... but this is a pleasant little hotel in an old cathedral town, with
marvellous streets of houses of fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries. The weather makes no end of hindrances and discomforts, yet
in this tour, as in all others, I have found that expected misfortunes
never happen: there are plenty of others, but what one looks for never
comes, and I have gone on steadily, missing nothing of the plan marked
out, only sometimes delayed. The people are beyond measure pleasant and
kind, and the cheapness of everything is a perpetual amazement.”
* * * * *
“_Carcassonne, May 28._--On Friday 23rd it poured in torrents, but I
could not give in, so went by the earliest train as far into the hills
as it penetrated, and then by omnibus to Souillac, one of the grand and
glorious abbey churches, now parochial, which are so common in that part
of France and nowhere else--full of colour and solemnity, though rugged
to a degree, and into which you descend by long flights of steps.
“It poured in returning too, but I stopped at a wayside station, and a
long walk through chalky mud and a ferry over the Dordogne took me to
Fénelon, which is a noble old château splendidly placed on a peninsula
looking down upon the meeting of many valleys and streams. It has always
been kept up; its terraces were in luxuriant beauty of flowers, and the
owner, Comte de Morville, was excessively civil in showing everything. I
drew under an umbrella in torrents.
[Illustration: CLOISTER OF CADOUIN.][406]
“Saturday I was up at five, and off by rail and road to Cadouin, another
of those grand abbey churches, of the same character as the rest, but
with the addition of a splendid gothic cloister. I arrived at nine,
perished with wet and cold, but was resuscitated by the kind woman at
the little inn, who made a hot fire on the great dogs of her hearth, and
soon had hot coffee ready. It was, however, a long day, and I did not
arrive till near midnight at Montpazier. This curious Bastide was built
by Edward III. of England, and has never been touched since his time,
and, whilst all is so changed in England, it was interesting to find in
this remote French hill-country a town the same as when the Black Prince
lived there, with old walls and gates, gothic house-windows, rectangular
streets, and in the centre of all the market, surrounded by arcades
like those at Padua, only here the arcades are so wide that you can
drive _in_ them. It was a quaint, charming place, and I stayed till
Monday, spending Sunday in the magnificent old Château de Biron.
[Illustration: ARCADES OF MONTPAZIER.][407]
“Then, by Cahors, with its wonderful old bridge over the Lot, I came to
Montpezat, a very simple place and primitive inn--wild open down, old
church, arcaded streets, flowers, goats, and old women in white-winged
caps. Late that night I reached Moissac, a place where there is a
wonderful church and cloister, which has been extolled as one of the
archaeological marvels of the world, but its describers have evidently
never seen St. Junien, Le Dorat, Souillac, Cadouin.”
* * * * *
“_Narbonne, June 4._--The wet weather has changed to intense heat.
Saturday was an interesting day at Alet, a ruined cathedral, and pretty
desolate place on the edge of the Eastern Pyrenees, with a very
admirable old curé, with whom I made great friends. That afternoon
brought me to Perpignan, an almost Spanish town on the
frontier--filthily dirty, but I was obliged to stay there to see Prades,
the fine lonely monastery of S. Michel de Cuxa, Amélie les Bains, and
Arles-sur-Tech. The great excursion to the latter place was indeed a
penance--ten hours in a jolting diligence, five each way, with burning
sun and stifling dust, and four passengers forced into each place meant
for three, so that _any_ movement was impossible, and as the diligence
started at five, one was breakfastless. However, all miseries have an
end, and Aries had to be visited, for St. Abdon and St. Sennen are
buried there; but oh! how glad I was I had no companion to suffer too!
On the way here I saw Elne, most Spanish and picturesque, with perhaps
the most beautiful cloister in the world. Yesterday too was an
interesting day, spent entirely at the great convent of Fontefroide, in
the mountains nine miles from hence, spared at the late suppression of
monasteries on account of the beneficent and useful lives of its
monks--of whom there are still more than fifty--the benefactors of the
whole of this part of the country, not only in teaching and preaching,
but by taking the lead in all industrial and agricultural work. They
receive all strangers, and gave me an excellent luncheon, though, being
Wednesday, they had only boiled beans for themselves. The mountains all
round the monastery were ablaze with cistus--white, pink, and
rose-coloured, with yellow salvia and honeysuckle in masses.”
[Illustration: AT FONTEFROIDE.][408]
* * * * *
“_Lodéve, June 8._--From Montpelier I went to Aigues-Mortes, the old
sea-town where St. Louis embarked for the Crusades, little altered since
his time, unless, indeed, the mosquitoes are worse, for they are
terrible.”
* * * * *
“_Lexos, Aveyron, June 15._--From Rodez and its great cathedral, and
Mareillac in the heart of the vine country, I had an excursion of
transcendent beauty through the most exquisite mountain valleys and
chestnut forests, by rocks and waterfalls, to Conques. I was taken there
by a single line in Fergusson’s ‘Architecture’ comparing it with
Souillac, which I had already seen, but found perhaps the most beautiful
spot in France, and, in that desolation, a glorious romanesque abbey
church, grand as a cathedral of the first rank, in which, owing to its
lonely position, all the curious mediaeval treasures remain unspoilt.
Here, and indeed everywhere, I found the greatest kindness from the
charming well-to-do peasantry. Every one seems well off: every one full
of courtesy and goodness; and though all the men in blouses expect to be
treated as equals, they are indescribably pleasant.
“Anything so cheap as ‘Untravelled France’ it is impossible to imagine.
Even at Mende, where it is quite a good hotel, prices were: room--very
good, 1 fr., dinner 2 fr., breakfast 50 c., service 50 c., bougie never
anything, and these are the usual prices.
“Nothing can describe what the delicious, sweetness of the acacias has
been, so abundant in all these town-villages, and now it is giving way
to that of the limes.
“This is a wooden inn of the humblest kind, close in the shadow of a
great junction station, at which I am for convenience, but the
pleasantness of the people gives it a charm. This solitary existence is
a placid, peculiar halt in life.”
* * * * *
I was the greater part of July in London.
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
[Illustration: CONQUES.][409]
“_July 25, 1885._--Mrs. Rogerson, working in the east end of London, met
with a family of poor children--very hopelessly poor children--whom she
knew, with a dog. She stopped and told them that, as they could not keep
themselves, she wondered they could keep a dog. The eldest boy answered
rather savagely, ‘Father bought it: father gave sixpence for the dog,
and right well he did too, for the rats wos so many, they wos, they
used to eat our toes at night, and the dog keeps them all off.’
“The Maharajah of Johore asked me to his ball. When he goes out to
luncheon or dinner he sends on his own cook to prepare for him, taking
with him, to kill on the spot, the chicken which his master is to eat.
When the cook kills it he says a sort of little prayer--‘Dear little
brother, forgive me for the pain I am going to inflict upon you: it will
only be momentary, and it really cannot be helped.’”
* * * * *
“_Campsea Ashe, Suffolk, August 22._--On the way here I saw Ipswich, its
great feature being ‘the Ancient House,’ adorned outside with
representations of the Seasons. Close to St. Peter’s Church is Wolsey’s
Gate, covered with ivy, which led to his college. This place, which the
William Lowthers have bought, in the flat corn-lands of Suffolk, has a
fine old garden, with clipped yew hedges and long tanks like Wrest. It
has been a most pleasant visit. I heard some one say once, ‘Mrs. Lowther
is a most extraordinary woman: she never will let the grass grow under
any one of her children’s feet even for a single instant;’ but it has
made them all very agreeable, from the immense variety of occupations in
which they are interested, and in which, consequently, they interest
others. James Lowther, who is at home now, is certainly one of the
pleasantest and best-informed young men of the day. He has just been
very amusing about answers in Board Schools, telling, amongst others, of
a child who was asked ‘If King Alfred had been alive now, what part
would he have taken in politics?’ and replied, ‘If King Alfred had been
alive now, he would have been far too old to have taken part in politics
at all!’
“We had a pleasant picnic at Framlingham, a noble ruined castle, which,
for Suffolk, stands almost on a height, and went to Sanbourn, the
luxurious home of the rich family of Heywood, and to Glemham, where Lady
North, mother of Lord Guildford, lives in a fine old house, which
contains much good old furniture and china.
“We spent a long interesting day at the noble old moated house of
Helmingham, where Lady Tollemache apologised amusingly for only having
nine of her sons at home to assist her in doing the honours! It is a
delightful place, with beautiful old gardens, and its inhabitants are
delightful too. Lord Tollemache especially brims with goodness to all
around him. He was very amusing in urging Miss Lowther, when she had as
many sons as he has (!), to make their home pleasanter to them than any
other place in the world, so that they should always prefer it to
everything else. He showed us all his relics, especially his Anglo-Saxon
MS. of the time of Alfred the Great, and several beautiful Bibles of the
time of Edward I. There is a pretty picture of Mary Tudor as a child.
Queen Elizabeth was at Helmingham, and stood godmother to a baby there,
who lived to become Sir Lionel Tollemache: that baby is represented,
with its three little sisters, in a curious picture in the hall.
“In the church is the tomb of Colonel Thomas Tollemache, who was
distinguished in the wars of Queen Anne’s time. The Duke of Marlborough
ordered him to attack Brest. There were reasons which made him very
doubtful of success, and he represented to the Duke that the only chance
of it lay in a surprise: still the Duke ordered him to attempt it. Brest
was found thoroughly prepared, the hoped-for surprise was an utter
failure, and Tollemache fell in the attack. The French Government had
been forewarned, and it was afterwards found that it had been forewarned
by Marlborough! When the Duc d’Aumale came to Helmingham, he said that
the thing he was most anxious to see was the monument of this
unfortunate officer, and that he had himself read, in the archives at
Brest, the letter of the Duke of Marlborough warning the garrison of the
coming attack.
“The last owner of Campsea Ashe, Mr. Shepherd, was the grandson of a
gardener. The Mr. Shepherd who then owned Campsea adopted a nephew, a
young Frere, grandfather of the well-known Sir Bartle. The nephew
invited his friends to Campsea, and, after the fashion of the time, they
sat up drinking. Very late, young Frere rang the bell and ordered
another bottle of port. The butler, very cross, went up to his master’s
room and woke him, saying that Mr. Frere wanted some more port and that
he must have the key of the cellar. Old Mr. Shepherd, furious, gave the
key, but next morning sent for a lawyer and disinherited his nephew,
and, no one else being handy, and having a gardener he liked who bore
his own name of Shepherd, he left him his fortune.”
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, August 23._--In returning from Campsea Ashe I spent some
hours at Colchester, and saw its two abbeys and its castle--rather
curious than beautiful.”
* * * * *
“_Drayton House, Northamptonshire, Sept. 20._--I have been spending
several days in this most pleasant old house, which is full of charm and
interest--many-towered, with an entrance court, a deserted Georgian
chapel, a grand hall full of fine pictures, a vaulted room dating from
Edward III., cellars probably from Henry III., admirable buildings of
Elizabeth and James I.
“The place belonged to the Greenes, who, with the Earl of Wiltshire, who
married a daughter of the house, have grand tombs in the church. Then it
passed to the Mordaunts, and was left by Lady Mary Mordaunt, the
divorced wife of the Duke of Norfolk, to her second husband, Sir John
Germaine, whose second wife, Lady Betty, left it to Lord George
Sackville, from whom it descended to its present owner, sweet engaging
Mrs. Sackville, who inherited it from her uncle, the last Duke of
Dorset, and who has all the perfect simplicity of the truest
high-breeding.
“The gardens are full of terraces, staircases, fountains, pleached
walks, avenues, and leaden statues--beautiful exceedingly. There is a
gallery of Mordaunt portraits in the house; in the old library at the
top are no end of treasures, and out of it opens the Duchess of
Norfolk’s boudoir, with old Japanese ornaments. Through a plank missing
in the floor of an upper gallery you can look into quite a large room
which no one has ever entered. Its windows are darkened by the
overgrowth of the creepers outside, and the only object in it is a large
box like a portmanteau. The Sackvilles have always lived here, yet not
one of them has had the curiosity to descend into that room or to look
into that portmanteau!
“I have been taken to see the curious old house of Lyveden--never
finished--one of the three strange semi-religious erections of the
Tresham of the Gunpowder Plot. This is supposed to be in honour of the
Virgin, and is covered with the oddest devices, such as ‘the Seven Eyes
of God,’ the money-bag of Judas, with the thirty pieces of silver round
it, &c. The second of Tresham’s buildings is Rothwell townhall; the
third a lodge at Rushton in honour of the Trinity, in which everything,
down to the minutest ornament, is three-cornered.
“Then we have been to Boughton, the Duke of Buccleuch’s great desolate
house, which contains two cartoons attributed, without any cause, to
Raffaelle. The house was built by the Duke of Montagu, who was
ambassador to Louis XIV., and the king lent him a French architect and
gardener. He made it as like a French château as possible. Then he told
his friends that he must plant an avenue to drive to London by, and when
they remonstrated that an immense part of the way to London did not
belong to him, he said, ‘Well, at any rate I will have an avenue of the
same length,’ and he planted seventy-two miles of it in his park. These
trees, hemming in the view in all directions, make the place
indescribably dull. Just outside the park is the pretty village of
Geddington, with a fine old church and bridge, and a beautiful Eleanor
cross with slender detached columns. We went on thence to tea at Warkton
with Mrs. Bridges, wife of the clergyman, a real patrician Venetian
beauty, who has set all Northamptonshire quarrelling as to whether the
glorious colour of her hair can be real; but it is. Half of the church
her husband serves is a mausoleum of the Dukes of Buccleuch, who have
four large and magnificent monuments in it.
“The old Duchess of Buccleuch, a homely-looking person, was very fond of
joining people who came to see the place and talking to them. One day
she walked by a visitor and said, ‘You know, all this belongs to the
Duke of Buccleuch.’--‘And pray, whom did he marry?’--‘ME!’”
* * * * *
“_Cromer, Sept. 22._--I came yesterday to stay with the Lockers, who
have lately taken the additional name of Lampson, with a fortune from
her father, Sir Curtis Lampson. They are exceedingly happy together. ‘My
winsome marrow,’ Mr. Locker has just said to his wife, ‘you know I never
can go anywhere without you.’ In the evening, Mr. Locker was very
pleasant in describing Rogers and his stories. Apropos of the dictum
that the postscript of a well-told story is often its best feature, he
told of Rogers describing a duel between a Frenchman and an Englishman,
which was to be fought in the dark. The Englishman was a very humane
man, and when it came to his turn to fire, fired up the chimney, that he
might do his adversary no harm, but brought down the Frenchman, who had
taken refuge there. ‘But when I tell that story in Paris,’ added
Rogers, ‘it is the Englishman who is up the chimney.’
[Illustration: CROMER.]
“He told of a Mr. Egerton who was with his regiment in Canada. Coming
into the messroom one morning, he seemed much depressed, and being asked
the reason, said he was troubled by an oddly vivid dream, in which he
had seen his own coffin on the deck of a vessel, and in the dream had
been even able to read the plate upon the coffin, which bore his name
and the date June 16. He was so full of it, that the Colonel, to humour
him, wrote down the circumstances and the date. This was in April.
Afterwards he went to Upper Canada, where he was killed by Indians on
the 16th of June, and his coffin was brought down the river as he had
seen it. Mr. Locker told this story to Lord Algernon St. Maur, who said,
‘I can corroborate that story, for I was in the messroom when what you
describe occurred.’
“Mr. Locker described Dickens’s way of telling stories. He heard him
tell that of Lincoln’s dream, and of his describing the oppressive
feeling he had, how he was ‘drifting, drifting, drifting,’ and how at
that moment the members of council came in and he said, ‘Now we must go
to business.’ It was on leaving that council that he was shot, so no one
heard the end of that dream, or whether there would seem to be any
forewarning in it.
“We have been to-day to Felbrigge, the fine old house of the Windhams,
sold to a Norwich tradesman named Catton, whose daughters have adopted
the older family as if it were their own, and are quite worthy of the
old pictures, MSS., &c., all left in the house, _nothing_ having been
taken away when the place was given up. ‘Mr. Windham comes every night
to look after his favourite books in the library,’ said Miss Catton; ‘he
often comes, and he goes straight to the shelves where they are: we hear
him moving the tables and chairs about: we never disturb him though, for
we intend to be ghosts ourselves some day, and to come about the old
place just as he does.’ In the hall there is a grand bust of the
statesman by Nollekens. Formerly it was on his monument in the church,
but after some years the family put a copy there, and moved the original
into the house. The church, however, still retains the most glorious
brasses. One is that of a lady in waiting who came over with Anne of
Bohemia, and whose daughter was herself invited to share the throne. But
the man she really married was one of the early owners of Felbrigge.”
* * * * *
“_Sept. 24._--We have been with the Dick Gurneys in their fleet
waggonette to Blickling, quite glorious, so perfect in colour, with an
exquisite entrance, and a splendid herbaceous garden. In the church is
the tomb which Lady Lothian has erected to her husband,[410] a most
grand one, with the head of the reclining statue turned to one side, and
the long beard drifted over the pillow.
“The innumerable Gurneys, Buxtons, and Hoares who populate Cromer come
in and out of this house, as of each other’s, whenever they like,
without ringing the bell.
“Last night Mrs. R. Hoare dined here. She says the people here always
address their superiors in the third person, as in French. They always
say ‘I’m very much fatagued,’ for bothered. ‘Well, Mrs. Smith, are you
going to take the blue dress or the brown?’ she said when keeping a
charity shop. ‘Why, ma’am, I’ve not fairly averdupoised,’ replied the
woman; and it is a common expression for balancing.
“There are many remnants here in Cromer from Danish occupation. The
ghosts, as in Denmark, are always without heads. There is great faith in
the story of ‘Old Strop,’ a Danish dog who was washed ashore with the
bodies of two Danish sailors, one of whom was buried at Overstrand and
the other at Cromer. Every night the dog, headless, is believed to run
from one grave to the other, and fishermen will always go round by the
shore at night rather than by the shorter lane, which the dog is
supposed to take.”
* * * * *
“_Sept. 25._--Mrs. Ritchie (Miss Thackeray) is here, most charming and
interesting, as I have always thought her. She describes Tennyson and
Mrs. Kemble as the noblest man and woman she knows.
“Mrs. Kemble found, when in England, that her husband was going to take
advantage of an American law which allowed him to obtain a divorce if
she was away from him two years. For her children’s sake it was
imperative that she should prevent this. She hurried back, and just
arrived in time by two or three days. Afterwards she herself quietly
obtained a divorce in some way which gave her the charge of her
children.... One of her daughters is Mrs. Leigh, whose husband, the
Vicar of St. Mary, Bryanston Square, she is always trying to persuade to
go out to the family plantations in Georgia. The other, Sarah, is the
wife of a merchant in New York, and a replica--a much feebler
replica--of her mother.
“Now, Mrs. Kemble is generally to be found knitting by her fireside. One
day Mrs. Ritchie took her little girl to see her. ‘Here I am,’ Mrs.
Kemble said to the child, ‘an old woman who never allows another person
to put in a word when she is talking; and now, what do you think of me?’
The little girl, who was shy, did not know what to say, and looked as if
she was going to cry. Mrs. Ritchie, to fill up the gap, said, ‘Oh, she
thinks, Mrs. Kemble, that no one could possibly wish to put in a word
when they could listen to you.’ ‘Ma fille, ne dites pas des choses
comme ça,’ cried Mrs. Kemble furiously; and then, more quietly, ‘You
should not say such things before the child: it is not right to teach
her to be artificial.’
“‘Right is right,’ she said one day, ‘and wrong is wrong, but God forbid
that I should judge of another whether he is right or wrong.’
“‘One day,’ said Mrs. Ritchie, ‘I found Mrs. Kemble sitting by her
fireside looking rather disconsolate, and asked her what she was doing.
“Oh, I’m knocking my head against the wall, my dear; that man who was
here was so dreadfully stupid, I’m obliged to knock it out of me.”’
“Mrs. Kemble was at an inn in Switzerland with a lady with whom she
never made acquaintance. They were both reading ‘Middlemarch,’ and came
down with their books into the public room, and were engrossed in them.
But one day the lady was so enchanted with a passage in her volume that
she burst out with, ‘Well, this woman is one of the noblest of authors:
whatever the peculiarities of her views on life may be, I will never
believe that the woman who can write thus can be other than one with the
very noblest aims.’ Then Mrs. Kemble turned upon her furiously with,
‘Who are _you_ that you should presume to _dare_ to judge such a woman
as George Eliot? how can you _dare_ to judge her?’ and the lady jumped
up, and, instead of being angry, embraced Mrs. Kemble upon the spot.
“For her own sharp sayings, Mrs. Kemble is repaid by her grandchildren.
She wrote to one of her grandsons that she did not care for Wagner’s
music, she could not understand what he meant by it. He answered, that
a fly crawling up the wall of Cologne Cathedral might as well presume to
judge of its architectural glories as she of Wagner! She did not seem to
know whether to be angry or pleased at this.
“Dear Lady Marian Alford used to tell of her first meeting Mrs. Kemble
at a garden-party. She had scarcely sat down by her when Mrs. Kemble
said slowly, with her peculiar intonation and inflection upon each
syllable--‘I do per-ceive a ... stink!’
“Being asked if she would employ Pakenham or M’Crackem as agent for
sending her goods from Italy to England, Mrs. Kemble said, ‘Why, rather
Pack’em than Crack’em, to be sure.’”
* * * * *