which he had been saving up for years, my brethren--saving up for
_years_ for some festive occasion.’
“He told of an American who never was in time for anything in his life,
was unpunctual for everything systematically. One day, in a very
out-of-the-way place, he fell into a cataleptic state, and was supposed
to be dead. According to the rapidity of American movement, instead of
bringing the undertaker to him, they took him to the undertaker, who
fitted him with a coffin and left him, only laying the coffin lid
loosely on the outside of it. In the middle of the night he awoke from
his trance, pushed off the lid, and finding himself in a place alone
surrounded by a quantity of coffins, he jumped up and pushed off the lid
of the coffin nearest to him. He found nothing. He tried another:
nothing. ‘Good God!’ he cried, ‘I’ve been late all my life, and now I’m
late for the resurrection!’”
* * * * *
“_June 20._--Yesterday we had a delightful drive to see Lady Cowley at
Draycot, a most charming place of happy medium size, in a park full of
fern and old oaks. Lord Mornington, who left it to the Cowleys, was
quite a distant cousin, and they expected nothing. He came to dine with
them occasionally at Paris, he mounted Lady Feodore for the Bois de
Boulogne, and one day they suddenly found themselves the heirs of
Draycot, perfectly fitted up with everything they could possibly wish
for. It was like a fairy story, and Lady Cowley has never attempted to
conceal her enchantment at it.
“To-day we went to a different place--Mr. Holford’s new house of
Westonbirt. It is an immense building in a flat, ugly situation. The
hall goes up the whole height of the house, with open galleries to the
bedrooms, so that every one sees who goes in and out of them. The
dining-room has a fine Jacobean chimney-piece and modern Corinthian
pillars. There is a great chimney-piece in another room, which was an
altar in a church at Rome. All is huge, and seemed very comfortless.
“It has been a most happy visit to the Suffolks, with whom one is
completely at home. As Lady Suffolk says, though they have often wished
to be rich, they have been much happier for being poor, for they have
all been obliged to do their part in the house and place, and all that
has to be carried on there, and so it is to them not only the scene of
their life, but of their work.”
* * * * *
“_June 22._--Yesterday I went to Oxford, and came in, without intending
it, for Commemoration. I will never go there again if I can help it. It
is like visiting a grave of happy past years.”
* * * * *
“_June 28._--Went to Holland House. The deep shade of its lofty avenue
is enchanting as one turns in from the baking street of Kensington. Lady
Holland sat in the inner room, with her sweet face encircled by the
prettiest of old-fashioned caps. Beau Atkinson was with her, with a
lovely little Skye dog in his arms, and Lady Lilford with her two fine
boys. After talking some time, we wandered into the gardens under the
old cedars. When we came in, old Mr. Cheney was leaning over Lady
Holland’s chair, chuckling to himself over the dogmatic self-assertion
of Mr. Hayward,[204] who was talking to her of books, the value of which
he considered to be quite decided by his opinion of them. Especially he
talked of Ticknor’s Memoirs, so remarkable because, though he was an
American of the most lowly origin, it is evident that when he came to
Europe he not only saw the best society of every country he visited, but
saw it intimately--which could only have been due to his own personal
charm.
“Dined at Lady Barrington’s. She said I must be presented, and George
Barrington said he should present me.
“L. was full of a dinner she had been at at Count Beust’s. The Prince
Imperial was there, who had always hitherto been regarded as only a
pleasant boy, but who electrified them on this occasion by a remarkable
flash of wit. It had been impossible to avoid asking the French
Ambassador, but Count Beust had taken especial pains to make it as
little offensive as possible. He took in the Princess of Wales to supper
and placed her at the same table with the Prince Imperial. The Comte and
Comtesse d’Harcourt were at another table with the Prince of Wales.
Suddenly an offensive pushing man, first secretary to the French
embassy, brought Mademoiselle d’Harcourt to the Prince Imperial’s table
and sat down. The Prince was very much annoyed. Looking up at a picture
of the Emperor of Austria, he asked if it resembled him--‘I do not
remember him, I was so very young when I saw him,’ and then in a louder
tone, ‘I wonder how the French Ambassador represents the Republic of
France on the walls of his rooms.’”
* * * * *
“_June 29._--Yesterday I went down into Kent for Miss Virginia Smith’s
wedding with young Francis Villiers,[205] toiling in a cab with Lady
Craven over the hot chalky hills. The breakfast was at Selsden Park, a
lovely place belonging to a child-heiress, Erroll Smith’s daughter.
“Dined with Lady Head, and we went on together to Baroness Burdett
Coutts’, where Irving read _Macbeth_ to an immense company, chiefly
bishops and archbishops and their belongings. The reading was stilted
and quite ineffective.”
* * * * *
“_June 30._--A most pleasant party at Lord Ducie’s--Mr. and Miss Froude,
Sir James Lacaita, Miss Grant the sculptress, Lord Aberdeen and Lady
Katherine, Lord Northbrook and Lady Emma Baring, Lord Camperdown, Mr.,
Mrs., and Miss Gladstone, Lord Vernon, George and Lady Constance
Shaw-Lefevre, &c.
“There was very agreeable conversation, chiefly about Macaulay’s
Life--of his wonderful memory and the great power it gave him. Gladstone
said the most astonishing thing about him was that he could remember not
only the things worth knowing, but the most extraordinary amount of
trash. He described another man he knew who, after once reading over the
advertisement sheet of the _Times_, could repeat it straight through.
“In the evening I was asked to tell a story, and did, feeling that if
Irving amused people for about three hundred nights of the year, it was
rather hard if I declined to amuse him on one of the remaining
sixty-five. He enjoyed it more than any one else, and lingering behind,
when all were gone but Mrs. Gladstone and one or two others, said, ‘Now
that we are such a very small party, do tell us another.’”
* * * * *
“_July 6._--Went by rail with Mr. Ralph Dutton and ‘Beauty Stephens’ to
Syon. It is a great house in a low-lying park, on the edge of which the
Thames is marked by its great lines of tall sedges and the barges going
up and down with music through the flat meadow-lands. On the parapet of
the house is the poor old lion from Northumberland House. The lime-trees
were in flower, scenting the whole air.