collected on the lawn. I took courage and went and talked to the
Japanese ambassadress, who was very smiling, but did not say much beyond
‘Me speak leetle English and no moosh French.’”
* * * * *
“_July 7._--Went by water with Mrs. Mostyn, Miss Monk, and Miss Milnes
to Fulham. The steamer was actually two hours and a half on the way.
There was an interest in recognising a whole gallery of De Wint’s
sketches in the tall bosky trees, the weirs, the great water-plants, and
still more on the causeway leading from Fulham Church to the palace. It
was a gloriously hot day, and very pleasant sitting under the old
gateway looking into the sunlit court, with full light on the rich
decorations of the brickwork and the massy creepers.
“Afterwards, I was at a beautiful and charming party at Holland House. A
number of grown-up royalties and a whole bevy of royal children sat
under the trees watching Punch and Judy. The Prince Imperial, with
charming natural manners, walked about and talked to every one he knew.
I was happy in finding Lady Andover and many other friends. Towards the
end, Lady Wynford said the Princess Amelie of Schleswig[206] desired
that I might be presented to her, as she had read my books, &c. She is
elderly, but enjoys life and dances at all the balls she is asked to,
especially at Pau, of which she talked with animation.”
[Illustration: COURTYARD, FULHAM PALACE.][207]
* * * * *
“_July 8._--At luncheon at Lady Alwyn Compton’s I met Lady Marion
Alford. There was much talk of the wills of old London citizens--how Mr.
Bancroft had desired in his that for a hundred years a loaf of bread and
a bottle of wine should be placed in his vault every year on the
anniversary of his death, because he was convinced that before that time
he should awake from his death-sleep and require it, and the hundred
years had only just expired;--of how Jeremy Bentham’s body, in
accordance with his will, was produced a year after his death at the
feast of a club he had founded, and how all the company fled from it.
“I was afterwards at a breakfast at Lord Bute’s. There were few people I
knew there, and the grass was very wet, so I sat under the verandah with
the Egertons. Presently an old lady was led out there, very old, and
evidently unable to walk, but with a dear beautiful face, dressed in
widow’s weeds. She seemed to know no one, so gradually--I do not know
how it came about--I gave her a rose, and sat down at her feet on the
mat and she talked of many beautiful things. She was evidently sitting
in the most peaceful waiting upon the very threshold of the heavenly
kingdom. When I was going away she said, ‘I should like to know whom I
have been talking to.’ I said, ‘My name is Augustus Hare.’ She said, ‘I
divined that when you gave me the flower.’ I have not a notion who she
was.[208]
“I dined at Sir John Lefevre’s, and was pained to see how weak and
failing he looks. The Rianos were there and Sir James Lacaita, and in
the evening Lady Ducie came in, radiant with goodness and beauty.”
* * * * *
“_July 11._--A very pleasant dinner at Lord Ebury’s. He overflows with
kindness. He said, ‘If this hot weather is trying for you and me, it is
very good for the corn: that hardens, while we melt.’”
* * * * *
“_July 13._--Luncheon with Sir C. Trevelyan, who showed me Macaulay’s
library, and then drove me to see the remnant of the house of Villiers,
Duke of Buckingham, in Villiers Street. Peter the Great lived there when
in London, and David Copperfield is made to lodge there by Dickens.
“Dined at Lord Cardwell’s, where I sat by George Otto Trevelyan, the
author of Lord Macaulay’s Life. At Lord Sherborne’s in the evening I
found Irving, with all the three hundred nights of his _Hamlet_ written
on his face. I was introduced to Dr. Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester and
Bristol, a little dapper man in a violet coat.”
* * * * *
“_July 14._--Luncheon at Mrs. Lowe’s. She was most amusing about her
pets. ‘Mr. Lowe, you know, is always going out and bringing home a new
animal: he does like pets so. He went and he bought a dog, and then he
went and bought a parrot, and then he bought a cockatoo and a cat, and I
said, “Mr. Lowe, if you go and buy any more pets, I will go out of the
house, because I will _not_ bear it,” and then Mr. Lowe went and bought
Bow-wow, the little white dog, and it had not cut its teeth, and it was
so dreadfully ill, and we had to nurse it, and it gave us more trouble
than all the other pets put together; and I like Bow-wow the best of
them all, and Mrs. Scutt (that’s the housekeeper) is just the same.
“‘I said to Mr. Lowe, “If you will go downstairs with that cockatoo on
your shoulder, it will fly away out of the window, and you’ll lose him,”
but Mr. Lowe would do it, you know, he’s so obstinate; and it was just
as I said, and the cockatoo flew out of the staircase window, and Mr.
Lowe was in a fine way about him. There are a lot of boys watching for
him now, and he’ll come back some day, for every one knows Mr. Lowe’s
cockatoo: but he won’t come back yet. And finely he’s enjoying himself,
that bird is; he’s never had such a fine time in his life; he’s finished
all the cherries in Eldon Grove, and he’s just beginning upon the
gooseberries.
“‘When we drive down to Caterham, Bow-wow and Elfin, the two dogs, sit
upon the back-seat, and the cat sits in the middle. They look out of the
windows and amuse themselves wonderfully, and finely the people stare.
“‘When I first married Mr. Lowe we lived at Oxford. It was quite
delightful: we had all the interesting society of the University, and
Mr. Lowe was a tutor and taught all the clever young men. When we went
up to London, we hired a coach, and had six first-class men inside, all
Mr. Lowe’s pupils. Then Mr. Lowe’s eyes failed, and we threw it all up
and went to Australia, and were away six years; but it answered to us,
for I had some money left to me at that time, and Mr. Lowe had some
money left to him, and we invested it there in houses, and they pay us
60 per cent., and we made our fortunes.
“‘How sad the Duchess of ---- going away is! She cried so dreadfully when
she went, that I am sure it’s for ever. Don’t you think, if I had had a
dreadful quarrel with Mr. Lowe, and we had parted for ever, that I
should cry too? It is a very different thing when it is not for ever. I
go off to Wiesbaden for six weeks, and I wish Mr. Lowe good-bye, and I
say, “Well, good-bye, Mr. Lowe; in six weeks you’ll have me back
again,” and if we have quarrelled, it does not signify; but it would be
very different if it was for ever. Why, I should cry my eyes out.’
“One day, however, when Mrs. Lowe was inveighing against the absurdity
of the marriage service--of the bridegroom’s statement, ‘With all my
worldly goods I thee endow,’ even when he possessed nothing and it was
just the other way, and when she was saying, ‘Now when I married Mr.
Lowe, he had nothing whatever but his brains’--a deep voice from the end
of the room growled out, ‘Well, my love, I certainly did not endow you
with those.’
“‘Why contend against your natural advantages?’ said Mr. Lowe one day to
a deaf friend who was holding up an ear-trumpet to listen to a bore.
“In the afternoon I drove down with Lady Sherborne, Miss Dutton, and
Miss Elliot to see Lord Russell at Pembroke Lodge. It is a beautiful
place; not merely a bit of Richmond Park, but a bit of old forest
enclosed, with grand old oaks and fern. The Queen gives it to Lord
Russell, who, at eighty-four,[209] was seated in a Bath-chair in the
garden, on a sort of bowling-green, watching his grandsons play at
tennis. Though he no longer comprehends present events, he is said to be
perfectly clear about a far-away past, and will converse at any length
about Napoleon, the escape from Elba, &c. When I was presented to him,
by way of something to say, I spoke of having seen the historical mound
in his garden, and asked what it was that Henry VIII. watched for from
thence as a death-signal, ‘was it a rocket or a black flag?’
“‘It was a rocket.’
“‘Then that would imply that the execution was at night, for he would
hardly have seen a rocket by day.’
“‘No, it was not at night; it was very early in the morning. She was a
very much maligned woman was that Anne Boleyn.’
“We all sat by a fountain under the oak-trees, and then went into the
house to a sort of five-o’clock tea on a large scale.”
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, July 15._--Returned to the dear little home, where I found
Charlotte Leycester sitting on the terrace surrounded by the dogs,
looking on the lovely view from our greenery. The intense freshness of
the air, the glory of the flowers, the deep blue sea beyond our upland
hayfields, and the tame doves cooing in the copper beech-tree, are
certainly a refreshing contrast to London, though I should never have
been able to leave it unless Duty had pulled at me.”
* * * * *
“_Highcliffe, July 24._--In this most unearthly Paradise all looks like
last year going on still--the huge stems of chestnut, and the white
lilies and bulrushes in the great vase relieved against the old boiserie
of the saloon; the wide window-porch open to the fountain and
orange-trees and sunlit terraces and sea; Lady Waterford coming in her
hat and long sweeping dress through the narrow wind-blown arbutus
avenue; old Mrs. Hamilton-Hamilton in her pleasant sitting-room, with
Miss Lindsay hovering about and waiting on her like a maid-of-honour;
the Ellices, so cordial and pleasant, so beaming with kindness and
goodness, their largeness of heart quite preventing their being able to
indulge in the sectarian part of their own religious ideas.... I have
felt, as I always do very shy at first, and then entirely at home.”
[Illustration: HOLMHURST.]
* * * * *
“_July 25._--We have all, I think, basked as much in the mental sunshine
of this beautiful life as in the external sunshine which illumines the
brilliant flowers and glancing sea.
“We walked on the shore this afternoon. ‘See what festival the sea has
been making, and what beautiful coloured weeds she has been scattering,’
said Lady Waterford. We found two little boots projecting from the sand,
and as we dug them out and found them _filled_ and stiff, we really
expected a drowned child to follow; but it was only sand that filled
them, and the little Payne child of Chewton Bunny had lost them when
bathing. As we sat on the shore while Lady Waterford looked for fossils,
a staith came down from the Bunny and flooded the little stream into a
river, cutting off our return. We, the male part, crossed much higher
up: Lady Waterford plunged in and walked: Lady Jane took off shoes and
stockings and waded.
“Lady Waterford has talked much of marriages--how even indifferent
marriages tone down into a degree of comfort which is better for most
women than desolation.”
* * * * *
“_July 26._--We walked in the evening to the Haven House. The old
pine-wood, with its roots writhing out of the sand, and its lovely
views, over still reaches of water to the great grey church, and the
herons fishing, are more picturesque than ever. Afterwards Lady Herbert
of Lea arrived with her beautiful daughter Gladys.[210] Lady Herbert is
suffering still from the bite of a scorpion when she was drawing in the
ruins of Karnac.”
[Illustration: Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford.
From a Photograph by W. J. Reed. Bournamouth.]
* * * * *
“_July 29._--In the afternoon I went with Lady Waterford to General
Maberly, who talked, as it seemed to me, very sensibly about the
exaggerations of teetotalism. He thought that every one should do as
they pleased, and that it was wrong of a great landowner to prevent the
existence of a public-house on his estate: that it was following the
teaching of the Baptist rather than that of our Saviour, for ‘was not
our Saviour a wine-bibber?’
“Lady Waterford has been speaking of sympathy for others; that there is
nothing more distressing than to see another person _mortified_.
“‘Mama could never bear to see any one mortified. Once at Paris, at a
ball they had, there was a poor lady, and not only her chignon, but the
whole edifice of hair she had, fell off in the dance. And Mama was so
sorry for her, and, when all the ladies tittered, as she was Madame
l’Ambassadrice and a person of some influence, I don’t think it was
wrong of her to apply the verse, and she said, “Let the woman among us
who has no false hair be the first to throw a stone at her.”’
* * * * *
“_July 30._--Hamilton Aïdé says he went to visit two or three times at a
lunatic asylum. The matron, a very nice person, said, ‘There is here a
very extraordinary example of a person who has become quite mad, and
only from vanity.’ He went to see her. It was a very old lady, with
great traces of beauty and dignity of manner, but she wore the most
extraordinary bonnet, very large, and from the fringe hung a pair of
scissors, a thimble, and a needle-book. He made a civil speech to her
about being glad to see her looking so well, or something of that kind.
In reply she only just looked up and said, ‘For further information
refer to the 25th chapter of the second Book of Kings,’ and took no more
notice whatever.”
* * * * *
“_July 31._--Lady Jane Ellice says that there are three shades of people
one likes--those whom one must see in heaven, for it would not be heaven
without them: those whom one hopes to see in heaven and to meet there:
and those whom one hopes will be _in_ heaven but that one will not see
them there. Her singing this evening of ‘Zurich’s Blue Waters,’ ‘Three
Blue Bottles,’ &c., has been perfectly charming.
“Lady Waterford has been telling of Ruskin ‘like a little wizened rat.’
‘He likes to be adored, but then Somers and I did adore him, and he
likes to lash his disciples with rods of iron. I do not mind that: it is
his jokes I cannot bear; they make me so sorry and miserable for him.’”
* * * * *
“_August 3._--Lady Waterford said that Lady Stuart, when a Frenchman
tried to talk to her in very bad English, told him she preferred talking
French. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘vous aimez mieux, Madame, écorcher les oreilles
des autres, qu’on vous écorche vos oreilles.’”
* * * * *
“_August 5._--I have left Highcliffe, and the gates of Paradise seem
closed for a year. There has been the usual perfect confidence about
everything through the whole party: the pleasant going backwards and
forwards to ‘Hamilton Place,’ and the waiting upon old Mrs. Hamilton of
her ‘equerry’ and her ‘maid-of-honour:’ the many friendly snubs and
contradictions which rail at all the smallnesses and ennoble all the
higher aims of life. After luncheon we all sat in the porch surrounded
by the great lilies and geraniums in flower and we had coffee there,
looking upon the Isle of Wight with the Needles looming through the
mist: then we parted.
“It was a long drive in pouring rain from Southampton to Sydney Lodge,
where I found a warm welcome from dear old Lady Hardwicke.[211] It is a
moderate house, with large gardens, into which bits of old forest are
interwoven. This morning we drove to Eliot Yorke’s house at Netley Fort,
an old tower of the monks, in front of which the _Mayflower_ set sail.
The situation is lovely, close to the sea, with a hilly garden in
miniature and a machicolated tower rising out of ivy walls like a scene
in a play. But the great charm is in Eliot himself, so handsome, with
such a pleasant smile and melodious voice. His Jewess wife, Agneta
Montagu, and Hinchinbroke were there. From the garden we went to the
Abbey, where I drew while Hinchinbroke amused himself by pretending to
make love to an old lady (‘Jemima Anne’) who was peering about in
spectacles amongst the arches. When we went back, boats were arriving
from Cowes at the little wharf--the Prince Imperial with the Duke and
Duchess of St. Albans and a crowd of others. The Prince has the most
pleasant, frank, simple manners, and makes himself agreeable to every
one. He was much amused with the quantities of Yorkes who seemed to crop
up from every house round, and said he ‘thought he must have landed by
mistake on the coast of Yorkshire.’ His arm was in a sling, and he
looked pale and fagged, for somehow, in playing at leap-frog with his
‘camarades,’ he had tumbled into a camp-fire, and, to save his face, had
instinctively put out his hands, and burnt the whole skin off one of
them. It must have been terrible agony, but he never complained.”
* * * * *
“_August 6._--The Yorkes are absolutely devoted to each other. There is
such family loyalty that every peccadillo is consecrated. I certainly do
not wonder at their love for Eliot; he has such a sweet though frank
manner, and is so genial and kind to every one.[212] L. has been talking
of the advantages of even an unhappy married life over a single one, as
exemplified by the poor Empress, who herself said, ‘C’est mieux d’être
mal à deux que d’être seule.’
“L. was at a party at Mrs. Brand’s, sitting by Lady Cork, when Lady
Francis Gordon came up to her. ‘Come, Lady Cork, can you spell in five
letters the three scourges of society?’ (drink, rink, ink). ‘No,’ said
Lady Cork instantly, ‘that I cannot do, but I can spell in two letters
the two blessings of society--U and I.’
“Mrs. Eliot Yorke is exceedingly pleasing and much beloved in her
husband’s family. Amongst the few Jews I have known, I have always found
the women infinitely superior to the men, and this is especially the
case with the Rothschilds. Some one once made an observation of this
kind to Rogers the poet. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the men crucified Him, but
the women--wept.’”
* * * * *
“_August 12._--Last Monday I went to Cobham for a few days, arriving
just as the setting sun was illuminating the grand old red brick house
deeply set in its massy woods. A large party was assembled, its most
interesting element being Fanny, Lady Winchilsea, who is always
delightful. Archdeacon Cust told me a curious story of a Mr. Phipps, a
clergyman at Slough. He asked him if he was related to Lord Normanby’s
family, and he said they were related, but that they had never known one
another, and that the reason was a strange one. His father had been
residing at Caen, where they had become very intimate with a French
family called Beaurepaire. After his father left Caen, the great
Revolution occurred, and all the Beaurepaire family perished on the
scaffold except the youngest daughter, who, for some unknown reason, was
spared. Having no relation left alive, she was utterly desolate, and
felt that no one in the world cared for her but young Phipps, the son of
her former neighbour, who had evinced an attachment for her. So to the
Phipps family she somehow made her way; but they, disapproving the
attachment, were all excessively unkind to her, except one sister, who
received her, and went out with her to India, where her brother was then
supposed to be. But when they reached India, they found, with despair,
that Phipps had left and gone to Egypt. Thither, however, they pursued
him, and there Mademoiselle de Beaurepaire was married to him. Young
Phipps would never forgive the unkindness which had been shown to his
wife by his family, and the two branches of the Phipps family were never
afterwards friends.
“A schoolmaster near Cobham, named King, for some reason best known to
himself, has abolished the game of football--a most unpopular move. The
boys were furious, and one day, when the master entered the schoolroom,
he found ‘King is a donkey’ chalked up in large letters on a board. For
an instant he was perplexed; but it would never do to take no notice. He
left the inscription, but added the single word--‘driver.’ The boys
quite saw the joke, and the master’s prestige was restored.”
* * * * *
“_Ampthill Park, August 29, 1876._--I came here on Monday, stopping some
hours in London on the way, and finding out ancient treasures in the
purlieus of Soho and St. Giles’s, which, black and filthy as they are,
are still full of reminiscences.
“At St. Pancras Station I saw a very ancient lady in a yellow wig step
into a railway carriage by herself, and her footman guard the door till
the train started, and I felt sure it was the Dowager Duchess of
Cleveland. At Ampthill Station the Lowther carriage was waiting for both
of us, and we drove off together. She talked the whole way, but the
carriage rumbled so that I could hardly hear a word she said, except
that when I remarked ‘What a fine tree!’ as we entered the park, she
answered rather sharply ‘That _was_ a fine tree.’ She spoke too of the
Lowther boys--‘They are having their vacancies. I like that word
vacancies,’ she said.
[Illustration: CHURCHYARD OF ST. ANNE, SOHO.][213]
“It is a fine wild park, with most unexpected ups and downs and a great
deal of grand old timber, on a ridge rising high above the blue
Bedfordshire plain, in the midst of which a spire rising out of a little
drift of smoke indicates the town of Bedford. On one of the highest
points of the ridge a cross raised on steps marks the site of the royal
residence where Katherine of Arragon lived for most of her
semi-widowhood, and where Anne Boleyn shot stags in a green velvet
train. The later house, approached on the garden side by a narrow
downhill avenue half a mile long, is in the old French style, with posts
and chains, broad steps widening at the top, and a _perron_.... The
Duchess, at eighty-four, talked most pleasantly and interestingly all
evening. Lady Wensleydale, in her high cap and large chair, with her
sweet face and expression, sat by like an old picture. There is a
picture of her thus, by Pointer, surrounded by great white azaleas, but
it does not do her justice.
“Yesterday I drove with James, Mildred, and Cecil Lowther to Wrest. It
is a most stately place, one of the stateliest I have ever seen. The
gardens were all laid out by Le Nôtre, and the house was of that period.
Lord De Grey pulled down the house, and found it rested on no
foundations whatever, but on the bare ground. It was so thin, that when
the still-room maid complained that her room was rather dark, the
footman took out his penknife and cut her a square hole for a window in
the plaster wall. Capability Brown was employed to rearrange the
gardens, which were thought hideous at one time; but though he spoilt so
many other places, he had sense to admire the work of Le Notre so much
here, that he made no alterations, except throwing a number of round and
oblong tanks into one long canal, which, on the whole, is rather an
improvement. The modern house is magnificent, and like what Chantilly
must have been.
“On the vast flagged terrace in front of the windows we found Lady
Cowper[214] sitting in an old-fashioned black silk dress and tight
white bonnet. She has a most sweet face, and was very kind and charming
in her manner. I walked with her for a long time on the terrace, looking
down on the brilliant gardens, and beyond them upon equally brilliant
groups of people, for it was the annual meeting of the great
Bedfordshire tennis club, for which she always gives a breakfast. She
told the whole story of the place, and took me to see all the finest
points of view and the great collection of fine orange-trees brought
from Versailles. She greatly lamented the prudishness of her great-aunt
(Lady De Grey), through whom her grandmother had derived the place, who
thought most of the old French statues--which, according to the custom
of that day, were made of lead--to be insufficiently dressed, and so
sold them for the value of the metal, at the same time that she sold an
incomparable collection of old plate, for the same reason, for its
weight in silver. She showed one of the statues, backed by a yew hedge
some centuries old. ‘That poor lady, you see, was saved when all the
others were sent away, because she had got a few clothes on.’ Lord De
Grey had replaced some of the statues, and Lady Cowper herself had added
a most beautiful fountain from Carrara, with a very flat basin.