"_Florence, May 22, 1864._--This morning we have received your most
touching account of the last hours, of which we had so longed to
know something. You may imagine with what breathless interest we
have followed every detail.
" ... I have seen poor Mr. Landor several times. He has a small
lodging in the Via della Chiesa, where he 'sits out the grey
remainder of his evening,' as Coleridge would describe it. He is
terribly altered, has lost the use of his hearing and almost of his
speech, and cannot move from his chair to his bed. I think he had a
very indistinct recollection who I was, but he remembered the
family, and liked to say over the old names--'Francis, Augustus,
Julius, I miei tre imperatori. I have never known any family I
loved so much as yours. I loved Francis most, then Julius, then
Augustus, but I loved them all. Francis was the dearest friend I
ever had.' He also spoke of the Buller catastrophe. 'It was a
great, great grief to me.' I did not tell him what has happened
lately; it was no use, he can live so short a time.[239]
"When he last left the Villa Landore, it was because Mrs. Landor
turned him out by main force. It was a burning day, a torrid summer
sun. He walked on dazed down the dusty road, the sun beating on his
head. His life probably was saved by his meeting Mr. Browning, who
took him home. After some time, Browning asked to take him to the
Storys' villa at Siena, and he stayed with them a long time. Mrs.
Story says that nothing ever more completely realised King Lear
than his appearance when he arrived, with his long flowing white
locks and his wild far-away expression. But after a day of rest he
seemed to revive. He would get up very early and sit for hours at a
little table in the great hall of the villa writing verses--often
Latin verses.
"One day he wrote, and thundered out, an epigram on his wife:--
'From the first Paradise an angel once drove Adam;
From mine a fiend expelled me: Thank you, madam.'
"Then he would tell the Storys interesting things out of his
long-ago, describing Count D'Orsay and Lady Blessington, with
Disraeli sitting silently watching their conversation, as if it
were a display of fireworks. He was always courteous and kind--a
polished gentleman of the old school. At last Browning arranged for
him to go to a lodging of his own, but he went to spend their
little girl's birthday with the Storys. He walked to their villa
along the dusty road in his old coat, but when he came in, he
unbuttoned it, and with one of his old volleys of laughter showed a
flowered waistcoat, very grand, which 'D'Orsay and he had ordered
together,' and which he had put on in honour of the occasion.
"After he was living in Florence, Mrs. Browning told him one day
that she had just got Lord Lytton's new book 'Lucile.'--'Oh, God
bless my soul!' he said, 'do lend it to me.' In an hour he sent it
back. 'Who could ever read a poem which began with _But_?' However,
he was afterwards persuaded to read it, and shouted, as he
generally did over what pleased him, 'Why, God bless my soul, it's
the finest thing I ever read in my life.'
"Mrs. Browning did not think he was properly looked after at
Florence, and sent her excellent maid, Wilson, to care for him. But
it did not answer. Wilson cooked him a most excellent little
dinner, and when he saw it on the table, he threw it all out of the
window; it was too English, he said."
In returning north from Italy, we made an excursion to Courmayeur,
driving in a tiny carriage from Ivrea along the lovely Val d'Aosta, and
lingering to sketch at all the beautiful points. In France we had an
especially happy day at Tonnerre, a thoroughly charming old town, where
the people were employed in gathering the delicious lime-flowers which
lined the boulevards, for drying to make tisanes.
[Illustration: COURMAYEUR.[240]]
There was a subject of painful interest to us during this summer, which
it is difficult to explain in a few words. My sister's letter mentions
how, when Italima was dying, there was one thing which she tried over
and over again to say to the Dowager Lady Lothian, who was with her, and
which Lady Lothian and the other bystanders vainly endeavoured to
understand. It began with "Esmeralda" and ended with "her," but the
intermediate words were lost. We naturally explained it to mean
"Esmeralda will be very desolate when I am gone; you will look after
her."
After Italima's death, Esmeralda had moved from Bryanston Street to a
house in Duke Street, Manchester Square, which was kept by Mrs. Thorpe,
the faithful and devoted maid of Italima's old friend Mrs. Chambers.
Here my sister had every comfort, and might have had rest, but one day
her brother William came to visit her, and broke a blood-vessel while he
was in the house. His wife was sent for, and for several weeks he
hovered between life and death; indeed, he never really recovered from
this attack, though he was able to be moved in a month and lived for
more than three years. The fatigue of her brother's illness entirely
prostrated Esmeralda, who was already terribly shaken in health by the
fatigue of the strange watchings, enjoined by Catholicism, which
followed her mother's death.
It was about August that I received a letter from my Aunt Eleanor Paul
begging me to come to London immediately, for something most
extraordinary and trying had happened. When I went, I found my sister
looking terribly ill, and my aunt greatly agitated. My aunt said that
two days before Mrs. Beckwith had been to visit my sister; that,
supposing she was come to talk of Catholic matters, she had not paid
any especial attention to what they were saying, and, owing to her
deafness, she consequently heard nothing. That she was suddenly startled
by a scream from my sister, and looking up, saw her standing greatly
excited, and Mrs. Beckwith trying to soothe her; that she still supposed
it was some Catholic news which had agitated my sister, and that
consequently she made no inquiries.
The next day, Esmeralda went out to drive with Mrs. Beckwith, and when
she came back she looked dreadfully harassed and altered, so much so
that at last my aunt said, "Now, Esmeralda, I am quite sure something
has happened. I stand in the place of a mother to you now, and I insist
upon knowing what it is."
Then my sister said that Mrs. Beckwith had startled her the day before
by saying that, as she had been walking down Brook Street, Madame de
Trafford had suddenly appeared before her, and, looking back upon all
the events connected with the past appearances of Madame de Trafford,
the news was naturally a shock to her. After driving with Mrs. Beckwith,
she had returned with her to her hotel, and while she was there the door
suddenly opened, and Madame de Trafford came in.
The malady from which Esmeralda had been suffering was an extraordinary
feeling, a sensation of burning in her fingers. The doctor whom she had
consulted, when this sensation became so acute as to prevent her
sleeping, said it arose from an overwrought state of nerves, possibly
combined with some strain she might have received while helping to move
furniture to turn the room into a chapel, after her mother's death. When
Madame de Trafford came into the room at the hotel, my sister instantly,
as usual, jumped up to embrace her, but Madame de Trafford put out her
hands and warded her off with a gesture of horror, exclaiming, "Ne me
touchez pas, ma chère, je vous en supplie ne me touchez pas: c'est vos
doigts qui sont en feu. Ah! ne me touchez pas." And then she became
terribly transfigured--the voice of prophecy came upon her, and she
said, "When your mother was dying, there was something she tried to say
to Lady Lothian, which you none of you were able to hear or understand.
I, in my château of Beaujour in Touraine, I heard it. It echoed through
and through me. It echoes through me still. For three months I have
struggled day and night not to be forced to tell you what it was, but I
can struggle no longer; I am compelled to come here; I am forced away
from Beaujour; I am forced to England against my will. When your mother
was dying she saw the future, and said, 'Esmeralda will soon follow me:
I shall not long be separated from her.' And you _will_ follow her,"
shrieked Madame de Trafford, her eyes flaming, and every nerve quivering
with passion. "You _will_ follow her very soon. Only one thing could
save you: if you were to go to Rome before the winter, that might save
your life; but if not, you must--die!" And then Madame de Trafford,
sinking down suddenly into an ordinary uninspired old woman, began to
cry; she cried and sobbed as if her heart would break.
When my aunt heard what Madame de Trafford had said, she felt the injury
it might do to my sister's impressible nature, and she was very angry.
She felt that, whatever her impulse might have been, Madame de Trafford
ought to have conquered it, and she determined to see her and to tell
her so herself. Very early the next morning she went to the hotel where
Madame de Trafford was and asked to see her. She was refused admittance,
but she insisted upon waiting, and she did wait, till at last she was
let in. Madame de Trafford was then quite composed and calm, very
courteous, very kind, very like other people, and my aunt said that in
entering upon her subject, it was like accusing a sane person of being
perfectly mad. But suddenly, whilst they were talking, Madame de
Trafford glided round the table, and standing in front of the fireplace,
seemed to rise out of herself, and in her terrible voice, every syllable
of which was distinctly audible to my deaf aunt on the other side of the
room, exclaimed these words--"Votre nièce est malade; elle sera encore
plus malade, et puis elle mourira," and having said this, she went
out--she went entirely away--she went straight back to France. She had
fulfilled the mission for which she came to England, and the next day
she wrote from Beaujour in Touraine to pay her bill at the hotel.
Aunt Eleanor said that to her dying day that awful voice and manner of
Madame de Trafford would be present to her mind.
Looking back upon the past, could Esmeralda and her aunt disbelieve in
the prediction of Madame de Trafford? Had not my sister in her desk a
warning letter which had told the day and hour of her mother's death?
and how true it had been! Yet at this time her going to Rome seemed
quite impossible; she could not go away whilst all her law affairs were
unwound up, indeed even then in the most critical state: besides that,
she had no funds. But in November, three suits in Chancery were suddenly
decided in her favour. By two of these my sister recovered £8000 of her
mother's fortune; by the third she secured £3000 from the trustees who
had signed away her mother's marriage settlement. So she and her aunt
immediately started for Rome, accompanied by Clémence Boissy, the old
maid of her childhood, whom she had summoned to return to her
immediately on her recovering an income. I will give a few extracts from
Esmeralda's letters after this:--
"_Paris, Nov._--At last we did start. But what a packing! what a
confusion!... Yesterday I saw Madame Davidoff,[241] as enthusiastic
as ever, but she was so rushed upon from all quarters, that I could
not get a quiet talk. I also saw the Père de Poulevey, the great
friend of the Père de Ravignan, who wrote his life.... And now you
will say this is a very cheerful letter, and on the contrary I feel
very sad, and very sad I felt at the Sacré Cœur and at S. Roch
this morning. Everything I see brings back the past."
"_Dec. 8, 1864, Maçon._--How astonished you will be to see the date
of this place. 'Why are you not in Rome by this time?' you will
exclaim. Because I was so exhausted when we arrived here that
Auntie agreed that the only thing to do was to take a long rest,
give up the Mont Cenis, and proceed slowly by Nice and Genoa.
[Illustration: Anne F. M. L. Hare.