dire que nous sommes plus heureux que les saints dans le ciel. Ils
vivent des leurs rentes; ils ne peuvent rien gagner; tandis que
nous, nous pouvons à chaque instant augmenter notre trésor.”--LE
CURÉ D’ARS.
“La debolezza umana piange, sorride l’imortale speranza.”--_Epitaph
at Pisa._
There is an old print at Holmhurst which represents life in its
successive stages as the ascent and descent of a hill. At fifty the top
of the hill is reached and the descent begins. I have passed the top,
and every year must bring less power of work and action, though I
scarcely feel older now than I did at five-and-twenty. But certain marks
in the forehead show that age has left his card upon one; we do not
know when he called, but the visit has been paid. Well, it is the more
necessary to do all we can whilst power lasts, never talking, but
acting, and recollecting that a duty once divined binds one from that
moment; while as for the abuse, public and private, received for
anything attempted out of the ordinary groove, we ought ever to follow
the simple advice of Sœur Rosalie, “Faites le bien, et laissez dire.”
Certainly the longer one lives one feels how, of all shams, the
religious sham is the worst--the man who talks “goody” without any heart
to sympathise with sorrow or _shame_, and who thus can never help those
who struggle sadly against vice and meanness, whilst tremulously aiming
at a nobler life. The same, in a wider sense, is true of almost all
sermons one hears--
“Two lips wagging, and never a wise word.”[418]
So few clergymen _feel_ what they say, that it only does harm. It was a
saying of Pope Pius II., “Bad physicians kill the body, unskilful
priests the soul.”
It ought not to be, but it certainly is true that the Church and
Religion are _two_; and, _apropos_ of sermons and religious
discussions, another saying of Pope Pius often comes back to me, “The
nature of God can be better grasped by believing than disputing.” “Let
us not be the slaves of any human authority, but clear our way through
all creeds and confessions to Thine own original revelation.” With
Thomas Chalmers, can I not feel this?
I have endless compensations for a lonely life in my pretty little home,
my sufficient means, my multitudes of friends. Besides, it is as Madame
d’Houdetot wrote to Madame Necker, “Vous savez que le seul être
malheureux est celui qui ne peut ni aimer, ni agir, ni mourir, et je
suis bien loin de cette situation.” I often feel, however, that this
book would give a very false idea of my life. I recount my many visits
and what I hear there because it is amusing, and I leave unnoticed the
months and months when nothing happens, and in which I am probably
employed in quiet work at Holmhurst. With every one naturally it must be
true that
“The life of man is made of many lives,
His heart and mind of many minds and hearts.”[419]
This, however, is enough of sentimentalising. I will return to facts.
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Jan. 9, 1886._--I am just come back from a very pleasant visit at
Battle Abbey, where I met the Powerscourts, Lord and Lady George
Campbell (she lovely and like a beautiful Gainsborough), Lord Hardinge
and a very nice daughter, Lord Wolmer and Lady Maude, Sir Prescott
Hewitt, a young Ryder, and Lady Dorothy Nevill. The latter was most
amusing, and well understands the famous principle--‘Glissez, mortels,
n’appuyez pas.’ She and the Duchess of Cleveland, who was in very good
vein, were quite charming together.”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Holmhurst, Feb. 20, 1886._--Do you know that, except for ten days, I
have been at home just three months to-day, and nearly all the time
quite alone. I cannot say how much I have enjoyed the quietude of study
and communing with great and wise people through many books. There is
certainly the greatest pleasure in thus acquiring new thoughts, and, in
a small way, fresh knowledge: indeed, I always feel that to give myself
up to overwork is quite as great a temptation to me as over-idleness to
some people.
“Each different literary work I have had has seemed to me, at the time,
more interesting and engrossing. The little accidental discoveries are
so amusing. Amongst those of this week, who do you think invented a
wheel-barrow?--Blaise Pascal.
[Illustration: THE DEANERY, BATTLE.][420]
“My diversion has been reading masses of old family letters, unearthed
by Lady Hartopp. They are very curious, and a complete portrait of the
family at the beginning of the century. My grandfather, Mr. Hare Naylor,
must have been quite odious--so imperious and arrogant: Lady Jones, the
incarnation of a rod in pickle, but with very fine qualities:
great-uncle Robert, the rector, more of a rowdy farmer than anything
else. Penelope Shipley (Mrs. Warren), a very fine unselfish creature:
Dean Shipley, selfish and dictatorial: Francis Hare, a self-indulgent
dandy: Julius, a miracle of boyish learning, talking like a Solon:
Augustus (it must be allowed), very priggish, but very amiable: Marcus,
indulged in everything by his aunts: the second Mrs. Hare Naylor,
foolish and querulous, but by no means an unjust stepmother. The
religious letters of consolation which the whole party write to one
another when little Anna dies are so stilted as to be truly comic. What
is touching is that over the harsh letters of her fierce elder sister,
the beloved memory of the first Mrs. Hare Naylor ever broods as a
softening influence: however much trouble the Hare brothers give her, no
pains or expense are too great for them, because ‘they were hers.’”
* * * * *
On the 9th of February I went up to London for Miss Jolliffe’s wedding,
and came in for--a revolution! On returning from the City, I found
Trafalgar Square one mass of people, and many orators addressing them,
but expected nothing more. Soon, however, a Socialist leader named Burns
suggested a reign of terror and offered himself as captain. Thousands of
men--well fed, well dressed, but still the scum of London--rushed down
Pall-Mall, breaking windows as they went--a very carnival of outlawry.
Their passions grew with their progress, and in St. James Street they
wrecked the University Club, which had expelled Hyndman, one of their
leaders, from its society. They seized certain carriages, turning out
the ladies they contained, and stripped a footman of his livery. They
pulled Lady Claude Hamilton out of her carriage and boxed her ears, but
when, _after_ this, she denounced them as dogs who ought to be flogged
as curs, they applauded her courage, and let her go on. Breaking windows
and wrecking many shops in Piccadilly, they entered the Park at Hyde
Park Corner and left it at Stanhope Gate. Then they rushed on through
South Audley Street, which they left much like Paris after the excesses
of the Commune. How truly Milton said--
“License they mean when they cry Liberty.”
I went the next day to see Lady Foley, whose house in Grosvenor Square
had been on their line of route. It had not only no pane of glass
unbroken, but not even fragments of glass left, and stones heaped in the
library enough to mend a good piece of road with. Lord Percy’s house,
next door, was so ruined that they went away next day.
For the two following days London had indeed a miserable aspect--windows
all broken, streets littered with fragments, shops shut, streets paraded
constantly by bands of entirely victorious and triumphant ruffians, and
shop-keepers, in some cases, guarding their property with revolvers.
The call for a fresh edition of my “Walks in Rome” made me suddenly
determine to go to Italy at the end of February. At Florence I was the
constant guest of the ever-kind Duchess Dowager of Sermoneta, with whom
I made delightful excursions in the hills.
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Hotel Paoli, Florence, March 7, 1886._--France was covered with snow
from end to end, yet next day we were speeding through lemon-groves
laden with fruit, and carpeted with a blaze of iris and scarlet geranium
in full flower. Here, after reading about the snowstorms in England, I
am glad in the gardens of Arcetri to sit to draw in the shade of the
cypresses, and all the hills are pink with almond-blossom. I spent one
evening with the Duchess at Palazzo Torrigiani, alone with the family
there, which is the most perfect type of a grand old Italian household,
consisting of between eighty and ninety persons. The kind and charming
old Marchesa Elisabetta has four sons, who have all married as soon as
they came of age, yet none have gone farther than to an apartment of
their own under the maternal roof, and eighteen children and
grandchildren dine with her daily, besides other guests. The four
daughters-in-law all live in the utmost harmony; the Marchesa Giulia,
wife of the eldest son Pietro, and the Marchesa Margherita, who was a
Malespina (which in Italy means great things), quietly giving
precedence to the Marchesa Cristina, who is a princess (Scilla) by
birth. All sat with work round a table, visitors dropped in, and it was
most easy and pleasant.
“Another day, the Duchess, Miss Phillimore, and I went out by the
steam-tram to spend a day at the Marchese della Stufa’s[421] old castle
of Castagnolo. We had an amusing luncheon of Italian dishes, guitar
music and singing, a walk to pick violets, with which the hedges are
full, a visit to the green-houses and aviaries of rare birds, and we
were taken back to the tram-line, where the station is built of
sunflower-stalks, which are like bamboo in their qualities.”
* * * * *
I reached Rome on the 10th of March, warmly welcomed by a large circle
of friends. In the hotel were Mrs. Tilt and Letitia Hibbert, very
familiar to me in early days at Birtles, and with them and their very
charming sister-in-law, Mrs. Frank Hibbert (_née_ Cholmondeley), I made
delightful excursions to familiar places--Tivoli, Frascati, Albano. Sir
John Lumley was now reigning at the Embassy and making it delightful to
his countrymen.
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Hotel d’Italie, Rome, March 17, 1886._--What lovely June weather this
is, so very hot, so unspeakably beautiful.... I find an immense deal to
do in correcting and writing, chiefly, however, in taking away from my
‘Walks in Rome,’ so very much is destroyed; indeed, Lanciani, the
archaeologist in power, says, ‘If they go on like this for twenty years,
there will be nothing left of older Rome but St Peter’s and the
Coliseum--_if_ those.’”
[Illustration: L’ARICCIA.][422]
* * * * *
“_March 21._--What expeditions we have had! On Monday we walked through
the glen at Ariccia and round the glorious old woods of the Parco Chigi,
full of cyclamen, cytisus, blue squills, green iris, and masses of dark
violets. Then, whilst the others went on to the convent of Palazzuola, I
sat to draw above the still lake, and, when they came back, we went to
the grand pine-groves of the Villa Barberini, to Castel Gandolfo, and
through the ilex galleries in time for the evening train.... I have
dined out every day, just as in London.”
[Illustration: GALLERIA DI SOTTO, ALBANO.][423]
* * * * *
“_March 31._--I wish I could transport you suddenly into the glorious
radiance of this cloudless sunshine and deepest of blue skies. To me
Rome has never seemed so delightful in climate as after three months of
fog and sleet at Holmhurst.... Amid all the changes elsewhere, I can
always turn with comfort to the Palatine, and have spent many happy
mornings there amongst the gigantic ruins, and the groves of laurustinus
and lentisc, and the huge fenochii, meditating on my past and its
past.”
[Illustration: LAKE OF BOLSENA.][424]
On April 22 I went to Perugia, finding in Brufani’s excellent hotel Mrs.
Robert Drummond and her daughter, and two charming Americans, Miss
Isabel and Miss Lorraine Wood, domesticated at Dresden. For the next
fortnight we toured about together. As to some of the most restful and
happiest days of my later years, I look back to the extreme comfort of
Perugia, and the perfect view from the windows of my room, unspeakably
glorious at all hours, but most of all when the rising sun was lighting
up the tops of the distant mountains, whilst all the detail of the
intermediate plain was lost in soft white haze. Equally delightful was
the old-fashioned inn at Orvieto, and the drives into the hills and to
Bagnorea and the Lago di Bolsena, returning in the carriage laden with
branches of honeysuckle and masses of anemones, violets, cyclamen, and
other spring flowers. From Siena, too, we made again the interesting
excursions to Monte Oliveto and S. Gimignano.
[Illustration: S. DOMENICO, SIENA.][425]
Crossing the St. Gothard to Basle, I turned aside to visit the whole of
the Jura country, greatly overrated, I thought, by former travellers.
Burgundy was much more interesting, with its fine churches and its noble
inhabited châteaux of Ancy le Franc and Tanlay. As I was dining in the
tiny primitive inn at the latter, the tradesmen who held the minute
shops in the village were disputing as to the superiority of their
different trades. The carpenter certainly won the day by winding up
with, “Et la Vierge s’est mariée avec un charpentier: elle était bien
libre de son choix, et elle a choisi--un charpentier!” Nearly the whole
of June I stayed in Paris, working at the archaeological details of the
town for my book, and seeing no one.
[Illustration: MONTE OLIVETO.][426]
[Illustration: SENS.][427]
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Montbard, May 23, 1886._--I wonder if my date conveys anything to you?
I had determined to evade this place if it were possible, yet here I am
for two days at the place so connected with the agonising anxiety of
_our_ last journey, where Mother in her illness was laid flat upon the
railway platform, to find, when the train was gone, that the little
hotel was closed, and where she was carried through the lanes to an old
farmhouse. There the people were most kind to us, and she almost enjoyed
it, and dear Lea was very happy, and of its inmates both were often so
anxious to hear during the after-summer of the German invasion. The old
host and hostess are dead now, and the two boys, whom I saw when I went
to luncheon with Mme. de Montgolfier, are married, and have twelve
children between them!”
[Illustration: THE PARACLETE.][428]
* * * * *
“_Sens, May 28._--The weather has changed to bitter wind, but it has
seemed appropriate to the wild country of Avallon and Vezelay. Auxerre
is very interesting and beautiful, especially the great abbey of S.
Germain and the marvellously simple and pure cathedral. Old affection
for Thomas à Becket took me thence, through the sweet acacia forests, to
Pontigny, since which I have been very comfortable for two nights at a
charming inn close under the shadow of this old archiepiscopal
cathedral.”
* * * * *
“_Hotel Noël Peter, Paris, June 6._--I am very glad to have accomplished
a long-wished-for visit to the historic sites of Clairvaux and the
Paraclete, though there is nothing whatever to see in either of them!
How I have worked since I have been here! My book is written, but I have
to go through every part of it on the spot. I breakfast at seven and
work till eleven, then luncheon and work again till four o’clock, when I
come in dead-tired, only to go out again to have food at a restaurant,
and to bed at eight.”
* * * * *
“_June 16._--Two desperately hard days at Versailles and two at the
Louvre, looking over and collating. Certainly no place of residence need
be cheaper than Paris. Life seems to cost nothing at all, a week here
being equivalent to a day in London, or even at Rome. It is an oddly
lonely life, as, except for ten minutes, I have seen no one to speak to
since May 11: however, there would certainly have been no time for it.”
* * * * *
In July I was in London, and then at Buckhurst, in glorious summer
weather, to meet Lord and Lady Lathom.
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_August 13, 1886._--Two days ago Lady Ossington took me to Lady Evelyn
Campbell’s wedding with James Baillie Hamilton in Henry VII.’s Chapel.
They have married on his vocation, which played all the time of the
ceremony, and on which their future depends for the bread and butter of
life, at present supplied to them by America for looking after it. They
have also a camp, in which they propose to train boys for hardships in
the colonies, and the sweet little bride began her own hardships by
having to walk two miles to this, through the wet grass and fern of a
desolate moor, carrying in a basket the cold chicken and bread which her
sisters had put up for her supper.
“I have been reminded how James Baillie Hamilton was at Harrow at
Hayward’s house, which in my time used to be Harris’s, and to have then
the reputation of being haunted. He told Catherine Vaughan that one
night whilst he was there, Albert Grey, also a senior boy in the house,
rushed into his room wild with horror, and said that when he was in bed
he had seen by the moonlight a most terrible figure come in, a kind of
nondescript, and that as it approached a chill as of death came over
him. Eventually it had seemed to go into a corner of the room and
disappear there. Something was arranged for Albert Grey for that night,
and the friends never told at Harrow what had occurred. Years
afterwards, at his camp, Baillie Hamilton met a boy called Anderson, who
had been in Hayward’s house. He told how he and another boy slept in the
same room. One night he heard his companion in an agonised tone say,
‘Oh, _do_ light the candle: there is something most dreadful in the
room.’ He lighted it, and found his friend sitting on the edge of his
bed, trembling from head to foot. He said that the door had opened, and
a horrible nondescript figure had come in, when the most terrible
chill, as of death, had come over him. After a time, all seeming as
usual, the boys put out the light. They had hardly done so, when
Anderson himself saw the figure--the appalling figure, come towards him,
and the same deathly icy chill seized him. They lighted the candle
again, when the apparition vanished.
“One of the curates at Llandaff was going to the place where Miss
Hayward, sister of the Harrow Master, lived, and Catherine asked him to
inquire if she remembered the circumstance. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is
exactly what happened; and that room is never used now.’
“On the evening of the wedding-day I went to Chichester, where the
Bishop’s palace, venerable and grey, but buried in myrtles and
coronillas, and radiant with brilliant flowers, lies close under the
shadow of the beautiful cathedral spire. The Bishop (Durnford), at
eighty-seven, is the very type of a christian scholar, perfectly
charming in conversation, equally at home in classical and in French,
English, and Italian reminiscence and quotation, and touchingly filled
with a generous and kindly spirit to all he meets with. Circling around
him were various relations, a brother-in-law--a pleasant old clergyman
Mr. Keate, nieces, two sons, Dick and Walter, the latter the pleasantest
and frankest of young Eton masters, and the daughter, Miss Durnford, who
is mistress of the house, and whose active energy makes all right
wherever she goes, and very cheerily right too. The profuse family use
of adjectives and verbs, which they unearth for themselves, was very
entertaining. ‘We seem to be going to have a regular Belshazzar,’ said
Walter Durnford when something more than usual appeared for luncheon.
“There is much to interest in the palace, which has a charming early
English chapel and a grand old kitchen. The cathedral retains the human
interest of its old pavement and a few tombs, sadly mutilated or
tinkered up: one of a Lady Arundel is very fine. There are curious
paintings of Cadwallador and of Henry VIII. giving charters on one of
the walls, by a painter of Henry VIII.’s time, who also decorated the
ceiling of the very fine old dining-room in the palace. Round the town,
much of the old wall remains, making a pleasant walk; but the most
curious building is St. Mary’s Hospital, like a church, with a great
single nave divided at the sides by chapels, which form the little
two-roomed houses of ten old women, presented by the Bishop and custos,
who live there rent-free in great comfort, with firing, and twelve
shillings a week for their maintenance. At the end is the chapel, only
separated from the rest by an old oak screen.
“With the Bishop and his party I went to Midhurst, a most attractive old
town in lovely country, and we walked through an ancient wood above the
Rother to the grand ruins of Cowdray, full of recollections of the
Poyntz family, who, as its possessors, came in bitterly for the curse of
sacrilege. When Mr. Poyntz went out in a boat at Bognor with his two
sons, and the boat upset whilst Mrs. Poyntz was watching it from the
hotel-window, the boys clung to the tail of their father’s coat as he
held the side of the boat in the waves, and he--who could not swim--had
the agony of feeling one after the other leave go and sink, without
being able to help them. He himself was eventually saved by the boatmen.
In the church of Easebourne, which stands in the park, near the fine old
building called the Priory, is a touching tomb by Chantrey, erected to
this Mr. and Mrs. Poyntz by their three daughters--Ladies Clinton,
Exeter, and Spencer. As they were co-heiresses, Cowdray was obliged to
be sold, and was bought by the Egmonts.”
* * * * *
“_Highcliffe, August 25._--I arrived here for my usual happy summer week
with Tina, Lady Waterford, who has been a curious contrast to the lady
of the place, but in herself very pleasant. She described how Cromwell,
determined to take ‘the golden vale of Tipperary,’ said he would take it
‘by Hook or by Crook’--the two villages on either side the river--and
thence the proverb.
“There has been a bee-show on the lawn here, Mr. Bellairs and young Evan
Maberly going amongst the bees, taking them up, and treating them just
as they pleased; but it looked horrible when their hats were covered
with a crawling mass, and bees were hanging to nose and ears.
“Lady Jane Ellice says that at Harewood there is one of the most
splendid collections of china--quantities of it. Formerly it all used to
be kept in the gallery in which the family live, on bureaux, tables, &c.
One evening it was all left in its usual place, and the next morning the
whole collection--everything--quite unbroken, was found on the ground.
There was never the least explanation. The china has ever since been
kept in cases.”
* * * * *
“_Lychett Heath, Poole, August 30._--My visit at Highcliffe was a very
happy one. ‘We have not had a single quarrel, scarcely even a dispute,’
said Lady Waterford when I came away.
“This is the beautiful house of the Eustace Cecils. The modern house is
exquisitely placed amongst sandy, heathery hills, with a lovely view,
across a rich wooded foreground, of the various reaches and windings of
Poole harbour. I have had much pleasant talk with Lord Eustace, and like
him immensely. We had a delightful excursion to-day, taking the train to
Wool, and then driving in a car to Lulworth Cove, and walking up the
fine wild hills, with noble sea-views, behind it. Then we went on to
Lulworth Castle, stern and stately, quadrangular with round towers at
the corners, standing on a terraced base, with beautiful park and woods
around. We saw the pictures, a few good family portraits of the Welds,
and Charles X.’s room which he inhabited when in exile.
“Thomas Weld of Lulworth, who took orders after the death of his wife,
became a bishop, and finally (1830) a cardinal. As a layman he had been
perfectly devoted to hunting, and, on establishing himself at Rome, the
first thing he did was to procure a very nice horse and hunt vigorously.
The Pope (Pius VIII.) sent for him and said, ‘Cardinals must not hunt.’
So, for his health’s sake, Cardinal Weld took to a vehement course of
walking; but the Pope sent for him again and said, ‘Cardinals must not
walk’--adding, ‘If it is necessary for your health that you should
walk, there is a place outside the walls where cardinals do walk up and
down; you can go there.’ But Cardinal Weld died of it.
“We had tea with the Bond family and the Misses Weld of Lulworth at
Binden Abbey, a Cistercian ruin, of which little remains beyond
foundations near some very curious fish-ponds.”
* * * * *