the waste of its dreary saloons. Then with Mary Hare I went to
Woolbeding, a drive through loveliest lanes, across an open common
covered with fern turned brown by the early frost, and then down an
avenue of magnificent Scotch firs, to where lines of gorgeous flowers
led up to the house, like a French château with high roof and dormer
windows. I had always wished to see its charming owner, Lady Lanerton,
who was just what I expected--a beautiful old lady, quite unable from
rheumatism to move out of the chair in which, put upon wheels, she can
be taken to the services in the little church in the garden, filled with
memorials of those she has loved and outlived. In her face was the
satisfied and restful expression of one waiting in grateful patience and
humblest hope upon the borderland. She seemed to say, what I have just
read as amongst Mrs. Stowe’s last words, “I feel about all things now as
I do about the things that happen in a hotel after my trunk is packed to
go home. I may be vexed and annoyed--but what of it? I am going home
soon.” In the garden, amongst the splendid profusion of old-fashioned
flowers, I was glad to find Lady Bagot, linked with many memories of my
long ago.
* * * * *
_To the_ HON. G. H. JOLLIFFE.
“_Nov. 1._--I have had an interesting and most pleasant visit to Sir
John Lubbock, one of the most delightful of men, so entirely captivating
in his simplicity of true wisdom, that no one could fail to be fond of
him. His home of High Elms, near Orpington, is a beautiful place, quite
near London, but with glorious woods and an entirely country aspect.
Professor Forster and many other clever men were there, all far too
learned for me, but I did not even try to ‘live up to them,’ and so
enjoyed myself thoroughly. I went on from High Elms to Sir George
Higginson’s at Great Marlow, and he--a very dear old friend--with all
the manly straightforwardness of a splendid soldier and the chivalry of
the most refined gentleness, is almost as attractive as Sir John, doing
far more than many cleverer people to make life pleasant, and verifying
Madame Swetchine’s words, ‘C’est par l’esprit qu’on s’amuse, c’est par
le cœur qu’on ne s’ennuie pas.’ Thence, I was taken to see my
Dashwood cousins at West Wycombe House, which is full of curious
pictures and furniture, recalling a French château of the beginning of
the eighteenth century, even in the peculiarly refined and delicate
loveliness of its chatelaine.”
* * * * *
_To_ VISCOUNT HALIFAX.
“_Nov. 9._--I have been very ill. It was a bad chill at first, followed
by most terrible pains, which I thought were part of the chill, and
struggled against, moving about when I ought to have kept perfectly
still. When at last I sent for a doctor, he said I had been in most
imminent danger for several days, and that I must have died before
another forty-eight hours were over if he had not come just then. A
slight operation was necessary at once to re-arrange an internal
misplacement, and this relieved the agonising pain. I have not often
been before so immediately, never so suddenly, face to face with
possible death. For some hours no one knew how it would go, yet I have
often _felt_ more ill. There was constantly in my mind a text which I
believe is in the Old Testament somewhere, ‘Shall not the Judge of all
the earth do right?’ and I rested upon it somehow. There seems something
almost cowardly in the way in which, when very ill, one turns for
comfort to texts and hymns and prayers, which one seldom thinks of at
other times. But I _do_ find them a comfort, and I suppose it is partly
the natural transition from active to contemplative life.... Still I
cannot say what my extreme thankfulness was when it was pronounced that
all was going on well and that I was likely to recover. I suspect that I
shall have to ‘go softly’ for a long time to come, perhaps always, and
never be quite as well as I have been: still, in the many mercies which
are left to me, I shall never have time to think of the disagreeables.
“How strange it is when one knows, when one is told, that one is almost
in the valley of the shadow of death! I felt more surprised than
frightened; indeed, I do not think I felt frightened at all, I could
leave it so completely in wiser Hands. But I know that I looked very
wistfully at all the little familiar pictures on the wall, feeling how
sorry I should be to see them for the last time, and to part from all
‘the boys’ and my many interests here, and go into the unknown, of which
one knows so little; only that I do, absolutely and entirely, trust in
the mercy of God, and know that it will be well somehow; as to the how,
God will know best how to settle it.
“Perhaps it may be, as in Michelangelo’s sonnet--
‘Not death indeed, but the dread thought of death saveth and severeth.’
“I may not always go on feeling so; but I feel now as if I had left my
long youth on the other side of this illness. Andersen says, ‘The stem
of the pine-tree forms knots which betray the age of the tree: human
life has also its perceptible rings;’ I suspect this illness will be a
perceptible ring to me.”
* * * * *
_To the_ HON. G. H. JOLLIFFE.
“_Dec. 21, 1892._--You know how ill I was in November, but you do not
know all the serious thoughts it awakened. ‘Il est ennuyeux de vivre
dans la grâce de Dieu, mais tout le monde veut y mourir;’ is that what
you would answer? I have a great deal to say about it, but as you will
like facts better, I will only tell you that since I recovered I have
been quite a tour of visits, beginning with Lady Beauchamp,[507] and
meeting charming Lady Granville and a party of sixteen young men and
maidens at Madresfield Court, a moated house with a lovely view of the
Malvern Hills, and full of precious collections of every kind--old
books, old music, old miniatures, ivories, enamels, &c. In my room, ‘the
Stuart Room,’ it was a pleasure to live with portraits inscribed ‘Mary
Stewart, Princess of Orange,’ and ‘King James III.’ There is a chapel,
where Lady Mary Lygon watches over the musical part of the services,
aided by a footman who sings splendidly and plays five instruments well!
“I was several days at Moor Park near Ludlow, the stately house of Mrs.
Johnston Foster and her pleasant heiress-daughters. They have built a
huge and handsome church near their present home, and another in
Yorkshire. Mrs. Foster took me to spend the day at the curious old house
of Kyre, where there is a hiding-place in the hall behind a picture on a
sliding panel, and an oubliette in the floor beneath a trap-door.
Amongst the pictures was a curious portrait of Lady Pytts, whose
daughter married Sir Thomas Stanley, the first baronet of Alderley, and
planted the Alderley wood with beech-nuts from her old home, for before
that ‘there were no beech-trees in Cheshire.’ The lady of the house,
Mrs. Childe, has a wonderful power of making slight sketches from all
such old portraits in the houses where she visits, and has many volumes
of them.
“At Hereford I spent a most pleasant day with kindly Dean Herbert, who
showed me all the details of his cathedral, which is beautiful still,
though somewhat spoilt by Wyatt. Nothing was more interesting than the
slab tombs of a bishop and dean, who were such friends, that their hands
are represented as clasping each other from their adjoining gravestones.
How seldom this can have been possible!
“I was one day with my Biddulph cousins at Ledbury, and was even more
struck than before with their delightful old house of 1590, ‘entre cour
et jardin,’ like the houses of the Faubourg S. Germain, entered by a
court from the little town, and with a delicious garden and an old
deer-park--perhaps the smallest in England--on the other side. I was at
Shakspeare’s Charlecote afterwards, and at Warwick, and oh! so bitterly
cold!
“It has been almost constantly bad weather, but I do not mind that as I
used. I think it was Caroline Fox who first reminded us of ‘A wet day
and all its luxuries, a fine day and all its liabilities.’
“Then I had a happy week at beautiful old Blickling, with Constance,
Lady Lothian, who--though no blood relation to her--reminded me more
than any one else of my dear Lady Waterford, with much the same charm of
manner and power of enjoyment of all the smallest things of beauty. The
park, gloriously wild, belonged to Harold, and endless illustrious
owners since. The house is a dream of beauty externally, and is full of
ghost-stories. It was the family home of the Boleyns, and in the
tapestried drawing-room Anne Boleyn is still supposed to walk at night
with her head in her hand. In the present serving-room the devil
appeared to Lord Rockingham, who threw an inkstand at him, which missed,
and marked the wall. When Lord and Lady Lothian first came to Blickling,
they altered the house and pulled down partitions to make the present
morning-room. ‘I wish these young people would not pull down the
partitions,’ said an old woman in the village to the clergyman. ‘Why
so?’--‘Oh, because of the dog. Don’t you know that when A. was fishing
in the lake, he caught an enormous fish, and that, when it was landed, a
great black dog came out of its mouth? They never could get rid of that
dog, who kept going round and round in circles inside the house, till
they sent for a wise man from London, who opposed the straight lines of
the partitions to the lines of the circles, and so quieted the dog. But
if these young people pull down the partitions, they will let the dog
loose again, and there’s not a wise man in all London could lay that dog
now.’
“Lady Lothian took me to Mannington, Lord Orford’s[508] curious little
place. The garden, with its clipped hedges, statues, and vases, is
surrounded, with the house, by a wide moat. The house is full of old
pictures and furniture. In the dining-room is a sculptured skeleton
whispering to a monk. It was here that Dr. Jephson saw his
much-talked-of ghost. He had been sitting up late over the MSS., when an
old man appeared to him. He spoke to the figure, and, though it did not
answer, he was for some time quite certain of the apparition. Whilst I
was at Blickling, however, Dr. Jephson was one of my fellow-guests, and
he now thinks the vision was an optical delusion.
“On the outer wall of the house of Mannington are a number of Latin
inscriptions, put up by the present owner. They are all most bitter,
vehement, and incisive against women. But in a distant part of the
grounds there is also a monument to ‘Louise,’[509] with ‘Pensez à lui,
et priez pour elle.’ This is in a little wood, close to an old ruined
chapel, within which Lord Orford has already placed his own sarcophagus,
with an inscription (saying nobody else would ever do it), and around
which he has collected a vast number of architectural fragments from
destroyed churches. Lord Orford seldom comes to Mannington now, but
till five years ago he was much here in strictest seclusion, with his
adopted son and his wife, who were much tried by the dinner at half-past
six, always of exactly the same food, after which he would talk to the
lady with incessant quotations from the Latin poets, of which she did
not understand a word. Every Saturday he used to pass Blickling on his
way to Norwich, where he used to see his doctor, play a game of whist,
and hear a mass, returning next day.
“I was two days at Titsey with Granville Leveson Gower, who is a
delightful archaeologist. I remember him at Oxford. Now he has six sons
of his own, several of them very handsome.
“And all this time dear Lady Egerton’s death has been a shadow. She was
a most kind friend to me, and ‘La Mort laisse souvent plus de vide que
la Vie ne prenait de place.’ It was characteristic of her great
unselfishness that, when she knew her illness must be a very suffering
one and certainly fatal, she insisted upon being removed from the home
she loved so devotedly to a hired house at Eastbourne, in order that
Tatton might not be left with any distressing association for her
husband. Truly of her may be said--
‘But by her grave is peace and perfect beauty,
With the sweet heaven above,
Fit emblems of a life of Work and Duty
Transfigured into Love.’”
* * * * *
_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN _and_ JOURNAL.
“_Belvoir Castle, Jan. 6, 1893._--‘Be firm with the weather, and it’s
sure to clear up,’ said old Miss Hammersley, and, after the terrible
early winter, the weather, though bitterly cold, is most glorious. My
arrival at this stately castle was a fiasco. The Duchess had forgotten
that she had told me to come to their little station of Redmile, and
when I arrived at that desolate place, with deep snow on the ground and
night fast closing in, there was nothing to meet me. The stationmaster
sent his little boy to the next village, and in an hour he returned with
an open waggonette, agonisingly cold across the open plain. But I was
repaid when we entered the still loveliness of the ice-laden woods,
every bough sparkling in the moonlight like crystallised silver; and
still more when we emerged upon the plateau at the top of the hill, and
the mighty towers of the castle rose pale grey into the clear air,
looking down into the wooded frost-bound gorges like the palace of the
ice-queen. I found the Duchess waiting for me in the corridor, with that
genial solicitude for one’s comfort which goes straight to the heart
when one does meet with it, which is so seldom.
“It was a great pleasure to find the all-delightful Speaker here, with
his pleasant daughters, also my friend Wilfrid Ricardo. The rest of the
party are Lady Bristol and her daughter, Lady Clancarty and hers,
pleasant Fred Henniker and his sister, Mr. Macalmont, Mr. G. H. Smith,
Miss De la Brosse, &c., besides the sons and daughters of the house.
“How I like all the mediaeval ways--the trumpeters, who walk up and down
the passages and sound the dressing-time: the watchman, who calls the
hours through the night; the ball-room, always ready in the evenings for
those who want to dance: the band, in uniform, which plays soft music
from an adjoining room during dinner, at which all the hunting men
appear in their red coats, and add brilliancy and colour to the
immensely long table with its glorious old silver ornaments.
“On the first morning, the Speaker and I went after breakfast with the
Duchess to her private rooms, filled with comfort and sunshine, where
she fed thousands of birds upon the little platform outside her windows,
and the Duke, amongst other treasures, showed me a deed of King John
conferring Haddon upon Richard Manners.
“At 12, I met the Duke and Duchess again, and walked alone with them on
the terraces and along the exquisitely beautiful wood walks, all
glistening in silvered splendour, whilst the sun was bright and the air
quite still. The Duke told me how he had the bill--at £60 a piece--of
those curious statues by Cibber which are such an ornament to the
garden. Nothing could be more delightful than the way in which he talked
about the place, and with great affection of his brother the late Duke.
When we reached a little garden where there is a slab inscribed with
verses by Mrs. Kemble, he was tired and returned. I went on with the
Duchess, a long and most attractive path through the woods, and she
talked of her real devotion to the Queen, and of the Queen’s extreme
kindness to her, especially in insisting on the Duke’s going to
Wiesbaden to the doctor who cured his eyes when he seemed upon the verge
of total blindness. After luncheon, the Duke took the Speaker and me to
see in detail the miniatures, which are so beautifully arranged in
little panels on the drawing-room walls, with movable glasses in front.
Wonderful are those portraits of Sir Philip Sidney, of his friend Prince
Henry (with pearl earrings), and of Charles I. as a boy, with an
inscription speaking of him as ‘the Hope of England.’ Then we saw those
two little tables; one a sort of shrine to the Duke of Wellington, with
the (framed) letter which he wrote to the then Duchess after her son
Lord Robert was wounded in Spain--the prettiest, kindest letter ever
written: the other a shrine to the Duke of York, with his little bust,
part of his famous Protestant speech on yellow satin, and part of the
famous Cheshire cheese presented to him after it, and a bit of which he
sent, with a letter, to the Duchess of Rutland.
“In an exquisite old case worked by the Duke’s great-grandmother, and
beneath a heart of pearls enclosing his hair, is the last letter of her
son, Lord Robert Manners, who fell as captain of the _Resolution_ in
action under Rodney. The letter is addressed to the captain of another
ship, asking him to come to see him, and is written in the utmost
cheerfulness--‘though one leg is off, the other shattered, and one arm
broke.’ He died immediately afterwards of lockjaw. The beautiful
portrait of this very handsome young hero hangs in the ball-room.
“Yesterday the Duchess was ill, and I went out alone with the Duke to
the kitchen-garden and to the fine stables, of Charles II.’s time, where
there are still sixty horses, over which Edward Manners presides as
‘field-master.’ The Government gives £5 annually as a retaining fee for
ten of the best horses being always entered to serve in case of an
invasion. I cannot say how delightful I think the Duke, what a noble old
man in every truest sense.”
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Jan. 1893._--Mrs. Kemble was certainly the living person I most wished
to see, but I have let too many opportunities slip, and she has passed
away without my knowing her. She must have been a great and generous
woman, and those who knew her always loved though they feared her. Miss
Hosmer has often told me how dearly she and her companions loved Mrs.
Kemble when she was at school in America near the place where she lived.
She would come voluntarily and read to the school-girls half a play in
the morning and would finish it in the evening. Once, when she was
reading, snow came on, and when she was to go home it was quite deep; so
all the school-girls turned out with spades and brooms and cleared it
away before her.
“But her severe manner terrified those who were given that way. ‘We had
some private theatricals,’ Mrs. Story told me, ‘and Mrs. Kemble came to
look on at the rehearsal, at which a girl was acting who was supposed to
do it very well. Afterwards, when she came in, Mrs. Kemble walked up to
her, and ‘_Are_ you a fool?’ was all she said.
“Dr. Silas Bartol, the Unitarian minister at Boston, took his girl to
see Mrs. Kemble. He was nervous, and said, ‘My daughter wished so much
to have the honour of knowing--rather of hearing--rather of seeing Mrs.
Kemble, that I have ventured to bring her.’ Mrs. Kemble bowed stiffly,
and motioned them to sit down, but she said nothing. The girl only sat
and stared at her. Then the father[510] tried again--‘My daughter is
very young--is very nervous--is very shy.’ Then Mrs. Kemble looked at
them both, and, in her most sepulchral accents, said, ‘Shy! I also am
shy. And since your daughter has nothing to say to me, and since most
assuredly I have nothing to say to her, I will wish you good morning.’
“To some Americans she met she said, ‘We hate you for your politics: we
hate you for your prosperity: we hate you for your manners: and ... I
don’t wonder at it.’
“Mrs. Sartoris had more talent, but Mrs. Kemble had the greater genius.
Those who met her recognised it at once. I heard one who loved her best
say, ‘She married Mr. Butler because, for once in her life, she was a
fool. He was very faulty as a husband, but she was so imperious, _no
one_ could have lived with dear Mrs. Kemble.’
“When Mr. Cummings was taking the duty in the chapel at Dresden, they
lived in the same house. Mrs. Cummings wishing to be civil, after some
time sent her card, and asked if she might wait on Mrs. Kemble. The
daughter came up at once and explained, very civilly, that her mother
now saw no one, so Mrs. Cummings thought no more about it. But some
time after, as she was sitting alone in her room, came a tap at the
door, and on her opening it, she saw a lady in black velvet and lace,
closely veiled, who startled her by saying in sepulchral accents, ‘I’m
come to say that I shall never come again.’--‘Oh, is that really you,
Mrs. Butler?’ said lively little Mrs. Cummings, and the sound of her
real name, unheard for years, made her quite pleasant, and she came in,
and was glad to hear of many mutual friends in the Berkshire of
Massachusetts. But unfortunately Mrs. Cummings made some allusion to
Shakspeare, and ‘I did not come here to speak of Shakspeare,’ said Mrs.
Kemble in her most awful accents, and the charm was broken.
“When in Boston long ago, while she was reading in public, she ordered
dresses, pink and blue satin, at the great shop, the Marshall &
Snelgrove of the town, but gave no address. The shopmen were afraid to
ask her. The manager felt he must run after her and ask where the things
should be sent. Unfortunately, to attract her attention, he touched her.
‘Unhand me, ruffian,’ she shouted in her most ferocious tone. ‘And such
was the man’s terror,’ said my informant, ‘that, though he was quite
young, his hair was turned white that night.’
“From personal vanity she was absolutely free. Miss Hosmer once
expressed her regret that she had been photographed in a hat--‘We would
so much rather have seen your head.’--‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Kemble, ‘my
sister, and my friends, and you yourself expressed a wish to possess my
photograph, so, as I was passing a photographer’s shop, I just went in
and flopped down and was photographed as I was.’
“A lady was once alluding to the hope she entertained of reducing her
figure. In her most tragical voice Mrs. Kemble said, dwelling on every
syllable, ‘With a hereditary tendency to fat, nor exercise, nor diet,
nor grief may avail.’”
* * * * *
_To_ MRS. C. VAUGHAN _and_ JOURNAL.
“_Longford Castle, Salisbury, Jan. 18._--I have been five days in this
magnificent old place, and it has been a very interesting visit--and
weird, from being with people to whom the other world is so very near,
who seem to be as intimate with the dead as with the living, and who
think no more of ‘receiving a message’ from one of their ‘guiding
spirits’ than we should of a note from an ordinary acquaintance. These
spirits, the wise ‘Huldah,’ the scientific ‘Iganesis,’ the sympathetic
‘Echord,’ the evangelistic ‘Ernest,’ and ‘Semirus,’ the wise physician,
are the friends of the Radnors’ daily life. There comes a rap, such a
noise as we should speak of as ‘only the furniture,’ and then it is
supposed that one of the spirits has something to say, and a pencil is
put into the hand of a medium. One cannot say that she writes, for she
often even goes fast asleep! but _it_ writes, frequently volumes--not
the sprawling incomprehensible stuff which I have often seen before from
‘Planchette,’ but clear MS. in different handwritings, and purporting to
come from one of the spiritual friends. Personally, I should say that
most of these communications were not the least worth the immense
amount of time and thought given to them. The letters--‘messages’--from
Echord and Ernest, are excellent certainly, but mild and affectionate
religious platitudes, such as might be written by an Evangelical
clergyman of rather poetical tendencies. They all, however, speak of the
dead as not asleep, but in action: of there being no ‘place,’ but ‘a
state’ after death: of existence after death being a process through
gradations. None of the spirits have seen ‘God,’ but ‘the dear Master,’
‘the sweet Master,’ is ever with them and amongst them. The
communications from Semirus are more important. He is the great
physician, and his advice has provided means of healing and safety for
numbers, where earthly physicians have proved powerless or helpless. The
Bishop of Salisbury has been scandalised at the state of things at
Longford and felt impelled to come and testify against it. He recognised
all that happened as fact, as every one must, but denounced it as
‘devilry,’ saying that the owners of the castle were risking their own
souls and all the souls around them. They answer: ‘It was said to
Christ, Thou hast a devil.’
“The great medium is Miss K. Wingfield, now aged about twenty-six. The
Radnors have known her and her family most intimately for many years,
and are certain of her absolute trustworthiness with regard to what she
hears or writes. She is almost as a daughter to them, and they have
watched the development of her psychical powers, through various steps,
with the greatest interest. Her most remarkable gift is automatic
writing, which has been given in many languages, several with which she
is wholly unacquainted (including a very old form of Chinese, only
decipherable at the British Museum), and in many different handwritings.
When her hand writes, or rather the pencil in her hand, she has never
the least idea of what is being written. A divining rod has unfailing
power in her hands.