delicate haze softens the view of the distant sea, sprinkled over with
vessels, and the castle-rock rises up pink-grey against it. Far
overhead, the softest of white clouds float in the blue ether. In the
meadows, where the cows are ringing their Swiss bells, the old oak-trees
are throwing long deep shadows across lawns of the most emerald green,
and the flower-beds and the terrace borders are brimming with the most
brilliant flowers, over which whole battalions of butterflies and bees
are floating and buzzing; the little pathlet at the side winds with
enticing shadows under the beech-trees, whilst the white marble Venetian
well, covered with delicate sculpture of vines and pomegranates,
standing on the little grassy platform, makes a point of refinement
which accentuates the whole. Selma steals lazily round the corner to see
if she can catch a bird, but finds it quite too hot for the exertion;
and Rollo raises himself now and then carelessly to snap at a fly. The
doves are cooing on the ledge of the roof, and the pigeons are
collecting on the smokeless chimneys. Upstairs Mrs. Whitford and Anne
are dusting and laughing over their work, with the windows wide open
above the ivied verandah, and Rogers is planting out a box of
sweet-scented tobacco-plants which has come by the post.
[Illustration: FROM THE WALKS, HOLMHURST.]
“Such is little Holmhurst on an August morning. You would be amused with
my hearing the other day that one of the servants had said, ‘Our
master’s a gentleman as knows his place,’ which meant that I never find
fault with an under-servant except through an upper, or cast even the
faintest shadow upon an upper-servant if an under-servant is present.
After all, it is only another form of Landor’s observation--‘The spider
is a gentleman, for he takes his fly in secret.’”
* * * * *
_To_ LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.
“_St. Michael’s Mount, Sept. 7, 1889._--This is a wonderful and
delightful place. It was nearly 10 P.M. when I reached the Marazion
station. The day had been very hot, and the evening lights and
reflections perfectly lovely; but night had quite closed in. Lord St.
Levan’s carriage met me at the station, and stopped at the head of a
staircase leading to the sea, where four sturdy boatmen took possession
of me and my things, and rowed away on a waveless sea, following up the
long stream of brilliant light which fell from one of the upper windows
of the castle on the sacred mount, grim and black in the still night. An
old man with a lanthorn met me at the landing-place, and guided me up a
steep pathlet in the rocks. At the door a maid received me, for the
family were all at dinner, but I found a pleasant meal ready for me in a
small sitting-room, and then was ushered in to the large party--Lord and
Lady St. Levan, six daughters, a son, a niece--Lady Agnes Townshend,
Hugh Amherst, two Misses Tyssen Amherst, Mr. and Lady Harriet Cavendish,
Miss Hill Trevor, Mr. Stewart, a young Manners, and Mrs. and Miss
Lowther. With the latter I have spent many pleasant mornings in drawing
on the rock (really improving greatly, I think, in knowledge of the
‘how’ and ‘why’ of everything), whilst the whole family has gone out
fishing, and most glorious are the subjects. Mrs. Lowther’s enthusiastic
energy makes her a first-rate companion. ‘Elle est au-dessus de l’ennui
et de l’oisiveté, deux vilaines bêtes,’ as Madame de Sévigné would have
said.
[Illustration: ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT.]
“It is a life apart. The chapel-bell rings at nine, and I always meet
Mrs. Lowther on the staircase hurrying up to the service, which is
reached by an open-air walk at the top of everything. Then, before
breakfast in the ‘Chevy Chase Hall’ (surrounded by old stucco hunting
scenes), we linger on the grand platform, looking down into the
chrysoprase waves with sea-birds floating over them, and across to the
mainland with its various bays, and its fleeting golden lights and
purple shadows.
“On Friday we went a long drive, passing St. Buryan’s, one of the three
parishes of the Deanery of St. Levan. A Mr. Stanhope was long the rector
here, having also a rich living, where he resided, in Essex. At St.
Buryan’s he kept a curate, to whom it was only necessary to give a very
small stipend indeed, because he was--a harmless maniac! He used to be
fastened to the altar-rail by a long chain, which allowed him to reach
either the altar or the reading-desk. When once there, he was quite sane
enough to go through the service perfectly! On week-day evenings he
earned his subsistence by playing the fiddle at village taverns; but he
continued to be the officiating clergyman of St. Buryan’s till his death
in 1808.
“This truly aquatic family bathe together from a raft at 7 A.M. most
mornings. To-day they were all rowed in their scanty bathing costumes,
looking like Charon’s souls being ferried to purgatory, into the little
port, and there (at twelve mid-day) one after the other took a header
into the sea, and swam--many of the guests with them--to the main-shore
at Marazion, to the great astonishment of the natives on the beach
there. The parents followed or accompanied their mermaid-daughters in
safety-boats, but instead of being anxious about those who became
exhausted, encouraged them to hold on. George Manners was almost choked
by a butterfly flying down his throat, mistaking his head for an
unexpected islet.
“The place is beyond everything poetical: even I have been unable to
refrain from some verses, which I send you.
“Grey cloud-wreaths lovingly entwine,
And in their mystic maze enfold
The sacred Mount, which day’s decline
Shadowed upon a sheet of gold:
And faint and sweet, the surges beat
The burthen of the ancient lay,
Which low or loud, through mirk and cloud,
The Past bewails eternally.
But when the radiant morn awakes
To kiss fresh life into the flowers,
The windows beam, the turrets gleam,
The blue waves break in silver showers,
Tossing their glistening foam away
In merry riplets to the shore:
The Present reigns; the murmuring Past,
Though whispering still, is heard no more.
Serene, the great Archangel keeps
His vigil here on high,
Whilst in the changeful world below
Fleet life is fluttering by.
Through shine or shower, his silent power,
Unheard, unseen his sway,
Spirits of ill, which daunt or chill,
Shall drive rebuked away.”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_St. Michael’s Mount, Sept. 7, 1889._--I have enjoyed my visit here
extremely, and, difficult as it was to manage coming, it is more
difficult to get away, from the extreme kindness and genuine
hospitality of Lord and Lady St. Levan, who would like one to stay
months. I think I never saw such excellent people, or a happier, more
united family; and being very well off, their kindnesses to rich and
poor cannot be calculated. Then it is indeed the most delightful of
homes, so healthy in its pure air of mingled sea and mountain
exhilaration, so glorious in its views over land and water, with every
atmospheric effect which Nature, never the same, can paint upon both.
Looking down from the ramparts into the deep clear chrysoprase water is
in itself a delight, and watching the fish rising and leaping with
sparkling showers, and the great white seagulls swooping down upon them.
No wonder the sons of the house, devoted to sport of every kind, think
there is nothing to compare to the fishing excursions round their home.
But there is unspeakable grandeur, too, when the sacred Mount is
enveloped in sea-fog, shrouding it from all sign of the mainland and
everything else, and when nothing is heard but the distant booming of
the waves far down below. This is the one great house of England, I
suppose, which is approached by no road whatever, for even the pathlet
which winds among the cliffs and low wind-blown bushes of the island is
lost where it crosses the turfy slopes which intervene here and there.
The castle is in seven stories (of which I inhabit the second); many of
the rooms are walled with rock, and in one of the narrow passages it is
known that a number of skeletons--naughty nuns, I suppose--are walled
up. I never saw a place where so much of daily life was in the open
air.”
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, Sept. 19._--From the Mount I went to visit the Tremaynes in
the Vale of Tavistock. It was an exquisite still evening when I arrived
at Sydenham, and it is a beautiful drive through a richly-wooded valley,
till a sharp turn brings one to the old bridge over the clear tossing
Lyd, on the other side of which rises the noble old manor-house, only
separated from the road by ‘the green court’ with a wrought iron gate.
By this gate, as I drove up, stood, with her daughter, Mrs. Tremayne,
her exquisite profile, quite white, like a Greek gem, relieved against
the dark yew foliage: it is a picture that remains with one. We had tea
in the old panelled hall, surrounded by four fine Chinese dogs.
“It would be difficult to over-praise the sweet seclusion of the spot,
the constant merry ripple of the sparkling river, the deep shade of the
tall trees, the old-fashioned gardens of splendid herbaceous flowers,
the charming old rooms and staircase, in which--even in this desolate
place--the two powdered footmen do not look out of keeping. But the
great charm lies in the family itself--in the ever-genial, courteous,
sweet-tempered father--the perfectly beautiful and dignified but simple
mother--the daughters and the only son.
“A relic in the house is the ‘tongue-token,’ only given during the Civil
Wars to the most faithful friends of the King and Queen,--a little gold
medal which could be concealed under the tongue. In this case it was
given to the Tremayne of the day, because, at imminent risk to himself,
he rode to announce to the King at Oxford the birth of the Princess
Henrietta at Exeter.
“We went several excursions: to the fine old gateway of Bradstone; to
the Kellys of Kelly, who have a most admirable collection of Alpine
plants, growing upon little but old mortar; to the Duke of Bedford’s
house of Ensleigh, beautiful in hilly woods feathering down to a river;
and to Launceston, a dull place, where the castle recalls that of
Gisors.
“From Sydenham I went to see the Elphinstones[484] at their beautiful
Government House at Plymouth, and on the same evening to Whiteway, where
I paid a delightful visit to the dear Dowager Lady Morley, who is still
as genially kind and as sharply truth-exacting as ever. It was comically
characteristic that when the foolish Bishop of Exeter (Bickersteth) came
over to Whiteway, Lady Morley, with innocent pride, showed him the
improvements she had made. ‘You should not take a sinful pride in your
possessions,’ said the Bishop; ‘_all_ God’s works are beautiful, and all
these are the works of God.’--‘That is all very well,’ answered Lady
Morley, ‘but _I_ made this walk.’ It was sad to see Lady Katherine, the
companion of many happy mountain excursions long ago, laid up as a
permanent invalid; but she is indescribably brave and cheerful.
“A child at Whiteway, being asked where the eggs were laid, answered,
‘On an average.’--‘What do you mean? who told you so?’--‘Father; he said
the hens laid, on an average, twenty eggs a day.’
“With the Lowthers and Listers we one day met the Halifaxes and their
two eldest children at Bovey, and we all went a delightful excursion
over Dartmoor to several of the great tors, which rise above the russet
wastes of moor, like castles in the south of France, and to Tecket
Falls, near which Lord Devon has a cottage. Hence, after ascending
through the mazes of a wood, Charlie H. insisted on our being taken
blindfold till we reached ‘Exclamation Point,’ where the present
Archbishop of Canterbury had fallen on his knees from the beauty of the
view. We did not return till eight, when the Halifaxes stayed to dine,
and went home at eleven, walking miles over the moors by night in true
Charlie Halifax fashion.
“Endless was the amusing talk of Devonshire quaintnesses. ‘How did you
break your arm?’ said Lady Katherine to an old woman. ‘Well, ‘twere all
along of gathering apples; ‘twere first the apples and then the fall: I
were like Eve, I reckon.’ ‘Blow your nose,’ she said to a child. ‘Yes,
mum, but her won’t bide blowed.’”
* * * * *
_To_ LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.
“_Holmhurst, Nov. 1889._--I have been far too long without writing, life
ripples by so quickly: it seems every day more different from the years
before I was grown up, when all was so long.... My ‘outing’ to the North
was very enjoyable. I was nearly a week at Tatton, where the host and
hostess were boundlessly kind. The party there had admirable
elements--Lord Savile, Lord and Lady Knutsford, Lord and Lady Jersey,
Lord and Lady Waldegrave, Lord and Lady Amherst, Sir Redvers and Lady
Audrey Buller, Mr. and Mrs. Piers Warburton, Mrs. Percy Mitford, Mrs.
Legh of Lyme, Sir Charles Grant, and Dick Bagot. We were all taken to
see the Ship Canal in a royal way, with special trains, luncheon sent
on, and tea at the mouth of the Canal in ‘Bridgewater House,’ where the
old Duke of Bridgewater spent his later years, and where his picture
still presides in the seldom-used dining-room.
“I left with Mrs. Legh, whose ponies met us at the Disley station, and
took us a wild drive over moor and fen, rock and fell--a drive of
glorious views, but no road whatever--before returning to Lyme. Lady
Lovelace came in the evening and was most agreeable, especially in her
reminiscences of India and Lady Canning. With her and Mrs. Legh I went
to draw the old hall at Marple, an interesting house of the Usherwoods,
who inherited it from the Bradshaws: the regicide’s chamber has its
original furniture and tapestry.
“Next, I went to Ingmire, a fine old place of Mrs. Upton
Cottrell-Dormer, beautifully situated amongst the Westmoreland fells,
though geographically in Yorkshire. John Way, the vicar of Henbury, was
there, who said that when the boys in his school were reading of
Jezebel, how she ‘painted her face, tired her head,’ &c., he asked, ‘Why
do you suppose she did that?’--‘She wanted to get married,’ promptly
answered a boy--true, probably, too. He described how his
great-grandfather, Sir Roger Hill, and his son lay dying at Denham at
the same time. It was of the most vital importance to the son’s wife to
keep her husband alive beyond his father, just sufficient time to
enable him to sign a will, and this she did by killing one pigeon after
another, keeping his feet immersed in the body of the hot steaming bird,
and, as soon as it chilled, changing it for another. The pigeons
conquered, and the Hedgeley property was left away to the son’s widow.
The Denham property went to the daughter, Mrs. Lockey, whose daughter
Abigail married Mr. Way, and was mother of Benjamin Way and Lady
Sheffield.
“From Ingmire I went to Muncaster, which I thought even more beautiful
and delightful than before. With Lady Muncaster and Lady Kilmarnock I
had one lovely day at Wastwater--glorious in the last coruscations of
Nature. The Bishop of Carlisle had just been at Muncaster, who said that
a boy in a Board-school examination, being asked one of the foolish
Catechism questions of ‘Why is a boy baptized when by reason of his
tender age?’ &c., wrote, ‘Why indeed?’
“Another child in a higher class, being asked to define faith, said it
was ‘the power of believing absolutely what was utterly incredible.’”
* * * * *
“_Bramfield House, Hertford, Nov. 27, 1889._--Lady Bloomfield is very
comfortably established here in a good house of Abel Smith’s, near a
pretty little church and village, and in the midst of the amiable Smith
colony. She finds no end of good works to do, and really is beyond
measure kind, in addition to a thousand other unostentatious goodnesses,
in filling her extra rooms with homeless and feeble gentlefolk needing
help, kindness, and temporary home. We went through Panshanger
yesterday, but I do not admire this cabbage-tree district, all so
prosperously unpicturesque.
“You must buy, you really must, ‘John Smith on Church Reform.’ It is by
no means the dull book it sounds. You will delight in it, and will
present it to Mr. Neville, as I shall to our little clergyman, who is
becoming quite as like naughty Rome as he dares, but is a good little
man all the same.”
* * * * *
In quoting so constantly from journal and letters, I do not think I have
mentioned how much poverty had been pressing upon me in the last few
years. Not only had Messrs. Daldy and Virtue, representing my first
publishers, ceased to pay even the interest of their large debt, or paid
it most irregularly, but under my second set of publishers I had made
_nothing whatever_ during the seven years I had been with them. Their
accounts showed that 28,000 of my books had been sold in the time, but
the innumerable percentages, &c., had swallowed up the whole of the
profits, leaving me nothing but the loss of money expended on woodcuts,
&c.
“’Tis a very good world that we live in,
To lend, or to spend, or to give in;
But to beg or to borrow, or get a man’s own,
’Tis the very worst world that ever was known.”
Whilst I was at Muncaster, however, Mrs. Arthur Severn came to the
castle, and told me how Mr. Ruskin also had made nothing by his books in
the hands of my then publishers, but that they had brought him in a good
income since they were removed to the hands of Mr. Allen of Orpington.
To his hands, therefore, I soon after removed all my books. I had no
complaint of unfairness to make against those I had lately employed;
they only acted according to their agreements and their usual method,
which I had long hoped against hope might eventually result to my
advantage: and they behaved very handsomely about parting with the
books, though it must have been both a loss and disappointment to them.
* * * * *
_To_ LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.
“_Campsea Ashe High House, Dec. 27, 1889._--We have had a very pleasant
merry week in this most kindly and happy of family homes, not going out
much, but the days full of intellectual interest, the evenings of games,
acting, &c. The party has been the two really charming Miss Farquhars,
their brother Ernest, pretty, attractive Miss Theresa Lister, Lady
Cecily Clifton, Captain Sydney, Kenneth and Miss Matheson, James
Lowther, young Brooke--a pleasant clever little county magnate,
delightful Jack Cator and his remarkably nice sister, a young Macgregor
in the Guards, and to-day the Anstruther Thompsons, the Edmund Fanes,
Miss Mullholland, and a young Burroughs have come. Last night we acted a
play, ‘The Bilious Husband,’ before a large audience of neighbours. Can
you fancy me as Captain Marmaduke Mynch of the Royal Berkshire Plungers?
Then there was ‘Barnum’s Show’--Miss Matheson as a mermaid, myself as a
dwarf, Miss Lowther as the tattooed woman, Miss Farquhar the fat woman,
Brooke a Zulu, Ernest Farquhar an Arab, and Mr. Lowther as ‘The Bearded
Lady!’ Another day I dressed up and came in as an old aunt of the
family--being the first scene of the word _Antidote_, for which we made
a little story. I have liked my frivolous week very much, but it is
enough, and I shall be glad to go back to my solitary work at Holmhurst
on Monday.
“Kenneth Matheson very kindly said, ‘I know you will consider it
sacrilege my pressing you to come to Highcliffe whilst I am its
tenant’--which I allowed to be the case!
“I was very glad to hear of Lady Ossington’s will--just like an echo
from the generosity, justice, and beneficence of her life.”
* * * * *
From Christmas 1889-90 people were already beginning to talk a great
deal about the “Influenza epidemic” which was spreading over Europe, and
was like a malarial fever. I was in London for a few hours on January
11, and bringing it back to Holmhurst with me, was very ill for nearly
a month, but with the comfort of being in my own home, and, to me, the
great comfort of being alone. In illness I quite feel the extreme
blessing of religion--not the religion worried and touzled by a thousand
million vagaries of personality, but the simple main facts, in which I
believe so fully. I find some lines of Elizabeth Trench which exactly
express what I feel myself:--
* * * * *
“Lord, I believe not yet as fain I would;
Dimly Thy dealings have I understood:
Thy word and message yet to me have brought
Only a shadow of Thy wondrous thought.
Fain would I follow on to know thee, Lord,
Fain learn the meaning of Thy every word;
Truth would I know--the truth that dwells in Thee,
Setting the lowest heart from doubting free.
Lord, I believe! oh fan this trembling spark,
Lest all my hope be lost in endless dark;
And where I yet believe not, lead Thou me,
And help my unbelief, which seeks for Thee.”
“When all fails, and to stand firm seems impossible, stand on the wood
of the Cross; it will float with you,” said Queen Marie Leczinska.
“The Mercy of God--_all_ is included in that word Mercy,” was a saying
of the Mère Angelique.
* * * * *
Yet I find it very difficult to endure any other religious book than the
Bible itself: all are so self-asserting, so self-seeking; and hymns,
with one or two sublime exceptions, are either abjectly foolish or full
of the self, even if it be the religious self, of man.
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Feb. 13, 1890._--In December my old servant Joe Cornford died, who had
been all my lifetime in the family service. For several years he had
been too old and infirm to do any work, but, when he was well enough, he
made a pretence of picking up a leaf or two, and received his wages all
the same. If it had not been for his grumbling old wife, it would have
been a pleasure to see him slowly dragging himself about the walks, but
her temper was a trial! He was worse for some time. One day I went in to
the lodge to see him after breakfast, and at that moment he suddenly
died! Again, as often before, I felt the wonderful power of the great
mystery of death, actually seeing life ebb downwards: the forehead
become white and waxen, then the cheeks, then the whole being. How I was
reminded of the lines of Caroline Bowles (Mrs. Southey):--
‘Oh change, oh wondrous change!
Burst are the prison bars,
This moment there so low,
So agonized, and now
Beyond the stars!
Oh change, stupendous change!
There lies the soulless clod;
The sun eternal breaks,
The new immortal wakes--
Wakes with his God.’
“I was at his funeral some days afterwards, the poor old man carried to
the grave by our workmen, and followed by seventeen of his descendants,
children and grandchildren. He has left me a chair which came out of
Hurstmonceaux Castle.”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 26, 1890._--Went to see Lady De Ros,[485] aged ninety-five. She
brought out for me her greatest treasure, a beautifully printed Church
of England Prayer-book in Spanish. It belonged to the great Duke of
Ormonde, and descended from him to Lady Eleanor Butler, by whom and Miss
Ponsonby--‘ladies of Llangollen’--it was given to the Duke of Wellington
as a boy. He taught himself Spanish by following its services, as he
himself says in an inscription on the fly-leaf. In his old age, when
Lady De Ros was with him at Strathfieldsaye, she found it in the
library, and told him what a valuable book she thought it. ‘Then, if you
think it such a valuable thing, I will give it you, my dear.’--‘So, as
Douro and Charles were just coming, I took my book away at once,’ said
Lady De Ros, ‘for fear they should stop me.’ Some years afterwards the
Duke asked Lady De Ros to lend him the book to show to some great
librarian. She let it go, but made it a condition that, before it was
returned, the Duke should write its history in the book with his own
hands; and this he did.
“Lady De Ros also showed me a brush of hogs’-bristles, mounted in ebony,
and with a silver plate. And she told how, when she was hunting wild
boars with the Duke on Mont St. Jean near Cambrai, an immense boar
sprang out of the thicket close by her. The Duke speared it. It was a
horrid sight and she shrank from it. ‘Oh, my dear,’ said the Duke, ‘you
must not mind it, for I am prouder of having killed that boar than of
the battle of Waterloo.’