had a long service and sermon in the picture-gallery. These Scotch
services are most wearisome, and the long prayers, _informing_ the
Almighty upon subjects on which He is all-wise and we are utterly
ignorant, are most revolting.
“One especially feels the length of these prayers in standing, in great
heat, in the General Assembly, where we occupy places near the throne,
which is raised in a gallery: the Moderator and ex-Moderator sit at a
table beneath, and the five hundred members occupy the body of the
house. The Moderator, Dr. Smith, is a most beautiful and benign old man,
full of simple and true Christianity, who looks, with his courtly
manners, as if he never could wear anything _but_ his court dress.
To-day we and about a hundred other guests breakfasted with him at his
hotel.
“The Holyrood which struck such ‘dismay and terror’ into the hearts of
the French emigrant princes is to me most captivating. I am often
reminded of Hogg’s admirably descriptive lines:--
‘When Mary turned her wond’ring eyes
On rocks that seemed to prop the skies;
On palace, park, and battled pile;
On lake and river, sea and isle;
O’er woods and meadows bathed in dew,
To distant mountains wild and blue;
She thought the isle that gave her birth
The sweetest, wildest land on earth.’
“On Sunday afternoon I went up Arthur’s Seat with Ally Gordon and the
ladies-in-waiting--Lady Margaret Hely Hutchinson and Lady Mary
Ashburnham. Most exquisite was the view over the sunlit slopes of
Edinburgh in its purple haze. Besides this, I shall have many
recollections of the delightful gardens of Holyrood in this still hot
weather, the apple-trees bursting into bloom, the hoary chapel with its
gothic arches and windows, the Salisbury Crags, deeply purple above,
and fading into mist below.”
* * * * *
“_May 29._--All has gone well and smoothly, and there is great interest
in the Holyrood life--the moving diorama of people, with the varying
lights and shades of character which they display, the old-world aspect
of all that has to be done, with the pages in their crimson and white
liveries, the chaplain and purse-bearer in their court dresses, and the
mounted guard. It has all been made especially pleasant by being on such
thoroughly friendly terms with the ladies-in-waiting and with one of the
aides-de-camp, Ally Gordon: the extreme goodness of the other, who has
been vehemently ‘converted,’ being a sort of barrier to intimacy.
“Old Miss Louisa Hope has been amongst the people who have come to
Holyrood. She talked much of her friendship with Lord Brougham, with
whom she corresponded constantly for many years. She had many religious
conversations with him, and he often used to dwell with her, as in his
public lectures, on the sublimity of that description of God, ‘eternal,
immortal, invisible,’ which has been spoilt in the revised translation
by changing the word ‘immortal’ into ‘incorruptible.’ After he had been
betrayed into especially bad language in her presence, she wrote a
strong remonstrance to him. He said nothing definite in answer, but
thenceforth always addressed her as ‘Dearest Miss Hope.’ When she heard
that he was not likely to live, Miss Hope wrote to him, saying that she
trusted that, if he was able to write himself, he would give her some
sign of his assurance as to a future life; but that, if he were not
able to write himself, he would not notice her request. Lord Brougham
wrote, ‘I trust entirely in the _graciousness_ of Him who died for me,’
and she was satisfied.
“Yesterday we drove out to Winton to Lady Ruthven. It was a lovely day,
the sea deep blue, and the trees, especially the sycamores, in their
richest foliage. We found the house just set in order after its
devastation during the fire which consumed the dining-room three weeks
ago, when everything was thrown out of the windows. Dear old Lady
Ruthven herself sat all the time on a chair on the lawn watching the
flames. She asked if every one was out of the castle, and being assured
that it was so, said, ‘Is Peppy (her dog) safe?’--‘Yes, my lady.’--‘Is
my blue vase safe?’--‘Yes, my lady.’--‘Then I am quite satisfied.’ And
she bade every person on the property go to church the next day to
return thanks for her preservation. She received me with the greatest
affection, and bade me kiss her.[357]
“At the great dinner at Holyrood in the evening I took in a Mrs. Murray,
who talked pleasantly about the old phase of Edinburgh society which she
remembered. ‘There were three subjects--wine, law, and contradiction:
wine is extinct now as a topic, but the other two, and especially the
last, are as much to the fore as ever.’ She said that she had studied
law herself, because it was the subject on which her husband was most
interested, and she liked him to be able to discuss all his occupations
with her.
“Another day I took in Mrs. Fleeming Jenkin, the marvellous amateur
actress. She described her home life and the reading aloud to her boys.
She read Landor, Alison, Scott. Only Byron’s ‘Childe Harold’ was a
failure. They got through the first two cantos, then the youngest boy
said, ‘Did the Childe never cheer up?’ and she was obliged to allow that
he did not: so the book was closed.
“Yesterday I talked much with Mrs. Fraser--Professor Fraser’s wife. She
described her visit to Hurstmonceaux--a week spent at the Rectory after
her wedding tour, and going down twice to Lime, and my dear Mother
sitting by the open window looking on the sunny lawn and flowers and the
sparkling water.
“To-day, at St. Giles’s, Professor Flint preached a magnificent sermon
on ‘I am the True Witness,’ describing how the doctrine which Christ
preached was that of the kingdom; ‘that of the Church He left to
others.’ His whole teaching was that inculcated by Diderot--‘Elargissez
Dieu, montrez-lui à l’enfant, non dans le temple, mais partout et
toujours.’”[358]
* * * * *
“_May 30._--Our stay is nearly at an end, and I am very sorry.... It is
impossible to live with the two charming old sisters (Lady Aberdeen and
Lady Ashburnham), so one in every thought and act, without being
impressed by their extreme simplicity and goodness; and Scottish ideas
of clanship are more captivated by the fact of ‘His Grace’ being
followed everywhere by his mother and aunt, and their going hand in
hand with him in every good work, than they could be by the most
brilliant court. Yesterday the preaching and praying were tremendous.
Now we are just off to a luncheon, then to visit the castle in state,
then a soldiers’ home, a sculptor’s studio, an artist’s studio, a dinner
of a hundred, and the Assembly again in state at 10 P.M. I cannot say
how kind every one is to me at Edinburgh.”
* * * * *
“_London, July 10._--With Lady Paget to hear Spurgeon preach at his
great Tabernacle near the Elephant and Castle. The vast congregation,
the united sound of the thousands of voices in the hymn, the earnestness
and zest of everything, were very striking: but far more so the strange,
common, coarse preacher. The text was from Rev. xxii. 17, ‘Let him that
heareth say Come.’ He described a sinner as like Leviathan, in whom
there must be some weak spot betwixt its thousand scales, between which
the dart of the exhorters could penetrate before death intervened and
set the ‘wax-tablet’ of his character for ever. He spoke of the
different ways of saying ‘Come,’ and acted them: that a ‘plain English,
not half Dutch-Latin-Hebrew way of speaking,’ should be employed: that
‘prayer was as necessary as that a servant should tell her master who
had called: that no servant was equal to answering for herself without
referring to her master.’
“The rough similes just suited the congregation, and also the jokes, at
which the people laughed aloud, but not irreverently. ‘A friend of mine
was preaching in the street the other day, and one of those fellows
passed by who has felt the hand touched by a bishop’s lawn sleeve upon
his blessed pate (not that I think there is any good in that; I do not
know if you do), and asked him by what authority he was preaching, and
my friend answered, ‘By the authority of Jesus Christ, who said, “Let
him that heareth say Come.”’ ‘Popes were represented sometimes with a
dove whispering the words which they should speak into their ears--they
were represented with a dove; I hope it was not really a raven.’”
* * * * *
I was suddenly called away in the middle of the season by the alarming
illness of my dearest old nurse, and for several weeks was at Holmhurst
with her, in the mysterious solitude of the shadow of death, in which so
many of my earlier years were passed, and then I had the intense
thankfulness of seeing life return into the dear old face connected with
so much that no one else remembers.
XXII
HOME SORROWS
“Faire le bien, connaître le vrai, voilà ce qui distingue un homme
d’un autre; le reste n’est rien. La durée de la vie est si courte,
ses vraies besoins sont si étroits, que quand on s’en va, il
importe si peu d’avoir été quelqu’un ou personne. Il ne faut à la
fin qu’un mauvais morceau de toile et quatre planches de
sapin.”--DIDEROT.
“Happy are they to whom the solemn angel comes unannounced and
quietly, and who are mercifully spared a long baptism of
suffering.”--WHITTIER.
“There is a melancholy in sunbright fields
Deeper to me than gloom: I am ne’er so sad
As when I sit amid bright scenes alone.”
--GEORGE DARLEY, “_Sylvia_.”
It was on the 11th of July, after I had returned to London, that I was
drawing in the cloisters of Westminster with Alethea Grenfell, when Miss
Johnes (the charming correspondent of Bishop Thirlwall) passed by, and
told me that Arthur Stanley was ill. I thought little of it at the time,
as he was so often sick, and I had lately seen him looking better and
happier than he had done since his sister Mary’s death. On Thursday 14th
there was a great dinner-party at the Deanery. Catherine Vaughan dined,
and as, at the last moment, Arthur was not well enough to appear, she
went in to sit with him after dinner, and finding him very dispirited
and unwell, gave up her intention of going to Llandaff next day, and
moved to the Deanery instead. That day erysipelas came on, and she was
prevented seeing him till 3 A.M. on the morning of Monday the 18th, when
the doctors called her, saying that an alarming change had come on.
Canon Farrar was then summoned, and administered the Sacrament, but when
he came to the blessing, Arthur motioned him to silence, and gave the
words of the longer Benediction himself, with the same solemnity with
which he spoke them at Augusta’s funeral. Then also Arthur spoke some
farewell words--of grateful affection for the Queen, of trustful
exhortation for his successor in the Deanery, of thankful appreciation
of the fidelity of his housekeeper, Mrs. Waters, and the services of his
butler and Charlotte the housemaid. Those who surrounded him then
thought that he was sinking, but he rallied, and in the morning all the
symptoms were favourable.
At 10 A.M. on Monday, I broke through the cordon which surrounded the
Deanery, and made my way up to Catherine, who was glad to have me with
her. The large rooms were silent and hushed, though many persons,
chiefly Bruces and Baillies, were moving in and out. It was the dead
heat of July, not a leaf stirring. In the afternoon, Arthur was so much
better that I went away, and even kept an engagement to dine out. But
next morning came the shock of his death--Arthur--the “Cousin Arthur” of
my childhood. He had become worse at 9.30 P.M. The Archbishop read
prayers in the room; they all knelt around; he never spoke more; and
before midnight it was over.
Catherine and I both took leave of the Deanery for ever the next
morning, but I went back to Westminster for the sad services of Sunday
and Monday. The funeral sermons were much more affecting than the
funeral itself; _that_ was far less touching than Augusta’s, for _he_
was not there to be felt with and for; and yet the number and the
unusual variety of true mourners made it a very remarkable sight.
To me it was a reopening of many beloved memories, and then a sealing
them away for ever. On the day after his death his sister and Hugh
Pearson, his dearest friend, wrote to me, asking me to undertake his
biography, to which I gladly assented, feeling sure that I could do it
well, and that no one could possibly know his life as well as myself.
But Sir George Grove, one of his literary executors, did not permit my
undertaking it.
The following weeks at Holmhurst were occupied on an article which I
wrote upon Arthur in _Macmillan_[359] (Sept. 1881), or rather in hunting
up material for it amongst the few papers I myself possessed, as the
literary executors allowed me access to nothing else. Yet, in doing it,
I could feel that, though somewhat estranged from him in late years,
there was no other who knew _all_ his life, its surroundings, motives,
and interests as I did. I went afterwards to Catherine, but first paid a
short visit in Suffolk to the ever-kind and pleasant Mrs. Paterson and
her husband at their charming Rectory of Brome. I extract from my
journal.
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Brome Rectory, Sept. 15, 1881._--On Tuesday I came here ... into
thickly wooded Suffolk, which thoroughly needs its shelter of trees from
its exposure to the north-east winds, for they say there is not a hill
between it and the Ural Mountains. I only just missed meeting two Mr.
Tyrrells, who have been building a church, not uncalled for, they said,
as an expiatory offering, for one of their ancestors murdered William
Rufus, and another the Princes in the Tower. We saw Eye, with its fine
church and pretty black and white grammar-school. The magnates of this
neighbourhood are Sir Edward and Lady Caroline Kerrison, who possess two
places, of which Brome Hall has delightful old gardens, while Oakley
contains the trunk of the tree under which St. Edward was said to have
been shot by the Danes, and in which, when it was cut down, an
arrow-head was found imbedded. Sir E. Kerrison has just demolished a
fine old wooden bridge, the successor of that under which the king
concealed himself, and where he was discovered to a newly married couple
by the light gleaming on his spurs. They betrayed him to the Danes, who
shot him. Dying, he cursed all persons who should cross that fatal
bridge over the Waveney on their way to or from a marriage, and on such
occasions the country people will always go two miles round to avoid it.
Close by is a spot where the discovery of flint weapons in a
pre-historic stratum has compelled an entire re-arrangement of geology,
as proving the existence of the world some millions of years before it
was supposed to have been created.
“Yesterday I went to Norwich, and how many memories were awakened by the
first sight of its beautiful spire! The river, the gateways, the ferry,
the cathedral were the same: only the beautiful palace was turned into a
common fifth-rate house. All who met there have now passed away except
Catherine Vaughan and Lea; but one seemed to see them all--the venerable
white head of my uncle the Bishop in his stall; Sedgwick emerging from
his house; Aunt Kitty in the broad garden-walk; my dearest Mother in the
Abbey Room; Sarah Burgess[360] in her still existing little room down
the steps; Arthur and Mary, Owen and Charlie--all gone!”
[Illustration: NORWICH FROM MOUSEHOLD.][361]
* * * * *
“_Sept. 25._--We went from Brome to see Roydon. Mr. G. E. Frere is
squire there, an eccentric man of old family, who has planted the
churchyard with flowers appropriate to each of the graves near them. One
is covered with wormwood: it is that of two old sisters in the parish,
horribly ill-tempered, who both became bedridden, but each was provided
with a stick that she might whack her companion as she lay in the bed
near her. We met Mr. H., an ugly man, intensely. proud of his worthless
pictures. Warren, the son of ‘Ten Thousand a Year,’ the clergyman who
preached such a capital sermon on the single word ‘but,’ dined with him,
and when Mr. H. pointed out what he calls a Murillo, said, ‘Really a
Gorillo--a family portrait, I suppose!’ We also went to see Wingfield,
an interesting old fortified manor of the De la Poles, and their
magnificent tombs in the church. One of them married Chaucer’s
grand-daughter and was murdered at Calais in the time of Henry VI.;
another married the sister of Edward IV.
“On leaving Brome, I made a tourette into Norfolk--to dilapidated
Walsingham, once the most celebrated shrine in England: to Lynn, with a
custom-house worthy of Flanders: to Castle Rising, a Norman tower almost
hidden in its green ballium: to Wymondham, with a splendid semi-ruined
church, perpendicular outside, but Norman within: and to the glorious
ruins of Castle Acre. The Coke of Elizabeth’s time bought so much land
in Norfolk, that the Queen ordered him to be told that he must not buy
any more, he would own too much for a subject. He petitioned, however,
that he might just buy three acres more, which would complete his
estate. The Queen said, ‘Yes, he might certainly do that;’ and he bought
Castle Acre, West Acre, and South Acre, three huge properties, only the
nucleus of which has descended to Lord Leicester.
* * * * *
“On the 20th I came to Llandaff.... We have been to see the ruins of a
deserted manor-house which belonged to Sir George Aubrey. It was
abandoned on account of a family tragedy. Sir George’s only son, a
little boy, one day refused to eat his pudding. ‘You must,’ said the
father. The child said he really could not, and implored with strange
anguish to be excused, but the father insisted. Three hours after the
child died in frightful agonies. That day the cook, by mistake, had put
arsenic into the pudding instead of sugar.
“Yesterday Lord and Lady Romilly[362] fetched me to their pretty little
house of Porthkerry, overhanging the Bristol Channel, and to-day we have
driven through pouring rain to visit Fon Mon (pronounced Fun-Mun), a
very curious old house of the thirteenth century.”
* * * * *
“_Penrhos, Anglesea, Oct. 9._--From Llandaff I went to Tenby, an
indescribably delightful place, with its varied coast, its wonderful
caves, its rich festoons of clematis hanging over the cliffs, and its
sapphire and chrysoprase seas. A girdle of old castles and abbeys
surrounds the place, affording an endless variety of excursions. I saw
something at Tenby of many members of the kindly respectable family of
Allen, and the Dean of the same name welcomed me to St. Davids, which is
truly marvellous in charm and interest--the cathedral, richly,
exquisitely beautiful; the ruined palace and college; and the village,
with its fine old cross, isolated in the solitude of a hollow in the
vast swooping hills, sixteen miles from a railway, almost from any other
inhabited place. It is said that if you take a sod from the churchyard
and stand upon it on the shore of the neighbouring sea, you look across
the mist of waters into all the glories of fairyland; and truly this
seems almost the case without the assistance of the churchyard sod, all
is so wondrously, uniquely, weirdly beautiful.
“On my way to this Stanley home of many memories, I went to visit the
Williams’s of Parcian, in central Anglesea, where the very savageness of
the country gives it an interest, and the desolate coves of its
sea-shore, in one of which, with the beautiful name of Moelvra, the
_Royal Charter_ was lost.
“Mr. (William) Stanley[363] is very kind, and has a great deal of shrewd
cleverness of its own sort; but a great deal has been written about the
charms and moral advantages of the life of a country gentleman who never
leaves his own place; nothing of its still more evident disadvantages.
Surely no life has so strong a tendency to generate self-importance,
exclusive possession, tenaciousness of authority, jealousy of
interference, hatred of independence in others.”
* * * * *
“_Kinmel, Oct. 14._--A kind invitation from Lord and Lady Penrhyn took
me from Penrhos to Penrhyn Castle, which is a very stately building
outside, though the huge stone corridors and richly decorated Norman
rooms are very unsuited for home comfort. A regiment of young ladies,
Miss Pennants--daughters, step-daughters, and step-grand-daughters of
Lady Penrhyn[364] appeared at every meal. The lady of the castle herself
is one of the most natural and unworldly women in the world; and Lord
Penrhyn[365] was most agreeable with his personal reminiscences. He
described the coronation of George IV., where he stood close to Queen
Caroline as she entered the carriage to drive away, and he said the
expression of her countenance was the most diabolical thing he ever
looked upon. Lord Penrhyn rode after Lord Anglesea, the Waterloo hero,
when he was followed by a hooting mob through St. James’s Park. Lord
Anglesea backed his horse between the trees, set his teeth, and hissed
back at the yelling people. Then he said, ‘If every man of you were a
hundred men, and each of them had a hundred hands, and a bayonet in each
hand, I should still do my--_duty!_’ Then the people cheered him.
“Lord and Lady Penrhyn took me to Pennisinant, Ogwen Bank, and the slate
quarries. The two first cannot be much altered since my mother’s
descriptions of them in her childhood, except by the growth of trees,
and are very lovely, with mossy rocks breaking the cascatelle of the
Ogwen, and old sycamores--now glorious in colour--on the grassy knolls,
relieved against a wild background of purple mountains. At Ogwen Bank,
the representation of our Lady Penrhyn’s pugs remains over the
chimney-piece.
“The life at Penrhyn Castle was most easy and agreeable, with the
freedom which only exists in very great houses, the plenty of time to
oneself, and yet interesting society. The same may be said of Kinmel,
which is like a great château in France.
“And here it has been a real pleasure to meet my sweet cousin Lizzie,
Lady Loch,[366] and her charming husband, Sir Henry, Governor of the
Isle of Man: she is really one of the best people I ever saw, as well as
one of the pleasantest.”
* * * * *
“_London, Nov. 1._--Dined with Lady Lyndhurst in Eaton Square. She
talked of her early life. ‘I lived in Paris with my father, and I saw
nobody. I never expected to marry; why should I? I had no fortune and no
attractions. The first time I saw my Lord was when he came to Paris with
his first wife. He came to see my father, and we went out driving with
him. He and my father sat forward, and another young lady and I sat
back, and most terribly afraid I was of him, and not a word did I
speak--a shy, awkward girl sitting bolt upright.