Clota, on the top of which is the old tower where the last witch was
burnt. In the church books there is an entry that on a particular day
there was no service, because all the congregation were gone to the
burning of the witch. That village in the hollow, which is so red and
striking in the sunset, is Kirriemuir: it is the “Thrums” of Barrie’s
novel. Now we will leave the carriage at “the Devil’s Stone:” it is just
a stone which the devil threw at the kirk, but it missed and fell into
the stream: it rests the opposite way to all boulders, and it is of a
different formation from all the other stones in the district. Dicky
Doyle loved the story and the stone, and used to paint it. And now we
will go into the “Garden of Friendship.” I made it when I first married
out of an old kitchen-garden, and I cut down a belt of trees and let in
the view. The lines in the summer-house are by Robert Lowe. All the
trees bear the names of the different friends who planted them. That one
was planted by Dr. John Brown. He was often here. He told me that my
Clementine was a lassie who had said something she might be proud of.
That was because one day when I said to her, “I am so tired; are not you
tired, darling?” she answered, “Tired! oh no, not a bit. I have a box of
laughter inside me, and the key that unlocks it is ‘fun.’” Over there is
our deer-forest. Charlotte, Lady Strathmore, took me up to the tower of
Glamis once, and stretched out her hand towards our hills--“You have a
deer-forest, and a river, and _scenery_” she said, “and I have
_nothing_.”
“‘Here is King Charles’s room. Charles II. was here for the gathering of
the clans, but they did not gather as they ought, and he went away
disappointed. He left a Prayer-book and a Euclid here: he was a great
scientist. Under the floor at that corner is a secret room: we have
never seen it. Some workmen found it after the great fire here whilst
every one was away, and before we came back it was walled up, and it has
never been thought worth while to disturb it again. Those are the
portraits of the Ogilvy who was out in the ‘45 and his first wife. She
was shut up in the Tolbooth for singing Jacobite songs in the Canongate.
He was devoted to her, but after they went to St. Germains he was told
that he must take a mistress because it was the fashion, and he did.
After her death he married again, an extravagant woman, who wheedled
him out of £3000 which he had saved to buy the property on the other
side of the river at Airlie,[559] and spent it on her own devices. They
quarrelled at last, for she would give a ball at Airlie Lodge at Dundee,
and he told her if she did he would never forgive it; and she had the
ball, and he never saw her again.’
“Lord Airlie is a splendid young man,[560] and has the most delightful
of wives in one of the granddaughters of the beloved Lady Jocelyn. He is
a consummate soldier. His devotion to his profession only allows him to
be six weeks at Cortachy in the year, but in that time he drives about
and visits every person on the estate. He has the firm faith and strong
religious feeling of his Ogilvy forbears. One day, at the gate of Airlie
Castle, with its unprotected precipices, he had mounted a dogcart with
his sister Clementine. The horse plunged and backed violently. They were
on the very edge of the abyss. ‘Make your peace with God,’ he said to
his sister; ‘in an instant we shall be over.’ At the very last moment a
man rushed out and caught the horse, but the wheels were half over then.
“To-day we have been to see the Monros at Lindertis--a semi-gothic
house, most comfortable inside. Mrs. Munro is a capital portrait-painter
in the style of Raeburn, and has done first-rate work. All evening Lady
Airlie has talked delightfully:--
“‘We were a very quarrelsome family as children. At Gosport, whilst we
were at church, my next sister, Cecilia,[561] who had been left at home,
fell out of the window. She lived for some days, very suffering and
scarcely conscious, but she used constantly, in her half-delirium, to
say, “Oh, don’t quarrel, don’t quarrel;” and it made a very great
impression upon me, and afterwards I always tried never to quarrel. My
father never let us complain. If anything unpleasant happened and my
mother murmured, he would always say, “Oh, don’t; we have so much more
than we _deserve_.” He always thought it so ill-bred--so ill-bred
towards God--to murmur. A widow, especially, should never murmur. If one
has had a great place and occupied a great position which all vanishes
with one’s husband, one ought to be so filled with gratitude for the
has-been as to leave no room for complaints. “I have lived my life: I
have enjoyed to the utmost,” that should always be the feeling. It is
terrible when a widow murmurs, for it is God who gave the husband, who
gave the home; and when He takes them away again, how can one doubt that
He knows best when one has had enough? For children, leaving an old home
is worse than for the widow: she has lived her life, but theirs is to
come.
“‘Before I grew up, my mother often took me with her to Miss Berry’s in
the evening. My father was away at the House, and she took her work and
went there, and Miss Berry liked to see that good and beautiful young
woman sitting there. At Miss Berry’s house I saw all the clever men of
the day, so I knew them all before I really came out. I shall never
forget going down once to Richmond to take leave of Miss Berry before we
went into the country, and her saying to me, “Allez vous retremper l’âme
à la campagne;” it seemed to me such a beautiful thought. Forty years
afterwards my daughter Blanche told it to Schouvaloff, the Russian
Minister. “Oui,” he said, and added, “et engourdir l’esprit.” It was as
characteristic of him as the first part of the sentence was of Miss
Berry.
“‘As soon as I came out, I went with my parents to the Grange, where the
first Lady Ashburton was very kind to me, and I passionately adored her.
There I first saw Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle, but he had known my mother
very well before. Mrs. Carlyle really loved Lady Ashburton, yet she was
madly jealous of her. When they were at home, and Carlyle would come in
quite tired out with a long day’s work, she would say, “Now just walk
down to Bath House and see Lady Ashburton, and that will refresh you.”
She meant him to go, but as soon as he was gone her grief was
passionate, because she felt it would not have been the same thing to
him if he had stayed with her. He was always pleasant, but to a few--to
my mother especially--he never failed to show the most intense delicacy
of feeling.
“‘I cannot describe what Charles Buller was. Girl as I was, I loved him,
but so did every one else; he was so very delightful. I remember as if
it were to-day going once into my mother’s room: all her long beautiful
hair was down and she was sobbing violently. “Oh,” she said, “Charles
Buller is dead.” How I longed to cry too, but I did not dare. I only
went to my own room in most bitter grief. Wherever he went, Charles
Buller brought sunshine with him. He left me his Coleridge in his will.
It surprised people that he should leave anything to a young girl like
me, and when I went to the Grange again, many spoke of it. Each had
something to show which had belonged to him: we all mourned together.
“‘Oh, how many recollections there are which will always remain with
one, which will stay by one at the resurrection. Many of my happiest are
of the Grange. Lord Houghton asked me once how long I had been there,
and he told me long afterwards that I had answered “Oh, I cannot tell; I
only know that it is morning when I come, and night when I go away.”
This bookcase is full of the gifts of friends, and recalls much of my
past. Here is a volume of Thackeray with an etching by himself, and here
are all John Morley’s and Lord Sherbrooke’s books, which they gave me as
they came out. Here is Lord Houghton’s “Monographs,” with a touching
letter from him after we had had a little coldness; and here are two
bound volumes of Mrs. Carlyle’s Letters to me.”
* * * * *
“_Balcaskie, Oct. 21._--What a wild country is this ‘low, sea-salted,
wind-vexed’ Fife, with its little royal boroughs along the coast, each
with its tiny municipality. About them their natives have the same
pride, however, as an Aberdonian, who said the other day, ‘Just tak’ awa
Aberdeen and twenty mile round her, and where are ye?’ The sea-line is
broken by islets, the most important of them being May, where S. Adrian
lived in a hermitage, and where the steps at the very difficult
landing-place are worn away by the knees of the pilgrims to his shrine.
S. Monan lived there after him, but also frequented a little cave on the
mainland, where the old church stands to which we went on Sunday, so
near the waves that, in rough weather, the roar of the surges mingles
with the music.
“Highly picturesque is this house of Balcaskie, and its high-terraced
gardens with their vases and statues. The Anstruthers have taken me to
Balcarres to spend the afternoon with ever-sunny Lady Crawford. Her
husband, weird-looking as an old necromancer, only came in as we were
leaving, but several of the handsome sons were at home. The house looks
gloomy outside from the black stone of the country, but is bright and
cheerful within, and has a beautiful oak-panelled parlour.
“On Sunday afternoon we went to Kellie, a noble stern old castle, with
corbie-steps and tourelles. It was neglected and deserted by the Earls
of Kellie, but has been restored by Mrs. Lorimer, widow of an Edinburgh
professor, who rents it. ‘Two little red shoes’ haunt it, pattering up
and down its winding staircases at night. At Crail we saw wonderful old
tombs of the Lindsays in the churchyard, and inside the church that of
Miss Cunningham, who, said the sacristan, died on the eve of her
marriage with some great poet whose name he could not remember: we
afterwards found it was Drummond of Hawthornden.”
* * * * *
“_Bishopthorpe, Oct. 23._--This house has a charm from the great variety
of its styles, even the gingerbread-gothic is important as being of a
date anterior to Horace Walpole, who has the reputation of having
introduced that style.
“The Archbishop of York says, ‘From sudden death, good Lord deliver us,’
means, ‘From dying unprepared for death, good Lord deliver us.’
“Lord Falkland has been here. He had been lately at Skelton Castle. His
hostess, Miss Wharton, took him to his room, down a long passage--a
large room, panelled with dark oak and with a great four-post bed with
heavy hangings. It was very gloomy and oppressive, Lord Falkland
thought, but he said nothing, dressed, and went down to dinner.
“When he came upstairs again, he found the aspect of the room even more
oppressive, but he made up a great fire and went to bed. In the night he
was awakened by a pattering on the floor as of high-heeled shoes and the
rustling of a stiff silk dress. There was still a little fire burning,
but he could see nothing. As he distinctly heard the footsteps turn, he
thought, ‘Oh, I hope they may not come up to the bed.’ They _did_. But
then they turned away, and he heard them go out at the door.
“With difficulty he composed himself to sleep again, but was soon
reawakened by the same sound, the rustling of silk and the footsteps.
Then he was thoroughly miserable, got up, lighted candles, made up the
fire, and passed a wretched night. In the morning he was glad to find an
excuse for going away.
“Afterwards he heard an explanation. An old Wharton, cruel and brutal,
had a young wife. One day, coming tipsy into his wife’s room, he found
her nursing her baby. He was in a violent temper, and, seizing the baby
from her arms, he dashed its head against the wall and killed it on the
spot. When he saw it was dead, he softened at once. Even in her grief
and horror Mrs. Wharton could not bear to expose him, and together they
buried the child under the hearthstone; but she pined away and very soon
she died.
“She used to be heard not only rustling, but weeping, wailing, sobbing,
crying. At that time the Whartons were Roman Catholics, and when the
family were almost driven from their home by its terrors, they got a
priest to exorcise the castle and to bury the baby skeleton in
consecrated ground. Since then, there have been no sobs and cries, only
the rustling and pattering of feet.”
* * * * *
_To_ MISS GARDEN _at Rome_.
“_Oct. 26, 1896._--The first three volumes of the ‘Story of my Life’ are
come out, and I send them to you. Even the favourable reviews complain
vehemently about their length; and yet, if they were not in a huge type
and had not quite half a volume’s space full of woodcuts, they might
easily have been two very moderate volumes.[562] Then, say the
reviewers, ‘the public would have welcomed the book.’ But after all, it
was not written or printed for the public, only for a private inner
circle, though I am sure that, in return for having been allowed to read
it, ‘the public’ will kindly be willing--well, just to _pay_ for the
printing! Then it is funny how each review wants a different part left
out--one the childhood, one the youth, one the experiences of later
life: there would be nothing left but the little anecdotes about already
well-known people, which they all wish to keep, and, in quoting these,
they one and all copy each other; it saves trouble. The _Saturday_ had
what the world calls ‘a cruel review’ of the book, but what was really
an article of nothing but personal vituperation against its author. I
know who the review was by, and that it was not, as every one seems to
think, by one of the family from whom I suffered in my childhood;
certainly, however, if any one cares to know how the members of that
family always spoke to and of me in my youth, they have only to read
that article. I think there is a good bit about criticism in Matthew
Arnold’s Letters. ‘The great thing is to speak without a particle of
vice, malice, or rancour.... Even in one’s ridicule one must preserve a
sweetness and good-humour.... I remember how Voltaire lamented that the
“literae humanae,” _humane_ letters, should be so dreadfully _inhuman_,
and determined in print to be always scrupulously polite.’ Then, how
truly Ruskin says, ‘The _slightest_ manifestation of jealousy or
self-complacency is sufficient to mark a second-rate character of
intellect.’
“As you know, I never intended the book, written seventeen and printed
two years ago, to appear till after my death, but this year it was so
strongly represented to me that then all who would care to read about my
earlier years would then be _dead too_, that I assented to the story up
to 1870 being published. To tell the truth, I feel now how sorry I
should have been to have missed the amusement of hearing even the most
abusive things people say. And certainly, as regards reviews, I feel
with Washington Irving, ‘I have one proud reflection to sustain myself
with--that I never in any way sought to win the praises nor deprecate
the censures of reviewers, but have left my work to rise or fall by its
own deserts. If my writings are worth anything, they will outlive
temporary criticism; if not, they are not worth caring about.’[563]
Yet, yet, just for the sake of variety, I should like some day, as a
change to the unknown, to read a really favourable review of _something_
I have written, though I read somewhere, ‘To like to be right is the
last weakness of a wise man: to like to be thought right is the
inveterate prejudice of fools.’[564]
“One of the things people find fault with is that I have not shown
sufficient adoration for Jowett, who was so exceedingly kind to me at
Oxford. But I always felt that it was for Arthur Stanley’s sake. Jowett
only really cared for three kinds of undergraduate--a pauper, a
profligate, or a peer: he was boundlessly good to the first, he tried to
reclaim the second, and he adored the third.”
* * * * *
“_Blaise Castle, Henbury, Nov. 23._--I came here to charming Mary
Harford[565] from Lockinge, where I paid a pleasant visit to Lord and
Lady Wantage, meeting a large party. Lady Wantage, beautified by the
glory of her snowy hair, was most charming--so thoughtful and kind for
every one--‘elle brillait surtout par le caractère,’[566] and though
‘few can understand an argument, all can appreciate a character.’[567]
One of the most agreeable guests, a ripple of interesting anecdote,
which began even in the omnibus driving up from the station in the dark,
was Lord James of Hereford. At dinner he told how Sir Drummond and Lady
Wolff had a Spanish dog, who was the best-bred creature in the world.
One day its mistress had a visitor who engrossed her so much that she
forgot her dog’s dinner. It would not scratch or whine, it was too well
conducted, but it went out into the garden and bit off a flower, and
came and laid it at its mistress’s feet: the flower was a forget-me-not.
“George Holford of Westonburt was at Lockinge, and very pleasant. Once
he walked from London to Ardington, close to Lockinge, where his
grandmother, Mrs. Lindsay, was then living. When he was within a mile
and a half of it, he saw a man kneeling on the body of another man on
the road. He went up to them, called out, had no answer, and at last
struck the kneeling man with his stick. His stick went through the man.
His story was received at Lockinge with shouts of derision.
“Three years after, at a tenants’ dinner, Lord Wantage told the story of
his nephew’s ‘optical delusion’ to the farmer sitting next, who said,
‘It is a very extraordinary thing, my Lord, but a man _was_ once
murdered by his servant on that very spot. The servant knocked him down,
knelt upon him, and killed him; and ever since the place has had the
reputation of being haunted.’”
* * * * *
_To_ VISCOUNT HALIFAX.
“_Jan. 9, 1897._--My Christmas was spent very pleasantly at Hewell,
where Lord and Lady Windsor had a large party. Most lovely and charming
was the hostess, most stately and beautiful the great modern house by
Bodley, greatly improved and embellished since I saw it last. How
closely, during a week’s visit, one is thrown with people, whom one
often does not see again for years, if ever. It is, as Florence
Montgomery says--‘People in a country-house play their parts, as it
were, before one, and then the curtain falls, and the actors disappear.
The play is played out.’[568] How laden with gifts children are
nowadays, and how far too luxurious their life is, as much in excess
that way as in the privations and penances which I remember in my own
childhood.
“Some people are very angry with me for telling the truth in the ‘Story
of my Life’[569] about these young years, when I was suffering ‘from an
indiscriminate theological education,’ as Mr. Schimmelpennick calls
such, and when I was made so constantly to feel how ‘l’ennui n’a pas
cessé d’être en Angleterre une institution religeuse.’[570] And it is
not merely the ‘canaille of talkers in type’[571] who find fault, but
many whose opinion I have a regard for. They think that the portrait of
a dead person should never be like a Franz Hals, portraying every
‘projecting peculiarity,’ but all delicately wrought with the smooth
enamelling touch of Carlo Dolce. They wonder I can ‘reconcile it to my
conscience’ to hold ‘another estimate of the Maurices to that which has
been hitherto popular.’ ‘Collect a bag of prejudices and call it
conscience, and there you are!’[572] For myself, I believe, and I am
sure it is the discipline of years which tells me so, that the rule of
after-death praise is a false one to be regulated by. It is true that
there is often an enlightenment from death upon sensations and
sympathies towards one who is gone, but I cannot feel that a faithful
record of words and actions ought to be altered by the mere _glamour_ of
death, which so often gives an apotheosis to those who little deserve
it. One of my reviewers says he would like to read a truthful
word-portrait of Augustus Hare by one of the persons he describes in
print: so should I exceedingly, and most appallingly horrible it would
be!
[Illustration: THE ARSON STEPS, HOLMHURST.]
‘O wad some power the giftie gi’e us
To see oorsels as ithers see us,’[573]
is what I would often say. Lately, a wonder whether I can have misjudged
or exaggerated my remembrance of the long-ago has made me give many
solitary evenings to old-letter reading; yet contemporary letters only
confirm _all_ I have expressed. How interesting they are! It is as
Archbishop Magee says, ‘Old letters are like old ghosts, coming often
uncalled for and startling us with their old familiar faces--pleasant
some of them, and some of them very ugly, but all of them dead and
bearing the stamp of death--and yet they will survive ourselves.’
“Most extraordinarily _virulent_ certainly reviews can be! Really,
‘hurricanes of calumny and tornados of abuse’[574] have been hurled at
me. As Cardinal Manning said, ‘To write anonymously is always a danger
to charity, truth, and justice.’ _Blackwood_ (_i.e._ the Maurice spirit
in _Blackwood_), in an article which breathes of white lips, after
dwelling scornfully upon ‘the sickening honey of the “Memorials,”’
writes:--
“What is Mr. Augustus Hare? He is neither anybody nor nobody--neither
male nor female--neither imbecile nor wise.... As we wade through this
foam of superannuated wrath ... this vicious and venomous personal
onslaught ... Mr. Hare’s paragraphs plump like drops of concentrated
venom over the dinted page.... Such a tenacity of ill-feeling, such a
cold rage of vituperation, is seldom to be met with.’
“I wonder a little if any one can really from his heart have offered
such ‘a genuine tribute of undissembled horror,’ or whether these
sentiments were only written to order? And then I look at Dante and
read:--
‘Vien dietro a me, e lascia dir le genti;
Sta come torre ferma che non crolla
Giammai la cima per soffiar de’ venti’[575]
And so--
‘I, painting from myself and to myself,
Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blame,
Or their praise either.’”[576]
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Jan. 31, 1897._--Saw Lady Delawarr, and heard all about her marvellous
escape. Lady Mary (Sackville) first heard a crackling noise between two
and three in the morning, and, looking out of her room door, saw that
the staircase[577] was in flames. She rushed into her sister Margaret’s
room, roused her, shrieked to the maids and governess, and finding a
fiery gulf separated them from their mother’s room, the sisters flew in
their night-dresses down the stairs, already in flames, and into the
street. Lady Delawarr, stupefied by smoke, slept on heavily, though for
twenty minutes her old servant Vincent, who occupied a room off the
garden, threw stones at her window. He dragged his mattress beneath it,
and strained it across the garden area. At last he roused her, and she
rushed to the door, but closed it again as the flames poured in. Then
she threw up the window. ‘Jump, my lady, jump!’ shouted Vincent; ‘there
is not a moment to lose.’ There was not time even to throw out her
diamonds, but she knotted her sheets firmly together, and sliding down
them, dropped upon the mattress. With her it held, but the fat cook, who
had not had courage to face the fiery staircase, leapt from the fourth
floor, and under her great weight the mattress gave way and she fell
into the area, breaking her leg in three places and fracturing her
skull, and now she is dead. For a whole hour Lady Delawarr crouched
behind the lilac bushes in the ice-bound garden, with the blazing house
between her and all else. Then she succeeded in breaking the window of a
carpenter’s shop which adjoined the garden, and was dragged through it,
and reached a friend’s house in a four-wheel cab.
“This cab she sent back to fetch her daughter Mary, but the horse fell
on the ice in Grosvenor Square, and Lady Mary, as she was, had to walk
up Upper Brook Street to the house where her mother had taken refuge.”
* * * * *
“_Jan. 28._--Dined at Lady Hope’s to meet Dr. Tucker, Bishop of Uganda,
who had walked 10,000 miles in his bishopric; there were no other means
of locomotion. He said Africa as a whole was more swamp and thicket than
desert. ‘Were not the lions alarming?’ ‘Not very; they seldom attacked
unless irritated.’ Once he saw five at the same time around him, but
‘they all had their own affairs to attend to.’ Snakes were worse,
especially puff-adders, which would attack whenever they could.”
* * * * *
“_Feb. 2, 1897._--Dreadful news has come of the terrible murder in the
Benin expedition of my dear Kenneth Campbell (of Ardpatrick), than whom
no one was better, braver, more attractive to look upon, or more
pleasant to live with.
‘I loved him, and love him for ever: the dead are not dead, but alive.’[578]
Yet a shadow is thrown over everything, and when even his friend feels
as if he could never write or speak of him without tears, what must not
it be to his parents! One had felt that he, if any one, had ‘i pensieri
stretti ed il viso sciolto’ which would ‘go safely over the whole
world,’ as Alberto Scipioni said to Sir Henry Wotton, and which the
latter recommended to Milton when asked for advice as to his travels.”
* * * * *
_To_ MRS. C. VAUGHAN.