child of six. All went well, till it came to making the sign of the
cross, when the child exclaimed, ‘If you do that again, I’ll hit yer in
the eye.’ At a recent Board-school examination ‘Education’ was defined
as ‘that which enables you to despise the opinions of others, and
conduces to situations of considerable emolument.’ I think it was Miss
Cobbe who defined ‘Conscience’ as ‘that which supplies you with an
excellent motive for doing that which you desire to do, and which fills
you with self-satisfaction when you have done it.’”
* * * * *
_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN.
“_Llandaff, Dec. 18, 1890._--I was a week at Ammerdown, meeting Lord and
Lady Temple, the Phelips’s of Montacute, and a charming Miss Devereux,
Lord Hereford’s daughter.... The Dean of ---- had been out with a
shooting party in the neighbourhood. ‘I hope you sent some pheasants the
Dean’s way,’ said the owner of the ground to a keeper. ‘Oh yes, that I
have, and his holiness has been pepperin’ away as stiff as a biscuit.’
“Here at Llandaff it has been interesting to meet Mr. Herbert Ward of
the African Stanley rearguard, a most frank, simple, and evidently most
truthful fellow, who speaks with great moderation of the leader of the
expedition, to whom they owed so much of suffering, misery, death, and
slander.
“Have you never remarked how hypnotism is described in Wisdom xvii.?”
* * * * *
_To_ LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.
“_Honingham, Norfolk, January 8, 1891._--I enjoyed my Christmas visit to
the Lowthers, though it was rather spoilt by what novelists would call
the incipient agonies of a cold, which has about attained its perfection
now, and I am glad to be in this warm house of the hospitable Ailwyn
Fellowes’s, where I am well looked after.
“I heard such a capital story of Bishop Magee the other day. He was in a
carriage on the Great Western with two young clergymen, one of whom
began, and went on violently abusing the Bishop of Peterborough by name,
without observing who he was. At Swindon the Bishop got out to have some
soup. When he was gone, the other curate said, ‘How could you go on like
that? couldn’t you see that _was_ the Bishop of Peterborough?’--‘Why
didn’t you stop me?’--‘Well, I did all I could; I’m sure I kicked you
hard enough.’--‘What _can_ I do?’--‘Well, if I was you, I should
apologise.’ So, when the Bishop came back, the young man said, ‘I’m very
sorry, my Lord, to have said all I did in your presence. I am sure I had
not an idea who you were, and if there is anything you especially
objected to, I should be very glad to withdraw it and
apologise.’--‘Well,’ said the Bishop, ‘there was one thing, there
certainly was one thing which annoyed me very much: you _would_ call me
Majee; now my name is Magee!”
* * * * *
Alas! the shadows which I had observed during my last visit to my dear
friend Lady Waterford were now gathering very thickly around her. She
had failed rapidly from the time of her removal from Highcliffe to her
Northumbrian home, and was no longer able to answer me; but I still
wrote to her.
* * * * *
_To_ LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.
“_Athenaeum Club, March 1, 1891._--I am thankful still to hear of you
from many common friends, and quite satisfied without hearing from
yourself, and rejoice to think of you as able to enjoy drives. I think
you will often find out, by carriage, points which will be almost new to
you, and I can imagine how lovely the effects must have been in the hazy
hollows of the Cheviots in these last days, when even here sunshine has
broken through the fog in which London was shrouded for a week. It is
Sunday, and I am just going to Curzon Street Chapel. I would not miss
one of Mr. Bennett’s sermons on any account.... The one which struck me
most was on the brief text ‘Nothing but leaves!’--so many bear those,
quite a great growth of them, and no more: I am sure I do.”
* * * * *
“_March 16._--Two days ago I ran in from this Club to luncheon at the
Brownlows’ close by, and had such a pleasant visit.
“I went first into the large room they call the library on the ground
floor--the most enchanting of rooms, hung all round with noble Italian
pictures, some of them bequeathed by Miss Talbot, and bright with many
flowers; some of your prettiest drawings on the table; Westminster
Abbey, faint, grey, and impressive, beyond the leafless trees outside
the window. Here I found Lord Pembroke, always as genial, pleasant, and
charming as he is handsome.
“The staircase is quite beautiful, chiefly designed by Lord Brownlow,
but partly taken from the old palace-inn at Parma, with friezes and
alcoves, and lighted by a copy of Michelangelo’s lanthorn. In the wide
gallery above we found Lady Brownlow. Her two sisters came in, and then
we had luncheon.
“Afterwards we went to the pretty little sitting-room, full of beautiful
things, which is called Lady Lothian’s. What an attractive group the
sisters made--the pale, spiritual, abstracted Lady Lothian, the very
type of refined gentleness: Lady Brownlow, with her noble Bronzino-like
head and colouring, and the figure of a classic caryatide: Lady
Pembroke, less interesting at first, but so intensely _grande dame_; and
then the two husbands leaning over them, on such happy, devoted terms
with all three, were such noble specimens of humanity. The conversation
there is delightful--so un-Londony, so original, so high-minded and
high-meaning.
“To-day I have been to Edward Clifford’s studio to see his drawings and
his Burne-Jones’s--all of the usual lean, limp, scared-woman kind. What
was more interesting was the handsome, radiant, bright-eyed elderly
woman who was looking over the drawings: it was the famous Madame
Novikoff. I had much talk with her, and found her most simple and
attractive, and not the least an alarming person.”
* * * * *
It was on the day after writing this that I first truly realised that my
dearest Lady’s illness must be fatal. Our Lady was told that it must be
so, that the end might come any day, any hour. At first she shed a few
natural tears, and said, “I thought I should have lived to
seventy-seven, as my mother did,” and then added sweetly, “But why
should I mind, since God so wills it? tell me how it will be.”--“Perhaps
in your chair, just as you are sitting now.”--“Oh, that will be well--so
quiet, so well.” One day soon afterwards she wished to go out into the
garden when it was not thought good for her. “Perhaps you might die when
you are out.”--“And why should it not be like that? If God called me in
the garden, it would be as well as in any other place.” I could not go
to Ford, because Lady Waterford was not allowed to see any one
unnecessarily, but for many weeks succeeding my whole heart was there
with the faithful friend, the kind sympathiser, the constant
correspondent of thirty years. One heard of the gradual increase of the
disease: of her laying aside all painting and writing: of her reading
prayers to her servants for the last time; but still talking in her wise
and beautiful way of all things “lovely and of good report,” laughing
brightly over old recollections: then of her lying constantly on a sofa,
always rejoicing to see those she loved, but mistaking her younger
relations for their mothers, dear to her in the long ago. Often also
others, those dearest to her, who had gone before, appeared to be
present with her as angel ministrants to cheer and comfort. The sweet
face of old Lady Stuart, her mother, seemed visibly present: she
imagined her old governess to be in the house, and bade Miss Lindsay to
be sure to arrange for the drives which she knew the old lady liked.
Through the flowers upon her table she constantly saw her sister
Charlotte, Lady Canning, in all her loveliness. Her sense of the
companionship of this beloved sister was so vivid, and she spoke of her
so often, that at last one of those present thought it necessary to say
to her, “Dear lady, Lady Canning died very many years ago.” “Oh, did
she? How delightful! then I shall soon be able to talk to her. I see her
now, but soon we shall talk as we used to do.” One evening there was a
beautiful sunset. Our dear Lady sat watching it. “It is like the coming
of the Lord,” she said. Surely the watchers at Ford realised General
Gordon’s words--“Any one to whom God gives to be much with Him, cannot
even suffer a pang at the approach of death. For what is death to a
believer? It is a closer approach to Him whom, even through the veil,
he is ever with.”
Mr. Neville, the rector of Ford, prayed with her daily. “How I wish that
others might have the solace this is to me,” she said, with her peculiar
emphasis on the word “solace.”
Lady Brownlow was with her three days, and was her last visitor: she
came away saying it had been like being in a beautiful church, so
pervading was the sense of holiness. “Oh, darling Adelaide! goodness and
beauty, beauty and goodness: those are ever the great things!” were our
dear Lady’s last words to her, as she took her hands and gazed at her
earnestly. They were very characteristic.
* * * * *
_To_ LOUISA, MARCHIONESS OF WATERFORD.
“_April 12, 1891._--How often my thoughts go to Ford, and how well I can
imagine all that surrounds you there--the snowy Cheviots, that pretty
little garden in the bastion tower, the warm bright library; most of all
the constant care of Miss Thompson and Miss Lindsay. I am so glad I know
it so well, and have so many memories of happy visits--in the old
castle, in the cottage with dear Lady Stuart, in the renewed castle
since. I seem to see you this bright Sunday morning, and hope it is as
bright with you. Inwardly I am sure the sun is shining, and that the
Saviour you have loved so well is very near you in hours of weakness. I
often wish I could do something--anything--for you, but I can only
think of you with ever-grateful love, and pray that all may be peaceful
and smooth with you.
“Lady Bloomfield is feeling the loss of her old friend Mrs. Hogg,[495]
but she had the most gentle and peaceful end, just talking to her sister
and daughter very calmly and quietly without any pain or fear, and then
falling sweetly asleep and not waking....
“‘The Blessed Trinity have you in his keeping,’ as Margaret Paston wrote
in 1461.”
* * * * *
“_April 26._--Another week of bitter cold and biting winds, and I fear
you will have been the worse for them. Your state of suspension from so
much that you used to be able to do so constantly recalls that of my
dearest mother--in winter--for many years; but when the limbs seemed
least helpful, and eyes and hands least active, all happy memories of
her wealthy past seemed brighter to her, and she was always able to find
comfort in the feeling that ‘they also serve who only stand and wait.’
... I know that, to the weakest, Christ can give such blessed assurance
of His love, that in the joy of it all pain and fear are unfelt and
vanish. Oh, would that I could do anything for you, but you know how
much I always am your most affectionate and grateful
“A. J. C. H.”
This letter was read to our Lady: then I was told to write no more. The
end was very near, and each hour became filled with a tensity of
waiting for the silent summons. There were none of the ordinary signs of
an illness. Our Lady suffered no pain at all, scarcely even discomfort.
Her former beauty returned to her, only in a more majestic form, the
signs of age seeming to be smoothed away, except in the grey hair half
hidden by soft lace. She rarely spoke, and noticed little except the
beauty of the flowers by which she was surrounded. But when she did
speak, those with her knew that, with entire and humblest prostration of
self at the foot of the Cross, her faith and hope had never been
brighter. She looked beyond the snowy hills into a sky of unearthly
beauty. And so, peacefully, radiantly, our dearest Lady fell into the
ever-smiling unconsciousness, in which, on May 11th, she passed away
from us to join the beloved and honoured who are at rest with Christ. As
I think of her, some lines come back to me which I read to her on my
last morning at Ford:--
“Now for all waiting hours
Well am I comforted,
For of a surety now I see
That, without dire distress
Of tears or weariness,
My Lady verily awaiteth me:
So that, until with her I be,
For my dear Lady’s sake
I am right fain to make
Out of my pain a pillow, and to take
Grief for a golden garment unto me;
Knowing that I, at last, shall stand
In that green garden-land,
And, in the holding of my Lady’s hand,
Forget the grieving and the misery.”[496]
I should have gone to Ford afterwards, but our Lady only died on Monday,
and it was late on Wednesday night before I heard that she was to be
buried on Thursday afternoon, so to arrive in time was impossible. Miss
Lindsay wrote to me how her coffin was carried on the shoulders of her
own labourers to the churchyard, how all the village and all her
tenantry came to her funeral, with the few intimate friends within
reach, and how Helmore’s music was sung. It was well the end was at
Ford. Highcliffe is a rapidly changing place, and it has already passed
to comparative strangers; but at Ford she will always be _the_ Lady
Waterford, “the good, the dear Lady Waterford.”
There our Lady rests, within view of her own Cheviots, surrounded by the
affectionate Border people, to whom their “Border Queen” was their
greatest pride and interest and joy. An aching void will remain in our
hearts through life, but it is only for our poor selves. When one thinks
of her, earth fades and vanishes, and if--when one is alone--one allows
oneself to think, to dwell upon all the glory of what she _was_, an
all-pervading sense of peace and holiness comes upon one, and one seems,
for the moment, almost to pass into the Land of Beulah--into the higher
life, without worry or vexation, where she _is_.
When her things were being distributed, the distributors were surprised
to hear that “the odd man” most earnestly begged for something: it was
for her old sealskin jacket. It was thought a most singular request at
first, but he urged it very much: he should “treasure the jacket as long
as ever he lived.”
[Illustration: TOMB OF LADY WATERFORD, FORD.]
He had been walking by her donkey-chair in the road, when they found a
female tramp lying in the ditch, very ill indeed. Lady Waterford got out
of her chair and made the man help her to lift the poor woman into it.
Then she took off her own jacket, and put it upon the sick woman, and
walked home by the side of the chair, tending and comforting her all the
way. “But it was not my Lady’s putting her jacket on the woman that I
cared about,” said the man, “but that she did not consider her jacket
the least polluted by having been worn by the tramp; _she wore it
herself afterwards_ as if nothing had happened.”
XXVII
SOCIAL REMINISCENCES
“Napoleon used to say that what was most fatal to a general was the
knack of combining objects into pictures. A good officer, he said,
never makes pictures; he sees objects, as through a field-glass,
exactly as they are.”--_Macmillan_, No. 306.
“Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy when great ones
are not in the way. For want of a block, he will stumble on a
straw.”--SWIFT.
“Errors like straws upon the surface flow,
He who would search for pearls must dive below.”
--DRYDEN.
_To the_ HON. G. JOLLIFE.
“_Holmhurst, August 1891._--I enjoyed my months in London at the time,
yet was very glad to come away. It is a terrible waste of life. The size
and lateness of dinners have killed society. Scarcely any one says
anything worth hearing, and if any one does, nobody listens.
“‘Que de bonnes choses vont tous les jours mourir dans l’oreille d’un
sot,’ was always a true saying of Fontenelle, but is less true now than
formerly--there are so few _bonnes choses_.
“People love talking, but not talk. Dinners are rather display than
hospitality, supplying abundance of sumptuous viands, but no _esprit_.
I heard pleasanter conversation in one quiet luncheon at the Speaker’s
from his delightful family than at a hundred parties: as a social art it
is extinct. One never hears such conversationalists as gathered round my
aunt Mrs. Stanley’s homely table long ago, or as, in later times, round
Arthur Stanley, Mrs. Grote, Madame Mohl, the first Lady Carnarvon, Lord
Houghton, Lady Margaret Beaumont. The dinners, in food sense, have never
any attraction to me. L. and I dined out together at ---- and I think it
was an even match which of us suffered most, L. or myself: myself,
because the dinner was too good; L., because it was not good enough.
[Illustration: THE OAK WALK, HOLMHURST.]
“From what I hear from the East End, the scandal of Tranby Croft seems
to be acting as the _affaire du collier_ did in France in preparing the
way for a revolution. But the West End goes on as if nothing had
happened. I saw the Emperor (of Germany) several times, a fat young man
with a bright good-humoured face, though apparently never free from the
oppression of his own importance, as well as of the importance of his
dress, which he changes very often in the day. And I went, one glorious
afternoon, when the limes were in blossom, with several thousand other
people to Hatfield to meet the Prince of Naples, whose intelligence
(especially on subjects connected with Natural History) seems to have
pleased everybody. He is very small, but has none of the aggressive
ugliness of his father and grandfather. One day I went to luncheon with
Miss Rhoda Broughton, who is seen at her very best in her little house
at Richmond, most attractive in its old prints and furniture and lovely
river view. Then I spent a Sunday with my cousin Theresa Earle in her
pretty Surrey home, and wound up the season by meeting a large party at
Cobham.”
[Illustration: THE VENETIAN WELL, HOLMHURST.]
* * * * *
_To_ MISS LEYCESTER (_æt._ 94).
“_Holmhurst, Sept. 2, 1891._--You will imagine how your birthday makes
me think of you, and how much I give thanks for the blessing which your
love and kindness has been to us for so many years. I like to think of
you on your peaceful sofa, and I know you are like John Wilson Croker,
who, when some one remarked in his presence that death was an awful
thing, said, ‘I do not feel it so. The same Hand which took care of me
when I came into this world will take care of me when I go out of it.’”
* * * * *
_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN, _and Note-book_.
“_Holmhurst, Oct. 1891._--I have returned from my autumn visits, which
have been delightful. The Watsons, who live at Rockingham, the old royal
palace of the Midlands, are well worthy of its noble rooms and its
brilliant gardens, relieved against the quaintest of yew hedges.
“At Hovingham, in Yorkshire, I found Mrs. Lowther, and we sketched
together very happily. It is an unusual great house, approached through
a riding-school and a sculpture gallery, which contains a huge work of
Giovanni da Bologna and the loveliest little Greek statue in England.
Genial Sir William Worsley, the adopted uncle of all the nicest young
ladies in the county, is a centre of love and goodness, and his
saint-like wife, crippled and utterly motionless from chronic
rheumatism, is the sunshine of all around her. Most quaint are some of
the old-fashioned dependants. The old coachman seriously asked his
master, ‘Is it true, Sir William, that Baron Rothschild was refused when
he offered to pay the whole of the natural debt if he might drive eight
horses like the Queen, instead of seven horses and a mule?’
“We saw Gilling, the fine old Fairfax castle, and spent a delicious day
at Rievaulx. Sir William has oratorios(!) annually performed in his
riding-school.
“I arrived at Bishopthorpe the day before the Archbishop’s enthronement,
and found a large party of relations assembling; but it would be
difficult to crowd the house, as there are forty bedrooms and the
dining-room is huge. The palace lies low, and out of the dining-room
window you could very nearly fish in the Ouse, which often floods the
cellars, the only part remaining of the original house of Walter de
Gray. The rococo gateway is imposed by guidebooks upon the uninitiated
as that of Wolsey’s palace at Cawood: perhaps a few of its ornaments
came from thence. The ceremony in the Minster was very imposing, the
more so as a military escort was given to the Archbishop, as having been
an old soldier. Most moving was his address upon the responsibilities,
and what he felt to be the duties, of his office. The ebb and flow of
processional music was beautiful, as the long stream of choristers and
clergy flowed in and out of the Minster. The Archbishop’s brothers--one
of them, Sir Douglas-Maclagan, being eighty--made a very remarkable
group.
“Most happy and interesting were my four succeeding days at Hickleton,
where I met one of the familiar circles of people I always connect with
Charlie Halifax--Lady Ernestine Edgecumbe, Lady Morton, Canon and Lady
Caroline Courtenay, the Haygarths. More characteristic still of the host
was the presence of a nun in full canonicals--Sister Caroline--‘this
religious,’ as Charlie called her--who appeared at meals, though only to
partake of a rabbit’s diet. In the churchyard a great crucifix, twelve
feet high, is being erected, and the people of Doncaster do not come out
to stone it; on the contrary, the crucifix and its adjuncts attract
large congregations of pitmen, who would not go to church at all
otherwise; and the neighbourhood is beginning to wonder how long the
Church of England can dare to deny its Lord by condemning the crucifix,
the vacant cross being but the frame of the picture with the portrait
left out, and in itself an eloquent protest against the omission.
Another smaller crucifix commemorates the three dear boys who have ‘gone
home.’ The shadow of their great loss here is ever present, but it is
truly a sanctified grief: their memory is kept ever fresh and the
thought of them sunny, and thus they still seem to have their
part--invisible--in the daily life, upon which their beautiful pictured
semblances look down from the walls of their home. Only a deep sudden
sigh from the father now and then recalls all he has undergone. The
short morning services in the house-chapel, with its huge crucifix from
Ober-Ammergau, where the household sing in parts, are very touching.
Still more so are the Sunday services in the beautiful church, close to
the house, the low mass, then the full surpliced choir and the blazing
lights, and the holy rood above the reredos glittering through them in a
golden glamour. In the darker aisle where we sat were the sleeping
alabaster figures of the late Lord and Lady Halifax upon their great
altar-tomb, and near me the dearest friend of my long-ago was
kneeling--a stainless knight--in a rapt devotion which seemed to carry
him far into the unseen. I could only feel, as Inglesant at Little
Gidding, the presence of a peace and glory utterly unearthly, and as if
there--as nowhere else--Heaven took possession of one and entered into
one’s soul.
“A journey through the Fen country took me to Campsea Ashe, where the
artistic party collected in the pleasant Lowther home spent a most
pleasant week in drawing--studying--by the silent moats of old-timbered
houses--Parham, Seckford, and Otley. We went also to the attractive old
town of Woodbridge, where Percy Fitzgerald lived, who wrote so many
capital articles. A characteristic story told of him is that he once
spent the evening in the company of a bore who buzzed on incessantly
about this lord and that till he could bear it no longer and left the
room, but as he did so, opened the door once more, and, putting in his
head, said, ‘_I_ knew a lord once, but he’s dead!’
[Illustration: BISHOP’S BRIDGE, NORWICH.][497]