clear, tossing river, and dark mountains of jagged outline, covered with
brown bracken wherever a turfy space is left between the rocks.
“My host--‘Josceline’--is geniality itself, and very amusing, and Lady
Muncaster excessively pleasant. Only her sister, pretty Lady Kilmarnock,
is here with her little Ivan, and two young ladies, Miss Rhoda Lestrange
and Miss Winifred Yorke,[471] whom her friends call ‘Frivolina.’ The
Muncasters have lived here for six hundred years; then they came from
Pennington, where a mound still exists which was crowned by their
residence in ancient British times.”
* * * * *
“_Alnwick Castle, Nov. 4._--Yesterday I left Muncaster at eight, and had
two hours in the middle of the day to wait at Carlisle. Whilst I was
sauntering round the cathedral, one of the Canons came up to me,
introduced himself as a college acquaintance--son of Richmond the
artist--and asked me to luncheon. He also showed me the cathedral,
‘restored’ out of much interest, with a miserable modern reredos and
other rubbish, but with two fine old tombs, and the modern monuments of
Paley and Law. Below the great east window Sir Walter Scott was married.
A noble fragment remains of a beautiful renaissance screen, and at the
back of the stalls are very curious early pictures of the lives of S.
Anthony, S. Augustine, &c. Close to the cathedral is the Fratry--the
refectory of the abbey--now used for lectures. Carlisle is a black and
truly uninviting place.
“Lady Airlie and Lady Griselda Ogilvy were at the station, and I
travelled with them as far as Naworth. On arriving here, it was pleasant
to be met by the cordial welcome of Duchess Eleanor, always most genial
and kind. The actual Duchess[472] did not appear till dinner, when she
was wheeled into the room in a chair, very sweet and attractive-looking,
but very fragile. The Duke[473] looks wiry, refined, rather bored, and
some people would find him very alarming. Lord and Lady Percy seem to be
two of the most silent people in the world--she pretty still in spite of
her ten children. There are also here pleasant little Lady Constance
Campbell, Miss Ellison, who goes about with Duchess Eleanor, and Lady
Emma and Miss M’Neile--the former a violent Radical, who went to bed at
once when the Primrose League became the topic of conversation. We
played at whist in the evening, but it was broken at ten by going to
prayers, which the Duke reads in the chapel. It is the only time I have
seen evening prayers in any country-house for the last fifteen years.
“This morning Duchess Eleanor showed me the rooms--the magnificent
Italian rooms, which owe their glory to her husband, Duke Algernon, who,
when remonstrated with for thus changing a mediaeval fortress, said,
‘Would you wish us only to sit on benches upon a floor strewn with
rushes?’ He purchased the whole of the great Camuccini collection at
Rome, because of his great wish to have one single picture, which they
would not sell separately. It is the so-called ‘Feast of the Gods’ by
Gian Bellini, with a landscape by Titian. Other noble pictures involved
in the purchase are a Crucifixion by Guido, singularly dark for the
master; a splendid portrait attributed to Andrea del Sarto, but more
like Franciabigio; and a little Raffaelle of SS. Mary Magdalen and
Catherine. Bought from the Manfrini Palace at Venice are two noble works
of Pordenone--one of them the picture of the father, mother, and son
mentioned by Byron (in ‘Beppo’). From the Davenport collection are
portions of a grand fresco of the ‘Salutation,’ by Sebastian del Piombo,
once in S. Maria della Pace at Rome. The magnificent decorations of the
rooms are by Canina. But the most lasting attraction of the castle is
the library, with the really splendid collection of books formed by Duke
Algernon.
“The Percies are Irvingites now, as well as the Duke and Duchess. Her
father, Mr. Drummond, was ‘one of the twelve apostles,’ in whose time it
is a tenet of faith that the Lord must return. Now only one ‘apostle’ is
alive, and when he dies what will happen? Meantime, though a very old
man, he is hard at work beating up recruits and inciting proselytism.
The family go to the church here, but then the vicar of Alnwick is also
an Irvingite. All the gibberish which the Irvingites talk when seized by
the spirit is taken down and treasured up as ‘prophecy.’”
[Illustration: ALNWICK CASTLE.]
* * * * *
“_Nov. 5._--This Irvingite family is constantly waiting and looking out
for the millennium: it is terribly anxious work. But their faith is most
simple and touching. When one of the Percy boys was very ill, they had
him anointed with oil; after that he recovered. ‘We had no doubt it
would be so,’ said Lady Percy, ‘no doubt whatever.’ After the anointing,
the friends of a patient have altogether done with human agency, and
leave everything in the Divine hands. It is curious to hear members of
this family say casually--‘The angel was here on Monday, and will be
here again on Friday.’
“I have had an interesting hour with the Duchess in her own
sitting-room, where she showed me all the treasures in her cabinet--two
miniatures of Elizabeth, contemporary, for they are painted without any
shadow, which she forbade, upon her face, and two others, evidently
painted afterwards, and naturally much more becoming; a miniature of
Mary Queen of Scots painted in prison, with the fat face and thick neck
which want of exercise caused in one used to so much riding; some of the
hair of Charles I., cut off by Sir Henry Halford when the king’s coffin
was opened at Windsor; miniatures of James I., Anne of Denmark, and
three of their children; the splendid ‘George’ of the fifth Earl of
Northumberland, made with the blue enamel which is now a lost art; one
of the amber snuff-boxes which Queen Charlotte had constructed in
Germany for her ladies, with her miniature on the outside, her dog
inside the lid, and her monkey at the bottom of the box; the pencil-case
of Lord Chesterfield, with a diamond at the end, being the pencil
mentioned by Pope. Not less interesting is a little (Dutch) silver
woman, which runs by clockwork, because it was the means of saving all
the family plate. For when burglars broke into Sion, it scampered about
the floor when they were going to pack it up, which made them think the
plate was possessed, and they took to flight, leaving all their booty
behind, with the baskets in which they had intended to carry it off.”
* * * * *
“_Nov. 6._--All this morning I was left to ‘browse in the library,’ as
Dr. Johnson expresses it. In the afternoon I had a walk with the Duke
and Percy to Alnwick Abbey--utterly unknown to history, and with only
the ruin of its fine gateway standing, yet which must have been one of
the most important buildings in the North of England. Its substructions
were sought and dug for in exact accordance with the rules laid down for
building a Premonstratensian abbey, and so they were found. The church
must have been grand as any cathedral.”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Holmhurst, Nov. 27, 1887._--I am greatly enjoying a little solitude in
this time so congenial for hard work, when all nature seems wrapped in a
swampy mist-cloud. There are great improvements in the garden. Along
that little upper walk to the field, where the frames were, is now a
rockery with rare heaths, and behind it a bed of kalmias, and then the
cypress hedge of my especial little garden. Rock and fern are also put
on the steep descent to the pond, opposite the line of tree-fuchsias.
“I wonder if you remember hearing of the extraordinary visitation of
crickets on the night of (my mother’s death) Nov. 12-13, seventeen years
ago--the uproar, like the sea in a storm, all night, scarcely allowing a
voice to be heard: then heard no more till the night, twelve years
after, in which dear Lea passed away. I was so struck by coming across
an allusion to it when reading the last chapter of Ecclesiastes as the
lesson in church last Sunday--‘And the grasshopper shall become a
burden, because man goeth to his long home.’”
[Illustration: HOLMHURST FROM THE SHRUBBERY.]
* * * * *
“_Dec. 24._--The dreary Christmas season of damp and dyspepsia, bills
and bother, is less odious than usual this year, as the day itself is
swallowed up in Sunday. I have, however, also had a real pleasure in a
present from the Duchess of Cleveland of her Life of Everard Primrose,
only printed for his friends. It is most beautifully, touchingly, really
nobly done, and the most perfect memorial of a high-minded
single-hearted young man’s life. I think I never read so perfect a
biography. The story is entirely told in Everard’s own admirable
letters, but the Duchess has not shrunk from her own part, and the
little touches from her own life, the Duke’s, &c., are indescribably
simple, graceful, and sincere. The book gives one a far higher opinion
of _her_ (of Everard I had always the very highest), and makes one
regret many hasty judgments. I have been quite engrossed with the book,
so perfectly delightful is it.”
* * * * *
After a busy six weeks of work, I spent the New Year again at Cobham,
always charming in its quiet home life, but was glad to return soon
again to work.
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Holmhurst, Feb. 10, 1888._--The news of Lady Marian Alford’s sudden
death removes from the cycle of life one whom I had felt to be a true
friend for more than thirty years. Our meetings were at long intervals,
but when we met, it was as more than mere acquaintances. With a grace
which was all her own, she often unfolded beautiful chapters in her own
life to me, and she was one of the very few persons who have read in
manuscript much of these written volumes of my past. She was a perfect
_grande dame_, unable to harbour an ignoble thought, incapable of a
small action. Regal, imperious, and extravagant,[474] she was generous,
kind, and personally most unselfish, and, had the real greatness and
goodness that was in her been regulated and disciplined by the
circumstances of her early life, she would have been one of the noblest
women of her century. Alas! only yesterday she was! How soon one has to
school oneself to say ‘would have been.’ Thus, however, it will
certainly be with oneself. The day after one dies people will say--and
how few with even a pang--‘He would: he might have been.’”
* * * * *
“_March 14._--Met Lady Fergusson Davy (_née_ Fortescue). She told me
that when Lady Hills Johnes, the friend of Thirlwall, was twenty-four,
she was once in society with the late Lord Lytton, who was talking of
second-sight, and of his own power of seeing the future of those he was
with. She urged him very much to tell her future, but he was very
unwilling to do so. Still she urged it so much that at last he did. He
did it after the manner of the Chaldees--told it to her, and wrote it
down at the same time in hieroglyphics. He said, ‘You will have a very
great sorrow, which will shake your faith in man: then you will have
another even greater sorrow, which will come to you through an old and
trusted servant: you will marry late in life a king among men, and the
close of your existence will be cloudlessly happy.’ All the first part
of the prophecy has come true--the breaking off of her first
engagement; the terrible murder of her father by his servant; her
marriage with Sir James Hills; all that remains now is happiness.”
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, May 14._--I have just returned from an interesting month in
London, seeing many people delightfully and making some pleasant new
acquaintance. At Lady Delawarr’s I was presented to the young Duchess of
Mecklenbourg, very pretty and full of life and animation. No one else
came up to talk to her, and I was left to make conversation from five
till a quarter to seven! by which time I think we had both exhausted all
possible topics, though she was very charming. At last she said, ‘I
always go at six to read to the Duchess of Cambridge.’--‘Well, ma’am,’ I
answered, ‘you will certainly be terribly late to-day.’--‘What very odd
things you do say to me!’ she said. The next day I sent her my ‘Walks in
London,’ and as her speaking of the Duchess of Cambridge convinced me of
her identity, I directed to the ‘Hereditary Grand Duchess of
Mecklenbourg-Strelitz.’ The next time I saw her I had found out, and
said, ‘I am sorry, ma’am, that I have made three mistakes in one line in
directing to you--that you are not ‘Hereditary,’ not ‘Grand,’ and not
‘Strelitz;’ for she was the Duchess Paul of Mecklenbourg-Schwerin; but
she laughed heartily.
“In going to London, I first saw, on a placard at the station, that
Matthew Arnold was dead. It seemed to carry away a whole joyous part of
life in a moment--for I have known Matthew Arnold ever since I remember
anything, though I did not know till I lost him that his happy
personality and cordial welcome had made a real difference to me for
years, especially in the rooms of the Athenaeum, where I have spent so
much time of late years. He had an evergreen youth, and died young at
sixty-six, and he was so impregnated with social tact and courtesy, as
well as with intellectual buoyancy, that he was beyond all men liveable
with. Herman Merivale has written some lines which seem to express what
I shall always remember--
‘Thrice happy he, whose buoyant youth
In light of Beauty sought for Truth,
* * * * *
And to the longing listener showed
How Beauty decks the ugliest road.’
“All who knew Matthew Arnold well loved him, though ‘the Apostle of
Moderation in Criticism’ would certainly have been shocked by some of
the fulsome articles which have followed his death; and I doubt of any
of his writings surviving his generation, especially his refined and
delicate verses, which surely lack the fire of a poet whose work is to
be eternal. I went on April 19, with Montagu Wood, to his funeral in the
graveyard of the ancient church at Laleham, where his father was vicar
before he went to Rugby, and where his children are buried. It was a day
of pitiless rain, which pelted upon the widow and sisters and crowd of
mourners round the grave, and on the piles of exquisite flowers beneath
which his coffin was hidden. As Alfred Austin says in a beautiful
article upon him, ‘Wherever he lies, there will be a Campo-Santo.’ I was
glad in going down to the funeral to make friends with Edward Arnold, a
charming fellow, who is the present editor of _Murray’s Magazine_.
“At dinner at the Miss Monks’ I was interested to find myself sitting
next to Lady Sawle, who told me that she was niece of the Rose Aylmer
who was the love of Landor’s youth. It was on her that he wrote the
lines which Archbishop Trench declared to be better than many an epic,
and which Charles Lamb said he lived upon for a fortnight. Lady Sawle
was herself one of the three Roses to whom Landor afterwards addressed a
poem, the third Rose being her mother. She described the death, when she
was at Rome, of Miss Bathurst--beautiful, radiant, and a splendid
horsewoman, riding along the narrow path between the Acqua Acetosa and
the Ponte Molle. The horse suddenly slipped backwards into the Tiber.
She called out to Lord Aylmer, ‘Uncle, save me!’ but he could not swim,
nor could any of the gentlemen or the groom who was present. Another
groom, who was a good swimmer, had been sent back to Rome with a restive
horse. She sank in her long blue habit, and her body was never found.
All Rome mourned ‘La bella Inglesa,’ and the little party of friends,
closely united and present at her death, dispersed sadly. One of them
alone, Mr. Charles Mills (of the Villa Mills), returned to Rome in the
autumn. As he was about to enter the city, he sent his carriage on to
the gate from the Ponte Molle, and walked slowly along the Tiber bank by
what had been the scene of the accident six months before. As he walked,
he saw two peasants on the other side of the river catch at something
which looked like a piece of blue cloth on the mud, and pass on. A
sudden impulse seized him, and he got some men to come at once with
spades and dig there in the Tiber bank. There Miss Bathurst was found as
if she were embalmed, in her blue riding-habit, perfectly beautiful, and
with her long hair over her shoulders. There was only one little mark of
a wound in her forehead. For a minute she was visible in all her
loveliness--a minute only. She was buried in the English cemetery.”[475]
[Illustration: S. FLOUR, FROM THE SOUTH.][476]
[Illustration: CHÂTEAU DU ROI, S. EMILION.][477]
* * * * *
On 28th May 1888 I went abroad to my French work, feeling as usual
greatly depressed at leaving home and going off into solitude, but soon
able to throw myself vigorously into all the interests of my foreign
life and its work. How full each week seemed!--the two first alone
amongst quiet villages and churches in Picardy and afterwards in
Auvergne, and many others after my friend Hugh Bryans joined me at wild
S. Flour, in the hill country of Auvergne, at beautiful Obazine, and at
Rocamadour again, then at beautiful S. Emilion, in wandering amongst the
innumerable historic relics of La Vendée; lastly by the Loire and its
surroundings. Three places especially come back to me with pleasant
memories--the home-like inn at S. Emilion, its beautiful old buildings
radiant with the blossom of pinks and valerian, and the sunset walks on
its old walls looking into the vineyards and cornfields:--the little
fishing port of Le Croisic, with its gay boats, its snow-white houses,
and its windy surroundings:--and charming Clisson, with its pleasant
inn and its balconies overhung with roses and wistaria. Hugh was a
capital companion, and full of interest in what he saw, though--like so
many at twenty-four--he pretended to hate all the historic detail.
However, I am sure my endless archaeological inquiries must have sorely
tried his patience, and he was always unweariedly good to me.
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Beauvais, June 1, 1888._--A number of friends wrote urging me to give
up what was ‘entirely an imaginary duty.’ However, I felt it was a duty
to finish what I had worked at so long, though perhaps it had not been a
duty to begin it; and so, much as I hated coming, I am here! It is no
use thinking of all one has left, and there is a great deal in what one
_has_, most of all _le grand air_ for hours and hours, and the
marvellous light and shade, which is in itself such a beauty in this
pellucid atmosphere. Then the peasants in Western France are delightful,
and I have not much fear of being taken up here; and I come so well
primed and informed that I know exactly what to look for everywhere, and
where to find it, and almost what to say about it.
“I left dear Holmhurst at 6.30 P.M. and at 2.30 A.M. was carrying my own
portmanteau down the desolate moonlit streets of Abbeville, where the
old town struck me more than ever, such a complete change from England,
and so romantically picturesque.”
* * * * *
“_Clermont Ferrand, June 9._--Oh, it has been so hot! Never in my life
have I been so grilled, roasted, boiled, and melted down; and it has
been hard having to work on all day, whatever the intense exhaustion
from the heat. But I have kept up to exactly the tale of work measured
out for each day before I left home.”
* * * * *
“_Le Puy, June 13._--We had an exquisite journey on Tuesday by rail down
the valley of the Alagnon to Neussargues, the quantity of old castles on
the rocky hills as striking as those on the Rhine were forty years ago,
and the mountain flowers lovely. Then we drove up through the cool
forests to the high plateau which is under snow nine months of the year,
and which was quite chilly even now. Here, in the evening, we reached
the old episcopal town of S. Flour, on a great basaltic rock, the most
wonderfully placed of all French cities, and much recalling Orvieto.
Everything seemed to belong to another world. From my window I could
throw anything sheer down the most tremendous of quite perpendicular
precipices, and the view was magnificent. The house had been in the same
family for four hundred years, and the landlady showed with pride the
dark passage where her ancestor intercepted the Protestants when they
were trying to take the city by stealth, the stone on which they were
beheaded, and the drain by which their blood flowed away. The other side
of the house opened into a great square, with the cathedral standing
amongst trees as in an English close, and houses with sixteenth-century
colonnades. I saw the huge modern viaduct bridge of Garrabit, most
extraordinary certainly, but though much more interesting to most
people, less so to me than the glorious views of S. Flour itself, on its
black and orange rocks, backed by the great purple towers of the
cathedral.”
[Illustration: Augustus J. C. Hare
1888]
[Illustration: S. NECTAIRE.][478]
* * * * *
“_S. Nectaire le Haut, June 28._--It was dark and raining in torrents
before we arrived here, and the driver suddenly announced not only that
he had lost his way, but that one of our wheels was likely to come off!
We were skirting a precipice by a rocky road without any parapet, and at
last, by holding the carriage lamps low, found that we had somehow got
into a very ancient churchyard, where stone coffins were strewn all
about. At last we knocked up a woman at a farmhouse, who guided us back
to the hotel, which we had long passed in the dark. This is an
enchanting place, beautifully situated in a wooded gorge below the old
romanesque church, where the Sunday congregation--from many far-away
villages--winding up the hill with baskets of food for the day, has been
most picturesque. There are lovely walks in all directions, and
Switzerland at its best never had more beautiful flowers, fields covered
with lilies, orchis, narcissus, globe ranunculus, pansies, pinks, &c.”
* * * * *
“_Le Croisic, July 17._--At this little fishing-town there is no fine
scenery, but it is most artistically lovely, with wide views over the
grey reaches of sea and yellow sandy flats to the soft hills, and
endless fishing-boats with red sails and nets.
“Yesterday we spent the day at La Guerande, a little unaltered mediaeval
town above the salt-flats; a very superior Winchelsea, described in
Balzac’s wonderful novel of ‘Beatrix.’”
* * * * *
I returned to England on August 7th, just in time to attend Alwyne
Greville’s wedding in London. In September I paid the Eustace Cecils a
visit, and then went to the Spencer Smiths at Kingston near Wareham.
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
[Illustration: GATE OF LA GUERANDE.][479]