1853-1855
"When I recall my youth, what I was then,
What I am now, ye beloved ones all:
It seems as though these were the living men,
And we the coloured shadows on the wall."
--MONCKTON MILNES.
"You are not bound to follow vulgar examples, nor to succeed--Fais
ce que dois."--AMIEL.
"Study as if you would never reach the point you seek to attain,
and hold on to all you have learnt as if you feared to lose
it."--CONFUCIUS.
During a visit at Lime, Arthur Stanley had spent a whole evening in
entertaining us with a most delightful description of the adventures of
Messrs. Black, White, Blue, Green, and Yellow on their first arrival at
Oxford, so that I was not wholly unprepared for what I had to encounter
there. His kindness had also procured me a welcome from his most
eccentric, but kind-hearted, friend Jowett, then a Fellow and tutor of
Balliol,[80] which prevented any forlornness I might otherwise have
experienced; but indeed so great was my longing for change and a freer
life, that I had no need of consolation, even under the terrors of
"Matriculation." At nineteen, I was just beginning to feel something of
the self-confidence which boys usually experience at thirteen, and, as I
emancipated myself gradually from the oppressors of my boyhood, to yearn
with eager longings for and sudden inexplicable sympathies towards the
friendship and confidence of companions of my own age. There was also a
pleasure in feeling that henceforward, though I should always have to
economise, I must have _some_ money of my own, although a regular
allowance was never granted at Oxford, or at any other time. It was
partially the fact that I had no money to spend in my own way, and that
my bills were always overlooked and commented upon, and partly that I
had known no other young men except those whom I met at my private
tutor's, which made me still very peculiar in dress as in voice and
manner. I can see myself now--very shy and shrinking, arriving at Oxford
in a rough "bear greatcoat," with a broad stripe down my trousers, such
as was worn then, and can hear the shrill high tones in which I spoke.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Balliol College, Oxford, March 14, 1853._--I cannot help writing
to my own mother on this my first night in Oxford. I should not
seem to have got through the day without it.
"I left Southgate with all good wishes and in pouring rain. When
the domes and towers of Oxford rose over the levels, I was not much
agitated at seeing them, and was very much disappointed at the look
of them. A number of young men were at the station, but I jumped
into an omnibus, and, in a tone as unlike a Freshman's as I could
make it, exclaimed 'Balliol.' Dull streets brought us to an arched
gateway, where I was set down, and asked the way to Mr. Jowett's
rooms. Through one court with green grass and grey arches to
another modern one, and upstairs to a door with 'Mr. Jowett' upon
it. Having knocked some time in vain, I went in, and found two
empty rooms, an uncomfortable external one evidently for lectures,
and a pleasant inner sanctuary with books and prints and warm fire.
My mother's letter was on the table, so she was the first person to
welcome me to Oxford. Then Mr. Jowett came in, in cap and gown,
with a pile of papers in his hand, and immediately hurried me out
to visit a long succession of colleges and gardens, since which we
have had dinner in his rooms and a pleasant evening. I like him
thoroughly. It is a bright beginning of college life."
"_March 16._--It is a member of the University who writes to my own
mother.
"It was nervous work walking in the cold morning down the High
Street to University. Mr. Jowett's last advice had been, 'Don't
lose your presence of mind; it will be not only weak, but wrong.'
Thus stimulated, I knocked at the Dean's (Mr. Hedley's) door. He
took me to the Hall--a long hall, with long rows of men writing at
a long table, at the end of which I was set down with pens, ink,
and paper. Greek translation, Latin composition, and papers of
arithmetic and Euclid were given me to do, and we were all locked
in. I knew my work, and had done when we were let out, at half-past
one, for twenty minutes. At the end of that time Mr. Hedley took me
to the Master.[81] The old man sate in his study--very cold, very
stern, and _very_ tall. I thought the examination was over. Not a
bit of it. The Master asked what books I had ever done, and took
down the names on paper. Then he chose Herodotus. I knew with that
old man a mistake would be fatal, and I did not make it. Then he
asked me a number of odd questions--all the principal rivers in
France and Spain, the towns they pass through, and the points where
they enter the sea; all the prophecies in the Old Testament in
their order relating to the coming of Christ; all the relationships
of Abraham and all the places he lived in. These things fortunately
I _happened_ to know. Then the Master arose and solemnly made a
little speech--'You have not read so many books, Mr. Hare, not
nearly so many books as are generally required, but in
consideration of the satisfactory way in which you have passed
your general examination, and in which you have answered my
questions, you will be allowed to matriculate, and this, I hope,
will lead you,' &c. &c. But for me the moral lesson at the end is
lost in the essential, and the hitherto cold countenance of Mr.
Hedley now smiles pleasantly.
"Then a great book is brought out, and I am instructed to
write--'Augustus Joannes Cuthbertus Hare, Armigeri filius.' Then
there is a pause. The Master and Dean consult how 'born at Rome' is
to be written. The Dean suggests, the Master does not approve; the
Dean suggests again, the Master is irritated; the Dean consults a
great folio volume, and I am told to write 'de urbe Roma civitate
Italiæ.' When this is done, Mr. Hedley stands up, the Master looks
vacant, I bow, and we go out.
"At five o'clock, having got a cap and gown at the tailor's, I
return to Mr. Hedley, now very affable, who walks with me to
Worcester, to the Vice-Chancellor. The servant at the door says, 'A
gentleman is matriculating.' Mr. Hedley says he is going to
matriculate me. So we go in, and I write again in a great book and
sign the Articles. I swear to abjure the Pope and be devoted to the
Queen, and kiss a Testament upon it. Then the Vice-Chancellor says,
'Now attend diligently,' and makes a little speech in Latin about
obedience to the institutes of the University. Then I pay £3,
10_s._ and am free."
On my way back through London I went to my first evening party. It was
at Lambeth Palace. Well do I remember my Aunt Kitty (Mrs. Stanley)
looking me over before we set out, and then saying slowly, "Yes, you
will _do_." At Lambeth I first heard on this occasion the beautiful
singing of Mrs. Wilson, one of the three daughters of the Archbishop
(Sumner). His other daughters, Miss Sumner and Mrs. Thomas and her
children lived with him, and the household of united families dwelling
harmoniously together was like that of Sir Thomas More. Another evening
during this visit in London I made the acquaintance of the well-known
Miss Marsh, and went with her to visit a refuge for reclaimed thieves in
Westminster. As we were going over one of the rooms where they were at
work, she began to speak to them, and warmed with her subject into a
regular address, during which her bonnet fell off upon her shoulders,
and, with her sparkling eyes and rippled hair, she looked quite
inspired. It was on the same day--in the morning--that, under the
auspices of Lea, who was a friend of the steward, I first saw Apsley
House, where the sitting-room of the great Duke was then preserved just
as he left it the year before, the pen lying by the dusty inkstand, and
the litter of papers remaining as he had scattered them.
When I reached Southgate, Mr. Bradley received me with "How do, Hare?
Your troubles are ended. No, perhaps they are begun." That was all, yet
he had really been anxious about me. I was always so brimming with
exaggerated sentiment myself at this time, that I had expected quite a
demonstration of farewell from the poor people in the wretched Southgate
district, to whom--after a sentimental fashion--I had devoted much time
and trouble, and was greatly disappointed to receive little more than
"Oh! be you?" when I informed them that I was going to leave them for
ever. The parting with Mr. Bradley was also more than chilling, as his
manner was so repellent; yet in after life I look back to him as a man
to whom, with all his eccentricities, I am most deeply indebted.
[Illustration: LIME, APPROACH.]
During the greater part of the Easter vacation, my Uncle Penrhyn and his
daughter Emmie were with us,--still filled with the first sorrow caused
by Aunt Penrhyn's death a few weeks before. To me personally the death
of this aunt made little difference, though she had always been kind to
me--she had so long been ill, never recovering the birth of her immense
number of children, chiefly still-born, and wornout besides with asthma.
My uncle used to obtain for her a reprieve of sleep by mesmerising her,
but in this state, though immovable and taking rest, she could be talked
to, understood all that was said, and recollected it afterwards. I
remember on one occasion her describing her agony when, in a mesmeric
state, she knew a wasp had settled on her nose, and yet was unable to
move. It was partly distress for her sorrowing relations acting on one
in whom the mind so acutely affected the body, which made my dear mother
very ill this spring, with the usual trying symptoms of trembling,
confusion, giddiness, and sleeplessness. On such occasions I sincerely
believe I never had _any_ thought but for her. Not only for hours, but
for weeks I would sit constantly beside her, chafing her cold hands and
feet, watching every symptom, ready to read if she could bear it, or to
bring my thoughts and words into almost baby-language, if--as was
sometimes the case--she could bear nothing else. But when she was ill,
the dead silence at Lime or the uncongenial society from the Rectory was
certainly more than usually depressing, and I was glad when, as at this
Easter, her doctor sent her to Hastings. Here, in her rare better
moments, I had great enjoyment in beginning to colour from nature on
the rocks. On the day before I returned to Oxford, we received the
Sacrament kneeling by the sick-bed of Priscilla Maurice,[82] whose
sick-room, which she then never left, was facing the sea in White Rock
Place. At this time I had not only an _enthusiasm_ for religion, which
in itself was worth very little, but was just beginning to be filled
with a steady anxiety to fulfil all the nobler aims of life; and to
have a contempt for that life of much preaching and little practice in
which I had latterly lived at Southgate, teaching others while I made no
effort to improve myself. In going to Oxford, from the set I lived in,
the so-called moral temptations of Oxford life not only did not assail,
but were invisible to me. I believe the very fact that I was always
ready--far too ready--to speak my mind, made base men avoid me. My chief
difficulty was to do any work; not to see my acquaintance at all hours
of the day; not to shut up Sophocles in utter weariness of what I had so
often read before, that I might go out to talk and laugh with those I
liked. In fact, probably I should have done little or nothing at first,
if the Schools, like the sword of Damocles, had not been hanging over my
head--the Schools, which, as I wrote in my journal-book, had, for
hundreds of years, probably seen more continuous trouble and misery than
any other rooms in the world.
On my way to Oxford, I paid a first visit to Hugh Pearson,[83]
afterwards my very dear friend, at Sonning Rectory near Reading, and
also visited the old Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley of Alderley,[84] at
Holmwood. Old Lady Stanley was then, as always, most formidable; but
her daughters Rianette and Louisa were not afraid of her, and in the one
afternoon I was there they had a violent dispute and quarrel, with very
high words, over which of their dogs barked loudest.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_University College, Oxford, April 9, 1853._--It is from my own
rooms, 'No. 2, Kitchen Staircase,' that I write to my mother--in a
room long and narrow, with yellow beams across the ceiling, and a
tall window at one end admitting dingy light, with a view of
straight gravel-walks, and beds of cabbages and rhubarb in the
Master's kitchen-garden. Here, for £32, 16_s._ 6_d._ I have been
forced to become the owner of the last proprietor's
furniture--curtains which drip with dirt, a bed with a ragged
counterpane, a bleared mirror in a gilt frame, and some ugly
mahogany chairs and tables. 'Your rooms might be worse, but your
servant could not,' said Mr. Hedley when he brought me here.... How
shy I have just felt in Hall, sitting through a dinner with a whole
set of men I did not know and who never spoke to me."
"_March 10._--The chapel-clock is _in_ my bedroom, and woke me with
its vibration every time it struck the hour. However, I suppose I
shall get used to it. But I was up long before the scout came to
call me at seven, and was in such fear of being late for chapel,
that I was ten minutes too early, and had to walk about in the cold
and stare at the extraordinary stained windows--Jonah and the whale
swimming about side by side; Abraham dragging Isaac to the
sacrifice by his hair; Mary and Martha attending upon Christ, each
with a brass ladle in her hand, only that Mary holds hers
suspended, and Martha goes on dipping hers in the pot while He is
talking. At last the Master entered statelily, and the troop of
undergraduates in black gowns and scholars in white ones came
clattering in; and Mr. Hedley read the service, and we all
responded, and a scholar read the lessons; and then there was a
general rush into Quad, and a great shaking of hands, at which I,
having no hand to shake, felt very blank, and escaped to my rooms,
and afterwards to breakfast with Mr. Jowett.... I am to go to him
every night with a hundred lines of Sophocles, some Latin
composition, and a piece of Cicero by heart--a great addition to my
eighteen lectures a week, but the greatest advantage; and really he
could not have done a more true kindness: I do not know how to say
enough of it.
"I wish I knew some one in this college. It is most disagreeable
being stared at wherever one goes, and having no one to speak to,
and though the Hall, with its high roof and pictures, may seem
picturesque at first, solitude in society becomes a bore. Expenses
appear to be endless. This morning I held a levée. First a sooty
man with a black face poked his head in at the door with 'Coalman's
fee, if you please, sir,--half-a-crown.' The buttery, represented
by a boy in a white apron, came up next, and then the college
porter and scouts, though as yet all these officials have done for
me--nothing! A man who declared himself sole agent of an important
magazine, and also a vendor of flannels and 'dressing-robes,' has
also just called--'supposed he had the honour of addressing Mr.
Hare, and would I for a moment favour him with my approval,' which
I declined to do, when he thanked me for 'my great condescension'
and departed."
"_March 17._--I have now been a whole week here. It seems a life to
look back upon, and I am becoming quite used to it. My first
visitor was a man called Troutbeck. This was our conversation:--
"'I suppose you're fond of boating: we must have you down to the
river and see what you're made of.'
"'But I don't boat: you would find me utterly inefficient.'
"'Then you ride?'
"'No.'
"'Do you sing, then?'
"'No, not at all.'
"'Do you play rackets?'
"'No, I neither boat, nor ride, nor sing, nor play rackets; so you
will never have been to call upon a more hopelessly stupid
Freshman.'
"However, I have made plenty of acquaintances already, and I do not
see much of either the temptations or difficulties of college life.
In some ways a college repeats a public school. For instance, I
have made rather friends with a Canadian called Hamilton, who all
dinner-time has to answer, and does answer most good-naturedly,
such questions as--'Pray, are you going to Canada for the
long?--When did you hear last from the Bishop of the Red River?'
&c."
"_April 23._--Having been induced, or rather compelled, to give a
two-guinea subscription to the cricket club, I have just been asked
to a great wine given to show that Coleridge the undergraduate is
not the same as Coleridge the cricket collector. I have now to
prepare Latin prose for the cynical Goldwin Smith, but my principal
lectures are with Mr. Shadforth, a man who has the character of
being universally beloved and having no authority at all. The
undergraduates knock at his door and walk in. He sits at a table in
the middle, they on cane-chairs all round the room, and his lecture
is a desultory conversation--questions addressed to each individual
in turn. But he dawdles and twaddles so much over details, we have
generally done very little before the hour ends, when he says, 'I
will not detain you any longer.' I doubt if there is much good in
any of the lectures one attends, or anything to be learnt from them
except what one teaches oneself; still they are part of the college
routine, and so have to be pottered through.
"There is a high Romanistic club here, called the Alfred, whose
members spend their time in passing ridiculous votes of censure on
different individuals. They are much tormented, but have a pleasant
imagination of martyrdom, and believe they are suffering for their
faith. When they met at Merton, the men of the college put slates
on the top of the chimney of the room where they were, and they
were almost suffocated with smoke. Here they met to pass a vote of
censure on--St. Augustine, and the whole time of their sitting in
conclave cayenne-pepper was burnt through the keyhole; and when it
was over, every window in the Quad along which they passed was
occupied by a man with a jug of water; so you may imagine they were
well soused before they got out.
"The Schools are going on now. They seem less alarming since I have
heard that the man passed satisfactorily who construed ??????
???????--Julius Cæsar, and also the man who, when asked why they
broke the legs of the two thieves, said he supposed it was to
prevent their running away. It was all put down to nervousness.
Christ Church walks are now green with chestnut buds, and a
pear-tree is putting out some blossoms in the Master's arid garden
under my windows."
"_May 1._--I am writing at half-past six A.M., for at four o'clock
I got up, roused Milligan[85] (now my chief friend and companion),
and we went off to Magdalen. A number of undergraduates were
already assembled, and when the door was opened, we were all let
through one by one, and up the steep winding staircase to the
platform amid the pinnacles on the top of the tower. Here stood the
choristers and chaplains in a space railed off, with bare heads,
and white surplices waving in the wind. It was a clear morning, and
every spire in Oxford stood out against the sky, the bright young
green of the trees mingling with them. Below was a vast crowd, but
in the high air the silence seemed unbroken, till the clock struck
five, and then, as every one took off their caps, the choristers
began to sing the Latin hymn, a few voices softly at first, and
then a full chorus bursting in. It was really beautiful, raised
above the world on that great height, in the clear atmosphere of
the sky. As the voices ceased, the bells began, and the tower
rocked so that you could _see_ it swaying backwards and forwards.
Milligan and I walked round Magdalen walks afterwards, and when my
scout found me dressed on coming to call me, he asked if I had been
'out a-Maying.' Yesterday afternoon I rowed with Milligan on the
river to Godstowe. It was so shallow, that if we had upset, which
was exceedingly probable, we could have walked to shore."
"_May 4._--I have now become a regular visitor at the lodging-house
of the Mendicity Society, which means taking my turn in going every
evening for a week to receive the beggars who come with tickets,
and reading prayers to them, besides giving them their supper, and
noting any remarkable cases which need help. It is a strange
congregation of wild haggard people, chiefly Irish, probably
meeting for that one evening only on earth, and one feels anxious
to do them some good.
"I went the other day with Troutbeck[86]--a friend of whom I see
much--to Bagley Wood, where he sang old ballads under the trees
upon a bank of bluebells and primroses. I have many friends now,
and I never was happier in my life."
"_May 22._--I am in the Schools to-morrow for Little-go, having
insisted on going in, in spite of my tutors. I do not feel as if I
minded much, but some of my friends are so alarmed about themselves
that they can scarcely eat."
"_May 23._--This morning the School-yard was full of men in white
ties and Masters in hoods, friends catching friends for last words
of advice, &c. Then the doors of the four Schools opened, and we
poured in. The room where I was was full of little tables, and we
each had one to ourselves. Then a Don walked about distributing the
long printed papers to be filled up--arithmetic, chiefly decimals.
At first I felt as if I understood nothing, and I saw several of my
neighbours wringing their hands in the same despair which
overwhelmed myself, but gradually ideas dawned upon me, and I wrote
as fast as any one, and had only one question unanswered when we
went out at twelve. In the afternoon was the Euclid school--very
horrid, but I am certainly not plucked by to-day's work."
"_May 30._--You will rejoice to hear I am safe. Just as I was
preparing to decamp this morning, to be out of the way of the
authorities, I was caught by the Dean's messenger, and was obliged
to go to him. He began by saying he could not allow me to go into
the Schools, both my friends and the college would suffer; but I so
entreated, and declared, and exclaimed that I must go in, that I
would be careful, &c., that at last, as his breakfast was getting
quite cold, he gave in.
"I had translations of Sophocles and Virgil to do on paper, but it
was not till the afternoon that 'Mr. Hare' was called for _viva
voce_. I really did pretty well, and as one of the examiners
considerately growled whenever I was turning down a wrong path, I
was able to catch up my faults. Mr. Jowett was present amongst my
friends, and as soon as all was over, carried me off to walk in New
College Gardens; and when we came back, it was he who went in to
ask my fate. He came back to me radiant with my _testamur_, and I
am very happy in the restful feeling of its being over, and no
other examination for so long.
"I have just been electro-biologised in the most marvellous manner
by the power of Troutbeck's left eye! by which he is able to
mesmerise friends far away in their own rooms, and can make a
fellow called Barrow[87] clairvoyant, in which state he travels to
Rugby, and other places where he has never been, and accurately
describes all that is going on there."
"_June 6._--Commemoration has been most amusing--concerts,
flower-shows, &c. The procession of boats was really a beautiful
sight--all the college boats, with their different flags and
uniforms, moving slowly up between the banks crowded with people,
and saluting the University barge by raising their oars and holding
them straight up in the air as they passed."
All through my first year at Oxford, Mr. Jowett (afterwards Master of
Balliol) continued to show me the utmost kindness, giving me extra work,
and allowing me to bring the result to him in the evening. I had been so
much neglected at Lyncombe, and so ill-grounded altogether in my
boyhood, that my passing all my examinations successfully was probably
owing to this generous action of his. Honours at Oxford, even in the
History School, I never thought of. My mother would only have wondered
what on earth I wanted them for, and, had I gained them, would have
lamented them as terribly ensnaring. I was profoundly grateful to Mr.
Jowett, but being constantly asked to breakfast alone with him was a
terrible ordeal. Sometimes he never spoke at all, and would only walk
round the room looking at me with unperceiving, absent eyes as I ate my
bread and butter, in a way that, for a very nervous boy, was utterly
terrific. Walking with this kind and silent friend was even worse: he
scarcely ever spoke, and if, in my shyness, I said something at one
milestone, he would make no response at all till we reached the next,
when he would say abruptly, "Your last observation was singularly
commonplace," and relapse into silence again. He was indeed truly
"intermittent," as Swinburne has called him. His quaint brevity of
speech was never more remarkable than when the Council, met in solemn
conclave, summoned "the little heretic," as he used to be called, into
its awful presence. Then, being asked, "Now, Mr. Jowett, answer the
truth; _can_ you sign the Thirty-nine Articles?" he dumbfoundered them
with--"If you've a little ink!" He could be very satirical. I remember,
in after years, when Jex Blake, afterwards Dean of Wells, had been
talking very prosily, he said, "I have long known that Law comes from
Lex, but I never knew till now that Jaw comes from Jex."
On looking back through the mists of years, I am often surprised at the
acquaintance whose society I sought during my first terms at Oxford, few
of whom, except my dear friends Willie Milligan and George
Sheffield,[88] have had any share in my after life. This was partly
owing to the fact that the men who were at University in my time for the
most part belonged to so entirely different a station in life, that our
after paths were not likely to cross; and partly to the fact that those
who had _any_ mental gifts--for most of my companions had none--were
repulsive or disagreeable in their habits.
Milligan was the first real friend I had ever had; before that, if I had
liked any one, they had never liked me, and _vice versa_. It was always
"l'un qui baisse, et l'autre qui tend la joue."
Very odd and far less satisfactory were others of my early Oxford
friendships. One was for a man who imposed upon those younger than
himself by a sort of apathetic high-handed manner of his own, and whom,
when he professed a great preference for me, I used to look up to as a
sort of divinity. Many were the almost volumes of sentimental twaddle I
wrote both to and about him, and I used to listen for his footstep on my
staircase as the great event of the evening. But all this soon wore off,
and when my idol was once dethroned from its pedestal, it became a
contemptible object.
An odder friendship still, made in my early Oxford life, was that for a
good-looking, sentimental, would-be poet. Of him I wrote home with
heartfelt enthusiasm, and at length, though I had never before asked
anything at home, took courage to persuade my mother to let me go abroad
with him to Bohemia for part of the long vacation. Before we set out he
came to stay with us at Hurstmonceaux, and greatly astonished my
relations must have been to find my charming young man so utterly
unlike what I had described him. But we had scarcely set out on our
travels before I found it out for myself--the first discovery being made
when he pronounced Cologne Cathedral "very pretty" and S. Aposteln "very
nice."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Andernach am Rhein, June 30, 1853._--I was delighted when we
rounded the corner of the river below Rheinach, and the old tower
of Andernach came in sight, with the cathedral, and the
vineyard-clad hills behind. The whole place is delightful. In the
evening we rambled up the rocks over carpets of thyme and
stonecrop, and saw the last tinge of yellow pass away from the sky
behind the cathedral and the light fade out of the river. All along
the road are stone niches with sculptures of the 'Sept Douleurs,'
and as we came in through the dark orchards a number of children
were chaunting with lighted tapers before a gaudy image of a saint
in a solitary place overshadowed by trees."
"_July 2._--This morning we went out at five, meeting crowds of
peasants coming in to market with their cheerful 'Guten Tag.' I
sate to draw at the Convent of St. Thomas in a rose-garden, while
A. read Hallam. At twelve, we drove through the volcanic hills,
covered with the loveliest flowers--blue larkspur, marigolds,
asphodels, campanulas, and great tufts of crimson pinks--to the
Laacher See, a deep blue lake, once the crater of a volcano, in a
wooded basin of the hills. It still sends forth such noxious
vapours that no bird can fly across it and live, and dead bodies of
small animals are constantly found along its shores. At one end of
the lake, Kloster Laach rises out of the woods, with a little inn
nestling in an orchard close under the walls of the church. The
exterior of that old Norman church is most beautiful, mellowed with
every tint of age, but internally it is disfigured by whitewash;
only the canopied tomb of the Phaltzgraf Henry II. is very curious.
We were so delighted with the place, that we sent away the carriage
and spent the evening by the lake, which was all alive with
fireflies, darting in and out with their little burdens of light
amongst the trees. In the morning we walked back to Andernach,
which was quite possible, as I had no luggage but a comb and a pair
of scissors."
"_Limbourg on Lahn, July 3._--What a tiresome diligence-drive we
have had from Coblentz here through endless forests, but we were
well repaid as we descended upon Limbourg. Our apathetic German
fellow-travellers were roused to 'wunderschön,' 'wunderliebliche,'
and even A. gave one glance and faintly emitted the word 'pretty.'
The view from the bridge is glorious. A precipitous rock rises out
of the flats, with the Lahn rushing beneath, and all up one side
the picturesque old black and white houses of the town, while
growing out of the bare rock, its front almost on the precipice,
like Durham, towers the magnificent cathedral, one of the oldest in
Germany, abounding in all those depths and contrasts of colour
which make the old German churches so picturesque--each window
having its different moulding of blue, yellow, and red stone: and
reflected in the clear water beneath. In the evening we walked to
the neighbouring village of Dietz--a long rambling street of old
houses, with the castle of Oranienstein overhanging them; and a
wonderful ruined bridge, with the river dashing triumphantly
through broken arches and over towers which have fallen into the
stream."
"_Marbourg, July 6._--We came in the diligence from Limbourg with
an emigrant family returning home from America, and words cannot
describe their ecstasies as we drew near Weilbourg and they
recognised every place as a scene of childhood. 'Oh, look! there is
the school! there is the hedge under which we used to have our
breakfast!' The noble old castle of Weilbourg, on a precipice above
the grey bridge over the Lahn, is very striking. The German waiter
at the inn asked with great gravity if we admired it more than 'the
castled crag of Drachenfels.' The endless forest scenery afterwards
was only varied by the huge castle of Braunfels, till a long avenue
brought us into the town of Wetzlar, which has a great red
sandstone and golden-lichened cathedral, with a grim and grand
Norman door called the Heidenthurm. At Giessen we joined the
railway for Marbourg, and the clock which is now striking nine A.M.
is that of St. Elizabeth![89]
"The Church of St. Elizabeth is almost out of the town; a rambling
street of old timber houses reaches down to it, but its golden-grey
spires have nothing between them and the dark forest. Inside, the
grove of red sandstone pillars is quite unspoilt by images or
altars: one beautiful figure of St. Elizabeth stands in a niche
against a pillar of the nave, and that is all. In the transept is
the 'heilige Mausoleum.' Its red steps are worn away by the
pilgrims: the tomb is covered with faded gold and vermilion; on its
canopy are remains of fresco-painting, and within is a beautiful
sleeping figure of Elizabeth. All around are grey monuments of the
Landgraves, her predecessors, standing upright against the walls.
The choir opens into the sacristy, where is the golden shrine of
the saint. As we reached it, a pilgrim was just emerging, deeply
solemnised by a _tête-à-tête_ with her bones. In her daughter's
tomb the face is quite worn away by the hands of the pilgrims. The
tomb of Conrad, her confessor, is there also. The sacristan
unlocked a great chest to show us Bible tapestry worked by the
hands of the saint. Some of the old pictures in the church
portrayed the flight from the Wartburg, and St. Elizabeth washing
the feet of the lepers: all reminded me of the stories you used to
read to me as a very little child out of the great book at the
Rectory.
"We went from the grave of St. Elizabeth to her palace--the great
castle of Marbourg, seen far and wide over the country and
overhanging the town, with a vast view over the blue-green billows
of Thuringian pine-forest. The castle is divided into two parts,
and you may imagine its size on hearing that 276 soldiers are now
quartered in one of them. A guide, who knew nothing of either
Luther or St. Elizabeth, except that they were both 'ganz heilige,'
let us into the chapel where Luther preached, and the Ritter Saale,
an old vaulted chamber where he met Zwingli and discussed
Transubstantiation."
"_Erfurth, July 8._--It is a delightful walk to the Wartburg from
Eisenach. A winding path through a fir-wood leads to an opening
whence you look across a valley to a hill crowned with a worn
gateway, something like one of the gates of Winchelsea. In the
intervening hollow some stone steps lead to a dark gap in the wood,
where is the fountain of St. Elizabeth under a grey archway with
sculptured pillars and overgrown with ferns. The water here is
excluded from the public as too holy for common use, but a little
is let out for the people into a stone basin below. By the side is
a stone seat, where it is said that Elizabeth used to wash herself.
"Again a narrow path edged with blue campanulas, and then the grey
arch of the castle-gateway. You look down at the side, and half-way
down the gorge you see a little plot of ground called 'Luther's
Garden.'
"The Wartburg is much like an English farmhouse. If Priest's
Hawse[90] was perched on the top of a mountain, it would resemble
it. It has an irregular court, of which rugged rock is the
pavement, surrounded with scattered buildings, some black and
white, and some castellated. The latter, which have two rows of
Norman arches and pillars and a kind of keep-tower at the end, were
the palace of the Landgraves and Elizabeth. The whole was full of
women and guides, geese, chickens, and dogs. We had some time to
wait in a room, where we were refreshed with 'lemonade' made of
raspberries, before we were shown over the castle--the most
interesting points being the chapel with Luther's pulpit, and the
room of his conflict with the devil, full of old pictures and
furniture, but with nothing which can be relied upon as
contemporary except his table and a stone which he used as a
foot-stool. When he threw the inkstand at the devil, the ink made a
tremendous splash upon the wall, but there is no trace of it now:
the relic collectors have scraped the wall away down to the bare
stones.
"At the last moment at Eisenach I could not resist rushing out to
sketch 'Conrad Cotta's House,' where you have so often described
how Ursula Cotta first found the little Martin Luther singing
hymns.
"The heat here at Erfurth is so great that I have been in a state
of perpetual dissolution. It is a dull town with a great cathedral,
and another church raised high above the market-place and
approached by long flights of steps. The Waisenhaus is an orphan
institution occupying the Augustinian convent where Luther lived as
a monk. All there is the same as in his time--the floors he used to
sweep, the doors he had to open, and the courtyard filled with
flowers and surrounded by wooden galleries. A passage lined with
pictures from the Dance of Death leads to the cells. Luther's cell
is a tiny chamber with a window full of octagonal glass, and walls
covered with texts: two sides were written by himself. The
furniture is the same, and even the inkstand from which I had to
write my name, while the woman who showed me the place mentioned
that the pens were not the same, for Luther's pens were worn out
long ago! There is a portrait by Cranach and writing of the three
friends, Luther, Bugenhagen, and Melancthon.
"A. cannot speak a word of German, and never knows what to do on
the simplest occasion, loses everything, is always late for the
train, cannot pack his things up, will not learn the money, and has
left every necessary of life at home and brought the most
preposterous things with him."
"_Dresden, July 11._--We have seen a number of places on the way
here. In the old cathedral of Naumbourg is a fine Cranach picture
of St. Elizabeth, with the Wartbourg above her head and the
Marbourg church at her feet. In the cathedral of Mersebourg is a
most extraordinary picture of the Electoral family of
Saxe-Mersebourg receiving the dead Christ and bearing him to the
sepulchre. The family became extinct in 1738, and they all lie in
the crypt under the church in the order in which they lived, in
coffins covered with vermilion and gold, the little children in
front and the grown people behind. Above, is the tomb of the
Emperor Rudolph of Swabia, and in the sacristy they put into my
hand a thing which I thought was a hand carved in oak, but found it
was his own real hand, cut off in 1080!
"Dresden announces itself by four black-looking domes and towers
above the flat horizon and then by the many arches of the long Elbe
bridge. It is very like a little--a very little Paris; the same
rows of tall white houses with green shutters: the same orange and
lime trees filling the air with their sweetness: only the river is
different, so gigantic and so bright. A broad flight of steps took
us to the stately Bruhl terrace above the river--golden in the
sunset. At the end an odd-looking building with a dome turned out
to be a Jewish synagogue, and we went in. One old Jew _in_ his hat
dropped in after another, till at last one of them put on a white
muslin shawl, and going up to a desk where the altar should be,
began bobbing his head up and down and quacking like a duck. Then
another in a corner, standing with his face close to the wall,
quacked also at intervals, and then all the rest chimed in, till it
was exactly like a farmyard. But no words can say how ridiculous it
eventually became, when they all burst out into choruses which
sounded like 'Cack a lack-lack-lack. Oh Jeremiah! Jeremiah! Oh
Noah's ark, Noah's ark! Cack a lack-lack-lack, lack, lack: loo,
loo, loo.' All the little black Wellington boots stamping on the
floor together, and all the long white beards bobbing up and down,
and giving an audible thump on the table at every bob.... And not
the least absurd part was that they seemed to think our presence a
compliment, at least they all bowed when we went out."
"_Schona on Elbe, July 16._--We left Dresden by the steamer--the
last view of the town very striking, with the broad flood of the
Elbe sweeping through a line of palaces. At Pirna we left the
boat, and a long walk through hot fields brought us to the entrance
of the Ottowalder Gründ. A flight of steps leads into a chasm, with
high rocks towering all round and the most brilliant and varied
greens beneath. In one place the narrow path is crossed by a
natural arch; then it winds up again through masses of forest and
deep rocky glens, till it emerges on the top of the Bastei.
"I was disappointed with the Bastei, which is like a scene on the
Wye rather exaggerated. You look over a precipice of seven hundred
feet, and see all around rocks equally high shooting straight up
skywards in every conceivable and inconceivable form--pillars,
pyramids, cones: and up all of them fir-trees cling and scramble,
and bright tufts of bilberries hang where no human hand can ever
gather their fruit. There are bridges between some of the rocks,
and they support fragments of castles of the robbers who used to
infest the Elbe, and, beyond the river, all the distant hills rise
in columnar masses of equal irregularity. After dining at the
little inn, we walked on to Königstein, a fortress which has never
been taken, large enough to hold the whole population of Dresden.
Here a tremendous thunderstorm rolled with grand effect around the
mountain. There is a terrible parapet overhanging the precipice,
where a page fell asleep, and was awakened by one of the Electors
firing a pistol close to his ear to break him of the habit. A long
path through bilberry thickets brought us to the station, and we
took the train to Schandau, where we slept--very glad to go to bed
at ten, having been on foot since 4 A.M.
"This morning we took a carriage for the first eight miles up the
valley of the Raven's Crag, and walked on to the Kuhl-stuhl. In the
very top of the hill the rock has made a huge natural arch, which
leads to an otherwise inaccessible platform overhanging the
valleys. The peasants drove their cattle here for protection in the
Thirty Years' War, whence the name of Kuhl-stuhl, and hither the
Bohemian Protestants fled for refuge. There is a natural slit in
the rock, with a staircase to an upper platform, which was the
refuge of the women, but only a _thin_ woman could reach this place
of safety.
"Forest again, ever deeper and darker--and no human life but a few
women gathering faggots with bare arms and legs, till we reached
the Jagd-Haus on the promontory of the Lesser Winterberg, where
Schiller's name is cut, with others, in the mossy stone. Forest and
bilberries again to the hotel on the Greater Winterberg, where we
dined on mountain _florellen_ and strawberries and cranberries.
Forest, ever the same, to the Prebischthor, a natural arch
projecting over an abyss, splendid in light and shadow, and
altogether the finest scene in the Saxon Switzerland ... then a
descent to Schona. We found it easy to accomplish in a day and a
half that for which Murray allots four days."
"_Prague, July 17._--All through the night we travelled in a
railway carriage with twenty-two windows and eighty inmates. Dawn
broke on a flat country near the Moldau. At last a line of white
wall crowned a distant hill. Then, while an Austrian official was
collecting passports, railway and river alike made a turn, and a
chain of towers, domes, and minarets appeared above the waving
cornfields, one larger than the others--the citadel of Prague!
"What a poem the town is!--the old square of the Grosse Ring, where
the beautiful delicately-sculptured Rathhaus and church look down
upon a red marble fountain, ever surrounded by women with pitchers,
in tall white caps: the streets of Bohemian palaces, with gigantic
stone figures guarding the doors: the bridge, with statues of
saints bending inwards from every pier, and the huge Hradschin
palace on the hill beyond, with the cathedral in its midst: the
gloomy precipice from which the Amazonian Queen Libessa hurled down
her lovers one by one as she got tired of them: the glorious view
from the terrace of the Hradschin, recalling pictures of the view
from the Pincio at Rome: the wonderful tombs of the Bohemian kings,
and the silver chandeliers and red lights before the shrine of St.
John Nepomuck in the cathedral."
"_July 18._--On Sunday afternoon we were at the Jewish synagogue,
the oldest building here--older than Prague itself, and now only
used on the Day of Atonement and other great occasions. It is quite
in the midst of the Jews' quarter, which is entirely given up to
them, and inside it is black with age, its gothic pillars looming
out of a coating of soot and smoke, never allowed to be cleared
away. The centre was spread with draperies of cloth of gold and
silver. On the platform within them was the chief Rabbi, a
venerable man with a white beard which swept over his brown robe as
far as his waist. 'He is wonderfully learned,' whispered my
neighbour to me. 'He understands every language in the whole world,
and as for English he speaks it as well as an Englishman.' At last
there was a bustle in the crowd, and a young woman made her way
through, enveloped in a very curious ancient hood of worked gold,
and several very smart ladies crowded up after her: we followed.
Then the priest shouted in Hebrew so that the little building rang
again, and the Rabbi took a little silver cup of oil and--I
think--anointed the lady, and a service followed in which all the
people responded electrically as if a bell were struck; but it was
not till we came out that I found the lady in the golden hood had
been--married.
"We went afterwards to the Jewish burial-ground--a wide rambling
expanse in the heart of the town, literally crammed with
tombstones, falling one over the other, and, between them, old
gnarled elder-trees growing fantastically. The cemetery has been
twice emptied!--and filled again. On one of the graves a young
Jewess was lying, evidently very ill. 'You see,' said the old woman
who let us into the cemetery, 'that the Rabbi who is buried there
was so good when he was alive, that when all the other people were
rooted up, they left him and his wife alone; and his good works
live on so much, that sick persons are often brought here to lie
upon his grave, in the hope of their being cured.'
"One of a knot of palaces in the Kleinsite was Wallenstein's. Here,
one room is hung with artificial stalactites: in another are
portraits of Wallenstein and his second wife, and the charger which
was shot under him at Lützen, stuffed--but only the body remains
of the original horse, the head and legs have been eaten up by
moths and renewed! The garden is charming, with an aviary of
peacocks.
"A. has been twice threatened with arrest for persisting in wearing
a wide-awake in the streets, for at present it is a revolutionary
emblem! At first he insisted on putting it on again, but the second
attack has been too much for his fortitude. Just now I was roused
by his shrieks, and reached his room just in time to see a large
black sheep emerge from under his bed!--it had walked in from the
market by the open galleries and had taken refuge there."
"_Bamberg, July 23._--We came here by Dresden and Saxe-Altenberg,
with its charming old castle. Near Hof the engine burst, doing us
no harm, but keeping us for hours sitting on the grassy railway
bank till another engine arrived, so that we did not get here till
3 A.M. The cathedral is glorious. Only imagine my having found
Baron and Baroness von Usedom in the hotel, and the next morning
Lady Malcolm and her two daughters arrived--most kind, most
amusing--and Madame von Usedom most extraordinary. She received me
with 'You're wonderfully like your sister, and she is very
beautiful,' so that's a compliment!"
"_July 28._--We have had another vision of loveliness at Nuremberg.
One became quite weary of saying, 'Oh! how beautiful! how
beautiful!' But no letter can give an idea of what Nuremberg
is--'The German Venice' Madame d'Usedom called it. And Albert
Dürer is a part of the place: whenever I see his woodcuts again at
the Rectory, they will bring back the town to me--where his house
is, and his pictures, his statue, and most of all his grave, in a
cemetery full of hollyhocks and lilies."
We came home by Augsburg, Ulm, and Heidelberg, and then through France
_via_ Chalons and Rheims. In thinking of present expenses (1895), I
often marvel at the cheapness of the long tour we had made. We had seen
the greater part of Germany and much of France, had travelled for six
weeks, and travelled in comfort, and, including journeys to and from the
coast of England, we _could_ each have spent only £25, for we had no
more to spend. I joined my mother at Ashburton Vicarage, near Dartmoor,
whence we saw "Wistman's Wood"--that wonderful stunted grove of
immemorial oak-trees in the midst of the moors. On our way home we went
to stay with Miss Boyle[91] at Portishead. It was my mother's first
sight of her, and she was much struck by that extraordinary person, for
whom at that time I had an almost passionate devotion, and who had
unfortunately just become notorious through her appearance--being
subpœnaed on the wrong side--at the trial of the false Sir Hugh
Smith, the claimant of Ashton Court. This trial created a tremendous
excitement at the time, and the decision was nearly given in favour of
the claimant. His wife, a daughter of De Wint the artist, had already
ordered the carriage in which she was to make a triumphal entry, when
the cause suddenly collapsed through the evidence of a jeweller who had
been employed to forge a brooch upon which much of importance depended.
The Bishop of St. David's, Thirlwall, was staying at the Rectory when I
was at home. Excellent as he was, I was horribly afraid of him, for a
more repellent, freezing manner than his I never saw. I hated the
Rectory now more than ever, but was more than ever devoted to Lime. What
a vision I have now of its quietude in those hot summer days, only the
wind whispering in the old abele-trees and rippling the waves upon the
pool, and of the fresh morning smell of the pinks and roses and syringa,
bowed down by the heavy dew. Our intensely quiet life would have suited
few young men, but when my dear mother was well, and the Rectory not
too aggressive, I was always happy. Each day was a routine. Called by
our fat John at seven, when Fausty's black nose was poked in my face, I
woke to see the sun shining on the little pictures on the wall and the
old-fashioned china ornaments, and to hear Joe Cornford whetting his
scythe on the lawn under the windows. I was downstairs before my mother
appeared in her lilac dress to breakfast and prayers. Then we walked on
the terrace. I read--first aloud to her, then to myself--then went with
her round the field and to the girls' school. At one was dinner; at
half-past two we drove out--Fausty with us. Then my mother lay on the
sofa and I read: then came our tea-supper, and I read aloud again, and
mother sang such old songs as "Hohenlinden," "Lord Ullin's Daughter,"
"Auld Robin Gray," or the Russian "Pojalite." Then, after prayers, I
helped her upstairs, and, at her little round table, she would say a
little short prayer with or for me out of her own heart, and I came down
to write till the melancholy sound of the mice in the wainscot drove me
to bed also. On my return to Oxford in October, I published in "The
Penny Post" my first story--"The Good Landgravine," about Elizabeth of
Thuringia--quite as important to me then as the publication of one of
my large books is now--and I obtained ten shillings for it with great
pride! I had much pleasure in a visit from Arthur Stanley this term, and
Mr. Jowett--"the great Balliol tutor"--continued his kindness and his
voluntary lessons to me, though I must often sorely have tried his
patience. I was, no doubt, a terrible little prig, and I have just
found, amongst old letters, a very kind one from him, written in the
vacation, urging me to make an effort to conquer "my conceit, which was
not vanity, but a constant restlessness about myself."[92] Jowett
was--tiresome perhaps, in some ways, but--one of the most unselfish
persons I have ever known. By his own life, as in his sermons, he
constantly inculcated disinterestedness, sympathy, and the love of God.
The Christian doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, &c., he
utterly ignored, out of the pulpit as in it, and I believe Arthur
Stanley quite agreed with him in his heart, though he had not quite "the
courage of his opinions."
"Reading men" used to congratulate me upon my intimacy with Jowett,
little knowing of how admonitory a nature were all his conversations
with me. Amongst the freshmen of the term were two with whom I became
great friends afterwards. One was Frederick Forsyth Grant,[93] whom we
always called "Kyrie," because when he went to spend the long vacation
at Athens (of all places in the world), he was called from his
generosity "Kyrie Dora"--the lord of gifts. The other was a peculiarly
boyish-looking fellow, with a remarkably lithe, graceful figure, and a
little Skye-terrier to which he was devoted. I remember the shy longing
I had to make friends with him, and my first visit after dinner--finding
him drinking coffee with his little dog by his side: it was George
Sheffield, my constant friend afterwards for very many years.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_University College, Nov. 18, 1853._--This morning I was asked to
breakfast with the Master, whose courteous placidity is such that
he looks as if turmoil, contradiction, and reform could never
approach him. He received us kindly but very solemnly, with an old
Miss Plumptre in a rich satin gown by his side. There was an awful
pause at first, while we stood in a row, and the Master and his
sister addressed an observation in turn to each of us, never going
out of the regular line. At breakfast I thought they talked
pleasantly, though the others pronounced it '_very_ flat.' When he
considered we had stayed long enough, the Master[94] pulled out his
watch and said, holding it in his hand, 'Good-bye, Mr. Gregson,'
when Mr. Gregson felt he must get up and walk out, and we all
followed. The Masters of colleges are really almost nonentities,
but have an absurd idea of their own dignity. The Provost of Oriel
the other day wrote--'The Provost of Oriel[95] presents his
compliments to the Dean of Christ Church,[96] and wishes to know
what time the examination will be;' and in answer was snubbed by
'Alexander the Great presents his compliments to Alexander the
Coppersmith, and informs him that he knows nothing about it.'
"I breakfasted the other day at Wadham with a most extraordinary
man called R., whose arms and legs all straggle away from his body,
and who holds up his hands like a kangaroo. His oddities are a
great amusement to his friends, who nevertheless esteem him. One
day a man said to him, 'How do you do, R.?' and he answered, 'Quite
well, thank you.' Imagine the man's astonishment at receiving next
day a note--'Dear Sir, I am sorry to tell you that I have been
acting a deceptive part. When I told you yesterday that I was quite
well, I had really a headache: this has been upon my conscience
ever since.' The man was extremely amused, and showed the letter to
a friend, who, knowing R.'s frailties, said to him, 'Oh R., how
could you act so wrongly as to call Mr. Burton "Dear Sir"--thereby
giving him the impression that you liked him, when you know that
you dislike him extremely?' So poor R. was sadly distressed, and a
few days later Mr. Burton received the following:--'Burton, I am
sorry to trouble you again, but I have been shown that, under the
mask of friendship, I have been for the second time deceiving you:
by calling you dear sir, I may have led you to suppose I liked you,
which I never did, and never can do. I am, Burton, yours &c.!'"
The winter of 1853 was a very sad one. I found my dearest mother very
feeble and tottering, and it was a constant grief to me to see the
patient, worn look of illness in her forehead as she leant back in her
chair. She would occupy herself, however, as usual in cutting out
clothes for the poor, saying that her own sufferings from the cold
forbade her not trying to prevent theirs. I scarcely ever ventured to
leave her for a moment as long as we stayed at home, always inventing an
excuse to walk behind her whenever she went upstairs, for fear she
should suddenly fall. On the 20th of December, the Stanleys being absent
at Canterbury, we went up to their empty house in Grosvenor Crescent.
Here the winter was much preferable to that at Lime, and on the whole my
mother suffered less; but my life was that of a constant sicknurse,
scarcely ever away from her. When I was, I generally went in the dusk to
the National Gallery--too late to see the pictures, but I liked to
wander about in the almost empty rooms, and to feel that they were
there, and knowing no one in London myself, to make imaginary histories
about the one or two figures which still lingered, finding the same odd
refuge as myself from the turmoil of the town. In reading my journal of
this winter, I can recall the days of intense anguish I went through,
seeing before me, as I thought, the realisation of Dr. Chapman's verdict
that softening of the brain had definitely set in for my dearest mother.
As the year closed in gloom, I looked forward with terror to what the
next would bring, to the probability of not having another year to
_surround_ her with my love, to ward off every sorrow. Whilst conscious
that my character had certainly expanded under the happier life I had
been leading at Oxford, and that the interests of my friends there had
become as near my heart as my own, I realised that all I could be and do
for my own mother was no mere duty, it was the outpouring of my whole
soul; for I did not entertain an angel _unawares_. At the New Year my
mother's attacks increased; often she was unable to see and became
almost unconscious. Yet by the 21st of January she had rallied so much
that I was able to return in tolerable comfort to Oxford.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_University College, Jan. 22, 1854._--My dearest mother will often
have thought of her child in his college home: and _how_ often have
I thought of my own mother, and longed to be by her to watch and
take care of her still. I feel the blank on the staircase, now my
hand has nothing to do in helping you. It is a comfort that you
have plenty of nurses to take care of you; but the great comfort of
all is that you now no longer _want_ me.
"I have new rooms now in the 'New Buildings.' They are not very
large, but the sitting-room has the charm of a beautiful oriel
window overhanging the High Street, with a cushioned seat all round
and a small writing-table in the middle: and the view is
delightful."
I think it was during the Easter vacation of this year that a day of
national humiliation was appointed on the outbreak of the Crimean War.
Severely indeed was the fast-day observed at Hurstmonceaux. At Lime we
had nothing to eat but bread, and for dinner some boiled sea-kale, a
vegetable which I have ever since associated with that time; and I have
a vivid remembrance of the serio-comic face of our butler, John Gidman,
when we were ushered into the dining-room, with the table laid out as
usual, and, when the covers were taken off, only that amount of food was
displayed. In theory Aunt Esther was always urging the duty not only of
a saintly, but of an ascetic life, and it was not her fault that the
only cell where she could herself carry out in practice her austere
views was an orange-scented library lined with rare folios or precious
works of art.
This, the second year of my Oxford life, was very enjoyable. Not
intending to read for honours, for which I had no ambition (as my
mother, unlike many parents, would have had no pleasure whatever in my
obtaining them, but, on the contrary, would have regarded them as a most
undesirable "snare"), I had plenty of time for other things, and pursued
those studies of French, Italian, History, and Archæology which have
been far more really useful to me than any amount of Latin and Greek. My
devotion to George Sheffield showed itself, amongst other ways, in
writing a story every week, which was presented to him on Sunday. Many
of these stories, though I forget them, must, I now believe, have been
rather interesting. Lady Sheffield used to keep them, and, as they all
referred to things and people long past, George and I used to make
schemes of publishing them some day in a black cover adorned with a
white skull and cross-bones, under the title of "Dead Dust,"--an idea
which, I am thankful to say, was never carried out. With Troutbeck and
Duckworth I used to attend and make copious notes of the lectures of
Professor Philips on Geology, which sometimes assumed a peripatetic
form.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Oxford, June 9, 1854._--At half-past ten yesterday, Troutbeck,
Duckworth, Bowden, and I, met the Professor and twenty-eight
fellow-geologists at the station. The Professor was dressed in a
queer old brown suit, and we were all armed with hammers, and
baskets to carry provisions and bring back fossils. We took the
train to Handbro', on the outskirts of Blenheim Park, and no sooner
arrived there than the Professor, followed by his whole lecture,
rushed up the railway bank, where he delivered a thrilling
discourse on _terrebratulæ_, which are found in that place, and for
which we all grubbed successfully immediately afterwards. And in
that extraordinary manner we perambulated the country all
day--getting on a few yards, and then stopping to hear a lecture on
some stone the Professor had spied in the hedge, or which one of
the party had picked up in the road. Greatly did we astonish the
villages we passed through. 'What _be's_ you all come
professionising about, zur?' said one old man to me. We had
luncheon in the remains of a Roman villa with mosaics."
"In the evening we went to the Professor's 'Soiree.' Here I found
it much more amusing to listen to his sister's discourse about
'poor dear Buckland--my friends Whewell and Sedgwick--my dear
friend Faraday--my very celebrated uncle, and my also celebrated
brother,' than to attend to the Professor himself, who was
exhibiting photographs of the scenery and geology of the moon."
Amongst the remarkable persons whom I frequently saw in my earlier
Oxford life was the venerable Dr. (Martin Joseph) Routh, President of
Magdalen, born 1755, who died in 1854, in his hundredth year. He would
describe his mother as having known a lady who had met Charles II.
walking round the parks at Oxford with his dogs. He had himself seen
Dr. Johnson "scrambling up the steps of University." In him I myself saw
a man of the type of Dr. Johnson, and of much the same dress, and even
ponderous manner of speaking. I remember Goldwin Smith once asking him
how he did, and his replying, "I am suffering, sir, from a catarrhal
cold, which, however, sir, I take to be a kind provision of Nature to
relieve the peccant humours of the system." His recollections of old
Oxford extended naturally over the most immense period. Sir George
Dasent has told me that the President once asked him, "Did you ever
hear, sir, of Gownsman's Gallows?"--"No, Mr. President."--"What, sir, do
you tell me, sir, that you never heard of Gownsman's Gallows? Why, I
tell you, sir, that I have seen two undergraduates hanged on Gownsman's
Gallows in Holywell--hanged, sir, for highway robbery."
A few years before the President's death, when he was at Ewelme, his
living in the country, his butler became insane and had to be sent away.
When he was leaving, he begged to see the President once more, "to ask
his blessing," as he said. The President received him in the garden,
where the man, stooping as if to kiss his hand, bit it--bit a piece out
of it. "How did you feel, Mr. President," said Sir G. Dasent
afterwards, "when the man bit your hand?"--"Why, at first, sir," said
the President, "I felt considerably alarmed; for I was unaware, sir,
what proportion of human virus might have been communicated by the bite;
but in the interval of reaching the house, I was convinced that the
proportion of virus must have been very small indeed: then I was at
rest, but, sir, I had the bite cauterised." It was often observed of Dr.
Routh that he never appeared on any occasion without his canonicals,
which he wore constantly. Some ill-disposed undergraduates formed a plan
which should force him to break this habit, and going under his window
at midnight, they shouted "Fire." The President appeared _immediately_
and in the most terrible state of alarm, but in full canonicals.
It was only forty-eight hours before Dr. Routh died that his powers
began to fail. He ordered his servants to prepare rooms for a Mr. and
Mrs. Cholmondeley, who had been long since dead, and then they felt sure
the end was come. They tried to get him upstairs to bed, but he
struggled with the banisters as with an imaginary enemy. He then spoke
of pedigrees, and remarked that a Mr. Edwards was descended from two
royal families: he just murmured something about the American war, and
then he expired. He left his widow very ill provided for, but the
college gave her a handsome income.
On reaching home in the summer of 1854, all the anxieties of the
previous winter about my mother's health were renewed. She was utterly
incapable of either any physical or any mental effort, and my every
minute was occupied in an agony of watchfulness over her. I felt then,
as so often since, that the only chance of her restoration was from the
elasticity of foreign air, and then, as so often since, was my misery
and anxiety increased by the cruel taunts of my aunts, who protested
that I was only trying to drag her away from home, at a sacrifice to her
comfort, from a most selfish desire for my own amusement. However, when
a short stay at Southborough and Eastbourne seemed rather to increase
than cure the malady, the absolute decision of her doctor caused the
talked-of journey to be accomplished, and we set out for Switzerland,
accompanied by Charlotte Leycester,--my mother, as usual, being quite
delighted to go abroad, and saying, "I have no doubt as soon as I reach
Boulogne I shall be quite well,"--a result which was very nearly
obtained. We lingered first at Fontainebleau, with its pompous but then
desolate château, and gardens brilliant with blue larkspurs and white
feverfew--the commonest plants producing an effect I have seldom seen
elsewhere. A pet trout, certainly of enormous age, and having its scales
covered with a kind of fungus, was alive then, and came up for biscuit:
it was said to have belonged to Marie Antoinette. At Chalons we took the
steamer down the Saône, and a picture that dwells with me through life
is that of the glorious effect, as we entered Lyons, of the sun suddenly
bursting through the dark thunderclouds and lighting up every projection
of roof and window in the tall houses which lined the quay and the
bright figures beneath. I have often been at Lyons since, but have never
cared for it as I did then, when we stayed long enough to enjoy S.
Martin d'Ainay, and the picturesque ascent to the Fouvières and noble
view from its terrace, and to marvel at the vast collection of votive
offerings, memorials of those who prayed to the Virgin in danger and
were protected by her, while we wondered where the memorials of those
were who invoked her and whose prayers were _not_ answered. My mother
went straight from Lyons to Aix-les-Bains by _voiturier_, but I
lingered to see the beauties of Vienne, and followed by steamer up the
Rhone and Lac de Bourget with my Southgate friend Walter Portman.[97] We
found Aix terribly hot, and generally spent the evenings by or on the
lake, where one day my mother, Lea, and I were in some danger, being
caught in a tremendous _burrasco_. Thence a most wearisome journey
_voiturier_ took us from Aix to Geneva, a place for which I conceived
the most intense aversion, from its hot baking situation, and the
illiberal and presumptuous "religion" of its inhabitants. While there,
in a hotel facing the lake, I was called up in the middle of the night
to Lea, who was very alarmingly ill, and while attending to and trying
to calm her, was roused by shrieks of "Fire" in the street, and saw the
opposite house burst into flame. Alarm-bells rang, engines were
summoned, crowds arrived, and only a change in the wind saved us from
destruction or flight. We moved afterwards to the Hôtel des Etrangers, a
house in a damp garden near the lake. Here we were seated almost alone
at the little _table-d'hôte_ when we heard the most extraordinary
hissing and rushing sound, like a clock being wound up, and a very
little lady entered, who seemed to be impelled into the room, followed
by her husband. On reaching her chair, several loud clicks resulted in
her being lifted into it as by invisible power! It was Mrs. Archer
Clive, the then celebrated authoress of "Paul Ferroll," who had no legs,
and moved by clock-work.
While at Geneva, I saw many of its peculiar celebrities, especially M.
Gaussen and M. Merle d'Aubigné, the historian of the Reformation, whose
real name was only Merle, the sequence having been adopted from his
former residence. He had a very striking appearance, his hair being
quite grey, but his shaggy eyebrows deep black, with a fine forehead and
expression. Another person we saw was M. Berthollet, with an enormous
head. It was with difficulty that any of these persons could be
convinced that our sole object in coming to Geneva was not to see a
certain pasteur, of whom we had never even heard. We visited Ferney,
which thrives upon the unpleasant memory of Voltaire, who had a villa
there, in which we saw the tomb of--his heart! The inn has as its sign a
portrait of him in his French wig.
We spent a pleasant afternoon at Colonel Tronchin's lovely villa. He was
a most excellent man, and one could not help seeing how nobly and
unostentatiously he employed his large fortune for the good of others.
Yet one could not help seeing also how many of his followers put up
their religious scruples like an umbrella to ward off whatever was not
quite to their liking--how "No, I could not think of it; it would be
against my conscience," became at Geneva, as elsewhere, very liable to
be said in pure selfishness.
My mother's sufferings from the heat led to our going from Geneva to
Chamounix. On the way we slept at St. Martin. As I was drawing there
upon the bridge, a little girl came to beg, but beggars were so common
that I paid no attention to her entreaties, till her queer expression
attracted me, and a boy who came up at the same time described her as an
"abandonnée," for her father was in prison, her sister dead, and her
mother had deserted her and gone off to Paris. The child, who had
scarcely an apology for being clothed, verified this in a touching and
at the same time an elf-like way--grinning and bemoaning her sorrows in
the same breath. Charlotte Leycester gave her four sous, with which she
was so enchanted that she rushed away, throwing her hands into the air
and making every demonstration of delight, and we thought we should see
no more of her. However, in going home, we found her under a wall on
the other side of the bridge, where she showed us with rapture the bread
she had been able to buy with the money which had been given her. An old
woman standing by told us about her--how wonderfully little the child
lived on, sleeping from door to door, and how extraordinary her spirits
still were. It was so odd a case, and there was something so interesting
in the child, that we determined to follow her, and see where she really
would go to sleep. To our surprise, instead of guiding us through the
village, she took her way straight up the woods on the mountain-side, by
a path which she assured us was frequented by wolves. It was very dark,
and the place she led us to was most desolate--some châlets standing by
themselves in the woods, almost at the foot of the mountain; the glass
gone from the windows, which were filled up with straw and bits of wood.
Meantime we had made out from the child that her name was Toinette,
daughter of François Bernard, and that she once lived in the
neighbouring village of Passy, where her home had been burnt to the
ground, a scene which she described with marvellous gesticulations. She
seemed to have conceived the greatest affection for Charlotte. When
asked if she knew that it was wrong to lie and steal, she said, "Rather
than steal, I would have my head cut off, like the people in the
prisons. I pray every day, and my prayer shall be always for you,
Madame."
A great dog flew out of the cottage at us, but Toinette drove it away,
and called out a woman who was standing in the doorway. The woman said
she knew nothing of Toinette, but that she had implored to sleep there
about three weeks before, and that she had slept there ever since; and
then the child, caressing her and stroking her cheeks, begged to be
allowed to do the same again. The woman offered to go with us to another
house, where the people knew the child better. On arriving, we heard the
inmates at prayers inside, singing a simple litany in responses.
Afterwards they came out to speak to us. They said it was but for a very
small matter François Bernard was imprisoned, as he had only stolen some
bread when he was starving, but that, if he came back, he could do
nothing for Toinette, and as her uncles were idiots, there was nobody to
take care of her: if we wished to do anything for her, we had better
speak to the Syndic, who lived higher up the mountain; so thither we
proceeded, with Toinette and all her female friends in our train.
It was a strange walk, by starlight through the woods, and a queer
companionship of rough kind-hearted people. Toinette, only seven years
old, laughed and skipped over the stones, holding Charlotte's gown, and
declaring she would never leave her. We had expected to find the
magistrate living in a better house than the others, but it was like its
neighbours--a little brown châlet by the side of a torrent. The Syndic
was already in bed, but Madame, his wife, speedily got him up, and we
held a parley with him on the wooden staircase, all the other people
standing below. He said that there were no workhouses, no orphan
asylums, and that though it was a bad case, the commune had no funds;
school did not open till October, and even if Toinette got work there
was no lodging for her at night. However, when Charlotte promised to
clothe her, he was so much enchanted with the "grandeur de sa charité,"
that he said he would consult with the commune about Toinette. Meantime,
in the morning Charlotte bought her some clothes, and settled something
for her future; but before we left we saw that she must not be too much
indulged, as she asked Charlotte, who had given her a frock, shoes, and
hat, to give her also some bonbons and a parasol!
We heard of Toinette Bernard for some years afterwards, and Charlotte
Leycester sent annual remittances for her; but eventually she absconded,
and utterly disappeared like a waif.
On the 1st of August I left my companions at Chamounix to make the
circuit of Mont Blanc, but the weather was horrible, and most of the
time the mountain-tops were hidden in swirl and mists; the paths were
watercourses, and the châlets where I slept with my guide, Edouard
Carrier, were piercingly cold and miserable--especially that of Motets,
where there was nothing to eat but potatoes; no furniture whatever,
nothing but some rotten straw to lie upon; no glass and no shutter to
the window, through which an icy blast blew all night from the glacier,
though the air of the filthy room was quite dense with fleas. Travelling
in these parts is quite different now, but I have a most wretched
recollection of the long walks in the cold mist, no sound but the cry of
the marmots--yet one always had a wish to go on, not back.
Delightful was the change as we descended upon Courmayeur, with its
valleys of chestnut-trees and its noble view of Mont Blanc, and Aosta
with its Roman ruins. In returning, I was overtaken by a tremendous
snowstorm at the top of the St. Bernard, and detained the whole of a
most tedious day in the company of the kind priests (monks they are not)
and their dogs. During this time sixty travellers arrived in turn and
took refuge. We all dined together, and saw the hospice and the Morgue,
which is a very awful sight: the snow has so perfectly embalmed the
bodies, that they retain all their features, though quite black; the
hair also remains. In one corner was a woman hugging her baby to her
breast as the death silence overtook her. We all went down through the
snow in a regular caravan, and I joined my mother at Villeneuve and went
with her to Clarens.
Railways make travelling in Switzerland, as elsewhere, so easy now, that
it is difficult to realise how long and tedious the journey to Visp was
when I next left my mother to go to Zermatt. On my way I visited the old
mountain-perched cathedral of Sion, then one of the most entirely
beautiful and romantic churches in the world, now utterly destroyed by a
"restoration," from which one might have hoped its precipitous situation
would have preserved it. I walked in one day from Visp to Zermatt, and
thence made all the excursions, and always alone. The Gorner Grat is
much the finest view, all the others being only bits of the same. It is
a bleak rock, bare of vegetation, far from humanity. Thence you look
down, first by a great precipice upon a wilderness of glaciers, and
beyond, upon a still greater wilderness of mountains all covered with
snow. They tell you one is Monte Rosa, another the Weiss Horn, and so
on, but they all look very much alike, except the great awful
Matterhorn, tossing back the clouds from its twisted peak. It is a grand
view, but I could never care for it. The snow hides the forms of the
mountains altogether, and none of them especially strike you except the
Matterhorn. There is no beauty, as at Chamounix or Courmayeur: all is
awful, bleak desolation. In memory I fully echo the sentiment I find in
my journal--"I am very glad to have seen it, but, if I can help it,
nothing shall ever induce me to see it again."
It was a long walk from the Riffel Berg to Visp (34 miles), whence I
proceeded to the Baths of Leuk, where the immense tanks, in which a
crowd of people, men, women, and children, lead an every-day life like
ducks, up to their chins in water, were a most ridiculous sight.
Sometimes you might find a sick and solitary old lady sitting alone in
the water on a bench in the corner, with her hands and feet stretched
out before her; but for the most part the patients were full of
activity, laughter, and conversation. They held _in_ the water the sort
of society which once characterised the pump-room at Bath: the old
people gossipped in groups, the young people flirted across their little
tables. Each person possessed a tiny floating table, on which he or she
placed handkerchief, gloves, flowers, smelling-bottle, newspaper, or
breakfast. In one of the tanks some nuns were devoutly responding to a
priest who was reciting the litany; but generally all the people were
mingled together during their eight hours of daily simmering--sallow
priests, fat young ladies, old men with grey beards, and young officers
with jaunty little velvet caps stuck on the back of their heads.
Generally they sate quite still, but sometimes there was a commotion as
a whole family migrated to the other side of the bath, pushing their
little tables before them; and sometimes introductions took place, and
there was a great bowing and curtseying. The advent of strangers was a
matter of great excitement, and you saw whole rows of heads in
different head-dresses all uniformly staring at the new-comer: but woe
betide him if he came upon the causeways between the tanks with his hat
on his head. I had been warned of this, however, by the _conducteur_ of
the omnibus. "Oh! qu'ils crient! qu'ils crient! qu'ils crient!"
I left Leuk on the 18th of August to cross the Gemmi Pass, with a boy
carrying my knapsack. It was very early morning. The Gemmi is a grass
mountain with a perpendicular wall of rock overhanging it, up which the
narrow path winds like a corkscrew, without railing or parapet--at least
it had none then--and an appalling precipice below. On this path it is
most unnecessary to take a false step, but a false step must be fatal.
It was an exquisitely clear, beautiful morning, and high up on the
mountain-side a large party might be seen descending towards us. I did
not see them, but I believe the boy did. We had just reached the top of
the grassy hill and were at the foot of the precipice when there was a
prolonged shouting. The whole mountain seemed to have broken out into
screams, which were echoed from the hills on every side. I said, "Is it
a hunt?"--"Nein, nein," said the boy with great excitement, "es ist ein
Pferd--ein Pferd muss übergefallen sein." But then, in a moment, came
one long, bitter, appalling, agonising shriek, which could be uttered
for no fall of a horse--there was a sudden flash--not more--of
_something_ between the light and the precipice, and a crash amid the
stones and bushes beside us--and "Oh, ein Mensch--ein Mensch!" cried the
boy, as he sank fainting on the ground.
Another moment, and a French gentleman rushed wildly past, his face
white as a sheet, his expression fixed in voiceless horror. I eagerly
asked what had happened (though I knew too well), but he rushed on as
before. And directly afterwards came a number of peasants--guides
probably. The two first looked bloodless, stricken aghast: it is the
only time I ever saw a person's hair stand on end, but then _I did_,
though they neither cried nor spoke. Then came one who sobbed, and
another who wrung his hands, but who only said as he passed, "Ein
Mensch--ein Mensch!" One of the peasants threw a cloak over the remains,
and two guides cried bitterly over it. Strange to say, the body was that
of a "garçon des bains" serving as a guide: he had jumped over a little
stone in his descent, had jumped a little too far, and fallen over. For
one awful moment he clung to the only fir-tree in the way--the moment
of the screams--then the tree gave way, and all was ended.
I knew that if I did not go on at once the news would arrive at Thun
before me and terrify my mother; but it was terrible, with the
death-shriek ringing in one's ears, to follow the narrow unprotected
path, and to pass the place where trampled turf and the broken fir-tree
bore witness to the last struggle. An old German professor and his wife
had left Leuk before us, and had heard nothing of what had happened.
When I told them at the top of the mountain, they knelt on the grass,
and touchingly and solemnly returned thanks for their safety. Then I met
Theodora de Bunsen with Sir Fowell and Lady Buxton going down, and was
obliged to tell them also. Awfully in sympathy with our sensations is
the ghastly scenery at the top of the Gemmi--the black lake, which is
frozen all the year round, and the dismal, miserable inn beside it,
which is the scene of Werther's horrible tragedy, of which I have so
often since told the foundation-story.
My Uncle Penrhyn paid us a visit at Thun, with his daughter Emmie and a
cousin, and I afterwards joined them at Lucerne, and was their guest in
a most happy excursion to Andermatt. Afterwards I went alone to
Engelberg, the village and great Benedictine convent in the green Alps
under the Tetlis mountains. Thence I made my way to Stanz, and
penetrated into the valleys connected with the strange story of the
Swiss pilgrim-saint, Nicholas von der Flue, ending in the great church
of Sachselen, which contained his hideous skeleton, with diamond eyes
and jewel-hung bones. Thence it was a very long walk over the Brunig
(there was then no carriage-road) to Meyringen, and thence, the same
day, over the Scheideck to Gründelwald; for my mother was expecting me
there, and if I did not appear by the promised day, she might have been
anxious; and in those days I was far too poor to have a mule: if I had
money enough to pay for some luncheon, my utmost ambition was fulfilled.
In returning to England, we went to Freiburg in Breisgau, and visited
the Bunsens at Heidelberg, greatly delighting in their beautifully
situated villa of Charlottenberg, and the view of the castle and bridge
from their terrace, with its oleanders and pomegranates. Afterwards we
saw Meaux and its relics of Bossuet.
[Illustration: ARCHDEACON HARE'S STUDY, HURSTMONCEAUX RECTORY.]
Uncle Julius, whose health was rapidly declining, received my mother
with many tears on our return. I have a vivid recollection of that first
evening. My mother read "Bless the Lord, O my soul," at evening prayers,
and said she always read that after a journey, with "He healeth all thy
diseases"--so true of her. We went to Hastings for Uncle Julius's Charge
to the clergy, which produced much enthusiasm amongst them, very
different from his lengthy sermons in Hurstmonceaux, under which the
whole congregation used quietly to compose themselves to sleep, probably
well aware that they would not understand a word, if they tried to
attend. The effect was sometimes most ridiculous of the chancel filled
with nodding heads, or of heads which had long since done nodding, and
were resting on their elbows locked in fastest slumber. I believe Mrs.
Sherwood describes a similar scene in one of her stories. Aunt Esther
and the curate would try in vain to keep themselves awake with strong
lavender lozenges during Uncle Julius's endless discourses. And then
"There's Mrs. Hare asleep on one side of the Archdeacon and the curate
on the other," the people would say, and he would go droning on with a
sermon preached fifty times before. There were, however, days on which
Uncle Julius would emerge from the vestry with clenched hands and his
face full of pale enthusiasm, and then I would whisper to my mother:
"Look, Uncle Julius is going to do Lady Macbeth!" There were no slumbers
then, but rapt attention, as Uncle Julius in his most thrilling (and
they were _thrilling_) tones went through the whole of the sleep-walking
scene, wrung his hands over the pulpit-cushion, unable to wash out the
"accursed spot" of sin. This was generally about once a year. Though
Hurstmonceaux did not comprehend them, there are, however, many
fragments, especially similes, in Uncle Julius's ordinary parish sermons
which will always have an effect, especially that of grief at a
death--the heavy plunge when the person goes down, and the circles
vividly apparent at first, then gradually widening, till they are lost
and disappear altogether. And though they did not understand him, his
parishioners loved Uncle Julius, for he always acted up to his own
answer to a question as to the value of a living--"Heaven or hell,
according as the occupier does his duty."
Uncle Julius had published a versified edition of the Psalms. He thought
his Psalter would be adopted by the whole Church, and it was never used
in a single church except Hurstmonceaux. During the service, he had the
oddest way of turning over the pages with his nose. "The sixteenth
morning of the month," he gave out one day. "No, 'tain't," called the
voice of Martin the clerk from below, "'tis the seventeenth." "Oh, the
seventeenth morning of the month."
[Illustration: Julius Charles Hare