"_Wantage, Feb. 21, 1860._--I came here yesterday over dreary
snow-sprinkled downs. Wantage is a curious little town surrounding
a great cruciform church in the midst of a desert. The Vicar (Rev.
W. J. Butler[183]) welcomed me at the door of the gothic vicarage,
and almost immediately a clerical procession, consisting of three
curates, schoolmaster, organist, and scripture-reader, filed in (as
they do every day) to dinner, and were introduced one by one. The
tall agreeable Vicar did the honours just as a schoolmaster would
to his boys. There was such a look of daily service, chanting, and
_discipline_ over the whole party, that I quite felt as if Mrs.
Butler ought also to be a clergyman, and as if the two little girls
would have been more appropriately attired in black coats and
bands.
"After dinner, in raging snow and biting east wind, we sallied out
to survey the numerous religious institutions, which have been
almost entirely founded by the energy and perseverance of this
Vicar in the thirteen years he has been at Wantage. The church is
magnificent. There is an old grammar-school in honour of Alfred
(who was born here), a National School painted with Scripture
frescoes by Pollen, Burgon, &c., a training school under the charge
of Mrs. Trevelyan, a cemetery with a beautiful chapel, and St.
Mary's Home for penitents. At seven o'clock all the curates
dispersed to various evening services, Mr. Butler went to St.
Mary's Home, and Mrs. Butler and I to the church, where we sat in
the dark, and heard a choir chant a service out of what looked like
a gorgeous illumination.
"I was aghast to hear breakfast was at half-past seven, but as I
could not sleep from the piercing cold, it did not signify. At
seven a bell rang, and we all hurried to a little domestic chapel
in the house, hung with red and carpeted with red, but containing
nothing else except a cross with flowers at one end of the room,
before which knelt Mr. Butler. We all flung ourselves down upon the
red carpet, and Mr. Butler, with his face to the wall, intoned to
us, and Mrs. Butler and the servants intoned to him, and all the
little children intoned too, with their faces to the ground.
"Now there is to be full church service again, and then--oh! how
glad I shall be to get away."[184]
The society of Mrs. Gaskell the authoress was a great pleasure during
this term at Oxford. I made great friends with her, and we kept up a
correspondence for some time afterwards. Everybody liked Mrs
Gaskell.[185] I remember that one of the points which struck me most
about her at first was not only her kindness, but her extreme courtesy
and deference to her own daughters. While she was at Oxford, the subject
of ghosts was brought forward for a debate at the Union; she wished to
have spoken from the gallery, and if she had, would probably have
carried the motion in favour of ghosts at once. Here is one of her
personal experiences:--
"Mrs. Gaskell was staying with some cousins at Stratford-on-Avon,
who took her over to see Compton Whinyates. On their return she
stayed to tea at Eddington with her cousins--cousins who were
Quakers. Compton Whinyates naturally led to the subject of spirits,
and Mrs. Gaskell asked the son of the house whether there were any
stories of the kind about their neighbourhood; upon which the
father, who was a very stiff, stern old man, reproved them for vain
and light talking.
"After tea Mrs. Gaskell and her cousins went out to walk about the
place with the younger Quaker, when the subject of the supernatural
was renewed, and he said that their attention had lately been
called to it in a very singular manner. That a woman who was a
native of the place had many years ago gone as a lady's-maid to
London, leaving her lover, who was a carter, behind her. While in
London, she forgot her carter and married some one else, but after
some years her husband died, leaving her a large competence, and
she came back to spend the rest of her life in her native village.
There she renewed her acquaintance with the carter, to whom, after
a fortnight's renewal of courtship, she was married. After they had
been married a few weeks, she said she must go up to London to sell
all the property she had there, and come down to settle finally in
the country. She wished her husband to go with her, and urgently
entreated him to do so; but he, like many countrymen in that part,
had a horror of London, fancied it was the seat of all wickedness,
and that those who went there never could come back safe: so the
woman went alone, but she did not return. Some time after her
husband heard that she had been found in the streets of
London--dead.
"A few weeks after this the carter husband was observed to have
become unaccountably pale, ill, and anxious, and on being asked
what was the matter with him, he complained bitterly, and said that
it was because his wife would not let him rest at nights. He did
not seem to be frightened, but lamented that his case was a very
hard one, for that he had to work all day, and, when he wanted
rest, his wife came and sat by his bedside, moaning and lamenting
and wringing her hands all the night long, so that he could not
sleep.
"Mrs. Gaskell naturally expressed a wish to see the man and to hear
the story from his own lips. The Quaker said that nothing could be
easier, as he lived in a cottage close by; to which she went,
together with five other persons. It was like a Cheshire cottage,
with a window on each side of the door, and a little enclosure,
half-court, half-garden, in front. It was six o'clock in broad
summer daylight when they arrived. The door was locked and the
Quaker went round to try the back entrance, leaving Mrs. Gaskell
and her friends in the enclosure in front. They all, while there,
distinctly saw a woman, of hard features, dressed in a common lilac
print gown, come up to the latticed window close by them on the
inside and look out. They then saw her pass on and appear again at
the window on the other side of the door, after which she went away
altogether.
"When the Quaker appeared, unsuccessful in opening the back-door,
they said, 'But there is some one who could have let you in, for
there is a woman in the house.' They tried unsuccessfully, however,
to make her hear. Then they went to the adjoining cottage, where
the people assured them that the man was gone out for the day, and
that there could not possibly be any one in the house. 'Oh,' said
Mrs. Gaskell, 'but we have _seen_ a woman in the house in a lilac
print gown.' 'Then,' they answered, 'you have seen the ghost: there
is no _woman_ in the house; but that is _she_.'"
[Illustration: OLD BEECHES, HURSTMONCEAUX PARK.]
It was when I was at Beckett, just before Easter 1860, that I was first
told that we should have to leave our dear home at Hurstmonceaux. Many
years before, there had been an alarm, and my mother would then have
bought the Lime property, but that the price asked was so greatly above
its value, and no other purchasers came forward. So she was satisfied to
go on renting Lime and the surrounding fields for a small sum,
especially as she had a promise from those who had charge of the sale
that no other offer should be accepted without giving her the
preference. In the spring of 1860, however, Mr. Arkcoll, a rich old
Hurstmonceaux farmer and churchwarden, died, leaving a large fortune to
his nephew and a considerable sum of ready money to buy a house near his
property. Lime had long been as Naboth's vineyard in the younger Mr.
Arkcoll's eyes, and before we knew that the uncle was dead, we heard
that the nephew was the purchaser of Lime, the promise to us having been
broken.
My mother immediately offered Mr. Arkcoll a much larger sum than he had
paid to save Lime, but not unnaturally he was inexorable.
Thus it was inevitable that at Michaelmas we must leave our dear home,
and, though I had suffered much at Hurstmonceaux, and though our
position there as a ruined family was often a dismal one, yet we felt
that nothing could ever replace what Lime itself was, where every plant
was familiar, and every tree had its own little personal reminiscence.
And there was also the great difficulty of finding a new home within
our small means, and yet large enough to house our many books and
pictures.
I met my mother at Bournemouth to talk over plans and possibilities for
the future, and we went on to Weymouth, where we remained some weeks. It
was bitterly cold weather, but I always liked Weymouth, and the pleasant
walks in Sandyfoot Bay, and excursions to Bow and Arrow Castle, Corfe
Castle, Abbotsbury, and Lyme Regis. In April I was again at Beckett.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Beckett, April 8, 1860._--Yesterday I went with Lady Barrington
and Lady Somerton to Ashdowne (Lord Craven's). It is a most awfully
desolate place, standing high up on the bare downs. Four avenues
approach the house from the four sides. It was built by a Craven
who was Lord Mayor of London, and who, flying from the great
plague, rode fiercely on and on, till upon this bleak down he saw a
desolate farmhouse, where he thought that the plague could not
penetrate, and there he rested, and there he eventually built. The
four avenues, and the windows on every side, were intended to let
the plague out in one direction if it came in at the other. Inside
the house are great stag's horns which Elizabeth of Bohemia brought
with her from Germany, and portraits of her, Prince Rupert, Prince
Maurice, and the four princesses her daughters, painted by one of
them. The young Ladies Craven showed us the house amid shouts of
laughter at their own ignorance about it, which certainly was most
dense.
"We went on by roads, which were never meant for a carriage, to a
point whence Lady Barrington and I walked across the down to
'Wayland Smith's Cave,' a very small cromlech, in which Wayland
could hardly have stood upright when he used it for a forge."
"_Hendred House, April 15._--It is a proof how necessary it is for
the writer of a Handbook to see himself all that he writes about,
that I found East Hendred, of which I had heard nothing, to be one
of the most romantic villages I ever saw--groups of ancient
gable-ended houses, black and white or black and red, with turreted
chimneys--a ruined moss-grown chapel dedicated to 'Jesus of
Bethlehem'--a fine old grey church in a glen--and a beautiful
Catholic chapel attached to this quaint old house, which contains a
great Holbein of Sir Thomas More and his family, his cup, a
portrait of Cardinal Pole, and the staff upon which Bishop Fisher
leant upon the scaffold!"
My next visit was to Dr. Hawtrey, the Provost of Eton, to whom I became
much attached. Being in the house with him was a constant intellectual
feast, he was so accomplished as well as learned. Beautiful and
interesting books were produced to illustrate all he said, and it would
be hard to say how much Latin or Italian poetry he daily read or
repeated to me. It was impossible not to be perfectly at home with him,
he was so easy and natural. Of the two old sisters who had resided with
him, and who were known by Eton boys as Elephantina and Rhinocerina,
only one was still living, in a gentle and touching state of
childishness, keeping up all her old-fashioned habits of courtesy and
politeness; the mind now and then taking in an idea like a flash of
light, and immediately losing it again. The Provost's attention to this
old sister was quite beautiful, and her affection for him. When she was
going to bed she would "pack up" and carry off all the things upon the
table--books, envelope-boxes, &c., which were soon sent downstairs
again.
I went with the Provost to dine at New Lodge (Mr. Van de Weyer, the
Belgian Minister's), and found there the Dean of St. Paul's and Mrs.
Milman, he most bright and animated, she "icily bland and coldly amiable
as ever." I was quite delighted with the Van de Weyers, especially the
second son Albert (who afterwards died young). M. Sylvain Van de Weyer,
through life the trusted friend and representative of Leopold I. of
Belgium, had the expensive hobby of books, collecting rare editions and
the earliest printed classics, a taste inherited from his father, who
kept a circulating library at Louvain. When he showed us two shelves of
books in his library he said, "I have read all these whilst waiting for
dinner. I am always down punctually, and my guests are always late. From
my library I see them arrive, and never join them till a good many are
come: thus I have got through all these." Madame Van de Weyer was
immensely fat. She had lately been with her husband to a concert at
Windsor, and been much jostled, at which she was very indignant. "Why,
they take us for pages," she said to her husband. "No, my dear," he
replied; "they take me for a page, but they take you for a volume."
On the last occasion on which I saw the Provost Hawtrey before his
death, he said to me that he knew I collected curious stories, and that
there was one story, intimately connected with his own life, which he
wished that I should write down from his lips, and read to him when I
had written it, that he might see that it was perfectly correct.