was a collision. The train was telescoped, and many passengers were
terribly hurt. The heavy case of instruments, which was in the rack
above the place where Dr. Watson had first been sitting, was thrown
violently to the other side of the carriage, hit the young lady upon the
forehead and killed her on the spot.
“It was long before the line could be sufficiently cleared for the train
to pass which was sent to pick up the surviving passengers. Many hours
late, in the middle of the night, Dr. Watson arrived at Oxenholme.
There, waiting upon the platform, stood the young man with the light
beard, in the brown ulster, exactly as he had been described. He had
heard that the only young lady in the through carriage from London had
been killed, and was only waiting for the worst to be confirmed. And
Dr. Watson was the person who went up to him and said: ‘Unfortunately it
is too true that a young lady has been killed, but it is not your young
lady. Your young lady is safe in the station hotel at Crewe.’”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Holmhurst, May 3._--I have had a visit from the people who formerly
lived here, so surprised at the changes--at the continuation of the walk
in the firwood, &c., but most at the number of pictures and books
everywhere inside the house, a clothing of walls which they evidently
thought most unsuitable in a dining-room and passages, and most of all
were they rather shocked at finding an ancient Madonna and Child of the
Luca della Robbia school over the kitchen fireplace, though in an
Italian house you might almost expect one there.
“I have nothing else interesting to tell you, so I will send you some
scraps from my notebook. Lord Brownlow, at a public meeting, heard a
schoolmaster say--‘Education is that which enables you to despise the
opinions of others, and conduces to situations of considerable
emolument.’ Miss Cobbe told me--‘Conscience is that which supplies you
with an excellent motive for doing that which you desire to do, and
which, when it is done, leaves you filled with self-satisfaction.’
“Mrs. L. (who has plantations in South America) has been telling me of a
nigger preacher there who said in the pulpit, ‘I am so blind I cannot
see; I’ve left my specs at home,’ and all the congregation thought he
was giving out the line of a hymn, and sung it lustily.”
[Illustration: IN THE FIR-WOOD, HOLMHURST.]
[Illustration: DINING-ROOM FIREPLACE, HOLMHURST.]
* * * * *
“_May 13, 1879, 34 Jermyn Street, London._--This morning I went with
Mrs. Duncan Stewart and a very large party to Whistler’s studio--a huge
place in Chelsea. We were invited to see his pictures, but there was
only one there--‘The Loves of the Lobsters.’ It was supposed to
represent Niagara, but looked as if the artist had upset the inkstand
and left Providence to work out its own results. In the midst of the
black chaos were two lobsters curvetting opposite each other and looking
as if they were done with red sealing-wax. ‘I wonder you did not paint
the lobsters making love before they were boiled,’ aptly observed a
lady visitor. ‘Oh, I never thought of that,’ said Whistler! It was a
joke, I suppose. The little man, with his plume of white hair (‘the
Whistler tuft,’ he calls it) waving on his forehead, frisked about the
room looking most strange and uncanny, and rather diverted himself over
our disappointment in coming so far and finding nothing to see. People
admire like sheep his pictures in the Grosvenor Gallery, following each
other’s lead because it is the fashion.”
* * * * *
“_May 14, Sunday._--An immense luncheon at Mrs. Cavendish Bentinck’s. I
sat near Mr. Herbert, the artist of the great fresco in the House of
Lords. He described things over which he became almost inspired--how in
the Bodleian he found an old MS. about the Magdalen which made him
determine to go off at once to St. Maximin in Provence (near La Sainte
Baume, the mountain hermitage where she died) to see her skull: that
when he reached St. Maximin, he found that the skull was in a glass case
upon the altar, where he could not really examine it, and he was told
that it was never allowed even to kings and emperors: that he
represented with such fervour his object in making the pilgrimage, that
at last the priests of the church consented to his sending twelve miles
for a _vitrier_ and having the case removed: then he was allowed to
place a single candle behind, and in that moment, as he described it,
with glowing face and voice trembling with emotion--‘I saw the outline
of her profile; the Magdalen herself, that dear friend of our Blessed
Lord, was revealed to me.’
“Miss Leslie, who was sitting near, asked how it was known that the
Magdalen came to St. Maximin. ‘How can you help knowing it,’ said Mr.
Herbert, ‘when it is all written in the Acts of the Apostles!!’”
[Illustration: LA SAINTE BAUME.][303]
* * * * *
“_May 15._--Dined with Lord and Lady Aberdeen--a very large party,
seventy-four pots of flowers upon the table. The dinner was very fine,
but rather uninteresting--the after-dinner better.
* * * * *
“_May 16._--I received the sad news that poor Sir Alexander Taylor was
on his death-bed in Lady Dashwood’s house at Hampstead, and went to him.
He knew me and was pleased to see me, but immediately relapsed into
unconsciousness. It was sad to stand by the utter wreck of one whom I
had known so well.”
* * * * *
“_May 17._--News of poor Sir Alexander’s death. Even at such a solemn
time one could not help smiling at his characteristic _last
words_--‘Present my duty to the Princess Amalie’ (of
Schleswig-Holstein).[304]
“At luncheon at Lady Florentia Hughes’s I met George Russell, who told
me a story which Lord and Lady Portsmouth had just brought back from
Devonshire.
“‘On the railway which runs from Exeter to Barnstaple is a small station
called Lapford. A farmer who lives in a farmhouse near that station
awoke his wife one night, saying that he had had a very vivid dream
which troubled him--that a very valuable cow of his had fallen into a
pit and could not get out again. The wife laughed, and he went to sleep
and dreamt the same thing. Then he wanted to go and look after the cow.
But the wife urged the piercing cold of the winter night, and he went to
sleep instead, and dreamt the same thing a third time. Then he insisted
upon getting up, and, resisting his wife’s entreaties, he went out to
look after the cow. It was with a sense of bathos that he found the cow
quite well and grazing quietly, and he was thinking how his wife would
laugh at him when he got home, and wondering what he should say to her,
when he was aware of a light in the next field. Crawling very quietly to
the hedge, he saw, through the leafless branches of the hawthorns, a man
with a lanthorn and a spade, apparently digging a pit. As he was
watching, he stumbled in the ditch and the branches crackled. The man,
hearing a noise, started, threw down the spade, and ran off with the
lanthorn.
“‘The farmer then made his way round into the next field and came up to
the place where the man had been digging. It was a long narrow pit like
an open grave. At first he could make nothing of it, then by the side of
the pit he found a large open knife. He took that and the spade, and
began to set out homewards, but, with an indescribable shrinking from
the more desolate _feeling_ of the fields, he went round by the lane. He
had not gone far before he heard footsteps coming towards him. It was
two o’clock in the morning, and his nerves being quite unstrung, he
shrank from meeting whoever it was, and climbed up into the hedge to
conceal himself. To his astonishment, he saw pass below him in the
moonlit road one of the maids of his own farmhouse. He allowed her to
pass, and then sprang out and seized her. She was most dreadfully
frightened. He demanded to know what she was there for. She tried to
make some excuse. “Oh,” he said, “there can be no possible excuse; I
insist upon knowing the truth.” She then said, “You know I was engaged
to be married, and that I had a dreadful quarrel with the man I was
engaged to, and it was broken off. Well, yesterday he let me know that
if I would meet him in the middle of the night, he had got something to
show me which would make up for all the past.”--“Would you like to know
what he had to show you? It was your grave he had to show you,” said the
farmer, and he led her to the edge of the pit and showed it to her.
“‘The farmer’s dream had saved the woman’s life.’”
* * * * *
“_May 19._--The Prince (of Sweden and Norway) has arrived with his suite
at Claridge’s. He received me most cordially and affectionately. We made
many plans for sight-seeing and people-seeing, but in England I have no
responsibility; Count Piper, the Swedish Minister, has it all.
“I dined at charming Lady Wynford’s, sitting near Lord Delamere, who was
very full of a definition he had heard of the word ‘deputation.’ ‘A noun
of multitude, which signifies many, but not much.’ It was attributed to
Gladstone, who said, ‘I only wish I _had_ made it.’ Lord Eustace Cecil
produced a definition of ‘Independent Member’ as ‘a Member on whom
nobody can depend.’
“There was an immense gathering at Lady Salisbury’s afterwards; my
Prince there and much liked. There, for the first time, I saw the
Empress Augusta of Germany.”
* * * * *
“_May 22._--A party at Lady Denbigh’s to meet Princess Frederika of
Hanover, a very sweet-looking and royal woman of simple and dignified
manners.”
* * * * *
“_May 24._--Lady Salisbury’s party at the Foreign Office, the staircase,
with its interlacing arches and masses of flowering shrubs, like the
essence of a thousand Paul Veroneses. My Prince was there in a white
uniform.”
* * * * *
“_May 27._--At dinner at Sir John Lefevre’s I met Mr. Bright. He has a
grand old lion-like head in an aureole of white hair, and his
countenance never seems to wake from its deep repose, except for some
burst of enthusiasm on a subject really worth while. He spoke of
Americans, ‘who say an infinity of foolish things, but always do wise
ones.’ Mr. Bryce of ‘The Holy Roman Empire’ was there, a bearded man
with bright eyes, who talked well. Afterwards there was a party at Lady
Beauchamp’s to meet Prince and Princess Christian. How like all the
princesses are to one another.”
* * * * *
“_May 29._--A dinner at Lord Carysfort’s and ball at Lady Salisbury’s. I
presented so many relations to the Prince that he said that which
astonished him more than anything else in England was ‘the multitude of
Mr. Hare’s cousins.’”
* * * * *
“_May 30._--With the Prince to Westminster Abbey, after which Arthur met
us in the Jerusalem Chamber and took us into the Deanery. In the evening
with the Prince to Lady Margaret Beaumont’s.”
* * * * *
“_June 6._--With the Prince Royal to the Academy.”
* * * * *
“_June 7._--To the National Gallery with the Prince.”
[Illustration: THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER.][305]
* * * * *
“_June 8._--Luncheon with the Prince. We drove afterwards to see Lady
Russell. Pembroke Lodge looked enchanting with its bright green of old
oaks and its carpet of bluebells--a most perfect refuge for the latter
years of an aged statesman. Lady Russell was waiting for us at the
entrance, with Lady Agatha and Rollo. On the lawn we found many other
members of the family, with Mr. Bouverie and Mr. Froude the historian. I
presented them all, and we walked in the grounds. At tea Lord Bute came
in from a neighbouring villa--always most pleasant and cordial to me.”
* * * * *
“_June 11._--Dined with old Lady Harrington, and left as early as I
could to go to Mrs. Schuster’s, where Sarah Bernhardt was to act. She
appeared first in the great scene of the ‘Phédre’--her face bloodless,
her arms rigid, her voice monotonous and broken. Gradually, under the
influence of her love, she became animated, but the animation began at
the tips of her fingers, till it burst all over her in a flood of
irrepressible passion.
“She did not seem to see her audience or to think of them. For the time
being she was _only_ her part, and, when it was over, she sank down
utterly exhausted, almost unconscious.
“She appeared again in a small part, in which she was a great lady
turned sculptress. The part was nothing; she had little more to say than
‘Let me see more of your profile; turn a little more the other way;’ yet
the great simplicity of her perfect acting made it deeply interesting,
and, in the quarter of an hour in which the scene lasted, she had done
in the clay a real medallion which was a striking likeness.”[306]
* * * * *
“_June 12._--Dined with Madame du Quaire--her table like a glorious Van
Huysum picture from the fruit and flower piece in the centre. The
hostess is famous for the warmth and steadfastness of her friendships.
Mrs. Stewart says--‘Fanny du Quaire is the only person I know who would
do _anything_ for her friends. If it were necessary for my peace that I
should have poison, I should send for Fanny du Quaire, and she would
give it me without flinching.’”
* * * * *
“_June 13._--Dined at Sir Charles Trevelyan’s. I took down a lady whose
name seemed to be ‘Mrs. Beckett.’ I did not interest her, and she talked
exclusively to Lord O’Hagan, who was on the other side of her. Towards
the close of dinner she said to me, ‘We have been a very long time at
dinner.’--‘To me it has seemed quite endless,’ I said.--‘Well,’ she
exclaimed, ‘I do not wonder that you were chosen to speak truth to
Princes.’
“I asked her how she knew anything about that, and she said, ‘I have
lived a long time in a court atmosphere myself. I was for twelve years
with the late Queen of Holland.’--‘Oh,’ I said, ‘_now_ I know who you
are; you are Mrs. Lecky!’ and it was the well-known author’s wife.”[307]
* * * * *
“_June 14._--Luncheon with Lady Darnley, and a long quiet talk with her
afterwards, then a visit to young Lord Lansdowne in his cool, pleasant
rooms looking upon the garden.
“Dined with Count Piper, the Swedish Minister,[308] to meet the Prince
Royal. I sat by Madame de Bülow, who is always pleasant. The only other
lady unconnected with the Embassy was Mademoiselle Christine Nilsson,
who sang most beautifully afterwards till Jenny Lind arrived. Then the
rivalry of the two queens of song became most curious, Nilsson planting
herself at the end of the pianoforte with her arms akimbo, and crying
satirical bravas during Jenny’s songs, and Jenny avenging herself by
never allowing Nilsson to return to the pianoforte at all. The party was
a very late one, and supper was served, when the Prince offered Jenny
his arm to take her down. She accepted it, though with great diffidence;
which so exasperated Nilsson, that with ‘Je m’en vais donc,’ utterly
refusing to be pacified, she swept out of the room and out of the house,
though how she got away I do not know.”
* * * * *
“_June 15._--A quiet luncheon with Lady Reay. Afterwards to Mrs. Duncan
Stewart, who told me:--
“‘A great friend of mine was living lately in Brittany, and, while
there, made acquaintance with a lady and her daughter who were staying
in the same place--the mother a commonplace woman, the daughter a
pleasant interesting girl.
“‘A short time after, the mother and daughter came to England, and my
friend, who was in very delicate health at the time, invited them to
visit her. The mother was prevented coming at first, but sent her
daughter and said that she would follow.
“‘One day my friend was sitting in her boudoir, of which the door was
ajar, very little open. The girl had gone to her own room, which was
immediately above the boudoir, saying that she had letters to write.
“‘Suddenly my friend was aware that _something_ was coming in at the
door, not pushing it wider open, but gliding through the opening which
already existed, and, to her horror, she saw, perfectly naked,
propelling herself serpent-like upon her belly, with her hair rising
like a crest over her head, and her eyes, without any speculation in
them, staring wide open, the figure of a young girl, whom she recognised
as her guest.
“‘With snake-like motion the girl glided in and out of the furniture,
under the chairs, sofas, &c., but touching nothing, and with her eyes
constantly fixed upon my friend, with an expression which was rather
that of fear than anything else. At length she glided out of the room as
she came in.
“‘As soon as my friend could recover herself a little, she pursued the
girl to her room and quietly opened the door. To her horror, all the
articles of crockery in the room, jug, basin, &c., were dispersed about
the floor at regular intervals and in a regular pattern, and through
them all, in and out, without touching them, the girl was gliding,
snake-like, with her head erect, and her vacant eyes staring.
“‘My friend fled to her room and began to think what she should do; but
such was her horror that she thinks she fainted; at any rate the power
of action seemed to fail her. When she could move, she thought it her
duty to go up to the girl’s room again, and perhaps was almost more
horrified than before to find the room in perfect order and the girl
seated dressed at the table, writing. She sent for the girl’s mother,
who was terribly distressed. She allowed that her daughter had had these
utterly inexplicable attacks before, but long ago, and she had hoped
that she was cured of them.’
“Mrs. Stewart told this story to Mr. Fergusson the great naturalist, who
only said, ‘I am not the least surprised: there is nothing extraordinary
in it. There have been many other instances of the serpent element
coming out in people.’”
* * * * *
“_June 16._--Met the Prince early at Paddington, whence we had a saloon
carriage to Oxford, with Sir Watkin Wynne as director to watch over us.
We went a whole round of colleges and to the Bodleian, where Mr. Coxe
exhibited his treasures. Then the Prince wished to see the boats, so we
walked down to the river. Just before us I saw an undergraduate in
boating costume and ran after him.
“‘Can you take us on board the University barge?’
“‘No-o-o-o, I think not.’
“‘But my companion is the Prince Royal of Sweden and Norway.’
“Upon which the boy very soon found that he could take a Prince
anywhere, and proud he probably was afterwards to narrate to whom he had
been acting cicerone. In the barge, a number of undergraduates were
looking at the Prince’s portrait in the _Graphic_. He looked at it too,
over their shoulders, but they did not recognise him.
“It was a fatiguing day, and I felt greatly the utter apathy and want of
interest in all the Swedes, who scarcely noticed anything, admired
nothing, and remembered nothing.”
* * * * *
“_June 18._--Again to Oxford with the Prince. This time the town was in
gala costume, and we drove through a street hung with flags, and through
crowds of people waiting to see the Prince, to the Vice-Chancellor’s
Lodge at Pembroke. Here the Prince dressed, and I went on at once with
his gentlemen to the Theatre, where places were reserved for us just
under the Vice-Chancellor’s throne. My Swedish companions were amused
with the undergraduates’ expression of their likes and dislikes, till
the great moment came and the great doors were thrown open, and, amid a
flood of sunlight, the procession streamed in headed by all the gold
maces. Immediately after the Vice-Chancellor came my Prince, looking
tall and handsome in his white uniform with the crimson robe over it,
and perfectly royal. _I_ knew that he felt nervous, but he could not
have been half as nervous as I was. He played his part, however,
perfectly. He received his degree standing by the Vice-Chancellor’s
side, and the whole body of undergraduates sang a little impromptu song,
to the effect of ‘He’s a charming Swedish boy.’
“We adjourned from the Theatre to the green court of All Souls, where,
in the sunlit quadrangle, I brought up, one after another, all the
principal persons to be presented to the Prince--Lord and Lady Dufferin,
Rachel and Sir Arthur Gordon, Lord Selborne, the Dean of Christ Church
and Mrs. Liddell, &c. There was a luncheon for 300 in the All-Souls
library, and afterwards we drove with Mrs. Evans, the Vice-Chancellor’s
wife, to the Masonic fête in the lovely Wadham garden, and then paid
official visits, before leaving, to the Vice-Chancellor and Dean.
“In the evening I was with the Prince at Mrs. E. Guiness’s ball, on
which £6000 are said to have been wasted. It was a perfect fairy-land,
ice pillars up to the ceiling, an avenue of palms, a veil of stephanotis
from the staircase, and you pushed your way through a brake of papyrus
to the cloak-room.”
* * * * *
“_June 19._--We dined with the Aberdeens. I went before the Prince, and
was with Aberdeen to receive him at the door, and then presented a
quantity of people--Lord and Lady Carnarvon, Lord and Lady Brownlow,
Lady Balfour, Dowager Lady Aberdeen, &c. The London Scottish Volunteers
played soft music during dinner. Soon afterwards the Prince went away to
the Scandinavian ball, rather disappointing many people who came to see
him in the evening.”
* * * * *
“_June 20._--Oh, what a shock it has been that, while the balls last
night were going on, telegrams announced the death of the dear young
Prince Imperial! I am sure I cried for him like a nearest relation;
there was something so very cordial and attaching in him, and there is
something so unspeakably terrible in his death. The Prince was
overwhelmed, and could not dine at Lowther Lodge, where there was a
large party expressly to meet him, but he was quite right.”
* * * * *
“_June 21._--We can think of nothing else but the Prince Imperial and
the awful grief at Chislehurst. Immediately on hearing the telegram,
Lord Dorchester wrote to M. Pietri a letter of condolence. M. Pietri was
away in Corsica, and the Empress opened his letter. It begged Pietri to
offer deep sympathy to the Empress in her overwhelming affliction. She
felt her son was dead, and when Lord Sydney and Mr. Borthwick arrived,
they found her in tears; but when she heard the awful truth that her
darling had been deserted and assegaied, she gave terrible shrieks and
fainted away.
“Most of the day she was unconscious. Those who went to Chislehurst
describe the scene as too heart-rending. The old servants could not
rest, and walked in the garden in groups, wringing their hands and
crying ‘O mon pauvre petit Prince! O mon pauvre cher petit Prince!’
“In the morning I went with the Prince to Lambeth,--all of us very sad
and tearful. I had mentioned a rather later hour to the Archbishop, so
that he was not ready to receive us, and Lord and Lady Charles Clinton,
who were there, were dreadfully shy. When the Archbishop came, he showed
us his library treasures, and climbed up the high Lollards’ Tower to
take the Prince to the prison of the early Reformers; but I felt how
fearfully dull the Archbishop must think all the Swedes, who made no
observation whatever upon anything they saw.”
* * * * *
“_June 23._--With the Prince to the Rose and Crown Coffee-House. Lord
and Lady Aberdeen and Lady Cairns met us there. It is a beautifully
managed institution, and fresh and clean to a degree. All the workmen
crowded in for dinner before we left, but I would not let Aberdeen let
them know who was there till the last moment, when the news gave great
satisfaction; but they behaved beautifully--no crowding or staring: the
Prince wrote his name in their book.
[Illustration: THE LOLLARDS’ PRISON, LAMBETH.][309]
“Luncheon afterwards with Lord and Lady Garvagh, meeting only Madame
Rouzaud (Christine Nilsson).”
* * * * *
“_June 25._--Dinner at Lord Sandwich’s--a particularly good party. I sat
by Lady Elcho, whose mind seems to be in perpetual moonlight, very
calming and refreshing.”
[Illustration: THE WAKEFIELD TOWER, TOWER OF LONDON.][310]
“_June 26._--To the Tower of London with the Prince, who was very
good-humoured and absurd. It is a long fatiguing sight. Our being at
Trinity Square was curious in its results, as persons were just then
visiting it (the site of the block at which More, Fisher, Laud,
Strafford fell) with a view to its destruction, and the fact, afterwards
adduced before the House of Lords, that the Prince Royal of Sweden and
Norway was at that very moment being taken to see it as one of the great
historical sites of London, proved its salvation.
“How wearisome it is to steer the Prince through people’s little
intrigues. They have to-day involved a letter of six sheets to the Queen
of Sweden. Yesterday I was free, as he went with the ‘Four-in-Hand
Club,’--an odd arrangement for _me_ to have to make for him.”
* * * * *