There certainly was a curious absence of ritual in the services at
Hurstmonceaux. Yet one felt that Uncle Julius's whole heart was in the
way he read the prayers. What was wanting arose from his personal
characteristics, the same which made him always hopelessly unpunctual,
which caused him to waste his mornings in hopeless dawdling just when
there was most to be done, which so often sent him off for his afternoon
walk just as the dinner-bell rang.
I was more than usually tried during the weeks spent at home this autumn
by the way in which Mrs. Alexander was set up on a pinnacle of worship
by Uncle Julius and Aunt Esther--everything and everybody, especially my
mother, being expected to give way to her. My journal, however, has many
touching reminiscences of quiet evenings in our home life at this
time--when I read aloud to my dearest mother, and she played and sang
"Comfort ye," I sitting on the little sofa by her side, the light from
the candles falling upon "the Reading Magdalen" over the pianoforte--and
of her simple, earnest prayers aloud by the little round table in her
own room that "the pleasures given us in this world might not draw us
out of the simple way of God." Especially touching to me is the
remembrance of our last evening together this summer, for it was then
almost first that she began to allow the part my life bore in hers. "O
God," she prayed, "be with us at our parting: and oh! prepare us to
meet when parting will be at an end." As I kissed her afterwards she
said, "You are a dear good child to me, darling. I may blame you
sometimes, and find fault with your opinions, but you are a dear, good,
dutiful child to me."
As I was returning to Oxford I paid a visit to Hugh Pearson at Sonning.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Sonning, Oct. 21, 1854._--The thought that my mother is well now
and does not need me enables me to bear having only
paper-conversation again for a little while. But how I long to know
each hour of the day what my dear mother is doing, and wish that
she could see me--very happy here in this peaceful little spot.
"H. P. was dressing when I arrived, but came to my room to welcome
me, most warmly, as he always does. There was a party at dinner,
but they left early, and I had a long talk afterwards with my host
over the fire. There is really no one I like so much. He gave an
amusing description of his church-restoration, very gradual, not to
shock people's prejudices. At last, when he put up a statuette of
the patron saint--St. Andrew--over the entrance, Bishop Wilberforce
came in high delight--'No other man in my diocese would have dared
to do such a thing.'[98] Bishop Blomfield rather admired his stone
pulpit, but said, 'I don't usually like a stone pulpit; I _usually_
prefer a wooden one, something more suited to the preacher
inside.'
"After breakfast we went out to pick up apples to feed H. P.'s pet
donkey with. What a pretty place Sonning is! The river winding
round, with old willows and a weir; the site of the palace of the
Bishop of Sarum marked by an old ash-tree; and the church--'all as
like naughty Rome as it dares,' says H. P., but very beautiful
within.... 'What a rate you do write at, child,' he says as he is
working tortoise-pace at his sermon by my side."
My mother was never given to being alarmed about me at any time, but I
think she must have had some anxieties this autumn; Oxford was so
dreadfully unhealthy--suffering from a perfect "wave of cholera," while
typhus fever and small-pox were raging in the lower parts of the town.
But the excitement of Aunt Kitty and Arthur about Mary Stanley, who had
taken great part in preparing nurses for the victims of the Crimean War,
and who eventually went out to Scutari herself as the unwelcomed
assistant of Miss Nightingale, kept the family heart fixed in the East
all through the autumn and winter.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Oxford, Oct. 23, 1854._--There was a special cholera service last
night. It is very bad still, and the cases very rapid. Those taken
ill at five die at seven, and for fear of infection are buried at
seven the next morning."
"_Oct. 24._--Typhus fever has broken out in the lower town in
addition to everything else, and there are 1000 cases of small-pox,
besides cholera. This morning I met two men at breakfast at Mr.
Jowett's. There was nothing to eat but cold mutton and some heavy
bread called 'Balliol bricks,' but Mr. Jowett was in his best
humour, and though he would not utter a word himself, he assisted
us into uttering a good many. He is certainly at once the terror
and the admiration of those he wishes to be kind to: as for myself,
I love him, though I often feel I would go round three streets any
day to avoid him."
"_Nov. 1._--The usual Oxford rain is now varied by a yellow fog and
stifling closeness, the consequence of which is that cholera has
returned in all its force to the lower town, and in the upper
almost every one is ill in one way or other. Duckworth and I walked
to Headington Common yesterday, and thinking that such a high open
place was sure to be free from illness, asked if there had been any
cholera there, in a cottage where we often go to buy fossils.
'Yes,' said the young woman of the house, 'father died of it, and
baby, and seven other people in this cottage and those joining--all
those who seemed the healthiest and strongest. I saw them all
seized with it in the morning, and before night they were all
gone.'--'What,' I said, 'did you nurse them all?' The young woman
turned away, but an old woman who came up and heard me said, 'Yes,
she _were_ a good creature. There were no one took but she went to
them. She were afeard of nothing. I used to think as God wouldna'
let the cholera come to her because she werena' afeard, and no
more He did.'"
"_Dec. 2._--Mrs. Parker[99] has just been telling me the beautiful
story of 'Sister Marion's' labours in the cholera. Her real name
was Miss Hughes. Mrs. P. was walking with her one day, when their
notice was attracted by Greenford, the landlord of the Maidenhead
inn, putting his beautiful little child on his great horse, while
the child was laughing and shouting for joy. Next day they heard
that the child was ill. Sister Marion went at once and nursed it
till it died, and it was buried the same evening. Then came the
rush of cholera. When any one was seized, they sent for Sister
Marion--she rubbed them, watched them, prayed with them; no cases
were too dreadful for her. She often had to put them in their
coffins herself. When all were panic-stricken, she remembered
everything. Mrs. Parker described one deathbed, where it required
two men to hold a woman down in her agonies, and her shrieks and
oaths were appalling. Little Miss Hughes came in, and taking both
her hands, knelt down quietly by the side of the bed, and, though
the doctors and others were standing round, began to pray aloud.
Gradually the face of the woman relaxed, and her oaths ceased,
though her groans were still fearful. At last Sister Marion said,
'Now your mind is easier, so you have more strength, and we can try
to help your body;' and when she began the rubbings, &c., the
woman took it quietly, and though she died that night, it was quite
peacefully.
"Then the cholera camp was made. There was one house for the
malignant cases, another for the convalescents, a third for the
children of those taken or for those in whom there was reason to
expect the disease to appear. Almost every nurse had to be
dismissed for drunkenness; the people were almost alone, and the
whole town seemed to depend on Sister Marion. Nine-tenths of those
who took the cholera died. Mrs. P. took it herself, and was saved
by constantly swallowing ice.
"I have just been to dine with the Master--a large party of
undergraduates and very dull, the Master every now and then giving
utterance to a solemn little proposition apropos of nothing at
all--such as 'A beech-tree is a very remarkable tree, Mr.
Hare'--'It is a very pleasant thing to ride in a fly, Mr.
Bowden'--which no one attempted to contradict."
"_Dec. 11._--Yesterday I went to the service at St. Thomas's, where
three-fourths of the congregation were in mourning owing to the
cholera. The sermon began with three strange propositions--1. That
the reading of the Scriptures is not necessary to salvation. 2.
That the Gospel consists not in the written Word, but in certain
facts laid down and elucidated by the Church. 3. That the
Scriptures ought not to be used as a means of converting the
heathen. I suppose the sermon was directed against the Bible
Society."
I insert a few paragraphs from my written winter-journal. They scarcely
give an idea of the stagnation of our Hurstmonceaux life.
"_Dec. 14._--A solemn tea-drinking of parish ladies at the Rectory.
My mother very ailing with trembling, and almost deaf."
"_Dec. 15._--A bitter drive to Hailsham through the bleak ugly
lanes. Mother very poorly, and unable to show interest in or
comprehension of anything. Entirely thrown on my own resources."
"_Dec. 16._--Intense cold and misery at church. Ill with this, and
felt the great usual Sunday want of anything to do, as I did not
like even to open any book which might offend mother; but at last,
finding 'Arnold's Life' would not be taken ill, settled to that.
Mother not able to speak or hear; felt the great solitariness of
loneliness _not alone_, and longed to have some friend who would
enter into my odd little trials--surely singular at twenty--but I
never have one."
"_Dec. 17._--Bitter cold and a great gale. Siberia can scarcely be
colder than Hurstmonceaux. Went by mother's wish to collect
'Missionary Pence' from the poor. No words can say how I hate this
begging system, especially from the poor, who loathe it, but do not
dare to refuse when 'the lady sends for their penny.' Sate a long
time with Widow Hunnisett, and wondered how I shall ever endure it
when I am in Orders, and have to sit daily in the cottages boring
the people and myself."
At the end of December, partly probably in consequence of the cold to
which I was constantly exposed, I became very ill with an agonising
internal abscess, and though this eventually gave way to application of
foxglove leaves (digitalis), just when a severe surgical operation was
intended, I was long in entirely recovering. My mother's feeble powers,
however, soon urged me to rouse myself, and, as soon as I could bring it
about, to remove her to London, as Uncle Julius was failing daily, and I
knew even then by experience how easily an invalid can bear a great
sorrow which is unseen, while a great sorrow witnessed in all its
harrowing incidents and details is often fatal to them.