music he pretends to detest, though her singing is quite lovely--not
much voice, but intense pathos and expression.
“This afternoon I have been with Miss Dutton and charming Miss Ruth
Bouverie to the old chase and the deer-park, in which there is a
beautiful deserted hunting-lodge by Inigo Jones. Lady Sherborne wanted
to make a garden in front of it, but was only allowed by her lord to
have grass instead of potatoes. We also went into the church adjoining
the house, which contains many family monuments. The most remarkable is
that of John Dutton, who was ‘possessed of large estate and of mind
æquall to his fortune;’ yet he lost a great part of his estates by
gambling, and staked Sherborne too, and would have lost it if he had not
been carried off to bed by his butler.
“Speaking of concealment of the whole truth, Miss Dutton related a story
her uncle, John Dutton, used to tell of the French governess sliding on
the ice, when one of the children said to her, ‘Mr. Lentil said,
Mademoiselle, that he hoped the boys would trip you up upon the ice, and
I really could not tell you what Mr. Davis said.’ Mr. Davis had said
_nothing_, but the intended impression was conveyed.
“I forget how, apropos of Bible ignorance, Miss Dutton told of an
American, who, entering a coffee-house at New York, saw a Jew there, and
seized him violently by the throat. ‘What, wh--at do you do that for!’
exclaimed the nigh strangled Jew.--‘Because you crucified my
Lord.’--‘But all that happened more than 1800 years ago.’--‘That does
not matter; I have only just heard of it.’”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 14._--Yesterday we went to Biberry, a beautiful old house of Lord
Sherborne’s. Mr. and Lady Augusta Noel joined the party in the evening,
she a Keppel,[248] the authoress of ‘Wandering Willie,’ and very
pleasant. Several neighbours came to dinner. The astronomical
conversation of Mr. Noel was very engaging. I deduced from it that the
flames in the sun were 96,000 miles long, and that we were all liable to
meet our end in three ways--_i.e._, by going fizz if a particle of the
sun (‘as big as this room’) broke off and struck the earth in any
direction: by being slowly consumed, the pools drying and the trees
shrivelling up: or by being gradually frozen under an ice-wave. The
earth has already perished once by the last-named contingency, and there
are geological features, especially at Lord Lansdowne’s place in
Ireland, which prove it.”
* * * * *
“_Osterley, Dec. 16._--I came here about tea-time to what Horace Walpole
calls ‘the Palace of Palaces.’ It is a magnificent house. Sir Thomas
Gresham was the original builder, and entertained Queen Elizabeth here.
Then it passed through various hands till it fell to the Childs, for
whom it was partially rebuilt and splendidly fitted up by the brothers
Adam. An immense flight of steps leads through an open portico to a
three-sided court, beneath which is the basement storey, and from which
open the hall and the principal rooms. There is a gallery like that at
Temple Newsam, but much longer and finer, and in this case it is broken
and partitioned by bookcases into pleasant corners--almost separate
rooms. The walls and ceilings are ornamented with paintings (let in) by
Zucchi and Angelica Kauffmann, but the great charm lies in the
marvellous variety, delicacy, and simplicity of the wood carvings, each
shutter and cornice a different design, but a single piece. In one room
are exquisite pink Gobelins, the chairs quite lovely; one of them
represents a little girl crying over the empty cage of her lost bird; on
its companion a little boy has caught the bird and is rushing to restore
it to her. There is a fine picture of Lady Westmoreland, Robert Child’s
daughter. When Lord Westmoreland, whom he considered a hopeless
ne’er-do-weel, asked for her hand, he had firmly refused it; but when
Lord Westmoreland some time after took him unawares with the question,
‘Now, if you were in love with a beautiful girl, and her father would
not consent to your marrying her, what would you do?’ answered, ‘Run
away with her, to be sure.’ Lord Westmoreland took him at his word, and
eloped with Miss Child in a coach-and-four from Berkeley Square; and
when, near Gretna Green, he saw that the horses of his father-in-law, in
hot pursuit, were gaining upon him, he stood up in the carriage and shot
the leader dead, and so gained his bride.
“The Duchess Caroline (of Cleveland) was often here with Lady Jersey,
and, when she sold her own place of Downham, determined to rent
Osterley. Since then, though only a tenant, she has cared for it far
more than its owner, Lord Jersey, and has done much to beautify and keep
it up. Only Miss Newton and Mr. Spencer Lyttelton[249] are here, the
latter with tremendous spirits, which carry him he knows not where. The
Duchess is very amusing. Ordering a very good fire to be made up in
church, she added drily to the servant, ‘Just such a fire as you make up
on a very hot day, you know.’ She mentioned a clever _mot_ of Count
Nesselrode. Speaking of Sir William Wallace’s marriage he said, ‘Il
avait une mauvaise habitude, et depuis il a épousé cette habitude.’”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 17._--The Duchess is a most interesting remnant of bygone times.
She is so easily put out by any one doing too much, that every one at
luncheon was afraid to get up and ring the bell for her, till she was
close to the bell herself, when a nervous young man jumped up and rang
it before she could reach it. ‘Sir, officiousness is not politeness,’
she said very slowly and forcibly.
“To young ladies she frequently says, ‘My dear, _never_ marry for love:
you will repent it if you do; I _did_:’ and yet she was fond of her Lord
William.
“Mr. Spencer Lyttelton rails at everything supernatural, so we spoke of
the story in his own family, and he told us the _facts_ of the Lyttelton
ghost, declaring that everything added to them about altering the clock,
&c., was absolutely fictitious.
“‘Thomas, Lord Lyttelton, my father’s first cousin, was at Peel House,
near Epsom, when a woman with whom he had lived seemed to appear to him.
He spoke of it to some friends--the Misses Amphlett--and said that the
spirit had said he should die in three days, and that he believed that
he should certainly do so. Nevertheless, on the following day--he went
up to London, and made one of his most brilliant speeches, for he was a
really great speaker--in the House of Lords. He was not well at the
time. On the third evening, his servant, after the custom of that time,
was in his room assisting him to undress. When the clock struck twelve,
Lord Lyttelton counted the strokes, and when it came to the last,
exclaimed, “I have cheated the ghost,” and fell down dead: he must have
had something the matter with his heart.’”
* * * * *
“_Hinchinbroke, Dec. 26._--Lord Sandwich is a charmingly courteous host,
and Lady Sandwich a warm, pleasant friend. The three sons, Hinchinbroke,
Victor, and Oliver, are all cheery, kindly, and amusing. ‘You see what a
set you’ve landed amongst,’ said Lord Sandwich; ‘it will take you some
time to know them.’ Agneta Montagu is here with her charming children;
Lady Honoria Cadogan; Miss Corry, a handsome, natural, lively
lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Edinburgh; and the kind old Duchess
Caroline, with relays of walking-sticks, which she changes with her caps
for the different hours of the day.
“Yesterday I went with Miss Corry and Hinchinbroke to Huntingdon, a
picturesque old town on the sleepy Ouse. In the market-place, opposite
the principal church, is the old grammar-school where Oliver Cromwell
was educated. Mr. Dion Boucicault, of theatrical fame, is going to
restore it in memory of his son, killed hard by in the Abbots Repton
railway accident, and is going to destroy the one characteristic feature
of the place--the high gable front of twisted and moulded brick, which
recalls Holland and records the Flemish settlers in the Fen country.”
* * * * *
“_Christmas Day._--The damp, sleepy weather is far from an ideal
Christmas, but I have liked being here in spite of a miserable cold, and
being accepted as a sort of relation by this warm-hearted family.”[250]
* * * * *
“_Ascot Wood, Jan. 22, 1877._--I have been working quietly at home for
nearly three weeks--a halt in life as far as the outer world is
concerned; and how good these silences are, when, from the turmoil of
the living present, one can retire into the companionship of a dead
past--past associations, past interests, passed-away friends, who,
though dead, are living for ever in the innermost shrines of one’s
heart, of which the general world knows nothing, at which very few care
to knock; which, even to those who knock, are so seldom opened.
“I have almost a pang when one of these breaks comes to an end, and the
outside world rushes in. ‘On ne se détache jamais sans douleur.’[251]
But it was a great pleasure to come here again to the companionship of
this perfectly congenial cousinhood. Sir John Lefevre, as usual, is full
of interesting conversation--not general, but with the one person next
him, and that one is generally myself! He described a visit in Sussex at
Sir Peckam Micklethwait’s (‘a man with other and more wonderful
names’).[252] When the Princess Victoria was at Hastings with the
Duchess of Kent, their horses ran away. They were in the greatest peril,
when Mr. Micklethwait, who was a huge and powerful man, stood in the
way, and seized and grappled with the horses with his tremendous
strength, and they were saved. One of the first things the Queen did
when she came to the throne was to make him a baronet.
“Sir John said how few people there were now who remembered the origin
of the word ‘fly’ as applied to a carriage. In the last century people
almost always went out to parties in sedan-chairs--a great fatigue and
trouble to their bearers. Gradually the sedans had wheels, and were
drawn. Then it began to dawn upon people to substitute a horse for a
man. At that time the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was being acted and very
popular, and, in allusion to a line in it, the new carriages were called
‘Fly-by-Night.’ Then the sobriquet was abridged--‘by night’ was omitted,
but ‘fly’ remained. Sir John remembered, when flys were first invented,
meeting a man who said he had just ‘encountered’ a fly with a wasp
inside and a bee (B) outside. It was Lord Brougham’s carriage.
“We went this afternoon to Lady Julia Lockwood’s.[253] Her odd little
house is quite full of relics of her sister, the Duchess of
Inverness--the Queen’s ‘Aunt Buggin,’ wife of the Duke of Sussex.
“To-night, talking of my little diaries, Sir John said that he had a
name for them--‘Seniority’--adapted from Nassau Senior’s journals. When
Senior went about, however, people knew that what they said would be
taken down, so acted accordingly, and produced their sentiments and
opinions as they wished them to be permanently represented. The Khedive
was told what Mr. Senior would do before he was admitted to his
interview. ‘Oh, yes, I quite understand,’ said the Khedive; ‘Mr. Senior
is the trumpet, and I am to blow down it.’
“Sir John described how in the Upper House of Convocation the members
amused their leisure moments by suiting each of the bishops with texts.
That for the Archbishop of York[254] was, ‘And _she_ was a Greek;’ for
Bishop Wilberforce, ‘She brought him _butter_ in a lordly dish.’”
* * * * *
“_Jan. 24._--When I arrived at the Ascot station, a little lady was
there, with glistening silver hair, waiting to go up to the house. It
was Mrs. William Grey. She was here two days and very pleasant--a
bright, active, simple mind, which finds its vent in excitement for the
superior education of women.
“Yesterday we went to Windsor for the day. We went to the castle
library, where Natalli, the sub-librarian, showed us everything. It is
very interesting regarded merely as a building--not one room, but a
succession of rooms, irregularly added as space allowed and comfort
dictated, by a succession of sovereigns. Queen Elizabeth’s library (the
only part of the castle unaltered outside) has an old chimney-piece of
her time, into which the Prince Consort cleverly inserted a bust from
her figure by Cornelius Cure, and it once had a ceiling painted by
Verrio, which was destroyed by William IV., who put up a stucco ceiling
instead. Of Anne there is the charming little boudoir, where she was
sitting with the Duchess of Marlborough when a letter (a facsimile of
which is preserved there) was brought in from the Duke telling of the
victory of Blenheim. The later rooms are of George III. and William IV.
We saw Miles Coverdale’s Bible, all the early editions of Shakspeare,
Charles I.’s Prayer-book, Elizabeth’s Prayer-book, Sir Walter Scott’s
‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’ with his corrections and alterations; but
better far was the view from the end window, with the terrace and its
final tower standing out in burly shadow against the misty and flooded
country.”
* * * * *
“_Thorpe, Jan. 26._--We went to-day to St. Anne’s Hill. Lady Holland was
sitting in the innermost of the richly furnished bright warm little
rooms, but was bandaged up still from a frightful fall she had received
by mistaking a staircase for a passage in the dark. One always feels
one’s own talk on waggon-wheels with a person who has the conversational
reputation she has, and I was glad when Madame de Jarnac came in and
undertook to show us the house. Lady Holland followed, and took us to
her bedroom, which is charming, with a view towards Chobham. Then we
went to the gardens, with a temple to Friendship (_i.e._, to Lord
Holland’s friendship), and the summer-house in which the preliminaries
of the Peace of Amiens were signed. Other summer-houses are paved with
encaustic tiles from Chertsey Abbey.”
* * * * *
“_69 Onslow Square, Jan. 27._--Mr. Byng preached a capital sermon to-day
upon ‘religious hypochondriacs’--people who say, ‘You know I was always
so spoilt when I was a child, you must make allowance for my being a
little selfish now,’ &c.”
* * * * *
“_6 Bury Street, Feb. 13._--Last night I dined with the Haygarths, to
meet the Woods and Leslies. The Dowager Lady Spencer[255] was there, who
gave an amusing account of her Irish experiences, when her stepson was
Lord Lieutenant. One day he was hunting, and had just leapt a hedge into
a lane, when he was aware that a funeral was coming up. He thought it
might hurt the feelings of the mourners if he passed them hunting, so he
hid himself. But as the funeral came by the hounds appeared, and
instantly, setting the coffin down in the road, mourners, pall-bearers,
and all started in hot pursuit, and Lord Spencer found himself left
alone with the body.
“Lady Spencer talked of one Irish gentleman, a Master of Hounds, who,
being very much puzzled by the two Lady Spencers, and how to distinguish
them, settled the matter by calling them, like dogs, one ‘Countess,’ and
the other ‘Dowager.’ ‘The absurdity never struck me much,’ she said,
‘till the last day of all, when Charlotte’s eyes were so red with
crying, and he, coming in, exclaimed, “Dowager, Dowager, what can we do
to comfort Countess?”’
“I have just been with Lady Halifax and the Corrys to see the Duke of
Suffolk’s head at the church in the Minories--a most awful object.
“Mr. Bodley[256] told us last night that when he was staying at St.
John’s College, Oxford, he saw a ghost. He could swear to it. He was in
a room which was in the broad moonlight of a summer’s night, for it had
no shutters. Suddenly he heard a movement like that of a man under the
bed, and then something thrown on the floor like a stick. He jumped up,
but there was nothing. He then went to bed again, when out of the floor
in the moonlight rose the head and shoulders of a man. He saw it against
the chest of drawers. It hid two of the handles of the drawers, but not
more. Farther than that out of the ground it did not rise. He is quite
certain that he saw it, and quite certain that he was awake.”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 14._--Luncheon at Miss Davenport Bromley’s to meet Mr. Portal.
Lord Houghton and his son and daughter were there. Mr. Portal has a
scheme for educating the unfortunate Americans of gentle birth who have
fallen from wealth to poverty owing to the changes on the cessation of
the slave trade in South Carolina, and he has been eminently successful.
He described the South Carolina reverses of fortune as most
extraordinary. One of his friends died in his house who had once
possessed an estate worth £300,000; yet, when his will was opened, it
only contained these words--‘I leave to the old and tried friend of my
youth, the Rev. ---- Portal, my only son!’ He had nothing else whatever
to leave except £9 towards his funeral expenses. Mr. Portal described
how the ‘darkies’ had been ‘done’ since the change by those who had too
much of the theory of religion to have any power left for the practice
of it. Being at a place on the border, where some of the greatest
battles were, he asked some of the ‘darkies’ why, when they saw the
Northerners gaining the upper hand, they did not join them. A ‘darkie’
said, ‘Mossieu, did you ever see two dogs fighting for a bone?’--‘Yes,
very often.’--‘But, Mossieu, did you ever see the bone fight?’
“The conversation fell on Philadelphia, ‘the most conservative place in
America, with its narrow streets and narrow notions.’ Lord Houghton said
that his son Robin had been shocked by the non-observance of Sunday in
the native city of Moody and Sankey. Mr. Portal said that Moody and
Sankey were utterly unknown, entirely without influence in their own
country; that it could only be the most enormous amount of American
cheek which had enabled them to come over to England, ‘exactly as if it
was a heathen country, to bring the light of the Gospel to the English;’
that America had heard with amazement and _shock_ how they were run
after; that they owed their success partly to their cheek, and partly to
their music.
“Mr. Portal described his feeling of desolation when he first arrived in
England--‘not one soul he knew amongst all these millions;’ that the
next day a lady asked him to conduct her and her child to a pantomime.
He consented, without understanding that a pantomime meant Drury Lane
Theatre, and his horror was intense when he ‘found himself, a clergyman
of forty years’ standing,’ in such a place. This, however, was nothing
to what he felt ‘when a troop of half-naked women rushed in and began to
throw up their legs into the air;’ he ‘could have sunk into the ground
for shame.’ ‘Was not the mother of our Lord a woman? was not my mother a
woman? is not my wife a woman? are not my daughters women? and what are
these?’
“Mr. Knowles, the ex-editor of the _Contemporary Review_, who was at
luncheon, said that he had taken Alfred Tennyson to see a ballet with
just the same effect. When the ballet-girls trooped in wearing ‘une robe
qui ne commence qu’à peine, et qui finit tout de suite,’ Tennyson had
rushed at once out of the box, walked up and down in an agony over the
degradation of the nineteenth century, and nothing would induce him to
go in again. Mr. Knowles said, however, that a general improvement in
the stage had dated from a climax of impropriety in ‘Bedel and Bijou:’
it had since been much leavened by Irving. Lord Houghton described how
much of Irving’s success had been due to the entirely original view he
had taken of his characters; that in Hamlet he had taken ‘the domestic
view, not declaiming, but pondering, saying things meditatively with his
legs over a chair-back.’”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 24._--I have been seeing a great deal of Willie Milligan lately,
and cannot help thinking of the characteristics so distinctive of him
whom for twenty-six years I have never ceased to feel _honoured_ in
being allowed to call my intimate friend.
“He is a thorough-bred gentleman in all the highest senses of the term.
Always without riches, he has never complained of having less than was
sufficient for his wants, which are most modest. Without being
cultivated, he is very clever. He never talks religion, but his life is
thoroughly christian. He is the soul of honour, pure, truthful,
blameless, and without reproach; yet in conversation no one is more
witty, original, and amusing. He is celebrated as a peace-maker, and
never fails to show that chivalry is the truest wisdom. He has never
done a selfish act, and never omitted to do a kind one.”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 25._--A visit to Mrs. Lowe. She talked of the contemptible state
of politics now; that it was all only playing at the old game of brag;
that the object with every one seems to be who can tell most lies, and
who can get any one to believe his lies most easily. If she ‘was
minister it would be different; she would nail men down to a point--what
will you do and what will you not do? and have a direct answer; _then_
one would know how to act.’
“Mr. Lowe described his life in Australia. Money then scarcely existed
there: payments were made either in kind or in bills of exchange. He
said, ‘When we played whist, we played sheep, with bullocks on the
rubber; and when a man won much, he had to hire a field next morning to
put his winnings in.’”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 28._--A charming visit to old Lord John Thynne, who told me many
of his delightful reminiscences of Sydney Smith, Milman, and others.
“Then to Mrs. Duncan Stewart, who was sitting almost on the ground,
covered with an eider-down. She talked of our ‘Memorials’ and of Mrs.
Grote, who said, when she read of the dear mother’s marvellous trances,
‘My dear, she was thinking more than was good for her; so God in His
great mercy gave her chloroform.’ She spoke of the difficulties of a
like faith, of the effort of keeping it up when prayer was _not_
answered, believing in the power of prayer just the same. She told how,
when her child was dying--she knew it must die--the clergyman came (it
was at Wimbledon) and used to kneel by the table and pray that
resignation might be given to the mother to bear the parting, and
resignation to the child to die; and how she listened and prayed too;
and yet, at the end, she could not feel it. She did not, and--though she
knew it was impossible--she could not but break in with, ‘Yet, O Lord,
yet _restore_ her.’
“‘Do you know,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘that till I was thirty, I had never
seen death--never seen it even in a poor person; then I saw it in my own
child, and I may truly say that then Death entered into the world for me
as truly as it did for Eve, and it never left me afterwards--_never_. If
one of my children had an ache afterwards, I thought it was going to
die; if I awoke in the night and looked at my husband in his sleep, I
thought--“He will look like that when he is dead.”
“‘Do not think I murmur, but life _is_ very trying when one knows so
little of the beyond. The clergyman’s wife has just been, and she said,
“But you must believe; you must believe Scripture literally; you must
believe all it says to the letter.” But I cannot believe literally: one
can only use the faith one has, I have not the faith which moves
mountains. I have prayed that the mountains might move, with all the
faith that was in me--_all_; but the mountains did not move. No, I
cannot pray with the faith which is not granted me.
“‘I think that I believe all the promises of Scripture; yet when I think
of Death, I hesitate to wish to leave the certainty here for what
is--yes, must be--the uncertainty beyond. Yet lately, when I was so ill,
when I continued to go down and down into the very depths, I felt I had
got so far--so very far, it would be difficult to travel all that way
again--“Oh, let me go through the gates now.” And then the comforting
thought came that perhaps after all it might _not_ be the will of God
that I should travel the _same_ way again, and that when He leads me up
to the gates for the last time, it might be His will to lead me by some
other, by some quite different way.’”
* * * * *