Louis Philippe. How different everything is to the time which
Hurstmonceaux recalls; all hurry now and energy and updoing, and then
such an extreme quietude of intellectual pursuits, in which every
uninitiated visitor was considered an unendurable bore, if, however
interesting he might be in himself, he did not fall in with the mutual
admiration society of which the Rectory was the axis. I remember how
Thomas Carlyle and Monckton Milnes, with his ‘gay and airy mind,’[588]
were amongst those so considered, for they had naturally their outside
views and intelligence, and the Rectory group never tried for a moment
to penetrate ‘l’écorce exterieur de leur vie;’ and, while bristling with
prejudices themselves, they always found much to be shocked at in every
outside person they came across. It seemed oddly apropos in all the
remembrance of the closed Hurstmonceaux life to read in Madame de
Montagu--‘It is not a good thing for everybody to see each other every
day and too closely; they risk becoming unconscious egoists, critics,
rulers, or subjects, and exhaust themselves by revolving perpetually on
a tiny axis.’ Yet in many ways how much more really interesting the life
was then; how picturesque Uncle Julius’s enthusiasm, how pathetic his
pathos over the books which were his realities; how interesting the
conversation, and how genial the courtesy of such constant visitors as
Bunsen and Landor, though the latter was such a perfect original,
‘dressed in classical adorning,’ as Arthur Young said of some one; then
how unruffled my dearest mother’s temper, over which even Aunt Esther’s
_strenuous_ exactions were powerless; and how ceaseless the flow of her
_love_--not charity, as people use the word now--to the poor of the
cottages in the hazel-fringed lanes around her, whose cares she made her
own, more moved and stirred by the querulous mutterings of Mrs. Burchett
or Mrs. Cornford than by the most important events of English politics
or the world’s history. Certainly she had a wonderful power with the
poor, and an influence which has never passed away, for she had the rare
art of entering into and understanding all their feelings; and then,
when with them, she always gave them her _whole_ attention. I feel that
my two books give very different ideas of what Hurstmonceaux was fifty
years ago, but both are quite true; only the ‘Memorials of a Quiet Life’
is the inside, and the ‘Story of my Life’ the outside view. How much of
life, after sixty, consists in retrospect! It is, as Fanny Kemble says--
‘Youth with swift feet walks onward in the way,
The land of joy lies all before his eyes;
Age, stumbling, lingers slower day by day,
Still looking back, for it behind him lies.’
One great difference of feeling older is that one is afraid to put off
doing anything. ‘By the street of By-and-by, you come to the house of
Nowhere,’ is an admirable Spanish proverb.
“I have greatly enjoyed the vivid, charming, simple letters of Mary
Sibylla Holland--‘anche oggi si sente una dolcezza d’affetto a leggere
quel libro.’”
* * * * *
_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN.
[Illustration: THE AVE-VALE GATE, HOLMHURST.]
“_Holmhurst, Sept. 29, 1898._--The building and changes here go on well,
but very slowly, a result of having the work done with my own stone, and
as much as possible by the men of our village. I think all will look
well in the end. Not a chair or a book will be moved from the older part
of the house, consecrated by my mother’s memory, but room will be given
for the many things connected with Esmeralda, which I bought back at Sir
Edward Paul’s sale, and, if I survive her, for many precious pieces of
furniture, pictures, prints, and books from Norwich which Mrs. Vaughan
says that she has left me. Where you will remember a steep grass bank,
there is now a double stone terrace, with vases and obelisks, and
luxuriant beds of brilliant flowers edged with stone, copied as a whole
from the Italian Villa Lante near Viterbo. At the end are a staircase
and gateway to the Solitude, the ‘Ave-Vale Gate,’ with ‘Ave’ on the
outside and ‘Vale’ within. Cypresses are growing up beside it to enhance
the impression of Italy, which is further carried out in a widening
staircase from the centre of the terrace, with lead vases on the piers,
copied in design and proportions from one at the Villa Arson near Nice.
Just now, in this hot noon-day, the gorgeous flowers against the stone
parapet, and background of brown-green ilex and blue-green pine are
really very Italian, while below in the meadows all is as English as it
can be, the cows feeding in the rich grass, the heavy rounded masses of
oak foliage, and the misty sea asleep in the motionless heat. Nothing
seems to move, except my little black Pomeranian spitz, Nero, frisking
and barking at the butterflies. I am sure that much the happiest part of
my present life is that spent at home, though there is nothing to tell
about it--‘l’histoire ne se soucie pas des heureux.’
“Emmie Penrhyn is here, whose visits are always an unusual pleasure to
me, and who is one of the dearest relations I have left, partly because,
more than any one else, she has a distant likeness to my mother. She
lives happily and most usefully at Richmond in a very little world, with
a weak body but an all-sufficing soul.
“I have grieved so truly over the news of Ranulph Mostyn’s death in
India, that I could not help writing to his mother. Yet I always
hesitate about whether letters of condolence can be of any comfort, and
can only act upon the knowledge that I like myself to have them in any
great sorrow. No Christian disquisitions, however: they always seem
forced and unmeaning. ‘Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief;’
that is somewhere in Shakspeare. Thirlwall’s Letters have an excellent
passage about them--‘Expressions of general condolence may be welcome as
tokens of goodwill, but can scarcely exert any general alleviating
power. The afflicted ones stand within a circle of images and feelings
of their own, which, painful as they may be, they would not part with
for worlds. Any attempt to draw them out of that circle can only inflict
a useless annoyance.”
* * * * *
_To_ MRS. C. VAUGHAN.
“_Holmhurst, Oct. 16, 1898._--I am alone this evening; the wind is
wailing a dirge, and ‘the dark sea drinks in the greyness of the
sky.’[589] But I have been away for three weeks. First to the sisters of
my old friend Willie Milligan, who now live in the Barrington
dower-house at Shrivenham, close to Beckett, the ideal ‘great house’ of
my boyhood, so stately and luxurious. Now, so are the mighty fallen, it
is let to some Australians, and the family--unless helped by an
heiress--can never afford to live there again. Then I was with the
delightful Boynes in the high Shropshire uplands, seeing in the most
charming way many beautiful old houses. I saw two more from my next
visit at Oxton in Notts--Wiverton, and Annesley where the Miss Chaworth
Musters, beloved by Byron, once walked on the beautiful old terraces.
Another echo from my long-ago came from my visit to Streatlam, where I
so often was in my young days, and which is now inhabited by Lord
Strathmore’s sister, Lady Frances Trevanion, and her pleasant cheery
husband, both most kind cousins to me. The long galleries are filled
with family portraits, including a great one of Mary Eleanor Bowes,
whose strange story I have so often told. Lady Frances’s time is greatly
taken up by the manners and morals of her dogs, the very smallest and
noisiest I ever saw. They must be the sort of dogs Chaucer speaks of--
‘Of small houndes hadde she, that she fedde
With rosted flesh and milk, and wastel brede;
But sore wept she if one of hem were dead.’
“It was a short journey from Streatlam to Kiplin, the beautiful old
house of Admiral Carpenter.... He told me how his grandfather had six
sons, Talbots, and was fond of making them all lie down full length on
the dining-room floor, joining one another, that he might see how many
yards of sons he had! I saw Richmond from Kiplin: what a beautiful
place, few abroad equal to it.
“But my most interesting visit was that to Baddesley Clinton in
Warwickshire, rising, with a fortified central gate-tower, from a deep
still moat, and with an inner courtyard full of flowers. It has dark
tapestried rooms, several priest’s hiding-holes, ghosts of a lady and a
child, and a murder-room, stained with the blood of a priest whom a
squire of Edward IV.’s time slew when he caught him chucking his wife
under the chin.[590] Then there are all the refined luxuries of fast-day
dinners, evening prayers in the chapel with a congregation of maids
veiled like nuns, and a live Bishop (of Portsmouth), in violet robes and
gold cross and chain, to officiate.
“Such a bishop he is! such a ripple of wit and wisdom! and so full of
playfulness! I read and copied somewhere--“A man after God’s own heart
is never a one-sided man. He is not wholly spiritual, he is not wholly
natural; he is not all earnestness, he is not all play; he cannot be all
things at once, and therefore he is all things by turns.”[591] Our
Bishop at Baddesley was just like this in his fun, in his love of cats,
and never more charming than when he gathered up all the scraps of toast
left at breakfast, and throwing open one of the windows, called ‘Quack,
quack!’ and crowds of ducks came rushing under the bridge over the moat
to scramble for them, one brown duck, which the Bishop called ‘the
orphan,’ being especially cared for. Speaking of the frequent ignorance
of religious intolerance led him to tell of the people of Imola and
Brigatella, who were always quarrelling. When the priest at Brigatella
began the paschal mass with ‘Christus immolatus est,’ his congregation
thought it was some compliment to the people of Imola, and declared they
would kill him unless he began ‘Christus brigatellatus est.’
“He had been with the Calthorpes of Woodland Vale to see an old house of
theirs in the Isle of Wight, which was quite deserted, and in the very
room where it occurred was told the reason why. A friend who had come
there to stay with Mr. Calthorpe saw there, in the dawn of the morning,
an old woman sitting knitting at the foot of the bed; he even heard the
click of the knitting-needles. At first he thought she had mistaken the
room, but it happened again the next day. The third time it happened, he
kicked out. The old woman then turned round her face towards him, and
displayed--a death’s-head. Another guest met the old woman on the stairs
and equally saw the death’s-head. No servant would stay in the house,
and now it is pulled down.
“After the evening service in the chapel, the Bishop went to have a
cigar before going to bed. When I excused myself from joining him, he
told of Benedict XIV., who offered a pinch of snuff to one of his
Cardinals. ‘Santo padre, non ho quel vizio,’ he answered. ‘Se fosse
vizio, tu l’avrei,’ said the Pope.
“Most charming of all was the châtelaine, the widow of my cousin Heneage
Dering, whose first wife was her aunt, Lady Chatterton, the well-known
novelist. The niece (‘Pysie’ Orpen) was then married to Marmion Ferrers,
the last of a famous Catholic family lineally descended from the Earl of
Derby attainted in the Wars of the Roses, and himself legally Baron
Compton and De Ferrers, though he never claimed the title on account of
his poverty and having no son. He was the pleasantest and most genial of
men--‘the old squire’ he used to be called in Warwickshire. One day he
found an old woman stealing his wood, and, when she expected a great
scolding, he only said, ‘That load of wood is a great deal too heavy for
you; you must let me carry it home for you,’ and he did. Another day he
caught three poachers, and said, ‘Come, now, let us have it out!’ and
they pulled off their coats and had a regular set-to: he floored two of
them, he was so strong, and then he let them all go.
“His life seems to have been made up of deeds of faith and charity, but
his property fell into decadence and must have been sold, if Heneage
Dering, who had married his wife’s aunt, had not come to the rescue.
They all lived together in the old house, mediaevally, almost mediaeval
even in their dress; and after Lady Chatterton died, and then Marmion
Ferrers, a final break-up of the remaining links with the past was
prevented by the marriage of Heneage Dering with the widowed ‘Pysie.’
They were perfectly happy for several years, but he always said ‘a
sudden death is the happiest death,’ and so in 1892 it was.
“Over the chapel door is inscribed--
‘Transit gloria mundi,
Fides catholica manet,’
and the Catholic religion nourishes as much at Baddesley still as it did
in the time of Sir Edward Ferrers, who founded this branch of the family
in 1517, and left ‘five masses in worship of the five wounds principal
that Our Lord suffered in His bitter Passion,’ and who is depicted
kneeling before a crucifix, with the legend ‘Amor meus crucifixus est’
issuing from his mouth. On Sunday afternoon we went to hear the
Benediction service beautifully sung by the invisible nuns of a convent
close by--a convent of ‘Colettines’ from Bruges, a severe form of Poor
Clares, founded here in 1850, the first of the Order since the
Dissolution. A niece of Lord Clifford was their abbess. There are 250
Catholics at Baddesley.
“As we drove to Warwick, we passed through a village where the learned
Dr. Parr was rector. ‘He took pupils,’ said the Bishop. ‘They were not
very bright. One of them said, “I make a point of never believing
anything I do not understand.” “Then your creed must be most uncommonly
brief,” said Dr. Parr.’
“In returning home, I lingered one day with my kind friend E. Mathews at
Sonning. I had often longed to go there on a pilgrimage to dear Hugh
Pearson’s grave, and never before been able. What a lovely village it
is, with its old red roofs nestling under tufted trees, and how fragrant
is the beloved memory of the true pastor who gave himself so royally for
his people. ‘Go and break it to my family,’ were his first words when
told he could not live, meaning by his family his parishioners, the
people in the village, who loved him so, and amongst whom he was almost
ideally happy, for he was not only always striving to do good for the
poor and helpless, but was successful in doing it.
‘His virtues walked their humble round,
Nor knew a pause, nor felt a void,
And sure the Eternal Master found
His single talent well employ’d.’[592]
“My volume on ‘Shropshire’ has come out--another book-child launched
into public life.”
* * * * *
_To_ W. H. MILLIGAN, _and_ JOURNAL.
“_Belvoir Castle, Nov. 18, 1898._--I have been with my dear Lowthers at
Campsea Ashe, enjoying their large party of pleasant musicianers,
Countess Valda Gleichen, radiant Mrs. Arkwright of the lovely voice,
&c., but enjoying much more two quiet days with the family when the
others were gone. Mrs. L. took me to Crowe Hall, a moated house with a
delightful old lady-farmeress, of the hard-working high-thinking type,
so familiar in my boyhood, but almost extinct in these days of
over-dressed, gig-driving, pianoforte-strumming minxes.
“One of those kind and characteristic telegrams of the Duchess of
Rutland, extending over a whole page, has brought me here, where there
is a large party too, almost entirely composed of the Duke’s innumerable
nephews and nieces. As I do not either shoot or care for the regular
evening ball in the gallery, what I like best is the daily walk with the
Duke and Duchess, meeting them in the hall as the clock strikes 12.15,
and wandering in the wood walks or on the nearer terraces, already
fragrant with violets, listening to the Duke’s reminiscences of his own
past and Belvoir’s past, always of endless interest. How I pity my host
and hostess in their over-anxious cares about their immense estates; but
they must be comforted themselves by the pleasure they are able to give.
Sightseers are admitted always, and the great Midland towns daily pour
their legions into these beautiful woods: they do no harm and behave
wonderfully well, but one almost feels as if the public, who most enjoy
it, ought to help to keep up the place. In the case of Belvoir, the
scourge of the death-duties affects what is the pleasaunce of thousands.
“I went with Mrs. G. Drummond to Bottesford, where there is such a grand
series of monuments of the Earls of Rutland and their families,
including one of some children who died by witchcraft. Their nurse was
condemned to be burnt for it, but said, ‘If I am guilty, may this bit of
bread choke me,’ and it did! The Duchess Elizabeth, who made all the
charming walks here, moved all the Dukes to her new mausoleum in the
Belvoir woods, but she left the Earls at Bottesford.
“Hearing of her again here has recalled much that Lady Waterford used to
tell me of the Duchess Isabella, who was called ‘Was a bella’ in her
later years. She used to describe the painting of her fine portrait by
Sir Joshua, how he would rush forward and look closely into her eyes,
take her well in, and then go as far back as possible and look at the
general effect in a distant glass, chiefly making his picture from that.
Lady Adeliza Manners once met a very beautiful peasant girl near
Belvoir, very beautiful except that she had lost one of her best front
teeth. ‘What a misfortune,’ said Lady A.; ‘how could it have
happened?’--‘Oh, the Duchess (Isabella) had lost one of her front teeth,
so she forced me to have mine taken out to replace it.’
“I wonder if you went to Harlaxton when you were here--the immense
modern house by Blomfield, of which a most pleasant Mr. Pearson Gregory
suddenly found himself the heir from a godfather. He was staying at the
castle and took me there. When the Empress Frederick was here, she
admired it beyond words, but I did not: it is magnificent, but too
heavy, and the staircase very dark. Outside there are garden-staircases
and fountains, which are really beautiful, almost worthy of the Villa
Aldobrandini. There is a picture of a De Ligne baby, the heir of the
place, whose cradle was put too close to the fire: a coal flew out, and
it was burnt to death. The village is rendered infinitely picturesque by
stone wells and portals made from fragments of a recently destroyed
moated manor-house, of which only the gateway is left.
“There is a great charm in being made a sharer in what Disraeli called
‘the sustained splendour of a stately life,’ but much of the pleasure of
a great country-house depends upon whom it falls to your lot to take
down to dinner, and the Duchess attends to this with careful cleverness.
I was especially amused by one sentence in that delightful ‘Isabel
Carnaby’--‘There is one good thing in getting married. You know then
that, whatever happens, there is one woman you will never have to take
in to dinner again as long as you live.’
“And what funny things people say at dinner. Lately--not here--a very
‘great lady’ said to me, ‘I can assure you that the consciousness of
being well dressed gives me an inward peace which religion could never
bestow.’”
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
[Illustration: IN THE UPPER CORRIDOR, HOLMHURST.]
“_Holmhurst, Jan. 21, 1899._--I sit alone on my hilltop, amid the
swirling mists, and howling winds, and swelching rain, and am often very
desolate and full of melancholy thoughts, which require active work to
drive them away. But I ought not to complain, for before Christmas I was
a week with the kind Llangattocks at the Hendre in beautiful
Monmouthshire, seeing much that was interesting, and driving with four
horses and postillions, to Raglan, and through the beautiful brown
billowy country of the Forest of Dean. Then I had a quietly happy
fortnight at Torquay with my kind Thornycroft cousins; and went from
them to Mount Ebford to Pamela Turner, a very pleasant first cousin I
had not seen for years; paying, lastly, a sad visit--because probably
the last ever possible--to beautiful Cobham.... Yet I am alone now, and
perhaps it is as well that my thoughts should be always turning to the
‘undiscovered country’ which will be so much to us, and of which we know
nothing, even though we may be very near its shores. I work on, I enjoy
on, but I feel more that life is becoming a waiting time.
‘I have a journey, sir, shortly to go;
My master calls me, I must not say no.’[593]
And there is a sentence of Epictetus which seems to demand thinking
about. ‘If the Master call, run to the ship, forsaking all these things,
and looking not behind. And if thou be in old age, go not far from the
ship at any time, lest the Master should ask, and thou not be ready.’
... It was Adrienne de Lafayette who said, ‘Must we not all die? The
great thing is to be always ready; as for the kind of death, that is
only a detail.’ I think and think, as so many millions have thought, how
it can be after death, and such inquiries and searchings have no answer.
Still, as Jowett wrote towards the close of life, ‘Though we cannot see
into another life, we believe, with inextinguishable hope, that there is
still something reserved for us.’
“I feel the view usually held now on these subjects is wholesomer than
that of my childhood, when ‘good people’ talked with such dogmatic
assurance, in all ‘le bel air de leur devotion,’ of how glorious their
life in another world would be, whilst definitely condemning so many of
their neighbours to the hell which, in their imagination, was their
God’s vindictive retaliation for His injuries. I often remember her
words, and I think I realise the feeling with which my dear old friend
Mrs. Duncan Stewart once said to me, ‘I should say, like Dr. Johnson, I
am speaking in crass ignorance, according to the failings of my fallible
human nature; and yet, may we not all, whilst acting like fallible human
beings as we are, trust respectfully to God’s mercy, though speaking of
no glorious future as reserved for us, lest He should say, “What hast
thou done to deserve this?”’
“Lord Llangattock writes urging me to join the Anti-vivisection Society;
but I answer I am not competent to judge of it. Then he sends me its
pamphlets, which seem to me rather blasphemous, asserting that ‘Christ
died just as much for all animals as for all human beings.’ What! for
bugs, lice, ringworms, mosquitoes? ‘Don’t kill that flea; Christ died
for it.’ Then how about cobras and puff-adders? Surely it must have been
the Devil that died for those. What nonsense people, especially
‘religious people,’ write in these little pamphlets, almost as great
nonsense as most country clergy preach in the dreary Sahara of their
endless sermons. ‘Long texts, short sermons,’ was John Wesley’s maxim,
and what a good one!”
* * * * *
JOURNAL _and_ LETTERS.
“_Rome, March 10, 1899._--I was very ailing, and Catherine Vaughan
insisted on my seeing Dr. Sansom, who found me so ‘run down’ that he
insisted on my coming out here to my ‘native air;’ therefore here I am,
and already it has done me good. I found my dear old friend Miss Garden
rather better than I left her three years ago, and full of her sister
Mrs. Ramsay’s escape, having been upset in a carriage close to the edge
of the Tarpeian rock. ‘If the horse had not been _assolutamente
pecora_,’ said the coachman, ‘she must have gone over.’
“The other day I was with a circle of old friends who were discussing
the ‘Story of my Life.’ ‘Surely the early part must have been
exaggerated,’ said one of them, ‘that story of Aunt Esther hanging the
cat, for instance,[594] because the child loved it.’ ‘I can testify that
that story was absolutely true, for _I was there_,’ said an old
clergyman present, ‘and I have shuddered over the cruel recollection
ever since.’ It was Canon Douglas Gordon. I had quite forgotten that he
was a pupil of Mr. Simpkinson, curate of Hurstmonceaux, at the time. Mr.
Gordon also said, ‘I can vouch, too, for the truth of the story of the
bullying at Harrow, for _I was myself the victim_;’ and he told how a
brutal bully got a dead dog, and cut off its feet, ears, &c., and forced
him to drink them in coffee. That day he ran away. ‘Alexander Russell’
went with him. They had only four miles to go to his father Lord
Aberdeen’s house at Stanmore. He and Lord Abercorn were governors of the
school. They happened to be together, and they sent him back in a
carriage that evening with a letter to the head-master saying that, in
the interests of the school, what had happened had better be hushed up;
but that it was so dreadful, that he--the master--must be compelled to
take the awful bullying in the school seriously in hand. And he did. Mr.
Gordon says that the wickedness of Harrow at that time was quite
appalling: things which could never be mentioned were then of nightly
occurrence all over the school. The masters were as bad, and would come
into the very pupil-rooms humming obscene songs.