to me the other day, ‘I have a horror of the patriarchs, and how any one
can set up such wicked, low, mean men as an example, I cannot
understand--Jacob and the rams, for instance. No wonder the Jews were
bad with such examples to follow.... I believe in Christ thoroughly and
cling to the thought of Him: of course the story of His birth and all
that is very difficult, but “autre pays, autres mœurs,” that is what
I say.’”
* * * * *
“_March 24._--We have been to Tivoli on the most glorious day--a
pellucid sky, and exquisite blue shadows flitting over the young green
of the Campagna. From the station I went to S. Antonio, the old
hermitage and shrine bought by the Searles. Mrs. Searle met me most
kindly. I said, ‘_What_ a beautiful home you have!’ ‘Yes,’ she answered,
‘and the really delightful thing is that _the Lord_ has given it to us.’
I could hardly help saying, ‘I suppose that means you bought it.’
Afterwards I found she was one of the very few ladies who belong to the
Salvation Army. She is kind and Christian beyond words--‘vraie marchande
de bonheur’--and her lovely home is a centre of thoughtful charity; but
being in this Catholic country gives her many qualms and shocks. One day
lately she was alone in a lane near her home, and came upon a shrine of
the Virgin with her little statue, and was filled with righteous
indignation at ‘that doll.’ As she stood there, a number of peasant
women came up and knelt before the shrine and prayed most devoutly. When
they got up she said, ‘How could you pray to that graven image? I wonder
what you were praying for.’ ‘Why, we were asking the Madonna to send us
rain; our land needs it so much,’ said the women, much surprised at her
wrath. ‘How can you pray to _her_ for that?’ said Mrs. Searle; ‘let me
show you how to pray,’ and then and there she knelt down in the dusty
road and prayed aloud, prayed with her whole heart to her Lord, that He
would send them the rain they needed; and immediately, though the sky
had been quite clear till then, it _poured_!
“The women went away to their priest and told him that they had seen a
lady who reviled the Madonna, but who was a powerful witch and had been
able to bring the rain by her enchantments.”
* * * * *
“_March 29._--To Sutri with Mrs. Ramsay. In the early morning the dew
was like crystal, every leaf glistening. The mountains rose pale blue
against an opal sky, but were hidden at their base by the delicate mists
of the plain. It was a long, long drive before we reached the great
solid rock, which is hewn away within into all the circular steps of a
vast amphitheatre overhung by mighty ilexes. Behind it, is an Early
Christian church, also hewn out of the rock,--pillars, font, and altar
all one with it.
“Se voi pensate sedere sopra una cittadina Americana, voi vi sbagliate,’
was heard by Gery Cullum from an American lady here in altercation with
her cabman.”
* * * * *
“_April 1._--I have had one of my Palatine lectures quite in the old
way, and a luncheon with the charming Crown Princess of Sweden has been
a great pleasure.
“Dining at Palazzo Bonaparte, M. de Westenberg told me that one day when
Madame Mère was living there, a stranger came to the palace and insisted
upon seeing her on a matter of vital importance. He was evidently a
gentleman, but would not tell his name or errand. At last his urgency
prevailed, and Madame Mère admitted him. He gave her a crucifix and said
it belonged to her son in St. Helena, and then he said, ‘You need no
longer be unhappy about him, for he has just entered into rest: his
sorrows are over.’ It was on that day that Napoleon died in St. Helena.
“Miss Garden says, ‘Lanciani came to me one day. He was not married
then, and he said, “I am too miserably dull; it cannot go on; I must
either take a wife or a cat.” “Well, and which should you prefer, Signer
Lanciani?”--“Oh, a me sono tutte due eguale,” he said. “But la signora
madre, which would she prefer?”--“Oh, la madre,” he said meditatively,
“il gatto.”
“‘All life has its sorrows,’ says Miss Garden, ‘only they are unequally
distributed. Do you know what Eddie Baddeley’s sorrow is? He is only
three, you know. It is that the turkey-cock at the Villa Borghese will
not make friends with him. “But don’t you think he will ever like me?”
he said to his mother. “No, my dear,” she said, “I don’t think he ever
will.” But it was just one of those cases in which I think a lie would
have been permissible; she had better have held out hopes.’”
* * * * *
“_Palazzo Guadagni, Florence, April 17._--I have been here ten days as
the guest of the ever-kind Duchess Dowager of Sermoneta, and found Mrs.
and Miss Lowther here. It is an unusual life. We scarcely see our
hostess till dinner-time, unless she asks us to drive with her, and we
have each a most comfortable apartment, with excellent food and service,
and the whole day to employ as we like. Many are the old friends we have
seen, but most frequently the Marchesa Peruzzi, Story’s daughter, who
has all his agreeable power of narration. ‘The reason why we loved Mrs.
Browning so much as children,’ she says, ‘is because she always treated
us as her equals, and talked to us as such. Pen and I used to sit at her
feet, and she was just as courteous to us as to any of the grown-up
people.’”
* * * * *
“_Arco in Sud Tyrol, April 27._--I came here with the Lowthers, and we
have been some days with two delightful Misses Warre, sisters of the
head-master of Eton. It is an exquisitely beautiful place, with glorious
excursions. One day we have spent most deliciously at Castel Toblino, a
grand old castle which looks at itself in a glassy lake surrounded by
mountains. General Baratieri, a hero, though a most unfortunate one, is
one of those of whom we have seen something here.”
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, May 10._--Reached the dear home with great thankfulness,
after a most severely hard-worked fortnight for a new edition of my
‘Paris.’”
[Illustration: THE PORCH, HOLMHURST.]
* * * * *
“_June 14, 1899._--At luncheon at Lady Constance Leslie’s I met Mr.
Holman Hunt, a charming, simple, natural man. He spoke of the great
difficulty of getting any one to do such work as is wanted for St.
Paul’s Cathedral; that few would give up the high prices paid now for
other work for the small prices the Government would pay. He talked of
Leighton, whom he had known intimately in early life. Three tailors in
Bond Street, thinking it might be a good speculation, clubbed together
to buy one of his first pictures. They offered £100 for it: he stuck out
for £200. Eventually it was arranged that they should pay £150, but a
suit of clothes was to be thrown in. Then came the violent abuse of all
Leighton’s work, and the tailors got alarmed, and sold the picture for
£100 without any suit of clothes. That picture was afterwards bought for
thousands by the Gallery at Liverpool, and there it is now, unlikely
ever to come to the hammer again.
“After this, when Leighton’s pictures were accepted for the Academy and
he was hard at work for the next year, he was told by his studio-man
that some one wanted to speak to him. He sent out word that he was very
busy and could not see any one; but the man was pertinacious and would
not go away. At last Leighton said, ‘Well, he had better come in for a
minute and say what his business is.’ So he was let in. But it was a man
who stood by the door and did not come further. ‘Well,’ said Leighton,
‘what do you want?’ ‘To come straight to the point at once,’ said the
man, ‘I want that picture’ (pointing to the work upon the easel). ‘You
get £300 now for your pictures, don’t you? Well, I will give you £700.’
‘But you have not even seen the picture,’ said Leighton; ‘you don’t even
know what the subject is.’ ‘No, I don’t,’ said the man, ‘and, if I did,
I should know no more about it than I do now.’ That man was Agnew. He
acquired the picture: it was his first venture.
“Mr. Holman Hunt said, speaking of the bad results of Board Schools,
that he had been away lately. When he came back, a boy came to him as a
model, a very good boy, whom he had not seen for some time. ‘Well,’ he
said to the boy, ‘it’s a long time since I’ve seen you; I’ve been away;
I’ve been at Stratford-on-Avon.’ ‘Ah,’ said the boy slowly, ‘so you’ve
been at Stratford-on-Avon, have you? That’s where Shakspeare lived, him
as married Anne Hathaway, and him as they called the Swan of Avon and
the smooth-tongued liar (lyre). It’s well I didn’t live in them times,
or they might have been calling me some such beastly names as that.’”
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, Sept. 8._--Early on the morning of July 29 I was summoned
from home by telegraph to the dying bed of my dear cousin Catherine
Vaughan, perhaps more than any one else still left bound up with all my
life in the long-ago. She had forbidden any one to come to her when ill,
but desired that, if it was known she was dying, I should be sent for. I
found her terribly ill and suffering, though delighted to see me. That
Saturday was a day of great anguish, both for herself and those with
her. But she grew calmer in the night, and was with us still for four
days and nights, during which I seemed to go back into my old life with
my mother, constantly by her side, fanning her, wiping the poor brow,
trying to help her to bear through. Almost her very last words were
‘Dear, dear Augustus.’ Then, the day before she quite left us, she was
unconscious, and we sate in a great calm, only waiting for the coming of
the angel. A majestic beauty had come back to her in the shadow of
death, a likeness to her mother, to her brother Arthur Stanley at his
best, to the ‘Curly Kate’ of sixty years ago, only now they were
snow-white curls which rippled over the pillow. I think it was the so
frequent sight of this life-long friend, more intimate and dearer than
ever in the last few years, yet so much older than myself, which has
always made me feel young, and that, with her passing away, a bridge is
broken down. It has been since quite a small added pain to take leave of
the old furniture and pictures, the inanimate witnesses of our
lives--‘auld nick-nackets’ somebody called them--but still silent and
sacred memorials of the dear Alderley and Norwich family homes, which
have now passed almost to a stranger. They could still recall to those
familiar with them so much that only Kate and I knew, and so much more
that only Kate and I cared about.
‘Yea, truly, as the sallowing years
Fall from us faster, like frost-loosened leaves
Pushed by the misty touch of shortening days,
And that unwakened winter nears,
’Tis the void chair our surest guest receives,
’Tis lips long cold that give the warmest kiss,
’Tis the lost voice comes oftenest to our ears;
We count our rosary by the beads we miss.’[595]
“How long and how full the hours of watching by a death-bed seem! how
full of what varied emotions and anxieties, an almost agonising
eagerness to do the right thing every minute even in a physical sense,
but much more to _say_ the right thing, only the right thing, to one
who is on the awful threshold of so great a transition, to whom, because
she is on the very brink of unravelling the great mystery, all the
commonplaces, even of religion, must fall so flat. One can only try to
help, to _support_ the beloved one, who is passing away from our
possibilities, spiritually as well as physically, try to recollect what
would be a comfort to oneself in such a crisis, and let oneself go
_with_ the departing one to the very portal itself.
“With dear Kate I had often spoken of this, yet, when the reality came,
it was unlike all we had imagined, and I suppose it is always so. But I
felt how well it must always be to talk over the end of life with those
you are likely to be near when the close really comes. It makes a sort
of death-bed comradeship, if I can so call it, which could never exist
without it, and certainly in this case it made Kate cling to my being
constantly with her, when she would allow no one else to see her. Then
how seldom _any_ words are possible from a dying person. In the six
death-beds I have attended it has been so; and even in this case, when
it lasted four days and nights, there was little speech, only an urgency
that I should never leave her, that I should keep near her, that I
should be close by her side as long as she was on earth at all, till she
passed into the unseen.
“Whilst feeling the change which her loss makes in my life, I have read
words of Bishop Magee which have come home to me. ‘The most beautiful
and natural of sunsets is still a sunset, and the shadows that follow it
are chill and depressing. I begin to feel the peculiar sadness that the
death of much older relatives brings to those who are entering
themselves on old age. When I see all those whom I remember once,
middle-aged men and women, younger by many years than I am now, all
passed and gone, I feel somehow as if light was going out of life very
fast. There are so few living with whom one can recall the _past_, and
grow young again in recalling it.’”
* * * * *
JOURNAL.
“_Holmhurst, Sept. 31._--I have been a week at Swaylands to meet the
Duchess of York, and as there were scarcely any other guests, saw a
great deal of her, and was increasingly filled with admiration for the
dignified simplicity and single-mindedness, and the high sense of duty
by which her naturally merry, genial nature is pervaded, and which will
be the very salvation of England some day. Before her scandal sits dumb:
she has a quiet but inflexible power of silencing everything which seems
likely to approach ill-natured gossip, yet immediately after gives such
a genial kindly look and word to the silenced one as prevents any
feeling of mortification. All morning the Duchess was occupied with her
lady in real hard work, chiefly letters, I believe; in the afternoons we
went for long drives and sight-seeings--of Penshurst, Knole,
Groombridge, Hever, Ightham, and she was full of interest in the history
and associations of these old-world places. At Hever the owners were
away, but we got a table from a cottage, and an excellent tea-meal was
spread upon it at the top of the high field above the castle. If the
Duchess is ever Queen of England, that table will be considered to have
a history.”
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, Sept. 8._--I have been in Suffolk on an ancestor-hunt,
which involved a delightful visit to Herbert and Lady Mary Ewart at
Great Thurlow. It was in the time of George I., I think, that our
great-great-uncle Francis Naylor, the owner of Hurstmonceaux Castle, a
‘Medmenham Brother’ and the wildest of the wild, was led to a changed
and better life by his love for the beautiful Carlotta Alston of
Edwardstone. Unfortunately, whilst they were engaged, his father, Bishop
Hare, found out that her elder sister, Mary Margaret, was one of the
greatest heiresses in England, married her without telling his son till
the day before the wedding, and then positively forbade him to become
his brother-in-law. Francis Naylor was very much inclined to go to the
devil again, but Carlotta maintained her influence, and eventually they
were married without the Bishop’s consent. They were too poor to live at
Hurstmonceaux, but the third Miss Alston had married the rich Stephen
Soame, and she gave them a home, and there, in the house of the generous
Anne Soame, they lived and died. The old Jacobean mansion of Little
Thurlow was magnificent and had eighty-one bedrooms; its beautiful
wrought-iron gates with pilasters were given by Charles II., who often
stayed there, and the family lived at Little Thurlow in most unusual
state, even for that time, driving out daily in three
carriages-and-four. Sir Stephen Soame, the builder of the house, has a
grand tomb in the church where Francis and Carlotta Naylor and Anne
Soame are buried behind his stately carved pew, and there are a most
picturesque grammar-school and almshouses erected by him. I remember
some of the Soames coming to Hurstmonceaux--as cousins--in my childhood,
but their direct line died out at last, and the place went to some very
distant relations from Beverley, who pulled down the old hall, because
‘they could not live in a house where you could drive a coach-and-four
up the great staircase.’ Old Mrs. Soame, however, of the second set, did
not die till she was 104, and the last of her two daughters only in
1885. Yet the Misses Soame had never been to London: their travels were
limited to being driven twice a year to Lowestoft in their large yellow
chariot with post-horses. They always intended to try the railway by
going from Haverhill to the next station and having their carriage to
meet them there; but when the day came they shrank from the feat. They
were ‘worth an income to the doctor, the chemist, and the fishmonger,’
and they left a fortune to the family of a man who had once proposed to
one of them.”
* * * * *
“_Holmhurst, Oct. 23._--Again I have been on an ancestor-hunt. I met
Mrs. Lowther at the old haunted house of Lawford Hall near Manningtree,
and our hostess, Mrs. Mouncey, sent us to Hadleigh, where Mary Margaret
Alston’s grandfather, Charles Trumbull, was the very saintly Rector in
the time of James II., and resigned his living for his ordination oath’s
sake on the advent of William III. The Rectory, now known as the
Deanery, is a glorious old house, with a grand brick gateway, priests’
hiding-holes, and curious pictures by Canaletto--an intimate friend and
visitor of one of the rectors--let into its walls. It was the home of
Rowland Taylor, the Marian martyr, who was dragged down the street of
Hadleigh to his stake outside the town ‘cracking jokes all the way,’ and
another vicar was Hugh Rose, when Archbishop Trench was the curate.
“Two days later I went to Edwardstone, a delightful old place near
Sudbury, one of the many of which Bishop Hare’s wife was the heiress,
and where numbers of her Alston ancestors are buried; and then I was two
days at the familiar Campsea Ashe, where, as its beloved owner says, ‘If
you do not know how to enjoy yourself, you must be made to.’ Mr. Astor
was there, and told me that the origin of the American expression ‘a
chestnut’ lay in the rivalries of the theatres in Chestnut Street and
Walnut Street in New York. An expected star who came out in the Walnut
Street Theatre could only do things which had already appeared in
Chestnut Street, and when the young men saw them they said, ‘That’s a
chestnut,’ and it passed into a proverb.
“Mr. Astor was very funny about a man who was always late for
everything, and who one day, when he was expecting a party to stay with
him, rushed home after all his guests had arrived. On the stairs he met
a man, with whom, to make up for lost time, he shook hands most warmly,
saying, ‘Oh, my dear fellow, I’m so glad to see you; do make yourself
quite at home and enjoy yourself.’ It was a burglar, very much surprised
at his cordial reception, for he was carrying off all the valuables. He
also said--
“‘You know Dr. N. and his wonderful tales. I heard him tell of going to
shoot chamois. He had sighted one a long way off and fired. He said the
chamois never moved, but put up one foot and scratched its ear. He fired
again, and it put up the other foot and scratched the other ear. Then he
fired again and killed it. When he came up to it, he found that each of
the first shots had touched an ear. The chamois had only thought, “Oh,
these damned fleas!”
“‘Then Dr. N. told of how he went after bears. A grisly came and he shot
him: then another grisly came and he shot him: then a third grisly
came.... “If you say you shot _him_” said a man present, “I’ll throw
this bottle at your head.” “Well, the third grisly escaped,” calmly said
Dr. N.’
“The last two days of my absence I spent with the Grant Duffs at Lexden
Manor, where Sir Mountstuart was most agreeable and anecdotive, and
whence Lady Grant Duff drove me to see the old gateway of Layer Marney,
beautiful in its great decay.”
* * * * *
“_London, Nov. 29._--Luncheon with the C.’s, who had dined last night
with the Wilberforces. Canon Wilberforce told them of a missionary
establishment in Africa, a most admirable mission, which had been most
effective, had converted the whole neighbourhood, built church and
schools, and done no end of good.
“Then, in some crisis or other, the mission was swept away and the place
was long left desolate.
“After many years the missionaries returned, expecting to find
everything destroyed. But, to their astonishment, they found the
church-bell going and the buildings in perfect repair, all looking as
before--only there _was_ a difference. They could not make out what it
was.
“So they went to the chief and asked him about it. ‘Well, yes,’ he said,
‘there _is_ one little difference. You used to tell us that God was love
and always watching over us for good, while the devil was always seeking
to destroy us; so we felt it was the devil we had better propitiate, and
it is the devil we have worshipped ever since you left, and--it has most
completely answered.’”
* * * * *
“_Dec. 22, 1899._--I am just at the end of a long retreat in a sort of
private hospital, where I have been for the sake of the ‘Nauheim cure’
for an affection of the heart, from which I have now suffered for more
than a year, and which was greatly increased by the anxieties and
sorrows of last August. I am better since my ‘cure,’ but am seldom quite
well now, and, as I read in a novel, ‘my dinner is always either a
satisfying fact or a poignant memory,’ and generally the latter. The
South African war news is casting a shadow over the closing year, and
the death of Lady Salisbury has been a real sorrow--an ever-kind friend
since my early boyhood. I went to the memorial service for her in the
Chapel-Royal--a beautiful service, but a very sad one to many.”
* * * * *
_To_ MRS. _and_ MISS AGNES THORNYCROFT (_after a happy visit to
them at Torquay_).
“_Liskeard, May 7, 1900._--I will begin a history to my two kindest of
hostesses from this dreary wind-stricken little town, which is as ugly
as it can be, but with a large, clean, old-fashioned posting-inn. I got
a little victoria to take me the 2½ miles to St. Cleer’s Well in the
uplands, in a moorland village, approached by primrosy, stitchworty
lanes. The well is a glorious subject for sketching, old grey stones
tinged with golden lichen, a canopy of open Norman arches, and
background of purple hill. It was so bitterly, snowily cold that I
feared, as I sate down on my camp-stool, that sciatica would never allow
me to rise from it; but Providence sent me a whole schoolful of
children, boys and girls, about sixty of them, who pressed close round
through the whole performance, so I just wore them like an eider-down,
and was rather hot than otherwise. Returning, the evening was still so
young that I took the carriage on to St Keyne’s Well, on the other side
of Liskeard, but it was scarcely worth the visit.”
“_Helston, May 8_, 6 P.M.--No farther than this, for when I arrived here
at midday, I found there was no chance of getting on to the Lizard; the
whole town was in too great a turmoil to attend to any individual, for
it was Furry Day, a local floral festa from very early times, and all
the gentlemen and ladies of the neighbourhood (the real ones!) were
dancing in couples, with bands playing through the streets, under
garlanded arches and flags flying from every window. This sounds
lovely, but really was not--only curious, though it gave infinite
satisfaction to the thousands of spectators, who on this day bring great
wealth to the town. But oh! the noise and discomfort for an unwilling
spectator--the organs, and peep-shows, and wild-beast shows, and ‘Boer
and Briton’ shows, and horsemanship-ladies careering through the streets
after the dancing was over. If any one wishes to know what the Inferno
is like and the worst din the human mind can imagine, they should spend
a ‘Furry Day;’ only, to be sure, at Helston all the people are quite
good, which would probably make a very considerable difference!”
“_Helston, May 10._--Yesterday I breakfasted in the coffee-room with an
old gentleman who was exceedingly angry with me because I did not think
Sterne’s ‘Sentimental Journey’ should be one of the twelve novels to be
saved if all the rest in the world were swept away--‘only the most dense
ignorance of literature’ could make me confess such a thing!