combine, and oh! in life there are so many of those cases.’”
* * * * *
“_January 12._--Mrs. Stewart has been talking of the cases in which a
lie is justifiable. Of herself she said, ‘There was once a case in which
I thought I ought to tell a lie, but I was not sure. I went to Dr. and
Mrs. Bickersteth, and I asked them. They would only answer, “We cannot
advise you to tell a lie;” they would not advise it, but they did not
forbid it. So when a husband came to question me about his wife, I
equivocated. I said, “She was certainly not seduced by that man.” He
said to me very sternly and fiercely, “That is no answer; is my wife
innocent? I will believe you if you say she is.” And I said, “She is.”
I said it hesitatingly, for I knew it was false, and _he_ knew it was
false; he knew that I had lied to him, and he did not believe me in his
heart; but he was glad to believe me outwardly, and he was grateful to
me, and that husband and wife lived together till death. I believe that
was one of the cases in which it is right to tell a lie. You will say
that it might lead me to tell many others, but I don’t think it has.
Stopford Brooke once said that strict merciless truth was the most
selfish thing he knew.”
“Mrs. Stewart also told us--
“Dudley Smith, as a very young man, went out to China, and was employed
in the opium trade. He then married and had several children. When he
was thirty-three his conscience began to work, and he felt the abuses of
opium. He left the trade and became a wharfinger, in which profession he
made some money, though it was not nearly so lucrative as the occupation
he had given up, in which he had made £12,000.
“When he was thirty-five, though he had then a wife and several
children, Dudley Smith brought the £12,000 to his man of business,
saying that it burnt a hole in his pocket, and desiring him to so invest
it as to realise £500 a year for a mission to the Chinese, from whom it
was taken. This story is delightful to me. It reminds me of a saying of
old Mr. Planchet’s, which meant, though I cannot remember the exact
words--
‘Of heroes and heroines I am sick grown;
The only real ones are those that are unknown.’
We have been to luncheon at Berkeley Castle to-day. Lady Fitzhardinge,
fat to a degree, is charming, and has the most wonderful knowledge of
all the delicate _finesses_ of form and colour, and the application of
them to furniture. Her rooms are quite beautiful, everything composing
the most harmonious picture, down to a string of blue beads suspended
from a yellow vase. Lord Fitzhardinge came in to luncheon with Lord
Worcester, Lord Guildford, and another man--four statues! Not one of
them spoke a word, I believe because not one of them had a word to say,
except about racehorses, about which we none of us could say anything.
The castle relics are most interesting--Sir Francis Drake’s furniture,
Queen Elizabeth’s plate, bequeathed to her cousin Lord Hunsdon, and the
last prayer of Edward VI., written out by his sister herself, in the
tiniest of little jewel-embossed volumes.”
* * * * *
“_Jan. 15._--Mrs. Stewart has been talking much of her great delight in
the works of Ampère, and of the intense devotion, the passionate love of
the younger Ampère for Madame Recamier. She was guilty of a _trahison_
to him, though. When he was at Weimar, he wrote to her a private letter,
telling her particulars about all the people there, which he had better
not have told, but he wrote them in strict confidence. She made that
letter public. ‘My dear Mr. Hare,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘I have never read
any letter more exquisitely, more tenderly pathetic than that which
Ampère wrote her when he heard this--a letter struggling between his old
respect and admiration and the feeling that his idol had fallen, that he
could not but reproach her.
“When Lowell (the American poet and minister) was describing his wife’s
terrible illness, he said, ‘My dear Mrs. Stewart, I would have given Job
ten and won.’
“After Lady Fitzhardinge came, Mrs. Stewart talked much of her
acquaintance with Brother Ignatius. She was at the place of her
son-in-law, Mr. Rogerson, in Scotland. One day out walking, Mrs.
Rogerson met a young man, of wonderful beauty, dressed as a monk, with
bare feet and sandals. He asked her whether they were near any inn, and
said, ‘The fact is, I have with me two sisters, Sister Gertrude and
another, and a brother--Brother Augustine. And the brother is very ill,
possibly ill to death, and we cannot go any farther.’ So Mrs. Rogerson
made them come to her house, and showed them infinite kindness, ‘giving
them at once water for their feet and all Scripture hospitality.’
Brother Augustine was very ill, very ill indeed, and they all remained
at Mrs. Rogerson’s house three weeks, during which Mrs. Stewart became
very intimate with them, especially with Brother Ignatius and Sister
Gertrude. They used to go out for the day together, ‘and then, in some
desolate strath, Brother Ignatius would sing, sing hymns like an
archangel, and then he would kneel on the grass and pray.’
“Many years afterwards, Mrs. Stewart heard that Brother Ignatius was
going to preach in London--‘some very bad part of London,’ and she went.
The room was packed and crowded, but she was in the first row. He
preached, a beautiful young monk, leaning against a pillar. ‘There were
at least a hundred of his attitudes worth painting,’ but there was
nothing in his words. At last a little girl thought he looked faint, and
brought him a smelling-bottle, which she presented to him kneeling. ‘He
smelled at it, and then seeing me, an old woman, near him, he sent it on
to me, and I smelled at it too. Afterwards I stayed to see him, and we
talked together in a small room, talked till midnight. Then he gave me
his blessing, gave it me very solemnly, and afterwards I said, ‘And God
bless you too, my dear young man.’
“In the evening Mrs. Stewart spoke much of the Sobieski Stuarts--their
gallant appearance when young, and their change into ‘the mildew of
age.’
“Apropos of the last words of St. Evremond, ‘Je vais savoir le grand
peut-être,’ Mrs. Stewart mentioned Mrs. Grote having said to her at
their last meeting, ‘I trust, dear, that you are living, as I am, in
_respectful hope_.’
“This led to much talk of Mrs. Grote, who had died (Dec. 29, 1878) when
I was away at Rome with the Prince Royal, and Mrs. Stewart described
how, when she returned from Hanover after the fall of the royal family,
and was quite full of events there, she went down at once to visit the
Grotes in the country. ‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Grote, ‘I cannot enter into
your feelings about all your princesses and duchesses, but as regards
your king, I can enter into them fully: he has lived “as it is
written.”’ Mrs. Stewart wrote this to the King, who knows Shakspeare to
his finger-ends, and he said it did him more good than anything else
anybody wrote or said to him. As long as he lived, he and Mrs. Grote
exchanged stories and messages afterwards, through Mrs. Stewart.
“Lady William Russell said with much truth of Mr. and Mrs. Grote, ‘He is
ladylike, and she is such a perfect gentleman.’
“When Lady Catherine Clive was painting her town-hall at Hereford, she
was very anxious to find new, not conventional, attributes for some of
her allegorical figures; she especially wished for something instead of
the scales of ‘Justice.’ Mrs. Stewart wrote this to Mrs. Grote: ‘Tell
your friend,’ she answered, ‘not to try to struggle against
conventionalities. Tell her to be content with the scales: she will come
to find the cross conventional next.’
“When Lady Eastlake undertook to write Mrs. Grote’s life after her
death, she asked Mrs. Stewart for all her ‘jottings’ of Mrs. Grote’s
conversations, but she made no use of them. She was so anxious that
every one should find the book too short, that she really omitted almost
everything characteristic. She wrote her regrets afterwards to Mrs.
Stewart, who answered, ‘You are suffering, my dear, from a granted
prayer,’--for, in fact, the book was so short and dry that it passed
almost unnoticed.
“Mrs. Stewart spoke again of how far a lie might be made right by
circumstances--giving a wrong direction to a man who was in pursuit of
another to kill him, &c., and, when some one objected, dwelt upon its
being far greater to be noble for others than holy for one’s self. Some
one said that in this case all should follow the inner voice, which
would tell them truly what their real duty was. She replied, ‘Yes,
having formed your character by the Master without, you may then act in
a crisis by the voice within, which will never be false to your life’s
teachings.... But perhaps,’ she added, ‘I should say, like Dr. Johnson,
“I have been speaking in crass ignorance, according to the failings of
my fallible human nature”’ (and she repeated some lovely lines on Mary
Magdalen, from Moore’s ‘Rhymes of the Road’);[354] ‘and yet, may we all,
whilst acting like fallible human beings as we are, trust respectfully
in God’s mercy,--though speaking of no glorious future as reserved for
us, lest He should say, “What hast thou done to deserve that?”’
“The letters written to the _Morning Post_ from Hanover during the last
days of the monarchy, and signed H. S., were by Mrs. Stewart: those in
the _Times_, bearing the same signature, were by another lady.
“After being for a time with Mrs. Stewart and hearing her talk, I feel
how great the decay of conversation is since my childhood, when there
were many people who knew how to _converse_, not merely to _utter_.
Scarcely any one now ever says what they really think, and there is an
unwholesome striving after aestheticism, Louis Quatorze, blue china,
&c., which another age, if it remembers it, will think most
ridiculous.”
* * * * *
“_London, Jan. 24._--To Miss Bromley, who had been on Saturday to take
leave of Carlyle, to whom she has been the most faithful of friends for
many years. He has been sinking for some time, full of power, pathos,
and patience. He woke out of what was supposed to be a death stupor to
recognise her, and pressed her hand to his lips.”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 26._--Went by appointment to see the Queen of Sweden, who is at
Claridge’s Hotel for two nights. She was most kind and gracious, and
said that she was glad to thank me in person for all that I had been to
the Crown Prince. She talked of her illness and its anxieties; but there
were many other people waiting for an audience, and there was no time
for any real conversation.”
* * * * *
“_March 1._--Met Lady Lyveden at dinner at General Higginson’s. She
described Mrs. Grote saying one day, ‘I have to go out this morning, my
dear; it’s not my usual time, and in fact it’s very inconvenient to me,
but then you know, my dear, it’s _an affliction job_.’
“Mrs. Grote, to the last, was very proud of her appearance. Her hands
and feet she was especially proud of. One day Lady Lyveden asked her to
come in the evening to meet some pleasant people in her neighbouring
house in Savile Row. She would not do it. ‘I shall not come, my dear,’
she said, ‘because I never go out; but besides that, I _could_ not come,
for, if I did, I should have to put my well-formed figure into one of
your abominably low arm-chairs.’[355]
“There was a charm about her primitive household. There was not one of
her servants who spoke of her otherwise than ‘the Missis.’
“After dinner, she would leave ‘the historian,’ as she called him, in
his study, and come up to the drawing-room, where she would talk to her
guests and be most entertaining. At nine o’clock, tea would be brought
up--such a tea as one never sees now, with tablecloth, muffins, cakes,
&c. Then she would say to the servant, ‘Bring up the historian’--and the
historian was ‘brought up.’ He was vastly civil, of the old school, and
wore a great deal of frill. He would take his place opposite the table,
and immediately taking a large clean pocket-handkerchief from his
pocket, spread it very deliberately over his knees, after which a dog
jumped up and sat upon it. Then he would say, as to a perfect stranger,
‘And now, Mrs. Grote, will you kindly favour us with a sonata?’ and Mrs.
Grote, who was an admirable musician, would play a very long sonata
indeed; after which he would say, ‘Thank you, Mrs. Grote. I am sure Lady
Lyveden joins with me in being very much obliged to you for your
beautiful sonata.’[356]
“Lady Eastlake’s written portrait misses all the wit, all the acted
comedy of Mrs. Grote’s real life. She made, however, a capital pencil
sketch (which Lady Lyveden has) of Mrs. Grote, who was greatly pleased
with it.”
* * * * *
“_March 9._--Met Princess Mary at luncheon at Lady Harrington’s, who
only presented me by ‘Here is Augustus.’ The Princess was good enough to
talk to me for a long time afterwards.”
* * * * *
“_March 22._--Dined at Lady Airlie’s, sitting by Lady Herbert of Lea,
who talked much of her long residence in Sicily, with which she was
connected through her mother. She went about a great deal amongst the
poor at Palermo, generally accompanied by a Sister of Charity, and on
one occasion nursed a sick brigand. Soon afterwards, her children, going
to the Bay of Mondello to pick up shells, were seized by brigands, but
as soon as they found whose children they were, they sent them back to
her safe. Another day, Lady Herbert was returning from a village,
whither she had been on some office of charity, to Palermo, as it was
almost dark. There were high walls on either side of the way. Suddenly
the Sister of Charity who was with her began to go so fast that she
could not keep up with her. ‘Non posso, Sorella mia, non posso cammináre
più,’ she said. ‘But look behind you,’ said the Sister. She looked, and
saw three brigands following them. It would have been impossible to get
away, so she waited till they came up and said, ‘Che vuole?’ They begged
her to excuse them: they were sent by their chief to protect her as far
as the walls of Palermo: _they_ knew her, but others might not, and
they were ordered to ascertain that she came to no harm.
“A Hungarian Count and Countess were at dinner. He talked of fashion
very amusingly. He said he had learnt much from his herdsman, a very
clever man (‘he was hung afterwards, poor man, but he was very clever’),
who chose the animal to bear the bell, which was accustomed to go in the
centre of the herd. He asked why this was, and the herdsman answered,
‘Because the one who goes first naturally runs first into all dangers,
and when he has done it once or twice, the herd begin to find it out,
and they cease to follow him; and the one who goes last is constantly
left behind, and the herd begin to find it out, and they cease to follow
_him_; but the one that is in the middle, and chooses the safest place,
that is the one they know to be wise, and so, in any time of danger,
they will assuredly follow him. The Count spoke of the mania for
husband-murder which prevailed at Marseilles till it became quite a
fashion. Six women were tried at the same assizes for murdering their
husbands. In some of these cases there seemed something of reason or
excuse, but at last there came a lady whose husband had been all that
was most charming and delightful, and where the crime seemed
incomprehensible. The judge pressed her as to her motive, and at first
she said, ‘Ces dames me l’ont mis dans l’esprit,’ and, when urged
further, ‘Mais, cela se fait à Marseilles!’
“The London world has been full of the ‘Reminiscences of Carlyle,’
published with furious haste by Froude a fortnight after his death. They
have dwarfed their subject from a giant into a pigmy. His journal and
letters speak well of no one except his own family, and assail with the
utmost vituperation all who differed from him. For his wife there is a
long wail of affection, which would be touching if the devotion had not
begun after her death. ‘Never marry a genius,’ she said to Lady
Ashburton; ‘I have done it, and suffered from it; but then, after my
death I shall have an apotheosis’--and she has had it. Much of Carlyle’s
virulence arose from the state of his health: he used to say, ‘I can
wish the devil nothing worse than that he may have to digest with my
stomach to all eternity; there will be no need of fire and brimstone
then.’”
* * * * *
“_March 28._--Dined at Lady Lyveden’s. Sat by Lady S., who was very
pleasant. She talked of Tennyson, who had been to stay with her. He
desired his sons to let her know that he should like to be asked to read
some of his poems in the evening. Nevertheless, when she asked him, he
made a piece of work about it, and said to the other guests, ‘I do it,
but I only do it because Lady S. absolutely insists upon it.’ He read
badly and with too much emotion: over ‘Maud’ he sobbed passionately.
“Afterwards, at Lady Ridley’s party, Lord Houghton talked to me about
Carlyle--of how his grimness, which was unrelieved in the
‘Reminiscences,’ was relieved in the _man_ by much kindly humour. He
said that he and Lady Houghton were almost the only people spoken well
of in the book. Mr. Spedding used to say that Carlyle always needed that
kind of indulgence which most of us need in a fit of violent
toothache.”
* * * * *
“_April 3._--Dined with old Lady Combermere, who declared that only two
people ever had any excuse for living in the country, and they were Adam
and Eve!”
* * * * *
“_April 8._--An amusing luncheon at Lady Sebright’s, with an immense
party of actors, actresses, painters, literati, and ‘great ladies.’ It
seemed a reversion of the old order of things when the actresses had
said they ‘must inquire a little into the characters of the great
ladies’ they were asked to meet!”
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, April 9._--Lea says, ‘It’s seven weeks from Guttit to
Aaster, and seven weeks from Aaster to Whissuntide.... You needna’ to
tak’ any trouble about the clocks, for when Lady Day comes it ‘ull mak’
’em all right, for there’s just twelve hours of sunshine on Lady Day.’
“‘After New Year’s day every day is just a cock’s ted longer than the
last: a cock’s ted, you know, is just the time a cock stops between its
crowings.’
“‘When we were any ways contrairy, my father used to say, “Yes, it’s
always too wet or too fine: it’s always too hot or too cold: that’s the
way of the world.’”
* * * * *
“_London, May 12._--To Mrs. Duncan Stewart, whom I found, after her
severe illness, sitting in a picturesque wrapper reading old _Figaros_.
‘So much in them, you know, so much more than in any other newspaper.’
They called up reminiscences of Lady Blessington, whom she thinks Lady
Airlie like, though without her perfect beauty: then of the trial of ...
for forgery, she being a grand-daughter of Stephanie Lafitte, ‘whom I
remember, not in her wedding-dress, but in one of her trousseau dresses,
for it was velvet. All French girls--and I was a French girl then--are
brought up to observe and think a great deal about dress, and it is
terrible, quite horrible to them, that an unmarried girl should have a
velvet dress: thus the remembrance clings to me.’
“Mrs. Stewart had been most alarmingly ill, but said she had rallied
from the moment Alfred Denison paid her a visit. She had said to him
that she had a presentiment she should not recover, and he had answered
her that he had never been ill without such a presentiment, and that it
had never come true.
“Yesterday I went to the Hollands to meet Princess Louise, and to tell
her some stories which she had graciously wished to hear. I knew that I
was to do this, but it was sufficiently formidable notwithstanding. The
Princess felt that it must be so, and was very sympathetic, and as nice
as she could be, talking first of my books, and saying that my Italian
volumes were never out of her hands when she was in Italy, &c. I had
been allowed to choose the rest of the audience, and the Childers,
Northcotes, Goschens, Lady Taunton, and Mrs. Dundas were there.”
* * * * *
“_May 18._--Luncheon with Catherine Vaughan at the Temple. She was very
full of a story of Sir F. Gore Ouseley. He took a house near London, and
a young man went to stay with him, an atheist and a reprobate. The next
morning this man came down an altered person, saying that he had heard a
supernatural voice in the night, which had so horrified him that it
would change his whole life--the voice had blasphemed in the most awful
language. That day was November 22. The young man went away, and he
really did change his life.
“The following year, on November 22, Sir F. Gore Ouseley suddenly opened
his door at night, and saw at the end of the passage a brilliant light,
and in the light the figure of an old man in a dressing-gown--luminous,
and all the rays of light issuing from his figure. Suddenly the light
went out: there was nothing more to be seen.
“Some time after, Sir F. Gore Ouseley went to visit the owner of the
house he had rented, who lived at a distance. Whilst waiting for him, he
was attracted by the picture of an old gentleman over the chimney-piece,
and recognised the very man he had seen. When the master of the house
came in, he said, ‘Pray excuse me, but whom does that portrait
represent?’--‘Oh,’ answered the owner, ‘that is no one you are likely to
have heard of: it is a grandfather of mine, who was a very bad man
indeed: so bad, that, in fact, we never mention him.’ Afterwards, Sir
Frederick found that he had strangled his wife in the very passage where
he appeared, and had then committed suicide.
“Mr. Austen, Rector of Whitby, was present when Catherine told this. He
said that Professor Owen had gone to stay at a house in Essex, where the
hostess apologised for putting him into the haunted room. The next
morning he was asked if he had heard anything. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have
heard something, but I should like to say nothing about it till I have
slept in that room again.’ The second morning he said that each night he
had heard loud cries of a child proceeding from the hearthstone, and
begged that a mason might be sent for and the stone removed. This was
done, and the skull of a child was found beneath the stone. They buried
it in the garden, and the cries have never been heard since.”
* * * * *
“_Holyrood Palace, May 27._--On the evening of the 14th, at Cleveland
House, first Lady Aberdeen, and then Aberdeen, asked me to come hither
with them as equerry, during their residence for the Lord High
Commissionership. I stayed in London for Miss Beaumont’s wedding with
Coplestone Bampfylde, and joined them on Friday, arriving at 9 P.M.,
when ninety guests were at dinner in the brilliantly lighted picture
gallery, in which all the kings of Scotland were, painted to order by
the same hand and from the same model. After dining by myself in a small
room, I joined the party in the reception-rooms, where I entered at once
upon my duties, which, for the most part, seem to be to talk right and
left to every one I see. Each evening the Synods of the different
districts dine, some eighty or a hundred clergymen, and I have generally
found from my clerical neighbours that they regard it as their carnival,
looked forward to throughout the whole year, and giving them much to
talk of when they return home. Sometimes military, legal, or other
classes are mixed with them. In the afternoons we have generally gone
in state to visit institutions of one kind or other, the most
interesting being the really beautiful Infirmary, built entirely by the
people of Scotland, and the marvellous printing establishment of Messrs.
Nelson. When we were at the latter, most hands were busy over the
revised New Testament, in which there are 7000 alterations from the
older edition, 2000 of them being important.”
* * * * *
“_Holyrood Palace, May 28._--It is an interesting life here, but a very
fatiguing one--the hours and hours of standing, as for real royalty; the
etiquette of always addressing Aberdeen as ‘Your Grace,’ and getting up
when he comes into a room; the whirlpool of invitations to be sent, in
which one is always being swallowed up.
“I have had little enough of individual conversation, except with Ally
Gordon, the very pleasant aide-de-camp, and with Dr. Russell the
chaplain, who has talked much of Carlyle. He said to a friend who
visited him a short time before his death, ‘We are both old men now, and
I daresay you find, as I do, that it is well to rest upon the simple
answer to the first question in our Shorter Catechism--‘What is your
object in life?’--‘To glorify my Maker and to enjoy Him for ever.’