come. It is a most unique and beautiful place, the vast town, or rather
three great towns, so embosomed in trees and gardens, that the houses
are almost lost. But the greatest charm lies in the constant view over
the glorious Dnieper, and the immense aërial plain beyond, with its
delicate pink lights and blue shadows. Then Kieff is the Mecca of
Russia, full of tombs of saints and holy images, and, though this is no
special season, the thousands and thousands of pilgrims are most
extraordinary--in sheep-skins and goat-skins, in fur caps, high-peaked
head-dresses and turbans; in azure blue, bright pink, or pale primrose
colour. I never could have believed without seeing it the reverence of
the Russian religion, and it has seemed the same everywhere and in all
classes. The bowing and curvetting and crossing before the icons is most
extraordinary, and still more so the three prostrations which all make
on approaching any holy place, bending down and kissing the dust in a
way worthy of an acrobat, though treated as a matter of course by the
devotees themselves. But the intense expression of devotion borne by
these pilgrims (who have often _walked_ from Archangel!) is such as I
have never seen on other faces, and some of the old men and women
especially would make the grandest studies for pictures of saintly
apostles and matrons. To see a smart young officer unhesitatingly
prostrate himself and kiss the ground on sight of an icon (in the mud of
this morning even), in the presence of equally smart companions, has
something deeply touching in it, and one wonders if any young guardsman
in England would do the same if and because he thought it right.”
* * * * *
“_In the Warsaw train, Sept. 25._--In this smoothly gliding train, which
takes one in fifty-four weary hours across the steppes, it is as easy to
write as in the study at home. I should be most comfortable if it were
not that my companion (in the compartment for two) is the most odious
type of American I ever came across. ‘I guess you will not want to have
the windows of this carriage opened till you get to Warsaw, because I
will not submit to it: I am in my right, and I will _not_ submit to it.’
“We were arrested again yesterday at Kieff, though then only by
priests--veiled priests--for daring to sketch the outside of one of
their sacred chapels; but after being hurried about from place to place
for an hour, and shut up in a courtyard, with a wooden bench to sit
upon, for another, we were regaled with a pile of beautiful grapes and
apples, and sent about our business. This constant worrying when drawing
has really made Russia very tiresome; but for those who do not want to
draw, I do not see what difficulties travelling in the country can
present, and Russians are always civil, even when arresting you.”
* * * * *
“_Warsaw, Sept. 27._--We arrived at the junction station of Brest more
than two hours late, for on some of the Russian lines no hours are
obligatory, and you are quite at the mercy of conductors and their whims
for spending ten, thirty, or even forty minutes in gossiping at side
stations. So the Warsaw train had left Brest, and we had five hours to
wait for another. Ill and wretched, I left the horrible room where a
crowd of people were smoking, spitting, and _smelling_, and made my way
to a sort of deserted public garden, where cows were browsing on the
lilacs. Here, from mere want of something to do, I began to sketch some
cottages and bushes, when I was suddenly seized by two soldiers and
carried off to the guard-house. Here a very furious bombastical old
major cross-examined me, and went into a passion over each sketch in my
book, with volleys of questions about each, and then he sent me with a
military escort to the station to fetch my passport. It was right, of
course, and at last, after several hours, I was dismissed with
‘Maintenant c’est fini;’ but after a quadruple walk of two miles each
way, and over such a pavement as only Russia can supply.
“I never was at Warsaw before, and should not care to stay. The Vistula
divides the town, which is full of palaces and gardens, but has older
quarters full of Jews, which are like the old streets of Paris. This
afternoon I drove to the old Sobieski palace of Villanov. Two horses
were necessary, for just outside this capital city the roads are like
the roughest of ploughed fields.”
* * * * *
I spent the autumn of 1883 very quietly at Holmhurst, but paid some
visits in the winter.
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Palace, Lichfield, Jan. 1, 1884._--After a pleasant Christmas at
Kinmel, I came here yesterday to dear Augusta Maclagan. The immense
quantity of work she does suits her, though it seems too much to those
who do not know her. Town, Diocese, Chapter, and the society of the
neighbourhood all work the willing horse alike. I cannot sufficiently
admire the marvellous versatility of the Bishop, or his wonderful power
of conversation, recalling that of Dean Alford in its simplicity and
vivacity. He has led the most varied of lives, and has much of interest
to tell of each part of it. He was for three years a soldier. When he
was born, the whole house was disturbed by the most fearful row, and
when they inquired what it was, the servant said, ‘Eh, it’s just Sandie
and Nellie fighting over the bit bairnie.’ Sandie, who had been military
servant to the father, an army doctor, said it must be brought up as a
soldier. Nellie said, ‘Nay, it’s the seventh bairn, and if it’s a
soldier, it must be the Lord’s soldier: the bairn must aye be a
minister;’ and he was both. The Bishop is still passionately fond of
riding and driving, and as soon as he gets out of Lichfield, mounts the
box of his carriage and drives his own horses, ‘Pride’ and ‘Prejudice.’
He says people may consider it a terrible thing for a Bishop to be drawn
hither and thither by these passions, but then it is assuredly a fine
thing to have them well under control.
“The Lonsdales dined last night, and afterwards we sat up for a touching
little midnight service in the palace chapel, in which the Bishop
preached, but very briefly, saying just what I have so often felt, that
it is not the expected, but the _unexpected_ events which come with the
New Year--that God’s hand is full of ‘surprises.’
“Augusta has written so admirable, so intensely interesting a Memoir of
her dear mother, that I cannot say how delightful I find it, or how
beautifully it portrays that lovely and lovable life from life to death.
It is only in MS., though one of the best biographies I ever read--‘the
history of a life, not a stuffed animal.’
“The cathedral is most uniform in its beauty, even the modern monuments
so fine. Of the older ones, the most interesting is that of Bishop
Hackett, who was appointed by Charles II. after the destruction caused
by the Puritans. He found the church a ruin, and it is touching to hear
how he called his choir and the one remaining canon into the only bit
which had still a roof, and prayed that he might have life and energy to
restore it. Going back to his palace, he harnessed his coach-horses to
the first cart that drew materials for the cathedral, and, though his
income was so small, he spent £8000 upon it.
“The statue of our Lord over the west front was put up by the present
Bishop in the place of a statue of Charles II., which was due to a Mrs.
Wilson. She was of an old Lichfield family, and married far beneath her,
a mere mason; but she said to him, ‘Now you are a clever man: you know
how to carve; make a good statue of his Majesty for the cathedral, and
it will be heard of at court, and you will be knighted, and I shall die
“my lady.”’ And all this actually happened. When the statue of Charles
was being taken down, the present Dean gave a groan of ‘Poor King
Charles!’--‘Why do you call him poor King Charles?’ said the Bishop.
‘Because he is being dethroned by a _restoration_.’
“Bishop Selwyn always desired that he might not be buried in the
cathedral, so a little mortuary chapel on the outside was restored for
him, and you look from the church through arches upon his beautiful
sleeping figure by Adams. When the Maori chiefs were in England, they
came down especially to see it, and gazed upon it with their eyes
streaming with tears. ‘They have laid him on a New Zealand mat, as a
chieftain should lie,’ they said.”
* * * * *
“_Fawsley, Jan. 8, 1884._--I came here from Lichfield to find a very
large party in this large and most comfortable house, with a hall of
Henry VII.’s time. Sir Rainald Knightley, its owner, is a splendid type
of an English gentleman, very conservative, very courteous, very clever,
and devoted to country sports and interests, which alternate with the
politics in which his more serious moments are spent. The only blemish
on his perfectly happy married life with Miss Bowater, who enters into
all his pursuits, whether duties or pleasures, politics, country
business, hunting, &c., is that they have no children. He is surrounded
by cousins--Charleses and Valentines--repeating in actual life the many
Charleses and Valentines to whom there are monuments in the fine old
church near the house. In the autumn, rheumatism takes him to Homburg,
but he refuses to learn German, ‘the grinding gibberish of the
garrulous Goth.’
“The parish has a population of fifty-eight, and there is only service
once on Sundays, performed by the cousin who is in orders. It is
alternately in the morning and afternoon, the difference being that the
morning service begins at noon, and the afternoon service at a quarter
past.
“Mrs. Charles Knightley drove me to Canons Ashby, the beautiful and
romantic old place of the eccentric and impoverished Sir H. Dryden. I
thought it looked like the background of a novel, and afterwards found
that it was the background of--‘Sir Charles Grandison’!
“Lady Knightley took me to Shackborough--a pretty place. When Charles I.
was going to the battle of Edgehill he met its proprietor of that day
merrily hunting. He had never heard that there was a civil war going on,
such was the paucity of political news! But he turned about and went
with the king into the fight and was wounded there.
“At the beginning of this century, the daughter of the house became
engaged to be married to an officer quartered at Weedon--a mésalliance
which was greatly disapproved by her family. At last she was induced to
break it off. But the officer persuaded her to grant him one last
interview at the summer-house on the hill that he might give her back
her letters. He gave her the letters with one hand, and with the other
he shot her dead, and then shot himself.
“At Marston St. Lawrence, near this, is an old house, beautiful and
moated. Here a Mrs. Blencowe was one day being dressed by her maid
before the toilet-table. Suddenly she said, ‘Did you see
anything’--‘Yes,’ said the maid. A hand had come out from behind the
curtain. They had both seen it, and both screamed violently. Help came,
and the room was searched, but no one was there.”
* * * * *
“_Ickwellbury, Jan. 27._--A man here, being asked by Mrs. Harvey how he
liked going to church, said, ‘Well, I like it very much: I goes to
church, and I sits down, and I thinks o’ nowt.’”
* * * * *
“_London, Feb. 23._--My dear Mrs. Duncan Stewart is dead. She never
rallied from the sudden death of her son-in-law Mr. Rogerson. But she
was able to see several people, to whom she spoke with that all-majestic
charity which was the mainspring and keynote of her life. Her last words
were ‘Higher, higher!’ and we may believe that she has passed into those
higher regions where her thirst after life, not repose, meets its full
fruition. I went to see her in the solemn peace of the newly dead, and
last Thursday I saw her laid in a grave of flowers at Kensal Green, many
faithful hearts mourning, many sad eyes weeping beside her coffin.[394]
“There were few equal to her. Mrs. Procter is most so. I met her the
other day, and some one made her a pretty speech. She said, ‘When I was
very young, Sydney Smith said to me, “My dear, do you like
flattery?”--“Very much indeed,” I answered, “but I do not like it put on
with a trowel.” What I really do like is--in the words of Sterne--a few
delicate attentions, not so vague as to be bewildering, and not so
pointed as to be embarrassing.’”
* * * * *
“_Firle, Lewes, April 18, 1884._--I came here to find a party of twenty
in the house, including Sir Rainald and Lady Knightley. It is a large
house, like a French château, close under the downs, but as my kind but
singular little host, Lord Gage, likes every window open in these bitter
winds, the cold is ferocious. On Wednesday I got Lady Knightley to walk
with me (the inhabitants of this place had never heard of it!) 2½
miles across the marshes to Laughton Place, the ancient and original
residence of the Pelhams--a moated grange, having an old red brick tower
with terra-cotta ornaments, and many other curious remains,
looking--stranded in the desolate fen, and with an abundance of animal
life--like an old Dutch picture.
“Yesterday I walked with Sir Rainald to Glynde. It is a curious old
house, approached through a gateway and stableyard and by clipped yew
hedges, having a pleasant view over upland country and high gardens. A
fine black oak staircase leads to a noble gallery-room, with deep
alcoves, so pleasantly furnished with fine pictures, &c., that, though
suitable to an enormous party, a single individual would never feel
solitary in it. Miss Brand did the honours of the many good portraits
very pleasantly, and, before we left, Lady Hampden came in from walking,
and I was very glad to see her in her country home, having so often
been in her house in the palace at Westminster.”
* * * * *
Ill-health in June made a happy excuse for my spending a delightful
month abroad. I saw first the group of towns around Laon, charming
old-fashioned Noyon, beautiful Soissons, and Coucy with its grand
castle. Then Alick Pitt met me at Thun, and we spent a delightful time,
joining the Husseys of Scotney Castle at Mürren and Rosenlaui, sketching
and flower-picking, and reawakening every slumbering sense of the
delights of Switzerland.
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Pension Baumgarten, Thun, June 25, 1884._--You will be wishing to hear
from this well-remembered place, where the mountains are quite as rugged
and purple, the lake as limpid and still, the river as green and
rushing, and the old town and castle as picturesque, as any youthful
recollection could paint them. This pension, too, is perfectly
delightful, with its coloured awnings over the wide terrace, its tubs of
pomegranates and oleanders, its garden of roses, and its meadows behind,
with the wooden châlets and the women making hay, and the delightful
pathlets through the dark woods on the mountain-side.
“I had a calm crossing on Friday, and reached Laon by seven. On Saturday
morning I saw the stately cathedral at St. Quentin, and spent the
afternoon at Noyon, which has an exquisite cathedral, Calvin’s curious
old house, and a most attractive little inn. Sunday I was at Coucy,
where there is the finest ruined château in existence after Heidelberg,
beautifully situated amongst wooded hills, in scenery so pretty, you
would take it for the Vosges, not Picardy. Monday morning I spent at
Soissons, with two fine cathedrals, one in ruins, and an interesting
town, and then came on by night to Berne.
* * * * *
[Illustration: NOYON.][395]
* * * * *
“The last night I was in London I dined with the Reptons to meet the
Kildares--Lady Kildare quite the most beautiful creature I ever saw.”
[Illustration: SOISSONS.][396]
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Oct. 10._--Since I returned from Switzerland, my home life has been
quite happy and uneventful. Only ten days ago I had a telegram from ‘my
Prince’ (of Sweden and Norway), asking me to come and spend Sunday
afternoon and evening with him at Eastbourne, as he was only there for
two days. He met me most cordially and affectionately, making me feel as
if the seeming neglect of several years was only ‘royalty’s way,’ and
pleasantly taking up all the dropped threads of life. We were several
hours together, and while we were talking a sweet-faced young lady
looked in. ‘I must come in: you are such a friend of the Prince: I have
heard of you, too, all my life. I am so very glad to see you at
last,’--and I felt at once that the Crown-Princess was a friend.
“She wanted to know what I thought of the Prince--the Prince wanted to
know what I thought of her: I was glad to be able to answer both most
satisfactorily.
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU DE COUCY.][397]
* * * * *
“I saw her again at dinner, and she talked most delightfully, and was
full of animation and interest. I came away with a happy feeling that my
affectionate occupation of many months for the Prince had, after all,
not been thrown away.”
* * * * *
“_Highcliffe, Oct. 26, 1884._--Lady Waterford says that the father of
that Thérèse Longworth who called herself Lady Avonmore was a young
clerk at Bordeaux at the time of the Noyades. Two beautiful young girls
were tied together, and were going to be drowned. Suddenly a poissarde,
seized with compassion from their looks, jumped upon a barrel and
shouted, ‘Are there no young men here who will save the lives of these
two beautiful girls by marrying them?’ Longworth and another young
fellow were looking out of a window at the time and heard it, and said
to one another, ‘Shall we do it?’ It was rather a gulp, for they were
both very young at the time; but they went down and said they would, and
they were both married there and then, by joining hands after the
fashion of the Commune. The daughter of one of those marriages was
Thérèse Longworth.”
* * * * *
Early in October I paid a visit to my distant cousins, Mrs. Quin and her
brother, Edmund Boyle, who were staying at Ramsgate. The health of Sir
Moses Montefiore, at the great age of one hundred, was then a great
topic of the place. Mrs. Quin said something to him about another year
at his age being only a waiting time, when he answered sharply, “What do
you mean by feeling old? I only feel forty.” He said no one had ever
mentioned the name of Christ to him except one person, and that was
Cardinal Antonelli!
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Ruxley Lodge, Oct. 30._--I am enjoying a pleasant visit to Lady Foley
and her sons; only Lady Jane Repton here besides. It is a charming
house, full of books and pictures, in a beautiful country, with fine
views of Windsor and Claremont. Once there was an old priory here, but
only the fishponds are left. We went to-day to see the tomb of Pamela,
mother of my Uncle Fitzgerald, at Thames Ditton. It was brought there
from Montmartre, where it was broken by a bomb in 1870. It is inscribed,
‘Pamela, Ladye Edward Fitzgerald, par son ami dévoué, L. L.;’ and no one
now knows who L. L. was. Close by are the graves of her daughter, Lady
Campbell, and several of her grand-daughters.
“The Foleys are said to descend from ‘Foley the Fiddler,’ a mechanic who
determined to make his fortune by finding out the secret of making nails
by machinery in Sweden. Up to that time the secret had been successfully
kept: the ironfounders had shut every one out, and let no one see their
process. But Foley the Fiddler, pretending to be half-witted, went and
played in the neighbourhood of the manufactory. The Swedish workmen
danced to his music, and eventually were so delighted with him that they
could not resist taking him to play inside the factory. When he had been
there some time, he fancied he had seen all he wanted, and went home. He
set up ironworks on the plan of what he had seen, but when he came to
completing them, found that, after all, he did not understand the
process perfectly. He went back, and the Swedish workmen were quite
delighted to find him again fiddling outside the factory--‘a daft
fiddler’--and they brought him in, and he learnt all he wanted, and went
home and made a great fortune.”
* * * * *
_“Goldings, Herts, Nov. 20._--Isabel Smith says that a lady in Wales, a
friend of Miss Frances Wynne, looked up suddenly one day after reading
the obituary in the _Times_, and exclaimed, ‘Now, at last, my lips are
unsealed.’ Then she told this:--
“One day she had been alone at her country-house in Wales, with her son
and a friend of his. She had received all the money for her rents that
day--a very large sum--and put it away in a strong box. Being asked, she
said she did not mind the least having it in her room, and should sleep
with the key under her pillow.
“When she had been in bed some time, she was aware that her door opened,
and that a man in a cloak came into her room with a candle. He passed
the candle before her face, but she lay with closed eyes, perfectly
motionless. Then he felt for the key; he felt for a long time, but
somehow he failed to find it. At last he went away.
“As soon as the door closed, she sprang out of bed, intending to go to
her son’s room to warn him that a robber was in the house. But his room
was a long way off, and she thought it would be better to go instead to
the friend, whose room was nearer.
“As she opened the door suddenly, she saw a figure muffled up in a long
cloak put down the candle. It was the same figure who had come into her
room. She looked at him fixedly. ‘To-morrow at 9 A.M.,’ she said, ‘the
dogcart will come to the door which was to have taken my strong box to
the bank: you will go in that dogcart, and you will never enter my door
again. If you never attempt to do this, I will never say a word on what
has happened as long as you live.’ And she never did, even to her son.”
* * * * *
“_Nov. 21._--We have spent the day at Knebworth, an interesting place,
though full of shams--a sham old house, with a sham lake, sham heraldic
monsters, sham ancient portraits, &c. Lord Lytton, with his velvet
collar and gold chains, recalled his father, who is represented on the
walls, with his boots pointed like a needle, in a picture by Maclise.
The ‘old’ rooms are chiefly modern in reality, but there is one really
ancient bedroom--a room in which Queen Elizabeth once slept. Lady
Lytton, beautiful, charming, and courteous, looked like a queen in the
large saloons and galleries. We found Lady Marian Alford, Lady
Colley--the pretty widow of Sir George--and Lady Paget, with her nice
son Victor, amongst the guests.
“I wish one did not know that the real name of the Lyttons is Wiggett.
William Wiggett took the name of Bulwer on his marriage with Sarah
Bulwer in 1756, and his youngest son (the novelist) took the name of
Lytton on succeeding to his mother’s property of Knebworth, she being
one Elizabeth Warburton, whose very slight connection with the real
Lytton family consisted in the fact that her grandfather, John Robinson
was cousin (maternally) to Lytton Strode, who was great-nephew of a Sir
William Lytton, who died childless in 1704.
“I have had the small trial of another ‘call’ of £300 on those
unfortunate Electric Lights in which St. George Lane Fox involved me. I
had saved up the money, so it was there, but it was provoking to have to
pay what is almost certain to be lost, yet to be obliged to do so, as
the only chance of seeing again any part of the £7000 which had gone
before it. However, I am never more than very temporarily troubled by
such things--there is no use. All I have ever made by my writings in
fourteen very hard-worked years is gone now through St. G. Lane
Fox--there is nothing else left to lose.”
* * * * *
“_Thoresby Park, Dec. 12._--This has been a most delightful visit at one
of the great houses I like the best. Its inmates are always so perfectly
brimming with kindness, goodness, and simplicity, and every surrounding
is so really handsome, even magnificent, without the slightest
ostentation. I arrived with Lord and Lady Leitrim--he quite charming, so
merry, pleasant, and natural, and she one of the delightful sisters of
charming Lady Powerscourt. It has been a great pleasure to find the
Boynes here, and Lady Newark, who is an absolute sunbeam in her
husband’s home--perfect in her relation to every member of his family. I
have been again to Welbeck and Clumber, only remarking fresh at the
former a fine Sir Joshua of a Mr. Cleaver, an old man in the
neighbourhood, dressed in grey, and the melancholy interesting portrait
of Napoleon by Delaroche, given by the Duc de Coigny.
“A Mrs. Francklin (sister of Lord St. Vincent), staying here, says that
a young man, going to stay with Millais, saw distinctly a hand and arm
come out of the fireplace in his room, and do it repeatedly. At last he
told Millais, who said it had often happened before, and they had the
hearthstone taken up, and found the bodies of a woman and child.”
* * * * *