my poor darling! what anguish it is to see her, and how thankful I shall
be to God now when He will set her free. One can bear to part with one’s
beloved ones, but their suffering tears one to pieces. How truly Heine
says, ‘Der Tod ist nichts; aber das Sterben ist eine schändliche
Erfindung.’”
* * * * *
“_Wednesday, Oct. 19._--Yesterday morning there was agonising pain for
three hours and then a respite. At 12 A.M. Hubert Beaumont walked in,
having come off at once on hearing a hopeless account. He was much
broken down at seeing his old friend so ill, but full of kindness and
help for me and all of us.... All afternoon she was worse. Two doctors
came.... At night she was terribly worse. Oh, it was so hard to see her
suffer,--so very, very hard. Soon after midnight I gave dose after dose
of laudanum, and when she was still, lay down--sank down, utterly
worn-out. At 3 A.M. I heard Harriet’s voice, ‘Aunt is gone.’ All was
still then--the agony lived through, the fight fought. As I rushed into
the room, the colour was fading out of my darling Pettie’s cheeks, but
her face and hands were still warm. A wonderful look of rest was
stealing over the beloved features. I knelt down and said the bidding
prayer. Truly we ‘gave thanks’ that our dearest one was at rest. Yet I
felt--oh, so stunned, so helpless! Dear Hubert was a great comfort.
“All day we have sobbed at intervals. Many touching notes have come in;
but I have felt dead in body and mind.”
* * * * *
“_Oct. 20._--My dearest Lea is laid in her coffin. It has been a day of
bitter anguish. All have tried to console, but
‘Console if you will, I can bear it,
’Tis a well-meant alms of breath:
But not all the preaching since Adam
Can make Death other than Death.’”[381]
* * * * *
“_Oct. 21._--Hubert has been summoned away by his parents,--very
miserable to go, poor boy. There has been a terrible storm all day,
which has seemed more congenial than the lovely sunshine yesterday.
“In the evening Mrs. Peters had put lights in the room, and I went to
look at my dearest Pettie in her coffin. The ‘afterglow’ had come on.
All her old beauty had come back to her. There was not a wrinkle on her
lovely dignified old face. Her snow-white hair just showed at the edge
of her pretty little crimped cap: all was peace and repose. It comforted
me to see her, and we surrounded her coffin with large branches of
Michaelmas daisies, enlivened by sprays of fuchsia, and the autumn
lilies which she loved.”
* * * * *
“_Oct. 23._--In the morning I went into her room to see my dearest
Pettie for the last time. Lady Darnley had sent a box of lovely flowers,
and I laid them round her. The marvellous beauty of her countenance
continued: it was the most sublime majesty of Death:--
‘That perfect presence of His face,
Which we, for want of words, call Death.’[382]
“John[383] came in to see her too, but can think of nothing but his own
future. That does not seem to occur to me--not yet: I can think of
nothing but her wealthy past, so rich, so overflowing in deeds of love,
in endearing ways which drew all hearts to her, in noble, simple trust
and faith, in heart-whole devotion and self-abnegation for the Mother
and me.
[Illustration: HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE GATEWAY.]
“At eleven I set off alone, in a little carriage, by the familiar lanes.
It was the loveliest of autumnal days, and all was in its richest, most
touching beauty: the Ashburnham woods; the long Boreham hill, with the
group of weird pine-trees called ‘The Crooked Aunts;’ Sybil Filiol’s
paved walk winding by the roadside; Windmill Hill; Lime Cross; Lime;
Flower’s Green and the Mother’s little school; Hurstmonceaux Place; and
then the ascent to the church through the deep hollow way overhung by
old oaks.
“Soon after 2 P.M. the little procession appeared over the brow of the
hill, the bearers, in white smock-frocks, walking by the carriages. The
coffin was laden with flowers, wreaths sent by different friends, and a
long garland of Michaelmas daisies and laurustinus falling over the
side. I followed the coffin alone first, then all the servants from
Holmhurst and many poor women from Lime Cross.
“The first part of the service was in the chancel amidst all the old
family monuments. The grave was by my Mother’s side, in the same little
garden enclosure. It was strange to feel that the next funeral there
must be my own, and to look down upon her coffin on which my own will
rest some day.
“After the others were gone I walked in the old deer-park. I felt as if
I was a spirit haunting the place. All was peace and loveliness, but how
great the change from the time when I was there so constantly! ‘On
dépose fleur à fleur la couronne de la vie.’[384] All the familiar
figures of my childhood are swept away--all the uncles and aunts,
brothers and sister; all the old neighbours; nearly all the old friends;
the dear Mother; Marcus Hare; Arthur and Mary Stanley; and now my own
dear Lea: all the old homes too are broken up, pulled down, or
deserted; only I and the ruins of the castle seem left.
‘So live I in spirit,
Lonely, my hidden life, by none to be known of,
Never a sound nor cloud-picture but brings to my fancy
Matter for thought without end and keen-edged emotion.’”[385]
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, Nov. 14._--The winds are howling round and I sit alone in
my home. The silence is sometimes awful, for I never hear the human
voice now, for my only attendant, the faithful Anne, who waits upon me,
is stone-deaf, so that all communication with her is in writing.
“It may seem odd, but my dear Lea’s removal really makes a greater blank
in my life than even the Mother left behind. My Mother had so long taken
the child’s place to be loved and taken care of: Lea, to her last hour,
took as much care of _me_ as in the first year of my life. I have the
piteous feeling that there is none now to whom I _signify_: it can
really ‘matter’ to no one whether I live or die. My friends are very
kind, and would be sorry to lose me, but in this rapid world-current a
few days would see them well out of their grief. And my dearest Lea, who
cared--who would have cared while life lasted, rests now under a white
marble cross like my Mother’s, inscribed--
MARY LEA GIDMAN,
June 2, 1800: Oct. 19, 1882.
Through fifty-four years
Devoted, honoured, and beloved
In the Hare family.”
XXIII
IN THE FURROWS OF LIFE
“Days--when gone--
Gone! they ne’er go; when past they haunt us still.”
--EDWARD YOUNG.
“What used to be joy is joy no longer: but what is pain is easier
because they have not to bear it.”--GEORGE ELIOT.
“To live for the shorter or longer remainder of my days with the simple
bravery, veracity, and piety of her that is gone, that would be a right
learning from her death, and a right honouring of her memory.”--CARLYLE.
“Dieu donne la robe selon le froid.”--PASCAL.
JOURNAL.
“_Dec. 1882._--With what a numbed feeling of desolate sadness do I look
back upon the last chapter. My home existence is so intensely changed by
the blank which the dear old friend of my whole life has left. It was
long before I could bear to go into her changed rooms, and I still wake
nightly with the sad inward outcry, ‘Can it be--can it be? Is every one
gone who shared _our_ home life? Is there no one left who is associated
with all our wealthy past?’ ‘Entbehren sollst du--sollst entbehren.’ And
when my friends urge me to marry, I feel the utter desolateness of
attempting to make new ties with any one who knows nothing and cares
nothing of those with whom all my earlier life was bound up. I have
happily still a great power of enjoyment when anything pleasant comes to
me, but oh! how seldom it happens. Griefs and worries--griefs and
worries come round with wheel-like recurrence. I often think of Aubrey
de Vere’s lines:--
‘When I was young, I said to Sorrow,
“Come, and I will play with thee.”
He is near me now all day;
And at night returns to say,
“I will come again to-morrow,
I will come and stay with thee.”
“Archbishop Tait, long a kind friend, is dead. I hear that at his
funeral, in the beautiful churchyard at Addington, a little robin
perched on an adjoining tombstone and poured forth a flood of song,
apparently unconscious of all present. ‘How our father would have liked
to have seen it,’ said one of the daughters.”
* * * * *
“_Jan. 12, 1883._--Tea with Dowager Lady Donoughmore,[386] who was very
pleasant. She described walking in Ireland with a stingy old gentleman.
A beggar came up to them, and he said, ‘I have not got a penny to give
you.’ The beggar retorted, ‘You’ve got an awful ugly face: I hope you
may die soon, but I pity the worms that will have to eat you.’
“Lady Donoughmore, however, said that she had boundless experience of
the natural poetry in the Irish peasantry. On receiving a shilling, an
old woman said to her, ‘May ivery hair of yer honour’s head become a
torch to guide yer sowle to heaven.’”
* * * * *
“_June 19._--Dined with Lady Airlie, only meeting Mrs. Duncan Stewart
and Lady De Clifford. Mrs. Stewart talked much of Mr. Carlyle.
“‘Mr. Hannay knew Carlyle very well, and often went to see him, but it
was in his poorer days. One day when Mr. Hannay went to the house, he
saw two gold sovereigns lying exposed in a little vase on the
chimney-piece. He asked Carlyle what they were for. Carlyle looked--for
him--embarrassed, but gave no definite answer. “Well, now, my dear
fellow,” said Mr. Hannay, “neither you nor I are quite in a position to
play ducks and drakes with sovereigns: what _are_ these for?”--“Well,”
said Carlyle, “the fact is, Leigh Hunt likes better to find them there
than that I should give them to him.”
“‘I was sitting once by Mr. Bourton,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘and he was
talking of Leigh Hunt. He said, “He is the only person, I believe, who,
if he saw something yellow in the distance, and was told it was a
buttercup, would be disappointed if he found it was only a guinea.”’
“Lady Airlie said she had known Leigh Hunt very well when she was a
child. He had taken her into the garden, and talked to her, and asked
her what she thought heaven would be like, and then he said, ‘I will
tell you what I think it will be like: I think it will be like a most
beautiful arbour all hung with creepers and flowers, and that one will
be able to sit in it all day, and read a most interesting novel.’
“Of her early acquaintance with Washington Irving, Mrs. Stewart said,
‘It was at Havre. My guardian was consul there. People used to say,
“Where is Harriet gone?” and he answered, “Oh, she is down at the end of
the terrace, busy making Washington Irving believe he is God Almighty,
and he is busy believing it.”’
“Mrs. Stewart told of Miss Ruth Paget, one of many sisters, who went
down at night to the kitchen to let out her little dog for a minute, and
found her brother Marco, who was a midshipman in the Mediterranean,
sitting on the kitchen-table, swinging his legs, but pouring with wet.
She said, ‘Good heavens, Marco, how did you come here?’ He looked at
her, and only said, ‘Do not tell any one you have seen me.” She looked
round for an instant to see if any one was coming, and when she turned,
he was gone.
“Ghastly pale, she went upstairs. Her sisters said, ‘You look as if you
had seen a ghost,’ and they tried to insist on her telling them what had
happened to her. She put them off by complaining of headache and
faintness; but she was terribly anxious.
“Three months afterwards she heard her brother was coming home, then
that he had arrived at Portsmouth, then he came. The first time she was
alone with him she said, ‘I must tell you something,’ and she told him
how he had appeared to her, and then she said, ‘I wrote it down at the
time, and here is the paper, with the date and the hour.’
“He looked shocked at first, and then said, that at that very moment,
being absent from his ship without leave, his boat had been upset, and
he had been as nearly drowned as possible--in fact, when he was taken
out of the water, life was supposed to be extinct. His first fear on
recovering was that his absence without leave would be detected by his
accident and become his ruin, and his first words were, ‘Do not tell any
one you have seen me.’”
* * * * *
“_June 21._--At Madame du Quaire’s I met Oscar Wilde and Mrs. Stewart.
He talked in a way intended to be very startling, but she startled him
by saying quietly, ‘You poor dear foolish boy! how can you talk such
nonsense?’ Mrs. M. L. had recently met this ‘type of an aesthetic age’
at a country house, and described his going out shooting in a black
velvet dress with salmon-coloured stockings, and falling down when the
gun went off, yet captivating all the ladies by his pleasant talk. One
day he came down looking very pale. ‘I am afraid you are ill, Mr.
Wilde,’ said one of the party. ‘No, not ill, only tired,’ he answered.
‘The fact is, I picked a primrose in the wood yesterday, and it was so
ill, I have been sitting up with it all night.’ Oscar Wilde’s oddities
would attract notice anywhere, but of course they do so ten times more
in the _plein midi_ of London society, where the smallest faults of
manner, most of all of assumption, are detected and exposed at once.”
* * * * *
“_July 2, 1883._--I have just heard again the ghost story so often told
by Mrs. Thompson Hankey:
“Two beautiful but penniless sisters were taken out in London by an
aunt. A young gentleman from the north, of very good family and fortune,
fell in love with one of them, and proposed to her, but she was with
difficulty persuaded to accept him, and afterwards could never be
induced to fix a date for their marriage. The young man, who was very
much in love, urged and urged, but, on one excuse or another, he was
always put off. Whilst things were in this unsettled state, the young
lady was invited to a ball. Her lover implored her not to go to it, and
when she insisted, he made her promise not to dance any round dances,
saying that if she did, he should believe she had ceased to care for
him.
“The young lady went to the ball, and, as usual, all the young men
gathered round her, trying to persuade her to dance. She refused any but
square dances. At last, however, as a delightful valse was being played,
and she was standing looking longingly on, she suddenly felt herself
seized round the waist, and hurried into the dance. Not till she reached
the end of the room, very angry, did she succeed in seeing with whom she
had been forced to dance: it was with her own betrothed. Furious, she
said she should never forgive him. But, as she spoke, he disappeared.
She begged several young men to look for him, but he could not be found
anywhere, and, to her astonishment, every one denied altogether having
seen him. On reaching home, she found a telegram telling her of his
death, and when the hours were compared, he was found to have died at
the very moment when he had seized her for the dance.
“Mrs Thompson Hankey knew all the persons concerned.
[Illustration: ON THE TERRACE, HOLMHURST.]
“Catherine Vaughan has just been taken to see an old woman in Scotland,
whose daughter was married last year. She asked if she was getting on
well. ‘Aye, she’s gettin’ on varra weel, varra weel indeed. She’s got a
pig, and she’s got a cock, and she’s got a son: it’s true that she hates
her mon, but one must aye have ae thing.’”
[Illustration: IN THE KITCHEN, HOLMHURST.]
“Charlotte Leycester is to be left in possession of my little Holmhurst
whilst I am away, and has such complete enjoyment of it, that I shall
have no sense of wasting my home by a long absence, as would otherwise
be the case.”
During the summer of 1883, I left England to join my oft-times
travelling companions, the Miss Hollands, for a tour in Russia. I did
not greatly enjoy this tour, partly because I felt so terribly knowing
almost nothing of the language of the country, not being able to read
even the names of the streets. I also suffered from not having had time
to teach myself anything of the country before I went there: for, after
I came home, and tried to instruct my mind by every book I could get
hold of about Russia, I found my travels had been much more interesting
than, from the very intensity of my ignorance, I believed them to be at
the time.
At Kieff I left my companions, and found my way home alone by Warsaw and
by Cracow, with its curious monuments and odious Jew population. After
the great discomforts of Russia, a very few days in Germany seemed very
charming, and I was especially glad to see beautiful old Breslau, and
afterwards Wilhelmshohe near Cassel, in a perfect conflagration of
splendid autumnal tints, truly realising Hood’s lines--
“How bravely Autumn paints upon the sky
The gorgeous fame of Summer which is fled.”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_St. Petersburg, August 22, 1883._--A rest in the interesting group of
North-German cities, Dantzic, Marienburg, Königsberg, prepared us for
the thirty-six hours’ journey through monotonous fir-woods and
cornfields, unvaried through 1000 miles, till two great purple domes
rose on the horizon--St. Alexander Newski and the Cathedral of St.
Isaac.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ST. ISAAC, ST. PETERSBURG.][387]
“It was difficult to believe we were in Europe on emerging from the
station and seeing the endless droskies--sledges on wheels--drawn up,
with their extraordinary-looking drivers, in long blue dressing-gowns
(wadded like feather-beds, so as to make the wearer look like a huge
pillow), with a girdle, and low cap. Then the gigantic streets, each
about as broad as St. James’s Square, and the huge squares, in which the
palaces, however vast, are so disproportioned to the immensity of space,
that their architectural features are lost. Then the utter desolation,
one carriage and two or three foot-passengers in the apparently
boundless vistas. Altogether, St. Petersburg is quite the ugliest place
I ever saw, even the Neva, huge as it is, so black and grim, and the
smoke of the steamers giving the worst aspects of London. But yesterday
evening we had a delightful drive of four hours on the islands in the
Neva, which answer here to the Park, and are exquisitely varied--lovely
winding alleys, bosquets of flowering trees, green meadows, little
lakes, rushing brooks, every variety of cottage and villa and garden and
bridge, at least twenty miles of them. Coming back, we stopped at the
fortress-church to see the royal tombs--stately marble sarcophagi in
groups; first Peter the Great and his family, then two groups of
intermediate sovereigns, then the present family, surrounded (inside the
church) by a grove of palms and laden with flowers. Close by is Peter
the Great’s cottage, and the tiny early church in which he worshipped,
and, at the former, the famous ‘icon’ which he carried in his wars,
before which crowds of people were incessantly prostrating and kissing
the pavement.”
* * * * *
“_Sept. 4._--We returned last night from Finland, of which I am glad to
have visited a specimen, though there is not much to see, except gloomy
little lakes, flat country, hundreds of miles of monotonous forests of
young firs and birch, and little wooden villages. All is very much like
an inferior Sweden, and the people understand Swedish, and have the
Swedish characteristics of honesty and civility, which, at so short a
distance off, make them an extraordinary contrast to the Russians. Our
journey was amusingly varied by endless changes of rail, steamer, walk,
char-a-banc, as the country allowed. At Imatra, our destination, a lake
tumbles into a river by curious rapids.”
[Illustration: ST. SOPHIA OF NOVGOROD.][388][Illustration: KREMLIN,
MOSCOW.][389]
[Illustration: THE NEW JERUSALEM.][390]
* * * * *
“_Moscow, Sept. 9._--We left St. Petersburg on Monday, and went to
Novgorod the Great, one of the oldest cities in Russia, once enormous,
but now dwindled to a large village, with a decaying kremlin and a
wonderful cathedral like a mosque, a blaze of beautiful ancient colour
within, quite splendid in its gold and silver decorations, and the
shrines of sixteen famous saints (the Greek saints are most puzzling)
who are buried there, and whose mummified hands, left outside their
cerecloths, are exposed to the kisses of the faithful. A journey of
nineteen hours’ rail brought us here on Thursday morning. The first
impression of Moscow is disappointing--commonplace omnibuses at the
station, ugly vulgar streets like the back-streets of Brighton, and, as
the town is above twenty miles round and nine miles across, they seem
endless. But you enter the Chinese town, in which we are now living, by
gates in the strangest walls imaginable, and the street has all the
crowd and clamour of Naples. Another series of very tall battlemented
red walls and lofty gates announces the Kremlin. This is more striking
than I expected--the three mosque-like cathedrals (there are five
cathedrals and three hundred churches in Moscow), and the splendid view
from the high terrace in front of them, which recalls that from the
Pincio at Rome, only the Moskva is a very broad river, and every church
has the strangest of towers--like bulbs, pine-apples, melons, fir-cones,
gilt or blue or brightest green, covered with network, with stars,
discs, moons, hung with chains like veils, every device that the wildest
dream or maddest imagination can invent, and yet in this clear
atmosphere of intense burning heat and with the arid low hills or burnt
plains which surround the town, it all looks right. Inside, the
cathedrals put all the churches in Italy and Spain to shame by their
splendour, but one is sorry not to know more of their history. I can
speak enough Russian now to get on humbly; but the alphabet beats me
still: it is not only that there are so many letters, but that the old
familiar forms of written letters mean something new.”
[Illustration: THE DNIEPER, KIEFF.][391]
[Illustration: THE HOLY CHAPEL OF KIEFF.][392]
* * * * *
“_Kieff, ‘The Holy City,’ Sept. 21._--We made excursions from Moscow to
all the great monasteries. There are few other sights of importance,
but these, in Russia, are quite unique--immense spaces surrounded by
walls, towers, and gates, which have stood many a siege, and which are
like the towns in old woodcuts, and contain gardens, cemeteries,
cathedrals, usually six churches with gilt domes and minarets, besides
accommodation for 600 or 800 monks and nuns, who have their wells,
gardens, farms, &c. One of those which I thought most attractive was
Novo Devichi, rising from an arid sandy plain close to the town, but
full of lovely flowers, which a kind old prioress came and gave us
handfuls of. Then we went to the New Jerusalem, where the famous Nikon
lived and is buried--many hours jolting along a no-road through the
forests in a rough tarantass, but a beautiful place when you get there.
Nikon chose it because he thought it so like the real Jerusalem, and
changed the name of its river to Jordan, and _made_ a Kedron. It was a
quiet countrified spot, and the only one I have seen which the Mother
and Lea would have enjoyed in the old days, and there was a primitive
inn with kindly, gentle people. We also went to the famous Troitsa, the
home and grave of Philaret. In all these excursions, as everywhere else,
we found the ‘difficulties’ of Russian travel entire imagination:
nothing can be easier.
[Illustration: CITADEL OF CRACOW.][393]
“Nevertheless, the journey to Kieff by a slow train was terrible,
lasting two days and a night, and awfully hot--across a hideous brown
steppe the whole way, with scarcely a tree to vary it. (There are
forests _till_ Moscow, only steppes afterwards.) I was ill and wretched
enough before this interesting place rose on its low hills above the
Dnieper.