very much. We had only the usual circle of guests, but summer days in
that beautiful place are a delicious halt in life. Thence I went to
Osterley, which looked bewitching, with its swans floating in sunshine
beyond the shade of the old cedars. Those radiant gardens will now bloom
through five years unseen, for Lord Jersey has accepted the Governorship
of New South Wales, which can only be from a sense of duty, as it is an
immense self-sacrifice, though he and Lady Jersey can never fail
anywhere to be a centre of all that is most interesting and useful. To
English society her absence will be a terrible loss, as, with the utmost
simplicity of high breeding, she is the one person left in England who
is capable of holding a _salon_ and keeping it filled, to the
advantage--in every best sense--of all who enter it. Nothing can be more
charming than the relation of Lord and Lady Jersey to their children,
and the fact that the latter were always of the party, yet never in its
way, was the greatest testimony to their up-bringing. The weather was
really hot enough for the luxury of open windows everywhere and for
sitting out all day. The party was a most pleasant one--M. de Staël, the
Russian Ambassador; Lady Crawford, still lovely as daylight, and her
nice daughter Lady Evelyn; Lady Galloway, brimming with cleverness; M.
de Montholon, French Minister at Athens; Mr. and Mrs. Frank Parker, most
amusing and cheery; Sir Philip Currie, General Fielding, &c. Everything
was most unostentatiously sumptuous and most enjoyable. On Monday we
were sent in three carriages to Richmond, where we saw Sir Francis
Cooke’s collections, very curious and worth seeing as it is, but which,
if his pictures deserved the names they bear, would be one of the finest
galleries in the world. Then, after a luxurious luncheon at the ‘Star
and Garter,’ we went on to Ham House, where Lady Huntingtower showed the
curiosities, including all the old dresses kept in a chest in the long
gallery. Finally, I told the Jersey children--splendid audience--a long
story in a glade of the Osterley garden, where the scene might have
recalled the ‘Decameron.’ I was very sorry to leave these kind friends,
and to know it would be so long before I saw them again.
“I came here with the Lowthers, finding kind Mrs. Cator surrounded by
three sons and eight daughters. This is a luxurious modern house,
replacing one which was burnt. Only a lawn and trees separate it from
the Norfolk Broads, and we have floated down the Bere in a delightful
sailing-boat, through the huge thirsty water-plants, to the weird
remains of St. Benet in the Holme, of which the Bishops of Norwich are
still titular Abbots.”
* * * * *
“_Sept. 6._--I have enjoyed a visit to Holmbury (Mr. Leveson Gower’s),
now let to Mr. Knowles of the _Nineteenth Century_--a lovely place with
a delightful view over Surrey plains. I like its homelike character
better than the larger place of Mr. Ralli, whither we went yesterday to
a garden-party. Mr. Knowles is most delightful company, full of
pertinent and never _im_pertinent questions. He has talked much of
Tennyson, with whom his family are very intimate, and who used often to
stay with him when he first married and lived on Clapham Common.
Tennyson speaks every thought without respect of persons. ‘What fish is
this?’ (at dinner).--‘Whiting.’--‘Yes, the meanest fish there is.’ Yet
his kindness of heart is such, that when his partridge was afterwards
given him almost raw, he ate steadily through it, for fear his hostess
might be vexed.
“After dinner Tennyson will sit smoking his pipe by the chimney-corner.
That is his great time for inspiration, but he will seldom write
anything down. ‘Thousands of lines just float up this chimney,’ he said
one day. Sometimes he will go into the drawing-room and recite something
he has just composed. Some of these poems Mr. Knowles has written down.
If asked to repeat them again, Tennyson can never do it in the same way,
something is always altered or forgotten: so hundreds of his poems are
lost. One day lately, when he was unusually melancholy, his nurse, whom
he greatly likes (he always has a nurse now), took him to task. ‘Mr.
Tennyson, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for grumbling in this way:
you ought to be expressing your gratitude for your recovery from your
bad illness by giving us something--by giving it to the world.’ And he
took her reproof very well, and went away to his own room, and in
half-an-hour had written his lines ‘Crossing the Bar,’ which he gave to
her.
“Tennyson was very rude to Mrs. Brotherton, a neighbour at Freshwater.
The next day he came to her house with a great cabbage under each arm.
‘I heard you liked these, so I brought them.’ It was his idea of a
peace-offering.
“My ‘France’ is just appearing, under the guardianship of Ruskin’s
friend Allen. I think it is good. I have certainly worked hard at it.
The woodcuts are beautifully engraved, and with the letterpress I have
even more than usual followed Arthur Young’s advice to authors--‘To
expunge as readily as to compose.’”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER.
“_Oct. 14, 1890._--I went on the 27th to Worth, the ultra-luxurious
house of the Montefiores, where the servants have their own
billiard-tables, ballroom, theatre, and pianofortes, and are arrogant
and presumptuous in proportion. It was a pleasure to drive over to the
picturesque old manor-house of Gravetye, which belongs to Mr. W.
Robinson, who wrote ‘The English Flower-Garden;’ but except the thickets
of Michaelmas daisies, I was disappointed in his flowers, for he only
attempts those which belong to the naturally existing soil. A far more
beautiful garden is that of Mrs. Rate at Milton Court, near Dorking,
whither I went afterwards. John Evelyn’s own house of Wotton is much
altered, but this, which was the dower-house of the Evelyns, remains as
it was in his time, and most lovely are the ranges of brilliant
old-fashioned flowers relieved against the yew-hedges. Mrs. Rate took me
a long drive over the back of Leith Hill, with views of unspeakable
beauty: abroad, there is nothing like such radiance and wealth of
woodland, such exquisite delicacy of misty distance. I was put down at
the station on my way to Highcliffe, to which I hastened in answer to an
unusually urgent and affectionate invitation from its dear lady, bidding
me on no account to miss coming at that time; at another time it might
not be possible. I found the dear Lady Waterford sadly ailing, but I
hope I was able to be useful to her during some days of extreme quietude
and much reading aloud. She had lately been to the Queen at Osborne,
crossing the Solent in the _Elfin_, seated between the two great
bags--‘as big as large arm-chairs’--containing the Queen’s letters for
the day. ‘The Queen would have my drawings in. It was dreadful! for you
know how a big portfolio slides off the table, and the Queen looked at
them all so closely, and I was afraid the portfolio would slip and catch
hold of her nose, and then I should have been sent to the Tower or
something. There was one of the drawings she liked so much that I gave
it to her. It was of Time with his scythe over his shoulder. A quantity
of little children were gambolling and sporting in front and beckoning
him onwards, but behind were a number of old people trying to hold him
back; for one wanted to go on with his book, another to finish a
drawing, and so on, and so they were clinging to his skirts as he was
striding away.’
“Lady Waterford cannot understand the physical signs of age which seem
to be suddenly attacking her: yet spiritually she is more than ever
living in Eternity’s sunrise. Truly those who have lived much at
Highcliffe or Ford can never ‘think this life a low and poor place in
which to seek the Divine Master walking to and fro.’[492]
“I felt sadder than usual in leaving Highcliffe this time, as if it
might be a last visit, yet it is difficult to imagine life without what
has given its greatest interest and charm. The dear lady was down before
I came away, though it was very early, and I retain a beautiful picture
of her standing in the conservatory under the great brugmantia laden
with its orange flowers. She came with me through the rooms, and I
looked back at her, and found her still looking after me, and so,
somehow walked away sadly down the dewy lanes to the station, with a
desolate feeling that I might see her no more.
“I went on to Babraham (the Adeanes’), whence I drove with Charlie to
spend the afternoon at Audley End--what a magnificent place! Afterwards
I had two days at pleasant, merry Hardwick.”
* * * * *
_To_ LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.
“_Nov. 10, 1890._--On October 20 I went to Tatton, meeting a large and
pleasant party for the week, and one sees every one there to perfection,
Lady Egerton knowing so well how to unlock a portal of
communication--often of friendship--with just the right key. Truly,
indeed, might Lady Egerton say--
‘Je suis né pour plaire aux nobles âmes,
Pour les consoler un peu d’un monde impur.’[493]
The country is black but always interesting. Little Knutsford was sanded
all over in patterns (as in India) for a wedding: it is a custom which
dates from King Alfred, who met a wedding-party as he was passing
through the town and threw down some sand, saying that he hoped the
descendants of the marriage might be as numerous as its grains. The
patterns of sand--flowers, love-knots, &c.--are made through the spout
of a teapot. One day the conversation fell upon the little hamlet of
Flash in the Cheshire hills. Pedlars from Manchester used to waste their
time there in drinking on their way to London, whence the term
‘flash-goods!’ We drove to Holford Hall, passing on the outskirts of
Tabley many of the brown many-horned sheep, which are said to have
descended from some washed ashore from the Armada. I was glad to go
again with Lady Egerton to Arley, where the beautiful gardens, really
modern, have all the picturesqueness of antiquity. It is typical of the
kindness which old Mr. Warburton shows in everything that all round the
roads on his estate he leaves open spaces with plenty of brambles for
blackberry gatherers.
“Lord Donington told Lady Egerton that when he went to live where he
does now, his two young boys were taught by an admirable English
governess. One day, having observed the housekeeper carefully locking
the door of a spare bedroom, she casually said, ‘Do you always keep the
doors of the unused bedrooms locked?’--‘No,’ said the housekeeper, ‘only
this one;’ and she invited the governess to look into it, saying that
there was a mystery about it. Some one always seemed to come to sleep
there, whom she could not imagine, and she believed some trick was being
played upon her. As an experiment, she said she would be very much
obliged if the governess would take away the key after the room was
locked, and keep it till the following morning. The next day they went
together to the room, which showed every appearance of having been slept
in, yet the window was carefully fastened inside, and there was no other
possible entrance.
“Some time after, a young man came to shoot with the boys, and was put
into that room. In the morning he came down with a very scared look, and
said he was very sorry, but he must leave. Being much pressed, he
allowed that he had been dreadfully frightened. He had kept his candle
by his bed to finish a book he had been reading, and, looking up, he saw
an old man sitting by the fire, who eventually rose, came, looked into
the bed, and seeing him there, walked away. ‘And,’ said the visitor,
‘_that_ is the man!’ pointing to a picture on the wall of an ancestor
who had died centuries before.
“Amongst the guests at Tatton were a Mr. and Mrs. Crum, most delightful
people. He had made a fortune as a manufacturer, and they now live at
Broxton Old Hall, a dower-house and beautiful old black and white manor
of Sir Philip Egerton’s, whither I went to visit them. Thence I saw Mr.
Wolley Dodd’s wonderful garden, the most interesting herbaceous
collection in England. Mr. Wolley, well known as an Eton master, married
Miss Dodd, the heiress of Edge, and of a family which has lived there
from Saxon times, and of which a member was knighted at Agincourt; and
he has turned a farmyard, a quarry, a pond, a wood, &c., into the most
astonishing of gardens, in which each genus of plants is provided with
the exact soil it loves best, and grows as it never does elsewhere. Near
Edge we saw the noble old black and white house of Carden. We also saw
the once splendid church of Malpas, utterly ruined by its so-called
‘restoration’ under a Chester architect named Douglas--old pavements,
old pews ruthlessly destroyed, and a vestry by Vanbrugh only spared for
want of funds to pull it down. A miserable window commemorates Reginald
Heber, once rector, and a lime avenue leads to his rectory. I was
several days at Drayton as I returned--most beautiful and interesting.
“C. writes to me for advice, but I feel more and more diffident about
giving any. I found such a capital bit about this in a novel called
‘Margaret Maliphant,’ the other day. The old servant Deborah says, ‘What
you think’s the right way most times turns out to be the wrong way; and
when you make folks turn to the right when they was minded to turn to
the left, it’s most like the left would have been the best way for them
to travel after all. I’ve done advisin’ long ago; for it’s a queer tract
of country here below, and every one has to take their own chance in the
long-run.’
“_How_ tiresome the shibboleth which many clergymen talk in church is!
Mr. ---- has been dwelling upon the exceeding _sinfulness of sin_. We
_may_ find a meaning for this, but is it in fact different from the
_beautifulness of beauty_, which we should call nonsense?”
* * * * *
_To_ LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.
“_Nov. 30, 1890._--I had a pleasant visit at St. Audries, Sir A. Acland
Hood’s beautiful place. It is a red sandstone house, enfolded amongst
green hills, chiefly covered with golden or russet woods or rich growth
of arbutus, and in front is the sea. In the morning-room are Turner’s
water-colour pictures of Sussex (including one of Hurstmonceaux),
executed for Mr. Fuller of Rosehill, of whom, with two other fortunes,
Lady Hood was the heiress. In a corner of the hall are baby-clothes of
three boys beneath the portrait of another remote ancestor, Edward
Palmer of Ightham Mote. One Whitsunday morning a servant came in and
said, ‘Sir, your lady has presented you with a son.’--‘The most joyful
news you could have brought me!’ said Mr. Palmer. The following Sunday
the servant came again: ‘Sir, your lady has presented you with another
son.’--‘Oh, God bless my soul! you don’t say so?’ exclaimed Mr. Palmer.
But the third Sunday the servant came in with ‘Sir, your lady has
presented you with another son.’ It seemed quite too much; but the
babies all lived, and grew up to be very distinguished men, being all
knighted for their valour by Henry VIII.[494] I was delightfully taken
about--to Crowcombe, where the Carew heiress has married Cranmer
Trollope, and where there are noble Vandykes and a fine Titian portrait:
to Quantockshead, with a delightful old hall and carved chimney-pieces:
and to Nettlecombe, where the old hall of the Catholic Sir Alfred
Trevelyan nestles close to the parish church. Sir Alfred described how
the ‘church restorers’ at Bideford had turned all that was worth having
out of the church. A figure of a man was bought by an old woman, but she
thought it was too undressed and kept it--in bed! There it was found
with its head comfortably laid on the pillow, a figure of St. John
Baptist. The old woman had some notion of its value, as she asked £600
for it; but it was well worth that, as it was a priceless Donatello!
“All about this neighbourhood it is the same thing. Sir A. Hood had been
to see a friend of his, and remarked, ‘What a pretty and peculiar
flower-stand you have.’--‘Yes,’ said the friend, ‘and an interesting one
too, for it is the font of Ongar church, in which Gunthran the Dane was
baptized, and by which King Alfred stood as his sponsor.’
“Mr. W. Neville, who was one of the guests at St. Audries, had been to
hear Dr. Parker, of the Congregational Hall, preach. He began his sermon
by saying, ‘My brethren, I have received a letter from a gentleman
saying that he intends to be present to-day and to make a philosophical
analysis of my discourse to you. I am sure you will all sympathise with
me in the embarrassment and nervousness which I must experience on such
an occasion, though certainly I may derive some little comfort from the
fact that my correspondent spells “philosophical” with an _f_.’
“Mr. Neville told me that he had asked a boy in his parish what was the
difference between the head and the stomach. ‘The head has brains in it,
if the owner has any,’ replied the boy; ‘the stomach has bowels; they
are five--_a-e-i-o-u_.’
“It was only a drive from St. Audries to Dunster, where I spent three
days, and which is, as Charlie Halifax has often described it, quite the
most beautiful place in the south of England. It is an old castle, of
which the earlier parts are of Edward I., on a great height, rising from
glorious evergreen woods, with a view of the sea on one side and russet
moorland on the other: in the depth, on one side, a tossing crystalline
river and old pointed bridge; on the other, the town with its ancient
market-house and glorious church. I slept in ‘King Charles’s Room,’ in a
great carved bed. The cottages in the villages around are covered with
myrtle, coronilla, and geranium.
“Mrs. Stucley, one of the Fanes of Clovelly, was at St. Audries. She
told me that one Sunday their clergyman preached entirely on
Thermopylae, and wound up by saying that the Spartans were much the
bravest men that ever lived; that there was never any battle like
Thermopylae. Afterwards, at luncheon, Colonel Stucley said he did not
agree with what the preacher had said, for all the Thespians perished,
whilst the Spartans survived: had the Thespians survived, they might
have proved as good as their rivals.
“Three weeks afterwards the clergyman surprised the Stucleys by saying,
‘Well, my case is proved. I’ve the opinion of the greatest Greek scholar
of the age--Mr. Gladstone--that it is as I stated it, that the Spartans
were the bravest.’ He had actually written to Mr. Gladstone, and
produced the answer.
“Afterwards Mrs. Stucley was dining out in London, and went down with
Mr. Godley, one of Gladstone’s secretaries. She said, ‘I am afraid my
name may not be unknown to you?’--‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Thermopylae,’ and went
on to tell that when one of the secretaries opened the letter, they all
discussed the question, and not being able to agree, took it in to Mr.
Gladstone, who was so excited by it that he left his finance and all
else, and walked about for three hours talking of nothing but
Thermopylae.
“Except the Lefevres and Brasseys, I think my Dunster visit is the only
time I have ever stayed in a Radical house; but its mistress, Mrs.
Luttrell, with the support of her own family twelve miles off, holds out
as a Conservative.
“From Somersetshire I went to Hatfield, arriving just after sunset. You
could only just see the red colouring on the majestic old house, but all
the windows blazed and glittered with light through the dark walls; the
Golden Gallery with its hundreds of electric lamps was like a Venetian
illumination. The many guests coming and going, the curiously varied
names inscribed upon the bedroom doors, give the effect of having all
the elements of society compressed under one roof. It was pleasant to
meet Lady Lytton, beautiful still, and with all the charm of the most
high-bred refinement. Another guest was Count Herbert Bismarck. Lady
Salisbury had spoken of him as a fallen power, greatly broken by his
fall, and so had enlisted our sympathies for him, but he quenched them
by his loud authoritative manner, flinging every sentence from him with
defiant self-assertion. He was especially opinionated about Henry
VIII.’s wives, utterly refusing to allow that Anne of Cleves did not
precede Anne Boleyn. He is a colossal man and a great eater, and would
always fill two glasses of wine at once, to have one in reserve. At
dinner he was rather amusing about the inefficiency of doctors, and said
that the only time when cause follows effect was when a doctor follows
the funeral of his patient. Lord Selborne, who was sitting near, spoke
of Baron Munchausen, how he took the whole College of Physicians up in
his balloon, and kept them there a month, and then, when he sent them
down again out of pity for their patients, found all their patients had
got quite well in their absence, but that all the undertakers were
ruined.
“The life of a Prime Minister’s family is certainly no sinecure. Lady
Salisbury and her daughter have constantly to go off to found or open
charities of every description. Lord Salisbury is occupied with his
secretaries to the very last moment before breakfast and luncheon, into
which he walks stooping, with hands folded behind him, and a deeply
meditative countenance, and by his side the great boar-hound called
‘Pharaoh’--‘because he will not let the people go;’ but when once seated
as a host, he wakes up into the most interesting and animated
conversation.
“How cold it is! but, as Mr. Bennett has been saying in Curzon Street
Chapel, ‘Winter is like the pause of the instrument; not the paralysis,
but the preparation of Nature.’ These sermons at Curzon Street are one
of the greatest interests of London now. Last Sunday’s was on
‘anonymous sins.’ ‘How many there are,’ said the preacher, ‘even in
fashionable life, who say, “Lord, I will follow Thee, I mean to follow
Thee ... but ...;”’ and proceeded to describe how ‘the future of the
world depends upon its unknown saints.’ Very different are these from
the nonsensical sermons one often hears about ‘the awful circumstances
of the times,’ interlarded with prophetic texts.
“There has been a long and amusing Review of my ‘France’ in the
_Speaker_, reproaching me with my Roman Catholic tendencies, as evinced
in the length of my account of Ars and its Curé, the writer being
evidently unconscious that for every English traveller who lingers at
Lyons, at least a hundred (Catholics) turn aside to Ars. This Review is
noticed in an American paper, which says, ‘As a matter of fact, Mr. Hare
is a well-known Low Church clergyman, who _poses at clerical meetings as
an advanced Evangelical_!’ The other Reviews seem to have been mostly
written by men who knew nothing of the subject, and who have not taken
the trouble to know more of the book than, at most, the first chapter.
One of them asserts that ‘the illustrations, said to be taken from
original sketches, are evidently all from photographs’ (!); but ‘j’ai
pour principe que le radotage des sots ne tire pas à conséquence,’ as
Ernest Renan says.”
* * * * *
_To_ LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.
“_Dec. 7, 1890._--I have had an interesting visit to the De Capel
Brookes in the old grey Tudor house of Great Oakley Hall in
Northamptonshire. Thence I saw two of the finest houses in England.
Rushton (Mr. Clarke Thornhill’s) is a great Tudor house with a screen
like that of a Genoese palace. In the garden is ‘Dryden’s Walk,’ and the
three-cornered lodge built by Richard Tresham (with Lyveden and the
town-hall of Rothwell) as a strange votive offering to propitiate the
Trinity for success in the enterprise of the Gunpowder Plot. Rockingham
is even more interesting. Once the hunting-palace of King John, it was
inhabited ever afterwards by the English kings till the time of Henry
VII., since which the Watsons have possessed it. The position is
splendid, with a wide view of map-like Northamptonshire country, and it
is approached by a gateway between noble Plantagenet towers. All
additions have been made in the best taste, and the great drawing-room
is magnificent. King John’s treasure-chest remains in the hall. There is
a noble Sir Joshua, and a most beautiful Angelica Kauffmann, probably
her finest work. Other interesting pictures came to the Watsons through
marriages, many of Lord Strafford and his surroundings through the
marriage of his daughter with Lord Rockingham; those of Henry Pelham,
the Duke of Newcastle, &c., through the daughter of the former.
“How interesting is the Parnell crisis! At Miss Seymour’s I met a
Countess Ziski, who talked of how curious it was that abroad, if a woman
misconducts herself, she is boycotted, but no notice is taken of the
misconduct of the man: here, if a woman misconducts herself, an
easy-going society makes excuses for her, but the man is cashiered for
ever.