conversation, which never stops for an instant. I like also Lord and
Lady Rayleigh: he is learned, but perfectly simple, and she, _née_
Balfour, is thoroughly pleasant and unsophisticated. Miss Mary Egerton,
very handsome, with her grey hair and youthful animated countenance, is
a delightful addition to the party. But the great, the real pleasure to
me, has been finding Derek Keppel (Lord Bury’s second son and
brother-in-law of the only daughter of the house) almost domesticated
here: I like him so very much, certainly better than any one I know in
the same degree. It is Sunday, and we have been to the new church at
Aston, built by Lord and Lady Egerton without an architect, and so
pleasant to look upon inside that an old man said, ‘Why, sir, one can be
cheerful in it, even when one is saying one’s prayers.’”
* * * * *
“_Woodlands, Glassbury, Sept. 7._--I came here through the lovely Church
Stretton country, stopping at picturesque Shrewsbury on the way to stay
with the Bishop of Lichfield and Augusta. Yesterday we went by rail
through the beautiful but drippingly wet valleys to visit the Venables
near Builth. Our host was the well-known and severe critic in the
_Saturday_--a pleasant old man to visitors, but evidently awful to the
younger members of his family.
“Augusta had many interesting reminiscences of Lord Beaconsfield. One
day, at luncheon, she offered him the mustard. ‘I never take mustard,’
he replied in his sepulchral voice. ‘Oh, don’t you?’ she said airily.
‘No,’ he continued in solemnest tones. ‘There are three things I have
never used: I have never touched mustard; I have never had a watch; and
I have never made use of an umbrella.’--‘Well,’ said Augusta, ‘I can
understand the mustard--that is a mere matter of taste; but surely going
without the other things must have been sometimes rather
inconvenient.’--‘And why should I want them?’ continued Disraeli more
sepulchrally than ever. ‘I live under the shadow of Big Ben, and there
is a clock in every room of the House of Commons, so that I cannot
possibly require a watch; and as I always go about in a close carriage,
I can never want an umbrella.’ Disraeli was always full of these small
affectations.”
* * * * *
“_Woodlands, Sept. 8._--This is a charming visit, and the place is
delightful--close to the glistening Wye, with green hills--‘mountains’
in Welsh--folding around, exquisite in the soft haze of early morning.
“Augusta has been giving an interesting account of Champlatreux in
France, belonging to the Duc d’Ayen, a representative of the De Noailles
family. In the château is preserved the precious volume of the
‘Imitation of Christ,’ which the young Duchesse de Noailles used in the
prison of the Luxembourg, where she devoted herself to keeping up the
courage of her mother-in-law and daughter. When the three generations of
the House of Noailles were summoned together to the scaffold, the
Duchesse was reading aloud to her fellow-prisoners from the chapter of
the ‘Chemin de la Croix.’ She turned down the page at that point and
gave the book to one of her companions in prison, begging her, if she
ever escaped, to convey it, as a memorial, to the De Noailles family.”
* * * * *
“_Sept. 10._--Two pleasant days with Graham Loyd in his charming cottage
at Sketty near Swansea, and a great cementing of friendship with him.
The first day he took me by a terrible path overhanging an unprotected
chasm opposite the Mumbles. All the population of Swansea seem to pour
out to drink in the neighbourhood of the Mumbles. ‘You want to close the
public-houses at Swansea, that men may get drunk at the Mumbles,’ said
Judge Bradwin, in opposing the Sunday-closing movement. At the same time
he said that he did not see any more reason why men should call beer a
‘pernicious liquor’ than that they should call water a ‘drowning fluid.’
“We have been to luncheon at Clyne, where Graham Vivian has an unkempt
but beautiful place, full of fine Italian treasures, and have dined at
Singleton with Lady Hussey Vivian.[460] Besides this, we have had a
wonderful drive, by heath, sandhill, and precipice, through the strange
district of Gower, where all the houses are whitewashed, and where there
are constant wrecks on the rock-girt coast, though a great bell tolls
eerily through the night on a sandbank, with the waves for its ringers.”
* * * * *
“_Sept. 12._--Two days at the Deanery at Llandaff, where family
furniture and pictures--familiar from Alderley, Norwich, Canterbury,
Oxford days--give a homelike aspect.
“Kate said that when she was in Madeira last year, a Mr. Husband, a
dentist from Hull, was staying in the same hotel. She had heard that he
had seen a ghost there, and she asked him about it. It was only on being
very much pressed that he told how that one night, when he was in his
bed in the hotel, a young man in lawn-tennis dress came in, stood at the
foot of the bed, and pointed with his finger at the pillow. Mr. H. was
not frightened, only annoyed, and asked the young man what he wanted. He
did not speak, and continued to point at the pillow. At last Mr. Husband
was so irritated that he said, ‘Well, if you will neither speak nor go
away, take that,’ and dealt him a blow, but his hand only seemed to sink
into cold icy vapour, and the apparition vanished.
“Next day Mr. Husband told the landlord of the hotel what had happened,
when he said, ‘Your story is very extraordinary, because a young man,
who was staying here for some time, and was treated by a doctor for a
very slight ailment, died in that bed under very suspicious
circumstances; and, as long as he was about, that young man was never
seen out of lawn-tennis dress.’
“Afterwards Mr. Husband heard of that young Mr. Hyndeman from other
people in Madeira. They remembered him perfectly. He was very silent and
shunned all society, and he was never out of lawn-tennis dress.”
* * * * *
“_Sept. 16._--A happy visit at cheerful merry Hardwick, which unites
the charms of an interesting house, of exquisite gardens, and most
varied and amusing society. There is a curious picture there of
Elizabeth Drury reclining on her side with her hand under her head,
which perhaps led to the story that she died of a box on the ear. She
was a great friend of Wotton and of Donne, who wrote verses to her, and
also her epitaph.”
* * * * *
“_Sept. 19._--A visit to the Ordes at Hopton, in the flat marshy country
near Yarmouth--a happy united family, with a very beautiful eldest
daughter, Evelyn. Hopton village is the Blunderstone of ‘David
Copperfield.’ Charlie Orde took me to Caister, the grandest fragment of
a castle I ever saw--so very lofty a tower rising abruptly from the edge
of a very wide moat. On Sunday we saw the great low-lying lake of
Flitton, which belongs to one of the Buxtons.”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Sept. 22._--On Monday I went to Sculthorpe, near Fakenham, where I saw
the site of the old manor-house, part of the property which came to
Bishop Hare through his marriage with Mary-Margaret Alston. It has the
odd name of Hos Tendis. Only the foundation-walls exist now, with
remains of the moat, overhung with old apple-trees. The church is a very
fine one, and the existing manor-house, Cranmer, is an exceedingly
handsome, pleasant house inside. Sir Laurence Jones, who lives there,
had brought out quantities of old Hare and Alston deeds to show me: it
was odd to see them there, but they had been sold with the property.
“My kind host, the Rector, Herbert Jones, the squire’s uncle, was the
picture of old-fashioned courtesy. His wife, a Gurney, sister of Mrs.
Orde at Hopton, is well known for her archaeological writings. They took
me, with their niece Miss Laura Troubridge and her betrothed, Adrian
Hope, to the beautiful old brick and terra-cotta house of Wolterton,
with a very fine gateway.
“Yesterday we went to Houghton, in a well-timbered park--a house full of
stately magnificence. The present Lord Cholmondeley has sold many of its
treasures, but, though much has been taken away, it is especially
interesting because nothing has been added since the time of Sir Robert
Walpole. George, Lord Walpole, destroyed the grand staircase of the
house, so that you now have to enter through the basement, instead of in
state by the grand hall on the first floor, where Sir Robert and his
companions used to carouse, and where the chairs which they used still
remain, with the rings in the ceiling which supported the scales for
weighing deer. The pictures are interesting--Sir Robert over and over
again, with his beloved first wife, Catherine Shorter, and his inferior
second wife Maria Skerret; his daughter and heiress, who brought the
place to the Cholmondeleys; and his sister Dorothy, who still walks as a
ghost at Rainham, where she was the wife of Lord Townshend, who is said
to have walled her up in a spot where bones have been found, supposed to
be hers.
“In one of the drawing-rooms is a glorious picture of the Duchess of
Ancaster, who was sent to bring Princess Charlotte of
Mecklenbourg-Strelitz to England when she came to marry George III.
‘Pug, pug, pug!’ cried the people when they saw her appearance as she
was entering London. ‘Vat is dat they do say--poog?’ said the Princess,
‘vat means poog?’--‘Oh, that means, God bless your Majesty,’ promptly
replied the Duchess, without the slightest hesitation. The pictures
which are not portraits are wretched, chiefly bad copies.
“In the grounds is the little garden of Catherine, Lady Walpole, which
in her time was surrounded by a yew hedge. Now the yews have grown into
tall trees and are interweaving overhead above the little grassy circle.
“I came last night to the Locker-Lampsons at Cromer, finding Julia, Lady
Jersey, Brandling, Lady Kathleen Bligh, and Rollo Russell here. To-day
we have been to Blickling, where we found Lady Lothian and Lady Pembroke
walking in the radiantly beautiful garden of the grand old house. Lady
Lothian showed it all delightfully--the staircase, with its carved
figures on the banisters; the tapestried rooms; the long library with a
very rich ceiling, the room itself in exquisite harmony with its ranges
of wonderful old books. At tea in the dining-room Baroness Coutts
appeared, and many other unexpected persons dropped in.”
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Salisbury, Sept. 28._--A very delightful visit to Canon Douglas
Gordon[461] and Lady Ellen, full of old-fashioned peculiarities and
brimming over with real excellence. One son, George, is at home, a
successful young architect, and two daughters, of whom the eldest is a
good artist. The Canon is interesting in his recollections--amongst many
others, of the Queen Dowager, whom, as Rector of Stanmore, he saw
constantly; and a portrait of her with the last words she ever wrote
beneath it--her gift to him--hangs over the drawing-room chimney-piece.
Near it is a very old oil-picture of Balmoral, interesting because the
sight of that picture first decided the Queen to buy the place, which
she had not then visited: it also shows how exactly her large modern
house follows the main lines of the old Scotch castle.
“Canon Gordon says that instantly after the Queen Dowager’s death, when
they were all in tears, and all the servants were waiting in the hall
for the last news of their mistress, they were startled by a tremendous
knocking at the door and a trumpet blowing, and three men entered with
the announcement, ‘We are the royal embalmers, and we are come to
perform our duty!’ They had actually been waiting outside--waiting for
the first announcement of the death. In this case, however, they were
sent away, as Queen Adelaide had left especial orders that her body was
not to be embalmed.
“In the Canonry garden here is a fine mulberry-tree. The _only_ fact
remembered about the old Canon who planted it is that whilst it was
being placed in the ground the cathedral bell rang for service, and the
gardener said, ‘You’ll be late for church, sir: the bell is ringing.’ To
which the Canon rejoined, ‘Church be d--d; but I’ll see this mulberry
planted.’ A lesson to be careful of what one says.
“Yesterday I went to Wilton in the pony-carriage with Miss Gordon, who
left me there. Lady Pembroke[462] soon came in in her riding-habit, and
took me at once through the beautiful brilliant gardens ending in the
old building still called ‘Holbein’s Porch,’ though it is now far away
from the house to which it once belonged. Then we walked on the sunny
lawns swept by the massy branches of grand old cedars and intersected by
three rivers, over one of which is a beautiful Palladian bridge like
that at Prior Park.
“Somehow Lady Pembroke is a person with whom one begins to talk
intimately very soon, and her own conversation is most original and
delightful. But she spoke much of her wish that religion was ‘not so
very odd,’--of her intense craving to know something, _anything_
tangible, about a future state. She had been seeing the Roman Mr. Story
lately, who has been much amongst spiritualists, had heard speaking
spirits, and had the very utmost faith in them. The spirits all
confirmed faith in a future state. Once a bad spirit came; its language
was perfectly horrible: in life it had been a pirate!
“Returning to the house, we saw the Vandykes, which are most glorious.
There is a very curious contemporary picture of the coronation of
Richard II. in the presence of his patron saints and of the heavenly
host. Lady Pembroke talked on and on, and when I got up to go, kept me:
but it was most interesting, and I would willingly have listened for
many hours more. Eventually she went with me to the end of the grounds,
and let me out at a postern-gate in the wall.
“To-day we have been to tea with the Pigott family, who live in George
Herbert’s rectory (which he built) at Bemerton. It is a lovely spot,
with the little church (vulgarised inside by glazed tiles), beneath the
altar of which he is believed to rest. The garden reaches to the clear
rushing Madder, full of trout and grayling, and has a beautiful view of
the cathedral across the water-meadows. We saw the register with the
notice of the burial of ‘Mr. George Herbert, Esquire, parson of this
place,’[463] and his old study with its very thick walls: but he was
only at Bemerton two years, leading a life ‘little less than sainted,
though not exempt from passion and choler,’ as his brother, Lord Herbert
of Cherbury, tells us in his memoirs. Americans come in crowds to see
the place, and can often repeat half his poems. Mr. Pigott asked one of
them to spend the night there, and in the morning inquired how he had
slept. ‘Sleep,’ he said, ‘do you suppose I could sleep in George
Herbert’s house? Why, I sat up all night thinking of him.’”[464]
* * * * *
“_Oct. 2._--Again at Highcliffe with Lady Waterford, whose conversation
is as charming as ever.
‘And thy eternal summer shall not fade,’
is a line of Shakspeare which seems ever to apply to her. Here are some
fragments from her lips:--
“‘That is like the priest who, when he was remonstrated with for eating
meat on Friday, said, “All flesh is grass.”
“‘When I was young, I delighted in Tittenhanger.[465] We used to post
down from London--a most delightful drive then. I thought it all
charming--the old house, and a wood with bluebells, and the Colne, a
mere dull sluggish stream, I suppose, but it had frogs and bulrushes,
and I found it enchanting. A few years ago I thought I would post down
to Tittenhanger in the old way, but it was a street all the way to
Barnet, and when the people saw the white horses and postillion in blue,
they came crowding round; for, though it was only my little maid
Boardman and me, they thought, “Now we shall see them: now we shall see
the newly-married pair.”
“The Duc d’Aumale is married. He married Mademoiselle Clinchamps, who
was lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Salerno, the Duchesse d’Aumale’s
mother. She does the honours of his house, but it is a sort of
morganatic marriage.... Madame Adelaide was married too to one of the
generals.... I remember the Aumales riding through the green avenues
near Ossington; Mary Boyle was with them. She was a most excellent
horsewoman, but a great gust of wind came, and the whole edifice of her
chignon was blown off before she could stop it. The little Prince de
Condé was very young then, and he was riding with her. He picked it up
and said, “I will keep it in my pocket, and then, when we reach
Thoresby, you can go away quietly and get it put on;” and so she did.
That young Condé used to say, “I am not _le grand Condé_; I am _le petit
Condé_.” ... Madame de Genlis used to write to Louis Philippe--“Sire et
cher enfant.”
[Illustration: THE MANOR WALK, HOLMHURST.]
“‘That Lord Shrewsbury[466] you were speaking of received Henri V. at
Alton Towers--received him as king of France, and dressed up all the
people of the different lodges to represent the different nations of
Europe giving him welcome. It was he who made the beautiful gardens.
There is a bust of him there, and inscribed beneath it--“He made the
desert to smile.” “And I don’t wonder at it,” said Lady Marian (Alford)
when she saw the bust: he was so comically hideous.’”
* * * * *
Whilst I was away on my visits, I had left my dear old cousin Charlotte
Leycester provided with companions at Holmhurst during the annual summer
visit of several months, which had never failed since my mother’s death.
I felt that thus my mother’s home, thus her own especial room, were
fulfilling what she would most have wished for them. And (though, unlike
my gentle mother, Calvinistic, vehement, with a habit of constantly
“improving the occasion,” and utterly intolerant still of all that did
not agree with her in religious matters), the beloved and beautiful old
cousin, at nearly ninety, was this year more than ever occupied by plans
and thoughts for the good of all around her, more full of spiritual
meditation herself, lifting her own heart and mind into celestial
dwelling-places. For her truly one might say, “The poetry of earth is
never dead,” and I often found that I knew little of the natural charms
of my own little home till she had shown them. “Speak to the earth and
it shall teach thee” is a verse of Job for which she had a constant
application, and the shrubs and flowers--at Holmhurst always planted in
the same places--were intimate and familiar friends to her--
“Still within this life,
Though lifted o’er its strife.”[467]
Sunday was always her great delight--a Sunday to be dealt with as John
Knox would have used it, and a church service freed from anything of
ritual, but with an extempore preacher if possible. She felt, “I always
like my victuals hot when I can get them,” as an old woman said in
reference to her preacher. Latterly, however, Charlotte Leycester was
scarcely able to hear sermons, though, as she wrote to me during my last
absence,--“I always _enjoy_ the sermon, though I do not hear it; for, as
our old friend George Herbert says, ‘God takes a text, and preaches
patience,’ and I can generally catch all texts quoted, which helps me to
follow the drift, like finding one stone after another in crossing a
current.”
[Illustration: ROSNY.][468]
When turned to her reminiscences of the past, her conversation was often
very interesting. I remember her telling me this summer of her visit to
Paris in 1827, and going to the Royal Chapel, into which came the king,
Louis XVIII., and the Duchess d’Angoulême with full evening dress in the
morning and feathers on her head. When the king entered, a great picture
of our Lord hung opposite where he was to sit, to which the master of
the ceremonies seemed to introduce him--“Le roi.” “At Rosny, a beautiful
old château with chestnut avenues, to which we drove out one October
evening after dining at Mantes, we saw the Duchesse de Berri. Most
amusing the travelling then was, with the postillions in blue and in
great jack-boots, into which they had to be lifted, with the blowing of
their horns at every village we passed through.”
* * * * *
A few days after I reached home, two more volumes of mine were
published, “Paris” and “Days near Paris.” They had been the engrossing
work of the last two years. My hourly thought had been for them, and I
had taken all the pains I could with them. I knew their faults, and know
them still; but all the same I am conscious, and I am sure it is not
conceit, that no better general books on those subjects have ever been
written,--certainly in French there is nothing of the kind. I suppose it
is one of the penalties of a lonely life, of having no near belongings,
that it seemed--perhaps a little bathos as regarded the subjects which
had filled one’s life--that no one spoke of them; that day after day
passed on, and no one ever mentioned their existence. And then came a
Review--a leading article indeed--in the _Athenæum_, not of mere abuse
of the books, though no words were strong enough for that, but of such
bitter personal malignity against myself, as gave one the shuddering
conviction that one must indeed have an enemy as virulent as he was
unscrupulous. “Turn author,” says Gray, “and straightway you expose
yourself to pit, boxes, and gallery: any coxcomb in the world may come
in and hiss if he pleases; ay, and what is almost as bad, clap too, and
you cannot hinder him.” Most of the Reviews of my books have been
unfavourable, but the books have always contrived to outlive them; and
generally, when they have been found fault with, I have felt almost
grateful for such lessons of humility, and have longed to say with
Goethe, “Pray continue to make me acquainted with my own work.” Even
honest reviewers, however, seldom read beyond the first chapter of a
book; _that_ they usually read, and occasionally criticise; but even
then the tendency to save themselves trouble generally causes a great
deal of copying. I have always found that a first Review has influenced
all the others except the very best. The excessive injustice and
untruthfulness this time made me understand the pain which Chatterton
felt, especially when it was said that the hundred and forty-seven
quotations, which I had been at such pains to find for my “Versailles,”
were “all taken second-hand from Dussieux’ History” of that palace,
though I am assured that not one (!!) of them is to be found there,
except the few taken from S. Simon, the especial historian of
Versailles, to which any one writing about it would naturally apply.
“Every white will have its black,
And every sweet its sour,”
and though serious disappointments are always a most bitter medicine,
life becomes much the same again after they are once swallowed and
assimilated. I know they must be good for one, like all the other
humiliations of--is it?--yes, I suppose in a right spirit it may be, _le
chemin de la croix_. Still I often wonder whether the writer of such an
article, when he _knows_ it is false and unjust, as this writer must
have done, does it with pleasure in taking away an author’s innocent
enjoyment in the birth of his book-child. In most cases of personal
injustice and injury, I am sure that it answers to take some secret
opportunity of doing something very kind towards the aggressor--it
“takes out the taste;” but when the intentional injury is anonymous, one
is deprived of even this consolation. Yet, to a certain extent, an inner
consciousness of high aims and disinterested intentions may raise a
screen against the base scurrilousness with which every one is assailed
at some time in their lives. Fortunately, also, I have never
quite--though very nearly--had to put in practice the maxim that--
“Those who live to please must please to live.”
It is curious, certainly, how one has only to turn to the pages of a
book which collects Reviews of past authors, like “Alibone’s
Dictionary,” to find plentiful consolation. I chanced to open it on
Thackeray, and found the _Edinburgh Review_, after abusing “Esmond” in
the most contemptuous tones, saying patronisingly, “If Esmond had been
confined within as short limits, it might have taken rank with the
‘Defence of Natural Society,’ but a parody three volumes long becomes
tiresome.” The same _Edinburgh Review_ advised Byron to abandon poetry
and apply his talents to some better use; and declared Coleridge’s
“Christabel” to be “a thing utterly destitute of value.” I think it is
Montaigne who says, “Aucun chemin de fleurs ne conduit à la gloire.”
XXV
IN PLEASURE AND PAIN
“Why, of all the countless faces which I meet as I walk down the
Strand, are the enormous majority failures--deflections from the
type of beauty _possible_ to them?”--DEAN CHURCH.
“Before the beginning of years there came to the making of man,
Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran.”
--SWINBURNE.