no crowd, no difficulty. By my ticket I had to enter through the hall
and rooms beyond it--the most picturesque way. The terrace was already
full of people, but the space is so vast there never could be a crowd,
and the scene was beautiful, looking down upon the sunlit lawns, the
lake and fountain, and the thousands of gaily-dressed people--the
splendid uniforms and lustrous robes and sparkling jewels of the Indians
glistening amongst them. It was impossible to find any one one looked
for, but one came upon hundreds of unexpected friends. Very few young
men seemed to have been asked, but there were galaxies of pretty girls.
One ancient Indian chief in white, with a flowing beard and a robe of
cloth of gold over his shoulders, was told he might salute the Queen. He
said he must do it after his fashion, which was to wipe the dust from
her feet with his handkerchief, and then kiss it.
“The beloved Queen, though very hot and tired (she had been before to
revisit her birthplace at Kensington), looked very sweet and smiling,
and walked indefatigably from side to side of the long avenues of
people, shaking hands with different ladies. There was the usual
procession of princes and princesses, including the white-haired Duchess
of Mecklenbourg and the ever-pretty group of Hesse princesses. The
Princess Beatrice’s baby assisted at the party in her perambulator,
pushed by a nurse in white. A good deal of my time was taken up by the
Duchess of Cleveland insisting that she could have no refreshment but
lemonade, and that being quite a quarter of a mile off; but I could not
get it after all, through people ten deep in the refreshment tents. Some
of the guests were rowed by the Queen’s boatmen in their gorgeous
mediaeval costume upon the lake, with very pretty effect. The palace is
very handsome on the garden side.”
* * * * *
“_July 8, 1887._--I made rather friends at the Speaker’s with his eldest
boy, Willie Peel, and walked about with him on the terrace. He is in all
the first flush of people-seeing, and thinks everybody full of
originality; yet how few ever say more than something they have heard or
read long ago, and dug up out of some remote corner of their brain. He
is, however, delightful, and being evidently ambitious, will some day be
very distinguished, I should think.
“How often one wishes one could enter society again, with one’s past
conversation like a white page, that where one could not say good of any
one, one had always kept silence. I sympathise with General Gordon
saying that one reason why he never desired to enter social life was the
very great difficulty of knowing people and not discussing others.”
* * * * *
“_July 9._--At Lambeth garden-party I sat with ----, whose marriage, an
admirable one, was quelched by worldly motives on the other side, sadly,
long ago. She spoke of the married happiness of her brilliant and
popular namesake ‘Yes, life for _her_ is always delightful now; but
_I_--but I!’--‘Where do you live?’--‘I don’t live, I exist.’
“I sat at dinner by Lady C, a very singular religious ‘talker,’ who
plunged at once into--‘I trust you are interested in the good
work.’--‘What good work?’--‘Raising the classes,’ and so on, and so on,
endless well-meant nonsense, in very grand expressions, till I longed to
say to her, and did, in other words, what Madame de Sévigné said to some
one, ‘Thicken me your religion a little; it is evaporating altogether by
being subtilised.’ I tried to dwell upon the really higher life (for she
had talked of her own neglected education), of teaching herself first as
much as possible, that she might help herself to teach her young son. I
suppose that, for her, would be the higher life. How much, in this
generation, ‘religious people’ are apt to forget John Wyckliff’s motto,
‘He who liveth best, prayeth best.’”
* * * * *
“_Sunday, July 10._--Sat in the afternoon in the garden at Lowther
Lodge, seeing a long diorama of people drop in and have tea.
“Afterwards I ascended the great brick mansions close by to see Mrs.
Procter (Barry Cornwall’s widow), who is not the least aged in mind, and
apparently not in body. People thought she would be broken by her
daughter’s death; but constitutions, especially of the old, seldom take
any notice of heart-blows, though there is something touching in the way
she speaks of her lost daughters as ‘my Edith,’ ‘my Adelaide.’ People
call her ‘Our Lady of Bitterness,’ but her words have no touch of
sharpness. No one is more agreeable still: no one has more boundless
conversational powers: indeed, she often says of herself that ‘talking
is meat, drink, and clothing’ to her. Her sense of humour is exquisite;
she never speaks bad grammar herself, so she can never tolerate it in
others. She wears a front of _blonde cendré_, and boldly speaks of it
as a wig. Mr. Browning came in, and they were most amusing together. ‘My
wife thought you would not perhaps like to meet Mr. Labouchere, Mrs.
Procter?’ said Mr. Thompson of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, rather
interrogatively. ‘Your wife was quite right: had I found, on coming to
dine with you, that Mr. Labouchere was expected, I should have been
compelled to ask you at once to call me a cab.’--‘Ah! Labby,
Labby!--Hie, cabby, cabby!!’ cried Mr. Browning in the quaintest
way.[456] Mr. Browning goes to see Mrs. Procter every Sunday afternoon,
giving up all else for it.
“Mrs. Procter has the almost lost art of conversation in the fullest
degree. Lord Houghton recollects how she was asked to meet Macaulay at
one of Rogers’ breakfasts. Afterwards she said to Rogers, ‘But where was
Macaulay?’--‘Why, he sat opposite to you!’--‘Was _that_ him? Why, I
always heard he was such a tremendous talker.’--‘So he is,’ said Rogers;
‘but you see I talked so much myself, I only left one opening, and that
_you_ took.’”
* * * * *
“_July 11._--Dined with the Seymour Hughes’s, where General Higginson
was full of indignation about the mismanagement of royal
invitations--that it was impossible for the Lord Chamberlain to do it
alone, but that he might have a committee--three or four men of the
Kenneth Howard kind--who would see that the right people were asked. The
Prince of Wales had said to one lady, ‘I did not see you at the
garden-party,’ and she had answered, ‘No, I was not asked; but my
dressmaker was.’”
* * * * *
“_July 15._--Dined with Mrs. Portman--a very large party. She told me
that, close to her country-house, a labourer had watched some boys
bathing, and thought how delightful was the way in which they dived,
floated, &c., and, though he could not swim, he determined that, on the
very first chance, he would enjoy the same amusement. Soon after, he was
sent to cut rushes with two other men. When his work was finished, he
remembered his wish, and did not even wait to undress, but, pulling off
his boots, jumped into the water with his clothes on. Soon he got into
a hole and began to sink. He called for help, and another of the men
jumped in, and was sucked into the hole also, and so the third. Mr.
Fitzhardinge Portman came up when it was all over, and said, ‘I will
ride on and break it to Mrs. W.,’ the wife of one of the men. As he
reached the cottage, Mrs. W. came out to meet him and said, ‘I know what
you have come to tell me, sir. Poor W. is dead.’--‘How can you know
it?’--‘Why, sir, just now my little girl came running in all awestruck,
and said that she had met a figure all in white in the wood-path down
which she always ran to meet her father; and then I knew it was a
warning.’
“There was a beautiful ball at Lowther Lodge--the Princess Christian
there and the garden illuminated, and looking, in that dress, as big as
the Green Park. I sat out with Lady Strathmore, full of all the
discomforts of a great inheritance--such endless details to be filled
up: such endless new responsibilities; and just what seems the wrong
things always left away.
“I heard such a charming story of little Jane Smith the other day. Her
nurse told her to say her prayers. She wouldn’t; she said God wouldn’t
expect her to. ‘But He always expects it,’ said the nurse. ‘No, He
doesn’t,’ replied little Jane, ‘for I told Him the other day I couldn’t
say them, I was so sleepy, and He said, ‘Don’t mention it, _Miss
Smith_.’”
* * * * *
“_July 15._--Rain on St. Swithin’s Day. Lady Lyndhurst says, ‘Do you
know that he was three times Lord Chancellor of England, and that the
only man who has filled that office three times since was my lord.’
“Went to see Mrs. Ross,[457] a breeze from Castagnuolo in London. She
was full of the enchantment of a visit to Lacaita at Leucaspide, and of
a tour she had made to Otranto; to Lecce, where all the professors had
met to receive ‘una donna molta istruita’ at the museum, where she had
not known anything whatever of the subjects they discoursed upon, but,
by judicious silence and an occasional ‘si,’ had now the highest
opinions; to Manfredonia, where the inn is now kept by one Don Michele,
to whom the would-be sojourners have to be formally presented, when he
accepts or rejects them, with ‘mi piace’ or ‘non mi piace.’ On one of
these excursions she heard the sound of an instrument hitherto unknown
to her from a hollow below the road, and going down, found a boy playing
on a long pipe of birch-bark. ‘Cosa è questo?’--‘Il fischio della
primavera;’ and she bought it for ten centimes--the sweetest of music
and of instruments; but it only lasts a week, and can only be obtained
with the spring.
“Afterwards I sat with Miss Seymour, who talked of the political state
of France, and of Kisseloff saying, ‘Ils se croient toujours malades
quand ils n’ont pas la fièvre.’
“Then to Mrs. Liddell (of Christ-Church). Princess Christian had just
been there for a committee for women’s work. Mrs. Liddell said she went
about immensely amongst the poor of Windsor, and had a district. Once,
when she went for a month to Berlin, she said to one of her poor women
that she was going away, but that she would be well looked after, as she
had got some one to take her place. ‘Yes, but it will not be the same to
me; for I shall have no one to tell my troubles to.’
“Mrs. Liddell had some capital oil-portraits. She asked who I thought
they were by. I supposed by young Richmond. ‘No; by my daughter
Violet.’”
* * * * *
“_July 16._--Luncheon with Lady Knightley and then to Osterley--a soft
warm day; the flowers, from the long drought, quite magnificent under
the dark cedars by the lake.
‘Look how the roses
Hold up their noses,’
said old Lord Ebury, with whom I walked about, and who begged Miss
Grosvenor not to leave him till she had found him an _innamorata_; which
she eventually did in the person of Lady Balfour of Burleigh, very
pretty in her attentions to the old man. Then the Duchess of
Mecklenbourg came, and also sat under the trees. Lady Wynford brought
Mr. Graham Vivian and me home, and I went to a Cinderella ball at Lady
Guinness’s--quite splendid; and though it began at ten and ended at
twelve, very crowded and successful, showing that the introduction of an
earlier hour for balls would be perfectly easy.”
* * * * *
“_July 17._--Met Mr. Reeve, the editor of the _Quarterly_. Mr. Tedder
reminded me of Mark Pattison’s speaking (in the _Academy_) of ‘those old
three-deckers--the _Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_; the latter of which
sets to sea under the guidance, apparently, of the Ancient Mariner.’
“I had luncheon yesterday with Mrs. Cyril Flower, the most amusingly
decided of women, and met young Lady Wenlock, pining to return to India,
where she enjoyed so much the languid life, or rather, as she called it,
the time for thought which the heat gave her.
“A most pleasant dinner at Charlie Balfour’s, meeting a group of real
friends--Guy Sebright and his nice wife, Basil Levett and his sweet Lady
Margaret, and Sir John Maxwell, who is most simple, clever, and
pleasant,--delightful to be with. Minnie Balfour was full of Mrs.
Slingsby, whose curious old house in Yorkshire is so strangely haunted.
One hot night, very late, when her husband was away, Mrs. Slingsby sat
out on the terrace, and below her, in the park, saw the most brilliant
light apparently burning on the grass. She went down to it, reached it,
and it disappeared. Exactly that day year, she watched for it and saw it
again. That time she went behind it, and saw it between herself and the
house.
“Lady Heathcote Amaury, whom I took down to dinner, said, ‘You know
young Lady Onslow was a daughter of Lord Gardner. She told me that her
father rented a place called Chilton from Colonel ----. When he took it,
Colonel ---- said, “As you are taking the place for some time, I think
perhaps it is my duty to tell you that the state bedroom is haunted. A
young ancestor of mine, dressed in a blue coat and breeches, with a
rose in his button-hole, comes in, arranges his hair at the mirror,
looks at the occupant of the room, throws up the window, and vanishes
through it. He does nobody any harm, and is excessively
pleasant-looking, still I ought not to let you take the place without
telling you.”
“‘Lord Gardner said he did not care a bit; but the state bedroom had
very remarkable furniture,--a magnificent bed with curtains looped up by
gilt cherubs, and, after Lady Gardner heard the story, she got leave to
change the furniture, and the old hangings were carefully put away, and
modern furniture used instead.
“‘Soon after some cousins of Lord Gardner, two ladies belonging to the
elder branch of the family, came from Scotland to stay, and were put
into that room. When they came down next morning, Lord Gardner asked the
elder if she had rested well after her journey. She answered, “Yes,
indeed, and I have had the most delightful dream: I dreamt that the room
I was in was furnished in the most beautiful way, with gilt cupids,
hangings, &c.,--and really what I dreamt was so charming that I longed
for you some time to be able to furnish the room just in that way. And
then--I seemed to be awake, but of course I could not have been--I saw a
young man of most beautiful countenance come into the room, dressed in a
blue coat, &c., which was quite in keeping with the room, and he went up
to the glass and arranged his hair, then he looked at me with a charming
expression upon his face, but just when he seemed going to speak, and I
was longing to know what he would say, he threw open the window, and
disappeared through it.”
“‘Lady Onslow said, “You may imagine the breathless interest with which
we listened.”’
* * * * *
“_July 17._--Supper at the Miss Hollands’. Met Mr. Turner, rather a
remarkable American. The sight of white roses made him say, ‘A white
rose comes home to me, Miss Holland, and I will tell you why. Many years
ago, in Philadelphia, I met a party of cousins, and we all spent the
evening together. A young cousin of mine--very pretty--was there, who
was lately married, and I was very glad to see her, and we talked much
together--so much together all evening that it was a matter of
comment--of foolish comment. When we parted, she gave me a white rose,
and she said, “You must keep that rose as long as we live.” I took the
rose home and pressed it. From time to time I heard from her afterwards,
but I never saw her, and I forgot the rose. Long afterwards I was in
Philadelphia again, and in the evening, opening a book, something fell
out on the floor: it was the white rose. I felt it an omen, and I said
to myself, “It is long since I heard of her; something has happened. I
will just go round to Uncle Joe’s and inquire.” I went, and found that
Uncle Joe knew nothing; but whilst I was there the news arrived that she
was dead.
“‘The white rose, when it fell, had told me that already.
“‘I believe in such things. I possess a looking-glass that I have long
had in my keeping. One day, there seemed no reason why, I saw it slide
from the table: it fell. The corner was broken off. I had it mended.
Almost immediately a cable was brought in announcing the death of a near
relation. Some time after it fell again. The other corner was broken
off. I said, “What is going to happen now?” The next day I heard of the
deaths of three intimate friends. So I said, “It will never do to go on
like this,” and I had the glass sawn down, and so framed and padded with
india-rubber at the back, that, if it fell, it was scarcely possible it
could be broken. Well, that--stopped it.’
“Mr. Turner gave a very curious account of the early state of many
American settlements--that the rivers or any running stream generally
marked the track for civilisation. It was easier to make a path along
them than anywhere else; a road followed, eventually a railway. Along
one of these tracks, many years ago, came annually a venerable old man.
People expected him--watched for his coming. He always came from the
east, and he was never observed to return: yet he came again from the
east in the following year. He was a kind of primitive missionary,
bringing Bibles, which he cut up, leaving parts in the different houses
he passed. Thus he would leave the Gospel of St. John one year, and the
next would call for it, and leave the Acts in its place. He had a
pocket-full of apple-seed, and wherever he stopped in the middle of the
day, he made a hole with his stick, and dropped one of his seeds into
it. People called him ‘Old John Apple-seed.’ Mr. Turner had seen many
fine apple-trees along the banks of streams, of which it was remembered
that they were planted by old John Apple-seed.
“Mr. Turner described how primitive many of the early lines of railway
were, made at the rate of three miles a week. At Harrisburg several of
these lines met, and it was a very dangerous point. A poor half-witted
man found his vocation in life by joining trains at this point, and
running in front screaming, ‘The engine is coming: the engine is
coming.’ And thus he would run for miles, keeping just in front of the
train, and if he saw a child, would seize it and throw it out of the
way, and would often seize a woman by the shoulder, and would almost
lift her off the line; but at last, after many years, whilst saving
another, he was killed himself.”
* * * * *
“_July 18._--A party at Lady Bantry’s, where Lady Helen Stewart recited
a poem much like the above story. Dined with the Grants. Old Lady
Frances Higginson[458] frightened a mincing curate out of his life who
said to her, ‘Will you _take_ some potatoes?’ by saying in her most
abrupt way, ‘God bless my soul, aren’t you going to _give_ me some?’”
* * * * *
“_July 20._--At luncheon at the Higginsons’, I met the Storys from Rome,
very happy in London, but ‘it is surely a bad arrangement of Nature,’ he
said, ‘that one should have so many coats and only one body. I should
like to have several--a body to work with; and a young smart body to go
into society with; and the old body, which always sleeps so well, to go
to bed with.’
“At luncheon at Lady Airlie’s I met Henry Cowper,[459] Mr. Morley, Lady
Tweeddale, and Miss Betty Ponsonby. Henry Cowper talked of the
friendship between Bright and Tuke. They had always been intimate. Then
they loved the same woman. In his great friendship Tuke gave way, and
the lady became the first Mrs. John Bright. Afterwards they were greater
friends, and saw more of each other than ever: Bright would do anything
for Tuke. But the conversation was chiefly about Gladstone, giving
instances of his marvellous personal charm--of his way of telling
things, bearing out Goethe’s words--
‘Märchen! doch so wunderbar,
Dichterkünster machen’s wahr.’
“Tea with Mrs. Ford--always interesting. She talked much of Dr. Morell
Mackenzie--well known to her. When he arrived at Berlin, he found six
great doctors waiting for him at the palace. They took him to a room
filled with knives, &c. ‘What are these for?’--‘For your choice in
operating upon the Crown Prince.’--‘But I can only operate upon him in
one way, that is my own;’ and he explained it. Four of the doctors
agreed with what he said, two violently opposed it. He was taken at once
to Bismarck, who said, ‘Do not consult me: ask me as many questions as
you like about _la haute politique_, but about this I can say nothing.’
Then he was taken to the Emperor, to whom he explained his views. The
Emperor listened to all, and then only said quietly--turning to those
who were with him--‘Let the Englishman act.’ He then went at once to the
Crown Prince. He performed the operation with his own forceps, steeped
in cocotine, which deadens, absolutely paralyses the throat, and seizing
the wart, dragged--not cut--it out. It seemed like a terrible
responsibility for England, as if the life of the Crown Prince was in
its hands.
“Mr. Browning described how he had been asked to dinner by two elderly
ladies--sisters. He did not know them, but it was very kind of them to
ask him, and he went. He met a very singular party at their
house--Gladstone, Mrs. Thistlethwayte, and others. Going down to dinner,
the lady who fell to his share suddenly said to him, ‘You are a poet,
aren’t you?’--‘Well, people are sometimes kind enough to say that I
am.’--‘Oh, don’t mind my having mentioned it: you know _Lord Byron was a
poet_!’
“Browning is unlike Tennyson; he does not write from inspiration, but by
power of work. He says he sets himself a certain number of lines to
write in a day, and he writes them. Sometimes he says, ‘To-morrow
morning I will write a sonnet; and he writes it. Nevertheless he is
always greater in aspiration than achievement. Mr. Carlyle could not
bear his poems. ‘What did the fellow mean by leaving that cart-load of
stones at my door?’ he said to Alfred Tennyson when Browning left one of
his poems there.
“London is now always asking itself ‘What is the cause of this long
drought?’--‘Because we have had fifty years’ rain (reign).’
“Went to the Halifax’s in the evening to meet the Indian princes, and
then to Lady Lamington’s party, made exceedingly pretty by its arcaded
garden on the roof.”
* * * * *
“_Langleybury, August 2._--I am staying with Harry Loyd, who at
twenty-six is certainly as near perfection as any one can possibly be in
every relation of life--son, brother, friend, landlord, county magnate.
His mother and four sisters live with him, and their hospitalities are
boundless.”
* * * * *
“_August 28._--Little Holmhurst has been full of summer guests--gentle
Lady Donoughmore and Lady Margaret Hamilton, Lady Airlie and Lady
Griselda Ogilvie, Basil Levett and his Lady Margaret, Lady Sherborne,
and lastly George Jolliffe and Lady Bloomfield, the latter a constant
ripple of interesting anecdote.”
* * * * *
“_Tatton Park, Sept. 2, 1887._--The large party in this large pleasant
hospitable house has included the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs.
Benson, with their daughter--the ‘modest philosopher,’ as Miss Egerton
aptly calls her. We have been to Manchester to see the exhibition of all
the works of artists of Victoria’s reign--a very fine collection, from
the vapid works of Etty and the hard commonplaceness of the earlier
Landseers to the noble ‘Christ or Diana’ of Long, which struck most of
us as the grandest and most expressive work amongst such multitudes.
There is a curious contrast between the last and this Lady Egerton, who
cannot enjoy life enough herself, or contribute enough to making it
enjoyable for others.
[Illustration: THE GARDEN, HOLMHURST.]
“We have just been across the park to the old Hall, where a fine timber
roof remains, very richly carved; and we have driven to Tabley and its
old isleted hall in the lake, so mysteriously beautiful, which the
family abandoned two hundred and fifty years ago, leaving all its
contents in the deserted house, so that you still see the open spinnet
with the mouldering keys, the lace half worked on the cushion, the
flax half spun on the distaff in the little low rooms, with their carved
furniture and fireplaces, opening, in two stories, around the great
timbered hall.
[Illustration: THE RAVENNA PINE, HOLMHURST.]