Elphinstone at the Eustace Cecils’. I like them both so very much. They
say the Queen is much occupied in learning Hindustanee and speaks it
now quite well--a great delight to her Indian subjects. She has three
Indian servants in constant attendance, and converses fluently with
them. This afternoon has been delightful, with Mrs. Spencer Smith and
her children, at St. Alban’s (St. Aldhelm’s) Head. In the little hollow
with stone cottages on the way thither a boy opened a gate for us whose
name was Sagittary Clump. The name came from his parents’ lodger, but it
must have had its origin in Sagittarius. Mrs. Spencer Smith spoke to the
boy’s father about his daughter’s misconduct. ‘I can’t help it,’ he
said; ‘I’d given her her documents,’ meaning that he had spoken to her
seriously: Shakspeare uses ‘documents’ in the same sense. Walking up the
hill, we were terribly bitten by harvest-bugs, which little Michael
Smith poetically called ‘Ces petites bêtes rouges dans les fleurs
bleues’ (harebells). Close to the coastguard station, near the edge of
the cliff, is a tiny chapel, perfectly square, supported by a single
pillar, and with only one wee romanesque window, so that almost all the
light comes from the open door: however, there is only service here in
summer. A monk of Sherborne Abbey was always kept here to toll a bell to
warn off ships, whilst he prayed for the shipwrecked. Seven little
children aged from three to four came up to us while we were drawing.
‘We be going to throw ourselves over the cliff, we be: we be going to
smash ourselves quite up, we be,’ the little monsters announced to their
mothers, as they all seven marched away arm-in-arm to the edge of the
cliff. Then ‘little sister’ made ‘Ernest’ sit down upon a thistle, at
which ‘Ernest’ roared; and finally the mother caught up Ernest and
carried it off, ‘little sister’ whacking its little naked behind with a
stick all the way as they went. Then a young Palgrave appeared, who took
the Spencer Smith children down to a wreck in Chapman’s (Shipman’s) Bay,
to their great delight. There were seven parrots saved from that ship,
but one was lost which was prepared for death by being able to say the
Lord’s Prayer straight through. We went afterwards to the desolate
village of Worth, where, in the wind-stricken rectory, the clergyman and
his wife see no one for five months of the year, and have to shout into
each other’s ears to be audible in the roaring winter blast. The church
has a Saxon arch, and in its graveyard two stone sarcophagi, one that of
a child-abbot, with an incised crosier lying upon it; also the
gravestone, of Mr. ‘Jessy,’ ‘who, by his great courage, innoculated his
wife and two sons from the (cow)’--_sic._ He rode up to London with
saddle-bags to give his experience to the Government. The Dorsetshire
here is pure Anglo-Saxon: King Alfred spoke Dorsetshire. The people are
very long-lived; at Steeple in Purbeck there have only been four rectors
since the time of Charles I. Three Messrs. Bond have lasted 160 years,
and an old Mrs. Ross of 101 drives up this hill in a dogcart to visit
her old servant of ninety-four in the village. In church the clerk said
‘Stand in a wee (awe) and sin not!’”
* * * * *
_To_ LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.
“_Cadland, Sept. 21._--This comfortable house stands in a park, which is
a piece of enclosed forest full of noble oaks and hollies, with glints
of blue sea and shipping between. The passages are entirely clothed with
fine prints and drawings, and in the rooms are many fine portraits,
especially that by Zoffany of the Drummond who founded the Bank. The
collection of autographs is priceless, and includes many by early kings
of France, letters of Marie Antoinette, a charming one of the little
Dauphin, and the execution-warrant of Madame du Barry. Amongst the
drawings is the touching sketch which Severn made ‘to keep himself
awake’ sitting by the death-bed of Keats.... We have driven to ‘the
Cottage,’ a charming house where Lady Elizabeth Drummond lived, in woods
of ilex and fir above the Solent.... The company has included Valletort;
Harry Forster, a very good-looking fellow; Robert Scott, Lord Montagu’s
second son; and Christopher Walsh, a very nice son of Lord Ormathwayte.”
* * * * *
“_Malshanger, Sept. 25._--I came here on the 22nd to visit Mr. Wyndham
Portal, and (in her grandmotherhood) his most beautiful as well as
charming wife. After luncheon we drove to the Vyne, admirable in the
rich colour of its old red brick and grey copings, and greatly beloved
by Horace Walpole, who used to stay there with his friend John Chute, to
whom he gave many pictures, and whose ‘Chutehood’--depression of spirits
and gout--he often deplored. It was to him that Gray wrote ‘suavissime
Chuti.’ The house has always been cared for and never allowed to ‘run
down,’ and there is much of interest in its fine old rooms, especially
in its two stories of ‘gallery,’ lined with busts and portraits. Four of
these were brought hither by Lady Dacre of Hurstmonceaux, upon her
second marriage with Challoner Chute of the Vyne, and include a portrait
of Chrysogona Baker, afterwards Lady Dacre; of the widow of the Lord
Dacre who was executed, with his picture hanging behind her, and two of
the Chute Lady Dacre herself, one of them copied from a picture now at
Belhus, the place of the Lennards. The present owner of the Vyne, who
married Miss Eleanor Portal, showed it all admirably, and has written a
capital book on the place.[480] He educates his own beautiful boys,
making scholars of them before they are ten years old.
“This district--‘Portalia,’ as people call it--is quite peopled with
Portals and their connections. They were a French Protestant family,
greatly persecuted under Louis XIV., when they took refuge at La
Cavalerie in the Larzac. Jean François de Portal escaped to Holland, and
his eight children, concealed in barrels and smuggled out of the kingdom
by faithful nurses, reached England. The eldest of these became tutor to
George III., and the second, Henri, obtained the monopoly of the
manufacture of bank-notes, which the family have enjoyed ever since. The
last Portal left his vast landed estates to his eldest son, Melville,
and his mills to his second son, Wyndham: now the land is only a burden,
but, police-guarded, the mills at Laverstoke constantly increase in
value, and turn out daily 50,000 Bank of England notes, 12,000 Indian
notes, and 100,000 postal orders. By the process of one beautiful
machine, the linen rags (nothing but new rags of the best linen being
used) are reduced to pulp, the pulp is flattened into paper, stamped,
drained, dried, and behold! before it leaves the machine, a bank-note
ready for the printer. All the machinery is turned by the transparent
Teste, which is full of trout almost up to its source. The workmen, who
live in comfortable cottages near the mills and receive high wages, are
hereditary, and always fulfil their quota of duty from father to son.
Mr. Portal throws open his fine gardens here every Saturday to the
people of Basingstoke, who play tennis and generally enjoy themselves,
and do no harm whatever.”
* * * * *
JOURNAL AND LETTERS TO MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Ford Castle, Northumberland, Nov. 23._--I set out to come here on
Wednesday evening, after attending Miss Higginson’s wedding at Marlow.
When we--two other guests, Mr. and Mrs. Bellairs, and I--reached the
desolate station amongst the bleak moorlands, we found only one little
gig in waiting, and no chance of anything else. Mrs. B. and I struggled
into it, and came through the howling raging storm for seven miles here;
Mr. B. walked; but our reception in these fine old rooms made us forget
all else, and to-day has been like all days at Ford and
Highcliffe--drawing, reading aloud with talking at intervals, and walks
in the glen and gardens.”
* * * * *
“_Nov. 26._--A delightful walk, combating with the wind, to the Devil’s
rocks, ‘where,’ say the Northumbrians, ‘the devil hanged his
grandmother.’ Mr. Neville (the rector) dined. He says the old rectory
here was haunted. His sister came to stay with him in the spare room
that looked out on the castle. The second day she said very quietly but
firmly that she could not sleep in that room again; another must be
given her or she must leave. Then she described that, on two successive
nights, the curtain of her bed had been drawn, and a strange voice had
distinctly said to her, ‘This is not a spare room.’
“Mr. Neville said--
“‘I belong to the Neville-Rolfes of Hitcham in Norfolk. After my cousin,
Charles Neville-Rolfe, who was beloved by every one, died, his boxes
were all found to be fastened with letter-locks, and the family were a
long time before they were able to get them undone, as he had not left
the clue. My cousins suggested to me afterwards that I should ask Crisp
the carpenter how he had discovered it at last; so, as I was rubbing an
inscription on a stone in the church, I got him to come and move part of
a pew which covered it, and I asked him about it. He said, “Whilst we
were puzzling over those locks, I heard in a dream the voice of Mr.
Charles, and he said, ‘Crisp, come and walk and talk,’ and I said, ‘Yes,
sir, gladly;’ and then he turned to me and said, ‘Crisp, guess!’--and I
woke, and ‘guess’ was the word we wanted.” I told my cousins afterwards
what Crisp had told me, and they said, “Yes, but the really curious part
was that only three letters were wanted. Crisp thought ‘guess’ was spelt
‘ges,’ still we acted on what he said, and it was right.’”
“Lady Waterford says--‘My maid is very good, very good: her only fault
is that she has three hands, she has a right hand and a left hand, and a
little behind-hand.’
“Mr. Bellairs, the Highcliffe agent, who is here, said--
“‘My grandfather was both at Trafalgar and Waterloo, for he was wounded
as a middy at Trafalgar, and then went into the army. It was odd when,
long afterwards, some one said about Trafalgar, “It was so and so” and
he said, “No, it was not, for _I_ was there,” and that the conversation
then went on to Waterloo, “It was so and so.”--“No, I beg your pardon,
but I was _there_.”
“‘Afterwards he fell in love with Miss Mackenzie, one of two heiress
sisters. He had nothing to marry upon, and the father forbade him the
house, but he was allowed one interview, and in that he found out that
the butler was just leaving, and the family would be wanting another. He
dressed up and came and applied for the place. He got it, and it was
three weeks before he was found out, and then Mr. Mackenzie allowed that
he was too much for him, and allowed that he should marry his daughter.
But he insisted that my grandfather should leave the army. “Very well,”
he said, “if you like I will go into the Church.” So that was agreed to,
and in time he became a Canon. He was as earnest in the Church as
everywhere else. Soon after his appointment to a country living, as he
was crossing some fields on a Sunday, he found a number of miners
crowding round some prize-fighters. “Come,” he said, “I can’t have this:
I shall not allow this.” “But you can’t prevent it,” they cried. “Can’t
prevent it! you’ll soon see if I can’t fight for my God as well as for
my king: I’ll fight you all in turn,” and he polished off the two
strongest miners in fair fight, and then the others were so pleased,
they chaired him, and carried him through the village to his church,
which they filled from that time forward.’
“Most delightful and full of holiest teaching have been the many quiet
hours I have spent with the lady of the castle. There is a sentence of
Confucius which says--‘If you would escape vexation, reprove yourself
liberally and others sparingly.’ It is exactly her case. And there is
another sentence of Confucius which applies to her--‘The wise have no
doubts, the virtuous no sorrows, the brave no fears.’ Being here so
quietly, I have seen even more of her than on other visits, and more
than ever has she seemed to be a fountain of original, interesting,
noble, and elevating words and thoughts. She is wonderfully well now,
and able to walk, and take all her old energetic interest in the place
and people, and oh! how we have talked!”
* * * * *
“_Littlecote, Wilts, Dec. 3._--A charming visit to this beautiful old
house, which mostly dates from Henry VII., and has a noble hall hung
with armour and the yellow jerkins of the Commonwealth, a long gallery
filled with fine Popham portraits, and a charming old pleasaunce with
bowling-green and long grass walks. I sleep in the ghost-room, and just
outside my door is the ante-chapel where Wild Darrell roasted the baby
as described in the notes to ‘Rokeby,’ but the grandfather of the
present possessor was so bored by inquiring visitors that he burnt the
old hangings of the bed by which the nurse identified the room of the
crime, and the bed itself, with much other old furniture, was sold to
provide the fortunes of the younger children in the present generation.
Nothing can be more delightfully comfortable, however, than the house as
it now is, and my young host--Frank Popham--is most pleasant and genial.
It has been a great pleasure to find Lady Sherborne domesticated here,
and to listen once more on a Sunday evening to her exquisite singing of
‘Oh rest in the Lord’--so delicate and touching in its faintly vanishing
cadences as to draw tears from her audience. Very pleasant too has it
been to meet charming Mrs. Howard of Greystoke and her daughter again.”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 11._--My old cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Thurlow, who had often invited
me before to their house of Baynards, wrote that this week was my last
chance of going, as Baynards was just sold, so I have been for one
night. The house is partly modern, but the place was an ancient royal
residence, and was part of the dower of Katherine Parr. A pretty statue
of Edward VI. was discovered there walled up, and Margaret Roper lived
there afterwards, and long kept her father’s head in a box, which still
exists at the foot of the staircase. There are also numbers of fine
portraits, the dressing-box and travelling trunk of Elizabeth, and I
slept in a magnificent old tapestried room and in Henry VIII.’s bed.
“Mrs. Thurlow says that Cardinal Wiseman went to dine with some friends
of hers. It was a Friday, but they had quite forgotten to provide a
fast-day dinner. However, he was quite equal to the occasion, for he
stretched out his hands in benediction over the table and said, ‘I
pronounce all this to be fish,’ and forthwith enjoyed all the good
things heartily.”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 12._--Henry Lyte says that Porson was told to write a Latin theme
as to whether Brutus did well or not in killing Cæsar--‘Si bene fecit
aut male fecit.’ He wrote--‘Non bene fecit, nee male fecit, sed
interfecit.’
“The Stuart Exhibition is most indescribably interesting. A glorious
Vandyke hangs there representing Henrietta Maria in radiant youth and
happiness, with husband and children. Close by hangs the most touching
portrait in the gallery--Henrietta Maria, the same person exactly, with
the same curls, only grey, the same features sunken and worn by sorrow,
in her old age at Chaillot, by Le Fevre.”[481]
* * * * *
“_Cobham, Jan. 3, 1889._--Drove with Lady Kathleen Bligh, Lady Mary, and
Lady Lurgan to Rochester to see the interesting old hospice for ‘six
poor travellers, not rogues or proctors,’ where that number are still
daily received and cared for. They are given half a loaf, boiled beef,
and porter for supper, have six small clean comfortable rooms lighted by
a street gas-lamp outside, and are sent away with fourpence each in the
morning. On Christmas Day a lady sends the travellers of the day some
tobacco, a pipe, and a sixpence each, and quaint are their letters of
thanks. ‘May you live for ever and a day after,’ was the good wish of
one of them this year.
“Lord Darnley went himself into the village of Cobham to engage lodgings
at a poor woman’s cottage for a man who wanted to come there. Lady
Kathleen went to see the poor woman afterwards, and found her greatly
delighted. ‘As soon as my Lord was gone,’ she said, ‘up I went to my
room, and down upon my knees I dropped to return thanks to the Almighty,
because the Lord above, and the Lord below, were working together for my
good.’”
* * * * *
“_Jan. 10._--To tea with Mrs. Humphry Ward, almost a celebrity now as
authoress of ‘Robert Elsmere,’ at her house in Russell Square. She said
it tried her somewhat to receive from an American ‘Whiteley’ his
circular with--‘for economy in literature we defy anything to beat our
Elsmere at six cents.’”
* * * * *
On Shrove Tuesday, March 6, I left home for the south, and spent a
fortnight at Mentone in the Hotel d’Italie, which I remembered--one of
the few houses then existing--as the residence of Mrs. Usborne when we
were living close by in 1869-70. My cousin Florentia Hughes was at
Mentone with her youngest daughter, and we had many pleasant excursions
together. In the hotel were Lord Northbrook and his daughter, with whom
I dined several times, meeting the excessively entertaining Lord
Alington and his pleasant daughters. On the 22nd I reached Rome, where
I spent six weeks in the Hotel d’Italie, seeing many friends, correcting
my “Walks in Rome,” and drawing a great deal.
[Illustration: PONT S. LOUIS, MENTONE.][482]
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_April 7._--On Friday I went with some friends to Albano, and, whilst
they drove to Neni, drew in the glen at Ariccia, and never was I so
tormented by children as by a beautiful little cowherd--Amalia
Maria--who, on my refusing her demand for _soldi_, vowed she would ‘lead
me a life,’ which she did by fetching six other little demons worse than
herself, when they all joined hands and danced round me and my
campstool, kicking and screaming with all their might. Then they fetched
a black _pecorello_, and having tried to make it eat my paints, danced
again, the _pecorello_, held by a string, prancing behind them. Happily
at last the cow which Amalia Maria was supposed to be chaperoning made
its escape over a hedge, and whilst she was pursuing it over the
country, I fled, and joined my companions at a little caffè, where we
had a delicious luncheon of excellent bread, hard-boiled eggs--painted
purple for Lent--and sparkling Aleatico, for fourpence a head.
Afterwards we sat to draw, looking down upon that loveliest of lakes and
woods full of cyclamens and anemones.
“The crowds in the Roman galleries are endless. Whole families arrive
together, every member of them carrying a campstool, and they will sit
down opposite each of the statues in turn, and move onwards gradually,
whilst the father reads aloud from a guidebook, and they all drink it
in. He often begins the description at the wrong end, but they do not
find it out, and ... it does not signify! An American, a Mrs. Ruggles,
coming to the Apollo Belvidere, said, ‘Is _that_ the Apollo
Belvidere?’--‘Yes, that’s the Apollo Belvidere.’--‘Well, then, if that’s
the Apollo Belvidere, I don’t think much of _him_: give me Ruggles.’”
* * * * *
“_April 18._--Caught in tremendous rain and hail near a warehouse at the
back of the Palatine, and took refuge under a rude porch with a number
of peasants and was kept there an hour. One of the men described his
life as a soldier when his battalion was sent against the brigands near
Pescara. Of these, the famous Angelo Maria was so horrible a monster,
that his own mother determined to rid the world of such a fiend and to
deliver him up. He discovered this, seized his mother, laid her on a
table, ripped her up, and taking out her steaming heart--ate it! Words
cannot describe the horrible gestures with which the peasant told this
story, or the dramatic power with which he described the sister seeing
the terrible scene through a chink in the door, and coming afterwards to
the guard-house, saying that she wished to betray her brother. ‘Oh,’
said the officer, ‘you need not suppose that we trust you; this is a
trap you have laid for us.’--‘Yesterday,’ she answered, ‘I might have
laid a trap, but I had not then seen that monster eat my mother’s
heart.’ And he was taken.
“But Capolo Roscia was worse. He came one night to a _masseria_. The
doors were barred, but he forced his way in with his band. The head of
the farm hid himself in the straw, but he was found and dragged out.
All the men in the _masseria_, eighteen in number, were brought out and
made to sit in a row. ‘Now you must all be shaved,’ said Capolo Roscia,
and he cut all their eighteen heads off and put them in a basket.
“‘Oh, in that time when we were brigand-hunting we did not stop much to
inquire how far they were guilty. “A ginocchio: avete cinque minuti,” we
shouted to a peasant if we caught him. “Oh, ma signori, signori!” he
would say. “A ginocchio! Un minuto, due, tre, cinque--bo-o-o-ah!” and he
was done for; for he had given the brigands provisions, and so he was as
bad as themselves. Even with _i sindaci_, well, we often did the same;
but--we got rid of the brigands.’”
* * * * *
“_Easter Sunday, April 21._--To St. Peter’s. The service was under the
dome, but the group around the shrine would not call up even a
reminiscence of the glorious services under the Papacy. The relics were
shown afterwards from a high gallery--the spear-head of Longinus, the
bit of the true cross, the napkin of Veronica, to the sight of which
seven thousand years’ indulgence is attached. I gazed hard, but could
only see its glittering frame, nor could any other member of the
congregation see any more.”
[Illustration: IN S. FRANCESCO NEL DESERTO.][483]
* * * * *
After leaving Rome, I spent ten days with a pleasant party of friends at
beautiful Perugia, and then went on to Venice, where I saw much of
Ainslie Bean, who took me in his gondola to many places I wanted to
see, and much also of the Comte and Comtesse de Lützow, on the eve then
of the great but still unforeseen sorrow of losing the dear daughter
Maude who was the sunshine of their lives. I was at the Pension
Anglaise, crowded with lively, kindly ultra-English people, whose
mistakes were amusing. “Gesu-Maria!” suddenly exclaimed the gondolier on
narrowly escaping a concussion at a sharp corner. “Why on earth does he
say ‘Je suis marié’?” said a Mrs. R. Afterwards I had a week’s hard work
in intense heat in Eastern France, and reached home on May 27.
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Holmhurst, May 27, 1889._--How quiet it is here! how shady! how
thankful I am to be back! The heat yesterday at Amiens was appalling,
but I reached the green retreat this morning at nine, a telegram
announcing my advent having only been delivered five minutes before, so
that I had the amusement of seeing Holmhurst as I had never done before,
in complete _un_-dress.... I never saw such foliage. Charles II. might
easily hide this year in any of the oak trees.”
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_July 16._--Dined at Lord Chetwynd’s, taking down a Mrs. Severn. She
talked of the difficulties of faith; of the comfort she had received
from Farrar’s ‘Justice and Mercy;’ of the simple impossibility of
eternal punishment; of the verse ‘The Lord shall save all men,
_especially_ such as are of the household of faith,’ as especially
indicating gradations of happiness in a future state.”
[Illustration: THE ROCKY VALLEY, HOLMHURST.]
* * * * *
“_July 18._--With troops of the London ‘world’ to a garden-party at
Hatfield to meet the Shah of Persia (Nasr-ed-Din), who looks most savage
and unimpressionable. He is, however, preferred to his servants, who
give themselves endless airs, refusing the rooms prepared for them, &c.,
and their hosts are afraid to complain of them to the Shah, for fear he
should cut off their heads! He is a true Eastern potentate in his
consideration for himself and himself only: is most unconcernedly late
whenever he chooses: utterly ignores every one he does not want to speak
to: amuses himself with monkeyish and often dirty tricks: sacrifices a
cock to the rising sun, and wipes his wet hands on the coat-tails of the
gentleman next him without compunction. He expressed his wonder that
Lord Salisbury did not take a new wife, though he gave Lady Salisbury a
magnificent jewelled order. He knows no English and very few words of
French, but when the Baroness Coutts, as the great benefactress of her
country, was presented to him by the Prince of Wales, he looked in her
face and exclaimed, ‘Quelle horreur!’”
* * * * *
“_July 22._--A wonderful speech (at the Aberdeens’) on Christian work
from the Bishop of Ripon (Boyd Carpenter)--eloquent, elevating, touching
beyond description. He pictured the system of work going on through all
creation--some one resting under a tree as under an object in repose,
and then, if the senses could be quickened, hearing the pulse, the
ever-labouring pulse which sends the sap through its every fibre: of how
fallacious is the ordinary view of God as a sovereign in contemplative
repose--how inconsistent with the description given us, ‘My Father
worketh and I work:’ of the way in which every practical worker might be
a particle of the Spirit of God: of the way in which the Christian life
of every individual might radiate on others and permeate their
existence, like the halos--unseen by the wearers--on the brows of
saints: of the way in which the impression of a visit carried away from
each country-house might influence a life, and the duty of leaving the
right impression--never by ‘religious talking,’ but by loving action:
that the usual saying was ‘Omnia vincit labor,’ but a truer one would be
‘Laborem vincit amor.’”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.