Milbank, who have a glorious garden. He is full of antiquarian lore and
interests, and has a precious collection of old locks and keys. She
knows sixteen languages well, and is learning a seventeenth. Hungarian
she acquired for the sake of its literature. A despatch came to the
Foreign Office in Hungarian, and no one there could read it, but Austen
Lee sent it to Lady Milbank, who translated it at once. The Milbanks
were very intimate with Madame Goldschmidt, whom they lived next door
to in London. One day in a church--a country church--they saw her go out
of her pew and shake a woman by her shoulders. ‘What on earth had that
unfortunate woman done?’ they asked when they came out. ‘Why, didn’t you
hear she was singing a false second.’”
* * * * *
“_Hams, Birmingham, Nov. 30._--This is a large house of extreme comfort,
and its owner, Lord Norton, who looks sixty, though he is eighty-two, is
one of the most agreeable hosts in England. Walking on the terrace this
morning, he said he ought to put up a slab to record how the whole
constitution of New Zealand was settled on that terrace: that which was
arranged while walking up and down there had never been altered. The
view of the pretty windings of the Thame recalled the exclamation of a
famous landscape-gardener when he saw it--‘Clever!’ ‘It was not made, it
is natural,’ said Lord Norton. But no, his friend could not regard it
except from the gardening point of view, and ‘clever’ was all he could
say. The river was terribly polluted by Birmingham, and Lord Norton went
to law about it. ‘Should the convenience of one man be considered before
that of millions?’ exclaimed the Birmingham advocate at the trial.
‘Yes,’ shouted the opposition, ‘for the grandeur of English law is that
millions may not interfere with the comfort and well-being of a single
individual. Now the pollution is partially diverted into a sewage farm
five miles in extent.
“The clergyman here has only the care of three hundred souls, so he
keeps three hundred chickens, and is often able to supplement his income
by getting fifty pounds for a cock.
“An oak avenue leads to the church, being a remnant probably of the
Forest of Arden, of which there are many traces still, but such an
avenue is very rare. The late storm had blown down several fine trees.
‘How strange it is,’ said Lord Norton, ‘that amid the thousand--the
million--theories that science has put forth, there should be none about
the wind: it is one of the many incidental proofs of the truths of the
Bible, that our Saviour saw this when he spoke of--“The wind bloweth
where it listeth,” &c.
“‘Those who say that as to religion we know nothing, do not recognise
that half religion is instinct (every one has the instinct that there is
a God), and the other half what Pascal calls “the submission of
reason.”’
“Lord Norton used to know very well Ellis the shoemaker, who devoted
himself to the reformation of boys. He said, ‘I do not take them to make
shoes only; I take them to give them a conscience.’ He said, ‘Many
people say that the boys are fools, but they are philosophers. They
reason at night. I overhear them; I hear them reasoning as to whether
there is a God.’ There was one boy especially who denied this, who
laughed at all who believed. One day this boy was given a parcel to take
to Sir Moses Montefiore. Now the boys may steal, but however much they
do that, when they are entrusted with anything, they are most tenacious
to fulfil their trust. This boy only knew of Sir Moses by his popular
name of ‘the King of the Jews,’ and all day long he asked his way to
him in vain. He could not find him anywhere. Evening closed in, and he
was faint with hunger and fatigue. He was quite sinking, but at the last
gasp cried, ‘O God, if there be a God, help me.’
“Immediately a policeman rushed at him. ‘What have you got there, you
young rascal? What’s in that parcel?--something you’ve been stealing, I
suppose?’--‘No, ‘taint; it’s a parcel for the King of the Jews, and I
can’t find him.’--‘Why, you young fool,’ said the policeman, shaking
him, ‘it’s Sir Moses Montefiore you mean: I can show you where to find
him.’
“That night the boys were philosophising as usual, declaring that there
was no God, there couldn’t be, when the boy who had taken the parcel
shouted, ‘Stop that rubbish, you fellows; there _is_ a God, and I _know_
it: and as for you, you’re just as much able to judge of God as a worm
is to judge of me.’”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 2._--A walk amidst the remnants of the Forest of Arden led to
much talk about trees. ‘When Gladstone meets any one new,’ said Lord
Norton, ‘his first thought is, “What does he know? what can I get out of
him?” When he met Lord Leigh, he had heard of Stoneleigh, that it
possessed some of the finest oaks in England; so, when he sat down by
him, he began at once, “Lord Leigh, have you any theory as to the age of
oaks?”--“Yes, certainly I have; I possess several myself that are above
a thousand years old.”--“And how do you know that is so?” said
Gladstone. “Well,” said Lord Leigh, “I have several that are called
‘Gospel Oaks,’ because the old Saxon missionaries used to preach under
them more than eight hundred years ago, and they would not be likely to
choose a young oak to preach under: we may suppose that they chose an
oak at least two hundred years old.”--“Well, that is a very good
reason,” said Gladstone.’
“Lord Norton had lately been with Gladstone to Drayton, full of Peel
relics, and with the wonderful collection of portraits which Sir Robert
brought together. All the heads of Government, from Walpole to the Peel
Administration, are represented. The pistols are preserved with which
Peel intended to fight O’Connell at Calais, but O’Connell’s wife
prevented it by giving notice and getting him arrested at Dover.
“While talking of hunting as conducive to the manliness of Englishmen,
Lord Norton said, ‘When I was hunting with Charlie Newdigate, a boy
almost naked, not quite, came out of a coal-pit, and on a donkey,
without saddle or bridle, hunted with us all day, not going over the
hedges, but through them. Newdigate was delighted. “_That’s_ the stuff
English heroes are made of,” he said, and he had a long talk with the
boy afterwards, and explained to him all about the field, &c.... In
Northumberland there was a boy who would ride one of his father’s bulls.
His father cut him off at last, and would have nothing more to do with
him. ‘I’m not a bad father,’ he said, ‘and I don’t mind his riding my
bull, but when he takes him out with the hounds it’s too much.’”
* * * * *
“_The Deanery, Llandaff, Dec. 7._--Lord Robert Bruce told me the facts
of Lord Llanover’s ghost story. As Sir Benjamin Hall and he were riding
in the Park in London, Sir Benjamin distinctly saw Lord Rivers, who was
an intimate friend of his, and he _saw him vanish_. He went to his club
immediately afterwards, and told what he had seen, and before he left
the club a telegram was brought in announcing that Lord Rivers was dead.
Afterwards Sir Benjamin Hall went to Mrs. Hanbury Leigh, and told her
what had happened, adding, ‘You know this must mean something; it must
mean that I am myself to die within the year;’ and so he did.
“I have enjoyed being again with the cousin so deeply loved in my
childhood, and also seeing the really beautiful work of the gentle and,
I am sure, holy Dean amongst the young men preparing for orders, who
hover reveringly around him.’
“Catherine Vaughan has told me how, after Augusta Stanley’s death, she
said to Mrs. Drummond (of Megginch), who was living at the Deanery,
‘Augusta’s presence so seems to fill this place, that I quite wonder she
never appears here;’ and was startled by the way in which Mrs. Drummond
said, ‘_She does_.’ Augusta used on her death-bed to say to Arthur, ‘I
shall always be near you when you give the Benediction.’ One day in the
Abbey, between the arches, but quite near Arthur, Mrs. Drummond most
distinctly saw Augusta--a vaporous figure, wrapped in folds of vaporous
white drapery, but with every feature as distinctly visible as in life.
This was just before the Benediction, and as its last tones died away
the appearance vanished. Mrs. Drummond had no doubt about it at all.”
* * * * *
_To_ GEORGE COCKERTON.
“_Burwarton, Shropshire, Dec. 12._--This is a charming place in the high
Clee Hills, and Lord and Lady Boyne, who live in it, are quite
delightful. I have been working for a great part of several days in the
library at a little book on ‘Shropshire,’ which I hope to be able to
finish another year. You would have been amused by the quaint sayings of
an old clergyman who came to dinner. Speaking of an unusually stupid
neighbour he said, ‘His folly is incredible, but even he has his lucid
intervals, for the other day he told me he knew he was an ass.’
“I would give up, if I were you, taking the extra work you speak of.
There is an old Swedish proverb which says--‘You cannot get more out of
an ox than beef,’ and there is no use, none, in trying to do, or to be,
two things at once.”
* * * * *
_To_ VISCOUNT HALIFAX.
“_Rome, April 23, 1896._--I wonder if you know that I have been abroad
since the first of February. At first, for a month, I was on ‘the
Rivieras,’ finishing up a little volume which will be so called, and
which will appear before next winter. Some new places are opened up now
by a railway--a most beautiful miniature railway--from Hyères to S.
Raphael, and amongst them is S. Maxime, a quiet scene of tranquil
beauty, where the pension is still only six francs, in a charming little
hotel with a garden which comes down to a sea-cove, where you look
across transparent shallows of emerald-green water into mountain
distances, not grand, but supremely lovely, and where, in our long-ago
days, you and I should have been in a fever of romantic interest over
the old castle of Grimaud, which was the cradle of the princely
Grimaldis.
“At Nice, I was not in the town, but at the old Villa Arson, which you
will remember. It is now a hotel, though its wonderful garden, full of
statues, staircases, fountains, and grottoes amongst the flowers and
palm-trees, is quite untouched. It was all beautiful, and the sky was
cloudlessly blue for a month; and I lingered at Bordighera with the
Strathmores and my dear old friend Emilia de Bunsen, and then at Alassio
with my cousin Lady Paul, and at beautiful Rapallo. But oh! the
difference on entering real Italy, and finding oneself in the delightful
old-world streets of Lucca, with their clean pavements and brown
green-shuttered houses, with the air so much more bracing, the sky so
much more soft, and the pleasant manner and winning tongue of the
Italian people.
“At the Florence station I had an unpleasant experience, in being robbed
of £100 by two roughly-jostling men at the entrance of the carriage. It
was a great loss, but I could not help admiring the cleverness with
which they contrived to extract my pocket-book out of the inner breast
pocket of my coat _with a greatcoat over it_. They were taken up
afterwards--Frenchmen, I am glad to say, not Italians--and immense booty
of watches, purses, &c., found upon them, all taken at Florence station;
but I have no chance of recovering my notes. I have had to appear
against them already six times and to identify them in prison.
“My last six weeks have been spent in Rome,--spoilt, destroyed, from
the old Rome of our many winters here, but settling down now into the
inferior mediocrity to which the Sardinian occupation has reduced it.
And, though one does not see them every hour as one used to do, there
are still many lovely and attractive corners to be hunted up. The
Italian archaeologists (so called) are also finding out that they have
made a great mistake in tearing away all the plants and shrubs which
protected the tops of the ruins, and are comically occupied in planting
little roots of grass and chickweed on their barren summits. There are
very few capable or interested winter visitors now. They mostly belong
to the class of the first of the three audience-seekers to whom Pius IX.
addressed his usual question of ‘How long have you been in Rome, and how
much have you seen?’ and who answered, ‘I have been here three days, and
have seen everything.’[546]
“Good old Dr. Gason has died lately (the man of whom Pius IX. said--‘un
certo pagano, chi si chiama Jasone’), the leader of the Evangelical
party here--one of a class who seemed to me ‘every one’ when I was a
boy, and when the dreary desert of Sunday was only enlivened by Foxe’s
‘Book of Martyrs’ and ‘Josephus,’ and almost everything pleasant was a
‘carnal indulgence.’ How few there are who think like that now--no one
who has a real part in my life since dear Charlotte Leycester passed
away. Certainly, there is no one now to think one--well, much worse than
a pagan for taking one’s sketch-book on Sundays to the Palace of the
Caesars, where I have spent many quiet hours meditating on my past and
its past. I am often oppressed, however, by my great loneliness, by the
want of any relation who has a real interest in me, by the constant
feeling--however kind people are--of _signifying_ nothing to anybody.
And those who remember our old life--the old life with the mother and
Lea which was so different from this--are becoming very, very few. I can
only try to say--
‘Call me, silent voices,
Forward to the starry track
Glimmering in the heights beyond me,
On, and always on.’[547]
“The ruin of the great families here is depressing. There has been a
sale at the old historic Orsini palace, at which a marble statue holding
a baton behind the auctioneer seemed to repeat his action and to preside
coldly over the ruin of his house and dispersion of its treasures. And
on the floor of the hall, appropriately surrounded by overthrown marble
pedestals, lay the great bust of the Orsini Pope, with a look of
unutterable disgust upon his face at having been just sold for £6. I
bought a little Madonna, which will adorn Holmhurst, if I can get it out
of the country.
“There is a new line to Viterbo now, which brings many places, formerly
difficult of access, within easy reach. With the Gordons from Salisbury
I went to Anguillara, splendid in colour from the orange roofs of its
quaint houses rising high above the broad, still lake in which
Bracciano and other towns on the farther shore were reflected. We
wandered afterwards in the beautiful gardens of an old ‘Ser Vincenzo,’
with woods--real trees--of camelias in fullest bloom, and larks singing,
and carpets of violets. Then another day, a large party of us went to
Segni in the purple recesses of the Volscian mountains, and saw that
wonderful arch whose origin is lost in pre-historic mystery. We took our
luncheon with us, and ate it on the down above the huge stones of the
wall. But generally we have something odd at the village inns. ‘How I
like topographical gastronomy!’ said old Mrs. Blackburn of Moidart on
one of these tourettes.
“Few interesting visitors have been at Rome this year, but having Lady
Airlie and Lady Kenmare here has been very pleasant, and dear old Miss
Garden--even in her great feebleness, which, alas! is constant
now--always ripples with wit and wisdom. At Mrs. Terry’s I met Miss
Paterson, the martyr-bishop’s sister, who told me how her old father,
when he first learnt his son’s determination to go out, began to say,
‘Oh, I cannot let him go,’ and then broke in with, ‘But oh! I _cannot_
deny him to God.’ He parted with him knowing they could never meet
again, but, after a time, in his letters found interest and consolation.
To-day--a desperately wet day--has been enlivened by a summons to
luncheon with the Crown Princess of Sweden, whom I think one of the most
charming, natural, and attractive of human beings; and oh! how simple,
how utterly without affectation is that sort of person who can have
nothing to _pretend_ to. It is that, I suppose, which makes such people
so much the easiest to talk to, which makes one feel so far more at
rest with them than with persons of another, even of one’s own class.
The Princess’s health obliges her to winter in Italy, away from her
husband and her little sons, but she will hurry back to them with the
warm weather. There was no one else at luncheon but the lady and
gentleman in waiting, and the conversation was chiefly about ghost
stories, the Princess declaring that ‘every hair of her head had curled
up’ from one I had told her at Eastbourne.
“There is a sort of homely amusement in seeing--I cannot help sometimes
counting them!--the great number of people who go about here with the
familiar little red and black volumes of ‘Walks in Rome.’ Sometimes also
I am touched by a kind note from an unknown hand saying that one of my
other books has been helpful to them. I am so glad when this happens. As
to any other feeling about my books, I think I gradually get to
_realise_ how ... ‘there is one glory of the terrestrial, another glory
of the celestial,’ and how one has to keep that in one’s heart.”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS GARDEN _at Rome_.
“_Viterbo, May 1, 1896._--Yesterday I went to Toscanella. The landlord
of the hotel was to engage a little carriage for me, which I found at
the door when I went down, but with a horse which was an absolute
skeleton. Still they declared it could go, and it _could_. How it
rushed, and tore, and swung us down the rose-fringed descent to the
great Etruscan plain, where the faint dome of Montefiascone rose in the
blue haze against the heavens, beyond the aërial distances of burnt
grass, broken here and there by Etruscan caves and ruins. Then how the
skeleton horse still galloped into the uplands, till great towers
appeared grouped like ninepins, or rather like S. Gemignano. It is yet a
long circuit to the town, a descent into a rocky gorge, then a steep
ascent winding round the hill outside the walls, a sort of Calvary to
this Jerusalem, where the great churches stand, S. Pietro like the most
magnificent cathedral, girdled by huge walls and towers, with a ruined
episcopal palace beside it, and a triumphal arch, like those of
Brittany, in front of the east end. The church was locked and the key
was away, but a little girl snatched a sick bambino from its cradle, and
carried it, and guided me to S. Maria in the depth below--even far
lovelier and more refined in the delicate sculpture of its roseate stone
than the great church above. All its great western doors were open to
the brilliant sunshine, yet it was terribly damp, the font and all the
lower part of the pillars green as the grass outside. But the exquisite
pulpit and bishop’s throne were unhurt, and the lovely frescoes--even
more beautiful in effect than detail--with which the walls were covered.
Having secured the key, we returned to S. Pietro, entering it by the
crypt--_l’incolonnata_--a perfect maze of little columns like the mosque
at Cordova in extreme miniature. Most grand is the upper church in its
orange-grey desolation; mass there only once a year. But our bambino was
worse for the damp, so we did not stay long, and indeed it was cheering
to emerge on the breezy uplands, where the whole air was embalmed with
sweet-basil, as one trod it down.
“The city of Toscanella scrambles, a mass of brown towers, golden roofs,
and grey houses, along the opposite hill, and has a thousand corners
which are enough to drive an artist frantic--such gothic windows; such
dark entries; such arcaded streets, with glints of brilliant foliage and
flowers breaking in upon their solemn shadows. At a little inn I had
luncheon--a dish of poached eggs, excellent bread, cheese, and wine, and
all for forty centimes, so living is not dear in Toscanella.
“Then oh! how the skeleton horse galloped home under the serene
loveliness of the pellucid sky, over the plain where all the little
grasses and flowers were quivering and shimmering in golden sunset
ecstasy.
“I cannot say the food here is delicious; it would be an exaggeration.
All the little somethings and nothings a butchered calf is capable of,
and vegetables lost in garlic and oil. The host’s name is Zefferino; he
is a very substantial zephyr. He arranged for my going this morning to
S. Martino, which I was most anxious to visit, for love--or was it
hate?--of Donna Olimpia Pamfili. I so longed to see where the great
‘papessa’ died; and how the plague got hold of her on that most grand
height, overlooking seventy miles of pink and blue distances, one cannot
imagine. Rocky honeysuckle-hung lanes lead up to it--a little
brown-walled town, with gates and fountain, and just one street--the
steepest street in the world, up which the great white oxen can only
just struggle--leading up to the palace and church. Before the high
altar of the latter is Olimpia’s tomb, providently placed in her
lifetime, with, I thought, a rather touching inscription, saying that
she had really tried to do all the good she _could_; and in the palace
are her full-length portrait and furniture of her time, and two pictures
of Innocent X. The great cool halls are let in the summer months, and
have, oh! such a view from their terrace; while close behind the palace
is another gate of the walled town, from which glorious forest--the
great Ciminian oak forest--begins at once, and stretches away to
infinity. I drew there, and five little swineherds in peaked hats and
about a hundred pigs grouped themselves around me. How _human_ the
latter are! They all had names, to which, when their masters called
them, they responded from a great distance, grunting loud, and running
up as hard as they could.
“Then this afternoon--oh! wealthy Viterbo!--I have been again to the
glorious Villa Lante. Surely never was there so beautiful a garden;
never one so poetical out of nymph-and faun-land--the green glades, the
moss-grown staircases, the fountains and vases, the foaming waterfalls,
the orange-trees and flowers!”
* * * * *
_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN.
“_Abbazia di S. Gregorio, Venice, May 17._--On arriving here, I was
persuaded to go to one of the principal hotels, sumptuously luxurious,
and consequently intensely unsympathetic and unattractive. The mass of
Americans, travelling like their own trunks, and with as much
understanding of the place, drove me away at last, and I was enchanted
to find a refuge in this dear little abbey, with its venerable court
full of flowers and beautiful decorated gateway, outside which the
green waves of the Grand Canal sparkle and dance. Walter Townley and his
charming bride have the other rooms, and we go together for our dinner
to a restaurant, and close by are Lady Airlie and Lady Kenmare, and,
just opposite, Basil and Lady Margaret Levett, all as perfect types of
high-bred excellence as can be found anywhere. I have enjoyed Venice
more than any other part of this time abroad--have had very happy times
with these friends in the afternoons, and in the mornings by myself
drawing in desolate but lovely corners, unknown places, quite overlooked
in what Symonds calls ‘Ruskin’s paint-box of delirious words.’ Yet I
find colouring here very difficult, and quite a new style necessary,
where _every_ shadow is transparent. Miss Clara Montalba thoroughly
understands this, and the delicate drawings which come from her fairy
brush have as much of the most refined poetry of the place as mine have
of its most unimaginative prose. But, with the love which I suppose
every one has of seeking what is unusual, she paints rather the dull and
foggy than the bright days. From the windows of the old house in the
Zattere, where she lives with her mother and two sisters, she has the
most glorious subjects, in which shipping is the great feature. Her
sister Hilda has also a studio in the top of the house--such a quaint
and picturesque place, with two tame doves flying about in it. She
described an old palace in which they had lived near Vicenza, where the
immense dining-room table had a central leg, with a fireplace in it to
keep the dinner hot.
“Two sets of people ought always to live in Venice: those who have heart
complaints and those who are afraid of horses; the peaceful floating
gondola life would be so suited to them. Lord Houghton’s sister, old
Lady Galway, spent many winters here for the former reason. But no one
ought to come here unless they at least _intend_ to see the best of it,
and to enjoy it.”
* * * * *
_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN.