"When your sister first insisted upon going to the Sacré Cœur,
she said it was 'pour voir.' 'O comme c'est drôle,' I said to
Madame Hare. But your sister was always obstinate in her own
intentions. 'Je veux examiner la religion catholique au fond,' she
said, 'ainsi que la religion protestante.' She got all the books.
She read those on both sides. Then she went to the Sacré Cœur
again. Her maid went to her three times a day. One day she took her
a great many things. 'What is it you take to Mademoiselle?' I said.
'I take what she ordered me,' answered the maid, and I said no
more: but it was really the white dress, the veil, and all that was
required for the reception. The next day I had a note from
Mademoiselle asking me to come to her at eight o'clock. I showed it
to Madame. 'Eh bien, nous irons ensemble,' she said, and we went
together in the carriage. When we reached the Sacré Cœur, we
were shown at once to the chapel, and then I began to suspect. All
the nuns were assembled. At last a door opened and your sister came
in, all in white, with a long white veil on her head. She walked in
firm and erect, and knelt down at a _prie Dieu_ in the aisle. The
Père de Ravignan made a most touching discourse. He bade her, if
she still felt any doubts, to remember that there was still time;
he urged her not to come forward without true faith. At the end of
his discourse she walked firmly up to the altar and knelt on the
steps. She remained there while mass was said. After it was over
she was taken into the garden. There she embraced her mother and
me. A collation was then served.... Nothing was said about her
going away. 'Voulez vous amener votre fille?' said one of the nuns
at last to Madame Hare. 'Je la laisse parfaitement libre maintenant
et toujours,' she replied. 'Oh comme Mademoiselle était belle ce
jour-là; elle était fraîche, elle allait si bien avec ce grand
voile blanc, et ses beaux cheveux noirs, et ses grands yeux: elle
avait du couleur, elle était vraiment ravissante! elle était
radieuse!... Dans ce temps-là elle était la reine de tous les
bals--à l'ambassade, à la cour, partout: mais elle n'était jamais
plus ravissante de sa beauté que ce jour-là dans le couvent.'"
The Dowager Lady Lothian[71] once told me that in the letter of
condolence which Madame Davidoff wrote to my sister after her mother's
death she said, "The cross which you saw on the day of your first
communion has been very heavy, but it has never crushed you." On the day
of her first communion she saw a huge black cross between her and the
altar. She lay on the ground, and it advanced to crush her, only it
seemed as if an invisible power upheld it, and then she saw that the top
was wreathed with flowers. Oh, how prophetic was this vision of the
cross!
A few days after her reception, Sir Peter Pole fulfilled his word with
regard to his daughter Marguerite. He turned her out of his house, and
he never would allow her name to be mentioned again. Not only to her
father, but to my sister, and to her own sister, Alice Pole, every trace
of her was lost. How my sister met Marguerite Pole again, and of her
extraordinary history in after years, will be told later in these
volumes.
I have been anticipating greatly, but it seems impossible to break up a
connected story into the different years in which their events occurred.
Meantime, without any romantic excitement and far removed from religious
controversy, our quiet existence flowed on; though I was always fond of
my sister and deeply interested in the faint echoes which from time to
time reached me from her life.
Mrs. Alexander was now settled at the Rectory at Hurstmonceaux, and she
ruled as its queen. Uncle Julius consulted her even on the smallest
details; she ordered everything in the house, she took the leading part
with all the guests, everything gave way to her. And the odd thing was
that Mrs. Julius Hare (Aunt Esther), instead of being jealous,
worshipped with greater enthusiasm than any one else at the shrine of
the domestic idol. I have met many perfectly holy and egotistical women,
but Mrs. Alexander was the most characteristic specimen.
[Illustration: CANON STANLEY'S HOUSE, CANTERBURY.]
In the summer of 1851, Arthur Stanley had been appointed to a canonry at
Canterbury, which was a great delight to me as well as to him. "One of
my greatest pleasures in going to Canterbury is the thought of
Augustus's raptures over the place and the cathedral," he wrote to my
mother. And truly I did enjoy it, and so did he. The eight years he
spent at Canterbury were certainly the happiest of his life. We spent
part of my winter holidays there with him and his family. Mrs. Grote
used to describe Arthur truly as "like a sausage, packed so full of
information;" and, with many peculiarities, he was the most charming of
hosts, while his enthusiastic interest peopled every chapel, every
cloister, every garden, with historic memories. Arthur Stanley's was now
the most stimulating companionship possible. He had lost all the
excessive shyness which had characterised his youth, and talked on all
subjects that interested him (ignoring those which did not) with an
eloquence which "se moque de l'éloquence," as Pascal says. His canonry
was situated in its own garden, reached by the narrow paved passage
called "the Brick Walk," which then intersected the buildings on the
north-east of the cathedral. Just behind was the Deanery, where the
venerable Dean Lyall used to be seen walking up and down daily in the
sun in the garden which contained the marvellous old mulberry tree, to
preserve the life of which a bullock was actually killed that the tree
might derive renewed youth from its blood. The fact that a huge bough
rent asunder[72] from this old tree had taken root, and become even more
flourishing than the parent stem, was adapted as an illustration by
Arthur Stanley in a lecture in which he likened the two trees to the
Churches of Rome and England.
Enchanting indeed were the many ancient surroundings of the mighty
cathedral--the Baptistery with its open arches and conical roof half
buried in ivy; the dark passage haunted by "Nell Cook;" the Norman
staircase, so beautiful in colour; the Pilgrim's Inn, down a narrow
entry from the street; the many tombs of the archbishops; and most of
all the different points through which one could follow Thomas à Becket
so vividly through his last hours from his palace to his martyrdom. I
made many drawings, chiefly in pencil and sepia, for my mother and aunt
deprecated colour. "Until you can draw perfectly you have no right to
it. Do one thing well, and not two badly," they said. Of course they
were right; and though often abashed and distressed by Aunt Kitty's
dictum--"Crude, coarse, harsh, and vulgar," after looking at my
sketches, I always felt the slight meed of praise just possible from her
lips a prize well worth striving for. I owe much to her (as to my
mother's) constant inquiry, after I had done a drawing I was conceitedly
proud of, as to what each line meant, and unless I could give a good
account of its intention, desiring me to rub it out; thus inculcating
the pursuit of _truth_, which she urged in drawing as in all else,
instead of striving after unattainable excellence.
[Illustration: SITE OF BECKET'S SHRINE, CANTERBURY.]
One great interest of this winter was going with Arthur Stanley
excursions to Bozledeane Wood and tracing out on the spot the curious
history of the so-called Sir William Courtenay, which is so strangely at
variance with the usually matter-of-fact character of the present
century. Briefly, the story is that of John Nichols Tom, son of a
maltster at Truro, who ran away from his wife, and, going to Canterbury,
announced himself as Sir William Courtenay, and laid claim to the title
and rights of the Earls of Devon. His dress was most extraordinary--a
scarlet robe with a crimson hanger. He was taken up, tried for perjury,
and confined in a lunatic asylum, but, while there, contrived to
interest Sir Edward Knatchbull in his behalf, and obtained his release
by Sir Edward's influence with Lord John Russell. On his return to
Canterbury in 1838, he gave out that he was not only Sir William
Courtenay, but Jesus Christ himself. It was not so much his dress, as
his long flowing hair, his beard, his perfect proportions, his beauty
and height, which lent themselves to his story, and his wonderful
resemblance to the well-known pictures of the Saviour. The rustics and
tradesmen welcomed him, and really believed in him. With forty of his
most devoted disciples he took up his abode in a village near
Canterbury. He was always preaching, and the chief part of his doctrine
was faith--faith in himself. He formed a plan of storming Canterbury and
seizing the cathedral on Whitsunday, when all the people were at the
service there. But this plan was frustrated and he lived in comparative
quietude till Michaelmas. Then a constable was sent to arrest him. The
constable found Courtenay with his forty disciples at breakfast at a
farmhouse near Bozledeane Wood, and when Courtenay saw him approach, he
went out, shot him, and leaving him writhing in agony upon the ground,
returned, perfectly unruffled, to finish his repast. After breakfast
"Sir William Courtenay" led his disciples down the path, which still
remains, into a hollow by a little stream in the heart of the wood. Here
his followers, under Colonel Armstrong, a fanatical leader from
Canterbury, threw up an earthwork, behind which they entrenched
themselves, and here they were surrounded by a body of troops sent out
in three bands to encompass them. Lieutenant Bennet, who was in command,
was sent forward to parley with the impostor. Courtenay, who stood under
a tree, waited till he came close up, and then shot him through the
heart! The troops then rushed forwards, but the fanatics, though greatly
astonished at the death of Courtenay, who, in spite of his professed
invulnerability, fell in the first onset, fought with fury, and defended
themselves with their bludgeons against the muskets of the soldiers. At
last seven of them were killed and the rest taken prisoners.
Mr. Curteis, the Principal of St. Augustine's College, who went with us
to Bozledeane Wood, described the scene after the battle, the pools of
blood, the trees riddled with shot, the bodies lying in the
public-house, and the beautiful hair of Courtenay being cut off and
distributed amongst the people. It was fourteen years afterwards that we
visited the spot. We went to the farmhouse where the last breakfast was
held and the gate where the constable was shot. The view was beautiful
over the Forest of Blean to the sea, with the line of the Isle of
Sheppey breaking the blue waters. A boy guided us down the tangled path
to the hollow where the battle took place by the little stream, said to
be now frequented by the white squirrel and badger. The "stool" of the
tree under which Courtenay stood had lately been grubbed up. The boy
described Courtenay and his forty men lying on a green mossy bank
talking, the evening before they were attacked, and his giving
"bull's-eyes" to all the children on the morning of the battle.
Courtenay had great powers of attracting all who came in contact with
him. A girl belonging to the farmhouse (who on a previous occasion had
knocked his arm aside when he would have shot a magistrate) rushed about
during the engagement to give water and help to the dying, perfectly
regardless of the bullets which were flying around her. And after his
death his wife turned up, "Mrs. Tom" from Truro, most deeply afflicted,
for "he was the best of husbands!"
I liked better being with the Stanleys at Canterbury than in London,
where they talked--as people in London do talk, and where my dearest
mother, who had lived only in the narrowest groove latterly, and
especially as to religious things, often felt it necessary to "testify
to her religious profession" in a way which was even more a
mortification than a pain to me. After we began to go abroad, and she
was removed from the "mutual admiration society" at Hurstmonceaux, she
took a wider view of everything,[73] and had a far better and more
general influence in consequence. But there was a time when my mother,
so infinitely tender and gentle in her own nature, almost seemed to have
lost her hold upon the liberality and gentleness of the Christian
gospel in her eager espousal of the doctrine of fire and worms beyond
the grave. I think it is St. Jerome who says, "Desire rather to act
Scripture than to write about it, to do rather than to say holy things."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Southgate, Feb. 10, 1852._--My own dearest mother, I am settled
here again after my most happy holidays, with the old faces round
me, and the old tiresome conversation about nothing but the
comparative virtues of ruff pigeons and carriers.... The last part
of the holidays at Canterbury was indeed perfectly delightful, and
I enjoyed it--oh! so much. I shall work very hard, and tell Arthur
I shall be quite ready for an examination on Pericles, Marathon,
and Arbela when I see him again. I am afraid Aunt Kitty thought me
awfully ignorant of Greek history, but I really never have had
anything to do with it.[74] I think of you and your walk through
the beautiful cloister when I plod through the muddy village to our
hideous chapel. It is very smoky and dirty and misty, but--I will
not be discontented."
"_Feb. 14._--And now I think of my dearest mother at home again,
sitting in the evening in her own arm-chair in Peace Corner, with
her little table and her Testament, and John and my Fausty[75]--all
white and clean--bringing in the supper, and, oh! how nice it must
be!"
[Illustration: STEPS AT LIME.]
It was very soon after her return from Canterbury that my mother, going
to visit a sick woman in the village, slipped down a turfy frostbound
bank near some steps in the garden at Lime. Unable to make any one hear
her cries for help, she contrived to crawl to the back part of the
house, whence she was carried to a sofa, and a doctor was sent for, who
found that her leg was broken. After very many weeks upon a sofa, all
lameness was cured, but the confinement, to one used to an active life,
told seriously upon her health, and my dearest mother was always liable
to serious illness from this time, though her precious life was
preserved to me for nineteen years to come. Henceforward I never left
her without misery, and when with her was perhaps over-anxious about
her. Mr. Bradley wisely sent me at once to her for a day that I might be
reassured, and I feel still an echo of the pang with which I first saw
her helpless--as I so often saw her afterwards. How I remember all the
sheltered spots in which Lea and I found primroses for her in the one
day I was at home in this bitterly early spring!
_To_ MY MOTHER (after returning to Southgate).
"_March 13, 1852._--Yesterday we had 'a truce,' so I hurried to see
Gerard's Hall in Bow Lane before its demolition. It has latterly
been an inn, with a statue of Gerard the Giant over the door. A
wooden staircase leads into the wine-cellar, once Gerard's Crypt,
possessing slender arches and pillars, most beautiful in colour,
and forming wonderful subjects for pictures, with pewter pots and
stone pitchers thrown about in confusion."
"_April 29._--I have been to see Mrs. Gayford, the nurse who
brought me over to England. She is very poor, and lives in an attic
in the New Wharf Road, but was enchanted to see me. I sate upon the
old seachest which has been often with her to India, and heard the
history of her going to Mannheim and meeting my father with his
'weak baby--very passionate, you know, but then it's in the nature
of such young gentlemen to be so.' And then she described the
journey and voyage, and my ingratitude to a lady who had been very
kind to me by slapping her in the face when she was sea-sick."
"_June 15._--We are in the midst of an examination in Thierry's
'Norman Conquest.' At nine we all assemble in the dining-room, and
the greatest anxiety is exhibited: the 'prophets' proclaim their
views on the issue of the day, and the 'hunters' speculate upon the
horses who are to 'run in the Thierry stakes.' Bradley comes in
with the papers and gives one to each, and from that time we are in
custody: no one can exchange a word, and two fellows may never go
up to the table together. When we have done that set of questions,
generally between one and three o'clock, we are at liberty till
five, and then we are in custody again till we have done the next,
at nine, ten, or eleven. Bradley is on guard all day, or, if he is
obliged to go out, Mrs. B. mounts guard for him. They cannot employ
themselves, as they have always to wander up and down the rows of
writers with their eyes.... I like the life during these
examinations, there is so much more excitement than over ordinary
work, and one never has time to get stupid, but the others do
nothing but bemoan themselves."
I think it must have been on leaving Southgate for the summer that I
paid a visit of one day to "Italima" and my sister in a house which had
been lent them in Grosvenor Square. It was then that my sister said,
"Mamma, Augustus is only with us for one day. We ought to take the
opportunity of telling him what may be of great importance to him: we
ought to tell him the story of the 'Family Spy.'" What I then heard was
as follows:--
For many years my sister had observed that she and her mother were
followed and watched by a particular person. Wherever they went, or
whatever they did, she was aware of the same tall thin man dressed in
grey, who seemed to take a silent interest in all that happened to them.
At last this surveillance became quite disagreeable and they tried to
escape it. One spring they pretended that they were going to leave Rome
on a particular day, announced it to their friends, and made secret
preparations for quitting Rome a week earlier. They arrived in safety
within a few miles of Florence, when, looking up at a tall tower by the
side of the road, my sister saw the face of the Family Spy watching
them from its battlements. Another time they heard that the Spy was ill
and confined to his bed, and they took the opportunity of moving at
once. As their vetturino carriage turned out of the piazza into the Via
S. Claudio, in order to attain the Corso, which must be passed before
reaching the gate of the city, the narrow street was almost blocked up
by another carriage, in which my sister saw the emaciated form of the
Family Spy propped on pillows and lying on a mattress, and which
immediately followed them. Constant inquiries had long since elicited
the fact that the Spy was a Sicilian Marquis who had been living at
Palermo when my parents were there, and whose four children were exactly
the same age as _their_ four children. Soon afterwards his wife and all
his children were swept away at one stroke by the cholera, and he was
left utterly desolate. With characteristic Sicilian romance, he
determined to create for himself a new family and a new interest in life
by adopting the other family, which was exactly parallel to his own, and
of which only the father had been removed--but adopting it by a
mysterious bond, in which the difficulty of a constant surveillance
should give entire occupation to his time and thought. When Italima
heard this, after making inquiries about him which proved satisfactory,
she sent to the Spy to say that she thought it much better this secret
surveillance should end, but that she should be happy to admit him as a
real friend, and allow him to see as much as he liked of the family in
which he took so deep an interest. But, though expressing great
gratitude for this proposal, the Spy utterly declined it. He said that
he had so long accustomed himself to the constant excitement of his
strange life, that it would be quite impossible for him to live without
it; that if ever an opportunity occurred of rendering any great service
to the family whose fortunes he followed, he would speak to them, but
not till then.
When I had been told this story, my sister and Italima took me out in
the afternoon to drive in the Park. As we were passing along the road by
the Serpentine, my sister suddenly exclaimed, "There, look! there is the
Family Spy," and, among those who walked by the water, I saw the tall
thin grey figure she had described. We passed him several times, and he
made such an impression upon me that I always knew him afterwards. My
sister said, "If you look out at ten o'clock to-night, you will see him
leaning against the railing of Grosvenor Square watching our
windows,"--and so it was; there was the tall thin figure with his face
uplifted in the moonlight.
In 1852 the extravagance of my two brothers Francis and William was
already causing great anxiety to their mother. Francis, who had lately
obtained his commission in the Life-Guards through old Lord Combermere,
had begun to borrow money upon the Gresford estate. William, who was in
the Blues, with scarcely any fortune at all, had plunged desperately
into the London season. When winter approached, their letters caused
even more anxiety on account of their health than their fortunes: both
complaining of cough and other ailments. One day, in the late autumn of
1852, my sister, coming into the diningroom of the Palazzo Parisani,
found her mother stretched insensible upon the hearth-rug, with a letter
open in her hand. The letter was from the new Sir John Paul, who had not
in the least got over his first anger at his sister's change of
religion, and who wrote in the cruellest and harshest terms. He said,
"Your eldest son is dying. It is quite impossible that you can arrive in
time to see him alive. Your second son is also in a rapid decline,
though if you set off at once and travel to England without stopping,
you may still be in time to receive his last words."
Palazzo Parisani was at once thrown into the utmost confusion, and all
its inmates occupied themselves in preparing for immediate departure.
Owing to the great number of things to be stowed away, it was, however,
utterly impossible that they should leave before the next morning.
Italima's state of anguish baffles description, for Francis was her
idol. In the afternoon my sister, hoping to give her quiet, persuaded
her to go out for an hour and walk in the gardens of the Villa Medici,
where she would not be likely to meet any one she knew. In the long
arcaded bay-walks of the villa she saw a familiar figure approaching. It
was the "Family Spy." He came up to her, and, to her amazement, he began
to address her--he, the silent follower of so many years! He said, "The
time has now come at which I can serve you, therefore I speak. This
morning you received a letter." Italima started. "You are surprised that
I know you have the letter, and yet I am going to tell you all that was
in that letter," and he repeated it word for word. He continued--"I not
only know all that was in your letter and the distress in which it has
placed you, but I know all the circumstances under which that letter was
written, and I know all that has happened to your sons since: I know
all about your sons. Your son Francis was taken ill on such a day: he
saw such and such doctors: he is already much better: there is no
danger: you may be quite easy about him. Your son William is not in
danger, but he is really much the more ill of the two. Dr. Fergusson has
seen him, and a foreign winter is prescribed. It will not do for you to
go to England yourself, but yet he is not well enough to travel alone.
You have an old servant, Félix, who came to you in such a year, and who
has been with you ever since. You must send him to fetch William, and
here is a paper on which I have written down all the trains and steamers
they are to travel by, both in going and returning." So saying, and
having given the paper to Italima and bowing very low, the Family Spy
retired. Italima went home. She acted entirely on the advice she had
received. She unpacked her things and remained in her palazzo at Rome.
She sent Félix, as the Spy had directed: he travelled according to the
written programme, and in a fortnight he returned to Rome bringing
William back with him. The Spy never spoke to any member of the family
again.
It is anticipating, but I may mention here that when we went to Rome in
1857, I wondered if we should see the Family Spy. I spoke of it to my
mother. As we passed through the Porta del Popolo, he was the first
person who met us. I saw him very often that winter, and again when I
was at Paris with my sister in October 1858. That winter my sister often
saw him at Rome. The next year was marked by our great family
misfortunes. My sister always expected that somehow or other he would
come to the rescue of the lost fortunes, but he never did. Some time
after she heard that he had died very suddenly about that time.
When I returned to my mother in the summer of 1852, she was at
Eastbourne with Charlotte Leycester and very ill. It was the earliest
phase of the strange hysteria with which I was afterwards so
familiar--sudden flushings with a deathly chill over her face, and
giddiness, sometimes followed by unconsciousness, occasionally by a
complete apparent suspension of life, a death-like trance without breath
or pulsation, lasting for hours, or even for many days together. It is a
very rare illness, but it is known to doctors, and I believe it is
called "Waking coma." In this summer I first began the anxious watchings
of first symptoms--the swelling of my mother's fingers around her rings,
and then by a kiss searched if the alarming chill had already taken
possession of her face. Happily, the heavenly state of mind in which she
always lived took away from her the terror of these illnesses; the
visions which beset her waking and sleeping were of all things good and
beautiful: the actual trances themselves were to her a translation into
heavenly places and to the companionship of the blessed, and, for those
who looked upon her, a transfiguration.
When my mother was able to move, it was decided that she must try
foreign air, which then and often afterwards completely restored her to
health for the time. It was settled that we should go to Heidelberg, and
as her cousin Charlotte Leycester was to travel with her, I was able to
precede her for a few days in the old Belgian towns, which, as I was
then in the first enthusiasm about foreign travel, I looked upon as
absolutely entrancing.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_St. Omer, July 15, 1852._--I shall never feel the day is properly
over till it has been shared with my own dear mother. I have only
left you a few hours, and yet, at an expense of one pound, how
great is the change!... We embarked at Dover at one, with a
cloudless sky and rippling waves, and an Irish lady near me was
most amusing, telling anecdotes first in French to her neighbour
on the other side and then in English to me. But half-way across
the Channel the thickest of fogs came on, we made no way, and cries
and whistles were kept up without cessation. Then it grew rough,
the Irish lady's jokes became less vivacious, and at last she
followed almost all the other passengers to the side of the vessel.
At five o'clock sea and fog subsided and we went on, but then the
tide had gone from the harbour, and when we were a mile and a half
from Calais, all the passengers were transferred to open boats. As
we were rowed in under the long pier, the beautiful fishing-nets
were being drawn up out of the calm waters, and the old French
faces with the high white caps and large gold earrings were looking
down as last year.... The railway journey was delicious through the
rich flat country, and the churches here, of the two missionary
saints, Bertin and Omer, are most interesting."
"_Bruges, July 17._--The heat is so intense that I am more inclined
to watch the perfectly motionless branches of the acacia under the
window than to do my duty by the sights. The old town and its
people all seem lulled to sleep by the oppression. Yet the Dyver
Canal is delightful, with its strange old towers and its poplar
trees, and the market on its bank filled with Dutch fishwives in
bright costumes.... My straw hat attracts much attention. 'Voilà le
costume anglais,' I hear the people say.... The _table d'hôte_ was
very amusing, musicians playing the while on harp, guitar, and
flute. To-night there is to be a procession which has had no equal
for a hundred years.
"This morning I went to the Béguinage, a little village with walls
of its own in the middle of the town. The sweet-faced Béguine nuns
in long white veils were chanting the service in the church, ranged
in the stalls of the choir. They wore long trains, which they took
up when they came out of church. A priest was there, but the abbess
seemed to take his part in officiating.[76] ... The streets are
beautifully decorated for the procession, planted with living
fir-trees, half the height of the houses, which, as they are very
narrow, gives the effect of an avenue; but, behind, the houses are
hung with flags and tapestry. In some streets altars are raised,
surrounded with orange-trees and flowers.
"10 P.M.--The ceremonial was to celebrate 'the jubilee of the
Carmelite tonsure.' ... The streets were all hung with flowers and
tapestry, and garlands made a flower canopy across them, beneath
which streamed crowds of peasants from every town in Belgium. Each
pine-tree was a huge Christmas-tree with thousands of wax-lights
blazing in the motionless air. Many hundreds of clergy formed the
procession, and Capuchins and Carmelites and Franciscans, many with
bare feet and flowing beards. There were also hundreds of
torch-bearers and children swaying censers. Then came troops of
young girls, 'brides of Christ,' in white, with garlands: then a
beautiful little boy as St. John leading his lamb by a string;
then Jesus, Mary, and Joseph--Mary crowned with a veil covered
with golden stars, and endless winged cherubs in attendance; then
abbots and canons; and lastly, under a crimson canopy, in a violet
robe, the Bishop bearing the Host.
"The scene in the Grande Place was magnificent. Along the base of
the _halles_ burning torches rolled up their smoke around the
belfry and the brilliant banners, and the sea of faces was
motionless in expectation. It was a tremendous moment when the
immense mass of clergy had sung a hymn around the altar in the
square, and the Bishop took off his mitre and knelt upon the rushes
before the Sacrament. Then, as he lifted the Host in his hands, the
music ceased, and the whole multitude of people fell almost
prostrate in silent prayer."
After visiting Ghent, Malines, Antwerp, and Louvain, I joined my mother
and her companions at Brussels, and we proceeded by the Rhine and
Frankfort to Heidelberg, where we found a charming apartment almost at
the castle gate, at the back of a baker's shop, with a little
oleander-fringed garden high on the hill-top, overlooking the town and
river. Two sisters and their cousin waited upon us. The castle gardens
were like our own, and delicious in their shade and freshness and the
scent of their roses and lilacs; and the courtyards and towers were
full of inexhaustible interest. We were never weary here of studying the
history of the English Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and finding out her
connection with the different parts of the castle, and her little garden
with its triumphal arch was our favourite resort. We seldom went down
into the town except on Sundays, when the famous Dr. Schenkel preached
in St. Peter's Church at the foot of our hill. In the evenings we used
to walk along the edge of the hills, through flower-fringed lanes, to
the clear springs of Wolfsbrunnen, where there was a sort of nursery of
trout (_florellen_). The students shared the gardens with us, with their
ridiculous dress and faces scarred for life in the silly duels at the
Hirsch Gasse, which they looked upon as a distinction, and which
generally arose from quarrels about giving way to each other in the
street. They often, consequently, spent six hours a day in practising
the sword-exercise, to the ruin of their studies. When we were at
Heidelberg, all the clothes in the place used to be sent to be washed in
the village of Spiegelhausen, because there the water was softer, and
when its hills were covered with the linen of the whole town they
produced the oddest effect. A large Heidelberg family considered it a
great point of honour to have linen enough to last them six months, so
as only to send it to be washed twice in the year, when it went in a
great waggon to Spiegelhausen. A young lady always endeavoured to have
this quantity at her marriage.
Lodging in the castle itself was M. Meyer,[77] afterwards a kind of
secretary to the Empress Augusta of Germany, a most singular man, who
was then employed upon an enormous poem, which he believed would throw
Dante into the shade, though it has passed quite unnoticed. He delighted
to read us some of its endless cantos in the castle gardens, and we
tried to look as if we understood and appreciated. But he was really
very kind to us, and was a most amusing companion in the long walks
which he took us--to the Angel's Meadow, a small green space in the
forests high on the mountains beyond the river, and elsewhere. I shared
his admiration for Mrs. Hamilton (_née_ Margaret Dillon, the maid of
honour), who was at that time in the zenith of her beauty and
attractiveness, and was living at Heidelberg with her husband and
children.
We spent a day at Schwetzingen, where at that time was living the Grand
Duchess Stephanie, the daughter of the Comte de Beauharnais and
great-niece of the Empress Josephine, who had been adopted by Napoleon,
and married against her will (1806) to the Prince of Baden. My aunt,
Mrs. Stanley, was very intimate with her, and had much that was
interesting to tell of her many trials.
It was during the latter part of our sojourn at Heidelberg that the
Stanleys (Aunt Kitty, Arthur, and Mary), with Emmie Penrhyn, came to
stay with us on their way to spend the winter at Rome, a journey which
at that time was looked upon as a great family event. With them I went
to Spires and its beautiful cathedral, and on the anniversary of my
adoption we all went over to Mannheim, and dined at the hotel where,
seventeen years before, I, being fourteen months old, was given away to
my aunt, who was also my godmother, to live with her for ever as if I
were her own child, and never to see my own parents, as such, any more.
I dwell upon this because one of the strangest coincidences of my
life--almost too strange for credence--happened that day at Mannheim.
When we returned to the station in the evening, we had a long time to
wait for the train. On the platform was a poor woman, crying very
bitterly, with a little child in her arms. Emmie Penrhyn, who was
tender-hearted, went up to her, and said she was afraid she was in some
great trouble. "Yes," she said, "it is about my little child. My little
child, who is only fourteen months old, is going away from me for ever
in the train which is coming. It is going away to be adopted by its
aunt, who is also its godmother, and I shall never, never have anything
to do with it any more."
It was of an adoption under _exactly_ the same circumstances that we had
been to Mannheim to keep the seventeenth anniversary!
After parting with the Stanleys, we left Heidelberg on the 26th of
August and made a little tour.
_To_ MRS. ALEXANDER.
"_Coblentz, Sept. 1._--Here we are again at Coblentz, in a room
looking on the friendly Rhine, with Ehrenbreitstein all new and
yellow on the other side the water, and the older houses of the
town below us.
"Our little tour has been most successful. We went first to Baden,
and spent the afternoon in driving up through the forest to the
Alte Schloss, coming down in a splendid sunset--the golden Rhine
gleaming in a red valley through the dark pines. The next morning,
as I was being shown over the Neue Schloss, I asked about the Grand
Duchess Stephanie and the Princess Wasa, when the guide rushed to a
window and said, 'Come quick, for the princesses are riding out of
the courtyard upon their asses, as they do every morning before
breakfast;' but I saw little more than their shadows flit across
the court as their donkeys clattered through the gate. I was shown
the circular opening through which prisoners bound in a chain used
to be let down into the _oubliettes_ and their subterranean
judgment-hall, and the place where they had to give the _baiser de
la Vierge_, when they fell through a trap-door upon wheels set
round with knives which cut them to pieces.
"Next day we went to Strasbourg--so hot it was!--and then to Metz,
where the cathedral is poor outside, but most glorious within--a
vista of solid round pillars terminating in a blaze of stained
glass. In one of the towers is 'Groggy,' a real dragon, dried.
"A diligence took us to Sierck on the Moselle, where we had a long
time to wait, and mother sate and drew whilst I rambled about. It
was evening before the churches of Treves appeared above the
river-bank. We stayed at the charming Rothes Haus, with the little
cross opposite commemorating the fiery vision of Constantine, which
is supposed to have taken place there. Treves has a wonderful round
of sights--the Roman baths, a beautiful ruin with tall brick
arches, brilliant still in colour: thence up the vine-clad hill to
where a gap between two ruined walls forms the entrance of the
amphitheatre: back by the Porta Nigra, noblest of Roman gateways,
with the hermitage whither S. Simeon was brought from Syracuse by
Archbishop Poppo, and where he spent the rest of his life: finally
to the cathedral, and the Liebfrauenkirche with lovely cloisters
filled with flowers.
"We made great friends with the old sacristan at the cathedral, who
gave us an extraordinary account of the last exhibition of its
great relic, the 'Heilige Rock,' or seamless coat of the Saviour,
when 30,000 persons passed through the church every day, weeping
and sobbing, singing and praying as they went. The coat is only
exhibited every twenty-five years, and awaits its next resurrection
entombed in a treble coffin before the high altar. It has certainly
done great things for Treves, as the cathedral has been restored, a
capital hospital built, and all the fortunes of the citizens made
by its exhibition. The sacristan was delighted to find that I also
was a 'Romische Burgher,' but hoped that in a few years I should
'want some more cloth putting into my coat.'"
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Namur, Sept. 2._--Here I am, alone and dreary in the world once
more.... It always seems as if I could have done a great deal more
for you, and been more gentle and loving when I am gone, but I am
sure my own darling mother will never really have thought me
wanting in gratitude to her."
* * * * *
"_Braine le Comte, Sept. 3._--I believe no one has such misfortunes
as I have. I was at the Namur station at six this morning, and
here by eight. Then the guard suggested my going into the
waiting-room, as there was half-an-hour to wait before the train
came up for Calais, for which I had a through ticket. I had no
summons to the train: it came up on the opposite side of the
station (concealed by another train) in five minutes, and I was
left behind, and there is no train again till past seven o'clock
this evening, and then only to Lille!--eleven hours to wait!"
"_Southgate, Sept. 4._--As the dreary hours at Braine le Comte
waned, two English families arrived from Namur, and with two
ladies, 'Alice and Sybil,' and the boys of Sybil, I sallied out to
see Braine le Comte, and then into the forest to pick bilberries
for the luncheon which I had no money to buy. Then I arrived in the
night at Lille, and being unable to find a hotel in the dark, and
indeed having no money to pay for going to one, wandered about till
at length I collapsed altogether on the doorstep of one of the
houses. Here I was found by some of the old market-women when they
arrived for the opening of the market at dawn, and they took me
into the _halles_, and made me share their early breakfast. This
was a kind of black broth in a huge wooden bowl, into which we all
dipped a great spoon in turns, but it was most welcome, and the old
women were very kind to me."
It was a great pleasure this autumn to pay a little visit to my mother's
old friend Miss Clinton, whose frequent visits to Lime had counted as
some of the happiest days of my childhood. She was essentially what the
French call "_bonne à vivre_," so good-humoured and cheerful, and so
indulgent to the faults of others. The crystal stream of her
common-sense had always seemed to stir up the stagnant quagmire of
religious inanities which the Maurice sisters had surrounded us with at
Hurstmonceaux.
"_Cokenach, Oct. 3._--I was so glad to come here for two days. The
dear old Stoke carriage with Lou Clinton[78] in it met me at
Royston. She took me first to see the antiquities--Lady Rohesia's
chapel and Roysie's Cave, which gave the place its name, and a
house where James I. stayed when he came hunting, in which his
bedroom is preserved with its old furniture: in the garden is the
first mulberry-tree planted in England. We reached Cokenach by the
field roads.
"I was taken up at once to Lady Louisa,[79] who sate, as years ago,
in her large chair by the blazing firelogs, with all her baskets of
papers round her, and her table covered with things."
As it was considered a settled point that I was to take Orders when I
was grown up (a point on which no single member of the family allowed
any discussion or difference of opinion), and that I was then to have
the rich family living of Hurstmonceaux, in the gift of my brother
Francis, my whole education up to this time had been with that
intention. My mother, therefore, was quite enchanted when my admiration
of the Béguinages which I had seen in Belgium led me, in the autumn of
1852, to devote every spare moment to a sort of missionary work in the
low wretched districts of Southgate. I had read in St. Vincent de Paul:
"L'action bonne et parfaite est le véritable caractère de l'amour de
Dieu ... c'est l'amour _effectif_ qu'il faut à Dieu," and I determined
to try to act upon it.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Sept. 29, 1852._--I have now regularly entered on my parochial
duties. There is a long strip of cottages in the village, yet out
of Southgate parish, and which the clergyman of their own parish
will have nothing to do with, as those of the inhabitants who go to
church go to Southgate, so that he gets no marriage fees. The
people would have been dreadfully neglected if Mrs. Bradley had not
taken care of them, and as it is, they are in a very bad state,
most of the men drunkards, and their wives and children starving.
As the houses look out upon an open drain, they teem with illness
for which there is no remedy. The children spend their days in
making mud-pies upon the road.... I have now got all these cottages
as my peculiar province.
"Most of the people cannot, or fancy they cannot, go to church, so
I offered to have a sort of 'cottage reading' every Tuesday in the
house of one of the better people--a Mrs. Perry. I was rather
alarmed, though glad, to see how many came.... I tried to make the
reading as interesting and easy as I could, and afterwards ventured
upon a little 'discourse.'
"It was strange to find this really heathen colony--for they know
_nothing_--close by, and I am glad to have a foretaste of what my
life's work will be like."
"_Southgate, October 12._--Mr. Bradley is in nothing so
extraordinary as in the education of his children. All the moral
lessons to his little daughter Jesse are taken from reminiscences
of his 'poor dear first wife,' who never existed. I am used to it
now, but was amazed when I first heard little Jesse ask something
about 'your poor dear first wife, papa,' and he took out a
handkerchief and covered over both their heads that no one might
see them cry, which the little girl did abundantly over the
touching story told her. Little Charlie's education was carried on
in a similar way, only the model held up to him was a son of Mrs.
Bradley's by an imaginary first husband, who 'died and is buried in
Oxfordshire.' Little Moses's mamma, 'Mrs. Jochebed Amram,' is also
held up as an effective example of Christian piety and patience,
but Moses himself never touches their feelings at all. I must send
you one of the allegories which I have heard Bradley tell his
children; it is such a characteristic specimen:--
"'Now I will tell you a story about Hare. When Hare was a little
child he lived at Rome: you know what we call it?--("Oh yes, papa,
Babylon.")--Well, he lived at Babylon, and he was a very good
little boy then, but he used to walk about dressed in scarlet, for
they all wore scarlet there. One day a man was seen in the streets,
very beautiful, a stranger with silver wings. And he said, "Are you
little Hare, and would you like to go with me and learn how to be
good?" for he was an angel. And little Hare said, "Oh yes, that is
what I always like to be and try to be, and I shall like very much
to go."
"'So the angel took little Hare up and carried him away on his
back: and his poor mother went up and down the streets of Babylon
crying and wringing her hands, for she did not know where her dear
boy was gone.
"'But the angel carried Hare to the Happy Island, where all manner
of little children were living--Ada and Angelina, and numbers of
others. All these little children came to Hare and asked why he
came there in his scarlet dress without getting it washed, because
they all wore white robes, and they told him he must get his robes
washed too. But he said he liked his scarlet clothes, and did not
wish to have white robes like theirs, and he was very sullen and
angry.
"'So then the angel and the children left him alone and took no
notice of him. But after a time he observed that all the other
children had little wings while he had none, and he felt sorry when
the great angel passed by every day and took no notice of him, and
at last he said, "How sorry I am to have spoken as I did, and how
much I should like to have my robes washed and made white like
those of the Happy Island children."
"'And the instant he said these words, his scarlet dress fell off,
and he had beautiful white robes given him, and he felt a strange
sensation in his shoulders, for little wings were growing there.
And all the little children came up and kissed him, and cried,
"Hosanna! hosanna! he is good; and he has got little wings like
us."
"'So Hare lived on in the island, till, one day, the angel said,
"Have you ever thought what your poor mother is doing now, and
would you not like to go back to her?" And Hare said, "But can I
always be good and have white robes and wings if I go back to
Babylon?" And the angel said, "No, but you can try," and he took
Hare on his back and flew off and off till he came to Babylon,
where he set Hare down in the streets: and all the people looked at
him, and when they saw his white robes and his wings, they said,
"Why, there is a little angel come!"
"'And Hare went to his mother when she was asleep, and when she
awoke she thought it was a dream, but he said, "No, mother, it is
no dream. I have been in the Happy Island all this time, and I have
come back good." Then his mother, when she saw his wings, said,
"Oh, go on being good, and then your wings will grow larger and
larger, till at last you will not only be able to go back yourself
to the Happy Isle, but to take me with you." And Hare wished to do
this, but nevertheless Babylon is a bad place, and as he went out
in the streets his dress became soiled with their mud, and he
mingled and played with its children till his wings grew smaller
and smaller, and at last they fell off altogether.
"'Still, if you were to examine Hare on the bare shoulders when he
is undressed, you would see the stumps where the wings were.'"
On the 17th of November I went up to London for the funeral of the Duke
of Wellington on the following day. Very late at night Arthur Stanley
arrived, having travelled day and night from Rome on purpose. We had to
set off at four o'clock next morning to reach our reserved seats in St.
Paul's, though I do not think the service began till twelve. We were
four hours in the long chain of carriages wending at a foot's pace
towards St. Paul's. A number of curious cases of robbery occurred then.
I remember one, of an old gentleman in a carriage before us, who was
leaning out of the carriage window with a pair of gold spectacles on his
nose. A well-dressed man approached him between the two lines of
carriages and said, "Sir, don't you know that you're very imprudent in
leaning out of the carriage window on this occasion with such a very
valuable pair of gold spectacles upon your nose? An _ill-disposed_
person might come up and whip off your spectacles like _this_"--and,
suiting the action to the word, he whipped them off, and escaped
between the opposite line of carriages, leaving the old gentleman
without any chance of redress.
The ceremony in St. Paul's was sublime beyond any power of words to
describe. I recollect as one of the most striking features the figure of
Dean Milman--bent almost double, with silver hair--who had been present
at the funeral of Nelson in 1806, when he "heard, or seemed to hear, the
low wail of the sailors who encircled their Admiral." My mother saw the
procession from the Bunsens' house at Carlton Terrace.
In the winter of 1852-53 I passed through one of those phases of
religious conviction which ultra-Evangelicals would call a
"conversion"--an awakening at a distinct time which I can remember
(January 11) of the strongest feeling of repentance for past sin and
desire for improvement. "O amare! O ire! O sibi perire! O ad Deum
pervenire," are words of St. Augustine which expressed my whole feeling
at the time. I have no doubt that this feeling--exaggerated and violent
as it was--was perfectly sincere at the time, and possibly in some way
may have had a wholesome influence on my life. But I am quite sure that
in other ways it had a very _unwholesome_ influence, and that the habit
of self-introspection and self-examination which I then felt a duty, and
which many clergymen inculcate, is most injurious, as destroying
simplicity of character, by leading an individual to dwell upon himself
and his own doings, and thus causing him to invest that self and those
doings with a most undue importance. I have always in later years, where
I have had any influence, done all I could to discourage and repress
these sudden religious "awakenings," producing unnatural mental
sufferings at the time, and usually lapsing into an undesirable rebound.
With an imaginary reality of conviction, young people are often led into
hypocrisy, from a sense of the meritoriousness of that very hypocrisy
itself in the eyes of many. I am quite sure that a simple Christian life
of active benevolence and exertion for others, of bearing and
forbearing, is the wholesome state--a life which is freed from all
thoughts of self-introspection, and from all frantic efforts (_really_
leading aside from simple faith in a Saviour) after self-salvation. I
dwell upon this here for a moment, though I dislike to do so, because no
narrative of my life could be true without it.
The last nine months of my stay at Southgate were less pleasant than the
preceding ones, as Mr. Bradley had ceased to like me, and, though he
fully did his duty by me in work-time, plainly showed, out of working
hours, that he would be very glad when the time came for our final
separation. This change arose entirely from my resistance, backed up by
Dr. Vaughan at Harrow, to many of his absurd punishments. I was now
nearly nineteen, and I offered to bear any amount of _rational_
punishment he chose, but utterly refused to wear my coat inside out, and
to run with a tin kettle tied to my coattail through the village, &c.,
which were the punishments he liked to impose.