her talk of the society at Paris under the Empire, the _soirées
intimes_, at which all etiquette was laid aside, and Prosper Merimée,
Théophile Gautier, &c., were seen at their best. No one knew so much
about the Empress as Merimée. He had known her well as a girl, and all
the letters about the marriage had passed through his hands. Nothing
could be more naïve than the Empress in her early married days. She
_would_ go shopping. She clapped her hands with delight at the
opera-bouffe, and the Emperor took them and held them, to the great
delight of the people, who applauded vehemently.
“In the last days at the Tuileries, all the court ladies were only
occupied in packing up their own things; all deserted their mistress
except Madame le Breton. She and the Empress stayed to the last. The
Empress asked General Tronchin how long the palace could hold out. He
said, ‘Certainly three days.’ It did not hold out three hours. They fled
as the people entered, fled precipitately by the long galleries of the
Louvre, once in agony finding a door locked and having to look for the
key. The Empress had no bonnet. Madame le Breton, with a bit of lace,
made something for her head. They reached the street and hailed a cab.
‘Eh! ma petite mère,’ said the driver, ‘il parait que nous nous sauvons:
où est le papa donc?’ But he took them and did not recognise them. They
went in the cab to the Boulevard Haussmann. Then they found that they
had no money to pay it, and Madame le Breton took off one of her rings.
‘We have forgotten our money,’ she said, ‘but you see how suffering my
friend is. I _must_ take her on to the dentist, but I will leave this
with you; give me your address and I will redeem it.’ And he let them
go.
“They took a second cab to the house of Evans, the American dentist, and
there found he was gone to his villa at Passy. They followed him there,
but when they reached the villa, the servant said he was out, and
positively refused to let them in. But Madame le Breton insisted--her
friend was so terribly ill: Mr. Evans knew her very well: she was quite
certain that he would see her: and at length she almost forced her way
in, and, moreover, made the servant pay the cab. At last Mr. Evans came
in. He had been to Paris, in terrible anxiety as to the fate of the
Empress, knowing that the mob had broken into the Tuileries.
“Mrs. Baring said that when Plonplon, commonly called ‘_Fatalité_,’ was
ill, the people said he was ‘_Fat alité_.’”
* * * * *
“_Hickledon, Dec. 17._--No words can say how glad I am to be here with
the dearest friend of my young life--dearer still, if possible, with
all his six children around him, who are learning also to be fond of me.
We walk and talk, and are perfectly happy together in everything.
“We have been to visit Barnborough Church. A man met a wild-cat in Bella
Wood, some distance off. He and the cat fought all the way along the
hillside, and they both fell down dead in this church porch.
“Yesterday we went to Sprotborough to visit old Miss Copley. It is a
very pretty place, a handsome house on a terrace upon a wooded bank
above the river. Sir Joseph Copley and his wife Lady Charlotte (Pelham)
quarrelled early in their married life. He overheard her at Naples,
through a thin wall of a room, telling a friend that he was mad, and he
never forgave it. They were separated for some years, then they lived
together again, but there was no cordiality. They were really Moyles. A
Moyle married a Copley heiress, and the Copleys long ago had married the
heiress of the Fitzwilliams, for Sprotborough was the old Fitzwilliam
place, and many of the family are buried there in the church. The
Copleys divided into two branches, of Sprotborough and Wadsworth, and it
is a pretty story that when the Copley of Sprotborough had nothing but
daughters, he left the estate to the Copley of Wadsworth, and then, when
the Copley of Wadsworth had nothing but daughters, he left it back to
the representative of the other branch. Not far from Sprotborough,
Conisborough stands beautifully on the top of a wooded hill: in
‘Ivanhoe’ its castle is the place where Athelstan lies in state when
supposed to be dead.
“The Bishop of Winchester told Charlie Wood that his predecessor, Bishop
Wilberforce, had always very much wished to see a portrait at Wotton
(the Evelyns’ place) of Mrs. Godolphin, whose life he had written whilst
he was at Alverstoke. This wish he had often expressed; but Mr. Evelyn
had not liked the Bishop, and he had never been invited.
“On the day on which the Bishop set off with Lord Granville to ride to
‘Freddie Leveson’s,’ Mr. Evelyn, his brother, and a doctor were sitting
late in the dining-room at Wotton, when the brother exclaimed, ‘Why,
there is the Bishop of Winchester looking in at the window.’ They all
three then saw him distinctly. Then he seemed to go away towards some
shrubs, and they thought he must have gone round to the door, and
expected him to be announced. But he never came, and an hour after a
servant brought in the news that he had been killed only two miles off.
“Mrs. George Portal of Burgclere told Charlie Wood that when Allan
Herbert was so ill at Highclere--ill to death, it was supposed--the
nurse, who was sitting up, saw an old lady come into the room when he
was at the worst, gaze at him from the foot of the bed, and nod her head
repeatedly. When he was better, and after he could be left, the
housekeeper, wishing to give the nurse a little distraction, showed her
through the rooms, and, in Lord Carnarvon’s sitting-room, the nurse
suddenly pointed at the portrait over the chimney-piece and said, ‘That
is the lady who came into the sick-room.’ The portrait was that of old
Lady Carnarvon, Allan Herbert’s mother, and the servants well
recollected her peculiar way of nodding her head repeatedly.
“Mrs. George Portal was niece of Lady Anne Townshend, who was also aunt
of that young Lord George Osborne who was killed at Oxford when
wrestling with Lord Downshire in 1831. On the day of his death, she saw
him pass through the room; she called to him, and he did not answer; she
rang the bell for the servant, who declared he had never entered the
house, and then she wrote the fact of having seen him to her husband,
who was absent. Next morning came a messenger to tell Lady Anne of the
death of her nephew, with whom she had been very intimate, and to beg
her to break it to her sister--his mother, the Duchess of Leeds. Years
after, when Mrs. George Portal was sorting her aunt’s letters after her
death, she found amongst them the very letter to her husband in which
she told what she had seen.”
* * * * *
“_Mount St. John, Dec. 20._--To-day was Lord Halifax’s birthday. The
hounds met at Hickledon, wishing to do him honour, but it was almost too
much for him. With me, I think it has been a pleasure to him to go back
into old days, old memories, old sketch-books, &c. I cannot say how much
I enjoyed my visit to the kind old man, as well as to my own dear
Charlie--better, dearer, more charming than ever, and more in favour,
one feels sure, with God as well as with man.
“Yet Charlie does not wish to die: his life here is so perfectly happy
and useful, but he says that it must be ‘very unpleasant to God to feel
that His children never wish to come home: he is sure _he_ should feel
it so with his children.’ He says he is quite certain what the pains of
Purgatory will be--‘they will be the realising for the first time the
love of God, and not being able to do anything for Him: this life is our
only chance.’ He says he is ‘sure that the next life will be in a more
beautiful world, like this, only glorified, and so much, oh! so much
better in everything. “Such cats!” my Uncle Courtenay says, “_such_
cats!”’
“Young Charlie came home yesterday, a most delightful boy, only less
engaging perhaps than little Francis.[398] To me, these children of my
dear brother-like friend are what no other children can ever be.
“This Mount St. John (where I am now visiting Mrs. J. Dundas, Charlie
Wood’s sister) is a beautiful place, very high up in hills which are now
snowy. There is a long chain of them, ending in Rolleston Scaur, where
it is said that, in the earliest times of Christianity, the followers of
the Druids met the first missionaries in a public discussion. The devil
was disguised in the ranks of the former, who, for a long time, had the
best of it; but, when Christian truth began to prevail, he was so
disgusted that he flew away to the neighbouring isolated height of
Hode’s Point, and a stone which stuck to his red-hot foot was deposited
on its summit--a tangible proof of the story, as it is of a wholly
different geological formation from its surroundings. The view from
these hills is intensely beautiful, comprising York Minster in the hazy
plain, and the many places which take their name from the god
Thor--Thirkleby, Thirsk, &c.”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 24._--Yesterday we spent at Newburgh, cordially received, and
shown all over the house by Lady Julia Wombwell--a most simple,
pleasant, winning person. There is the look of an old Dutch house
externally, in the clock-tower, clipped yews, and formal water. Inside,
the house is very uncomfortable and cold, and has no good staircase.
Mary, Lady Falconberg, Cromwell’s daughter, is said to have rescued her
father’s body from Westminster at the Restoration, and to have buried it
here at the top of the stairs leading to the maids’ rooms. The family,
however, prudently refuse to open ‘the tomb’ and see if there is
anything inside. Two portraits are shown as those of Mary, Lady
Falconberg, and there really is an old silver pen which belonged to her
father. There is a beautiful Vandyke of a Bellasye in a red coat, and a
good Romney of a lady. The church has an octagonal tower and some tombs
of Falconbergs. At the end of the village is the house of Sterne, who
was curate there, with an inscription.”
* * * * *
“_Whitburn, Dec. 28._--Lizzie Williamson[399] says she wonders very much
that, when our Saviour was on earth, no one thought of asking Him if
people ill of hopeless and agonising complaints, idiots, cretins, &c.,
might not be put out of the way--‘the Bible would have been so much more
useful if it had only given us a little information on these points.’
“I stayed a few hours in Durham as I passed through, and found what is
so picturesque in summer unbearably black and dismal in winter. The
present Dean (Lake), who has so spoilt the cathedral, is most unpopular.
One day he had taken upon himself to lecture Mr. Greenwell, one of the
minor canons, for doing his part in the service in thick laced boots.
Greenwell was furious. Rushing out of the cathedral, he met Archdeacon
Bland, the most polite and deliberate of men, and exclaimed, ‘I’ve been
having the most odious time with the Dean, and I really think he must
have got the devil in him.’--‘No, Mr. Greenwell, no, no, not that,’ said
Archdeacon Bland in his quiet way; ‘he is only possessed by three imps:
he is imperious, he is impetuous, and he is impertinent.’
“People are full of ‘The Unclassed,’ a powerful novel, though, as a very
pretty young lady said to me the other day, ‘not at all the sort of book
one would give to one’s mother to read!’
“Coming through Roker, I heard a woman say, ‘Wal, geese is geese, and ye
canna mak um nought else.’ But some one else had this to report as a
specimen Northumbrian sentence: ‘I left the door on the sneck, and, as I
was ganging doun the sandy chare (lane), I met twa bairnies huggin a can
o’ bumblekites, and a good few tykes were havin a reglar hubbledeshoo o’
a midden.’”
* * * * *
“_Brancepeth Castle, Jan. 3, 1885._--Mr. Wharton dined. He said, ‘When I
was at the little inn at Ayscliffe, I met a Mr. Bond, who told me a
story about my friend Johnnie Greenwood of Swancliffe. Johnnie had to
ride one night through a wood a mile long to the place he was going to.
At the entrance of the wood a large black dog joined him, and pattered
along by his side. He could not make out where it came from, but it
never left him, and when the wood grew so dark that he could not see it,
he still heard it pattering beside him. When he emerged from the wood,
the dog had disappeared, and he could not tell where it had gone to.
Well, Johnnie paid his visit, and set out to return the same way. At the
entrance of the wood, the dog joined him, and pattered along beside him
as before; but it never touched him, and he never spoke to it, and
again, as he emerged from the wood, it ceased to be there.
“‘Years after, two condemned prisoners in York gaol told the chaplain
that they had intended to rob and murder Johnnie that night in the wood,
but that he had a large dog with him, and when they saw that, they felt
that Johnnie and the dog together would be too much for them.’
“‘Now that is what I call a useful ghostly apparition,’ said Mr.
Wharton.”
* * * * *
“_London, Feb. 22, 1885._--At dinner at Miss Bromley’s I met the Misses
Bryant, who live in 17 Somerset Street. On the ground-floor of the house
is a large room said to be haunted, and in which such terrible noises
are heard as prevent any one sleeping there. A man with a grey beard
once committed suicide in that room. The other day some children,
nephews and nieces of the Misses Bryant, came to spend the afternoon
with them, and, to amuse them, one of the ladies got them to help her in
arranging her garden upon the leads. While they were at work, the little
boy looked over the parapet into the court below, and said, ‘Who is that
old man with the grey beard who keeps looking at me out of that window?
Oh! he is gone now, but he has put out his head and looked up at me
several times.’ The window was that of ‘Greybeard’s room.’ Miss Bryant
immediately ran down and asked the servants if any one with a grey beard
had come into the house, but no one had entered the house at all, and
‘Greybeard’s room’ was locked up.”
* * * * *
“_March 7._--Two days ago I dined with Lady Sarah Lindsay to meet
Colonel Hugh Lindsay and Lady Jane. Colonel Lindsay was full of
spiritualism and the wonderful discoveries this generation seems on the
verge of. He had himself seen a large table, which had been first set in
motion, after the hands which touched it were taken away, float up to
the ceiling, remain there for some time over their heads, and then float
down again. ‘The conjurors Maskelyne and Cook could not have done this;
they might have raised the table (by wires), but it would not have
floated.’
“Colonel Lindsay spoke much of the wonderful Providence which keeps down
voracious animals. He said that the aphis (of the rose, &c.) reproduced
itself in such intense multitudes, that, if not kept down by weather
and other insects, it would, _in ten days_, have assumed proportions
equal in volume to many thousand times the inhabitants of the earth, the
whole air would be darkened, and every living thing upon earth would be
utterly consumed by them!
“Lady Sarah told of her grandmother, old Lady Hardwicke,[400] with whom
a young lady came to stay. They dined at three o’clock, but when the
girl came down, she was dreadfully agitated, and looked as if she had
seen a ghost. When Lady Hardwicke pressed her as to the reason, she,
after a time, confessed that it was because there was a spirit in her
room. It came to her lamenting its hard fate whilst she was dressing,
and she was sure there had been a murder in that room. Lady Hardwicke
said, ‘Well, my dear, to-morrow you must let me come and stay with you
when you are dressing,’ and she did. Soon the girl said, ‘There--there
it is!’ and Lady Hardwicke really did hear something. ‘Oh, listen!’
cried the girl. ‘Once I was hap-hap-hap-y, but now I am me-e-e-serable!’
a voice seemed to wail: it was the old kitchen jack!”
* * * * *
“_March 19._--Edward Malet was married to Lady Ermyntrude Russell in
Westminster Abbey at 4 P.M. Seldom was there a greater crowd in the
streets near Westminster. I met Lady Jane Repton in the crush, and we
made our way in together through the Deanery. The glorious building was
crowded from end to end, and the music most beautiful. Perhaps the
greatest of smaller features was Lady Ermyntrude’s dress, which the
papers describe as ‘more pearly than pearl, and more snowy than snow.’”
* * * * *
“_March 28._--Dining at Mrs. Quin’s, I met Mrs. Ward, who was very
amusing.
“She described the airs of Frances-Anne, Lady Londonderry.[401] One day
she was extremely irritated with her page, and sent him to Lord
Londonderry with a note, in which she had written in pencil, ‘Flog this
fellow well for me: he has been quite unendurable.’ But the page read
the note on the way, and meeting one of the great magnificent flunkeys,
six feet high, said, ‘Just oblige me by taking this note in to my lord:
I am forced to do something else.’ The flunkey brought out the answer,
and met the page, who took it in to his lady. She was rather surprised,
for it was--‘I’m afraid.’ Mrs. Ward was in the house when this happened.
“Mrs. Ward recollected, in her own childhood, when she was not three
years old, sitting on the floor in her mother’s sitting-room cutting up
a newspaper with a pair of blunt scissors. A lady came in to see her
mother, and brought with her two very fat children, with great round
staring eyes. The children were told to sit down by her on the floor,
and she was bidden to amuse them. It was impossible: they only stared in
hopeless irresponsiveness. Soon her mother began to talk as loudly as
she could. It was to drown the voice of her own little girl, whom she
heard repeating aloud a verse of the psalm she had been learning that
morning, ‘Eyes have they, but they see not: ears have they, but they
hear not: neither speak they with their lips.’
[Illustration: SHRINE OF ST. ERASMUS, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.][402]
“In the afternoon I went with a crowd to see Herkomer’s portrait of my
friend Katharine Grant--a magnificent _tour de force_, white upon
white.”
On the 1st of May 1885 I set off on the first of a series of excursions
in France for literary purposes, oftentimes of dismal solitude, and
always of weary hard work, though full of interest of their own. I found
then, as I have always done, how different seeing a thing with intention
is to ordinary sight-seeing. A dentist at Rome once said to me, “Mr.
Hare, you do not brush your teeth.”--“Yes, indeed I do,” I answered,
“every night and morning.”--“Ah! yes; you brush them from habit, but not
from motive;” and I discovered the result from my many past tours in
France had been just the same. As usual, I found that the ordinary
English travellers, who are always occupied in playing at “follow my
leader” all the time they are abroad, had missed the best part of
France, and that the churches and abbeys of the Correze and
Creuse--almost unknown hitherto--are absolutely glorious; and some
places in that part of France--Rocamadour, for instance--worthy of being
compared with the very finest scenes in Italy. I described much of this
tour in a series of papers in the _Art Journal_, as well as in my books
on France. In the central provinces the accommodation was very good in
its way, and the food always excellent, but in some of the places in the
Eastern Pyrenees the dirt was scarcely endurable. The excellent hotel
at Montpelier came as a real respite. Whilst there, I made some
acquaintance with a banker of the place, who had a poetic Ruskin-like
way of describing the wildness of the Cevennes, the grey rocks, desolate
scenery, long lines of russet landscape. This so took hold of me, that I
went to Lodêve and engaged a carriage for several days to explore the
Cevennes thoroughly. It was wild enough certainly and rather curious,
but an unbroken monotone; every view, every rocky foreground, even each
dreary ruinous village, repeated the last, and after eight or nine hours
I was utterly wearied of it; thus it was an intense relief when my
driver came in the evening, with no end of apologies, and said he had
received a telegram, bidding him return at once to Lodêve; and I was
free to jump into the first diligence and reach the nearest station.
Railway then took me to Mende, an exceedingly beautiful place, and
afterwards to Rodez. Hence I went south again by S. Antonin and
Bruniquel, whence beautiful recollections of the spring verdure and
clear river come back to me. I made a little tour afterwards to Luchon
and other places in the Pyrenees which I had not seen before, and
returned straight home from Bordeaux. During this two months’ tour I do
not think I ever once saw an English person, even in the railway, and I
made no acquaintances.
I found Lourdes entirely changed since I was there last by its enormous
religious pilgrimages, and no doubt, whether from the healing waters or
the power of faith, many wonderful cures had taken place. It was
strange, on nearing the miraculous fountain, to read the inscription,
“Ici les malades vont au pas,” &c. A story was told of an officer who
had a wooden leg and came to the fountain. When he put in his legs (he
put them both in, the wooden leg and the other), as he did so he uttered
a little prayer--“Faites, Seigneur, O faites que mes jambes soient
pareilles.” When he drew them out, they were both wooden legs!
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Châteauroux, May 6, 1885._--What weather! bitter north-east winds and
torrents of rain ever since I landed in France.... I spent Sunday at
Etampes, a little narrow town, one street wide and three miles long,
with four churches of the utmost architectural importance.... Leaving
Orleans, my ‘Untrodden France’ began, and very pleasantly, at pretty
Vierzon on the rushing river Cher. There are rather oppressive moments
of solitude, but in this awful weather I am especially glad not to have
any grumblers against disagreeables which cannot be helped.”
* * * * *
“_Argenton, May 8._--Yesterday I was called at five for an excursion of
forty miles up the valley of the Creuse, but it rained in such torrents
it was impossible. At eight it cleared a little, and I set off, and
_did_ it all, returning at eight, but it rained in a deluge more than
half the time. There were, however, beautiful moments of sun-gleam, and
the scenery very lovely. At Le Crozant, the great rendezvous of French
artists, where a most charming old woman keeps a very primitive inn, it
is even magnificent, finer than anything on Rhine or Moselle--stupendous
rocks and a grand castle. Gargilesse, the place where Mme. George Sand
lived so oddly, and wrote ‘Promenades autour de mon Village,’ is also a
very curious and charming place, the village clustering around a
romanesque church in the _enceinte_ of a great ruined castle above the
river.”
* * * * *
“_Brive, May 15._--I feel like a child eating through a cake, feeling it
a duty not to leave anything remarkable unseen in this part of France,
so little known to the English. How unfairly those judge this country
who measure France by what they see from the well-known railways to
Strasbourg or Marseilles. Nothing can be more beautiful than these hills
and valleys of the Creuse and Correze, nothing more rich than the
forest-clad country, besides the interest of endless castles and later
châteaux, of old towns where the greater proportion of the houses date
from the thirteenth century, and of perfectly honest, primitive, and
unspoilt people.
“I came to Limoges last Friday, and remained there five days, that is to
say, was scarcely there at all, but returned to a good hotel there at
night. I saw the great castle of Chalusset; the romanesque Abbey of
Solignac; S. Junien, a most grand church; Le Dorat, almost as fine;
Montmorillon, full of curiosities; and Chalus, where Richard Cœur de
Lion was killed, and where, under the old castle he was besieging, the
stone called Rocher de Malmont still rises in the water-meadows, upon
which he was standing when the fatal arrow struck him.
[Illustration: LE CROZANT.][403]
“Then I came here, and am staying here in the same way, breakfasting
daily at seven, off at half-past seven, and only returning to go to
bed. All yesterday I was at the wonderful sanctuary of Rocamadour--the
La Salette of these parts--a most curious place, beautiful exceedingly;
indeed, though it sounds a very grand comparison, rather like--Tivoli!
But it poured all day, with a bitter wind, and this has been the case
every day, only this afternoon there have been lovely lights at the
falls of Gimel in the exquisite mountain forests. I am so glad I have no
companions: they would never have endured the discomfort. No words can
say how tired I am every day, nor how wet, nor how dirty; but I shall be
glad afterwards to have done it all.”
[Illustration: SOLIGNAC.][404]
[Illustration: ROCAMADOUR.][405]
* * * * *