Stewart. Irving was there. I ventured to tell him how I thought his play
was spoilt by the changes he had recently made, and _why_, and he was
quite simple, as he always is, not the least offended, and in the end
agreed with me, and said he should alter the changes as I suggested, and
send me a box that I might come and see the improvement. He said how,
ever since he heard me tell a story at Lord Ducie’s, he had wished I
should do something in public. He ‘did not know if I wanted money, but
thought I could make any sum I liked.’ He ‘believed he could guarantee’
my making £8000 a year! He advised my doing what he had intended doing
himself when he had been ‘making a mere nothing of ten guineas a week,
and felt _that_ could not go on.’ He intended to have got Wilkie Collins
to write him a story, and to take a room at the Egyptian Hall, fit it up
in an old-fashioned way, sit down by the fire, and then take the
audience, as it were, at once into his room and confidence. ‘But in your
case,’ he said, ‘you need not apply to Wilkie Collins.’”
* * * * *
“_April 16._--Miss Northcote’s wedding in Westminster Abbey. I had a
capital place in a stall just behind Princess Louise and Princess Mary
of Teck. The church was crowded, and though it was a bitter wind
outside, it was quite glorious within, all the forest of arches tinted
with golden sunlight. Arthur gave the blessing _magnificently_, as he
always does. There were 350 people at the breakfast afterwards, which
was at Lord Beaconsfield’s house in Downing Street. There were endless
little tables. I sat at one with Lady Aberdare, Lady Middleton, and
young Lord Colchester. I was glad to see the dear little Lady Winifred
Herbert again, growing up fast, but with the same sweet innocent
expression, walking about with Jim Cranbourne, who is a charming boy.”
* * * * *
“_April 23._--Dined with Lady Charlemont. Old Mr. Planché was there, and
talked much about the favourable characteristics of the present Duke of
Wellington; how before his father died he said how grief for his death
would be aggravated by perpetual consciousness of his own name and
position. ‘Think what it will be when the Duke of Wellington is
announced and only _I_ come in!’ Poor Mr. Planché, celebrated as a wit
and story-teller in former times, is becoming painfully aware of having
outlived the patience of his auditors!
[Illustration: CHANTRY OF HENRY V.][260]
“Lady Charlemont said, ‘Whenever I make a _very_ naughty quotation from
‘Don Juan,’ I always preface it by saying, ‘As Dr. Watts touchingly
observes.’”
* * * * *
“_April 26._--Dined at Mrs. Stratford Dugdale’s. Lord Crewe was there,
with the most extraordinary and diabolic-looking red flower in his
button-hole. He always has one of these weird orchids, and delights to
surprise people with them.”
* * * * *
“_April 28._--A pleasant morning with Mrs. Hollond, Sir Hampton
Lorraine, and others at Grosvenor House. The rooms were quite lovely,
and the flowers more so--great blue-green bowls filled with cowslips;
great glasses of blue bells, with a few yellow jonquils intermixed.
“Luncheon afterwards at Mrs. Duncan Stewart’s. Mrs. Rogerson told the
story of a cat she had known who would lie on the rug with its head on
the side of a little dog called Flossy. People said, ‘How selfish the
cat is; she only lies there because it is warm.’ But Flossy died and the
cat was missing. It was found on Flossy’s grave, and lay there all
night. It was brought in and milk was given to it, but it refused to
eat, and as soon as it was left alone in the room where it was shut up,
it dashed straight through the window and went back to the grave again.
If they took hot milk out to it at the grave, it ate it, but away from
the grave it would eat nothing. It lay there day and night. At last they
built it a little pent-house over the grave, and it lay there, partially
sheltered, till, six weeks afterwards, it died.
“Mrs. Rogerson knew another story of a terrier and a cat, who were
deadly foes and always quarrelling. The cat had kittens, and the kittens
were all put out of the way and were buried. The cat was inconsolable
and went mewing about the house. The terrier could not make it out, and
followed her everywhere; he did not snap at her any more; on the
contrary, he seemed to do all he could to console her. At last he had an
inspiration. He found out where the kittens were buried, and scratched
and scratched till he got them up, and one by one he brought the dead
kittens and laid them down before the cat. It was a very small
consolation to poor pussy, but she and the terrier never quarrelled
again, and were the greatest friends as long as they lived.”
* * * * *
“_May 2._--A pleasant party at Lady Leslie’s beautiful house to meet the
Tecks. She looked more amenable than ever, yet the Princess all over.”
* * * * *
“_May 4._--Dined with Sir Dighton and Lady Probyn in the strange houses
built like the Tower of Babel by Mr. Hankey. Went to a quaint collection
of anybodies and nobodies at Lord Houghton’s afterwards. He spoke of the
‘unexpected places in which gold is found’ in literature.”
* * * * *
“_May 6._--To Lady Salisbury, whom I found in her bright sunny boudoir
looking on the Park. Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice and Mr. Ralli came in and
talked politics furiously. Lady Maude told me of Lord Sligo’s visit to
Paris immediately after the siege, and how he had driven about in the
same cab for some days, and then found he had been sitting all the time
on an explosive bomb which was under the seat. The cabman, when
remonstrated with, as the slightest jolt might have made it explode,
said he ‘had not left it at home, because he thought the children might
get playing with it.’”
* * * * *
“_May 11._--At dinner at Lady Jane Ellice’s I met Lady Waterford and
Lady Folkestone.[261] The latter sang most beautifully and pathetically.
She _felt_. ‘One cannot feel always,’ she said; ‘one cannot feel with an
audience who say, “How sweet.” Lady Waterford told of Sir Philip and
Lady Durham. Lady Durham died quite suddenly. She had been out in the
garden the day before, seeing the gardener and ordering some bouquets
she wanted. After her sudden death, Sir Philip found a paper in her
dressing-box. It said--‘Something so very odd has happened to me, that I
think I had better write it down. In the garden I saw a figure which
beckoned to me and beckoned to me, and I followed it. I followed it a
long way, and at last it reached the churchyard, and then it
disappeared.’”
* * * * *
“_May 12._--Dined at Mrs. Rogerson’s, where I took down the Countess
Bremer, who has always lived at the Hanoverian Court. She is that
‘Margaret Bremer’ who is celebrated for her answer to the blind King,
who loved to shock her by his improper stories. ‘What do you think of
that, Margaret?’ he asked, after telling her one of his worst. ‘I think
that your Majesty has a very clean way of telling a very dirty story,’
she replied.”
* * * * *
“_May 15._--Dined at Sir John Shaw-Lefevre’s. Having two round tables
made the party most pleasant. It included the beautiful and charming
Lady Granville, Lady Russell, Lady Aberdeen, and Wallace of the Russian
book.”
* * * * *
“_May 17._--A party at Lord Houghton’s; every one there, from Princess
Louise to Mrs. Anthony Trollope, a beautiful old lady with snow-white
hair turned back. These crowded parties remind me of Madame de Staëls
description--‘Une société aux coups de poing.’”
* * * * *
“_May 26._--I have been for three days at Cobham, where the woods
covered with bluebells were like expanses of Italian sky brought down
and laid on the earth. There was a large party in the house--Lady
Haddington and her bright Lady Ruth; Murray Finch Hatton and his wife,
as delicate as a drooping lily; Meysey Clive, a charming natural fellow,
and his Lady Catherine; Lord and Lady Pelham, &c. The life was most
easy; we drew, read, talked, and showed the house to Lord and Lady
Onslow, who arrived while touring in a four-in-hand.”
* * * * *
“_May 30._--On Saturday I was at a pleasant party at Lord Houghton’s,
meeting scarcely any one but authors, and a very odd collection--Black,
Yates, and James the novelists; Sir Francis Doyle and Swinburne the
poets; Mrs. Singleton the erotic poetess (Violet Fane), brilliant with
diamonds; Mallock, who has suddenly become a lion from having written a
clever squib called ‘The New Republic,’ and Mrs. Julia Ward Howe with
her daughter. I was introduced to Mrs. Howe, having asked Lord Houghton
who was the charming, simply-dressed woman with the sensible face, and
then found she was sister of my Roman friend Mrs. Terry. She wrote the
hymn, singing which the troops took Pittsburg. We asked her about it.
She said she could not help feeling the little annoyance so many felt on
similar occasions--that she should be only known as the authoress of one
thing, one little waif out of all her work, and that people should treat
her as if she had _only_ written that.”
* * * * *
“_June 3._--I have dined several times with Miss Wright to meet the
Charles Wilbrahams. She sings beautifully. He had much that was curious
to tell about the project of a French engineer for deepening the course
of the brook Kishon, so as to let in the Mediterranean. Kishon rises
near Tabor, and if the Mediterranean could once pass the watershed, it
would run down on the other side into the great hollow of the Dead Sea,
which is now so far below its own level. The engineer, of course, had
never thought of Ezekiel xlvii., in which the fishermen of Engedi, now
some 3000 feet above the level of the sea, are described as casting in
their nets.
“Mr. Wilbraham was amusing with some of his American experiences. He
told of two young girls who were stopped going through a turnpike gate.
‘What are your charges?’--‘Half a dollar for man and horse.’--‘Well,
then, just stand on one side, will you, for we are two girls and a
mare, so we’ve nothing to pay.’ He said he had asked an American at
Florence what he thought of the Venus de Medicis. ‘Wal, I guess I’m not
so partiklar overpowered by stone gals,’ was the reply.
“I constantly meet Froude the historian at Miss Wright’s, a somewhat
shy, sardonic, and silent man. His sphinx-like character, the very doubt
about him, makes him interesting: one never really knows what he would
be at.”[262]
* * * * *
“_June 4._--Dined at Lord Egerton of Tatton’s. Old Mrs. Mildmay told a
rather improper story there, which was received with shouts of
merriment. She was at a country-house where there was a very pleasant
man named Jones, and there was also a lady who had a maid called Jones:
the people in the house knew this, because there was a confusion about
letters. The lady’s husband went away for the day, and, as she was going
to walk to the station in the evening to meet him, the mistress of the
house asked Mr. Jones to walk with her. When the train came in, the
husband was not there, but just then a telegram was brought in. ‘Oh,’
said the lady, ‘Oh-o-o, I’m sure my husband is dead: I can’t open
it.’--‘Nonsense!’ said Mr. Jones; ‘if he is dead, he cannot have sent
you a telegram.’--‘Well, I can’t open it; I know it’s something
dreadful--I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.’ So at last, Mr. Jones opened it
for her and read it aloud, not seeing at once what it contained. It
was--‘I am all right, unavoidably detained. If you are at all nervous,
_get Jones to sleep with you!_’”
* * * * *
“_June 6._--Lady Manners and her daughters drove me down to Osterley.
The great wide park looked dark and dull under a leaden sky, the house
gloomy and ghostly as Bleak House. The old Duchess, stumping about with
her inlaid ebony stick, seemed part of the place. I dined at Sir Edward
Blackett’s, a beautiful house with Raffaellesque and pink tapestry
decorations, prepared for the Duke of Gloucester on his marriage with
the Waldegrave, but never lived in by him.”
* * * * *
“_June 7._--Dined with George Lefevre. Mr. Bright was there, said to be
the man who reviewed me so unmercifully in the _Athenæum_, and I was
very glad to see the kind of man he is. He talked incessantly, never
allowing a word to any one else; still after a time one found out he was
interesting. He talked most of Miss Martineau, then of Hawthorne with
great praise--‘the kindest, most generous of men and friends.’ Of his
son, Julian Hawthorne, he said that he had ‘written a book which it took
_very_ long to read.’”
* * * * *
“_June 13._--An excursion with the Lefevres to the Rye House, which I
knew so well in my boyhood. It was like spending an afternoon in
Holland, so very Dutch are those long expanses of rich meadow-lands,
those streams with their boats and tall water-plants. We sat in burning
sunshine to draw the old terra-cotta tower, and then had tea and eggs
and bacon in the garden of the little inn, which was covered with
scarlet geranium in full flower up to the attic windows.”
* * * * *
“_June 19._--The news of poor old Cousin Susan’s[263] death. It is the
glueing down of another much-read page of life, which can never be seen
again. I feel ashamed of not grieving more for one whom I have known so
well, but have always more feared than loved. The agent wrote desiring
me to come down at once, but, backed by Lady Barrington’s decision that
I had better keep out of the way till the will was decided, I excused
myself. Yet I am sorry not to be at the funeral, and the old house of
many associations, and the little Beltingham chapel with its view over
the gleaming Tyne, are very constantly in my mind. All the cousins are
quite sure that I am the heir, but I do not think that it is so. Cousin
Susan knew that I did not wish it, and I have always urged the claims of
the Strathmore boys.”
* * * * *
“_June 20._--I have received from Milligan the news of Cousin Susan’s
will. It is exactly the will I begged her to make--all to Mr. Bowes for
life, then to the Strathmores. These pleasant boys deserve their good
fortunes. I would only rather she had selected _one_ of them to have
more definitely preserved her memory.”
* * * * *
“_June 28._--After a party at Lowther Lodge, I went to Lady Marian
Alford, whom I found with a very ancient aunt, Lady Elizabeth Dickens.
Lady Marian showed me her drawings. There was one glorious sketch of a
Roman model, yet most unlike a model. ‘She is,’ said Lady Marian, ‘the
model who is so hated by the other models because of her stateliness.
“She walks down the Corso as if it belonged to her,” they say. She had
two beautiful children--a boy and a girl. Last time I went to Rome, I
saw her alone. “Where is your boy?” I asked.--“Oh, dead,” she
answered.--“And the girl?”--“Oh, dead, _dead_ too,” she replied,
pressing her hands to her forehead. And I pitied her, and I asked her
about it, and she said, “I will tell you how it was.” And she told me
how she was coming downstairs with her boy in her arms and the girl
behind her, and that just as she reached the house-door, a church-bell
began to toll. “E un giustiziáto!” said one of the neighbours. And then,
she could not tell how, it was somehow borne in upon her that her
boy--her son--might, if he grew up, also some day fall into sin, also
some day, perhaps, even be _giustiziáto_; and she turned round to the
Madonna on the wall, and prayed that, if it were to be so, if such agony
were possible for her, that she would take her son _then_, that she
would take him away _then_, from the evil to come. And her husband, who
heard her, said angrily, “Che sono queste stragonfiáte;” and he beat
her; but the Madonna had heard her, and that night her boy was taken
ill, and in twenty-four hours he was dead.
“‘And then she said, “That night I went again to the Madonna, and I
said, ‘You have taken my boy, and, oh! if I may ever have _arrossire_
for my girl, take the girl also, take her away in her innocence;’ _e la
Madonna mi ha fatto anche questa caritá_, and I, I am alone, but my
children are safe.”’
* * * * *
“_July 1._--To Holland House, most lovely in all the freshness of
new-mown hay, and the old elm avenue dewy from a shower. It was a
delight to see Mrs. Augustus Craven, altered from the lovely ‘Pauline de
la Ferronays,’ but still beautiful, and I had the happiness of finding
that she liked to talk to me about her loved and lost ones.
“A very interesting dinner at Miss Davenport Bromley’s. Signor
Francheschi described his life in Corsica, especially the weird women,
who come like the Fates, as hired mourners, to bewail the dead, yet
throw themselves so completely into their profession that they become
quite absorbed in grief, and torrents of tears flow down their cheeks.
“One night he had to travel. In a desolate road he saw two strange
ghastly horsemen approaching, with men walking on either side of their
horses and holding them. The moonlight glared upon their fixed and
horrid countenances. As they came near he heard the footmen talking to
them. ‘We must hasten; they are waiting for you; they are even now
lamenting you.’ Then he saw that the riders were dead. They were
murdered men found by the highway, and had been set on horseback to be
brought home. In Corsica it is the custom never to cease speaking to the
dead.”
* * * * *
“_July 7._--A capital party at Lowther Lodge to meet Princess Louise and
Lord Lorne. The garden was illuminated with magnesium light, and looked
both beautiful and--boundless!”
[Illustration: LOWTHER LODGE.][264]
* * * * *
“_July 15._--Luncheon at Lady Combermere’s, where Lord Houghton
described his experience of executions. He had been to numbers of those
in Newgate. Up to the time of George III. the sign-manual was necessary
for every execution, and it was an odd thing that George III., usually a
humane man, used to hang every one. He would sit at the council-board
and ask each of the ministers in turn whether a man was to suffer death.
They would bow their heads in assent. Lord Melbourne was especially
ready to do this when he was sitting at the council-board. One day,
however, there was a case of a man who had murdered his wife under most
brutal circumstances. The evidence was quite incontrovertible, and all
were surprised that Lord Melbourne, usually so ready, shrugged his
shoulders and seemed to have the greatest difficulty in making up his
mind to give an assent to the death-warrant. One of the ministers, in
going out, asked why it was. ‘Why, poor man, those women are so damned
provoking,’ said Lord Melbourne.
“Mr. Browning said he recollected seeing as many as twenty-one persons
sitting together on the condemned bench in Newgate Chapel, many only for
stealing a handkerchief. One day in chapel he was jostled by some one
pushing in past him, and turned round annoyed. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,
but I am going to _suffer_,’ said the man.”
* * * * *
“_July 12._--Monday was a most beautiful day for the party at Chiswick,
for its beautiful Italian gardens with glorious cedars. All London was
there, including the Prince of Wales, with his little boy George, and
the Tecks.”
* * * * *
“_July 29._--Since I wrote last the curious episode of Mrs. L. has
occurred.
“On the 14th I left my lodgings in the afternoon to go to the Athenæum,
when a tremendous cataract of rain came on, in which I took refuge in
the covered entry of Pall Mall Place. A number of other people took
refuge there also. Amongst them, I was attracted by the agonised face of
a woman crouching in a corner--a lady, for so she seemed by her face,
and in a certain degree by her dress; for though her gown looked as if
it had been dragged through every Slough of Despond in Europe, the rest
of her dress seemed to belong to the better class. As for her
expression, I cannot forget it, it was of such agonised, hopeless,
bewildered despair. I suppose I looked pityingly at her, for she turned
to me, and in sharp wolfish accents said, ‘I am not a beggar, I am not,
I am only starving to death, I am starving to _death_!’ I think I begged
her to tell me what had brought her to such a pass; at any rate she told
me--‘I am Mrs. L.’ To many this would not convey anything, but, from
having always been occupied with architecture, it conveyed something to
me, and I said, ‘What! the widow of L., the architect?’--‘Yes,’ she
said, and she described in the same sharp, broken, gasping accents how
she had been with her husband in Paris at the time of the siege, and how
he had wished to get her away and had arranged for her escape to
England, and how at the moment that he was parting with her and putting
a purse into her hand to pay the expenses of her journey, a shell burst
near them, and her jaw was blown off. ‘When I came to myself in the
hospital,’ she said, ‘I found that the shell which had blown off my jaw,
had blown my husband to pieces.’ She then described how she came to
England, and how the Soane Museum, which takes care of the widows of
architects, had given her a pension of £75 a year. ‘You wonder,’ she
continued, ‘that, having this pension, I should have reached the
condition I am in, but the fact is I have been a very wicked woman. When
our pension is granted, we take a vow never to lend money, which is
absolutely forbidden by the rules of the Museum; but a friend of mine
was in great want, and I trusted her and became security for her, and
she has absconded, and they have come upon me for the debt, and
yesterday morning early all my things were seized, and I could not apply
to the Museum, because then they would take away my pension, and I was
turned adrift in the streets with nothing at all in the world.’ And then
the poor woman corrected herself and said, ‘I have told a lie. I have
not quite nothing in the world. I have a silk gown. I had that on when I
was turned out, but I knew it would be worse for me to spend a night
homeless in the streets in a silk gown, and I went to a servant I knew,
and got her to take care of it for me, and to lend me the worst gown she
had.’
“‘Since yesterday morning,’ she said, ‘I have tasted nothing whatever.
You wonder I have not fainted. I have not done that because I am so
dreadfully ill; I am in a burning fever. Yesterday I walked up to
Hampstead, because there was a governess I knew there, and I thought she
would help me; but when I arrived, I found her gone to Scotland with her
family, and I walked all about Hampstead and Highgate, and the police
insulted me, they did not protect me, they insulted me worst of all; and
all through the day I have walked in the streets.’ I asked her, ‘Have
you no friend in the world?’--‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I have one person who is
a friend; at least there is one person who I think would help me if I
could get to her, because my mother was once very kind to her, and that
is Mrs. H. of the Mansfield Park School at Uxbridge, and to her, if I
could have even a cup of coffee to strengthen me, I should set out and
walk.’
“I got her to go and have some tea, which, as I foresaw, made her
violently sick; and then, when she was a little better, I sent her by
the train to Uxbridge. Immediately returning to the Athenæum, I wrote a
lady who lives close to Uxbridge, briefly telling her the story, that
Mrs. L. would probably arrive very ill, perhaps almost dying, and
begging her to go at once to Mansfield Park and look after her.
“This was on Saturday. On Sunday there is no postal delivery. On Monday
morning I received two letters. One was from Mrs. H., overwhelmingly
grateful for what I had been able to do for Mrs. L., saying that she had
received benefits from her mother which nothing could ever repay, and
that she had been only too thankful to receive and care for the
daughter. The other letter was from the lady to whom I had written,
saying that there was no such place as Mansfield Park, that there was no
such person as Mrs. L., and enclosing letters from the police and
post-office at Uxbridge certifying this. I explained this in my own mind
by remembering that, while telling me her story under the entry, Mrs. L.
had said, ‘There is a little affectation about the name of Mansfield
Park; it misleads people, for after all it is only a farmhouse.’
“On Monday evening the servant at my lodgings said that Mrs. L. herself
had called: I was gone out to dinner. The next morning before I was up
she came again, and waited till I was dressed.
“She was then quite calm and happy. She told how, when she got to
Uxbridge, after being dreadfully ill in the train, her heart failed
her--‘perhaps after all Mrs. H. would not receive her.’ However, she
described with tears the touching kindness of Mrs. H.--that she had
washed her, dressed her, put her in her own bed, tended her, and finally
given her a cheque for £20, which she showed me. Her brother also, a
travelling wine merchant in France, whom she had not seen for years, and
to whom she had written without a hope of finding him, had also
telegraphed that he was on his way to her assistance.