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Title: Story of My Life, volumes 1-3

Author: Augustus J. C. Hare

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THE STORY OF MY LIFE

VOLUMES 1-3

[Illustration: Georgiana Hare Naylor

From a miniature]




THE STORY OF
MY LIFE

BY

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE

AUTHOR OF "MEMORIALS OF A QUIET LIFE,"
"THE STORY OF TWO NOBLE LIVES,"
ETC. ETC.

LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1896

[_All rights reserved_]

_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_At the Ballantyne Press_



VOLUME 1




PREFACE


In the autumn of 1878, the desire to comfort and amuse one of my kindest
friends during hours of wearing pain and sickness induced me to begin
writing down some of the reminiscences of my life. As almost all those
who shared my earlier interests and affections had passed away, I
fancied at first that it would be impossible to rescue anything like a
connected story from "the great shipwreck of Time." But solitude helps
remembrance; and as I went on opening old letters and journals with the
view of retracing my past life, it seemed to unfold itself to memory,
and I found a wonderful interest in following once more the old track,
with its almost forgotten pleasures and sorrows, though often reminded
of the story of the old man who, when he heard for the first time the
well-known adage, "Hell is paved with good intentions," added promptly,
"Yes, and roofed with lost opportunities."

Many will think mine has been a sad life. But, as A. H. Mackonochie
said, "No doubt our walk through this little world is through much fog
and darkness and many alarms, but it is wonderful, when one looks back,
to see how little the evils of life have been allowed to leave real
marks upon our course, or upon our present state."

And besides this, Time is always apt to paint the long-ago in fresh
colours, making what was nothing less than anguish at the time quite
light and trivial in the retrospect; sweeping over and effacing the
greater number of griefs, joys, and friendships; though ever and anon
picking out some unexpected point as a fixed and lasting landmark. "Le
Temps, vieillard divin, honore et blanchit tout."

Many, doubtless, who read these pages, may themselves recollect, or may
remember having heard others give, a very different impression of the
persons described. But, as the old Italian proverb says, "Every bird
sings its own note," and I only give my own opinion. Pope reminds us
that--

    "'Tis with our judgments as our watches--none
    Go just alike--yet each believes his own."

And after all, "De mortuis omnia" is perhaps a wholesomer motto than
"Nil nisi bonum," and if people believed it would be acted upon, their
lives would often be different. While one is just, however, one ought to
remember that nothing can be more touching or pathetic than the
helplessness of the dead. "Speak of me as I am," says Othello, "nothing
extenuate, nor set down aught in malice."

Since I have latterly seen more of what is usually called "the
world"--the little world which considers the great world its
satellite--and of the different people who compose it, the later years I
have described will probably be the most interesting to such as care to
read what I have written. I have myself, I think, gradually learnt what
an "immense folio life is, requiring the utmost attention to be read and
understood as it ought to be."[1] But to me, my earlier years will
always seem far the most important, the years throughout which my
dearest mother had a share in every thought and was the object of every
act. To many, my up-bringing will probably appear very odd, and I often
feel myself how unsuited it was to my character, and how little that
character or my own tastes and possible powers were consulted in
considerations of my future. Still, when from middle life one overlooks
one's youth as one would a plain divided into different fields from a
hill-top, when "la vérité s'est fait jour," one can discern the faulty
lines and trace the mistakes which led to them, but one cannot even then
see the difficulties and perplexities which caused inevitable errors of
judgment in those who could not see the end when they were thinking
about the beginning. Therefore, though there is much in the earlier part
of my life which I should wish to rearrange if I could plan it over
again, I am sure that the little which may be good in me is due to the
loving influence which watched over my childhood, whilst my faults are
only my own. In the latter years of her life, my dear adopted mother and
I became constantly more closely united. The long period of sickness and
suffering, which others may have fancied to be trying, only endeared her
to me a thousandfold, and since the sweet eyes closed and the gentle
voice was hushed for ever in November 1870, each solitary year has only
seemed like another page in an unfinished appendix.

I once heard a lady say that "biographies are either lives or stuffed
animals," and there is always a danger of their being only the latter.
But, as Carlyle tells us, "a true delineation of the smallest man and
the scene of his pilgrimage through life is capable of interesting the
greatest man, and human portraits, faithfully drawn, are of all pictures
the welcomest on human walls." It is certainly in proportion as a
biography is human or individual that it can have any lasting interest.
Also, "Those relations are commonly of the most value in which the
writer tells his own story."[2]

I have allowed this story to tell itself when it was possible by means
of contemporary letters and journals, convinced that they at least
express the feeling of the moment to which they narrate, and that they
cannot possibly be biassed by the after-thoughts under the influence of
which most autobiographies are written, and in which "la mémoire se plie
aux fantasies de l'amour propre."

       *       *       *       *       *

My story is a very long one, and though only, as Sir C. Bowen would have
called it, "a ponderous biography of nobody," is told in great--most
people will say in far too much--detail. But to me it seems as if it
were in the petty details, not in the great results, that the real
interest of every existence lies. I think, also, though it may be
considered a strange thing to say, that the true picture of a whole
life--at least an English life--has never yet been painted, and
certainly all the truth of such a picture must come from its delicate
touches. Then, though most readers of this story will only read parts of
it, they are sure to be different parts.

The book doubtless contains a great deal of _esprit des autres_, for I
have a helpless memory for sentences read or heard long ago, and put
away somewhere in my senses, but not of when or where they were read or
heard.

Many of the persons described were very important to those of their own
time who might have had a _serrement de coeur_ in reading about them.
Therefore, if their contemporaries had been living, much must have
remained unwritten; but, as Sydney Smith said, "We are all dead now."

Still, in looking over my MS., I have always carefully cut out
everything which could hurt the feelings of living persons: and I
believe very little remains which can even ruffle their sensibilities.




    CONTENTS

                      PAGE

    ANTECEDENTS          1
    CHILDHOOD           43
    BOYHOOD            170
    LYNCOMBE           247
    SOUTHGATE          297
    OXFORD LIFE        402




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. I


    GEORGIANA, MRS. HARE NAYLOR. (_Photogravure_)         _Frontispiece_
    PAGE
    HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE. (_Full-page woodcut_)          _To face_     4
    GLAMIS CASTLE                                                     22
    AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE WITH LUCIA CECINELLI.
       (_Photogravure_)                                  _To face_    50
    HURSTMONCEAUX RECTORY                                             55
    LIME                                                              58
    FRANCIS G. HARE. (_Photogravure_)                    _To face_    84
    HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE                                              93
    THE DRAWING-ROOM AT LIME                                         101
    RUIN IN THE PALACE GARDEN, NORWICH                               117
    THE CHAPEL DOOR, NORWICH                                         119
    STOKE RECTORY--THE APPROACH                                      126
    REV. O. LEYCESTER. (_Photogravure_)                  _To face_   128
    PETSEY                                                           132
    STOKE CHURCH                                                     136
    STOKE RECTORY--THE GARDEN SIDE                                   141
    HURSTMONCEAUX                                                    165
    THE VESTRY, HURSTMONCEAUX                                        188
    LEWES                                                            195
    AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE. _From S. Lawrence._
       (_Photogravure_) _To face_                                    202
    REV. O. LEYCESTER'S GRAVE, STOKE CHURCHYARD                      208
    EDWARD STANLEY, BISHOP OF NORWICH. (_Photogravure_)   _To face_  232
    THE TOWER AT ROCKEND, TORQUAY                                    252
    WILMINGTON PRIORY                                                257
    FLOWERS GREEN, HURSTMONCEAUX                                     259
    THE RYE GATE, WINCHELSEA                                         290
    IN ST. HELEN'S, BISHOPSGATE                                      336
    LE TOMBEAU NAPOLEON                                              349
    CANON STANLEY'S HOUSE, CANTERBURY                                358
    SITE OF BECKET'S SHRINE, CANTERBURY                              361
    STEPS AT LIME                                                    367
    LIME, THE APPROACH                                               410
    ARCHDEACON HARE'S STUDY, HURSTMONCEAUX RECTORY                   466
    JULIUS C. HARE. _From Richmond._ (_Photogravure_)     _To face_  468
    HURSTMONCEAUX CHURCH                                             483
    LIME, FROM THE GARDEN                                            491
    ALFRISTON                                                        506





I

ANTECEDENTS

                  "Time doth consecrate;
    And what is grey with age becomes religion."--SCHILLER.

     "I hope I may be able to tell the truth always, and to see it
     aright, according to the eyes which God Almighty gives
     me."--THACKERAY.


In 1727, the year of George the First's death, Miss Grace Naylor of
Hurstmonceaux, though she was beloved, charming, and beautiful, died
very mysteriously in her twenty-first year, in the immense and weird old
castle of which she had been the heiress. She was affirmed to have been
starved by her former governess, who lived alone with her, but the fact
was never proved. Her property passed to her first cousin Francis Hare
(son of her aunt Bethaia), who forthwith assumed the name of Naylor.

The new owner of Hurstmonceaux was the only child of the first marriage
of that Francis Hare, who, through the influence first of the Duke of
Marlborough (by whose side, then a chaplain, he had ridden on the
battle-fields of Blenheim and Ramilies), and afterwards of his family
connections the Pelhams and Walpoles, rose to become one of the richest
and most popular pluralists of his age. Yet he had to be contented at
last with the bishoprics of St. Asaph and Chichester, with each of which
he held the Deanery of St. Paul's, the Archbishopric of Canterbury
having twice just escaped him.

The Bishop's eldest son Francis was "un facheux détail de notre
famille," as the grandfather of Madame de Maintenon said of his son. He
died after a life of the wildest dissipation, without leaving any
children by his wife Carlotta Alston, who was his stepmother's sister.
So the property of Hurstmonceaux went to his half-brother Robert, son of
the Bishop's second marriage with Mary-Margaret Alston, heiress of the
Vatche in Buckinghamshire, and of several other places besides. Sir
Robert Walpole had been the godfather of Robert Hare-Naylor, and
presented him with a valuable sinecure office as a christening present,
and he further made the Bishop urge the Church as the profession in
which father and godfather could best aid the boy's advancement.
Accordingly Robert took orders, obtained a living, and was made a Canon
of Winchester. While he was still very young, his father had further
secured his fortunes by marrying him to the heiress who lived nearest to
his mother's property of the Vatche, and, by the beautiful Sarah Selman
(daughter of the owner of Chalfont St. Peter's, and sister of Mrs.
Lefevre), he had two sons--Francis and Robert, and an only daughter Anna
Maria, afterwards Mrs. Bulkeley. In the zenith of her youth and
loveliness, however, Sarah Hare died very suddenly from eating ices when
overheated at a ball, and soon afterwards Robert married a second
wife--the rich Henrietta Henckel, who pulled down Hurstmonceaux Castle.
She did this because she was jealous of the sons of her predecessor, and
wished to build a large new house, which she persuaded her husband to
settle upon her own children, who were numerous, though only two
daughters lived to any great age. But she was justly punished, for when
Robert Hare died, it was discovered that the great house which Wyatt had
built for Mrs. Hare, and which is now known as Hurstmonceaux Place, was
erected upon entailed land, so that the house stripped of furniture, and
the property shorn of its most valuable farms, passed to Francis
Hare-Naylor, son of Miss Selman. Mrs. Henckel Hare lived on to a great
age, and when "the burden of her years came on her" she repented of her
avarice and injustice, and coming back to Hurstmonceaux in childish
senility, would wander round and round the castle ruins in the early
morning and late evening, wringing her hands and saying--"Who could have
done such a wicked thing: oh! who could have done such a wicked thing,
as to pull down this beautiful old place?" Then her daughters, Caroline
and Marianne, walking beside her, would say--"Oh dear mamma, it was you
who did it, it was you yourself who did it, you know"--and she would
despairingly resume--"Oh no, that is impossible: it could not have been
me. I could not have done such a wicked thing: it could not have been me
that did it." My cousin Marcus Hare had at Abbots Kerswell a picture of
Mrs. Henckel Hare, which was always surrounded with crape bows.

[Illustration: HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE.]

The second Francis Hare-Naylor and his brother Robert had a most unhappy
home in their boyhood. Their stepmother ruled their weak-minded father
with a rod of iron. She ostentatiously burnt the portrait of their
beautiful mother. Every year she sold a farm from his paternal
inheritance and spent the money in extravagance. In 1784 she parted with
the ancient property of Hos Tendis, at Sculthorpe in Norfolk, though
its sale was a deathblow to the Bishop's aged widow, Mary-Margaret
Alston. Yet, while accumulating riches for herself, she prevented her
husband from allowing his unfortunate elder sons more than £100 a year
apiece. With this income, Robert, the younger of the two, was sent to
Oriel College at Oxford, and when he unavoidably incurred debts there,
the money for their repayment was stopped even from his humble pittance.

Goaded to fury by his stepmother, the eldest son, Francis, became
reckless and recklessly extravagant. He raised money at an enormous rate
of interest upon his prospects from the Hurstmonceaux estates, and he
would have been utterly ruined, morally as well as outwardly, if he had
not fallen in with Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who was captivated
by his good looks, charmed by his boldness and wit, and who made him the
hero of a living romance. By the Duchess he was introduced to her
cousin, another even more beautiful Georgiana, daughter of Jonathan
Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, and his wife Anna Maria Mordaunt, niece of
the famous Earl of Peterborough; and though Bishop Shipley did
everything he could to separate them, meetings were perpetually connived
at by the Duchess, till eventually the pair eloped in 1785. The
families on both sides renounced them with fury. The Canon of Winchester
never saw his son again, and I believe that Bishop Shipley never saw his
daughter. Our grandparents went to Carlsruhe, and then to Italy, where
in those days it was quite possible to live upon the £200 a year which
was allowed them by the Duchess of Devonshire, and where their four
sons--Francis, Augustus, Julius, and Marcus--were born.

The story of Mrs. Hare-Naylor's struggling life in Italy is told in
"Memorials of a Quiet Life," and how, when the Canon of Winchester died,
and she hurried home with her husband to take possession of
Hurstmonceaux Place, she brought only her little Augustus with her,
placing him under the care of her eldest sister Anna Maria, widow of the
celebrated Sir William Jones, whom he ever afterwards regarded as a
second mother.

The choice of guardians which Mrs. Hare-Naylor made for the children
whom she left at Bologna would be deemed a very strange one by many: but
gifted, beautiful, and accomplished, our grandmother was never
accustomed either to seek or to take advice: she always acted upon her
own impulses, guided by her own observation. An aged Spanish Jesuit was
living in Bologna, who, when his order was suppressed in Spain, had
come to reside in Italy upon his little pension, and, being skilled in
languages, particularly in Greek, had taken great pains to revive the
love of it in Bologna. Amongst his pupils were two brothers named
Tambroni, one of whom, discouraged by the difficulties he met with,
complained to his sister Clotilda, who, by way of assisting him,
volunteered to learn the same lessons. The old Jesuit was delighted with
the girl, and spared no pains to make her a proficient. Female
professors were not unknown in Bologna, and in process of time Clotilda
Tambroni succeeded to the chair of the Professor of Greek, once occupied
by the famous Laura Bassi, whom she was rendered worthy to succeed by
her beauty as well as by her acquirements. The compositions of Clotilda
Tambroni both in Greek and Italian were published, and universally
admired; her poems surprised every one by their fire and genius, and her
public orations were considered unrivalled in her age. Adored by all,
her reputation was always unblemished. When the French became masters of
Bologna, the University was suppressed, and to avoid insult and danger,
Clotilda Tambroni retired into private life and lived in great
seclusion. Some time after, she received an appointment in Spain, but,
just as she arrived there, accompanied by her monk-preceptor Dom
Emmanuele Aponte, the French had overturned everything. The pair
returned to Bologna, where Aponte would have been in the greatest
distress, if his grateful pupil had not insisted upon receiving him into
her own house, and not only maintained him, but devoted herself as a
daughter to his wants. After the Austrians had re-established the
University on the old system, Clotilda Tambroni was invited to resume
her chair, but as her health and spirits were then quite broken, she
declined accepting it, upon which the Government very handsomely settled
a small pension upon her, sufficient to ensure her the comforts of life.

With Clotilda Tambroni and her aged friend, our grandmother Mrs.
Hare-Naylor, who wrote and spoke Greek as perfectly as her native
language, and who taught her children to converse in it at the family
repasts, naturally found more congenial companionship than with any
other members of the Bolognese society; and, when she was recalled with
her husband to England, she had no hesitation in intrusting three of her
sons to their care. Julius and Marcus were then only very beautiful and
engaging little children, but Francis, my father, was already eleven
years old, and a boy of extraordinary acquirements, in whom an almost
unnatural amount of learning had been implanted and fostered by his
gifted mother. The strange life which he then led at Bologna with the
old monk and the beautiful sibyl (for such she is represented in her
portrait) who attended him, only served to ripen the seed which had been
sown already, and the great Mezzofanti, who was charmed at seeing a
repetition of his own marvellous powers in one so young, voluntarily
took him as a pupil and devoted much of his time to him. To the year
which Francis Hare passed with Clotilda Tambroni at Bologna, in her
humble rooms with their tiled floors and scanty furniture, he always
felt that he owed that intense love of learning for learning's sake
which was the leading characteristic of his after life, and he always
looked back upon the Tambroni as the person to whom, next to his mother,
he was most deeply indebted. When he rejoined his parents at
Hurstmonceaux, he continued, under his new tutor, Dr. Lehmann, to make
such amazing progress as astonished all who knew him and was an intense
delight to his mother.

Hurstmonceaux Place was then, and is still, a large but ugly house. It
forms a massy square, with projecting circular bows at the corners, the
appearance of which (due to Wyatt) produces a frightful effect outside,
but is exceedingly comfortable within. The staircase, the floors, and
the handsome doors, were brought from the castle. The west side of the
house, decorated with some Ionic columns, is part of an older
manor-house, which existed before the castle was dismantled. In this
part of the building is a small old panelled hall, hung round with
stags' horns from the ancient deer-park. The house is surrounded by
spacious pleasure-grounds. Facing the east front were, till a few years
ago, three very fine trees, a cedar, a tulip-tree, and a huge silver
fir. In my childhood it often used to be a question which of these trees
should be removed, as they were crowding and spoiling each other, and it
ended in their all being left, as no one could decide which was the
least valuable of the three. The wind has since that time carried away
the cedar. The tulip-tree was planted by our great-aunt Marianne,
daughter of Mrs. Henckel Hare, and I remember that my uncle Julius used
to say that its gay flowers were typical of her and her dress.

For several years our grandparents carried on a most laborious contest
of dignity with poverty on their ruined estate of Hurstmonceaux, where
their only daughter Anna Maria Clementina was born in 1799. Finding no
congenial associates in the neighbourhood, Mrs. Hare-Naylor consoled
herself by keeping up an animated correspondence with all the learned
men of Europe, while her husband wrote dull plays and duller histories,
which have all been published, but which few people read then and nobody
reads now. The long-confirmed habits of Italian life, with its peculiar
hours and utter disregard of appearances, were continued in Sussex; and
it is still remembered at Hurstmonceaux how our grandmother rode on an
ass to drink at the mineral springs which abound in the park, how she
always wore white, and how a beautiful white doe always accompanied her
in her walks, and even to church, standing, during the service, at her
pew door.

Upon the return of Lehmann to Germany in 1802, Francis Hare was sent to
the tutorship of Dr. Brown, an eminent professor in Marischal College at
Aberdeen, where he remained for two years, working with the utmost
enthusiasm. He seems to have shrunk at this time from any friendships
with boys of his own age, except with Harry Temple (afterwards
celebrated as Lord Palmerston), who had been his earliest acquaintance
in England, and with whom he long continued to be intimate. Meanwhile
his mother formed the design of leaving to her children a perfect series
of large finished water-colour drawings, representing all the different
parts of Hurstmonceaux Castle, interior as well as exterior, before its
destruction. She never relaxed her labour and care till the whole were
finished, but the minute application, for so long a period, seriously
affected her health and produced disease of the optic nerve, which ended
in total blindness. She removed to Weimar, where the friendship of the
Grand Duchess and the society of Goethe, Schiller, and the other learned
men who formed the brilliantly intellectual circle of the little court
did all that was possible to mitigate her affliction. But her health
continued to fail, and her favourite son Francis was summoned to her
side, arriving in time to accompany her to Lausanne, where she expired,
full of faith, hope, and resignation, on Easter Sunday, 1806.

After his wife's death, Mr. Hare-Naylor could never bear to return to
Hurstmonceaux, and sold the remnant of his ancestral estate for
£60,000, to the great sorrow of his children. They were almost more
distressed, however, by his second marriage to a Mrs. Mealey, a
left-handed connection of the Shipley family--the Mrs. Hare-Naylor of my
own childhood, who was less and less liked by her stepsons as years went
on. She became the mother of three children, Georgiana, Gustavus, and
Reginald--my half aunt and uncles. In 1815, Mr. Hare-Naylor died at
Tours, and was buried at Hurstmonceaux.

The breaking up of their home, the loss of their beloved mother, and
still more their father's second marriage, made the four Hare brothers
turn henceforward for all that they sought of sympathy or affection to
their Shipley relations. The house of their mother's eldest sister, Lady
Jones, was henceforward the only home they knew. Little Anna Hare was
adopted by Lady Jones, and lived entirely with her till her early death
in 1813: Augustus was educated at her expense and passed his holidays at
her house of Worting, her care and anxiety for his welfare proving that
she considered him scarcely less her child than Anna; and Francis and
Julius looked up to her in everything, and consulted her on all points,
finding in her "a second mother, a monitress wise and loving, both in
encouragement and reproof."[3] While Augustus was pursuing his education
at Winchester and New College, and Marcus was acting as midshipman and
lieutenant in various ships on foreign service; and while Julius (who
already, during his residence with his mother at Weimar, had imbibed
that passion for Germany and German literature which characterised his
after life) was carrying off prizes at Tunbridge, the Charter House, and
Trinity College, Cambridge; Francis, after his mother's death, was
singularly left to his own devices. Mr. Hare-Naylor was too apathetic,
and his stepmother did not dare to interfere with him: Lady Jones was
bewildered by him. After leaving Aberdeen he studied vigorously, even
furiously, with a Mr. Michell at Buckland. From time to time he went
abroad, travelling where he pleased and seeing whom he pleased. At the
Universities of Leipsic and Göttingen the report which Lehmann gave of
his extraordinary abilities procured him an enthusiastic reception, and
he soon formed intimacies with the most distinguished professors of both
seats of learning. At the little court of Weimar he was adored. Yet the
vagaries of his character led him with equal ardour to seek the
friendship and share the follies of Count Calotkin, of whom he wrote as
"the Lord Chesterfield of the time, who had had more princesses in love
with him and perhaps more children on the throne than there are weeks in
the year." At twenty, he had not only all the knowledge, but more than
all the experiences, of most men of forty. Such training was not a good
preparation for his late entrance at an English University. The pupil of
Mezzofanti and Lehmann also went to Christ Church at Oxford knowing far
too much. He was so far ahead of his companions, and felt such a
profound contempt for the learning of Oxford compared with that to which
he had been accustomed at the Italian and German universities, that he
neglected the Oxford course of study altogether, and did little except
hunt whilst he was at college. In spite of this, he was so naturally
talented, that he could not help adding, in spite of himself, to his
vast store of information. Jackson, Dean of Christ Church in his time,
used to say that "Francis Hare was the only rolling stone he knew that
ever gathered any moss." That which he did gather was always made the
most of for his favourite brother Julius, for whose instruction he was
never weary of writing essays, and in whose progress he took the
greatest interest and delight. But through all the changes of life the
tie between each of the four brothers continued undiminished--"the most
brotherly of brothers," their common friend Landor always used to call
them.

After leaving Oxford, my father lived principally at his rooms in the
Albany. Old Dr. Wellesley[4] used often to tell me stories of these
pleasant chambers (the end house in the court), and of the parties which
used to meet in them, including all that was most refined and
intellectual in the young life of London. For, in his conversational
powers, Francis Hare had the reputation of being perfectly unrivalled,
and it was thus, not in writing, that his vast amount of information on
all possible subjects became known to his contemporaries. In 1811, Lady
Jones writes of him "at Stowe" as "keeping all the talk to himself,
which does not please the old Marquis much."

Francis Hare sold his father's fine library at Christie's soon after his
death, yet almost immediately began to form a new collection of books,
which soon surrounded all the walls of his Albany chambers. But his
half-sister Mrs. Maurice remembered going to visit him at the Albany,
and her surprise at not seeing his books. "Oh, Francis, what have you
done with your library?" she exclaimed. "Look under the sofa and you
will see it," he replied. She looked, and saw a pile of Sir William
Jones's works: he had again sold all the rest. And through life it was
always the same. He never could resist collecting valuable books, and
then either sold them, or had them packed up, left them behind, and
forgot all about them. Three of his collections of books have been sold
within my remembrance, one at Newbury in July 1858; one at Florence in
the spring of 1859; and one at Sotheby & Wilkinson's rooms in the
following November.

Careful as to his personal appearance, Francis Hare was always dressed
in the height of the fashion. It is remembered how he would retire and
change his dress three times in the course of a single ball! In
everything he followed the foibles of the day. "Francis leads a rambling
life of pleasure and idleness," wrote his cousin Anna Maria Dashwood;
"he _must_ have read, but who can tell at what time?--for wherever there
is dissipation, there is Francis in its wake and its most ardent
pursuer. Yet, in spite of this, let _any_ subject be named in society,
and Francis will know more of it than nineteen out of twenty."

In 1816-17, Francis Hare kept horses and resided much at Melton Mowbray,
losing an immense amount of money there. After this time he lived almost
entirely upon the Continent. Lord Desart, Lord Bristol and Count d'Orsay
were his constant companions and friends, so that it is not to be
wondered at that attractions of a less reputable kind enchained him to
Florence and Rome. He had, however, a really good friend in John
Nicholas Fazakerley, with whom his intimacy was never broken, and in
1814, whilst watching his dying father at Tours, he began a friendship
with Walter Savage Landor, with whom he ever afterwards kept up an
affectionate correspondence. Other friends of whom he saw much in the
next few years were Lady Oxford (then separated from her husband, and
living entirely abroad) and her four daughters. In the romantic
interference of Lady Oxford in behalf of Caroline Murat, queen of
Naples, and in the extraordinary adventures of her daughters, my father
took the deepest interest, and he was always ready to help or advise
them. On one occasion, when they arrived suddenly in Florence, he gave a
ball in their honour, the brilliancy of which I have heard described by
the older Florentine residents of my own time. Twice every week, even in
his bachelor days, he was accustomed to give large dinner-parties, and
he then first acquired that character for hospitality for which he was
afterwards famous at Rome and Pisa. Spa was one of the places which
attracted him most at this period of his life, and he frequently passed
part of the summer there. It was on one of these occasions (1816) that
he proceeded to Holland and visited Amsterdam. "I am delighted and
disgusted with this mercantile capital," he wrote to his brother
Augustus. "Magnificent establishments and penurious
economy--ostentatious generosity and niggardly suspicion--constitute the
centrifugal and centripetal focus of Holland's mechanism. The rage for
roots still continues. The gardener at the Hortus Medicus showed me an
Amaryllis (alas! it does not flower till October), for which King Lewis
paid one thousand guelders (a guelder is about 2 francs and 2 sous).
Here, in the sanctuary of Calvinism, organs are everywhere
introduced--though the more orthodox, or puerile, discipline of Scotland
has rejected their intrusion. But, in return, the sternness of
republican demeanour refuses the outward token of submission--even to
Almighty power: a Dutchman always remains in church with his hat unmoved
from his head."

The year 1818 was chiefly passed by Francis Hare in Bavaria, where he
became very intimate with the King and Prince Eugene. The latter gave
him the miniature of himself which I still have at Holmhurst. For the
next seven years he was almost entirely in Italy--chiefly at Florence or
Pisa. Sometimes Lord Dudley was with him, often he lived for months in
the constant society of Count d'Orsay and Lady Blessington. He was fêted
and invited everywhere. "On disait de M. Hare," said one who knew him
intimately, "non seulement qu'il était original, mais qu'il était
original sans copie." "In these years at Florence," said the same
person, "there were many ladies who were aspirants for his hand, he was
_si aimable, pas dans le sens vulgaire, mais il avait tant
d'empressement pour tout le sexe feminin_." His aunts Lady Jones and her
sister Louisa Shipley constantly implored him to return to England and
settle there, but in vain: he was too much accustomed to a roving life.
Occasionally he wrote for Reviews, but I have never been able to trace
the articles. He had an immense correspondence, and his letters were
very amusing, when their recipients could read his almost impossible
hand. We find Count d'Orsay writing, apropos of a debt which he was
paying--"Employez cette somme à prendre un maître d'écriture: si vous
saviez quel service vous renderiez à vos amis!"

The English family of which Francis Hare saw most at Florence was that
of Lady Paul, who had brought her four daughters to spend several years
in Italy, partly for the sake of completing their education, partly to
escape with dignity from the discords of a most uncongenial home. To the
close of her life Frances Eleanor, first wife of Sir John Dean Paul of
Rodborough, was one of those rare individuals who are never seen without
being loved, and who never fail to have a good influence over those with
whom they are thrown in contact. That she was as attractive as she was
good is still shown in a lovely portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Landor
adored her, and rejoiced to bring his friend Francis Hare into her
society. The daughters were clever, lively and animated; but the mother
was the great attraction to the house.

[Illustration: GLAMIS CASTLE.]

Defoe says that "people who boast of their ancestors are like potatoes,
in that their best part is in underground." Still I will explain that
Lady Paul was the daughter of John Simpson of Bradley in the county of
Durham, and his wife Lady Anne Lyon, second daughter of the 8th Earl of
Strathmore, who quartered the royal arms and claimed royal descent from
Robert II. king of Scotland, grandson of the famous Robert Bruce: the
king's youngest daughter Lady Jane Stuart having married Sir John Lyon,
first Baron Kinghorn, and the king's grand-daughter Elizabeth Graham
(through Euphemia Stuart, Countess of Strathern) having married his son
Sir John Lyon of Glamis. Eight barons and eight earls of Kinghorn and
Strathmore (which title was added 1677) lived in Glamis Castle before
Lady Anne was born. The family history had been of the most eventful
kind. The widow of John, 6th Lord Glamis, was burnt as a witch on the
Castle Hill at Edinburgh, for attempting to poison King James V., and
her second husband, Archibald Campbell, was dashed to pieces while
trying to escape down the rocks which form the foundation of the castle.
Her son, the 7th Lord Glamis, was spared, and restored to his honours
upon the confession of the accusers of the family that the whole story
was a forgery, after it had already cost the lives of two innocent
persons. John, 8th Lord Glamis, was killed in a Border fray with the
followers of the Earl of Crawford: John, 5th Earl, fell in rebellion at
the battle of Sheriffmuir: Charles, 6th Earl, was killed in a quarrel.
The haunted castle of Glamis itself, the most picturesque building in
Scotland, girdled with quaint pepper-box turrets, is full of the most
romantic interest. A winding stair in the thickness of the wall leads to
the principal apartments. The weird chamber is still shown in which, as
Shakspeare narrates, Duncan, king of Scotland, was murdered by Macbeth,
the "thane of Glamis." In the depth of the walls is another chamber more
ghastly still, with a secret, transmitted from the fourteenth century,
which is always known to three persons. When one of the triumvirate
dies, the survivors are compelled by a terrible oath to elect a
successor. Every succeeding Lady Strathmore, Fatima-like, has spent her
time in tapping at the walls, taking up the boards, and otherwise
attempting to discover the secret chamber, but all have failed. One
tradition of the place says that "Old Beardie"[5] sits for ever in that
chamber playing with dice and drinking punch at a stone table, and that
at midnight a second and terrible person joins him.

More fearful than these traditions were the scenes through which Lady
Anne had lived and in which she herself bore a share. Nothing is more
extraordinary than the history of her eldest brother's widow,
Mary-Eleanor Bowes, 9th Countess of Strathmore, who, in her second
marriage with Mr. Stoney, underwent sufferings which have scarcely ever
been surpassed, and whose marvellous escapes and adventures are still
the subject of a hundred story-books.

The vicissitudes of her eventful life, and her own charm and cleverness,
combined to make Lady Anne Simpson one of the most interesting women of
her age, and her society was eagerly sought and appreciated. Both her
daughters had married young, and in her solitude, she took the eldest
daughter of Lady Paul to live with her and brought her up as her own
child. In her house, Anne Paul saw all the most remarkable Englishmen of
the time. She was provided with the best masters, and in her home life
she had generally the companionship of the daughters of her mother's
sister Lady Liddell, afterwards Lady Ravensworth, infinitely preferring
their companionship to that of her own brothers and sisters. Lady Anne
Simpson resided chiefly at a house belonging to Colonel Jolliffe at
Merstham in Surrey, where the persons she wished to see could frequently
come down to her from London. The royal dukes, sons of George III.,
constantly visited her in this way, and delighted in the society of the
pretty old lady, who had so much to tell, and who always told it in the
most interesting way.

It was a severe trial for Anne Paul, when, in her twentieth year (1821),
she lost her grandmother, and had to return to her father's house. Not
only did the blank left by the affection she had received cause her
constant suffering, but the change from being mistress of a considerable
house and establishment to becoming an insignificant unit in a large
party of brothers and sisters was most disagreeable, and she felt it
bitterly.

Very welcome therefore was the change when Lady Paul determined to go
abroad with her daughters, and the society of Florence, in which Anne
Paul's great musical talents made her a general favourite, was the more
delightful from being contrasted with the confinement of Sir John Paul's
house over his bank in the Strand. During her Italian travels also, Anne
Paul made three friends whose intimacy influenced all her after life.
These were our cousin, the clever widowed Anna Maria Dashwood, daughter
of Dean Shipley; Walter Savage Landor; and Francis Hare; and the two
first united in desiring the same thing--her marriage with the last.

Meantime, two other marriages occupied the attention of the Paul family.
One of Lady Paul's objects in coming abroad had been the hope of
breaking through an attachment which her third daughter Maria had formed
for Charles Bankhead, an exceedingly handsome and fascinating, but
penniless young attaché, with whom she had fallen in love at first
sight, declaring that nothing should ever induce her to marry any one
else. Unfortunately, the first place to which Lady Paul took her
daughters was Geneva, and Mr. Bankhead, finding out where they were,
came thither (from Frankfort, where he was attaché) dressed in a long
cloak and with false hair and beard. In this disguise, he climbed up and
looked into a room where Maria Paul was writing, with her face towards
the window. She recognised him at once, but thought it was his double,
and fainted away. On her recovery, finding her family still inexorable,
she one day, when her mother and sisters were out, tried to make away
with herself. Her room faced the stairs, and as Prince Lardoria, an old
friend of the family, was coming up, she threw open the door and
exclaimed--"Je meurs, Prince, je meurs, je me suis empoisonné."--"Oh
Miladi, Miladi," screamed the Prince, but Miladi was not there, so he
rushed into the kitchen, and seizing a large bottle of oil, dashed
upstairs with it, and, throwing Maria Paul upon the ground, poured the
contents of it down her throat. After this, Lady Paul looked upon the
marriage as inevitable, and sent Maria to England to her aunt Lady
Ravensworth, from whose house she was married to Charles Bankhead,
neither her mother or sisters being present. Shortly afterwards Mr.
Bankhead was appointed minister in Mexico, and his wife, accompanying
him thither, remained there for many years, and had many extraordinary
adventures, especially during a great earthquake, in which she was saved
by her presence of mind in swinging upon a door, while "the cathedral
rocked like a wave on the sea" and the town was laid in ruins.

While Maria Paul's marriage was pending, her youngest sister Jane had
also become engaged, without the will of her parents, to Edward, only
son of the attainted Lord Edward Fitz Gerald, son of the 1st Duke of
Leinster. His mother was the famous Pamela,[6] once the beautiful and
fascinating little fairy produced at eight years old by the Chevalier de
Grave as the companion of Mademoiselle d'Orleans; over whose birth a
mystery has always prevailed; whose name Madame de Genlis declared to be
Sims, but whom her royal companions called Seymour. To her daughter
Jane's engagement Lady Paul rather withheld than refused her consent,
and it was hoped that during their travels abroad the intimacy might be
broken off. It had begun by Jane Paul, in a ball-room, hearing a
peculiarly hearty and ringing laugh from a man she could not see, and in
her high spirits imprudently saying--"I will marry the man who can laugh
in that way and no one else,"--a remark which was repeated to Edward
Fitz Gerald, who insisted upon being immediately introduced. Jane Paul
was covered with confusion, but as she was exceedingly pretty, this only
added to her attractions, and the adventure led to a proposal, and
eventually, through the friendship and intercession of Francis Hare, to
a marriage.[7]

Already, in 1826, we find Count d'Orsay writing to Francis Hare in
August--"Quel diable vous possede de rester à Florence, _sans Pauls_,
sans rien enfin, excepté un rhume imaginaire pour excuse?" But it was
not till the following year that Miss Paul began to believe he was
seriously paying court to her. They had long corresponded, and his
clever letters are most indescribably eccentric. They became more
eccentric still in 1828, when, before making a formal proposal, he
expended two sheets in proving to her how hateful the word _must_ always
had been and always would be to his nature. She evidently accepted this
exordium very amiably, for on receiving her answer, he sent his banker's
book to Sir John Paul, begging him to examine and see if, after all his
extravagancies, he still possessed at least "fifteen hundred a year,
clear of every possible deduction and charge, to spend withal, that is,
four pounds a day," and to consider, if the examination proved
satisfactory, that he begged to propose for the hand of his eldest
daughter! Equally strange was his announcement of his engagement to his
brother Augustus at Rome, casually observing, in the midst of
antiquarian queries about the temples--"Apropos of columns, I am going
to rest my old age on a column. Anne Paul and I are to be married on the
28th of April,"--and proceeding at once, as if he had said nothing
unusual--"Have you made acquaintance yet with my excellent friend Luigi
Vescovali," &c. At the same time Mrs. Dashwood wrote to Miss Paul that
Francis had "too much feeling and principle to marry without feeling
that he could make the woman who was sincerely attached to him happy,"
and that "though he has a great many faults, still, when one considers
the sort of wild education he had, that he has been a sort of pet pupil
of the famous or infamous Lord Bristol, one feels very certain that he
must have a more than commonly large amount of original goodness (not
sin, though it is the fashion to say so much on that head) to save him
from having many more."

It was just before the marriage that "Victoire" (often afterwards
mentioned in these volumes) came to live with Miss Paul. She had lost
her parents in childhood, and had been brought up by her grandmother,
who, while she was still very young, "pour assurer son avenir," sent her
to England to be with Madame Girardôt, who kept a famous shop for
ladies' dress in Albemarle Street. Three days after her arrival, Lady
Paul came there to ask Madame Girardôt to recommend a maid for her
daughter, who was going to be married, and Victoire was suggested, but
she begged to remain where she was for some weeks, as she felt so lonely
in a strange country, and did not like to leave the young Frenchwomen
with whom she was at work. During this time Miss Paul often came to see
her, and they became great friends. At last a day was fixed on which
Victoire was summoned to the house "seulement pour voir," and then she
first saw Lady Paul. Miss Paul insisted that when her mother asked
Victoire her age, she should say twenty-two at least, as Lady Paul
objected to her having any maid under twenty-eight. "Therefore," said
Victoire, "when Miladi asked 'Quelle age avez vous?' j'ai répondu
'Vingt-deux ans, mais je suis devenu toute rouge, oh comme je suis
devenu rouge'--et Miladi a répondu avec son doux sourire--'Ah vous
n'avez pas l'habitude des mensonges?'--Oh comme cà m'a tellement
frappé."[8]

My father was married to Anne Frances Paul at the church in the Strand
on the 28th of April 1828. "Oh comme il y avait du monde!" said
Victoire, when she described the ceremony to me. A few days afterwards a
breakfast was given at the Star and Garter at Richmond, at which all the
relations on both sides were present, Maria Leycester, the future bride
of Augustus Hare, being also amongst the guests.

Soon after, the newly-married pair left for Holland, where they began
the fine collection of old glass for which Mrs. Hare was afterwards
almost famous, and then to Dresden and Carlsbad. In the autumn they
returned to England, and took a London house--5 Gloucester Place, where
my sister Caroline was born in 1829. The house was chiefly furnished by
the contents of my father's old rooms at the Albany.

"Victoire" has given many notes of my father's character at this time.
"M. Hare était sevère, mais il était juste. Il ne pouvait souffrir la
moindre injustice. Il pardonnait une fois--deux fois, et puis il ne
pardonnait plus, il faudrait s'en aller; il ne voudrait plus de celui
qui l'avait offensé. C'était ainsi avec François, son valet à Gloucester
Place, qui l'accompagnait partout et qui avait tout sous la main. Un
jour M. Hare me priait, avec cette intonation de courtoisie qu'il
avail, que je mettrais son linge dans les tiroirs. 'Mais, très
volontiers, monsieur,' j'ai dit. Il avait beaucoup des choses--des
chemises, des foulards, de tout. Eh bien! quelques jours après il me
dit--'Il me manque quelques foulards--deux foulards de cette espèce'--en
tirant une de sa poche, parcequ'il faisait attention à tout. 'Ah,
monsieur,' j'ai dit, 'c'est très probable, en sortant peut-être dans la
ville.' 'Non,' il me dit, 'ce n'est pas ça--je suis volé, et c'est
François qui les a pris, et ça n'est pas la première fois,' ainsi enfin
il faut que je le renvoie." It was not till long after that Victoire
found out that my father had known for years that François had been
robbing him, and yet had retained him in his service. He said that it
was always his plan to weigh the good qualities of any of his dependants
against their defects. If the defects outweighed the virtues, "il
faudrait les renvoyer de suite--si non, il faudrait les laisser aller."
When he was in his "colère" he never allowed his wife to come near
him--"il avait peur de lui faire aucun mal."

The christening of Caroline was celebrated with great festivities, but
it was like a fairy story, in that the old aunt Louisa Shipley, who was
expected to make her nephew Francis her heir, then took an
offence--something about being godmother, which was never quite got
over. The poor little babe itself was very pretty and terribly
precocious, and before she was a year old she died of water on the
brain. Victoire, who doated upon her, held her in her arms for the last
four-and-twenty hours, and there she died. Mrs. Hare was very much
blamed for having neglected her child for society, yet, when she was
dead, says Victoire, "Madame Hare avait tellement chagrin, que Lady Paul
qui venait tous les jours, priait M. Hare de l'ammener tout de suite.
Nous sommes allés à Bruxelles, parceque là M. FitzGerald avait une
maison,--mais de là, nous sommes retournés bien vite en Angleterre à
cause de la grossesse de Madame Hare, parceque M. Hare ne voulut pas que
son fils soil né à l'étranger, parcequ'il disait, que, étant le
troisième, il perdrait ses droits de l'héritage.[9] C'est selon la loi
anglaise--et c'était vraiment temps, car, de suite en arrivant à
Londres, François naquit."

The family finally left Gloucester Place and went abroad in consequence
of Lady Jones's death. After that they never had a settled home again.
When the household in London was broken up, Victoire was to have left.
She had long been engaged to be married to Félix Ackermann, who had
been a soldier, and was in receipt of a pension for his services in the
Moscow campaign. But, when it came to the parting, "Monsieur et Madame"
would not let her go, saying that they could not let her travel, until
they could find a family to send her with. "It was an excuse," said
Victoire, "for I waited two years, and the family was never found. Then
I had to _consigner_ all the things, then I could not leave Madame--and
so it went on for two years more, till, when the family were at Pisa,
Félix insisted that I should come to a decision. Then M. Hare sent for
Félix, who had been acting as a courier for some time, and begged him to
come to Florence to go with us as a courier to Baden. Félix arrived on
the _Jeudi Saint_. M. Hare came in soon after (it was in my little room)
and talked to him as if they were old friends. He brought a bottle of
champagne, and poured out glasses for us all, and _faisait clinquer les
verres_. On the Monday we all left for Milan, and there I was married to
Félix, and, after the season at Baden, Félix and I were to return to
Paris, but when the time came M. Hare would not let us."

"Wherever," said Victoire, "M. Hare était en passage--soit à Florence,
soit à Rome, n'importe où, il faudrait toujours des diners, et des
fêtes, pour recevoir M. Hare, surtout dans les ambassades, pas seulement
dans l'ambassade d'Angleterre, mais dans celles de France, d'Allemagne,
etc. Et quand M. Hare ne voyageait plus, et qu'il était établi dans
quelque ville, il donnait à son tour des diners à lui."

"Il s'occupait toujours à lire,--pas des romans, mais des anciens
livres, dans lesquelles il fouillait toujours. Quand nous voyageons,
c'était toujours pour visiter les bibliothèques, ça c'était la première
chose, et il emporta énormément des livres dans la voiture avec lui....
Quand il y'avait une personne qui lui avait été recommandée, il fallait
toujours lui faire voir tout ce qu'il avait, soit à Rome, soit à
Bologne,--et comme il savait un peu de tout, son avis était demandé pour
la valeur des tableaux, et n'importe de quoi."

On first going abroad, my father had taken his wife to make acquaintance
with his old friends Lady Blessington and Count d'Orsay, with whom they
afterwards had frequent meetings. Lady Blessington thus describes to
Landor her first impressions of Mrs. Hare:--

     "_Paris, Feb. 1829._--Among the partial gleams of sunshine which
     have illumined our winter, a fortnight's sojourn which Francis
     Hare and his excellent wife made here, is remembered with most
     pleasure. She is indeed a treasure--well-informed, clever,
     sensible, well-mannered, kind, lady-like, and, above all, truly
     feminine; the having chosen such a woman reflects credit and
     distinction on our friend, and the community with her has had a
     visible effect on him, as, without losing any of his gaiety, it has
     become softened down to a more mellow tone, and he appears not only
     a more happy man, but more deserving of happiness than before."

My second brother, William Robert, was born September 20, 1831, at the
Bagni di Lucca, where the family was spending the summer. Mrs. Louisa
Shipley meanwhile never ceased to urge their return to England.

     "_Jan. 25, 1831._--I am glad to hear so good an account of my two
     little great-nephews, but I should be still more glad to see them.
     I do hope the next may be a girl. If Francis liked England for the
     sake of being with old friends, he might live here very
     comfortably, but if he _will_ live as those who can afford to make
     a show, for one year of parade in England he must be a banished man
     for many years. I wish he would be as 'domestic' at home as he is
     abroad!"

In the summer of 1832 all the family went to Baden-Baden, to meet Lady
Paul and her daughter Eleanor, Sir John, the FitzGeralds, and the
Bankheads. All the branches of Mrs. Hare's family lived in different
houses, but they met daily for dinner, and were very merry. Before the
autumn, my father returned to Italy, to the Villa Cittadella near Lucca,
which was taken for two months for Mrs. Hare's confinement, and there,
on the 9th of October, my sister was born. She received the names of
"Anne Frances Maria Louisa." "Do you mean your [Greek: polnônumos or
poluônumos]] daughter to rival Venus in all her other qualities as well
as in the multitude of her names? or has your motive been rather to
recommend her to a greater number of patron saints?" wrote my uncle
Julius on hearing of her birth. Just before this, Mrs. Shelley (widow of
the poet and one of her most intimate friends) had written to Mrs.
Hare:--

     "Your accounts of your child (Francis) give me very great pleasure.
     Dear little fellow, what an amusement and delight he must be to
     you. You do indeed understand a Paradisaical life. Well do I
     remember the dear Lucca baths, where we spent morning and evening
     in riding about the country--the most prolific place in the world
     for all manner of reptiles. Take care of yourself, dearest
     friend.... Choose Naples for your winter residence. Naples, with
     its climate, its scenery, its opera, its galleries, its natural
     and ancient wonders, surpasses every other place in the world. Go
     thither, and live on the Chiaja. Happy one, how I envy you. Percy
     is in brilliant health and promises better and better.

     "Have you plenty of storms at dear beautiful Lucca? Almost every
     day when I was there, vast white clouds peeped out from above the
     hills--rising higher and higher till they overshadowed us, and
     spent themselves in rain and tempest: the thunder, re-echoed again
     and again by the hills, is indescribably terrific.... Love me, and
     return to us--Ah! return to us! for it is all very stupid and
     unamiable without you. For are not  you--

    'That cordial drop Heaven in our cup had thrown,
    To make the nauseous draught of life go down.'"

After a pleasant winter at Naples, my father and his family went to pass
the summer of 1833 at Castellamare. "C'était à Castellamare" (says a
note by Madame Victoire) "que Madame Hare apprit la mort de Lady Paul.
Elle était sur le balcon, quand elle la lut dans le journal. J'étais
dans une partie de la maison très éloignée, mais j'ai entendu un cri si
fort, si aigu, que je suis arrivée de suite, et je trouvais Madame Hare
toute étendue sur le parquet. J'appellais--'Au secours, au secours,' et
Félix, qui était très fort, prenait Madame Hare dans ses bras, et
l'apportait à mettre sur son lit, et nous l'avons donné tant des choses,
mais elle n'est pas revenue, et elle restait pendant deux heures en cet
état. Quand M. Hare est entré, il pensait que c'était à cause de sa
grossesse. Il s'est agenouillé tout en pleurs à coté de son lit. Il
demandait si je lui avais donné des lettres. 'Mais, non, monsieur; je ne
l'ai pas donné qu'un journal.' On cherchait longtemps ce journal,
parcequ'elle l'avait laissé tomber du balcon, mais quand il était
trouvé, monsieur s'est aperçu tout de suite de ce qu'elle avait." The
death of Lady Paul was very sudden; her sister Lady Ravensworth first
heard of it when calling to inquire at the door in the Strand in her
carriage. After expressing her sympathy in the loss of such a mother,
Mrs. Louisa Shipley at this time wrote to Mrs. Hare:--

     "I will now venture to call your attention to the blessings you
     possess in your husband and children, and more particularly to the
     occupation of your thoughts in the education of the latter. They
     are now at an age when it depends on a mother to lay the foundation
     of principles which they will carry with them through life. The
     responsibility is great, and if you feel it such, there cannot be a
     better means of withdrawing your mind from unavailing sorrow, than
     the hope of seeing them beloved and respected, and feeling that
     your own watchfulness of their early years, has, by the blessing of
     God, caused them to be so. Truth is the cornerstone of all virtues:
     never let a child think it can deceive you; they are cunning
     little creatures, and reason before they can speak; secure this,
     and the chief part of your work is done, and so ends my sermon."

It was in the summer of 1833, following upon her mother's death, that a
plan was first arranged by which my aunt Eleanor Paul became an inmate
of my father's household--the kind and excellent aunt whose devotion in
all times of trouble was afterwards such a blessing to her sister and
her children. Neither at first or ever afterwards was the residence of
Eleanor Paul any expense in her sister's household: quite the contrary,
as she had a handsome allowance from her father, and afterwards
inherited a considerable fortune from an aunt.

In the autumn of 1833 my father rented the beautiful Villa Strozzi at
Rome, then standing in large gardens of its own facing the grounds of
the noble old Villa Negroni, which occupied the slope of the Viminal
Hill looking towards the Esquiline. Here on the 13th of March 1834 I was
born--the youngest child of the family, and a most unwelcome addition to
the population of this troublesome world, as both my father and Mrs.
Hare were greatly annoyed at the birth of another child, and beyond
measure disgusted that it was another son.




II

CHILDHOOD

1834-1843

        "Sweete home, where meane estate
    In safe assurance, without strife or hate,
    Findes all things needfull for contentment meeke."--SPENSER.

     "Is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and best some of the
     child's heart left to respond to its earliest enchantments?"--C.
     LAMB.

    "I cannot paint to Memory's eye
        The scene, the glance, I dearest love;
    Unchanged themselves, in me they die,
        Or faint, or false, their shadows prove."--KEBLE.

    "Ce sont là les séjours, les sites, les rivages,
    Dont mon âme attendrie évoque les images,
    Et dont, pendant les nuits, mes songes les plus beaux
    Pour enchanter mes yeux composent leurs tableaux."--LAMARTINE.


Maria Leycester had been married to my uncle Augustus Hare in June 1829.
In their every thought and feeling they were united, and all early
associations had combined to fit them more entirely for each other's
companionship. A descendant of one of the oldest families in Cheshire,
Miss Leycester's childhood and youth had been spent almost entirely in
country rectories, but in such rectories as are rarely to be found, and
which prove that the utmost intellectual refinement and an interest in
all that is remarkable and beautiful in this world are not incompatible
with the highest aspirations after a Christian and a heavenly life. Her
father, Oswald Leycester, Rector of Stoke-upon-Terne in Shropshire, was
a finished scholar, had travelled much, and was the most agreeable of
companions. Her only sister, seven years older than herself, was married
when very young to Edward Stanley, Rector of Alderley, and afterwards
Bishop of Norwich, well known for the picturesqueness of his imaginative
powers, for his researches in Natural History, and for that sympathy
with all things bright and pleasant which preserved in him the spirit of
youth quite to the close of life. Her most intimate friend, and the
voluntary preceptor of her girlhood, had been the gifted Reginald Heber,
who, before his acceptance of the Bishopric of Calcutta, had lived as
Rector of Hodnet--the poet-rector--within two miles of her home.

One of the happy circle which constantly met at Hodnet Rectory, she had
known Augustus Hare (first-cousin of Mrs. Heber, who was a daughter of
Dean Shipley) since she was eighteen. Later interests and their common
sorrow in Heber's death had thrown them closely together, and it would
scarcely have been possible for two persons to have proved each other's
characters more thoroughly than they had done, before the time of their
marriage, which was not till Maria Leycester was in her thirty-first
year.

Four years of perfect happiness were permitted them--years spent almost
entirely in the quiet of their little rectory in the singularly small
parish of Alton Barnes amid the Wiltshire downs, where the inhabitants,
less than two hundred in number, living close at each other's doors,
around two or three small pastures, grew to regard Augustus Hare and his
wife with the affection of children for their parents. So close was the
tie which united them, that, when the rich family living of
Hurstmonceaux fell vacant on the death of our great-uncle Robert,
Augustus Hare could not bear to leave his little Alton, and implored my
father to persuade his brother Julius to give up his fellowship at
Trinity and to take it instead.

     "Having lived but little in the country, and his attention having
     been engrossed by other subjects, Augustus Hare was, from education
     and habits of life, unacquainted with the character and wants of
     the poor. The poverty of their minds, their inability to follow a
     train of reasoning, their prejudices and superstitions, were quite
     unknown to him. All the usual hindrances to dealing with them, that
     are commonly ascribed to a college life, were his in full force.
     But his want of experience and knowledge touching the minds and
     habits of the poor were overcome by the love he felt towards all
     his fellow-creatures, and his sympathy in all their concerns. In
     earlier days this Christ-like mind had manifested itself towards
     his friends, towards servants, towards all with whom he was brought
     in contact. It now taught him to talk to his poor parishioners and
     enter into their interests with the feeling of a father and a
     friend.... He had the power of throwing himself out of himself into
     the interests and feelings of others; nor did he less draw out
     their sympathies into his own, and make them sharers in his
     pleasures and his concerns. It was not only the condescension of a
     superior to those over whom he was placed, it was far more the
     mutual interchange of feeling of one who loved to forget the
     difference of station to which each was called, and to bring
     forward the brotherly union as members of one family in Christ,
     children of the same Heavenly Father, in which blessed equality all
     distinctions are done away. Often would he ask their counsel in
     matters of which he was ignorant, and call upon their sympathy in
     his thankful rejoicing. His garden, his hayfield, his house, were
     as it were thrown open to them, as he made them partakers of his
     enjoyment, or sought for their assistance in his need.... The one
     pattern ever before his eyes was his Lord and Master Jesus Christ;
     the first question he asked himself, 'What would Jesus Christ have
     me to do? What would He have done in my place?'

     "Perfect contentedness with what was appointed for him, and deep
     thankfulness for all the good things given him, marked his whole
     being. In deciding what should be done, or where he should go, or
     how he should act, the question of how far it might suit his own
     convenience, or be agreeable to his own feelings, was kept entirely
     in the background till all other claims were satisfied. It was not
     apparently at the dictate of duty and reason that these thoughts
     were suppressed and made secondary: it seemed to be the first, the
     natural feeling in him, to seek first the things of others and to
     do the will of God, and to look at his own interest in the matter
     as having comparatively nothing to do with it. And so great a dread
     had he of being led to any selfish or interested views, that he
     would find consolation in having no family to include in the
     consideration--'Had I had children I might have fancied it an
     excuse for worldly-mindedness and covetousness.' His children truly
     were his fellow-men, those who were partakers of the same flesh and
     blood, redeemed by the same Saviour, heirs of the same heavenly
     inheritance. For them he was willing to spend and be spent, for
     them he was _covetous_ of all the good that might be obtained....
     He was never weary in well-doing, never thought he had done enough,
     never feared doing too much. Those small things, which by so many
     are esteemed as unnecessary, as _not worth while_, these were the
     very things he took care not to leave undone. It was not rendering
     a service when it came _in_ his way, when it occurred in the
     natural course of things that he should do it; it was going _out_
     of the way to help others, taking every degree of trouble and
     incurring personal inconvenience for the sake of doing good, of
     giving pleasure even in slight things, that distinguished his
     benevolent activity from the common form of it. The love that dwelt
     in him was ready to be poured forth on whomsoever needed it, and
     being a free-will offering, it looked for no return, and felt no
     obligation conferred."

I have copied these fragments from the portrait which Augustus Hare's
widow drew of his ministerial life,[10] because they afford the best
clue to the way in which that life influenced hers, drawing her away
from earth and setting her affections in heavenly places. And yet,
though in one sense the life of Augustus Hare and his wife at Alton was
one of complete seclusion, in another sense there were few who lived
more for, or who had more real communion with, the scattered members of
their family. Mrs. Stanley and her children, with her brother Mr.
Penrhyn[11] and his wife, were sharers by letter in every trifling
incident which affected their sister's life; and with his favourite
brother Julius, Augustus Hare never slackened his intellectual
intercourse and companionship. But even more than these was Lucy Anne
Stanley,[12] the life-long friend of Maria Hare, till, in the summer of
1833, the tie of sisterhood, which had always existed in feeling, became
a reality, through her marriage with Marcus Hare, the youngest of the
four brothers.

A chill which Augustus Hare caught when he was in Cheshire for his
brother's marriage, was the first cause of his fatal illness. It was
soon after considered necessary that he should spend the winter abroad
with his wife, and it was decided that they should accompany Marcus and
Lucy Hare to Rome. At Genoa the illness of Augustus became alarming, but
he reached Rome, and there he expired on the 14th of February 1834, full
of faith and hope, and comforting those who surrounded him to the last.

My father felt his brother's loss deeply. They had little in common on
many points, yet the close tie of brotherhood, which had existed
between them from early days at Bologna, was such as no difference of
opinion could alter, no time or absence weaken. When Augustus was laid
to rest at the foot of the pyramid of Caius Cestius, my father's most
earnest wish was to comfort his widowed sister-in-law, and in the hope
of arousing an interest which might still give some semblance of an
earthly tie to one who seemed then upon the very borderland of heaven,
he entreated, when I was born in the following month, that she would
become my godmother, promising that she should be permitted to influence
my future in any way she pleased, and wishing that I should be called
Augustus after him she had lost.

I was baptized on the 1st of April in the Villa Strozzi, by Mr. Burgess.
The widow of Augustus held me in her arms, and I received the names of
"Augustus John Cuthbert," the two last from my godfathers (the old Sir
John Paul and Mr. Cuthbert Ellison), who never did anything for me, the
first from my godmother, to whom I owe everything in the world.

[Illustration: Augustus J. C. Hare.

And his nurse Lucia Cecinelli.]

Soon afterwards, my godmother returned to England, with her faithful
maid Mary Lea, accompanied by the Marcus Hares. She had already decided
to fix her future home in the parish of Julius, who, more than any
other, was a fellow-mourner with her. As regarded me, nothing more
than the tie of a godmother had to that time been thought of; but in the
quiet hours of her long return journey to England, while sadly looking
forward to the solitary future before her, it occurred to Augustus
Hare's widow as just possible that my parents might be induced to give
me up to her altogether, to live with her as her own child. In July she
wrote her petition, and was almost surprised at the glad acceptance it
met with. Mrs. Hare's answer was very brief--"My dear Maria, how very
kind of you! Yes, certainly, the baby shall be sent as soon as it is
weaned; and, if any one else would like one, would you kindly recollect
that we have others."

Yet my adopting mother had stipulated that I was to be altogether hers;
that my own relations were henceforward to have no claim over me
whatever; that her parents were to be regarded as my grandparents, her
brother and sister as my uncle and aunt.

Meantime my father took his family for the hot summer months to one of
the lovely villas on the high spurs of volcanic hill, which surround
picturesque romantic Siena. They had none of the English society to
which they had been accustomed at Lucca Baths and at Castellamare, but
the Siennese are celebrated for their hospitality, and my father's
talents, famous then throughout Italy, ensured him a cordial welcome
amongst the really cultivated circle which met every evening in the old
mediæval palaces of the native nobility. Of English, they had the
society of Mr. and Mrs. Bulwer, who were introduced by Landor, while
constant intercourse with Landor himself was one of the chief pleasures
which the family enjoyed during this and many succeeding years. With
Francis Hare he laid the plan of many of his writings, and in his
judgment and criticism he had the greatest confidence. To this he
alludes in his little poem of "Sermonis Propriora:"--

    "Little do they who glibly talk of vrese
    Know what they talk about, and what is worse,
    Think they are judges if they dare to pass
    Sentence on higher heads.

                              The mule and ass
    Know who have made them what they are, and heed
    Far from the neighing of the generous steed.
    Gell, Drummond, Hare, and wise and witty Ward
    Knew at first sight and sound the genuine bard,
    But the street hackneys, fed on nosebag bran,
    Assail the poet, and defame the man."

After another winter at Rome, the family went to Lausanne, and thence
my father, with my beautiful Albanese nurse, Lucia Cecinelli, took me to
meet Mrs. Gayford, the English nurse sent out to fetch me by my adopted
mother from Mannheim on the Rhine. There the formal exchange took place
which gave me a happy and loving home. I saw my father afterwards, but
he seldom noticed me. Many years afterwards I knew Mrs. Hare well and
had much to do with her; but I have never at any time spoken to her or
of her as a "mother," and I have never in any way regarded her as such.
She gave me up wholly and entirely. She renounced every claim upon me,
either of affection or interest. I was sent over to England with a
little green carpet-bag containing two little white night-shirts and a
red coral necklace--my whole trousseau and patrimony. At the same time
it was indicated that if the Marcus Hares should also wish to adopt a
child, my parents had another to dispose of: my second brother William
had never at any time any share in their affections.

On reaching England I was sent first to my cousin the Dowager Countess
of Strathmore, and from her house was taken (in the coach) by Mrs.
Gayford to my mother--my real only mother from henceforth--at
Hurstmonceaux Rectory, which at that time was as much a palace of art,
from its fine collection of pictures and books, as a country rectory
could be.

My adopted mother always used to say that the story of Hannah reminded
her of the way in which I was given to her. She believed it was in
answer to a prayer of my uncle Augustus in the cathedral at Chalons,
when he dropped some money into a box "pour les femmes enceintes,"
because he knew how much she wished to have a child. His eldest
brother's wife was then _enceinte_, and I was born soon afterwards.

[Illustration: HURSTMONCEAUX RECTORY.]


     _From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

     "On Tuesday, August 26, 1835, my little Augustus came to me. It was
     about four o'clock when I heard a cry from upstairs and ran up.
     There was the dear child seated on Mary's (Mary Lea's) knee,
     without a frock. He smiled most sweetly and with a peculiar
     archness of expression as I went up to him, and there was no
     shyness. When dressed, I brought him down into the drawing-room: he
     looked with great delight at the pictures, the busts, and
     especially the bronze wolf--pointed at them, then looked round at
     Jule and me. When set down, he strutted along the passage, went
     into every room, surveyed all things in it with an air of
     admiration and importance, and nothing seemed to escape
     observation. The novelty of all around and the amusement he found
     at first seemed to make him forget our being strangers. The next
     day he was a little less at home. His features are much formed and
     an uncommon intelligence of countenance gives him an older look
     than his age: his dark eyes and eyelashes, well-formed nose and
     expressive mouth make his face a very pretty one; but he has at
     present but little hair and that very straight and light. His limbs
     are small and he is very thin and light, but holds himself very
     erect. He can run about very readily, and within a week after
     coming could get upstairs by himself. In talking, he seems to be
     backward, and except a few words and noises of animals, nothing is
     intelligible. Number seems to be a great charm to him--a great many
     apples, and acorns to be put in and out of a basket. He has great
     delight in flowers, but is good in only smelling at those in the
     garden, gathers all he can pick up in the fields, and generally has
     his hands full of sticks or weeds when he is out. He wants to be
     taught obedience, and if his way is thwarted or he cannot
     immediately have what he wants, he goes into a violent fit of
     passion. Sometimes it is soon over and he laughs again directly,
     but if it goes on he will roll and scream on the floor for
     half-an-hour together. In these cases we leave him without
     speaking, as everything adds to the irritation, and he must find
     out it is useless. But if by _prevention_ such a fit may be avoided
     it is better, and Mary Lea is very ingenious in her preventing."


     "_Oct. 3._--Augustus improves in obedience already. His great
     delight is in throwing his playthings into a jug or tub of water.
     Having been told not to do so in my room, he will walk round the
     tub when full, look at Mary, then at me, and then at the tub with a
     most comical expression, but if called away before too long will
     resist the temptation. He is very impatient, but sooner quiet than
     at first: and a tear in one eye and a smile in the other is usually
     to be seen. His great delight lately has been picking up mushrooms
     in the fields and filling his basket."

It was in October that my mother moved from the Rectory to Lime--our
own dear home for the next five-and-twenty years. Those who visit
Hurstmonceaux now can hardly imagine Lime as it then was, all is so
changed. The old white gabled house, with clustered chimneys and roofs
rich in colour, rose in a brilliant flower-garden sheltered on every
side by trees, and separated in each direction by several fields from
the highroad or the lanes. On the side towards the Rectory, a drive
between close walls of laurel led to the old-fashioned porch which
opened into a small low double hall. The double drawing-room and the
dining-room, admirably proportioned, though small, looked across the
lawn, and one of the great glistening pools which belonged to an old
monastery (once on the site of the house), and which lay at the foot of
a very steep bank carpeted with primroses in spring. Beyond the pool was
our high field, over which the stumpy spire of the church could be seen,
at about a mile and a half distant, cutting the silver line of the sea.
The castle was in a hollow farther still and not visible. On the right
of the lawn a grass walk behind a shrubbery looked out upon the wide
expanse of Pevensey Level with its ever-varying lights and shadows, and
was sheltered by the immensely tall abele trees, known as "the Five
Sisters of Lime," which tossed their weird arms, gleaming silver-white,
far into the sky, and were a feature in all distant views of
Hurstmonceaux. On the left were the offices, and a sort of enclosed
court, where the dogs and cats used to play and some silver pheasants
were kept, and where my dear nurse Mary Lea used to receive the endless
poor applicants for charity and help, bringing in their many complaints
to my mother with inimitable patience, though they were too exclusively
self-contained to be ever the least grateful to her, always regarding
and speaking of her and John Gidman, the butler, as "furriners, folk
from the shires."

[Illustration: LIME.]

No description can give an idea of the complete seclusion of the life at
Lime, of the silence which was only broken by the cackling of the
poultry or the distant threshing in the barn, for the flail, as well as
the sickle and scythe, were then in constant use at Hurstmonceaux, where
oxen--for all agricultural purposes--occupied the position which horses
hold now. No sound from the "world," in its usually accepted sense,
would ever have penetrated, if it had not been for the variety of
literary guests who frequented the Rectory, and one or other of whom
constantly accompanied my uncle Julius when he came down, as he did
every day of his life, to his sister-in-law's quiet six-o'clock dinner,
returning at about eight. Of guests in our house itself there were very
few, and always the same--the Norwich Stanleys; Miss Clinton, a dear
friend of my mother; after a time the Maurices, and Mr. and Mrs.
Pile--an Alton farmer of the better class, and his excellent wife: but
there was never any variety. Yet in my boyhood I never thought it dull,
and loved Lime with passionate devotion. Even in earliest childhood my
dearest mother treated me completely as her companion, creating
interests and amusements for me in all the natural things around, and
making me so far a sharer in her own spiritual thoughts, that I have
always felt a peculiar truthfulness in Wordsworth's line--

    "Heaven lies about us in our infancy."

If my mother was occupied, there was always my dear "Lea" at hand, with
plenty of farmhouse interests to supply, and endless homely stories of
country life.


     _From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

     "_Lime, Oct. 23, 1835._--My little Augustus was much astonished by
     the change of house, and clung to me at first as if afraid of
     moving away. The first evening he kissed me over and over again, as
     if to comfort and assure me of his affection."

     "_Nov. 21._--Augustus has grown much more obedient, and is ready to
     give his food or playthings to others. Some time ago he was much
     delighted with the sight of the moon, and called out 'moon, moon,'
     quite as if he could not help it. Next day he ran to the window to
     look for it, and has ever since talked of it repeatedly. At
     Brighton he called the lamps in the streets 'moon,' and the
     reflection of the candles or fire on the window he does the same.
     He is always merriest and most amiable when without playthings: his
     mind is then free to act for itself and finds its own amusement;
     and in proportion as his playthings are artificial and leave him
     nothing to do, he quarrels or gets tired of them. He takes great
     notice of anything of art--the flowers on the china and plates, and
     all kinds of pictures."


     "_Stoke Rectory, Jan. 7, 1836._--During our stay with the Penrhyns
     at Sheen, Baby was so much amused by the variety of persons and
     things to attract attention, that he grew very impatient and
     fretful if contradicted. Since we have been at Stoke he has been
     much more gentle and obedient, scarcely ever cries and amuses
     himself on the floor. He is greatly amused by his Grandpapa's
     playful motions and comical faces, and tries to imitate them. When
     the school children are singing below, he puts up his forefinger
     when listening and begins singing with his little voice, which is
     very sweet. He will sit on the bed and talk in his own way for a
     long time, telling about what he has seen if he has been out: his
     little mind seems to be working without any visible thing before
     it, on what is absent."


     "_Alderley, March 13._--My dear boy's birthday, two years old. He
     has soon become acquainted with his Alderley relations,[13] and
     learnt to call them by name. He has grown very fond of 'Aunt
     Titty,' and the instant she goes to her room follows her and asks
     for the brush to brush the rocking-horse and corn to feed it. His
     fits of passion are as violent, but not so long in duration, as
     ever. When he was roaring and kicking with all his might and I
     could scarcely hold him, I said--'It makes Mama very sorry to see
     Baby so naughty.' He instantly stopped, threw his arms round my
     neck, and sobbed out--'Baby lub Mama--good.' When I have once had a
     struggle with him to do a thing, he always recollects, and does it
     next time."


     "_Lime, June 13._--On the journey from Stoke to London, Baby was
     very much delighted with the primroses in the hedgerows, and his
     delight in the fields when we got home was excessive. He knows the
     name of every flower both in garden and field, and never forgets
     any he has once seen.... When he sees me hold my hand to my head,
     he says, 'Mama tired--head bad--Baby play self.'"


     "_July 9._--Baby can now find his way all over the house, goes up
     and down stairs alone and about the lawn and garden quite
     independently, and enjoys the liberty of going in and out of the
     windows: runs after butterflies or to catch his own shadow: picks
     up flowers or leaves, and is the picture of enjoyment and
     happiness. Tumbling out of the window yesterday, when the fright
     was over, he looked up--'Down comes Baby and cradle and all.' He
     tells the kitten 'not touch this or that,' and me 'not make noise,
     Pussy's head bad.'"


     "_Sept. 28._--The sea-bathing at Eastbourne always frightened Baby
     before he went in. He would cling to Mary and be very nervous till
     the women had dipped him, and then, in the midst of his sobs from
     the shock, would sing 'Little Bo Peep,' to their great amusement.
     He was very happy throwing stones in the water and picking up
     shells; but above all he enjoyed himself on Beachy Head, the fresh
     air and turf seemed to exhilarate him as much as any one, and the
     picking purple thistles and other down flowers was a great
     delight.... His pleasure in returning home and seeing the flowers
     he had left was very great. He talks of them as if they were his
     playmates, realising Keble's--'In childhood's sports, _companions_
     gay.'"


     "_Oct. 17._--After dinner to-day, on being told to thank God for
     his good dinner, he would not do it, though usually he does it the
     first thing on having finished. I would not let him get out of his
     chair, which enraged him, and he burst into a violent passion.
     Twice, when this abated, I went to him and tried, partly by
     encouragement, partly by positively insisting on it, to bring him
     to obedience. Each time I took him up from the floor, he writhed on
     the floor again with passion, screaming as loud as he could. After
     a while, when I had left him and gone into the drawing-room, he
     came along the walk and went back again two or three times as if
     not having courage to come in, then at last came and hid his face
     in my lap. I carried him back to the dining-room and put him in his
     chair and talked to him about his dinner, did not he love God for
     giving him so many good things, and I knelt by him and prayed God
     to forgive him for being so naughty and to take away the naughty
     spirit. All the time he was struggling within himself,
     half-sobbing, half-smiling with effort--'I can't say it'--and then,
     after a time, 'Mama thanks God for Baby's good dinner.' 'No,' I
     said, 'Baby must do it for himself.' Still he resisted. At length
     on getting down from the chair he said, 'Kneel down under
     table'--and there at last he said, 'Thank God for Baby's good
     dinner,' and in a minute all the clouds were gone and sunshine
     returned to his face. The whole struggle lasted I suppose
     half-an-hour. In a few minutes after he was calling me 'Mama dear'
     and as merry as ever."


     "_Stoke Rectory, Nov. 26._--Baby asks 'Who made the dirt? Jesus
     Christ?' It is evident that he has not the slightest notion of any
     difference between the nature of God and any man, or between Heaven
     and London or any name of a place. Perhaps in this simplicity and
     literality of belief he comes nearer the truth than we in the
     sophistications and subtilties of our reasonings on such things:
     but the great difficulty is to impress awe and reverence for a holy
     and powerful Being, and to give the dread and serious sense of
     being under His eye, without a slavish fear and distance.

     "He always asks when he sees my Bible--'Mama reading about Adam and
     Eve and Jesus Christ?'--a union of the two grand subjects, very
     unconsciously coming to the truth."


     "_Jan. 16, 1837._--Time is as yet a very indistinct impression on
     Baby's mind. Going round the field, he gathered some buttercups. I
     said, 'Leave the rest till to-morrow.' When we returned the same
     way, he asked, 'Is it to-morrow now?' ... After a violent passion
     the other day he looked up--'Will Jesus Christ be shocked?' He
     comes often and says--'Will 'ou pray God to make little Augustus
     good?' and asks to 'pray with Mama.'

     "The other day he said--'My eyes are pretty.' 'Oh yes,' I said,
     'they are, and so are Mama's and Na's.'--'And Grandpapa's and
     Grannie's too?'--'Yes, they are all pretty, nothing so pretty as
     eyes.' And I have heard no more of it.

     "'Look, Mama,' he says, 'there is a bird flying up to God.'--'Where
     have you been to, Baby?'--'To a great many wheres.' He visits all
     the flowers in Grannie's garden, quite as anxiously as if they were
     living beings, and that quite without any hope of possessing them,
     as he is never allowed to gather any. He puts the different flowers
     together--and invents names for them--Hep--poly--primrose, &c. He
     also talks to animals and flowers as if they were conscious, and in
     this way creates constant amusement for himself: but the illusion
     is so strong he hardly seems to separate it from fact, and it
     becomes increasingly necessary to guard against the confusion of
     truth and error."

Children are said seldom to remember things which happen when they are
three years old; but I have a distinct recollection of being at my
mother's early home of Toft in Cheshire during this spring of 1837, and
of the charm, of which children are so conscious, of the Mrs. Leycester
("Toft Grannie"--my mother's first cousin) who lived there. I also
recollect the great dog at Alderley, and being whipped by "Uncle Ned"
(Edward Stanley) at the gate of the Dutch garden for breaking off a
branch of mezereon when I was told not to touch it. Indeed I am not sure
whether these recollections are not of a year before, in which I
distinctly remember a terrible storm at Lime, when Kate Stanley was with
us, seeing a great acacia-tree torn up by the roots and hurled against
the drawing-room window, smashing all before it, and the general panic
and flight that ensued. Otherwise my earliest impressions of
Hurstmonceaux are all of the primroses on the Lime bank--the sheets of
golden stars everywhere, and the tufts of pure white primroses which
grew in one particular spot, where the bank was broken away under an old
apple-tree. Then of my intense delight in being taken in a punt to the
three islets on the pond--Mimulus Island, Tiny and Wee; and of the
excessive severity of Uncle Julius, who had the very sharpest possible
way of speaking to children, even when he meant to be kind to them.
Every evening, like clockwork, he appeared at six to dine with my
mother, and walked home after coffee at eight. How many of their
conversations, which I was supposed neither to hear or understand, have
come back to me since like echoes: strange things for a child to
remember--about the Fathers, and Tract XC., and a great deal about hymns
and hymn-tunes--"Martyrdom," "Irish," "Abridge," &c.; for an organ was
now put into the church, in place of the band, in which the violin never
could keep time with the other instruments. Sir George Dasent has told
me how he was at Hurstmonceaux then, staying with the Simpkinsons.
Arthur Stanley was at the Rectory as a pupil, and he asked Arthur how he
liked this new organ. "Well," he said, "it is not so bad as most organs,
for it does not make so much sound." Uncle Julius preached about it,
altering a text into "What went ye out for to hear."

A child who lives much with its elders is almost certain to find out
what it is most intended to conceal from it. If possible it had better
be confided in. I knew exactly what whispers referred to a certain dark
passage in the history of the Rectory before Uncle Julius's time--"il y
avait un crime"--and I never rested till I found it out. It was about
this time that I remember Uncle Julius going into one of his violently
demonstrative furies over what he considered the folly of "Montgomery's
Poems," and his flinging the book to the other end of the room in his
rage with it, and my wondering what would be done to me if I ever dared
to be "as naughty as Uncle Jule."


     _From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

     "_Lime, June 20, 1837._--Augustus was very ill in coming through
     London.... Seeing Punch one day from the window, he was greatly
     amused by it, and laughed heartily. Next day I told him I had seen
     Punch and Judy again. 'No, Mama, you can't have seen Judy, for she
     was killed yesterday.' On getting home he was much pleased, and
     remembered every place perfectly. Great is his delight over every
     new flower as it comes out, and his face was crimsoned over as he
     called to me to see 'little Cistus come out.' At night, in his
     prayers he said--'Bless daisies, bluebells,' &c.... I have found
     speaking of the power exercised by Jesus Christ in calming the wind
     a means of leading him to view Christ as God, which I felt the want
     of in telling him of Christ's childhood and human
     kindness,--showing how miraculous demonstration is adapted to
     childhood."

I have a vivid recollection of my long illness in Park Street, and of
the miserable confinement in London. It was just at that time that my
Uncle Edward Stanley was offered the Bishopric of Norwich. His family
were all "in a terrible taking," as they used to call that sort of
emotion, as to whether it should be accepted or not, and when the matter
was settled they were almost worse--not my aunt, nothing ever agitated
her, but the rest of them. Mary and Kate came, with floods of tears, to
tell my mother they were to leave Alderley. My Uncle Penrhyn met Mary
Stanley coming down our staircase, quite convulsed with weeping, and
thought that I was dead.

When I was better, in the spring, we went to my Uncle Penrhyn's at East
Sheen. One day I went into Mortlake with my nurse Mary Lea. In
returning, a somewhat shabby carriage passed us, with one or two
outriders, and an old gentleman inside. When we reached the house, Lea
asked old Mills, the butler, who it was. "Only 'Silly Billy,'" he said.
It was King William IV., who died in the following June. He had
succeeded to the sobriquet which had been applied to his cousin and
brother-in-law, William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, who died in 1834.

John Sterling had been living at Hurstmonceaux for several years as my
uncle's curate, and was constantly at Lime or the Rectory. I vividly
recollect how pleasant (and handsome) he was. My mother used to talk to
him for hours together and he was very fond of her. With Mrs. Sterling
lived her sister Annie Barton, whom I remember as a very sweet and
winning person. During this summer, Frederick Maurice, a Cambridge pupil
of my uncle's, came to visit him, and confessed his attachment to her.
There were many obstacles to their marriage, of which I am ignorant; but
my mother was always in favour of it, and did much to bring it about. I
recollect Annie Barton as often sitting on a stool at my mother's feet.

On our way to Stoke in the preceding autumn, we had diverged to visit
Frederick Maurice at his tiny curacy of Bubnell near Leamington. With
him lived his sister Priscilla, for whom my mother formed a great
friendship, which, beginning chiefly on religious grounds, was often a
great trial to her, as Priscilla Maurice, with many fine qualities and
great cleverness, was one of the most exacting persons I have ever
known. I am conscious of course now of what fretted me unconsciously
then, the entire difference of class, and consequent difference in the
measurement of people and things, between the Maurices and those my
mother had been accustomed to associate with, and of their injurious
effect upon my mother herself, in inducing her to adopt their peculiar
phraseology, especially with regard to religious things. They persuaded
her to join in their tireless search after the motes in their brother's
eyes, and urged a more intensified life of contemplative rather than
active piety, which abstracted her more than ever from earthly
interests, and really marred for a time her influence and usefulness.
The Maurice sisters were the first of the many so-called "religious"
people I have known, who did not seem to realise that Christianity is
rather action than thought; not a system, but a life.

It must have been soon after this that Frederick Maurice moved to
London, and our visits to London were henceforth for several years
generally paid to his stuffy chaplain's house at Guy's, where, as I
could not then appreciate my host, I was always intensely miserable,
and, though a truly good man, Frederick Maurice was not, as I thought,
an attractive one. What books have since called "the noble and pathetic
monotone"[14] of his life, which was "like the burden of a Gregorian
chaunt," describes him exactly, but was extremely depressing. He
maundered over his own humility in a way which--even to a child--did not
seem humble, and he was constantly lost mentally in the labyrinth of
religious mysticisms which he was ever creating for himself. In all he
said, as in all he wrote, there was a nebulous vagueness. "I sometimes
fancy," "I almost incline to believe," "I seem to think," were the
phrases most frequently on his lips. When he preached before the
University of Cambridge to a church crowded with dons and
undergraduates, they asked one another as they came out, "What was it
all about?" He may have sown ideas, but, if they bore any fruits, other
people reaped them.[15] Still his innate goodness brought him great
devotion from his friends. Amongst those whom I recollect constantly
seeing at Guy's, a man in whose society my mother found much pleasure,
was John Alexander Scott, whom Mrs. Kemble describes as being mentally
one of the most influential persons she had ever known.

Priscilla Maurice henceforward generally came to Lime soon after our
annual return from Shropshire, and usually spent several months there,
arriving armed with plans for the "reformation of the parish," and a
number of blank books, some ruled in columns for parochial visitation,
and others in which the names of all communicants were entered and
preserved, so as to make the reprobation of absentees more easy at
Hurstmonceaux.

As she established her footing, she frequently brought one of her many
sisters with her: amongst them Esther Maurice, who at that time kept a
ladies' school at Reading. Priscilla, I believe, afterwards regretted
the introduction of Esther, who was much more attractive than herself,
and in course of time entirely displaced her in my mother's affections.
"Priscilla is like silver, but Esther is like gold," I remember my
mother saying to Uncle Julius. Of the two, I personally preferred
Priscilla, but both were a fearful scourge to my childhood, and so
completely poisoned my life at Hurstmonceaux, that I looked to the
winters spent at Stoke for everything that was not aggressively
unpleasant.

Little child as I was, my feeling about the Maurices was a great bond
between me and my aunt Lucy Hare, who, I am now certain, most cordially
shared my opinion at this time, though it was unexpressed by either.
Otherwise my Aunt Lucy was also already a frequent trial to my
child-life, as she was jealous for her little Marcus (born in 1836) of
any attention shown to me or any kindness I received. I felt in those
early days, and on looking back from middle life I know that I felt
justly, that my mother would often pretend to care for me less than she
did, and punish me far more frequently for very slight offences, in
order not to offend Aunt Lucy, and this caused me many bitter moments,
and outbursts of passionate weeping, little understood at the time. In
very early childhood, however, one pleasurable idea was connected with
my Aunt Lucy. In her letters she would desire that "Baby" might be
allowed to gather three flowers in the garden, any three he liked: the
extreme felicity of which permission that Baby recollects still--and the
anxious questionings with himself as to which the flowers should be.


     _From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

     "_Lime, July 24, 1837._--Augustus continually asks 'Why,' 'What is
     the reason.' If it be in reference to something he has been told to
     do, I never at the _time_ give him any other reason than simply
     that it is my will that he should do it. If it refers to something
     unconnected with practical obedience, it is right to satisfy his
     desire of knowledge as far as he can understand. Implicit faith and
     consequent obedience is the first duty to instil, and it behoves a
     parent to take care that a child may find full satisfaction for its
     instinctive moral sense of justice, in the consistency of conduct
     observed towards him; in the sure performance of every promise; in
     the firm but mild adherence to every command.

     "He asks, 'Is God blue?'--having heard that He lived above the
     sky."


     "_Stoke Rectory, Jan. 1, 1838._--On Christmas Day Augustus went to
     church for the first time with me. He was perfectly good and kept a
     chrysanthemum in his hand the whole time, keeping his eyes fixed on
     it when sitting down. Afterwards he said, 'Grandpapa looked just
     like Uncle Jule: he had his shirt (surplice) on.'

     "He has got on wonderfully in reading since I began to teach him
     words instead of syllables, and also learns German very quickly.

     "Having been much indulged by Mrs. Feilden (Mrs. Leycester's
     sister), he has become lately what Mary (Lea) calls rather
     'independent.' He is, however, easily knocked out of this
     self-importance by a little forbearance on my part not to indulge
     or amuse him, or allow him to have anything till he asks
     rightly.... There is a strong spirit of expecting to know the
     reason of a thing before he will obey or believe. This I am anxious
     to guard against, and often am reminded in dealing with him how
     analogous it is to God's dealing with us--'What thou knowest not
     now, thou shalt know hereafter.' Now he is to walk by faith, not by
     sight, not by _reason_."

     "_Lime, May 14, 1838._--Yesterday being Good Friday, I read to
     Augustus all he could understand about the Crucifixion. He was a
     little naughty, and I told him of it afterwards. 'But I was good
     all yesterday, won't that goodness do?' His delight over the
     flowers is as excessive as ever, but it is very necessary to guard
     against greediness in this."

     "_August 10._--Being told that he was never alone, God and Jesus
     Christ saw him, he said, 'God sees me, but Jesus Christ does
     not.'--'But they are both one.'--'Then how did John the Baptist
     pour water on His head, and how could He be crucified?' How
     difficult to a child's simple faith is the union of the two
     natures![16]

     "Two days ago at prayers he asked what I read to the servants, and
     being told the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, he said, 'I know what
     "Amen" means. It means, "It is done."'

     "_June 11._--Having knocked off a flower on a plant in the nursery,
     Lea asked how he could have done such a thing--'What tempted you to
     do such a thing?' He whispered--'I suppose it was Satan.'

     "Yesterday he told us his dream, that a beast had come out of a
     wood and eat him and Lea up; and Susan came to look for them and
     could not find them; then Mama prayed to God to open the beast's
     mouth, and He opened it, and they both came out safe.

     "One night, after being over-tired and excited by the Sterlings, he
     went to bed very naughty and screamed himself asleep. Next morning
     he woke crying, and being asked why he did so, sobbed out, 'Lea put
     me in bed and I could not finish last night: so I was obliged to
     finish this morning.'

     "Going up to London he saw the Thames. 'It can't be a river, it
     must be a pond, it is so large.' He called the sun in the midst of
     the London fog 'a swimming sun:' asked if the soldiers in the Park
     were 'looking out for the enemy.' 'Does God look through the
     keyhole?'

     "Two days ago, having been told to ask God to take away the
     naughtiness out of him, he said, "May I ask Jesus Christ to take
     away the naughtiness out of Satan? then (colouring he said it, and
     whispering) perhaps He will take him out of hell.'

     "On my birthday he told Lea at night, 'They all drank her health
     but Uncle Jule, and he loved her so much he could not say it.'"

I was now four years old, and I have a vivid recollection of all that
happened from this time--often a clearer remembrance than of things
which occurred last year. From this time I never had any playthings,
they were all banished to the loft, and, as I had no companions, I never
recollect a game of any kind or ever having played at anything. There
was a little boy of my own age called Philip Hunnisett, son of a
respectable poor woman who lived close to our gate, and whom my mother
often visited. I remember always longing to play with him, and once
trying to do so in a hayfield, to Lea's supreme indignation, and my
being punished for it, and never trying again. My mother now took me
with her every day when she went to visit the cottages, in which she was
ever a welcome guest, for it was not the lady, it was the woman who was
dear to their inmates, and, when listening to their interminable
histories and complaints, no one entered more into George Herbert's
feeling that "it is some relief to a poor body to be heard with
patience." Forty years afterwards a poor woman in Hurstmonceaux was
recalling to me the sweetness of my mother's sympathy, and told the
whole story when she said, "Yes, many other people have tried to be kind
to us; but then, you know, Mrs. Hare _loved_ us." Truly it was as if--

    "Christ had took in this piece of ground,
    And made a garden there for those
    Who want herbs for their wound."[17]

Whilst my mother was in the cottages, I remained outside and played with
the flowers in the ditches. There were three places whither I was always
most anxious that she should go--to Mrs. Siggery, the potter's widow,
where I had the delight of seeing all the different kinds of pots, and
the wet clay of which they were made: to "old Dame Cornford of the
river," by which name a tiny stream called "the Five Bells" was
dignified: and to a poor woman at "Foul Mile," where there was a ruined
arch (the top of a drain, I believe!) which I thought most romantic. We
had scarcely any visitors ("callers"), for there were scarcely any
neighbours, but our old family home of Hurstmonceaux Place was let to
Mr. Wagner (brother of the well-known "Vicar of Brighton"), and his wife
was always very kind to me, and gave me two little china mice, to which
I was quite devoted. His daughters, Annie and Emily, were very clever,
and played beautifully on the pianoforte and harp. The eldest son,
George, whose Memoirs have since been written, was a pale ascetic youth,
with the character of a mediæval saint, who used to have long religious
conversations with my mother, and--being very really in earnest--was
much and justly beloved by her. He was afterwards a most devoted
clergyman, being one of those who really have a "vocation," and probably
accomplished more practical good in his brief life than any other five
hundred parish priests taken at random. Of him truly Chaucer might have
said--

    "This noble sample to his sheep he gave,
    That first he wrought, and afterwards he taught."

From the earliest age I heartily detested Hurstmonceaux Rectory, because
it took me away from Lime, to which I was devoted, and brought me into
the presence of Uncle Julius, who frightened me out of my wits; but to
all rational and unprejudiced people the Rectory was at this time a very
delightful place. It is situated on a hill in a lonely situation two
miles from the church and castle, and more than a mile from any of the
five villages which were then included in the parish of Hurstmonceaux;
but it was surrounded by large gardens with fine trees, had a wide
distant view over levels and sea, and was in all respects externally
more like the house of a squire than a clergyman. Inside it was lined
with books from top to bottom: not only the living rooms, but the
passages and every available space in the bedrooms were walled with
bookcases from floor to ceiling, containing more than 14,000 works.
Most of these were German, but there were many very beautiful books upon
art in all languages, and many which, even as a child, I thought it very
delightful to look at. The only spaces not filled by books were occupied
by the beautiful pictures which my uncle had collected in Italy,
including a most exquisite Perugino, and fine works of Giorgione, Luini,
Giovanni da Udine, &c. I was especially attached to a large and glorious
picture by Paris Bordone of the Madonna and Child throned in a sort of
court of saints. I think my first intense love of colour came from the
study of that picture, which is now in the Museum at Cambridge; but my
uncle and mother did not care for this, preferring severer art. Uncle
Julius used to say that he constantly entertained in his drawing-room
seven Virgins, almost all of them more than three hundred years old. All
the pictures were to me as intimate friends, and I studied every detail
of their backgrounds, even of the dresses of the figures they portrayed:
they were also my constant comforters in the many miserable hours I even
then spent at the Rectory, where I was always utterly ignored, whilst
taken away from all my home employments and interests.

Most unpleasant figures who held a prominent place in these childish
years were my step-grandmother, Mrs. Hare Naylor, and her daughter
Georgiana. Mrs. H. Naylor had been beautiful in her youth, and still,
with snowwhite hair, was an extremely pretty _petite_ old lady. She was
suspicious, exacting, and jealous to a degree. If she once took an
impression of any one, it was impossible to eradicate, however utterly
false it might be. She was very deaf, and only heard through a long
trumpet. She would make the most frightful tirades against people,
especially my mother and other members of the family, bring the most
unpleasant accusations against them, and the instant they attempted to
defend themselves, she took down her trumpet. Thus she retired into a
social fortress, and heard no opinion but her own. I never recollect her
taking the wisest turn--that of making the best of us all. I have been
told that her daughter Georgiana was once a very pretty lively girl. I
only remember her a sickly discontented petulant woman. When she was
young, she was very fond of dancing, and once, at Bonn, she undertook to
dance the clock round. She performed her feat, but it ruined her health,
and she had to lie on her back for a year. From this time she defied
the Italian proverb, "Let well alone," and dosed herself incessantly.
She had acquired "l'habitude d'être malade;" she liked the sympathy she
excited, and henceforth _preferred_ being ill. Once or twice every year
she was dying, the family were summoned, every one was in tears, they
knelt around her bed; it was the most delicious excitement.

Mrs. Hare Naylor had a house at St. Leonards, on Maize Hill, where there
were only three houses then. We went annually to visit her for a day,
and she and "Aunt Georgiana" generally spent several months every year
at Hurstmonceaux Rectory--employing themselves in general abuse of all
the family. I offended Aunt Georgiana (who wore her hair down her back
in two long plaits) mortally, at a very early age, by saying "Chelu (the
Rectory dog) has only one tail, but Aunt Georgie has two."[18]

On the 28th of June 1838, the Coronation of Queen Victoria took place,
when a great fête was given in the ruins of Hurstmonceaux Castle, at
which every person in the parish was provided with a dinner. It was in
this summer that my father brought his family to England to visit Sir
John Paul, who had then married his second wife, Mrs. Napier, and was
living with her at her own place, Pennard House, in Somersetshire. In
the autumn my father came alone to Hurstmonceaux Rectory. I remember him
then--tall and thin, and lying upon a sofa. Illness had made him very
restless, and he would wander perpetually about the rooms, opening and
shutting windows, and taking down one volume after another from the
bookcase, but never reading anything consecutively. It was long debated
whether his winter should be passed at Hastings or Torquay, but it was
eventually decided to spend it economically at West Woodhay House, near
Newbury, which Mr. John Sloper (nephew of our great-uncle--the husband
of Emilia Shipley) offered to lend for the purpose. At this time my
father's health was already exciting serious apprehensions. Mrs. Louisa
Shipley was especially alarmed about him, and wrote:--

     "Dr. Chambers says your lungs are not _now_ in diseased state, but
     it will require great care and caution for a long time to keep them
     free, though with that he hopes that they may recover their
     usual tone and become as stout as you represent them; so remember
     that it depends on yourself and Ann's watchfulness and care of you,
     whether you are to get quite well, or be sickly for the remainder
     of your life, and also that the former becomes a duty, when you
     think of your children."

[Illustration: Francis G. Hare.]

My father never once noticed my existence during his long stay at the
Rectory. On the last day before he left, my mother said laughingly,
"Really, Francis, I don't think you have ever found out that such a
little being as Augustus is in existence here." He was amused, and said,
"Oh no, really!" and he called me to him and patted my head, saying,
"Good little Wolf: good little Wolf!" It was the only notice he ever
took of me.

Instead of going as usual direct to Stoke, we spent part of the winter
of 1838-39 with the Marcus Hares at Torquay. Their home was a most
beautiful one--Rockend, at the point of the bay, with very large grounds
and endless delightful walks winding amongst rocks and flowers, or
terraces overhanging the natural cliffs which there stride out seawards
over the magnificent natural arch known as London Bridge. Nevertheless I
recollect this time as one of the utmost misery. My Aunt Lucy, having
heard some one say that I was more intelligent than little Marcus, had
conceived the most violent jealousy of me, and I was cowed and snubbed
by her in every possible way. Little Marcus himself was encouraged not
only to carry off my little properties--shells, fossils, &c.--but to
slap, bite, and otherwise ill-treat me as much as he liked, and when,
the first day, I ventured, boylike, to retaliate, and cuff him again, I
was shut up for two days on bread and water--"to break my spirit"--and
most utterly miserable I became, especially as my dear mother treated it
as wholesome discipline, and wondered that I was not devoted to little
Marcus, whereas, on looking back, I wonder how--even in a modified
way--I ever endured him.


     _From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

     "_Torquay, January 7, 1839._--Augustus was very good on the
     journey, full of spirits and merriment. He was much delighted in
     passing through the New Forest to see the place where Rufus was
     shot, of which he has a picture he is fond of. At Mr. Trench's[19]
     he enjoyed, more than I ever saw him, playing with the children,
     and the two elder ones were good friends with him directly. They
     joined together and had all kinds of games. At Exmouth the shells
     were a great delight while they were embarking the carriage that we
     might cross the ferry.

     "It has been a trial to him on coming here to find himself quite a
     secondary object of attention. At first he was so cowed by it that
     he seemed to have lost all his gaiety, instead of being pleased to
     play with little Marcus. In taking his playthings, little Marcus
     excited a great desire to defend his own property, and though he
     gives up to him in most things, he shows a feeling of trying to
     keep his own things to himself, rather than any willingness to
     share them. By degrees they have learnt to play together more
     freely, and on the whole agree well. But I see strongly brought out
     the self-seeking of my dear child, the desire of being first,
     together with a want of true hearty love for his little companion,
     and endeavour to please him."


     "_Stoke, February 26._--All the time of our stay at Rockend,
     Augustus was under an unnatural constraint, and though he played
     for the most part good-humouredly with little Marcus, it was
     evident he had no great pleasure in him, and instead of being
     willing to give him anything, he seemed to _shut up_ all his
     generous feelings, and to begin to think only of how he might
     secure his own property from invasion: in short, all the
     selfishness of his nature seemed thus to be drawn out. For the most
     part he was good and obedient, but the influence of reward and
     dread of punishment seemed to cause it. He has gained much greater
     self-command, and will stop his screams on being threatened with
     the loss of any pleasure immediately, and I fear the greater part
     of his kindness to little Marcus arose from fear of his Aunt Lucy
     if he failed to show it. Only once did he return a blow, and knock
     little Marcus down. He was two days kept upstairs for it, and
     afterwards bore patiently all the scratches he received; but it
     worked inwardly and gave a dislike to his feeling towards his
     cousin.... He seemed relieved when we left Torquay."


     "_March 13, 1839._--My little Augustus is now five years old.
     Strong personal identity, reference of everything to himself,
     greediness of pleasures and possessions, are I fear prominent
     features in his disposition. May I be taught how best to correct
     these his sinful propensities with judgment, and to draw him out of
     self to live for others."

On leaving Torquay we went to Exeter to visit Lady Campbell, the eldest
daughter of Sir John Malcolm, who had been a great friend of my Uncle
Julius. She had became a Plymouth sister, the chief result of which was
that all her servants sate with her at meals. She had given up all the
luxuries, almost all the comforts, of life, and lived just as her
servants did, except that one silver fork and spoon were kept for Lady
Campbell. Thence we proceeded to Bath, to the house of "the Bath
Aunts," Caroline and Marianne Hare, daughters of that Henrietta Henckel
who pulled down Hurstmonceaux Castle. The aunts were very rich. Mrs.
Henckel Hare had a sister, Mrs. Pollen, who left £60,000 to Marianne,
who was her god-daughter, so that Caroline was the principal heiress of
her mother. After they left Hurstmonceaux, they rented a place in the
west of Sussex, but in 1820 took a place called Millard's Hill near
Frome, belonging to Lord Cork, and very near Marston, where he lived. I
was there many years after, on a visit to our distant cousin Lady Boyle,
who lived there after the Bath Aunts left it, and then found the
recollection still fresh in the neighbourhood of the Miss Hares, their
fine horses, their smart dress, their splendid jewels, and their
quarrelsome tempers. Their disputes had reference chiefly to my Uncle
Marcus, to whom they were both perfectly devoted, and furious if he paid
more attention to one than the other. Neither of them could ever praise
him enough. Caroline, who always wrote of him as her "treasure," was
positively in love with him. Whenever he returned from sea, to which he
had been sent as soon as he was old enough, the aunts grudged every day
which he did not spend with them. But their affection for him was
finally rivetted in 1826, when he was accidentally on a visit to them at
the time of their mother's sudden death, and was a great help and
comfort. Mrs. Henckel Hare had been failing for many years, and even in
1820 letters describe her as asking for salt when she meant bread, and
water when she meant wine; but her daughters, who had never left her,
mourned her loss bitterly. Augustus wrote to Lady Jones in 1827, that
the most difficult task his aunts had ever imposed upon him was that of
writing an epitaph for their mother, there was "so remarkably little to
say." However, with Julius's assistance, he did accomplish an
inscription, which, though perfectly truthful, is strikingly beautiful.
Besides her country house, Mrs. Henckel Hare had a large house in the
Crescent at Bath, where her old mother, Mrs. Henckel, lived with her to
an immense age. Old Mrs. Hare was of a very sharp disposition. Her
niece, Lady Taylor, has told me how she went to visit her at Eastbourne
as a child, and one day left her work upon the table when she went out.
When she came in, she missed it, and Mrs. Hare quietly observed, "You
left your work about, my dear, so I've thrown it all out of the window;"
and sure enough, on the beach her thimble, scissors, &c., were all
still lying, no one having picked them up!

In their youth "the Bath Aunts" had been a great deal abroad with their
mother, and had been very intimate with the First Consul. It is always
said that he proposed to Marianne before his marriage with Josephine,
and that she refused him, and bitterly regretted it afterwards.
Certainly he showed her and her sister the most extraordinary attentions
when they afterwards visited Milan while he was there in his power.

The Bath Aunts had two brothers (our great-uncles) who lived to grow up.
The eldest of these was Henry (born 1778). He was sent abroad, and was
said to be drowned, but the fact was never well established. Lady Taylor
remembered that, in their later life, a beggar once came to the door of
the aunts at Bath, and declared he was their brother Henry. The aunts
came down and looked at him, but not recognising any likeness to their
brother, they sent him away with a few shillings. The next brother,
George (born 1781), grew up, and went to India, whence he wrote
constantly, and most prosperously, to his family. After some years, they
heard that he was dead. He had always been supposed to be very rich, but
when he died nothing was forthcoming, and it was asserted by those on
the spot, that he had left no money behind him; yet this is very
doubtful, and it is possible that a fortune left by George Hare may
still transpire. Some people have thought that the account of George
Hare's death itself was fictitious; but at that time India was
considered perfectly inaccessible; there was no member of the family who
was able to go and look after him or his fortunes, and the subject
gradually dropped.

[Illustration: HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE.]

Before leaving George Hare, perhaps it is worth while to introduce here
a story of later days, one of the many strange things that have happened
to us. It was some time after our great family misfortunes in 1859,
which will be described by-and-by, that I chanced to pass through
London, where I saw my eldest brother, Francis, who asked me if we had
any ancestor or relation who had gone to India and had died there. I
said "No," for at that time I had never heard of George Hare or of the
Bishop's youngest son, Francis, who likewise died in India. But my
brother insisted that we must have had an Indian relation who died
there; and on my inquiring "why," he told me the following story. He
assured me, that being resolved once more to visit the old family home,
he had gone down to Hurstmonceaux, and had determined to pass the night
in the castle. That in the high tower by the gateway he had fallen
asleep, and that in a vision he had seen an extraordinary figure
approaching him, a figure attired in the dress of the end of the last
century and with a pig-tail, who assured him that he was a near relation
of his, and was come to tell him that though he was supposed to have
died in India and insolvent, he had really died very rich, and that if
his relations chose to make inquiries, they might inherit his fortune!
At the time I declared that the story could not be true, as we never had
any relation who had anything to do with India, but Francis persisted
steadfastly in affirming what he had seen and heard, and some time
afterwards I was told of the existence of George Hare.

At the time we were at Bath, Aunt Caroline was no longer living there;
she had become so furiously jealous of Mrs. Marcus Hare, that she had to
be kept under restraint, and though not actually mad, she lived alone
with an attendant in a cottage at Burnet near Corsham. There she died
some years after, very unhappy, poor thing, to the last. Her companion
was a Mrs. Barbara, with whom Aunt Caroline was most furious at times.
She had a large pension after her death. It used to be said that the
reason why Mrs. Barbara had only one arm and part of another was that
Aunt Caroline had eaten the rest.[20]

It was when we were staying with Aunt Marianne in 1839 that I first saw
my real mother. "On est mère, ou on ne l'est pas," says the Madame
Cardinal of Ludovic Halévy. In my case "on ne l'était pas." I watched
Mrs. Hare's arrival, and, through the banisters of the staircase, saw
her cross the hall, and was on the tiptoe of expectation; but she
displayed no interest about seeing me, and did not ask for me at all
till late in the evening, when all enthusiasm had died away. "I hope the
Wolf answered your expectations, or still better surpassed them," wrote
my father to his wife from West Woodhay. He was in the habit of calling
all his children by the names of beasts. "Bring some cold-cream for the
Tigress" (my sister), he wrote at the same time, and "the Owl (Eleanor
Paul) and the Beast (William) are going to dine out." Francis he
generally called "Ping," and his wife "Mrs. Pook."

Aunt Marianne, wishing to flatter Uncle Julius's love of learning,
proudly announced to him that she had given me a book--a present I was
perfectly enchanted with--when, to my intense dismay, he insisted upon
exchanging it for a skipping-rope! which I could never be persuaded to
use.

In the autumn of 1839 my father again returned with his family to Pisa,
to the bitter grief of old Mrs. Louisa Shipley, who refused altogether
to take leave of Mrs. Hare, though she afterwards wrote (Oct. 16), "I
hope Anne has forgiven my rudeness her last day. I was too sorry to part
with you to admit any third person." She was already rapidly failing,
but she still wrote, "Your letters always give me pleasure, when I can
read them, but to be sure they take a long time in deciphering." In the
course of the following winter Mrs. Louisa Shipley died, without seeing
her favourite nephew again. It was found then that she had never
forgiven the last emigration to Italy against her wishes. Except a
legacy to my Uncle Marcus, she left all she possessed to her next
neighbour and cousin, Mrs. Townshend (daughter of Lady
Milner--half-sister of Mrs. Shipley)--a will which caused terrible
heartburnings amongst her more immediate relations, especially as many
precious relics of Lady Jones and of Mrs. Hare Naylor were included in
the property thus bequeathed. At the same time the estate of Gresford in
Flintshire, which Bishop Shipley had left to each of his daughters in
turn, now, on the death of the last of them, descended to my father, as
the eldest son of the eldest daughter who had left children.

Victoire remembered the arrival of the letter, sealed with black, which
announced the death of Mrs. Shipley, whilst the Hare family were at
Florence. Félix was with his master when he opened the letter, and came
in afterwards to his wife, exclaiming, "Oh mon pauvre M. Hare a eu bien
de malheur." Francis Hare had thrown up his hands and said, "Félix, nous
sommes perdus." All that day he would not dress, and he walked up and
down the room in his dressing-gown, quite pale. He never was the same
person again. Up to that time he had always been "si gai"--he was always
smiling. He was "si recherché." "Avec les grands il était si franc, si
charmant, mais avec les personnes de basse condition il était encore
plus aimable que avec les grands personnages. Oh! comme il était
aimé.... Jusque là il était invité partout, et il donnait toujours à
diner et ses fêtes, et son introduction était comme un passeport
partout. Mais depuis là il ne faisait pas le même--et c'était juste: il
faudrait penser à ses enfants."[21]

But I am digressing from my own story, and must return to the intensely
happy time of escaping from Rockend and going to Stoke. It was during
this journey that I first saw any ruin of importance beyond
Hurstmonceaux and Pevensey. This was Glastonbury Abbey, and it made a
great impression upon me. I also saw the famous Christmas-blooming
thorn, which is said to have grown from St. Joseph of Arimathea's staff,
in the abbot's garden, bright with hepaticas. I remember at Stoke this
year having for the first time a sense of how much the pleasantness of
religious things depends upon the person who expresses them. During the
winter my mother saw much of the voluminous author Mr. Charles Tayler,
who was then acting as curate at Hodnet. He was very frank and sincere,
and his "religious talking" I did not mind at all; whereas when the
Maurices "talked," I thought it quite loathsome. In the following summer
I used often to listen to conversations between Mr. Manning (afterwards
Archdeacon, then Cardinal) and my mother, as he then first fell into the
habit of coming constantly to Hurstmonceaux and being very intimate with
my mother and uncle. He was very lovable and one of the most perfectly
gentle _gentle_-men I have ever known; my real mother used to call him
"l'harmonie de la poésie religieuse." My mother was very unhappy when he
became a Roman Catholic in 1851.

How many happy recollections I have of hot summer days in the unbroken
tranquillity of these summers at Lime. My mother was then the object of
my uncle's exclusive devotion. He consulted her on every subject, and he
thought every day a blank in which they had no meeting. We constantly
drove up to the Rectory in the afternoon, when he had always some new
plant to show her and to talk about. I well remember his enchantment
over some of the new flowers which were being "invented"
then--especially _Salpiglossis_ (so exceedingly admired at first, but
now forgotten), _Salvia patens_ and _Fuchsia fulgens_, of which we
brought back from Wood's Nursery a little plant, which was looked upon
as a perfect marvel of nature.

Often when awake in the night now, I recall, out of the multiplicity of
pretty, even valuable things, with which my house of Holmhurst is
filled, how few of them belonged to our dear simple home in these early
days. The small double hall had nothing in it, I think, except a few
chairs, and some cloaks hanging on pegs against the wall, and the simple
furniture of the double drawing-room consisted chiefly of the gifts made
to my mother by her family when she went to Alton. One wall--the
longest--was, however, occupied by a great bookcase, filled with
handsomely bound books, chiefly divinity, many of them German. On the
other walls hung a very few valuable engravings, mostly from Raffaelle,
and all framed according to Uncle Julius's fancy, which would have
driven print-collectors frantic, for he cut off all margins, even of
proofs before letters. The only point of colour in the room, not given
by flowers, came from a large panel picture presented by Landor--a
Madonna and Child by Raffaellino da Colle, in a fine old Italian frame.
The few china ornaments on the chimney-piece beneath were many of them
broken, but they were infinitely precious to us. In the dining-room were
only a few prints of Reginald Heber, my Uncle Norwich, my grandfather
Leycester, and others. Simpler still were the bedrooms, where the
curtains of the windows and beds were of white dimity. In my mother's
room, however, were some beautiful sketches of the older family by
Flaxman. The "pantry," which was Lea's especial sitting-room, where the
walls were covered with pictures and the mantel-piece laden with china,
had more the look of rooms of the present time. I believe, however, that
the almost spiritualised aspect of my mother's rooms at Lime were as
characteristic of her at this time, as the more mundane rooms of my
after home of Holmhurst are characteristic of myself!

[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM AT LIME.]

My mother and I breakfasted every morning at eight (as far as I can
remember, I _never_ had any meal in the so-called nursery) in the
dining-room, which, as well as the drawing-room, had wide glass doors
always open to the little terrace of the garden, from which the smell of
new-mown grass or dewy pinks and syringa was wafted into the room. If it
was very hot too, our breakfast took place _on_ the terrace, in the deep
shadow of the house, outside the little drawing-room window. After
breakfast I began my lessons, which, though my mother and uncle always
considered me a dunce, I now think to have been rather advanced for a
child of five years old, as besides English reading, writing and
spelling, history, arithmetic and geography, I had to do German reading
and _writing_, and a little Latin. Botany and drawing I was also taught,
but they were an intense delight. Through plans, maps, and raised
models, I was made perfectly familiar with the topography of Jerusalem
and the architecture of the Temple, though utterly ignorant of the
topography of Rome or London and of the architecture of St. Peter's or
St. Paul's. But indeed I never recollect the moment of (indoor)
childhood in which I was not undergoing education of some kind, and
generally of an unwelcome kind. There was often a good deal of screaming
and crying over the writing and arithmetic, and I never got on
satisfactorily with the former till my Aunt Kitty (Mrs. Stanley) or my
grandmother (Mrs. Leycester) took it in hand, sitting over me with a
ruler, and by a succession of hearty bangs on the knuckles, forced my
fingers to go the right way. At twelve o'clock I went out with my
mother, sometimes to Lime Cross (village) and to the fields behind it,
where I used to make nosegays of "robin's-eye and ground-ivy,"--my love
of flowers being always encouraged by mother, whose interest in Nature
had a freshness like the poetry of Burns, observing everything as it
came out--

    "The rustling corn, the freited thorn,
        And every happy creature."

Generally, however, we went to the girls' school at "Flowers Green,"
about half a mile off on the way to the church, where Mrs. Piper was the
mistress, a dear old woman who recollected the destruction of the
castle, and had known all my uncles in their childhood at Hurstmonceaux
Place. At the school was a courtyard, overhung with laburnums, where I
remember my mother in her lilac muslin dress sitting and teaching the
children under a bower of golden rain.

I wonder what would be thought of dear old Mrs. Piper, in these days of
board-schools and examinations for certificates. "Now, Mr. Simpikins,"
she said one day to Mr. Simpkinson the curate, whose name she never
could master--"Now Mr. Simpikins, do tell me, was that Joseph who they
sold into Egypt the same as that Joseph who was married to the Virgin
Mary?"--"Oh no, they were hundreds of years apart."--"Well, they both
went down into Egypt anyway." Yet Mrs. Piper was admirably suited to her
position, and the girls of her tuition were taught to sew and keep house
and "mind their manners and morals," and there were many good women at
Hurstmonceaux till her pupils became extinct. The universal respect with
which the devil is still spoken of at Hurstmonceaux is probably due to
Mrs. Piper's peculiar teaching.

But, to return to our own life, at one we had dinner--almost always
roast-mutton and rice-pudding--and then I read aloud--Josephus at a
_very_ early age, and then Froissart's Chronicles. At three we went out
in the carriage to distant cottages, often ending at the Rectory. At
five I was allowed to "amuse myself," which generally meant nursing the
cat for half-an-hour and "hearing it its lessons." All the day I had
been with my mother, and now generally went to my dear nurse Lea for
half-an-hour, when I had tea in the cool "servants' hall" (where,
however, the servants never sat--preferring the kitchen), after which I
returned to find Uncle Julius arrived, who stayed till my bedtime.

As Uncle Julius was never captivating to children, it is a great pity
that he was turned into an additional bugbear, by being always sent for
to whip me when I was naughty! These executions generally took place
with a riding-whip, and looking back dispassionately through the
distance of years, I am conscious that, for a delicate child, they were
a great deal too severe. I always screamed dreadfully in the
anticipation of them, but bore them without a sound or a tear. I
remember one very hot summer's day, when I had been very naughty over my
lessons, Froissart's Chronicles having been particularly uninteresting,
and having produced the very effect which Ahasuerus desired to obtain
from the reading of the book of the records of the chronicles, that
Uncle Julius was summoned. He arrived, and I was sent upstairs to
"prepare." Then, as I knew I was going to be whipped anyway, I thought I
might as well do something horrible to be whipped _for_, and, as soon as
I reached the head of the stairs, gave three of the most awful,
appalling and eldrich shrieks that ever were heard in Hurstmonceaux.
Then I fled for my life. Through the nursery was a small bedroom, in
which Lea slept, and here I knew that a large black travelling
"imperial" was kept under the bed. Under the bed I crawled, and wedged
myself into the narrow space behind the imperial, between it and the
wall. I was only just in time. In an instant all the household--mother,
uncle, servants--were in motion, and a search was on foot all over the
house. I turn cold still when I remember the agony of fright with which
I heard Uncle Julius enter the nursery, and then, with which, through a
chink, I could see his large feet moving about the very room in which I
was. He _looked under the bed_, but he saw only a large black box. I
held my breath, motionless, and he turned away. Others looked under the
bed too; but my concealment was effectual.

I lay under the bed for an hour--stifling--agonised. Then all sounds
died away, and I knew that the search in the house was over, and that
they were searching the garden. At last my curiosity would no longer
allow me to be still, and I crept from under the bed and crawled to the
window of my mother's bedroom, whence I could overlook the garden
without being seen. Every dark shrub, every odd corner was being
ransacked. The whole household and the gardeners were engaged in the
pursuit. At last I could see by their actions--for I could not hear
words--that a dreadful idea had presented itself. In my paroxysms I had
rushed down the steep bank, and tumbled or thrown myself into the pond!
I saw my mother look very wretched and Uncle Julius try to calm her. At
last they sent for people to drag the pond. Then I could bear my dear
mother's expression no longer, and, from my high window, I gave a little
hoot. Instantly all was changed; Lea rushed upstairs to embrace me;
there was great talking and excitement, and while it was going on, Uncle
Julius was called away, and every one ... forgot that I had not been
whipped! That, however, was the only time I ever escaped.

In the most literal sense, and in every other, I was "brought up at the
point of the rod." My dearest mother was so afraid of over-indulgence
that she always went into the opposite extreme: and her constant habits
of self-examination made her detect the slightest act of especial
kindness into which she had been betrayed, and instantly determine not
to repeat it. Nevertheless, I loved her most passionately, and many
tearful fits, for which I was severely punished as fits of naughtiness,
were really caused by anguish at the thought that I had displeased her
or been a trouble to her. From never daring to express my wishes in
words, which she would have thought it a duty to meet by an immediate
refusal, I early became a coward as to concealing what I really desired.
I remember once, in my longing for childish companionship, so intensely
desiring that the little Coshams--a family of children who lived in the
parish--might come to play with me, that I entreated that they might
come to have tea in the summer-house on my Hurstmonceaux birthday (the
day of my adoption), and that the mere request was not only refused, but
so punished that I never dared to express a wish to play with any child
again. At the same time I was _expected_ to play with little Marcus,
then an indulged disagreeable child whom I could not endure, and because
I was not fond of _him_, was thought intensely selfish and self-seeking.

As an example of the severe discipline which was maintained with regard
to me, I remember that one day when we went to visit the curate, a lady
(Miss Garden) very innocently gave me a lollypop, which I ate. This
crime was discovered when we came home by the smell of peppermint, and a
large dose of rhubarb and soda was at once administered with a
forcing-spoon, though I was in robust health at the time, to teach me to
avoid such carnal indulgences as lollypops for the future. For two
years, also, I was obliged to swallow a dose of rhubarb every morning
and every evening because--according to old-fashioned ideas--it was
supposed to "strengthen the stomach!" I am sure it did me a great deal
of harm, and had much to do with accounting for my after sickliness.
Sometimes I believe the medicine itself induced fits of fretfulness; but
if I cried more than usual, it was supposed to be from want of
additional medicine, and the next morning senna-tea was added to the
rhubarb. I remember the misery of sitting on the back-stairs in the
morning and having it in a tea-cup, with milk and sugar.

At a very early age I was made to go to church--once, which very soon
grew into twice, on a Sunday. Uncle Julius's endless sermons were my
detestation. I remember some one speaking of him to an old man in the
parish, and being surprised by the statement that he was "not a good
winter parson," which was explained to mean that he kept the people so
long with his sermons, that they could not get home before dark.

With the utmost real kindness of heart, Uncle Julius had often the
sharpest and most insulting manner I have ever known in speaking to
those who disagreed with him. I remember an instance of this when Mr.
Simpkinson had lately come to Hurstmonceaux as my uncle's curate. His
sister, then a very handsome young lady, had come down from London to
visit him, and my mother took her to church in the carriage. That Sunday
happened to be Michaelmas Day. As we were driving slowly away from
church through the crowd of those who had formed the congregation, Uncle
Julius holding the reins, something was said about the day. Without a
suspicion of giving offence, Miss Simpkinson, who was sitting behind
with me, said, in a careless way, "As for me, my chief association with
Michaelmas Day is a roast goose." Then Uncle Julius turned round, and,
in a voice of _thunder_, audible to every one on the road, exclaimed,
"Ignorant and presumptuous young woman!" He had never seen her till that
day. As she said to me years after, when she was a wife and mother,
"That the Archdeacon should call me ignorant and presumptuous was
trying, still I could bear that very well; but that he should dare to
call me a _young woman_ was not to be endured." However, her only
alternative was to bear the affront and be driven two miles home, or to
insist upon getting out of the carriage and walking home through the
mud, and she chose the former course, and afterwards my uncle, when he
knew her good qualities, both admired and liked her.

It must have been about this time that Uncle Julius delivered his
sermons on "the Mission of the Comforter" at Cambridge, and many of his
friends used to amuse my mother by describing them. The church was
crowded, but the congregation was prepared for sermons of ordinary
length. The Halls then "went in" at three, and when that hour came, and
there was no sign of a conclusion, great was the shuffling of feet. This
was especially the case during the sermon on "The Church the Light of
the World," but Uncle Julius did not care a bit, and went on till 3.20
quite composedly.

At this time it used to be said that Uncle Julius had five
popes--Wordsworth, Niebuhr, Bunsen, Frederick Maurice, and Manning.[22]
They were very different certainly, but he was equally up in arms if any
of these were attacked.

I was not six years old before my mother--under the influence of the
Maurices--began to follow out a code of penance with regard to me which
was worthy of the ascetics of the desert. Hitherto I had never been
allowed anything but roast-mutton and rice-pudding for dinner. Now all
was changed. The most delicious puddings were talked of--_dilated_
on--until I became, not greedy, but exceedingly curious about them. At
length "le grand moment" arrived. They were put on the table before me,
and then, just as I was going to eat some of them, they were snatched
away, and I was told to get up and carry them off to some poor person in
the village. I remember that, though I did not really in the least care
about the dainties, I cared excessively about Lea's wrath at the fate of
her nice puddings, of which, after all, I was most innocent. We used at
this time to read a great deal about the saints, and the names of
Polycarp, Athanasius, &c., became as familiar to me as those of our own
household. Perhaps my mother, through Esther Maurice's influence, was
just a little High Church at this time, and always fasted to a certain
extent on Wednesdays and Fridays, on which days I was never allowed to
eat butter or to have any pudding. Priscilla Maurice also even persuaded
Uncle Julius to have a service in the schoolroom at (the principal
village) Gardner Street on saints' days, which was attended by one old
woman and ourselves. My mother, who always appropriated to charities all
money she received for the sale of my Uncle Augustus's sermons, also now
spent part of it in the so-called "restoration" of Hurstmonceaux Church,
when all the old pews were swept away and very hideous varnished benches
put in their place. Uncle Julius, as soon as he became Archdeacon, used
to preach a perfect crusade against pews, and often went, saw and hammer
in hand, to begin the work in the village churches with his own hands.

Our own life through these years continued to be of the most primitive
and simple kind. A new book or a new flower was its greatest event--an
event to be chronicled and which only came once or twice a year. Many
little luxuries, most common now, were not invented then, steel-pens and
wax-matches for instance, and, amongst a thousand other unobserved
deficiencies, there were no night-lights, except of a most rudimentary
kind. No one ever thought of having baths in their rooms then, even in
the most comfortable houses: a footpan or a "bidet" was the utmost
luxury attempted.

It was in the spring of 1839 that I had my first associations with
death. Often, in my earliest childish days, had I seen the sweet and
charming Lady Parry, who, as Bella Stanley, had been one of the dearest
friends of my mother's youth. While our dear cousins Charlotte and Emma
Leycester were at Lime, the news came of her death, and I remember how
they and my mother sate over the fire crying, and of gradually
understanding the cause, and of tears being renewed for several mornings
afterwards, when details were received from Sir Edward Parry and old
Lady Stanley.


     _From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

     "_Lime, June 18, 1839._--During a week spent in London, Augustus
     was part of every day with his brothers and sister. Their first
     meeting was at Sheen. Augustus was much excited before they came,
     and when he saw his brothers, threw himself on my neck and kissed
     me passionately. They were soon intimate, and he was very much
     delighted at playing with them, and was not made fretful by it.
     There seemed to be a strong feeling of affection awakened towards
     them, unlike anything he has shown to other children. I have begun
     to teach Augustus to draw, but it is wearisome work from his
     inattention.... His delight in flowers and knowledge of their names
     is greater than ever, and it is equally necessary to control his
     gratification in this as in other pleasures. The usual punishment
     for his impatience over dressing is to have no garden flowers.

     "In all the books of education I do not find what I believe is the
     useful view taken of the actual labour of learning to read--that of
     forcing the child's attention to a thing irksome to it and without
     interest. The task is commonly spoken of as a means to an end,
     necessary because the information in books cannot otherwise be
     obtained, and it is to be put off till the child's interest in the
     information is excited and so made a pleasure to him. Now it seems
     to me to be an excellent discipline whereby daily some self-denial
     and command may be acquired in overcoming the repugnance to doing
     from duty that which has in itself no attraction. In the first
     struggle to fix the attention and learn that which is without
     interest, but which _must be done_, a habit is gained of great
     importance. And in this way nothing is better suited to the purpose
     than the _lesson_ of reading, even though little progress may be
     made for a long time.

     "I find in giving any order to a child, it is always better not to
     _look_ to see if he obeys, but to take it for granted it will be
     done. If one appears to doubt the obedience, there is occasion
     given for the child to hesitate, 'Shall I do it or no?' If you seem
     not to question the possibility of non-compliance, he feels a trust
     committed to him to keep and fulfils it. It is best never to repeat
     a command, never to answer the oft-asked question 'why?'

     "Augustus would, I believe, always do a thing if _reasoned_ with
     about it, but the necessity of obedience without reasoning is
     specially necessary in such a disposition as his. The will is the
     thing that needs being brought into subjection.

     "The withholding a pleasure is a safe punishment for naughtiness,
     more safe, I think, than giving a reward for goodness. 'If you are
     naughty I must punish you,' is often a necessary threat: but it is
     not good to hold out a bribe for goodness--'If you are good I will
     give you such a thing.'"

In the autumn of 1839 we went for the first time to Norwich and spent
Christmas there, which was most enchanting to me. The old buildings of
Norwich gave me, even at five years old, the intense and passionate
pleasure with which I have ever since regarded them. No others are the
same. No others come back to me constantly in dreams in the same way.

[Illustration: RUIN IN THE PALACE GARDEN, NORWICH.]

How I revelled in the old Palace of that time, with its immensely long
rambling passages and carved furniture; in the great dining-room with
the pictures of the Christian Virtues, and the broad damp matted
staircase with heavy banisters which led through it towards the
cathedral, which it entered after passing the mysterious chapel-door
with its wrought-iron grille, and a quaint little court, in which a
raven and a seagull, two of the many pets of my uncle the Bishop,
usually disported themselves! Then, in the garden were the old gateway
and the beautiful ruin of the first bishop's palace, and, beyond the
ruin, broad walks in the kitchen-garden, ending in a summer-house, and a
grand old mulberry-tree in a corner. Outside the grounds of the Palace,
it was a joy to go with Lea by the old gate-house over the Ferry to
Mousehold Heath, where delightful pebbles were to be picked up, and to
the Cow Tower by the river Wensum: and sometimes Aunt Kitty took me in
the carriage to Bramerton, where my kind old uncle taught me the names
of all the different fossils, which I have never forgotten to this day.

My Aunt Kitty was deeply interesting, but also very awful to me. I could
always tell when she thought I was silly by her looks, just as if she
said it in words. I was dreadfully afraid of her, but irresistibly
attracted to her. Like my mother, I never differed from her opinion or
rebelled against her word. She was pleased with my attempts to draw, and
tried to teach me, drawing before me from very simple objects, and then
leaving me her outlines to copy, before attempting to imitate the
reality.

[Illustration: THE CHAPEL DOOR, NORWICH.]

My cousins, Mary and Kate, had two rooms filled with pictures and other
treasures, which were approached by a very steep staircase of their own.
I soon began to be especially devoted to Kate, but I thought it perfect
rapture to pay both of them visits in their rooms and "make waxworks"
with the little bits of coloured wax off the taper-candles which they
collected for me. Besides, in her room Kate kept a wonderful little live
owl. My cousin Arthur Stanley was also very attractive to me. He was
quite young at this time--had not taken his Oxford degree, I think--and
had a very charming and expressive countenance. If it had not been for
this, and his winning smile, I suppose that in manners (certainly in
dress) he would have been thought very wanting. He scarcely ever spoke
to strangers, and coloured violently when spoken to. His father he was
most piteously afraid of. I do not think he was quite comfortable and at
home with any one except his two sisters. But he noticed me a good deal
as a child, and told me stories out of the History of England, which I
liked immensely. Hugh Pearson, afterwards my dear friend, recollected
how, on overhearing him and Arthur in the chapel talking about the
inscription on the tomb of Bishop Sparrow, who wrote the "Rationale," I
exclaimed, "Oh cousin Arthur, _do_ tell me about Bishop Sparrow and the
Russian lady." I used to play with the children of Canon Wodehouse, who,
with his charming wife, Lady Jane, lived close to the Palace. With their
two youngest daughters, Emily and Alice, I was great friends, and long
kept up a childish correspondence with them, on the tiniest possible
sheets of paper. Emily had bright red hair, but it toned down, and after
she grew up she was very much admired as Mrs. Legh of Lyme. On the way
to the Ferry lived Professor Sedgwick, who was always very kind to me.
He once took me with him to a shop and presented me with a great
illustrated "Robinson Crusoe."

     _From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

     "_Stoke, Feb. 12, 1840._--Augustus's chief delight of late has been
     stories out of the History of England, and the 'Chapter of Kings'
     is a continual source of interest and pleasure. His memory in
     these things is very strong and his quick apprehension of times and
     circumstances. I should say the historical organ was very decided
     in him, and he seems to have it to the exclusion of the simple
     childlike view of everything common to his age. In reading the
     account of the flood yesterday he asked, 'What books did Noah take
     into the Ark? he must have taken a Bible.'--'No--the people lived
     after his time.'--'Then he must have had one of Adam and Eve and
     Cain and Abel.'--'How dreadful it must have been for Noah to see
     all the dead bodies when he came out of the Ark.'

     "'How much ground there will be when we all die!'--'Why
     so?'--'Because we shall all turn to dust.'

     "There is a strong predominance of the intellectual over the moral
     feeling in him, I fear, and it must be my endeavour always to draw
     out and encourage the love of what is good and noble in character
     and action. His eyes, however, always fill with tears on hearing
     any trait of this kind, and he readily melts at any act of
     self-denial or affection, so that his talking little of these
     things must not perhaps be dwelt upon as a sure sign of not
     estimating them."

     "_August 5._--There is just the same greediness in Augustus now
     about books that there used to be about flowers, and I have to
     restrain the taste for novelty and excitement. Reading of a little
     girl who was fond of her Bible, he said, 'I should not have been
     so. I like my fat Yellow Book much better, but I like the Bible far
     better than the Prayer-Book: I do not like that at all.'"

In this year of 1840, Uncle Julius accepted the Archdeaconry of Lewes,
which wrought a change in our quiet life from the great number of clergy
who were now constant guests at the Rectory and the greater frequency of
clerical subjects of discussion at Lime. Once a year also, we went
regularly to Hastings for a night before my uncle gave his charge to the
clergy, driving back late afterwards through the hot lanes. I always
liked this expedition and scrambling about with Lea on the mile of open
common which then intervened between St. Leonards and Hastings: but it
was dreadfully tantalising, when I was longing to go to the sea on the
second day, that I was expected to remain for hours in the hot St.
Clement's Church, while the sermon and charge were going on, and that
the charge, of which I understood nothing except that I hated it,
sometimes lasted three hours!

Mr. John Nassau Simpkinson[23] was now curate to my uncle, and lived in
"the Curatage" at Gardner Street with his sister Louisa and her friend
Miss Dixon, whom we saw constantly. They persuaded my mother to have
weekly "parish tea-parties," at which all the so-called "ladies of the
parish" came to spend the evening, drink tea, and work for the poor,
while one of them read aloud from a Missionary Report. I think it was
also at the suggestion of Miss Simpkinson that my mother _adopted_ a
little Hindoo girl (whom of course she never saw), putting her to
school, paying for her, and otherwise providing for her.

A little excitement of our quiet summer was the marriage, in our old
church, of my half-uncle Gustavus Hare, then a handsome young officer,
to a pretty penniless Miss Annie Wright. It was a most imprudent
marriage, and would probably have been broken off at the last moment, if
my mother had not been melted by their distress into settling something
(£1200 I think) upon them. I remember that it was thought a good omen
that a firefly (one had never been seen at Hurstmonceaux before)
perched, with its little lamp, upon the bride on the evening before the
marriage. Mrs. Gustavus Hare proved an admirable wife and a good mother
to her army of children. They lived for some time in Devonshire, and
then in Ireland: whence, in 1868, they went to Australia, and afterwards
passed entirely out of the family horizon, though I believe many of the
children are still living.

In the autumn, a great enjoyment was driving in our own little
carriage, with "Dull," the old horse (mother, Uncle Julius, Lea, and I),
to spend a few days with the Penrhyns at Sheen, sleeping at Godstone and
passing through Ashdown Forest. In those days, however, by starting
early and posting, the journey from Lime to London could be accomplished
in one day, but our annual journey from London to Stoke (in Shropshire)
occupied three days. My mother and I used to play at "gates and stiles,"
counting them, through the whole journey. Unluckily the swinging motion
of our great travelling chariot always made me so sick that I had a
horror of these journeys; but we had pleasant hours in the evenings at
the old posting-inns, with their civil old-fashioned servants and
comfortable sitting-rooms with the heavy mahogany furniture which one so
seldom sees now, and sometimes we arrived early enough for a walk, which
had all the interest of an expedition into an unknown territory. Well do
I remember certain fields near the comfortable old inn of Chapel House,
and the daisies which Lea and I used to pick there. After my Aunt Kitty
gave me my first taste for antiquities when showing me, at Stoke, the
picture of Old Time in the frontispiece of Grose's "Antiquities," these
journeys had a fresh interest, and greatly did I delight in the glimpse
of Brambletye House, as we passed through Ashdown Forest, and the little
tower of Stafford Castle at the top of its wooded hill. Once also we
slept at Peterborough and saw its cathedral, and on the way to Norwich
it was always an ecstasy to see and draw Thetford Abbey.

On the third day from London, when evening was drawing to a close, we
began to reach familiar scenes--the inn of "the Loggerheads," with the
sign of the two heads and the motto--

    "We three
    Loggerheads be."

Market-Drayton, paved with round pebbles, over which the carriage jolted
violently, the few lamps being lighted against the black and white
houses at the dark street corners: Little Drayton shabbier still, with
the gaudy sign of the Lord Hill public-house, then of "The Conquering
Hero," with the same intention: Stoke Heath, at that time a wild
pine-wood carpeted with heather: some narrow lanes between high
hedgerows: a white gate in a hollow with river-watered meadows: a drive
between steep mossy banks with beech-trees, and a glimpse of an old
church and tufted islands rising from the river in the flat meadows
beyond: then the long windows and projecting porch of a white house with
two gables. As we drove up, we could see through the windows two figures
rising hastily from their red armchairs on either side the fire--an
ancient lady in a rather smart cap, and an old gentleman with snow-white
hair and the dearest face in the world--Grannie and Grandpapa.

[Illustration: STOKE RECTORY--THE APPROACH.]

The happiest days of my childish years were all condensed in the five
months which we annually spent at Stoke (away from Uncle Julius, Aunt
Georgiana, and the Maurices). Grandpapa did not take much notice of my
existence, but when he did it was always in kindness, though I believe
he had rather resented my adoption. Grannie (who was only my mother's
stepmother but married to Grandpapa when she was quite a child) was
tremendously severe, but also very good to me: she never "kept me at a
distance," so, though she often punished me, I was never afraid of
her--"Better a little chiding than a great deal of heart-break."[24]

The quaint old house was also suited to my imaginative disposition, and
I thought the winding passage in the older part quite charming, and
never observed that my bedroom had no carpet, and that the fender, which
was the whole height of the mantel-piece, shut in all the warmth of the
fire. A dark back-staircase with a swing door and a heavy bolt, which I
thought most romantic, led hence to the offices.

In memory I can still see dear Grannie coming downstairs in the morning,
with her little fat red and white spaniel Rose (it had belonged to her
sister Rosamund) barking before her. She used to make Grandpapa read
prayers in the study, a little long room close to the offices, which
had a white bookcase along one side full of old books in white paper
covers, and on the other a number of quaint old pictures of Switzerland.
Square green baize cushions were put down in front of each of the
"quality" for them to kneel upon, and were taken away as soon as the
performance was over. I had my breakfast in the little room of Mrs.
Cowbourne, my Grannie's dear old maid, which was through the kitchen,
and deliciously warm and comfortable. I always remember the three glazed
green flower-pots which stood in the window of that room, and which held
respectively a double geranium, a trailing hop, and a very peculiar kind
of small fuchsia, which one never sees now, with very small flowers.
Sometimes I went in to see the men and maids have their breakfast at the
long table in the servants' hall: the maids had only great bowls of
bread and milk; tea and bread and butter were never thought of below the
housekeeper's room.

[Illustration: Rev. Oswald Leycester

From a portrait in his 86th year]

I did my lessons in my mother's room upstairs, which, as she always
brought with her a picture of the four Hare brothers, and certain books
from home in familiar covers, suggested a salutary reminiscence of Uncle
Julius. Spelling and geography were always trials, the latter
because the geography book was so dreadfully uninteresting: it told us
how many inhabitants there were in the States of Lucca and Modena. I
never had any playthings at Stoke: my amusement was to draw on all the
bits of paper I could get hold of; but I only drew two subjects, over
and over again--the Day of Judgment, and Adam and Eve being turned out
of Paradise: these were of inexhaustible interest. Sometimes I was
allowed to have the little volumes of "Voyages and Travels" to look at
(I have them now), with the enchanting woodcuts of the adventures of
Columbus, Cortes, and Pizarro: and there were certain little books of
Natural History, almost equally delightful, which lived on the same
shelf of the great bookcase in the drawing-room, and were got down by a
little flight of red steps.

I scarcely ever remember Grannie as going out, except sometimes to
church. She was generally in one extreme or other of inflammation or
cold; but it never went beyond a certain point, and when she was thought
to be most ill, she suddenly got well. Grandpapa used to walk with my
mother in the high "rope-walk" at the top of the field, and I used to
frisk away from them and find amusement in the names which my mother
and her companions had cut on the beech-trees in their youth: in the
queer dark corners of rock-work and shrubbery: in the deliciously high
sweet box hedge at the bottom of the kitchen-garden; and most of all in
the pretty little river Clarence, which flowed to join the Terne under a
wooden bridge in a further garden which also belonged to the Rectory.
But, if Grandpapa was not with us, we used to go to the islands in the
Terne, reached by straight paths along the edge of wide ditches in the
meadows. Two wooden bridges in succession led to the principal island,
which was covered with fine old willow-trees, beneath which perfect
masses of snowdrops came up in spring. At the end was a little
bathing-house, painted white inside, and surrounded with cupboards,
where I used to conceal various treasures, and find them again the
following year. I also buried a bird near the bathing-house, and used to
dig it up every year to see how the skeleton was getting on. My mother
had always delightful stories to tell of this island in her own
childhood, and of her having twice tumbled into the river: I was never
tired of hearing them.

Another great enjoyment was to find skeleton-leaves, chiefly
lime-leaves. There was a damp meadow which we called "the
skeleton-ground" from the number we found there. I have never seen any
since my childhood, but I learnt a way then of filling up the fibres
with gum, after which one could paint upon them. Our man-servant, John
Gidman, used to make beautiful arrows for me with the reeds which grew
in the marshy meadows or by "Jackson's Pool" (a delightful place near
which snowdrops grew wild), and I used to "go out shooting" with a bow.
Also, in one of the lumber-rooms I found an old spinning-wheel, upon
which I used to spin all the wool I could pick off the hedges: and there
was a little churn in which it was enchanting to make butter, but this
was only allowed as a great treat.

[Illustration: PETSEY.]

I always found the Shropshire lanes infinitely more amusing than those
at Hurstmonceaux. Beyond the dirty village where we used to go to visit
"Molly Latham and Hannah Berry" was a picturesque old water-mill, of
which Grandpapa had many sketches. Then out of the hedge came two
streamlets through pipes, which to me had all the beauty of waterfalls.
Close to the Terne stood a beautiful old black and white farmhouse
called Petsey. The Hodnet Lane (delightfully productive of wool), which
ran in front of it, led also to Cotton, a farmhouse on a hill, whither
my mother often went to visit "Anne Beacoll," and which was infinitely
amusing to me. At the corner of the farmyard was a gigantic stone, of
which I wonder to this day how it got there, which Grandpapa always told
me to put in my pocket. But I liked best of all to beguile my mother in
another direction through a muddy lane, in which we were half swamped,
to Helshore, for there, on a promontory above the little river, where
she remembered an old house in her childhood, the crocuses and
polyanthuses of the deserted garden were still to be found in spring
under the moss-grown apple-trees.

My grandparents and my mother dined at six. The dining-room had two
pillars, and I was allowed to remain in the room and play behind them
noiselessly: generally acting knights and heroes out of my ballad-books.
At Hurstmonceaux I should have been punished at once if I ever made a
noise, but at Stoke, if I was betrayed into doing so, which was not very
often, Grannie would say, "Never mind the child, Maria, it is only
innocent play." I can hear her tone now. Sometimes when "Uncle Ned" (the
Bishop of Norwich) came, he used to tell me the story of Mrs. Yellowly,
cutting an orange like an old lady's face, and "how Mrs. Yellowly went
to sea," with results quite shocking--which may be better imagined than
described. In the dining-room were two framed prints of the death of
Lord Chatham (from Copley's picture) and of Lord Nelson, in which the
multitude of figures always left something to be discovered. At the end
of the room was a "horse"--a sort of stilted chair on high springs, for
exercise on wet days.

In the evenings my mother used to read aloud to her old parents. Miss
Strickland's "Queens of England" came out then, and were all read aloud
in turn. If I found the book beyond my comprehension, I was allowed,
till about six years old, to amuse myself with some ivory fish, which I
believe were intended for card-markers. Occasionally Margaret, the
housemaid, read aloud, and very well too. She also sang beautifully,
having been thoroughly well trained by Mrs. Leycester, and I never hear
the Collect "Lord of all power and might" without thinking of her.
Grannie was herself celebrated for reading aloud, having been taught by
Mrs. Siddons, with whom her family were very intimate, and she gave me
the lessons she had received, making me repeat the single line, "The
quality of Mercy is not strained," fifty or sixty times over, till I had
exactly the right amount of intonation on each syllable, her delicate
ear detecting the slightest fault. Afterwards I was allowed to read--to
devour--an old brown copy of "Percy's Reliques," and much have I learnt
from those noble old ballads. How cordially I agree with Professor
Shairp, who said that if any one made serious study of only two
books--Percy's "Reliques" and Scott's "Minstrelsy"--he would "give
himself the finest, freshest, most inspiring poetic education that is
possible in our age."

My mother's "religion" made her think reading any novel, or any kind of
work of fiction, absolutely wicked at this time, but Grannie took in
"Pickwick," which was coming out in numbers. She read it by her
dressing-room fire with closed doors, and her old maid, Cowbourne, well
on the watch against intruders--"elle prenait la peine de s'en divertir
avec tout le respect du monde;" and I used to pick the fragments out of
the waste-paper basket, piece them together, and read them too.

Sundays were far less horrid at Stoke than at home, for Grannie
generally found something for me to do. Most primitive were the church
services, very different indeed from the ritualism which has reigned at
Stoke since, and which is sufficient to bring the old grandparents out
of their graves. In our day the Rectory-pew bore a carved inscription--

    God prosper y^{e} Kynge long in thys lande
    And grant that Papystrie never have y^{e} vper hande,

but the present Rector has removed it.

[Illustration: STOKE CHURCH.]

I can see the congregation still in imagination, the old women in their
red cloaks and large black bonnets; the old men with their glistening
brass buttons, and each with his bunch of southern-wood--"old man"--to
snuff at. In my childhood the tunes of the hymns were always given with
a pitch-pipe. "Dame Dutton's School" used to be ranged round the altar,
and the grand old alabaster tomb of Sir Reginald Corbet, and if any of
the children behaved ill during the service, they were turned up and
soundly whipped then and there, their outcries mingling oddly with the
responses of the congregation. But in those days, now considered so
benighted, there was sometimes real devotion. People sometimes said real
prayers even in church, before the times since which the poor in village
churches are so frequently compelled to say their prayers to music. The
curates always came to luncheon at the Rectory on Sundays. They were
always compelled to come in ignominiously at the back door, lest they
should dirty the entrance: only Mr. Egerton was allowed to come in at
the front door, because he was "a gentleman born." How Grannie used to
bully the curates! They were expected not to talk at luncheon, if they
did they were soon put down. "Tea-table theology" was unknown in those
days. As soon as the curates had swallowed a proper amount of cold veal,
they were called upon to "give an account to Mrs. Leycester" of all that
they had done in the week in the four quarters of the parish--Eton,
Ollerton, Wistanswick, and Stoke--and soundly were they rated if their
actions did not correspond with her intentions. After the curates, came
the school-girls to practise their singing, and my mother was set down
to strum the piano by the hour together as an accompaniment, while
Grannie occupied herself in seeing that they opened their mouths wide
enough, dragging the mouths open by force, and, if they would not sing
properly, putting her fingers so far down their throats that she made
them sick. One day, when she was doing this, Margaret Beeston bit her
violently. Mr. Egerton was desired to talk to her afterwards about the
wickedness of her conduct. "How could you be such a naughty girl,
Margaret, as to bite Mrs. Leycester?"--"What'n her put her fingers down
my throat for? oi'll boite she harder next time," replied the impenitent
Margaret.

Grannie used to talk of chaney (china), laylocks (lilacs), and gould
(gold): of the Prooshians and the Rooshians: of things being "plaguey
dear" or "plaguey bad." In my childhood, however, half my elders used
such expressions, which now seem to be almost extinct. "Obleege me by
passing the cowcumber," Uncle Julius always used to say.

There were always three especial sources of turmoil at Stoke--the
curates, the butlers, and the gardeners. Grannie was very severe to all
her dependants, but to no one more than to three young lady _protégées_
who lived with her in turn--Eliza Lathom, Emma Hunt, and Charlotte
Atkinson--whom she fed on skim-milk and dry bread, and treated so
harshly that the most adventurous and youngest of them, Charlotte
Atkinson,[25] ran away altogether, joined a party of strolling players,
and eventually married an actor (Mr. Tweedie). I remember Grannie going
down into the kitchen one day and scolding the cook till she could bear
it no longer, when she seized the dinner-bell from the shelf and rang it
in her ears till she ran out of the kitchen. When there was "a wash" at
Stoke, which was about every third week, it was a rule with Grannie
that, summer or winter, it must always begin at one A.M. At that hour
old Hannah Berry used to arrive from the village, the coppers were
heated and the maids at work. The ladies-maids, who were expected to do
all the fine muslins, &c., themselves, had also always to be at the
washtubs at three A.M.--by candlelight. If any one was late, the
housekeeper reported to Mrs. Leycester, who was soon down upon them
pretty sharply. Generally, however, her real practical kindness and
generosity prevented any one minding Mrs. Leycester's severity: it was
looked upon as only "her way;" for people were not so tender in those
days as they are now, and certainly no servant would have thought of
giving up a place which was essentially a good one because they were a
little roughly handled by their mistress. In those days servants were as
liable to personal chastisement as the children of the house, and would
as little have thought of resenting it. "You don't suppose I'm going to
hurt _my_ fingers in boxing _your_ ears," said Grannie, when about to
chastise the school children she was teaching, and she would take up a
book from the table and use it soundly, and then say, "Now, we mustn't
let the other ear be jealous," and turn the child round and lay on again
on the other side. Grannie constantly boxed her housemaids' ears, and
alas! when he grew very old, she used to box dear Grandpapa's, though
she loved him dearly, the great source of offence being that he would
sometimes slyly give the servant's elbow a tip when his daily
table-spoonful of brandy was being poured out.

[Illustration: STOKE RECTORY--THE GARDEN SIDE.]

As I have said, Grannie was quite devoted to Grandpapa, yet as she was
twenty years younger, his great age could not but accustom her to the
thought of his death, and she constantly talked before him, to his great
amusement, of what she should do as a widow. Judge Leycester ("Uncle
Hugh"), my grandfather's brother, had left her a house in New Street,
Spring Gardens, and whenever Mary Stanley went to Stoke, she used to
make her write down the different stages and distances to London to be
ready for her removal. Frequently the family used to be startled by a
tremendous "rat-a-tat-tat-tat," on the dining-room door. Grannie had
ordered Richard, the young footman, up, and was teaching him how to
give "a London knock"--it was well he should be prepared. One day the
party sitting in the drawing-room were astonished to see the family
carriage drive up to the door, with Spragg the butler on the box. "I was
only seeing how Spragg will look as coachman when your Grandpapa is
dead," said Grannie, and Grandpapa looked on at the arrangements and
enjoyed them heartily.

As for dear Grandpapa himself, he was always happy. He would amuse
himself for hours in touching up in grey or brown his own (very feeble)
sketches in Switzerland or France. Being a great classical scholar, he
also read a great deal of Italian and Latin poetry, and addressed a
Latin ode to his daughter-in-law Lady Charlotte Penrhyn when he was in
his ninety-second year! This kind aunt of my childhood--"Aunt Nin," as I
always called her--was a very simple person, utterly without pretension,
but because she was Lord Derby's daughter, Grannie always treated her as
the great person of the family. When we went to Stoke, no difference
whatever was made in the house, the stair-carpets were not laid down,
and though the drawing-room was constantly lived in, its furniture was
all swathed in brown holland after the fashion of an uninhabited London
house. When the Stanleys or Leycesters of Toft came to Stoke, the
stair-carpet was put down and the _covers-covers_ were taken off; but on
the rare occasions when Aunt Penrhyn came to Stoke--oh sublime
moment!--the _covers_ themselves were taken off.

From our constant winter walk--"the Rope Walk"--my mother and I could
see Hodnet Tower, of which Grandpapa had at one time been Rector as well
as of Stoke. Bishop Heber had been Rector before him, and in his time my
mother had found much of her chief happiness at Hodnet, from sources
which I did not understand, when I used so often to walk up and down
with her on Sundays, listening to the beautiful Hodnet bells. In my
childhood, Mrs. Cholmondeley was living at Hodnet Hall, having been Mary
Heber, the Bishop's sister. She was very kind to me, writing for my
instruction in English history a "Chapter of Kings," of which I can only
remember the two last lines, which were rather irreverent:

    "William the Fourth was a long time sick,
    And then was succeeded by little Queen Vick."

It was a great event at Stoke when my mother was allowed to have the
carriage, though what John Minshull the coachman generally did no one
could ever find out. If we drove, it was generally to Buntingsdale, a
fine old brick house of the last century standing at the end of a
terraced garden, with lime avenues above the Terne, near Market Drayton.
Here Mr. and Mrs. Tayleur lived with their four daughters--Mary,
Harriet, Lucy, and Emma, who were very severely brought up, though their
father was immensely rich. The old fashion was kept up at Buntingsdale
of all the daughters being expected to spend the whole morning with
their mother in the morning-room at work round a round table, and
formality in everything was the rule. Yet many of my childish pleasures
came from Buntingsdale, and I was always glad when we turned out of the
road and across some turnip-fields, which were then the odd approach to
the lime avenue on the steep bank above the shining Terne, and to see
the brilliant border of crocuses under the old garden wall as we drove
up to the house. The eldest daughter, Mary, who looked then like a
delicate china figure and always smelt of lavender and rose-leaves, used
to show me her shell cabinet and her butterflies, and teach me to
collect snail-shells! The bright energetic second daughter, Harriet,
drew capitally and encouraged my early interest in art. The other two
daughters, Lucy and Emma, died young, almost at the same time: my chief
recollection is of their bending over their eternal worsted-work, very
pale and fragile, and their passing away is one of my earliest
impressions of death.

The other neighbours whom we saw most of were the Hills of Hawkestone,
then a very numerous family. Five of the brothers--Sir Rowland
(afterwards Lord Hill), Sir Robert, Sir Francis, Sir Noel, and Colonel
Clement Hill, were in the battle of Waterloo, and my mother has often
described to me the sickening suspense in watching for the postman after
the first news of the engagement had come, with the almost certainty
that at least some of the brothers must be killed. Miss Emma was deputed
to receive the news, as the sister of strongest nerve, but when she
heard that all her brothers were safe (only Sir Robert being slightly
wounded), she fainted away. Lord Hill used to ride to see my Grandfather
upon the charger he rode at Waterloo, which horse had such a reputation,
that people would come from great distances more even to see the horse
than Lord Hill himself. In earlier days, the family at Hawkestone used
to be likened to that of the Osbaldistons in "Rob Roy"--and had all the
same elements--the chaplain, the soldiers, the sportsmen, the
fox-hunter, the fisherman, and in Rachel (daughter of the Colonel Hill
who was killed by a fall from his horse) a very handsome Diana Vernon,
with frank natural manners: people called her "the Rose of Hawkestone."
My mother often used to recall how remarkable it was that though, when
gathered at home, the family seemed to have no other purpose than to
pursue the amusements of a country life, when called on by their country
to go forth in her service, none of her sons were so brave, none more
self-devoted, than the Hill brothers.

When all the family were at Hawkestone, they dined early and had a hot
supper at nine o'clock. As the family interests were confined to
sporting, the conversation was not very lively, and was relieved by the
uncles endeavouring to provoke each other and the young ones--to yawn!
no very difficult task, seeing they had nothing to do. The eldest Miss
Hill (Maria) was a very primitive-looking person, with hair cut short,
and always insisted upon sitting alone at a side-table that no one might
see her eat; but I cannot remember whether she was alive in my time, or
whether I have only heard of her. Even in the days of a comparative
inattention to those niceties of feminine attire now universally
attended to, the extraordinary head-gear worn by the Misses Hill, their
tight gowns, and homely appearance, were matter for general remark. But
if they lacked in these points, they vied with their brothers in the
possession of brave hearts and loving sympathies--"Every eye blessed
them: every tongue gave witness" to their active benevolence.

In true patriarchal style, the six children of the eldest of the Hill
brothers were brought up with the uncles and aunts at Hawkestone Hall,
nor was any change made when the father's sudden death left a young
widow to be tended with all the kindness of real brethren in the old
family home. At length the grandfather died, and Sir Rowland, then about
eighteen, succeeded. But when his affairs were inquired into, it was
found, that in consequence of very serious losses in a county bankruptcy
and from mismanagement of the estate, there was a heavy debt upon the
property, which, at best, it would take years to liquidate. A plan of
rescue presented itself to Mrs. Hill, the young baronet's mother, who
was a clever and kind-hearted woman, but lacked the simplicity of her
sisters-in-law. A rich merchant, a Mr. Clegg from Manchester, had
bought the estate adjoining Hawkestone. His only grand-daughter was then
scarcely more than a child; but it was as great an object of desire to
old Mr. Clegg to ally his child with an ancient and respected family and
to procure for her the rank and station which his gold could not obtain,
as it was to Mrs. Hill to replenish her son's empty treasury, and enable
him to keep up the family place. A compact for the future was soon
settled. In a few years, however, the fatal illness of Mr. Clegg obliged
Mrs. Hill to hurry matters, and over her grandfather's deathbed Sir
Rowland was married to the girl of fifteen. Immediately after the
ceremony Mr. Clegg died. Mrs. Hill then took the girl-bride home, and
educated her with her own niece, no one suspecting her secret. Sir
Rowland went abroad. When two years had elapsed, Mrs. Hill also went
abroad with "Miss Clegg"--who returned as the wife of Sir Rowland,
received with great festivities. The marriage was a most happy one. The
unassuming gentleness of the lady was as great as if she had been born
in the station to which she was called: and in the charities of social
and domestic life and the exercise of the widest-hearted benevolence to
all around her, she long reigned at Hawkestone.[26] Her son Rowland was
only a year older than myself, and was the nearest approach to a
boy-acquaintance that I had quite as a child.

Hawkestone was and is one of the most enchanting places in England.
There, the commonplace hedges and fields of Shropshire are broken by a
ridge of high red sandstone cliffs most picturesque in form and colour,
and overgrown by old trees with a deep valley between them, where great
herds of deer feed in the shadow. On one side is a grotto, and a
marvellous cavern--"the Druid's Cave"--in which I used to think a live
Druid, a guide dressed up in white with a wreath, appearing through the
yellow light, most bewildering and mysterious. On the other side of the
valley rise some castellated ruins called "the Red Castle." There was a
book at Stoke Rectory about the history of this castle in the reign of
King Arthur, which made it the most interesting place in the world to
me, and I should no more have thought of questioning the fight of Sir
Ewaine and Sir Hue in the valley, and the reception of the former by
"the Lady of the Rock," and the rescue of Sir Gawaine from the gigantic
Carados by Sir Lancelot, than I should have thought of attacking--well,
the divine legation of Moses. But even if the earlier stories of the Red
Castle are contradicted, the associations with Lord Audley and the
battle of Blore Heath would always give it a historic interest.

Over one of the deep ravines which ran through the cliff near the Red
Castle was "the Swiss Bridge"--Aunt Kitty painted it in oils. Beneath
it, in a conical summer-house--"the Temple of Health"--an old woman used
to sit and sell packets of ginger-bread--"Drayton ginger-bread"--of
which I have often bought a packet since for association's sake.

But the most charming expedition of all from Stoke was when, once every
year, I was sent to pay a visit to the Goldstone Farm, where the mother
of my dear nurse Mary Lea lived. It was an old-fashioned farmhouse of
the better class, black and white, with a large house-place and a cool
parlour beyond it, with old pictures and furniture. In front, on the
green, under an old cherry-tree, stood a grotto of shells, and beyond
the green an open common on the hillside covered with heath and gorse,
and where cranberries were abundant in their season. Behind, was a large
garden, with grass walks and abundance of common flowers and fruit.
Dear old Mrs. Lea was charming, and full of quaint proverbs and sayings,
all, as far as I remember them, of a very ennobling nature. With her
lived her married daughter, Hannah Challinor, a very fat good-natured
farmeress. Words cannot describe the fuss these good people made over
me, or my own dear Lea's pride in helping to do the honours of her home,
or the excellent tea, with cream and cakes and jam, which was provided.
After Mrs. Lea's death, poor Mrs. Challinor fell into impoverished
circumstances, and was obliged to leave Goldstone, though the pain of
doing so almost cost her her life. I was then able for many years to
return in a measure the kindness shown me so long before.

Long after the railway was made which passed by Whitmore (within a long
drive of Stoke), we continued to go in our own carriage, posting, to
Shropshire. Gradually my mother consented to go in her own carriage, on
a truck, by rail as far as Birmingham; farther she could not endure it.
Later still, nearly the whole journey was effected by rail, but in our
own chariot. At last we came to use the ordinary railway carriages, but
then, for a long time, we used to have post-horses to meet us at some
station near London: my mother would not be known to enter London in a
railway carriage--"it was so excessively improper" (the sitting opposite
strangers in the same carriage); so we entered the metropolis "by land,"
as it was called in those early days of railway travelling.

On returning to Lime in the spring of 1841, I was sent to Mr. Green's
school, a commercial school at Windmill Hill, about a mile off. I used
to ride to the school on my little pony "Gentle," much to the envy of
the schoolboys; and in every way a most invidious distinction was made
between me and them, which I daresay would have been thoroughly avenged
upon me had I remained with them during play-hours; but I was only there
from nine to twelve, doing my lessons at one of the great oak desks in
the old-fashioned schoolroom. I chiefly remember of the school the
abominable cases of favouritism that there were, and that if one of the
ushers took a dislike to a boy, he was liable to be most unmercifully
caned for faults for which another boy was scarcely reproved. In the
autumn, when we went to Rockend, I was sent to another school at
Torquay, a Mr. Walker's, where I was much more roughly handled, the
master being a regular tartar. I remember a pleasant, handsome boy
called Ray, who sat by me in school and helped me out of many a scrape,
but Mr. Walker was very violent, and as he was not allowed to beat me as
much as he did the other boys, he soon declined teaching me at all.

The railway from London to Brighton was now just opened, and we took
advantage of it. As we reached Merstham (by the first morning train) the
train stopped, and we were all made to get out, for the embankment had
fallen in in front of us. It was pouring in torrents of rain, and the
line muddy and slippery to a degree. We all had to climb the slippery
bank through the yellow mud. I was separated from my mother and Lea and
Uncle Julius, who was with us, but found them again in a desolate house,
totally unfurnished, where all the passengers by the train were
permitted to take refuge. It was the place whither I have gone in later
days to visit Lord Hylton. Here we sat on the boarded floor, with very
little food, in a great room looking upon some dripping
portugal-laurels, all through the long weary day till four in the
afternoon, when omnibuses arrived to take us to another station beyond
the broken line. We did not reach Brighton till nine P.M., and when we
arrived at the station and inquired after our carriages, which were to
have met us at mid-day and taken us home, we heard that a bad accident
had taken place; one of the horses had run away, one of the carriages
been overturned down a steep bank, and one of the servants had his arm
broken. We remained at Brighton in some anxiety till Monday, when we
found that it was my uncle's horse "Steady" which had run away, and his
faithful old servant Collins who was injured.

When my uncle was driving himself, these accidents were so frequent that
we scarcely thought anything of them, as he drove so carelessly and
talked vehemently or composed his sermons or charges all the way. But if
the family had an accident on their way to church, they always returned
thanks for their preservation, which made quite a little excitement in
the service. I remember one occasion on which my mother and aunt did not
appear as usual, when a note was handed to Uncle Julius as he came out
of the vestry, upon which thanks were returned for the "merciful
preservation of Lucy and Maria Hare and Staunton Collins" (the
coachman)--and all the Rectory servants and all the Lime servants
immediately walked out of church to look after the wounded or--because
they were too excited to stay! The horse had taken fright at a gipsy
encampment in the marsh lane and the family had been precipitated into
the ditch.

At this time Uncle Julius had been made one of the Poor Law Guardians
and had to visit at the workhouse, and there was the most ceaseless
ferment and outcry against him. All sorts of stories were got up. One
was that he was going to put all the children into a boat and take them
out to sink them in Pevensey Bay! One day old Betty Lusted went up to
the Rectory and asked to see the Archdeacon. He went out to her: "Well,
Betty, and what do you want?"--"I want to know, zur, if you do know the
Scripture."--"Well, Betty, I hope I do, but why do you ask?"--"Because
if you _do_ know the Scripture, how coomes it that you doona zee--'them
whom God hath joined together let na man put asunder'?" (apropos of the
separation of husbands and wives in the workhouse); and though she was a
poor half-witted body, she brought the tears into his eyes. I remember
his asking her daughter Polly once what she prayed for every night and
morning. "Well, zur, I do pray for a new pair of shoes," replied Polly,
without the slightest hesitation.

Uncle Julius would have given the world to have been able to talk easily
and sympathetically to his people, but he could not get the words out.
Sick people in the parish used to say, "The Archdeacon he do come to us,
and he do sit by the bed and hold our hands, and he do growl a little,
but he do zay nowt."

One day he heard that a family named Woodhams were in great affliction.
It was just after poor Haydon had committed suicide, and he took down
Wordsworth's sonnet on Haydon, and read it to them by way of comfort. Of
course they had never heard of Haydon, and had not an idea what it was
all about.[27]

It was on our way from Norwich to Stoke in the autumn of 1841 that I
made my first sketch from nature. We slept at Bedford, to meet Charles
Stanley there, and I drew Bedford Bridge out of the window--a view made
by candlelight of a bridge seen by moonlight--but it was thought
promising and I was encouraged to proceed. My mother, who drew admirably
herself, gave me capital simple lessons, and in every way fostered my
love of the picturesque. Indeed Hurstmonceaux itself did this, with its
weird views across the levels to the faint blue downs, and its noble
ruined castle. Of the stories connected with this castle I could never
hear enough, and Uncle Julius told them delightfully. But the one I
cared for most was of our remote ancestress Sybil Filiol, who lived at
Old Court Manor in the reign of Edward II., I think. Uncle Julius used
to describe how, after her marriage in Wartling Church, she went to take
leave of her dead father's garden (before riding away upon a pillion
behind her husband), and, whilst there, was carried off by gipsies. Her
husband and other members of her family pursued them, but in those days
locomotion was difficult, escape in the Cheviot Hills easy, and she was
never heard of again.[28] How well I remember the pictorial description
of a strange funeral seen approaching over the hills--"the gipsies of
the north" bringing back the body of Sybil Filiol to be buried with her
ancestors at Wartling, and the story of how her husband devoted her
dowry to making "Sybil Filiol's Way," a sort of stone causeway to
Hurstmonceaux Church, of which I delighted to trace the old grey stones
near Boreham Street and in the Church Lane.

Our cousin Anna Maria Shipley, who had been cruelly married by her
father against her will to the savage paralytic Mr. Dashwood, and who
had been very many years a widow, had, in 1838, made a second marriage
with an old neighbour, Mr. Jones, who, however, lived only a year. In
1840, she married as her third husband the Rev. George Chetwode, and
died herself in the year following. Up to the time of her death, it was
believed and generally understood that the heirs of her large fortune
were the children of her cousin Francis,[29] but it was then discovered
that two days before she expired, she had made a will in pencil in
favour of Mr. Chetwode, leaving all she possessed in his power. This
news was an additional shock to my father, who had never recovered the
will of Mrs. Louisa Shipley, and he passed the winter of 1841 at Palermo
in the utmost melancholy. When he first arrived, he gave a few dinners,
but after that, says Victoire, he seemed to have a presentiment of his
end, though the doctors declared that he was not dangerously ill. For
several nights in February Félix sate up with him. Mr. Hare wished to
send him to bed, "mais Félix repondit, 'Rappelez-vous, monsieur, que je
suis ancien militaire, et que quand j'ai une consigne, je ne la quitte
jamais;'" and then he opposed Félix no longer. "One morning at five
o'clock A.M.," said Madame Victoire, "he asked Félix what o'clock it
was. Félix told him. Then he said, 'Dans une demi-heure j'aurais mon
lait d'ânesse,' parceque l'ânesse venait à six heures.... Puis il
commence à faire jour, et Félix se met à arranger un peu la chambre. Se
trouvant à la fenêtre, il entend M. Hare faire un mouvement dans le lit:
Félix regarde de près, il écoute, il touche: M. Hare venait de finir."

My father was buried in the English Cemetery at Palermo, where there is
a plain sarcophagus over his grave. The English Consul sent the
following certificate to Mrs. Hare:--

     "On Saturday, the 15th January, 1842, the remains of the late
     Francis George Hare, Esquire, were interred in the Protestant
     Burial Ground at the Lazzaret of Palermo, in the presence of a
     large concourse of Sicilian noblemen, and of the British, French,
     and American residents. The service of the church was read by the
     Rev. W. F. Holt, and the pall was supported by the Principino of
     Lardoria, the Prince of Radali, the American Consul, and Mr. J. F.
     Turner. As a token of respect to the memory of the deceased, the
     flags of the British, French, and American vessels were hoisted
     half-mast high during the forenoon."

The summer was spent by the Marcus Hares at the Rectory--one of those
intensely hot summers which I never remember since my childhood, when we
gasped through the day, and lay at night under bowers of ash-boughs to
keep off the torment of gnats, which used then to be as bad at
Hurstmonceaux as I have since known mosquitoes in Italy. Of my cousins I
preferred Theodore, who was a very engaging little child. I remember
Uncle Julius coming out with tears streaming down his cheeks, and an
open letter in his hand, one day when all the family were sitting under
the trees. It was the news of the death of Dr. Arnold of Rugby.

In the autumn Mrs. Hare came with her children to spend some time at
Hurstmonceaux Rectory. It was then arranged that I should call her
"Italima" (being a corruption of "Italian Mama"), and by that name I
will henceforth speak of her in these memoirs, but this must not be
taken to imply any greater intimacy, as she never treated me familiarly
or with affection. I remember the party arriving in their black
dress--Italima, Francis, William, Esmeralda, Mr. Gaebler--the admirable
tutor, Félix, Victoire, and Clémence--my sister's maid. My sister, as a
little child, was always called "the Tigress," but as she grew older,
her cousin Lord Normanby remonstrated at this. "Then give her another
name," said Italima. "Esmeralda,"--and Esmeralda she was now always
called.

Italima must have found it intensely dull at the Rectory. She used to
walk daily to Gardner Street, where the sight of "_somebody_" and the
village shops was a consolation to her. She used to make my sister
practise on the pianoforte for hours, and if she did not play well she
shut her up for the rest of the day in a dressing-room, and I used to go
and push fairy-stories to her under the door. Though she was so severe
to my sister, she resented exceedingly any scoldings which Uncle Julius
gave to Francis, who richly deserved them, and was terribly spoilt. He
was, however, as beautiful as a boy as my sister was as a girl, and a
wonderfully graceful pair they made when they danced the tarantella
together in the evenings. Altogether my own brothers and sister being as
children infinitely more attractive than the Marcus Hares', I was much
happier with them, which was terribly resented in the family, and any
sign I gave of real enjoyment was always followed by some privation, for
fear I should be over-excited by it. Mr. Gaebler was a most pleasant and
skilful tutor, and I found it delightful to do lessons with him, and
made immense progress in a few weeks: but _because_ his teaching was
pleasant, it was supposed that the "discipline" of lessons was wanting,
and I was not long allowed to go on learning from him. In the afternoons
we were all made to go to the school and practise ridiculous Hullah
singing, which we loathed.

The Bunsens were now living at Hurstmonceaux Place. Bunsen had been
Minister for Prussia at Rome at the time of my birth and the death of my
uncle Augustus Hare, and had then become very intimate with my mother,
as he had previously been with my uncle. Therefore, when he became
Minister in London and wanted a country-house, Hurstmonceaux Place,
which was then to let, seemed wonderfully suited to his requirements.
The great distance from London, however (the railway then coming no
nearer than Brighton, twenty-four miles off) prevented the Bunsens from
remaining more than two years at Hurstmonceaux; but during this time
they added much to our happiness, and, child as I was, I was conscious
of the vivifying influence which their refinement, their liberal views,
and hightoned conversation brought into the narrow circle at
Hurstmonceaux, which being so much and so often cut off from outer
influences, was becoming more and more of a Mutual Admiration Society.
In the many loving daughters of the house, my mother found willing
helpers in all her work amongst the poor, while the cheerful wisdom and
unfailing spirit of Madame Bunsen made her the most delightful of
companions. For several months I went every morning to Hurstmonceaux
Place, and did all my lessons with Theodore Bunsen, who was almost my
own age, under the care of his German tutor, Herr Deimling.

It must have been in 1841, I think, that Bunsen inoculated my uncle and
mother with the most enthusiastic interest in the foundation of the
Bishopric of Jerusalem, being himself perfectly convinced that it would
be the Church thus founded which would meet the Saviour at his second
coming. Esther Maurice, by a subscription amongst the ladies of Reading,
provided the robes of the new Bishop.

In the spring of 1843 I was dreadfully ill with the whooping-cough,
which I caught (as I had done the chicken-pox before) from my mother's
numerous parochial godchildren, when they came to Lime for their
lessons. When I was better we went for three days in our own carriage to
the Mount Ephraim Hotel at Tunbridge Wells. It was my first "tour," and
it was with rapture that I saw Mayfield Palace, Bayham Abbey, and the
High Rocks, on our way to which Lea and I were run away with by our
donkeys.

When the Marcus Hares were not at the Rectory, Uncle Julius in these
years had a wonderfully varied society there, of whom we always saw more
or less--German philosophers, American philologists, English
astronomers, politicians, poets. Amongst those I particularly disliked
were Whewell and Thirlwall--so icily cold were their manners. Bunsen,
Star, Archdeacon Moore, Prentiss the American, Darley, Hull, I liked;
but Professor Sedgwick I was quite devoted to.[30] He "threw a mantle of
love over every one;"[31] and nothing could be more charming than his
stories, more attractive and interesting than his conversation,
especially with children, with whom he took pains to "be agreeable." I
saw so many people of this kind, that I used to think that what I heard
called "society" was all like these specimens: I was very much mistaken.
A visit from the gentle and amiable Copley Fielding early encouraged my
love of art. He greatly admired the peculiar scenery of
Hurstmonceaux--the views from the churchyard, so like the descent upon
the marshes of Ostia; the burnt uplands of the old deer-park; the long
flat reaches of blue-green level; and the hazy distant downs, which were
especially after his own heart. There was one view of the castle towers
seen from behind, and embossed against the delicate hues of the level,
which he used to make a frequent study of, and which my mother and
uncle ever after called "Copley Fielding's view."

[Illustration: HURSTMONCEAUX.]

Amongst other visitors of this year, I must mention our cousin Penelope,
Mrs. Warren (eldest daughter of Dean Shipley and sister of Mrs. Dashwood
and Mrs. Heber), who spent some days at the Rectory with her daughters,
because under her protection I had my only sight of the upper part of
Hurstmonceaux Castle. One of the staircases remained then, and the
timbers of many of the upper rooms were left, though the floors were
gone. One day we were with my mother and uncle in the ruins, and they
were saying how no one would ever see the upper floor again, when, to
their horror, Mrs. Warren seized me in her arms and darted up the
staircase. "Look, child, look!" she said, "for no one will ever see this
again," and she leapt with me from beam to beam. I recollect the old
chimney-pieces, the falling look of everything. It was wonderful that we
came down safe; the staircase was removed immediately after, that no one
might follow in our footsteps.

I remember Carlyle coming to stay at the Rectory, where they did not
like him much. He came in a high hat--every one wore high hats then. The
day he arrived, the wind blew his hat off into a ditch as he was
getting over a stile: and he went off at once into one of his unbounded
furies against "the most absurd outrageous head-covering in the world,
which the vanity of the Prince Regent had caused people to adopt."

Aunt Lucy and the Maurices had long urged my mother to send me to
school, and perhaps in many ways my terrible fits of naughtiness made it
desirable, though they chiefly arose from nervousness, caused by the
incessant "nagging" I received at home from every one except my mother
and Lea. But the choice of the school to which I was sent at nine years
old was very unfortunate. When illness had obliged my Uncle Augustus
Hare to leave his beloved little parish of Alton Barnes for Italy, a
Rev. Robert Kilvert came thither as his temporary curate--a very
religious man, deeply learned in ultra "evangelical" divinity, but
strangely unpractical and with no knowledge whatever of the world--still
less of the boyish part of it. As Dr. John Brown once said--"The grace
of God can do muckle, but it canna gie a man common-sense." Mr. Kilvert
was a good scholar, but in the dryest, hardest sense; of literature he
knew nothing, and he was entirely without originality or cleverness, so
that his knowledge was of the most untempting description. Still his
letters to my mother in her early widowhood had been a great comfort to
her, and there was no doubt of his having been a thoroughly good
parish-priest. He had lately married a Miss Coleman, who derived the
strange name of Thermuthis from the daughter of Pharaoh who saved Moses
out of the bulrushes, and he had opened a small school at his tiny
Rectory of Hardenhuish, or, as it was generally called, Harnish, the
estate of the Clutterbucks, near Chippenham in Wiltshire; so my mother,
thinking it of far more importance to select "a good man" than "a good
master," determined to send me there. How often since have I seen the
terrible mistake of parents in "packing off" children to a distant
school, to be entirely in the hands of masters of whose practical
influence and social competence for their duties they know nothing
whatever!

My own experience of Harnish is one of the many instances I have known
of how little the character of the head of an establishment affects the
members of it, unless his spirituality is backed up by a thorough
knowledge of the world. The greater portion of Mr. Kilvert's
scholars--his "little flock of lambs in Christ's fold"--were a set of
little monsters. All infantine immoralities were highly popular, and--in
such close quarters--it would have been difficult for the most pure and
high-minded boy to escape from them. The first evening I was there, at
nine years old, I was compelled to eat Eve's apple quite up--indeed, the
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was stripped absolutely bare:
there was no fruit left to gather.

I wonder if children often go through the intense agony of anguish which
I went through when I was separated from my mother. Perhaps not, as few
children are brought up so entirely by and with their parents in such
close companionship. It was leaving my mother that I minded, not the
going to school, to which my misery was put down: though, as I had never
had any companions, the idea of being left suddenly amongst a horde of
young savages was anything but comforting. But my nervous temperament
was tortured with the idea that my mother would die before I saw her
again (I had read a story of this kind), that our life was over, that my
aunts would persuade her to cease to care for me,--indeed, the anguish
was so great and so little understood, that though it is more than fifty
years ago, as I write this, I can scarcely bear to think of it.




III

BOYHOOD

1843-1848

    "The more we live, more brief appear
      Our life's returning stages:
    A day to childhood seems an year,
      And years like passing ages."

    --THOMAS CAMPBELL.

    "Oh if, in time of sacred youth,
      We learned at home to love and pray,
    Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth
      May never wholly pass away."

    --THACKERAY.


My mother took me to Harnish Rectory on July 28, 1843. The aspect of Mr.
Kilvert, his tall figure, and red hair encircling a high bald forehead,
was not reassuring, nor were any temptations offered by my companions
(who were almost entirely of a rich middle class), or by the playground,
which was a little gravelled courtyard--the stable-yard, in fact--at the
back of the house. The Rectory itself was a small house, pleasantly
situated on a hill, near an odd little Wrenian church which stood in a
well-kept churchyard. We were met at Harnish by Mrs. Pile, who, as
daughter of an Alton farmer, was connected with the happiest period of
my mother's life, and while I was a prey to the utmost anguish, talking
to her prevented my mother from thinking much about parting with me.

One miserable morning Mr. Kilvert, Mrs. Pile, and I went with my mother
and Lea to the station at Chippenham. Terrible indeed was the moment
when the train came up and I flung myself first into Lea's arms and then
into my mother's. Mrs. Pile did her best to comfort me--but ... there
_was_ no comfort.

Several boys slept in a room together at Harnish. In mine there was at
first only one other, who was one of the greatest boy-blackguards I ever
came across--wicked, malicious, and hypocritical. He made my life
indescribably miserable. One day, however, whilst we were wearily
plodding through our morning lessons, I saw a pleasant gentleman-like
boy come through the gate, who was introduced to us as Alick MacSween.
He was thirteen, so much older than any of the others, and he was very
good-looking, at least we thought so then, and we used to apply to him
the line in our Syntax--

    "Ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris."

It was a great joy to find myself transferred to his room, and he soon
became a hero in my eyes. Imagination endowed him with every grace, and
I am sure, on looking back, that he really was a very nice boy.
Gradually I had the delight of feeling assured that Alick liked me as
much as I liked him. We became everything to each other, and shared our
"lockers" in school, and our little gardens in play-hours. Our affection
made sunshine in the dreariness. My one dread was that Alick would some
day like another boy better than he liked me. It happened. Then, at ten
years old, life was a blank. Soon afterwards Alick left the school, and
a little later, before he was fifteen, I heard that he was dead. It was
a dumb sorrow, which I could speak to no one, for no one would have
understood it, not even my mother. It is all in the dim distance of the
long ago. I could not realise what Alick would be if he was alive, but
my mind's eye sees him now as he was then, as if it were yesterday: I
mourn him still.

Mr. Kilvert, as I have said, was deeply "religious," but he was very
hot-tempered, and slashed our hands with a ruler and our bodies with a
cane most unmercifully for exceedingly slight offences. So intense, so
abject was our terror of him, that we used to look forward as to an
oasis to the one afternoon when he went to his parish duties, and Mrs.
Kilvert or her sister Miss Sarah Coleman attended to the school, for, as
the eldest boy was not thirteen, we were well within their capacities.
The greater part of each day was spent in lessons, and oh! what trash we
were wearisomely taught; but from twelve to one we were taken out for a
walk, when we employed the time in collecting all kinds of rubbish--bits
of old tobacco-pipe, &c.--to make "museums."

     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "DARLING MAMA,--I like it rather better than I expected. They have
     killed a large snake by stoning it, and Gumbleton has skinned it,
     such nasty work, and peged it on a board covered with butter and
     pepper, and layed it out in the sun to dry. It is going to be
     stuffed. Do you know I have been in the vault under the church. It
     is so dark. There are great big coffins there. The boy's chief game
     is robbers. Give love and 8 thousand kisses to Lea and love to the
     Grannies. Good-bye darling Mama."

     "Frederick Leuis has been very ill of crop. Do you know what that
     is? I have been to the school-feast at Mr. Clutterbuck's. It was so
     beautifull. All the girls were seated round little round tables
     amongst beds of geraniums, heltrope, verbenas, and balm of Gilead.
     We carried the tea and were called in to grapes and gooseberries,
     and we played at thread-the-needle and went in a swing and in a
     flying boat. Good-bye Mamma."


     "MY DEAR MAMMA,--The boys have got two dear little rabbits. They
     had two wood-pigeons, but they died a shocking death, being eaten
     of worms, and there was a large vault made in which was interred
     their bodies, and that of a dear little mouse who died too. All
     went into mourning for it."


     "MY DEAR MAMMA,--We have been a picknick at a beautiful place
     called Castlecomb. When we got there we went to see the dungeon.
     Then we saw a high tower half covered with ivy. You must know that
     Castlecomb is on the top of an emense hill, so that you have to
     climb hands and knees. When we sate down to tea, our things rolled
     down the hill. We rambled about and gathered nuts, for the trees
     were loaded. In the town there is a most beautiful old carved cross
     and a church. Good-bye darling Mamma."


     "_Nov. 11._--I will tell you a day at Mr. Kilvert's. I get up at
     half-past six and do lessons for the morning. Then at eight
     breakfast. Then go out till half-past nine. Then lessons till
     eleven. Then go out till a quarter-past eleven. Then lessons till
     12, go a walk till 2 dinner. Lessons from half-past three, writing,
     sums, or dictation. From 5 till 6 play. Tea. Lessons from 7 to 8.
     Bed. I have collected two thousand stamps since I was here. Do you
     ever take your pudding to the poor women on Fridays now? Goodbye
     darling Mamma."

As the holidays approached, I became ill with excitement and joy, but
all through the half years at Harnish I always kept a sort of map on
which every day was represented as a square to be filled up when lived
through. Oh, the dreary sight of these spaces on the first days: the
ecstasy when only one or two squares remained white!

     _From_ MY MOTHER'S JOURNAL.

     "When I arrived at Harnish, Augustus was looking sadly ill. As the
     Rectory door was opened, the dear boy stood there, and when he saw
     us, he could not speak, but the tears flowed down his cheeks. After
     a while he began to show his joy at seeing us."

The Marcus Hares were at Hurstmonceaux all the winter, and a terrible
trial it was to me, as my Aunt Lucy was more jealous than ever of any
kind word being spoken to me. But I had some little pleasures when I was
at Hurstmonceaux Place with the large merry family of the Bunsens, who
had a beautiful Christmas-tree.

There is nothing to tell of my school-life during the next year, though
my mind dwells drearily on the long days of uninstructive lessons in
the close hot schoolroom when so hopelessly "nous suyons à grosses
gouttes," as Mme. de Sévigné says; or on the monotonous confinement in
the narrow court which was our usual playground; and my recollection
shrinks from the reign of terror under which we lived. In the summer I
was delivered from Hurstmonceaux, going first with my mother to our dear
Stoke home, which I had never seen before in all its wealth of summer
flowers, and proceeding thence to the English lakes, where the delight
of the flowers and the sketching was intense. But our pleasure was not
unalloyed, for, though Uncle Julius accompanied us, my mother took
Esther Maurice with her, wishing to give her a holiday after her hard
work in school-teaching at Reading, and never foreseeing, what every one
else foresaw, that Uncle Julius, who had always a passion for
governesses, would certainly propose to her. Bitter were the tears which
my mother shed when this result--to her alone unexpected--actually took
place. It was the most dismal of betrothals: Esther sobbed and cried, my
mother sobbed and cried, Uncle Julius sobbed and cried daily. I used to
see them sitting holding each other's hands and crying on the banks of
the Rotha.

These scenes for the most part took place at Foxhow, where we paid a
long visit to Mrs. Arnold, whose children were delightful companions to
me. Afterwards we rented a small damp house near Ambleside--Rotha
Cottage--for some weeks, but I was very ill from its unhealthiness, and
terribly ill afterwards at Patterdale from the damp of the place.
Matthew Arnold, then a very handsome young man, was always excessively
kind to me, and I often had great fun with him and his brothers, but he
was not considered then to give any promise of the intellectual powers
he showed afterwards. From Foxhow and Rotha Cottage we constantly
visited Wordsworth and his dear old wife at Rydal Mount, and we walked
with him to the Rydal Falls. He always talked a good deal about himself
and his own poems, and I have a sense of his being not vain, but
conceited. I have been told since, in confirmation of this, that when
Milton's watch--preserved somewhere--was shown to him, he instantly and
involuntarily drew out his own watch, and compared, not the watches, but
the poets. The "severe creator of immortal things," as Landor called
him, read us some of his verses admirably,[32] but I was too young at
this time to be interested in much of his conversation, unless it was
about the wild-flowers, to which he was devoted, as I was. I think that
at Keswick we also saw Southey, but I do not remember him, though I
remember his (very ugly) house very well. In returning south we saw
Chester, and paid a visit to an old cousin of my mother's--"Dosey
(Theodosia) Leigh," who had many quaint sayings. In allusion to her own
maiden state, she would often complacently quote the old Cheshire
proverb--"Bout's bare but it's yezzy."[33] While at Chester, though I
forget how, I first became conscious how difficult the having Esther
Maurice for an aunt would make everything in life to me. I was, however,
at her wedding in November at Reading.

The winter of 1844-45 was the first of many which were made unutterably
wretched by "Aunt Esther." Aunt Lucy had chastised me with rods, Aunt
Esther did indeed chastise me with scorpions. Aunt Lucy was a very
refined person, and a very charming and delightful companion to those
she loved, and, had she loved me, I should have been devoted to her.
Aunt Esther was, from her own personal characteristics, a person I never
could have loved. Yet my uncle was now entirely ruled by her, and my
gentle mother considered her interference in everything as a cross which
was "sent to her" to be meekly endured. The society at the Rectory was
now entirely changed: all the relations of the Hare family, except the
Marcus Hares, were given to understand that their visits were unwelcome,
and the house was entirely filled with the relations of Aunt Esther--old
Mr. and Mrs. Maurice; their married daughter Lucilla Powell, with her
husband and children; their unmarried daughters--Mary, Priscilla, and
Harriet[34]--Priscilla, who now never left her bed, and who was
violently sick after everything she ate (yet with the most enormous
appetite), often for many months together.

With the inmates of the house, the whole "tone" of the Rectory society
was changed. It was impossible entirely to silence Uncle Julius, yet at
times even he was subdued by his new surroundings, the circle around him
being incessantly occupied with the trivialities of domestic or
parochial detail, varied by the gossip of such a tenth-rate provincial
town as Reading, or reminiscences of the boarding-school which had been
their occupation and pride for so many years. Frequently also the spare
rooms were filled by former pupils--"young ladies" of a kind who would
announce their engagement by "The infinite grace of God has put it into
the heart of his servant Edmund to propose to me," or "I have been led
by the mysterious workings of God's providence to accept the hand of
Edgar,"[35]--expressions which Aunt Esther, who wrote good and simple
English herself, would describe as touching evidences of a Christian
spirit in her younger friends.

But what was far more trying to me was, that in order to prove that her
marriage had made no difference in the sisterly and brotherly relations
which existed between my mother and Uncle Julius, Aunt Esther insisted
that my mother should dine at the Rectory _every_ night, and as, in
winter, the late return in an open carriage was impossible, this
involved our sleeping at the Rectory and returning home every morning in
the bitter cold before breakfast. The hours after five o'clock in every
day of the much-longed-for, eagerly counted holidays, were now absolute
purgatory. Once landed at the Rectory, I was generally left in a dark
room till dinner at seven o'clock, for candles were never allowed in
winter in the room where I was left alone. After dinner I was never
permitted to amuse myself, or to do _anything_, except occasionally to
net. If I spoke, Aunt Esther would say with a satirical smile, "As if
you ever _could_ say anything worth hearing, as if it was ever
_possible_ that any one could want to hear what you have to say." If I
took up a book, I was told instantly to put it down again, it was
"disrespect to my Uncle." If I murmured, Aunt Esther, whose temper was
absolutely unexcitable, quelled it by her icy rigidity. Thus gradually I
got into the habit of absolute silence at the Rectory--a habit which it
took me years to break through: and I often still suffer from the want
of self-confidence engendered by reproaches and taunts which never
ceased: for a day--for a week--for a year they would have been nothing:
but for _always_, with no escape but my own death or that of my
tormentor! Water dripping for ever on a stone wears through the stone at
last.

The cruelty which I received from my new aunt was repeated in various
forms by her sisters, one or other of whom was always at the Rectory.
Only Priscilla, touched by the recollection of many long visits during
my childhood at Lime, occasionally sent a kindly message or spoke a
kindly word to me from her sick-bed, which I repaid by constant
offerings of flowers. Most of all, however, did I feel the conduct of
Mary Maurice, who, by pretended sympathy and affection, wormed from me
all my little secrets--how miserable my uncle's marriage had made my
home-life, how I never was alone with my mother now, &c.--and repeated
the whole to Aunt Esther.

From this time Aunt Esther resolutely set herself to subdue me
thoroughly--to make me feel that any remission of misery at home, any
comparative comfort, was as a gift from her. But to make me feel this
thoroughly, it was necessary that all pleasure and comfort in my home
should first be annihilated. I was a very delicate child, and suffered
absolute agonies from chilblains, which were often large open wounds on
my feet. Therefore I was put to sleep in "the Barracks"--two dismal
unfurnished, uncarpeted north rooms, without fireplaces, looking into a
damp courtyard, with a well and a howling dog. My only bed was a rough
deal trestle, my only bedding a straw palliasse, with a single coarse
blanket. The only other furniture in the room was a deal chair, and a
washing-basin on a tripod. No one was allowed to bring me any hot water;
and as the water in my room always froze with the intense cold, I had to
break the ice with a brass candlestick, or, if that were taken away,
with my wounded hands. If, when I came down in the morning, as was often
the case, I was almost speechless from sickness and misery, it was
always declared to be "temper." I was given "saur-kraut" to eat because
the very smell of it made me sick.

When Aunt Esther discovered the comfort that I found in getting away to
my dear old Lea, she persuaded my mother that Lea's influence over me
was a very bad one, and obliged her to keep me away from her.

A favourite torment was reviling all my own relations before me--my
sister, &c.--and there was no end to the insulting things Aunt Esther
said of them.

People may wonder, and oh! how often have I wondered that my mother did
not put an end to it all. But, inexplicable as it may seem, it was her
extraordinary religious opinions which prevented her doing so. She
literally believed and taught that when a person struck you on the right
cheek you were to invite them to strike you on the left also, and
therefore if Aunt Esther injured or insulted me in one way, it was
right that I should give her the opportunity of injuring or insulting me
in another! I do not think that my misery cost her nothing, she felt it
acutely; but _because_ she felt it thus, she welcomed it, as a fiery
trial to be endured. Lea, however, was less patient, and openly
expressed her abhorrence of her own trial in having to come up to the
Rectory daily to dress my mother for dinner, and walk back to Lime
through the dark night, coming again, shine or shower, in the early
morning, before my mother was up.

I would not have any one suppose that, on looking back through the
elucidation of years, I can see no merits in my Aunt Esther Hare. The
austerities which she enforced upon my mother with regard to me she
fully carried out as regarded herself. "Elle vivait avec elle-même comme
sa victime," as Mme. de Staël would describe it. She was the Inquisition
in person. She probed and analysed herself and the motive of her every
action quite as bitterly and mercilessly as she probed and analysed
others. If any pleasure, any even which resulted from affection for
others, had drawn her for an instant from what she believed to be the
path--and it was always the thorniest path--of self-sacrifice, she
would remorselessly denounce that pleasure, and even tear out that
affection from her heart. She fasted and denied herself in everything;
indeed, I remember that when she was once very ill, and it was necessary
for her to see a doctor, she never could be persuaded to consent to it,
till the happy idea occurred of inducing her to do so on a Friday, by
way of a penance! To such of the poor as accepted her absolute
authority, Aunt Esther was unboundedly kind, generous, and considerate.
To the wife of the curate, who leant confidingly upon her, she was an
unselfish and heroic nurse, equally judicious and tender, in every
crisis of a perplexing and dangerous illness. To her own sisters and
other members of her family her heart and home were ever open, with
unvarying affection. To her husband, to whom her severe creed taught her
to show the same inflexible obedience she exacted from others, she was
utterly devoted. His requirement that she should receive his old friend,
Mrs. Alexander, as a permanent inmate, almost on an equality with
herself in the family home, and surround her with loving attentions, she
bowed to without a murmur. But to a little boy who was, to a certain
degree, independent of her, and who had from the first somewhat
resented her interference, she knew how to be--oh! she was--most cruel.

Open war was declared at length between Aunt Esther and myself. I had a
favourite cat called Selma, which I adored, and which followed me about
at Lime wherever I went. Aunt Esther saw this, and at once insisted that
the cat must be given up to her. I wept over it in agonies of grief: but
Aunt Esther insisted. My mother was relentless in saying that I must be
taught to give up my own way and pleasure to others; and forced to give
it up if I would not do so willingly, and with many tears, I took Selma
in a basket to the Rectory. For some days it almost comforted me for
going to the Rectory, because then I possibly saw my idolised Selma. But
soon there came a day when Selma was missing: Aunt Esther had ordered
her to be ... hung!

From this time I never attempted to conceal that I loathed Aunt Esther.
I constantly gave her the presents which my mother made me save up all
my money to buy for her--for her birthday, Christmas, New Year, &c.--but
I never spoke to her unnecessarily. On these occasions I always received
a present from her in return--"The Rudiments of Architecture," price
ninepence, in a red cover. It was always the same, which not only saved
expense, but also the trouble of thinking. I have a number of copies of
"The Rudiments of Architecture" now, of which I thus became the
possessor.

Only from Saturday till Monday we had a reprieve. The nearness of Lime
to the school which my mother undertook to teach on Sundays was the
excuse, but, as I see from her journal, only the excuse, which she made
to give me one happy day in the week. How well I remember still the
ecstasy of these Saturday evenings, when I was once more alone with the
mother of my childhood, who was all the world to me, and she was almost
as happy as I was in playing with my kittens or my little black spaniel
"Lewes," and when she would sing to me all her old songs--"Hohenlinden,"
"Lord Ullin's Daughter," &c. &c.--and dear Lea was able to come in and
out undisturbed, in the old familiar way.

[Illustration: THE VESTRY, HURSTMONCEAUX.]

Even the pleasures of this home-Sunday, however, were marred in the
summer, when my mother gave in to a suggestion of Aunt Esther that I
should be locked into the vestry of the church between the services.
Miserable indeed were the three hours which--provided with a sandwich
for dinner--I had weekly to spend there; and though I did not expect to
see ghosts, the utter isolation of Hurstmonceaux Church, far away from
all haunts of men, gave my imprisonment an unusual eeriness. Sometimes I
used to clamber over the tomb of the Lords Dacre, which rises like a
screen against one side of the vestry, and be stricken with vague
terrors by the two grim white figures lying upon it in the silent
desolation, in which the scamper of a rat across the floor seemed to
make a noise like a whirlwind. At that time two grinning skulls (of the
founder and foundress of the church, it was believed) lay on the ledge
of the tomb; but soon after this Uncle Julius and Aunt Esther made a
weird excursion to the churchyard with a spade, and buried them in the
dusk with their own hands. In the winter holidays, the intense cold of
the unwarmed church made me so ill, that it led to my miserable penance
being remitted. James II. used to say that "Our Saviour flogged people
to make them go out of the temple, but that he never punished them to
make them go _in_."[36] But in my childhood no similar abstinence was
observed.

It was a sort of comfort to me, in the real church-time, to repeat
vigorously all the worst curses in the Psalms, those in which David
showed his most appalling degree of malice (Psalm xxxv. 7-16, Psalm
lix., Psalm lxix. 22-29, Psalm cxl. 9, 10, for instance), and apply them
to Aunt Esther & Co. As all the Psalms were extolled as beatific, and
the Church of England used them constantly for edification, their
sentiments were all right, I supposed.

A great delight to me at this time was a cabinet with many drawers which
my mother gave me to keep my minerals and shells in, and above which
was a little bookcase filled with all my own books. The aunts in vain
tried to persuade her to take away "some of the drawers," so that I
might "never have the feeling that the cabinet was wholly mine." When I
returned to school, it was some amusement in my walks to collect for
this cabinet the small fossils which abound in the Wiltshire limestone
about Harnish, especially at Kellaway's quarry, a point which it was
always our especial ambition to reach on holidays. At eleven years old I
was quite learned about Pentacrinites, Bellemnites, Ammonites, &c.

It was often a sort of vague comfort to me at home that there was always
one person at Hurstmonceaux Rectory whom Aunt Esther was thoroughly
afraid of. It was the faithful old servant Collins, who had kept his
master in order for many years. I remember that my Uncle Marcus, when he
came to the Rectory, complained dreadfully of the tea, that the water
with which it was made was never "on the boil," &c.--"they really must
speak to Collins about it." But neither Uncle Julius nor Aunt Esther
would venture to do it; they really couldn't: he must do it himself. And
he did it, and very ill it was received.

The summer holidays were less miserable than those in the winter,
because then, at least for a time, we got away from Hurstmonceaux. In
the summer of 1845, I went with my mother to her old home of Alton for
the first time. How well I remember her burst of tears as we came in
sight of the White Horse, and the church-bells ringing, and the many
simple cordial poor people coming out to meet her, and blessing her. She
visited every cottage and every person in them, and gave feasts in a
barn to all the people. One day the school-children all sang a sort of
ode which a farmer's daughter had composed to her. Never was my sweet
mother more charming than in her intercourse with her humble friends at
Alton, and I delighted in threading with her the narrow muddy foot-lanes
of the village to the different cottages, of old and young Mary Doust,
of Lizzie Hams, Avis Wootton, Betty Perry, &c.

Alton was, and is, quite the most primitive place I have ever seen,
isolated--an oasis of verdure--in the midst of the great Wiltshire
corn-plain, which is bare ploughed land for so many months of the year;
its two tiny churches within a stone-throw of each other, and its
thatched mud cottages peeping out of the elms which surround its few
grass pastures. A muddy chalky lane leads from the village up to "Old
Adam," the nearest point on the chain of downs, and close by is a White
Horse, not the famous beast of Danish celebrity, but something much more
like the real animal. I was never tired during this visit of hearing
from his loving people what "Uncle Augustus" had said to them, and truly
his words and his image seemed indelibly impressed upon their hearts.
Mrs. Pile, with whose father or sister we stayed when at Alton, and who
always came to meet us there, was one of those rare characters in middle
life who are really ennobled by the ceaseless action of a true,
practical, humble Christianity. I have known many of those persons whom
the world calls "great ladies" in later times, but I have never known
any one who was more truly "a lady" in every best and highest sense,
than Mrs. Pile.

On leaving Alton, we went to join the Marcus Hares in the express train
at Swindon. Uncle Marcus, Aunt Lucy, her maid Griffiths, and my mother
were in one compartment of the carriage; my little cousin Lucebella,
Lea, an elderly peer (Lord Saye and Sele, I think), and I were in the
other, for carriages on the Great Western were then divided by a door.
As we neared Windsor, my little cousin begged to be held up that she
might see if the flag were flying on the castle. At that moment there
was a frightful crash, and the carriage dashed violently from side to
side. In an instant the dust was so intense that all became pitch
darkness. "For God's sake put up your feet and press backwards; I've
been in this before," cried Lord S., and we did so. In the other
compartment all the inmates were thrown violently on the floor, and
jerked upwards with every lurch of the train. If the darkness cleared
for an instant, I saw Lea's set teeth and livid face opposite. I learned
then for the first time that to put hand-bags in the net along the top
of the carriage is most alarming in case of accident. They are dashed
hither and thither like so many cannon-balls. A dressing-case must be
fatal.

After what seemed an endless time, the train suddenly stopped with a
crash. We had really, I believe, been three minutes off the line.
Instantly a number of men surrounded the carriage. "There is not an
instant to lose, another train is upon you, they may not be able to stop
it,"--and we were all dragged out and up the steep bank of the railway
cutting. Most strange, I remember, was the appearance of our ruined
train beneath, lying quite across the line. The wheels of the luggage
van at the end had come off, and the rest of the train had been dragged
off the line gradually, the last carriages first. Soon two trains were
waiting (stopped) on the blocked line behind. We had to wait on the top
of the bank till a new train came to fetch us from Slough, and when we
arrived there, we found the platform full of anxious inquirers, and much
sympathy we excited, quite black and blue with bruises, though none of
us seriously hurt.

[Illustration: LEWES.]

Soon after we reached Hurstmonceaux, my Uncle Marcus became seriously
ill at the Rectory. I went with my mother, Aunt Esther, and Uncle Julius
to his "charge" at Lewes, and, as we came back in the hot evening, we
were met by a messenger desiring us not to drive up to the house, as
Uncle Marcus must not be disturbed by the sound of wheels. Then his
children were sent to Lime, and my mother was almost constantly at the
Rectory. I used to go secretly to see her there, creeping in through the
garden so as not to be observed by the aunts, for Aunt Lucy could
scarcely bear her to be out of sight. At last one morning I was summoned
to go up to the Rectory with all the three children. Marcus went in
first alone to his father's room and was spoken to: then I went in with
the younger ones. Lucebella was lifted on to the pillow, I stood at the
side of the bed with Theodore; my mother, Uncle Julius, and Aunt Esther
were at the foot. I remember the scene as a picture, and Aunt Lucy
sitting stonily at the bed's-head in a violet silk dress. My dying uncle
had a most terrible look and manner, which haunted me long afterwards,
but he spoke to us, and I think gave us his blessing. I was told that
after we left the room he became more tranquil. In the night my mother
and Uncle Julius said the "Te Deum" aloud, and, as they reached the last
verse, he died.

Aunt Lucy never saw him again. She insisted upon being brought away
immediately to Lime, and shut herself up there. She was very peculiar at
this time and for a year afterwards, one of her odd fancies being that
her maid Griffiths was always to breakfast and have luncheon with the
family and be waited on as a lady. We children all went to the funeral,
driving in the family chariot. I had no real affection for Uncle Marcus,
but felt unusually solemnised by the tears around me. When, however, a
peacock butterfly, for which I had always longed, actually perched upon
my prayer-book as I was standing by the open grave in the most solemn
moment, I could not resist closing the book upon it, and my prayer-book
still has the marks of the butterfly's death. I returned to school in
August under the care of Mr. Hull, a very old friend of the family, who
had come to the funeral.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Harnish, August 8._--When we got to London we got a cab and went,
     passing the Guildhall where Gog and Magog live, the great
     Post-Office, the New Royal Exchange and the Lord Mayor's, to
     Tavistock Square, where three young men rushed down-stairs, who Mr.
     Hull told me were his three sons--John, Henry, and Frank. I had my
     tea when they had their dinner. After tea I looked at Miss Hull's
     drawings. Mr. Hull gave me a book called 'The Shadowless Man.' I
     stayed up to see a balloon, for which we had to go upon the top of
     the house. The balloon looked like a ball of fire. It scattered all
     kinds of lights, but it did not stay up very long. We also saw a
     house on fire, the flames burst out and the sky was all red. Do
     give the kitten and the kitten's kitten some nice bits from your
     tea for my sake."


     "_August 30._--We have been a picknick to Slaughterford. We all
     went in a van till the woods of Slaughterford came in sight. Then
     we walked up a hill, carrying baskets and cloaks between us till we
     came to the place where we encamped. The dinner was unpacked, and
     the cloth laid, and all sate round. When the dishes were uncovered,
     there appeared cold beef, bread, cheese, and jam, which were
     quickly conveyed to the mouths of the longing multitude. We then
     plunged into the woods and caught the nuts by handfuls. Then I got
     flowers and did a sketch, and when the van was ready we all went
     home. Goodbye darling Mamma. I have written a poem, which I send
     you--

    "O Chippenham station thy music is sweet
    When the up and down trains thy neighbourhood greet.
    The up train to London directeth our path
    And the down train will land us quite safely at Bath."


     "_October_ the I don't know what.--O dearest Mamma, what do you
     think! Mr. Dalby asked me to go to Compton Bassett with Mr. and
     Mrs. Kilvert and Freddie Sheppard.... When we got to the gate of a
     lovely rectory near Calne, Mrs. Sheppard flew to the door to
     receive her son, as you would me, with two beautiful little girls
     his sisters. After dinner I went with Freddie into the garden, and
     to the church, and saw the peacocks and silver pheasants, and made
     a sketch of the rectory. On Sunday we had prayers with singing and
     went to church twice, and saw a beautiful avenue where the ground
     was covered with beech-nuts. On Monday the Dalbys' carriage brought
     us to Chippenham to the Angel, where we got out and walked to
     Harnish. Mr. Dalby told me to tell you that having known Uncle
     Augustus so well, he had taken _the liberty_ to invite me to
     Compton."


     "_Oct. 6._--It is now only ten weeks and six days to the holidays.
     Last night I had a pan of hot water for my feet and a warm bed,
     and, what was worse, two horrible pills! and this morning when I
     came down I was presented with a large breakfast-cup of senna-tea,
     and was very sick indeed and had a very bad stomach-ache. But to
     comfort me I got your dear letter with a sermon, but who is to
     preach it?"


     "_Nov. 6._--Dearest Mamma, as soon as we came down yesterday all
     our dresses for the fifth of November were laid out. After
     breakfast the procession was dressed, and as soon as the sentinel
     proclaimed that the clock struck ten, the grand procession set
     out: first Gumbleton and Sheppard dressed up with straps, cocked
     hats, and rosettes, carrying between them, on a chair, Samuel
     dressed as Guy Fawkes in a large cocked hat and short cloak and
     with a lanthorn in his hand. Then came Proby carrying a Union Jack,
     and Walter (Arnold) with him, with rosettes and bands. Then King
     Alick with a crown turned up with ermine, and round his leg a blue
     garter. Behind him walked the Queen (Deacon Coles) with a purple
     crown and long yellow robe and train, and Princess Elizabeth (me)
     in a robe and train of pink and green. After the procession had
     moved round the garden, singing--

    'Remember, remember,
    The fifth of November, &c,'

     the sentinel of the guard announced that the cart of faggots was
     coming up the hill ... and in the evening was a beautiful bonfire
     and fireworks.

     "What a pity it is that the new railway does not turn aside to save
     Lewes Priory. I shall like very much to see the skeletons, but I
     had much rather that Gundrada and her husband lay still in their
     coffins, and that the Priory had not been disturbed.... It is only
     five weeks now to the holidays."


     "_Nov. 28._--Counting to the 19th, and not counting the day of
     breaking up, it is now only three weeks to the holidays. I will
     give you a history of getting home. From Lewes I shall look out for
     the castle and the Visitation church. Then I shall pass Ringmer,
     the Green Man Inn, Laughton, the Bat and Ball; then the Dicker,
     Horsebridge, the Workhouse, the turnpike, the turn to Carter's
     Corner, the turn to Magham Down, Woodham's Farm, the Deaf and Dumb
     House, the Rectory on the hill, the Mile Post--'15 miles to Lewes,'
     Lime Wood, the gate (oh! when shall I be there!)--then turn in, the
     Flower Field, the Beaney Field, _the_ gate--oh! the garden--two
     figures--John and Lea, perhaps you--perhaps even the kittens will
     come to welcome their master. Oh my Lime! in little more than three
     weeks I shall be there!"


     "_Hurrah for Dec. 1._--On Wednesday it will be, not counting
     breaking-up day, two weeks, and oh! the Wednesday after we shall
     say 'one week.' This month we break up! I dream of nothing, think
     of nothing, but coming home. To-day we went with Mr. Walker (the
     usher) to Chippenham, and saw where Lea and I used to go to sit on
     the wooden bridge.... Not many more letters! not many more sums!"

How vividly, how acutely, I recollect that--in my passionate devotion to
my mother--I used, as the holidays approached, to conjure up the most
vivid mental pictures of my return to her, and appease my longing with
the thought of how she would rush out to meet me, of her ecstatic
delight, &c.; and then how terrible was the bathos of the reality, when
I drove up to the silent door of Lime, and nobody but Lea took any
notice of my coming; and of the awful chill of going into the
drawing-room and seeing my longed-for and pined-for mother sit still in
her chair by the fire till I went up and kissed her. To her, who had
been taught always to curtsey not only to her father, but even to her
father's chair, it was only natural; but I often sobbed myself to sleep
in a little-understood agony of anguish--an anguish that she could not
really care for me.

    "Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
    And the little less, and what worlds away!"[37]

In the winter of 1845-46, "Aunt Lucy" let Rockend to Lord Beverley, and
came to live at Lime for six months with her three children, a
governess, and two, sometimes three, servants. As she fancied herself
poor, and this plan was economical, it was frequently repeated
afterwards. On the whole, the arrangement was satisfactory to me, as
though Aunt Lucy was excessively unkind to me, and often did not speak a
single word to me for many weeks together, and though the children were
most tormenting, Aunt Esther--a far greater enemy--was at least kept at
bay, for Aunt Lucy detested her influence and going to the Rectory quite
as cordially as I did.

How often I remember my ever-impatient rebellion against the doctrine I
was always taught as fundamental--that my uncles and aunts must be
always right, and that to question the absolute wisdom and justice of
their every act--to me so utterly selfish--was typical of the meanest
and vilest nature. How odd it is that parents, and still more uncles and
aunts, never will understand, that whilst they are criticising and
scrutinising their children or nephews, the latter are also scrutinising
and criticising them. Yet so it is: investigation and judgment of
character is usually mutual. During this winter, however, I imagine that
the aunts were especially amiable, as in the child's play which I wrote,
and which we all acted--"The Hope of the Katzekoffs"--they, with my
mother, represented the three fairies--"Brigida, Rigida, and
Frigida"--Aunt Lucy, I need hardly say, being Frigida, and Aunt Esther
Rigida.

[Illustration: Augustus J. C. Hare

From a portrait by S. Lawrence.]

Being very ill with the measles kept me at home till the middle of
February. Aunt Lucy's three children also had the measles, and were very
ill; and it is well remembered as characteristic of Aunt Esther, that
she said when they were at the worst--"I am _very glad_ they are so ill:
it is a well-deserved punishment because their mother would not let
them go to church for fear they should catch it there." Church and a
love of church was the standard by which Aunt Esther measured
everything. In all things she had the inflexible cruelty of a Dominican.
She would willingly and proudly undergo martyrdom herself for her own
principles, but she would torture without remorse those who differed
from her.

When we were recovering, Aunt Lucy read "Guy Mannering" aloud to us. It
was enchanting. I had always longed beyond words to read Scott's novels,
but had never been allowed to do so--"they were too exciting for a boy!"
But usually, as Aunt Lucy and my mother sat together, their conversation
was almost entirely about the spiritual things in which their hearts,
their mental powers, their whole being were absorbed. The doctrine of
Pascal was always before their minds--"La vie humaine n'est qu'une
illusion perpetuelle," and their treasure was truly set in heavenly
places. They would talk of heaven in detail just as worldly people would
talk of the place where they were going for change of air. At this time,
I remember, they both wished--no, I suppose they only thought they
wished--to die: they talked of longing, pining for "the coming of the
kingdom," but when they grew really old, when the time which they had
wished for before was in all probability really near, and when they
were, I believe, far more really prepared for it, they ceased to wish
for it. "By-and-by" would do. I imagine it is always thus.

Aunt Lucy loved her second boy Theodore much the best of her three
children, and made the greatest possible difference between him and the
others. I remember this being very harshly criticised at the time; but
now it seems to me only natural that in any family there must be
favourites. It is with earthly parents as Dr. Foxe said in a sermon
about God, that "though he may love all his children, he must have an
especial feeling for his saints."


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_March 13._--My dearest, dearest Mamma, to-day is my 12th
     birthday. How well I remember many happy birthdays at Stoke, when
     before breakfast I had a wreath of snowdrops, and at dinner a
     little pudding with my name in plums.... I will try this new year
     to throw away self and think less how to please it. Good-bye dear
     Mamma."

In March the news that my dear (Mary) Lea was going to marry our
man-servant John Gidman was an awful shock to me. My mother might easily
have prevented this (most unequal) marriage, which, as far as Mrs.
Leycester was concerned, was an elopement. It was productive of great
trouble to us afterwards, and obliged me to endure John Gidman, to wear
him like a hair-shirt, for forty years. Certainly no ascetic torments
can be so severe as those which Providence occasionally ordains for us.
As for our dear Lea herself, her marriage brought her misery enough, but
her troubles always stayed in her heart and never filtered through. As I
once read in an American novel, "There ain't so much difference in the
troubles on this earth, as there is in the folks that have to bear
them."


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_March 20._--O my very dearest Mamma. What news! what news! I
     cannot believe it! and yet sometimes I have thought it might
     happen, for one night a long time ago when I was sitting on Lea's
     lap--O what shall I call her now? may I still call her Lea? Well,
     one night a long time ago, I said that Lea would never marry, and
     she asked why she shouldn't, and said something about--'Suppose I
     marry John.' ... I was sure she could never leave us. I put your
     letter away for some time till Mrs. Kilvert sent me upstairs for my
     gloves. Then I opened it, and the first words I saw were
     'Lea--married.' I was so surprised I could not speak or move....
     How very odd it will be for Lea to be a bride. Why, John is not
     half so old as Lea, is he?... Tell me all about the wedding--every
     smallest weeest thing--What news! what news!"


     MARY (LEA) GIDMAN _to_ A. J. C. H.

     "_Stoke_, _March_ 29, 1846.--My darling child, a thousand thanks
     for your dear little letter. I hope the step I have taken will not
     displease you. If there is anything in it you don't like, I must
     humbly beg your pardon. I will give you what account I can of the
     wedding. Your dear Mamma has told you that she took me to
     Goldstone. Then on Saturday morning a little after nine my mother's
     carriage and a saddle-horse were brought to the gate to take us to
     Cheswardine. My sister Hannah and her husband and George Bentley
     went with me to church. I wished you had been with me so very much,
     but I think it was better that your dear Mamma was not there, for
     very likely it would have given her a bad headache and have made me
     more nervous than I was, but I got through all of it better than I
     expected I should. As soon as it was over the bells began to ring.
     We came back to Goldstone, stayed about ten minutes, then went to
     Drayton, took the coach for Whitmore, went by rail to Chelford, and
     then we got a one-horse fly which took us to Thornycroft to John's
     grandfather's, where we were received with much joy. We stayed
     there till Wednesday, then went for one night to Macclesfield, and
     came back to Goldstone on Thursday and stayed there till Friday
     evening. Then we came back to Stoke. The servants received us very
     joyfully, and your dear Mamma showed me such tender feelings and
     kindness, it is more than I can tell you now. My dear child, I hope
     you will always call me Lea. I cannot bear the thought of your
     changing my name, for the love I have for you nothing can ever
     change. My mother and Hannah wish you had been in the garden with
     me gathering their flowers, there is such a quantity of them.... We
     leave Stoke to-morrow, and on Friday reach your and our dear Lime.
     I shall write to you as soon as we get back, and now goodbye, my
     darling child, from your old affectionate nurse Lea."

[Illustration: REV. O. LEYCESTER'S GRAVE, STOKE CHURCHYARD.]

The great age of my dear Grandfather Leycester, ninety-five, had always
made his life seem to us to hang upon a thread, and very soon after I
returned home for my summer holidays, we were summoned to Stoke by the
news of his death. This was a great grief to me, not only because I was
truly attached to the kind old man, but because it involved the parting
with the happiest scenes of my childhood, the only home in which I had
ever been really happy. The dear Grandfather's funeral was very
different from that which I had attended last year, and I shed many
tears by his grave in the churchyard looking out upon the willows and
the shining Terne. Afterwards came many sad partings, last visits to
Hawkestone, Buntingsdale, Goldstone; last rambles to Helshore, Jackson's
Pool, and the Islands; and then we all came away--my Uncle Penrhyn
first, then Aunt Kitty, then my mother and Lea and I, and lastly
Grannie, who drove in her own carriage all the way to her house in New
Street, Spring Gardens, the posting journey, so often talked of,
actually taking place at last. Henceforward Stoke seemed to be
transferred to New Street, which was filled with relics of the old
Shropshire Rectory, and where Mrs. Cowbourne, Margaret Beeston, Anne
Tudor, and Richard the footman, with Rose the little red and white
spaniel, were household inmates as before.

I thought the house in New Street charming--the cool, old-fashioned,
bow-windowed rooms, which we should now think very scantily furnished,
and like those of many a country inn; the dining-room opening upon wide
leads, which Grannie soon turned into a garden; the drawing-room, which
had a view through the trees of the Admiralty Garden to the Tilting
Yard, with the Horse Guards and the towers of Westminster Abbey.

The grief of leaving Stoke made me miserably unwell, and a doctor was
sent for as soon as I arrived at the Stanleys' house, 38 Lower Brook
Street, who came to me straight from a patient ill with the scarlatina,
and gave me the disorder. For three weeks I was very seriously ill in
hot summer weather, in stifling rooms, looking on the little black
garden and chimney-pots at the back of the house. Mary and Kate Stanley
were sent away from the infection, and no one came near me except my
faithful friend Miss Clinton, who brought me eau-de-Cologne and flowers.
It was long foolishly concealed from me that I had the scarlatina, and
therefore, as I felt day after day of the precious holidays ebbing away,
while I was pining for coolness and fresh country air, my mental fever
added much to my bodily ailments, whereas, when once told that I was
seriously ill, I was quite contented to lie still. Before I quite
recovered, my dear nurse Lea became worn-out with attending to me, and
we had scarcely reached Lime before she became most dangerously ill with
a brain-fever. For many days and nights she lay on the brink of the
grave, and great was my agony while this precious life was in danger.
Aunt Esther, who on _great_ occasions generally behaved kindly, was very
good at this time, ceased to persecute me, and took a very active part
in the nursing.

At length our dear Lea was better, and as I was still very fragile, I
went with my mother and Anne Brooke, our cook, to Eastbourne--then a
single row of little old-fashioned houses by the sea--where we
inhabited, I should think, the very smallest and humblest lodging that
ever was seen. I have often been reminded of it since in reading the
account of Peggotty's cottage in "David Copperfield." It was a tiny
house built of flints, amongst the boats, at the then primitive end of
Eastbourne, towards the marshes, and its miniature rooms were filled
with Indian curiosities, brought to the poor widow to whom it belonged
by a sailor son. The Misses Thomas of Wratton came to see us here, and
could hardly suppress their astonishment at finding us in such a
place--and when the three tall smart ladies had once got into our room,
no one was able to move, and all had to go out in the order in which
they were nearest the door. But my mother always enjoyed exceedingly
these primitive places, and would sit for hours on the beach with her
Taylor's "Holy Living" or her "Christian Year," and had soon made many
friends amongst the neighbouring cottagers, whose houses were quite as
fine as her own, and who were certainly more cordial to the lady who had
not minded settling down as one of themselves, than they would have been
to a smart visitor in a carriage. The most remarkable of these people
was an excellent old woman called Deborah Pattenden, who lived in the
half of a boat turned upside down, and had had the most extraordinary
adventures. My first literary work was her biography, which told how she
had suffered the pains of drowning, burning (having been enveloped in
flames while struck by lightning), and how she had lain for twenty-one
days in a rigid trance (from "the plague," she described it) without
food or sign of life, and was near being buried alive. We found a
transition from our cottage life in frequent visits to Compton Place,
where Mrs. Cavendish, mother of the 7th Duke of Devonshire, lived then,
with her son Mr. Cavendish, afterwards Lord Richard. She was a charming
old lady, who always wore white, and had very simple and very timid
manners. But she was fond of my mother, who was quite adored by Lord
Richard, by whom we were kept supplied with the most beautiful fruits
and flowers of the Compton Gardens. He was very kind to me also, and
would sometimes take me to his bookcases and tell me to choose any book
I liked for my own. We seldom afterwards passed a summer without going
for a few days to Compton Place as long as Mrs. Cavendish lived there.
It was there that I made my first acquaintance with the existence of
many simple luxuries to which, in our primitive life, we were quite
unaccustomed, but which in great houses are considered almost as
necessaries. The Cavendishes treated us as distant relations, in
consequence of the marriage of my Grandmother's cousin, Georgiana
Spencer, with the 5th Duke of Devonshire.

When I returned to Harnish I was still wretchedly ill, and the constant
sickness under which I suffered, with the extreme and often unjust
severity of Mr. Kilvert, made the next half year a very miserable one.
In the three years and a half which I had spent at Harnish, I had been
taught next to nothing--all our time having been frittered in learning
Psalms by heart, and the Articles of the Church of England (I could say
the whole thirty-nine straight off when eleven years old), &c. Our
history was what Arrowsmith's Atlas used to describe Central Africa to
be--"a barren country only productive of dates." I could scarcely
construe even the easiest passages of Cæsar. Still less had I learned to
play at any ordinary boys' games; for, as we had no playground, we had
naturally never had a chance of any. I was glad of any change. It was
delightful to leave Harnish for good at Christmas, 1846, and the
prospect of Harrow was that of a voyage of adventure.

In January 1847 my mother took me to Harrow. Dr. Vaughan was then
headmaster, and Mr. Simpkinson, who had been long a curate of
Hurstmonceaux, and who had been consequently one of the most familiar
figures of my childhood, was a master under him, and, with his handsome,
good-humoured sister Louisa, kept the large house for boys beyond the
church, which is still called "The Grove." It was a wonderfully new life
upon which I entered; but though a public school was a very much rougher
thing then than it is now, and though the fagging for little boys was
almost ceaseless, it would not have been an unpleasant life if I had not
been so dreadfully weak and sickly, which sometimes unfitted me for
enduring the roughness to which I was subjected. As a general rule,
however, I looked upon what was intended for bullying as an additional
"adventure," which several of the big boys thought so comic, that they
were usually friendly to me and ready to help me: one who especially
stood my friend was a young giant--Twisleton, son of Lord Saye and Sele.
One who went to Harrow at the same time with me was my connection Harry
Adeane,[38] whose mother was Aunt Lucy's sister, Maude Stanley of
Alderley. I liked Harry very much, but though he was in the same house,
his room was so distant that we saw little of each other; besides, my
intense ignorance gave me a very low place in the school, in the Lower
Fourth Form. It was a great amusement to write to my mother all that
occurred. In reading it, people might imagine my narration was intended
for complaint, but it was nothing of the kind: indeed, had I wished to
complain, I should have known my mother far too well to complain to
_her_.

     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Harrow, Jan. 29, 1847._--When I left you, I went to school and
     came back to pupil room, and in the afternoon had a solitary walk
     to the skating pond covered with boys.... In the evening two big
     boys rushed up, and seizing Buller (another new boy) and me,
     dragged us into a room where a number of boys were assembled. I was
     led into the midst. Bob Smith[39] whispered to me to do as I was
     bid and I should not be hurt. On the other side of the room were
     cold chickens, cake, fruit, &c., and in a corner were a number of
     boys holding open little Dirom's mouth, and pouring something
     horrible stirred up with a tallow-candle down his throat. A great
     boy came up to me and told me to sing or to drink some of this
     dreadful mixture. I did sing--at least I made a noise--and the boys
     were pleased because I made no fuss, and loaded me with oranges and
     cakes.

     "This morning being what is _called_ a whole holiday, I have had to
     stay in three hours more than many of the others because of my
     slowness in making Latin verses. This evening Abel Smith sent for
     me to his room, and asked me if I was comfortable, and all sorts of
     things."


     "_Jan. 21._--What do you think happened last night? Before prayers
     I was desired to go into the fifth form room, as they were having
     some game there. A boy met me at the door, ushered me in, and told
     me to make my salaam to the Emperor of Morocco, who was seated
     cross-legged in the middle of a large counterpane, surrounded by
     twenty or more boys as his serving-men. I was directed to sit down
     by the Emperor, and in the same way. He made me sing, and then
     jumped off the counterpane, as he said, to get me some cake.
     Instantly all the boys seized the counterpane and tossed away. Up
     to the ceiling I went and down again, but they had no mercy, and it
     was up and down, head over heels, topsy-turvy, till some one called
     out 'Satus'--and I was let out, very sick and giddy at first, but
     soon all right again.... I am not much bullied except by Davenport,
     who sleeps in my room."


     "_Jan. 22._--To-day it has snowed so hard that there has been
     nothing but snow-balling, and as I was coming out of school, hit
     by a shower of snowballs, I tumbled the whole way down the two
     flights of stairs headlong from the top to the bottom."


     "_Jan. 23._--Yesterday I was in my room, delighted to be alone for
     once, and very much interested in the book I was reading, when D.
     came in and found the fire out, so I got a good licking. He makes
     me his fag to go errands, and do all he bids me, and if I don't do
     it, he beats me, but I don't mind much. However, I have got some
     friends, for when I refused to do my week-day lessons on a Sunday,
     and was being very much laughed at for it, some one came in and
     said, 'No, Hare, you're quite right; never mind being laughed at.'
     However I am rather lonely still with no one to speak to or care
     about me. Sometimes I take refuge in Burroughs' study, but I cannot
     do that often, or he would soon get tired of me. I think I shall
     like Waldegrave,[40] a new boy who has come, but all the others
     hate him. Blomfield[41] is a nice boy, but his room is very far
     away. Indeed, our room is so secluded, that it would be a very
     delightful place if D. did not live in it. In playtime I go here,
     there, and everywhere, but with no one and doing nothing. Yet I
     like Harrow very much, though I am much teased even in my form by
     one big boy, who takes me for a drum, and hammers on my two sides
     all lesson-time with doubled fists. However, Miss Simmy says, if
     you could see my roses you would be satisfied."

     "_Jan. 30._--There are certain fellows here who read my last letter
     to you, and gave me a great lecture for mentioning boys' names; but
     you must never repeat what I say: it could only get me into
     trouble. The other night I did a desperate thing. I appealed to the
     other boys in the house against D. Stapleton was moved by my story,
     and Hankey and other boys listened. Then a boy called Sturt was
     very much enraged at D., and threatened him greatly, and finally
     D., after heaping all the abuse he could think of upon me, got so
     frightened that he begged me to be friends with him. I cannot tell
     you how I have suffered and do suffer from my chilblains, which
     have become so dreadfully bad from going out so early and in all
     weathers."


     "_Feb. 2._--To-day, after half-past one Bill, I went down the town
     with Buller and met two boys called Bocket and Lory. Lory and I,
     having made acquaintance, went for a walk. This is only the second
     walk I have had since I came to Harrow. I am perpetually 'Boy in
     the House.'"


     "_Feb. 10._--To-day at 5 minutes to 11, we were all told to go into
     the Speech-room (do you remember it?), a large room with raised
     benches all round and a platform in the middle and places for the
     monitors. I sat nearly at the top of one of these long ranges. Then
     Dr. Vaughan made a speech about snow-balling at the Railway Station
     (a forbidden place), where the engine-drivers and conductors had
     been snow-balled, and he said that the next time, if he could not
     find out the names of the guilty individuals, the whole school
     should be punished. To-day the snow-balling, or rather ice-balling
     (for the balls are so hard you can hardly cut them with a knife),
     has been terrific: some fellows almost have their arms broken with
     them."


     "_Feb. 12._--I am in the hospital with dreadful pains in my
     stomach. The hospital is a large room, very quiet, with a window
     looking out into the garden, and two beds in it. Burroughs is in
     the other bed, laid up with a bad leg.... Yesterday, contrary to
     rule, Dr. Vaughan called Bill, and then told all the school to stay
     in their places, and said that he had found the keyhole of the
     cupboard in which the rods were kept stopped up, and that if he did
     not find out before one o'clock who did it, he would daily give the
     whole school, from the sixth form downwards, a new pun, of the
     severest kind.... There never was anything like the waste of bread
     here, whole bushels are thrown about every day, but the bits are
     given to the poor people.... I like Valletort[42] very much, and I
     like Twisleton,[43] who is one of the biggest boys in this house."


     "_Feb. 20._--To-day I went to the Harrisites' steeplechase. Nearly
     all the school were there, pouring over hedges and ditches in a
     general rush. The Harrisites were distinguished by their white or
     striped pink and white jackets and Scotch caps, and all bore
     flags."


     "_Feb. 21._--I have been out jumping and hare-and-hounds, but we
     have hard work now to escape from the slave-drivers for
     racket-fagging. Sometimes we do, by one fellow sacrificing himself
     and shutting up the others head downwards in the turn-up bedsteads,
     where they are quite hidden; and sometimes I get the old woman at
     the church to hide me in the little room over the porch till the
     slave-drivers have passed."


     "_March 1._--I have just come back from Sheen, where I have had a
     very happy Exeat. Uncle Norwich gave me five shillings, and Uncle
     Penrhyn ten."

     MRS. STANLEY _to_

     HER SISTER MRS. A. HARE.


     "_Sheen, March 1._--I never saw Augustus look anything like so
     well--and it is the look of health, ruddy and firm, and his face
     rounder. The only thing is that he stoops, as if there were
     weakness in the back, but perhaps it is partly shyness, for I
     observed he did it more at first. He did look very shy the first
     day--hung his head like a snowdrop, crouched out of sight, and was
     with difficulty drawn out; but I do not think it is at all because
     he is cowed, and he talked more yesterday. The Bishop was very much
     pleased with him, and thought him much improved.... He came without
     either greatcoat or handkerchief, but did not appear to want the
     one, and had lost the other. He said most decidedly that he was
     happy, far happier than at Mr. Kilvert's, happier than he expected
     to be; and, though I felt all the time what an uncongenial element
     it must be, he could not be in it under better circumstances."


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_March 4._--As you are ill, I will tell you my adventure of
     yesterday to amuse you. I went out with a party of friends to play
     at hare-and-hounds. I was hare, and ran away over hedges and
     ditches. At last, just as I jumped over a hedge, Macphail caught
     me, and we sat down to take breath. Just then Hoare ran up
     breathless and panting, and threw himself into the hedge crying
     out, 'We are pursued by navvies.' The next minute, before I could
     climb back over the hedge, I found myself clutched by the arm, and
     turning round, saw that a great fellow had seized me, and that
     another had got Macphail and another Hodgson Junior. They dragged
     us a good way, and then stopped and demanded our money, or they
     would have us down and one should suffer for all. Macphail and
     Hoare were so frightened that they gave up all their money at once,
     but I would not give up mine. At last they grew perfectly furious
     and declared they _would_ have our money to buy beer. I then gave
     them a shilling, but hid the half-sovereign I had in my pocket, and
     after we had declared we would not give them any more, they went
     away.

     "To cut the story short, I got Hodgson Junior (for the others were
     afraid) to go with me to the farmer on whose land the men were
     working, and told what had happened. He went straight to the field
     where the navvies were and made them give up all our money, turned
     one out of his service, and threatened the other two, and we came
     back to Harrow quite safe, very glad to have got off so well.

     "What do you think! the fever has broken out in Vaughan's, and if
     any other house catches it, we are to go--home!"


     "_March 9._--All the school is in an uproar, for all Vaughan's
     house went down yesterday. Two boys have the fever, and if any one
     else catches it, we shall all go home. What fun it will be. The
     fever came straight from Eton with some velocipedes. Everybody now
     thinks everybody else has the fever. I am shunned by all because I
     have a sore throat, and half-a-yard is left on each side of me in
     form. Boys suck camphor in school. Endless are the reports.
     'Pember's got the fever.'--'No, he hasn't.'--'Yes, he has, for it's
     broke out in Harris's.'--'Then we shall all go home. Hurrah!'--'No,
     it's all a gull!'"

            *       *       *       *       *

     "My adventure with the navvies has been a very good thing for me,
     as some fellows say 'that little Hare has really got some pluck.'"


     "_March 10._--Hurrah! Vaughan has caught the fever. The Vaughanites
     are all gone. Valletort is gone. Waldegrave is gone. But the great
     news is we all go home the day after to-morrow. Now if you don't
     write the instant you get this you will delay my return home. So
     pray, Mamma, do--do--do--do. I cannot write much, for the school is
     so hurry-scurry. There will be no Trial--oh hip! hip! Oh pray do
     write directly! I shall see you soon. Hurrah!"


     (After Easter holidays), "_April 14._--When I got here, I found
     Davenport was gone and Dirom come into our room. The bells rang all
     night for the return of the school. We are busy at our Trial, which
     we do with our masters in form. We did Ovid this morning, and I
     knew much more about it than many other fellows."


     "_Saturday._--To-day has been a whole holiday, as it always is at
     the end of Trial. I have got off very well, and learnt eighty lines
     more than I need have done, for we need only have learnt fifty
     lines, and I knew more of other things than many others.

     "To-day was 'Election Day'--commonly called Squash Day (oh, how
     glad I am it is over), the day most dreaded of all others by the
     little boys, when they get squashed black and blue, and almost
     turned inside out. But you won't understand this, so I will tell
     you. Platt, horrid Platt, stands at one side of Vaughan's desk in
     school, and Hewlett at the other, and read the names. As they are
     read, you go up and say who you vote for as cricket-keeper, and as
     you come out, the party you vote against squash you, while your
     party try to rescue you. Sometimes this lasts a whole hour (without
     exaggeration it's no fun), but to-day at breakfast the joyful news
     came that the fourth form was let off squash. It was such a
     delight. The fifth form were determined that we should have
     something though, for as we came out of Bill, they tried to knock
     our hats to pieces, and ourselves to pieces too."


     "_April 24._--The boys have all begun to wear strawhats and to buy
     insect-nets, for many are very fond of collecting insects, and to
     my delight I found, when I came up, that they did not at all
     despise picking primroses and violets."


     "_April 28._--The other day, as Sturt was staying out, I had to fag
     in his place. I had to go to that horrid Platt at Ben's. At the
     door of Ben's was P----. I asked him which was Platt's room, and he
     took me upstairs and pushed me into a little dark closet, and when
     I got out of that, into a room where a number of fellows were at
     tea, and then to another. At last I came to some stairs where two
     boys were sitting cross-legged before a door. They were the
     tea-fags. I went in, and there were Platt and his brother, very
     angry at my being late, but at last they let me go, or rather I was
     kicked out of the house.

     "To-day we went to hear a man read the 'Merchant of Venice' in
     Speech-room. Such fun: I liked it so much."


     "_May 1._--Yesterday I was in a predicament. Hewlett, the head of
     our house, sent me with a note to Sporling, the head of the school,
     in Vaughan's new house. I asked a boy which was Sporling's. He told
     me that I should find him upstairs, so I went up stairs after
     stairs, and at the top were two monitors, and as I looked
     bewildered by the long passages, they told me which was Sporling's
     room. When I came out with an answer to the note, they called after
     me, and ordered me to give Hewlett their compliments, and tell him
     not to be in too great a hurry to get into Sporling's shoes. You
     must obey a monitor's orders, and if you don't you get a wapping;
     but I was pretty sure to get a wapping anyway--from the monitors if
     I did not deliver the message, and from Hewlett for its
     impertinence. I asked a great many boys, and they all said I must
     tell Hewlett directly. At last I did: he was in a great rage, but
     said I might go.

     "I have 7s. 6d. owed me, for as soon as the boys have any money
     they are almost obliged to lend it; at least you never have any
     peace till it is all gone. Some of the boys keep rabbits in the
     wells of their studies, but to-night Simmy has forbidden this."


     "_June._--On Sunday in the middle of the Commandments it was so hot
     in chapel that Kindersley fell down in a fit. He was seized head
     and foot and carried out, struggling terribly, by Smith and Vernon
     and others: and the boys say that in his fit he seized hold of Mr.
     Middlemist's (the Mathematical Master's) nose and gave it a very
     hard tweak; but how far this is true I cannot tell. However, the
     whole chapel rose up in great consternation, some thinking one
     thing and some another, and some not knowing what to think, while
     others perhaps thought as I did, that the roof was coming down. Dr.
     Vaughan went on reading the prayers, and Kindersley shrieking, but
     at last all was quiet. Soon, however, there was another row, for
     Miles fainted, and he was carried out, and then several others
     followed his example. That night was so hot that many of the boys
     slept on the bare floor, and had no bedclothes on, but the next day
     it rained and got quite cold, and last night we were glad of
     counterpanes and blankets again."

     "_The Bishop's Holiday._--The cricket-fagging, the dreadful,
     horrible cricket-fagging comes upon me to-day. I am Boy in the
     House on the extra whole holiday, and shall have cricket-fagging in
     the evening at the end of a hard day's other fagging."


     "_Saturday._--I must write about the awful storm of last night. I
     had been very ill all day, and was made to take a powder in
     marmalade--Ah-h--bah!--and went to sleep about twelve with the
     window wide open because of the heat. At half-past two I awoke
     sick, when to my astonishment, it being quite dark, flash after
     flash of lightning illuminated the room and showed how the rain was
     pouring in floods through the open window. The wind raged so that
     we thought it would blow the house down. We heard the boys
     downstairs screaming out and running about, and Simmy and Hewlett
     trying to keep order. I never saw such a storm. All of a sudden, a
     long loud clap of thunder shook the house, and hail like great
     stones mingled with the rain came crashing in at the skylights.
     Another flash of lightning illuminated the room, and continued
     there (I suppose it must have struck something) in one broad flame
     of light, bursting out like flames behind the window: I called out
     'Fire, fire, the window's on fire.' This woke Buller, who had been
     sleeping soundly all this time, and he rushed to the window and
     forced it down with the lightning full in his eyes. Again all was
     darkness, and then another flash showed what a state the room was
     in--the books literally washed off the table, and Forster and Dirom
     armed with foot-pans of water. Then I threw myself on my bed in
     agonies of sickness: not a drop of water was to be had to drink: at
     last Buller found a little dirty rain-water, and in an instant I
     was dreadfully sick.... You cannot think what the heat was, or what
     agonies of sickness I was in."[44]


     "_June 13._--I have cricket-fagged. Maude, my secret helper in
     everything, came and told me what to do. But one ball came and I
     missed it, then another, and I heard every one say, 'Now did you
     see that fool; he let a ball pass. Look. Won't he get wapped!' I
     had more than thirty balls and missed all but one--yet the
     catapulta was not used. I had not to throw up to any monitors;
     Platt did not come down for some time, and I had the easiest place
     on the cricket-field, so it will be much worse next time. Oh, how
     glad I was when half-past eight came! and when I went to take my
     jacket up, though I found it wringing wet with dew.

     "The next day was Speech-day, but, with my usual misfortune, I was
     Boy in the House. However I got off after one o'clock. All the boys
     were obliged to wear straw-coloured or lavender kid-gloves and to
     be dressed very smart.... When the people came out of Speeches, I
     looked in vain for Aunt Kitty, but Aunt Kitty never came; so, when
     we had cheered everybody of consequence, I went back with the
     others to eat up the remains of Simmy's fine luncheon, and you may
     guess how we revelled in jellies and fruit.

     "The boys in our house now play at cricket in the corridor."


     "_June._--I have been cricket-fagging all evening, and it was
     dreadful; Platt was down, the catapulta was used, and there were
     very few fags, so I had very hard fagging.... Platt bellowed at me
     for my stupidity, and Platt's word is an oracle, and Platt's nod
     strikes terror into all around."


     "_June 16._--I have been for my Exeat to Brook Street.... At
     breakfast the Archbishop of Dublin came in. He is a very funny old
     man[45] and says such funny things. He gave us proverbs, and
     everybody a piece of good advice."


     "_July._--I have found a beautiful old house called Essingham
     standing in a moat full of clear water. It is said to have been
     inhabited once by Cardinal Wolsey.

     "Last night I cricket-fagged, very hard work, and I made Platt very
     angry; but when I told him my name, he quite changed, and said I
     must practise and learn to throw up better, and when the other
     monitors said I ought to be wapped, Platt (!!) said, 'I will take
     compassion upon him, because when I first came to Harrow I could do
     no better.'"

If it had not been for constant sickness, the summer holidays of 1847
would have been very happy ones. I found my dear old Grandmother Mrs.
Oswald Leycester at Lime, which prevented our going to the Rectory, and
it was the greatest happiness to read to her, to lead her about, and in
every way to show my gratitude for past kindnesses at Stoke. When she
left us, we went for the rest of the holidays to the Palace at Norwich,
which was always enchanting to me--from the grand old library with its
secret room behind the bookcase, to the little room down a staircase of
its own, where the old nurse Mrs. Burgess lived--one of the thinnest and
dearest old women ever seen--surrounded by relics of her former charges.
Aunt Kitty was pleased with my improvement in drawing, and she and Kate
Stanley encouraged me very much in the endless sketches I made of the
old buildings in Norwich. "Honour the beginner, even if the follower
does better," is a good old Arabic proverb which they thoroughly
understood and practised. We spent the day with the Gurneys at Earlham,
where I saw the heavenly-minded Mrs. Catherine Gurney ("Aunt Catherine")
and also Mrs. Fry, in her long dark dress and close white cap, and we
went to visit the Palgraves at Yarmouth in a wonderful old house which
once belonged to Ireton the regicide. But a greater delight was a visit
of several days which we paid to the Barings at Cromer Hall, driving
the whole way with the Stanleys through Blickling and Aylsham, a journey
which Arthur Stanley made most charming by the books which he read to us
about the places we passed through. We lingered on the way with Miss
Anna Gurney, a little old lady, who was paralysed at a very early age,
yet had devoted her whole life to the good of those around her, and who,
while never free from suffering herself, seemed utterly unconscious of
her own trials in thinking of those of others. She lived in a beautiful
little cottage at Northrepps, full of fossils and other treasures, close
to the sea-coast.

Lord and Lady Shrewsbury[46] (the father and mother of the Princesses
Doria and Borghese) came to meet my mother at Cromer Hall, perfectly
full of the miraculous powers of "L'Estatica" and "L'Addolorata," which
they had witnessed in Italy, and of which they gave most extraordinary
accounts.

The kindness of "Uncle Norwich" caused me to love him as much as I
dreaded Uncle Julius. In his dealings with his diocese I have heard that
he was apt as a bishop to be tremendously impetuous; but my aunt knew
how to calm him, and managed him admirably. He wonderfully wakened up
clerical life in Norfolk. Well remembered is the sharpness with which he
said to Dean Pellew, who objected to a cross being erected on the
outside of the cathedral, "Never be ashamed of the cross, Mr. Dean,
never be ashamed of the cross." It was his custom to pay surprise visits
to all Norwich churches on Sunday afternoons. On one of these occasions,
an old clergyman--fellow of his college for forty years--who had lately
taken a small living in the town, was the preacher. High and dry was the
discourse. Going into the vestry afterwards, "A very old-fashioned
sermon, Mr. H.," said the Bishop. "A very good-fashioned sermon _I_
think, my lord," answered the vicar.

[Illustration: Edward Stanley

Bishop of Norwich.]

In those days a very primitive state of things prevailed in the Norwich
churches. A clergyman, newly ordained, provided for by a title at St.
George's, Colegate, was exercised by finding the large well-thumbed
folio Prayer-book in the church marked with certain hieroglyphics.
Amongst these O and OP frequently recurred. On the curate making inquiry
of the clerk if there were any instructions he ought to follow during
the service, he was informed that his active predecessor had established
a choir and had reopened an organ closed from time immemorial. He had
done this without any reference to the incumbent, who was so deaf that
he could hear neither organ nor choir. Thus it happened that when they
came to the "Venite," the incumbent read, as usual, the first verse.
From long usage and habit he knew, to a second, the moment when the
clerk would cease reading verse two, and then commenced reading the
third verse, the clerk below him making frantic signs with his hand,
which were quite incomprehensible: and it was not until the reading of
the fifth verse that he understood he had better be silent
altogether, and leave the field to the organ and choir, of whose
performances he had not heard one single sound. He was determined not to
be taken aback again, so, consulting with the clerk, he elicited when
the performances of the organ would take place, and marked these for his
guidance with a large O or OP--_organ plays_.

When the curate of whom I have spoken was first ordained, the incumbent
gave him instructions as to what he was to do. Afterwards he found him
visiting and over-zealous for the age, and said, "Now don't do too much
in the parish, and _never_ give anything away." The curate expressed
surprise, when he added, "If you _want_ to give, always come to me"--a
suggestion the curate never failed to carry out. The rector had a very
poor opinion of clergymen who wrote fresh sermons every week. "I've only
got two sermons for every Sunday in the year, and I preach them all
every year. I don't see why I should trouble myself to write any more,
for when I preach them, I find I don't recollect them myself, so it's
quite impossible the congregation should." As reminiscences of a type of
clergyman very common at this time, but nearly extinct now, these notes
seem worth recording.

Most of the Norfolk clergy were then old-fashioned conservatives of the
first water. One day at a clerical dinner-party at the Palace, the
Bishop, probably with the view of improving the taste of his guests,
said, "When I first came into this diocese, I found the clergy would
drink nothing but port. I used every means I could think of to alter a
taste I could not myself enter into. All failed. At last I hit upon
something which I thought was sure to be successful. I told my
wine-merchant to send me the best of all other wines and the nastiest of
port. But the clergy still insisted upon drinking the nasty port. So,
when I felt my plan had failed, I wrote to my wine-merchant again, and
told him to let them have it good."

The Bishop used to be greatly amused by an epitaph in Bergh Apton
Church, which said that the man commemorated was "very free of his
port," meaning that he was very hospitable (from _portcullis_), but the
common people always thought it meant that he drank a great deal of
port.

My dear old uncle was a capital bishop, and his clergy gradually learnt
to think him so. But it was a sailor he had wished to be. He had been
better fitted for that profession originally. Indeed, when he was a very
little child he had such a passion for the sea, that once when he was
missed from his cot, he was found asleep on the high shelf of a
wardrobe, having climbed up there because he thought it was like a
berth. Through life he was one of those men who never want presence of
mind, and this often stood him in good stead. One Advent Sunday it was
the Bishop's turn to preach in the cathedral, where the soldiers in the
barracks usually attend the service: but it was terrible weather, and,
with due regard to their pipe-clay, they were all absent that morning.
The Bishop had prepared his sermon especially for the soldiers he
expected to hear it, and he had no other. But he was quite equal to the
occasion, for, after he had given out the text, he began--"Now _this_ is
the sermon I should have preached if the soldiers had been here," and
went on, without concerning himself further about their absence.

On another occasion he fell fast asleep in the cathedral during the
sermon. At the end, when the choir broke out into the "Amen," he
suddenly awoke. In that moment he could not collect himself to remember
the words of the blessing, but, "Peace be with you" he exclaimed very
solemnly, and it did quite well.

"Uncle Norwich," with his snow-white hair and black eyebrows, and his
eager impetuous manner, was a somewhat startling figure to come upon
suddenly. There was a private door in the wall in a remote corner of the
palace-garden. A rather nervous clergyman who lived close by had passed
it for years, and had never seen it open. His curiosity was greatly
excited about it. One day when he was passing, he could not resist the
impulse, and looking up and down the road, and seeing neither the Bishop
nor any of the Stanley family about, though very shy, he stooped down to
peep in at the keyhole. At that moment the Bishop's key entered the lock
on the other side, the door flew open, and he found himself confronted
by the Bishop in person!

It was soon after we left Norwich that Jenny Lind, then at the height of
her fame, went to stay at the Palace, and great was the family
enthusiasm about her. My aunt conceived an affection for her which was
almost maternal. Arthur Stanley admired her exceedingly, in spite of his
hatred of music, but amused her when he said, "I think you would be
_most_ delightful if you had no voice."

At the end of August I returned to Harrow.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Harrow, Sept. 10._--Alas! our form is under Mr. Oxenham. He has
     the power of flogging, and does flog very often for the least
     fault, for he really enjoys it. He is such an old man, very old,
     very sharp, very indolent, very preachy. Sometimes he falls asleep
     when we are in form, and the boys stick curl-papers through his
     hair, and he never finds it out. He always calls his boys 'stupid
     little fools,' without meaning anything particular by it. This
     morning he said to me, 'Stuff and nonsense, stupid little fool;
     don't make yourself a stupider little fool than you are.' He is
     always called 'Billy.'"


     "_Sept._--I have been racket-fagging all afternoon. It is such
     dismal work. You have to stand in one corner of the square court
     and throw all the balls that come that way to the 'feeders,' who
     throw them to the players when they are wanted. The great amusement
     of P., one of those I fag for, is to hit the racket-balls with all
     his might at the fags, and he tried to cut me off a great many
     times, but missed. At last P. said, 'I'll go and get another fag
     instead of that young beast Hare,' and he went, but he never came
     back, or the fag either.

     "One day our room bought a pipkin, saucepan, and frying-pan to cook
     things in, but Mrs. Collins (the matron) took away the frying-pan,
     and the others were bagged. But we got another pipkin, and one
     night as we were cooking some potatoes, in little slices as we have
     them at home, they made such a smell that Mrs. Collins came up, and
     told Simmy, and he was very angry, and would not let us have fires
     for a week, and _said_ we should all have extra pupil-room; but
     fortunately he forgot about that."


     A. P. STANLEY _to_ A. J. C. H.

     "_University College, Oxford, Oct. 16._--The Goblin presents his
     compliments to the Ghost, and will give him a leaf of a bay-tree
     from Delphi, a piece of marble from Athens, and a bit of tin from
     the Cassiterides, on condition that the Ghost can tell him where
     those places are, and where the Goblin shall send these treasures."


     A. J. C. H. _to_ A. P. STANLEY.

     "Delphi is the capital of Phocis and the seat of the oracle in
     Greece. Athens is capital of Attica in Greece, and the Cassiterides
     are islands in the Western Ocean. The Ghost presents his
     compliments to the Goblin, thanks him very much, tells him where
     the places are, and begs him to send the things from those places
     to the usual haunt of the Ghost. The Ghost has communicated the
     Goblin's stories of the beautiful Hesketh and Mrs. Fox to the boys
     at night. The Ghost flitted up Harrow church-steeple yesterday, and
     was locked up inside. Farewell, Goblin, from your most grateful
     cousin--the Ghost."

This letter reminds me how I used to tell stories to the boys in our
room after we had gone to bed: it was by them that I was first asked to
"tell stories."

The winter of 1847-48 was one of those which were rendered quite
miserable to me by the way in which I was driven to the Rectory, where
Aunt Esther made me more wretched than ever, and by being scarcely ever
permitted to remain in my own dear home. I fear that in later days I
should have acted a part, and pretended to _like_ going to the Rectory,
when it would instantly have been considered unnecessary, the one
thought in the mind of all the family being that it was a duty to force
me to do what I disliked; but at that time I was too ingenuous to
indulge in even the most innocent kinds of deception. My own brothers,
Francis and William, who were now at Eton, came to the Rectory for part
of their holidays, but their upbringing and their characters had so
little in common with my own, that we were never very intimate, though I
rather liked them than otherwise. They hated the Rectory, and got away
from it whenever they could.

Of all the miserable days in the year, Christmas was the worst. I
regarded it with loathing unutterable. The presents of the quintessence
of rubbish which I had to receive from my aunts with outward grace and
gratitude. The finding all my usual avocations and interests cleared
away. The having to sit for hours and hours pretending to be deeply
interested in the six huge volumes of Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," one of
which was always doled out for my mental sustenance. The being
compelled--usually with agonising chilblains--to walk twice to church,
eight miles through the snow or piercing marsh winds, and sit for hours
in mute anguish of congelation, with one of Uncle Julius's interminable
sermons in the afternoon, about which at that time I heartily agreed
with a poor woman, Philadelphia Isted, who declared that they were "the
biggest of nonsense." Then, far the worst of all, the Rectory and its
sneerings and snubbings in the evening.

My mother took little or no notice of all this--her thoughts, her heart,
were far away. To her Christmas was simply "the festival of the birth of
Christ." Her whole spiritual being was absorbed in it: earth did not
signify: she did not and could not understand why it was not always the
same with her little boy.

I was not allowed to have any holidays this year, and was obliged to do
lessons all morning with Mr. Venables, the curate.[47] At this I wonder
now, as every day my health was growing worse. I was constantly sick,
and grew so thin that I was almost a skeleton, which I really believe
now to have been entirely caused by the way in which the miseries of my
home life preyed upon my excessively sensitive nervous disposition.
And, instead of my mind being braced, I was continually talked to about
death and hell, and urged to meditate upon them. Towards the close of
the holidays I was so ill that at last my mother was alarmed, and took
me to a Mr. Bigg, who declared that I had distinct curvature of the
spine, and put my poor little back into a terrible iron frame, into
which my shoulders were fastened as into a vice. Of course, _with_ this,
I ought never to have been sent back to Harrow, but this was not
understood. Then, as hundreds of times afterwards, when I saw that my
mother was really unhappy about me, I bore any amount of suffering
without a word rather than add to her distress, and I see now that my
letters are full of allusions to the ease with which I was bearing "my
armour" at school, while my own recollection is one of intolerable
anguish, stooping being almost impossible.

That I got on tolerably well at Harrow, even with my "armour" on, is a
proof that I never was ill-treated there. I have often, however, with
Lord Eustace Cecil (who was at Harrow with me), recalled since how
terrible the bullying was in our time--of the constant cruelty at
"Harris's," where the little boys were always made to come down and box
in the evening for the delectation of the fifth form:--of how little
boys were constantly sent in the evening to Famish's--half-way to the
cricket-ground, to bring back porter under their greatcoats, certain to
be flogged by the head-master if they were caught, and to be "wapped" by
the sixth form boys if they did not go, and infinitely preferring the
former:--of how, if the boys did not "keep up" at football, they were
made to cut large thorn sticks out of the hedges, and flogged with them
till the blood poured down outside their jerseys. Indeed, what with
fagging and bullying, servility was as much inculcated at Harrow in
those days as if it was likely to be a desirable acquirement in after
life.

I may truly say that I never learnt anything useful at Harrow, and had
little chance of learning anything. Hours and hours were wasted daily on
useless Latin verses with sickening monotony. A boy's school education
at this time, except in the highest forms, was hopelessly inane.

In some ways, however, this "quarter" at Harrow was much pleasanter than
the preceding ones. I had a more established place in the school, and
was on more friendly terms with all the boys in my own house; also,
with my "armour," the hated racket-fagging was an impossibility. I had
many scrambles about the country with Buller[48] in search of eggs and
flowers, which we painted afterwards most carefully and perseveringly;
and, assisted by Buller, I got up a sort of private theatricals on a
very primitive scale, turning Grimm's fairy stories into little plays,
which were exceedingly popular with the house, but strictly forbidden by
the tutor, Mr. Simpkinson or "Simmy." Thus I was constantly in hot water
about them. One day when we had got up a magnificent scene, in which I,
as "Snowdrop," lay locked in a magic sleep in an imaginary cave, watched
by dwarfs and fairies, Simmy came in and stood quietly amongst the
spectators, and I was suddenly awakened from my trance by the _sauve qui
peut_ which followed the discovery. Great punishments were the result.
Yet, not long after, we could not resist a play on a grander
scale--something about the "Fairy Tilburina" out of the "Man in the
Moon," for which we learnt our parts and had regular dresses made. It
was to take place in the fifth form room on the ground-floor between the
two divisions of the house, and just as Tilburina (Buller) was
descending one staircase in full bridal attire, followed by her
bridesmaids, of whom I was one, Simmy himself suddenly appeared on the
opposite staircase and caught us.

These enormities now made my monthly "reports," when they were sent
home, anything but favourable; but I believe my mother was intensely
diverted by them: I am sure that the Stanleys were. A worse crime,
however, was our passion for cooking, in which we became exceedingly
expert. Very soon after a tremendous punishment for having been caught
for the second time frying potato chips, we formed the audacious project
of cooking a hare! The hare was bought, and the dreadful inside was
disposed of with much the same difficulty and secrecy, and in much the
same manner, in which the Richmond murderess disposed of her victims;
but we had never calculated how long the creature would take to roast
even with a good fire, much more by our wretched embers: and long before
it was accomplished, Mrs. Collins, the matron, was down upon us, and we
and the hare were taken into ignominious custody.

Another great amusement was making sulphur casts and electrotypes, and
we really made some very good ones.

My great love for anything of historic romance, however, rendered the
Louis Philippe revolution the overwhelming interest of this quarter, and
put everything else into the shade. In the preceding autumn the murder
of the Duchesse de Praslin had occupied every one, and we boys used to
lie on the floor for hours poring over the horrible map of the
murder-room which appeared in the "Illustrated," in which all the pools
of blood were indicated. But that was nothing to the enthusiastic
interest over the sack of the Tuileries and the escape of the Royal
Family: I have never known anything like it in after life.

I have often heard since much of the immoralities of a public-school
life, but I can truly say that when I was there, I saw nothing of them.
A very few boys, however, can change the whole character of a school,
especially in a wrong direction. "A little worm-wood can pollute a hive
of honey," was one of the wise sayings of Pius II. I do not think that
my morals were a bit the worse for Harrow, but from what I have heard
since of all that went on there even in my time, I can only conclude it
was because--at that time certainly--"je n'avais pas le goût du peché,"
as I once read in a French novel.

At Easter, 1848, I left Harrow for the holidays, little imagining that I
should never return there. I should have been very sorry had I known it.
On the whole, the pleasurable "adventures" of a public-school life had
always outweighed its disagreeables; though I was never in strong enough
health for any real benefit or enjoyment.




IV

LYNCOMBE

     "Les longues maladies usent la douleur, et les longues espérances
     usent la joie."--MME. DE SÉVIGNÉ.

              "One adequate support
    For the calamities of mortal life
    Exists, one only--an assured belief
    That the procession of our fate, however
    Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being
    Of infinite benevolence and power,
    Whose everlasting purposes embrace
    All accidents, converting them to good."

    --WORDSWORTH.

    "Condemned to Hope's delusive mire,
       As we toil on from day to day
     By sudden stroke or slow decline
       Our means of comfort drop away."

    --JOHNSON.

    "It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys
    of fourteen who would not be ashamed of themselves at forty."

    --JEROME K. JEROME.


Of all the unhappy summers of my boyhood, that of 1848 was the most
miserable. When I left Harrow at Easter, I was very really ill. The iron
frame which had been made for my back had seriously injured the spine
which it was intended to cure, and a bad fall down the school steps at
Harrow had increased the malady. When Sir Benjamin Brodie saw me, he
said that I must lie down for at least the greater part of many months,
and that a return to Harrow was quite out of the question. This,
however, was concealed from me at first, and when I knew it, I was too
ill to have any regrets. We went first to Torquay, stopping on the way
to visit Mrs. Alexander, a person who afterwards, for some years, bore a
large share in our life. In her youth, as Miss Mary Manning, she had
been a governess in the family of Sir John Malcolm, and, while living
with the Malcolms at Hyde Hall near Cambridge, had been the most
intimate early friend of my Uncle Julius. People generally thought that
he had been engaged to her, but this, I believe, was never the case. She
had married a Mr. Alexander, a physician at Edinburgh, who soon left her
a widow, and since that time she had possessed no settled home. She was
very tall, serene, and had a beautiful countenance, and her
old-fashioned dress was always wonderfully refined and in keeping with
her appearance. She seemed to have the power of imposing her own
personality upon her surroundings, and subduing the life and movement
around her into an intellectual as well as a physical calm. She had a
melodious low voice, a delicate Scotch accent, a perfectly
self-possessed manner, and a sweet and gentle dignity. In conversation
she was witty and genial, but never rude. With wonderful power of
narration, she had the art of throwing unspeakable interest and charm
over the most commonplace things: yet she never exaggerated. All the
clever men who came in contact with her were bound under her spell.
Whewell, Worsley, Landor, Bunsen, Sedgwick adored her, and did not
wonder at my uncle's adoration. Saint-Amand's description of Mme. de
Maintenon might have been written for her--"Elle garda, dans sa
vieillesse, cette supériorité de style et de langage, cette distinction
de manières, ce tact exquis, cette finesse, cette douceur et cette
fermeté de caractère, ce charme et cette élévation d'esprit qui, à
toutes les époques de son existence, lui valurent tant d'éloges et lui
attirèrent tant d'amitié."

This is one view of Mrs. Alexander, and, as far as it goes, it is
perfectly true. But scarcely any characters are all of one piece. She
was also boundlessly subtle, and when she had an object in view she
spared no means to attain it. For her own ends, with her sweetness
unruffled, she would remorselessly sacrifice her best friends. The most
egotistical woman in the world, she _expected_ every one to fall under
her spell, and calmly and gently but consistently hated any one who
escaped. Whilst she almost imperceptibly flattered her superiors in rank
and position, she ruthlessly and often heartlessly trampled upon those
whom she (sometimes wrongly) considered her inferiors. She demanded
sovereignty in every house she entered, and she could always find a way
to punish rebellion. She made herself friends that "men might receive
her into their houses," and when she had once entered them she never
relaxed her foothold.

There is a description in the Life of George Sand which might be well
applied to this view of Mrs. Alexander--"Elle était une personne glacée
autant que glaciale.... Ce n'était pas qu'elle ne fut aimable, elle
était gracieuse à la surface, un grand savoir-vivre lui tenant lieu de
grace véritable. Mais elle n'aimait réellement personne et ne
s'intéressait à rien qu'à elle-même."

When we first saw Mrs. Alexander, she was living in a small lodging at
Heavitree near Exeter. In the following year she came to Hurstmonceaux
Rectory for three days and stayed three weeks. The year after she came
for three weeks and stayed five years. From the first she was supreme at
the Rectory, ruling even Aunt Esther with unswerving and ever-increasing
power; but on the whole her presence was an advantage. Her education and
strong understanding enabled her to enter into all my uncle's pursuits
and interests as his wife could never have done, and to outsiders she
was usually suave, courteous, and full of agreeable conversation.

[Illustration: THE TOWER AT ROCKEND, TORQUAY.]

Uncle Julius and Aunt Esther visited Rockend when we were there, and as
my aunts when together generally acted as foils to each other, I should
have been at liberty to enjoy the really beautiful place--its delightful
gardens, storm-beaten rocks, and the tower where Aunt Lucy "made her
meditations"--if I had been well enough; but I had generally to spend
the greater part of the day lying upon the floor on a hard backboard and
in a state of great suffering. It was often an interest at this time to
listen to Uncle Julius as he read aloud in the family circle passages
connected with the French Revolution, Kingsley's "Saint's Tragedy,"
which had then recently appeared, or the papers which my uncle and his
friends were then contributing to the Magazine for the People which
Kingsley was getting up. No one read so well as Uncle Julius--a whole
whirlwind of tragedy, an unutterable depth of anguish and pathos could
be expressed in the mere tone of his voice; and it was not merely tone;
he really thus _felt_ what he read, and so carried away his listeners,
that all their actual surroundings were invisible or forgotten. Those
who never heard Julius Hare read the Communion Service can have no idea
of the depths of humility and passion in those sublime prayers.

In everything Uncle Julius was as unsuited to the nineteenth century as
he well could be. He used to declare that he never would read a book
which he knew would interest him, till the exact mood of his mind was
fitted for it, till the sun happened to be shining where it ought, and
till weather and time and situation all combined to suit the subject and
give its full effect, and he usually had numbers of books by him waiting
for this happy conjunction, but, when it arrived, he did the books full
justice.

I never saw any one so violent, so unmitigated in his likes and dislikes
as Uncle Julius, so furious in his approval or condemnation. "Il avait
une grande hardiesse, pour ne pas dire effronterie," as Bassompierre
wrote of the Duke of Buckingham. In his despotic imperiousness he had no
sympathy with the feelings and weaknesses of others, though
inexpressible pity for all their greater misfortunes or sorrows.

Another person of whom we saw much at this time was the really
saint-like Harry Grey, my mother's first cousin, who was living at
Babbicombe. He was heir to the Earldom of Stamford (to which his son
afterwards succeeded), but a clergyman, and very poor.

I was so ill when we returned home, almost everything I ate producing
violent sickness, that it is astonishing my health should not have been
considered a primary object. A few weeks of healthy life on moors or by
the sea-side, with freedom from the gnawing mental misery and depression
under which I suffered, would probably have restored me; a visit to
German baths might have cured me, and saved years of ill-health. Had the
family only had any practical common-sense! But, on religious grounds,
it was thought wrong to contend against "the wonderful leadings of God's
Providence"--pain was "sent" to be endured, sickness as a tractor to
draw its victims to heaven; and all simple and rational means of
restoration to a healthy and healthful life were disregarded. Sago with
brandy in it was provided instead of meat for my physical, and an
inexhaustible supply of tracts, hymns, and little sermons for my mental
digestion. Patient endurance of suffering, the following of the most
unpleasant path which duty could be thought to point out, and that
without hope of either reward or release, were the virtues which even my
mother most inculcated at this time.

Then a private tutor was sought for--not by knowledge, not by inquiry at
the Universities, not by careful investigation of attainments for
teaching, but by an advertisement. The inquiry as to all the letters
which answered it was whether they appeared to be "those of truly pious
men"--_i.e._, whether they were written in the peculiar phraseology then
supposed to denote such a character. At last one was accepted, and a
tutor arrived, who was--well, I will not describe him further than as
certainly the most unprepossessing of human beings: Nature had been so
terribly hard upon him.

With this truly unfortunate man I was shut up every morning in the hope
that he would teach me something, a task he was wholly unequal to; and
then I had to walk out with him. Naturally there were scenes and
recriminations on both sides, in which I was by no means blameless. But
daily my health grew worse, and scarcely a morning passed without my
having an agonising fit of suffocation, from contraction of the muscles
of the throat, gasping for breath in misery unutterable. The aunts said
it was all nervous. I have no doubt it was: I have had plenty of
experience of hysteria since, and it is the most dreadful disorder that
exists.

At last my sufferings were such, from the relaxing air of Hurstmonceaux,
that I was taken to Eastbourne, but an attempt was still made to chain
me down for six or eight hours a day in a stuffy lodging at lessons with
my tutor, who had not an idea of teaching and knew nothing to teach.
Poor man! he was at least quite as wretched as I was, and I know that he
thirsted quite as much for the fresh air of the downs. Aunt Esther came
over, and used cruelly to talk, in my presence, of the fatigue and
trouble which my ill-health caused my mother, and of the burden which
she had thus brought upon herself by adopting me. It is only by God's
mercy that I did not commit suicide. I was often on the point of
throwing myself over the cliffs, when all would have been over in an
instant, and was _only_ restrained by my intense love for my mother, and
the feeling that her apparently dormant affection would be awakened by
such a catastrophe, and that she would always be miserable in such an
event. Twenty-two years afterwards, when we were as closely united as it
was possible for any mother and son to be, my darling mother reverted of
her own accord to this terrible time: she could never die happy, she
said, unless she knew that her after love had quite effaced the
recollection of it.

[Illustration: WILMINGTON PRIORY.]

Yet, even in these wretched months at Eastbourne there were oases of
comfort--days when my "Aunt Kitty and Lou Clinton" came down, and, with
"le coeur haut placé" and sound common-sense, seemed to set everything
right; and other days when I made excursions alone with my mother to
Jevington in the Downs, or to Wilmington with its old ruin and yew-tree,
where we used to be kindly entertained by the primitive old Rector, Mr.
Cooper, and his wife.

When I went, in 1877, to visit Alfred Tennyson the poet, he asked me to
give him a subject for "A Domestic Village Tragedy." The story which I
told him occurred at Hurstmonceaux this summer. Mrs. Coleman, who kept
the "dame's school" at Flowers Green, had a niece, Caroline Crowhurst, a
very pretty girl, the belle of the parish, and as amiable and good as
she was pretty, so that every one was friends with her. She became
engaged, rather against the will of her family, to a commercial
traveller from a distance. He wrote to her, and she wrote to him,
maidenly letters, but full of deep affection. One day they had a little
quarrel, and the man, the fiend, took the most intimate, the most
caressing of these letters and nailed it up against the Brewery in the
centre of Gardner Street, where all the village might read it and scoff
at it. As the people knew Caroline, no one scoffed, and all pitied her.
But Caroline herself came to the village shop that afternoon; she saw
her letter hanging there, and it broke her heart. She said nothing about
it to any one, and she did not shed a tear, but she went home and kissed
her aunt and her mother more tenderly than usual; she gathered the
prettiest flowers in her little garden and put them in her bosom, and
then she opened the lid of the draw-well close to her home and let
herself in. The lid closed upon her.

[Illustration: FLOWERS GREEN, HURSTMONCEAUX.]

I remember the news coming to Lime one evening that Caroline Crowhurst
was missing, and the dreadful shock the next morning when we heard that
the poor girl had been found in the well. My mother, who had known her
from her birth, felt it very deeply, for at Hurstmonceaux we were on
the most intimate terms with the poor people, and Philadelphia Isted,
Mercy Butler, dear old Mrs. Piper the schoolmistress, Ansley Vine of the
shop, grumbling old Mrs. Holloway (who always said she should be so glad
when she was dead because then people would believe she had been ill),
the crippled Louisa Wood, the saint-like bedridden Mrs. Wisham, and
gentle Mrs. Medhurst, who lived amongst the primroses of "the lower
road"--all these, and many more, were as familiar to me as my own
nearest relations. To many of them, when well enough, I went regularly,
and to Mrs. Piper, who had lived in the time of the castle, and known my
father and his brothers from babyhood, almost every day. Her death was a
real affliction. My mother walked behind her coffin at her funeral. In
her will she left me a box which had belonged to my unhappy little
ancestress, Grace Naylor.

At the end of July my real mother, "Italima," with my sister, came to
stay at the Rectory. The visit was arranged to last a month, but
unhappily on the second day of her stay, Italima went out with Aunt
Esther. They came home walking on different sides of the road, and as
soon as she entered the house Italima sent for post-horses to her
carriage and drove away. I have never heard what happened, but Italima
never came to the Rectory again. Soon afterwards she fixed her residence
at Rome, in the Palazzo Parisani, which then occupied two sides of the
Piazza S. Claudio.

In August it was decided to send me away to a private tutor's, and my
mother and Uncle Julius went with me to Lyncombe, near Bath. My tutor
was the Rev. H. S. R., son of a well-known evangelical writer, but by no
means of the same spiritual grace: indeed I never could discover that he
had any grace whatever; neither had he any mental acquirements, or the
slightest power of teaching. He was "un homme absolument nul," and
though paid a very large salary, he grossly and systematically neglected
all his duties as a tutor. Uncle Julius must have been perfectly aware
how inefficient the education at Lyncombe would be, but he was probably
not to blame for sending me there. Because I did not "get on" (really
because I was never taught), he regarded me as the slave of
indolence--"putrescent indolence" he would have called it, like Mr.
Carlyle. He considered me, however, to be harmless, though fit for
nothing, and therefore one to be sent where I should probably get no
harm, though certainly no good either. It was the system he went upon
with my brothers also, and in their case he had all the responsibility,
being their guardian. But, indeed, Uncle Julius's view was always much
that of Rogers--"God sends sons, but the devil sends nephews," and he
shunted them accordingly.

    "Les grands esprits, d'ailleurs très estimables,
    Ont très peu de talent pour former leurs semblables."

I went to Lyncombe with the utmost curiosity. The house was a large
villa, oddly built upon arches in the hollow of a wooded valley about a
mile from Bath, behind the well-known Beechen Cliff. At the back of it
was a lawn with very steep wooded banks at the sides, and a fountain and
pool, showing that the place had once been of some importance, and
behind the lawn, meadows with steep banks led towards the heights of
Combe Down. We all had rooms to ourselves at Lyncombe, scantily
furnished, and with barely a strip of carpet, but we could decorate them
with pictures, &c., if we liked. We did our lessons, when we were
supposed to do them, at regular hours, in the dining-room, where we had
our meals, and after work was finished in the evening, and eight
o'clock tea, we were expected to sit with Mrs. R. in the drawing-room.

But we had an immense deal of time to ourselves--the whole afternoon we
were free to go where we liked; we were not expected to give any account
of what we did, and might get into as much mischief as we chose. Also,
we too frequently had whole holidays, which Mr. R.'s idle habits made
him only too glad to bestow, but which I often did not in the least know
what to do with.

Eagerly did I survey my new companions, who were much older than myself,
and with whom I was likely to live exclusively, with none of the chances
of making other friendships which a public school affords. Three of them
were quiet youths of no especial character: the fourth was Temple
Harris,[49] at once the friend, enlivener, and torment of the following
year.

On the whole, at first I was not unhappy at Lyncombe. I liked the almost
unlimited time for roaming over the country, and the fresh air did much
to strengthen me. But gradually, when I had seen all the places within
reach, this freedom palled, and I felt with disgust that, terribly
ignorant as I was, I was learning nothing, and that I had no chance of
learning anything except what I could teach myself. Whilst Temple Harris
stayed at Lyncombe, we spent a great deal of time in writing stories,
ballads, &c., for a MS. magazine which we used to produce once a week;
and this was not wholly useless, from the facility of composition which
it gave me. But after Temple Harris left, the utter waste of life at
Lyncombe palled upon me terribly, and I made, in desperation, great
efforts to instruct myself, which, with no books and with every possible
hindrance from without, was difficult enough. After a fashion, however,
I succeeded in teaching myself French, stumbling through an interesting
story-book with Grammar and Dictionary, till I had learnt to read with
ease; of the pronunciation I naturally knew nothing. Two miserable years
and a half of life were utterly wasted at Lyncombe, before Arthur
Stanley came to visit me there, and rescued me by his representation of
the utter neglect and stagnation in which I was living. It had been so
hammered into my mind by my aunts that I was a burden to my mother, and
that she was worn out with the trouble I had given her in finding my
first private tutor, that I should never of myself have ventured to try
to persuade her to look out for a second.

My earlier letters to my mother from Lyncombe are filled with nothing
but descriptions of the scenery round Bath, of which I formed a most
exaggerated estimate, as I had seen so little with which I could compare
it. Once a week at least I used to go into Bath itself, to dine with my
father's old friend Walter Savage Landor, who had been driven away from
his Florentine home by his wife's violent temper. Mr. Landor's rooms (in
Catherine Place, and afterwards at 2 Rivers Street) were entirely
covered with pictures, the frames fitting close to one another, leaving
not the smallest space of wall visible. One or two of these pictures
were real works of art, but as a rule he had bought them at Bath, quite
willing to imagine that the little shops of the Bath dealers could be
storehouses of Titians, Giorgiones, and Vandycks. The Bath
picture-dealers never had such a time; for some years almost all their
wares made their way to Mr. Landor's walls. Mr. Landor lived alone with
his beautiful white Spitz dog Pomero, which he allowed to do whatever it
liked, and frequently to sit in the oddest way on the bald top of his
head. He would talk to Pomero by the hour together, poetry, philosophy,
whatever he was thinking of, all of it imbued with his own powerful
personality, and would often roar with laughter till the whole house
seemed to shake. I have never heard a laugh like that of Mr.
Landor--"deep-mouthed Beotian Savage Landor," as Byron called him--such
a regular cannonade.[50] He was "the sanest madman and the maddest
reasonable man in the world," as Cervantes says of Don Quixote. In the
evenings he would sit for hours in impassioned contemplation: in the
mornings he wrote incessantly, to fling off sheet after sheet for the
_Examiner_, seldom looking them over afterwards. He scarcely ever read,
for he only possessed one shelf of books. If any one gave him a volume,
he mastered it and gave it away, and this he did because he believed
that if he knew he was to keep the book and be able to refer to it, he
should not be able to absorb its contents so as to retain them. When he
left Florence, he had made over all he possessed to his wife, retaining
only £200 a year--afterwards increased to £400--for himself, and this
sufficed for his simple needs. He never bought any new clothes, and a
chimney-sweep would have been ashamed to wear his coat, which was always
the same as long as I knew him, though it in no way detracted from his
majestic and lion-like appearance. But he was very particular about his
little dinners, and it was about these that his violent explosions of
passion usually took place. I have seen him take a pheasant up by the
legs when it was brought to table and throw it into the back of the fire
over the head of the servant in attendance. This was always a failing,
and, in later days, I have heard Mr. Browning describe how in his fury
at being kept waiting for dinner at Siena, he shouted: "I will not eat
it now, I will not eat it if it comes," and, when it came, threw it all
out of the window.

At the same time nothing could be more nobly courteous than his manner
to his guests, and this was as marked towards an ignorant schoolboy as
towards his most distinguished visitor; and his conversation, whilst
calculated to put all his visitors at their ease and draw out their best
points, was always wise, chivalrous, pure, and witty.

At one time Mr. Landor's son Walter came to stay with him, but he was an
ignorant rough youth, and never got on well with his father. I believe
Mr. Landor preferred me at this time to any of his own children, and
liked better to have me with him; yet he must often have been grievously
disappointed that I could so little reciprocate about the Latin verses
of which he so constantly talked to me, and that indeed I could seldom
understand them, though he was so generous and high-bred that he never
would allow me to feel mortified. Mrs. Lynn Linton, then Miss Lynn, was
by her almost filial attentions a great comfort to Landor during the
earlier years of his exile at Bath. Another person, whom he liked, was a
pretty young Bath lady, Miss Fray, who often came to dine with him when
I was there. After dinner Mr. Landor generally had a nap, and would say,
"Now, Augustus, I'm going to sleep, so make love to Miss Fray"--which
was rather awkward.[51]

These were the best friends of Lander's solitude; most of his other
visitors were sycophants and flatterers, and though he despised the
persons, he did not always dislike the flattery. Swift says truly--

    "'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
      That flattery's the food of fools;
    Yet now and then your men of wit
      Will condescend to take a bit."

Another resident of whom I saw much at Bath was my mother's cousin, Miss
Harriet Dumbleton (her mother was a Leycester)--an old maiden lady, who
lived in the most primitive manner, really scarcely allowing herself
enough to eat, because, like St. Elizabeth, though she had a very good
fortune, she had given everything she had to the poor. She would even
sell her furniture, books, and pictures, to give away the money they
realised. But she was a most agreeable, witty, lively person, and it was
always a great pleasure to go to her.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Lyncombe, Sept. 12._--I have been here four days, but only to-day
     did Mr. R. _begin_ to attempt any lessons with me. He was very
     impatient, and I got so puzzled and confused, I could scarcely do
     anything at all; all my sums and everything else were wrong.
     Warriner and Hebden were very kind, and did all they could to help
     me. I like Warriner very much. To-day I have done much better, and
     I really do try to do well, dearest Mamma."


     "_Sept. 14._--Yesterday morning, as there was again no work
     whatever to be done, I went off by myself to Charterhouse Hinton to
     see the Abbey. I was told it was not shown, but insisted upon going
     up to the house, where I rang the bell, and was allowed to look at
     the ruin in the garden. There I found an old gentleman, to whom I
     told who I was, where I was, and all about myself, and he told me
     in return that he had been at school with Uncle Jule and knew the
     Bath aunts, and not only showed me the best place to sketch the
     Abbey from, but gave me a lesson in perspective. Then he took me
     into the house and told me all the stories of the pictures there.

     "Mr. Landor has been here, and, thinking to do me honour, called
     upon the R.'s. Whilst Pomero danced about, he told numbers of
     stories, beginning at once about the Dukes of Brandenburg and
     Orleans, and in defence of the Danes. 'Hare may say what he likes,
     but that King of Prussia is a regular old scoundrel.'

     "Whenever we are _supposed_ to do any work, Mr. R. sits at the
     small table in the dining-room while we are at the large one; but
     no one takes any notice of him, and all talk slang and laugh as if
     he was out of the room; and if Harris gets bored with his supposed
     work, he rings for a plate and glass of water and paints."


     "_Sept. 22._--You need not grudge my long walks and being away from
     the others, for I should not be with them if at home, as Hebden
     goes to play on the Abbey organ, and the rest have their own
     occupations. To-day I went over hill and dale to Wellow, where
     there is a noble old church, and a Holy Well of St. Julian, at
     which a white lady used to appear on St. Julian's Eve, whenever any
     misfortune was about to happen to the family of Hungerford, the
     former possessors of the soil. As I was drawing the village, a
     farmer came riding by, and, after looking at my sketch, went back
     with me to show me his house, once a manor of the Hungerfords, with
     a splendid old carved chimney-piece.

     "These are very long dreary half-years. At Harrow I used to rejoice
     that I should never more have to endure those horrible long
     private-school half-years, yet here they are again. Oh! what would
     I not give to be back with you, and able to take care of you when
     you are poorly!"


     "_Oct. 9._--Yesterday, as there were no lessons whatever again, I
     made a great expedition to Farley Castle, but was very miserable
     all the way in thinking that I had not been better to you all the
     summer, dearest, dearest Mamma. I used to think, when I knew that I
     should be at home such a long time, what a comfort I should be to
     you, and that you would see how good I was grown; but instead of
     that, how bad I was all the time! Oh! if I had only a little of it
     over again! Well, it is a long walk, but at last I arrived at
     Farley, a pretty ruin on a height, with four towers at the angles
     and a chapel in the centre. I persuaded the woman to lock me in
     here, and was in ecstasies. The walls are covered with armour of
     the Hungerfords for centuries, and in a corner are Cromwell's boots
     and saddle. At the other end is the ancient high altar with a Bible
     of ages mouldering away beneath a carved crucifix and stained
     window, and the surrounding walls are emblazoned with Hungerford
     arms. Old banners wave from the ceiling, old furniture lines the
     aisle, and in St. Anne's Chantry are two splendid altar-tombs, of
     Lady Joanna Hungerford and her husband, and Sir Edward and his
     wife.

     "How am I to get any money to pay for having my hair cut, and for
     some gloves, for mine are quite worn out?"


     "_Oct. 20._--No work at all, so I have had a grand expedition to
     the beautiful old deserted house of the Longs at South Wraxhall,
     and have been writing ballads and stories about it ever since."


     "_Oct. 26._--No lessons. Mr. R. will not have them. So we have all
     been together to Farley, and went into the vault where the
     Hungerfords lie in leaden coffins, melted to fit their bodies and
     faces, their real features in deep relief. They look most
     extraordinary, especially two babies, whom, at first sight, you
     would take for a pair of shoes.... When I am alone with Harris, I
     like him very much. He writes poetry and draws beautifully, and can
     read French and Italian for his own amusement. I wish I could. Oh,
     I am so tired of having nothing to do!"

My dear Grandmother, Mrs. Leycester, had been failing all the autumn,
and my mother was much with her at her house in New Street. Towards the
end of October she seemed better, and my mother returned to Lime, but on
the 3rd of November she was suddenly recalled. As so often happens in
serious cases, for the only time in her life she missed the train, and
when she arrived, after many hours' delay, she found that dear Grannie
had died an hour before, wishing and longing for her to the last. To my
intense thankfulness, I was allowed to go to my mother in New Street,
once more to behold the beloved aged features in the deep repose of
death, and to see the familiar inanimate objects connected with my
childhood, and the dear old servants. Grannie was buried in the vaults
of St. Martin's Church, Trafalgar Square, her coffin being laid upon
that of Uncle Hugh (Judge Leycester). The vaults were a very awful
place--coffins piled upon one another up to the ceiling, and often in a
very bad state of preservation,[52]--and the funeral was a very ghastly
one, all the ladies being enveloped in huge black hooded mantles, which
covered them from head to foot like pillars of crape. Grannie is one of
the few persons whose memory is always evergreen to me, and for whom I
have a most lasting affection. Everything connected with her has an
interest. Many pieces of furniture and other memorials of my
grandmother's house in New Street and, before that, of Stoke Rectory,
have been cherished by us at Hurstmonceaux and Holmhurst, and others it
has always been a pleasure to see again when I have visited my Penrhyn
cousins at Sheen--objects of still life which long survive those to whom
they were once important.

In the winter of 1848-49 I saw at St. Leonards the venerable Queen Marie
Amélie, and am always glad to have seen that noble and long-suffering
lady, the niece of Marie Antoinette.

During the autumn at Lyncombe I was almost constantly ill, and very
often ill in the winter at home, which the Marcus Hares all spent at
Lime. It was a miserable trial to me that, in her anxiety lest I should
miss an hour of a school where I was taught nothing, my mother sent me
back a week too early--and I was for that time alone in the prison of my
abomination, in unutterable dreariness, with nothing in the world to do.
This term, a most disagreeable vulgar boy called W---- was added to the
establishment at Lyncombe, who was my detested companion for the next
two years; and from this time in every way life at Lyncombe became
indescribably wretched--chiefly from the utter waste of time--and, as I
constantly wrote to my mother, I was always wishing that I were dead. My
only consolation, and that a most dismal and solitary one, was in the
long excursions which I made; but I look back upon these as times of
acute suffering from poverty and _hunger_, as I never had any allowance,
and was always sent back to my tutor's with only five shillings in my
pocket. Thus, though I walked sometimes twenty-four miles in a day, and
was out for eight or ten hours, I never had a penny with which to buy
even a bit of bread, and many a time sank down by the wayside from the
faintness of sheer starvation, often most gratefully accepting some of
their food from the common working people I met. If I went out with my
companions, the utmost mortification was added to the actual suffering
of hunger, because, when they went into the village inns to have a good
well-earned luncheon, I was always left starving outside, as I never had
the means of paying for any food. I believe my companions were very
sorry for me, but they never allowed their pity to be any expense to
them, and then "E meglio essere odiato che compatito" is an Italian
proverb which means a great deal, especially to a boy. After a time,
too, the food at Lyncombe itself became extremely stinted and of the
very worst quality--a suet dumpling filled with coarse odds and ends of
meat being our dinner on at least five days out of the seven, which of
course was very bad for an extremely delicate rapidly-growing
youth--and, if I was ill from want of food, which was frequently the
case, I was given nothing but rice.

What indescribably miserable years those were! I still feel, in passing
Bath by railway, sick at heart from the recollection, and I long in this
volume to hurry over a portion of life so filled with wretched
recollections, and which had scarcely a redeeming feature, except Mr.
Landor's constant kindness and friendship. It was also a terrible
disappointment that my mother never would consent to my going for a few
days to see "Italima" and my brothers, who were then living at Torquay,
and who vainly begged for it. My endless letters to my mother (for I
wrote several sheets daily) are so crushed and disconsolate that I find
little to select.

     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Easter Sunday, 1849._--Yesterday Mr. Landor asked me to dine with
     him. First we went out to order the dinner, accompanied by Pomero
     in high spirits. As we went through the streets, he held forth upon
     their beauties, especially those of the Circus, to which he
     declares that nothing in Rome or in the world was ever equal. We
     stopped first at the fishmonger's, where, after much bargaining,
     some turbot was procured; then, at the vegetable shop, we bought
     broccoli, potatoes, and oranges; then some veal to roast; and
     finally a currant-tart and biscuits. Mr. Landor generally orders
     his own little dinners, but almost all this was for me, as he will
     dine himself on a little fish. He has actually got a new hat, he
     says because all the ladies declared they would never walk with him
     again unless he had one, and he has a hideous pair of new brown
     trousers. Pomero was put out of the room for jumping on them, but
     when he was heard crying outside the door, Mr. Landor declared he
     could not let his dear child be unhappy, and was obliged to let it
     in; upon which the creature was so delighted, that it instantly
     jumped on the top of its master's head, where it sate demurely,
     looking out of the window.

     "Harris has just written an account of my home life which he says
     he believes to be exact, _i.e._, that I live with two maiden aunts,
     'Gidman and Lear'--that they have a dog called 'Paul against the
     Gentiles,' who runs after them, carrying muffins and apples to the
     poor and destitute inhabitants of the parish of
     Chalk-cum-Chilblains--that his kennel is inscribed with texts of
     Scripture, and when a heretic is near he can smell him five miles
     off--that his food consists of tracts, and that he drinks a
     dilution of hymn-books and camphor-ice."

In my summer holidays of 1849 my mother took me for the second time to
Alton. It was very hot weather, and we lived entirely amongst the
affectionate primitive cottagers, going afterwards to stay with Lady
Gore at Wilcot House--an old haunted house, with a tower where a tailor
(I forget how he got there) committed suicide. With Mrs. Pile we drove
through the open Wiltshire country to her farmhouse home of Tufton,
where we spent several days very pleasantly, in a quiet place on the
glistening little river Teste, close to Hurstborne Park. On the day of
our leaving Tufton we visited Winchester, and as we were going thence to
Portsmouth by rail, we had an adventure which might have ended
seriously.

The train was already in motion, and my mother and I were alone in the
carriage, when three men came running along the platform and attempted
to enter it. Only one succeeded, for before the others could follow him,
the train had left the platform. In a minute we saw that the man who was
alone in the carriage with us was a maniac, and that those left behind
were his keepers. He uttered a shrill hoot and glared at us.
Fortunately, as the door banged to, the tassel of the window was thrown
up, and this attracted him, and he yelled with laughter. We sat
motionless at the other side of the carriage opposite each other. He
seized the tassel and kept throwing it up and down, hooting and roaring
with laughter. Once or twice we fancied he was about to pounce upon us,
but then the tassel attracted him again. After about eight minutes the
train stopped. His keepers had succeeded in getting upon the guard's box
as the train left the station, and hearing his shouts, stopped the
train, and he was removed by force.

We went to stay at Haslar with Sir Edward Parry, the Arctic voyager,
whose first wife had been my mother's early friend Bella Stanley. He was
now married again, and had three more children, and his wife had two
daughters by her first husband, Mr. Hoare. The three families lived
together, and in the most wonderful harmony. The eldest son, Edward,
afterwards Bishop of Dover, was several years older than I, yet not too
old for companionship. But I never could feel the slightest interest in
the dockyards or the ships at Spithead. My only pleasure was a happy
_tourette_ round the Isle of Wight--the mother, Lea, and I, in a little
carriage. During the latter part of our stay at Haslar, cholera broke
out in the hospital, and our departure was like a flight.

While I was at Lyncombe in the autumn, my step-grandmother Mrs. Hare
Naylor died, very soon after the marriage of her daughter Georgiana to
Mr. Frederick D. Maurice, whose first wife had been her intimate friend.
She was married during what was supposed to be her last illness, but was
so pleased with her nuptials that she recovered after the ceremony and
lived for nearly half a century afterwards.

My dear old uncle Edward Stanley had always said, while making his
summer tour in Scotland, that he should return to Norwich when the first
case of cholera appeared. He died at Brahan Castle, and his body was
brought back to Norwich just as the cholera appeared there. Tens of
thousands of people went to his funeral--for, in the wild Chartist times
of his episcopate, he had been a true "chevalier sans peur et sans
reproche," and had become beloved by people of every phase of creed and
character. My mother met Aunt Kitty in London as she came from Scotland,
and went with her to Norwich. It was perfect anguish to me not to see
once more the place which I had most delighted in, but that was not
permitted. Only two days after leaving her home in the old palace, my
aunt heard of the death of her youngest son, Captain Charles Edward
Stanley, at Hobart Town in Van Diemen's Land. He left a young widow,
who, in her desolation, derived her chief comfort from the thought of
joining her husband's eldest brother, Captain Owen Stanley, at Sydney,
and returning to England in his ship, the _Rattlesnake_. When she
reached the ship, she learned that he had been found dead in his cabin
only a few days after receiving the tidings of his father's death. The
news of this third loss reached Lime just after Aunt Kitty and Kate
Stanley had left it to take possession of their new London home--6
Grosvenor Crescent. I remember my mother's piercing shriek when she
opened the letter: it was the only time I ever heard her scream. It was
only a few months after this that Kate was married to Dr. Vaughan, her
brother's friend and my late head-master.

In 1850 I detested my life at Lyncombe more than ever. Mr. R. was
increasingly neglectful in teaching, and the food and everything else
was increasingly bad. Temple Harris and my other elder companions went
away, and their places were taken by a boy "with flaxen hair and
spectacles, like a young curate," but inoffensive, and "an atrociously
vulgar little snob;" while the ill-tempered rathunter, who had been at
Lyncombe with the old set, was the only one of them that remained. I was
now, however, more anxious than ever to learn something, and I made much
progress by myself. Most of the external consolations of this year came
from the residence in Bath of my maternal cousin Mrs. Russell
Barrington, a rather gay young widow, and an eccentric person, but very
kind to me at this time, incessant in her invitations, and really very
useful in her constant lectures upon "good manners." She might truly
have written to my mother in the words of Mme. de Sévigné--"Je me mêle
d'apprendre à votre fils les manèges des conversations ordinaires, qu'il
est important de savoir; il y a des choses qu'il ne faut pas ignorer. Il
seroit ridicule de paraître étonné de certaines nouvelles de quoi on
raisonne; je suis assez instruite de ces bagatelles."

Up to this time, as ever afterwards, no preparation for social life had
ever been thought of as far as I was concerned. I was never encouraged
to talk at home; indeed, if I ever spoke, I was instantly suppressed. I
knew nothing of any game; I was never taught to ride or swim, and
dancing was absolutely prohibited as an invention of the evil one. Other
boys must have thought me a terrible ass, but it was really not quite my
own fault. Oh! how heartily I agree with Archbishop Whately, who said
that "the God of the Calvinists is the devil with 'God' written on his
forehead."

There was another of my real relations with whom I made acquaintance
this year, and with whom I was afterwards very intimate--namely, Henry
Liddell, Rector of Easington, and one of the trustees of Bamborough
Castle, who was the brother of my great-uncle Lord Ravensworth, and had
married Charlotte Lyon of Hetton, daughter of the youngest brother of my
great-grandmother Lady Anne Simpson. Mr. Liddell was one of the kindest
of men, with all the genial courtesy of a race of country gentlemen now
almost extinct, and his wife was a beautiful old lady, with much that
was interesting to tell of past times and people. Their eldest son, who
was afterwards Dean of Christ Church at Oxford, was at this time
head-master of Westminster, and was a clever and cultivated person,
though inferior to his parents in natural charm of character. In the
summer my maternal grandfather, Sir John Paul, came to stay at a hotel
at Bath and I saw him frequently, but never found anything in common
with him, though he was an exceedingly clever artist. In my daily
letters to my mother, I see that I described his first reception of me
with "How do you do, sir"--just like any distant acquaintance. He was at
this time married to his third wife, who was a daughter of Bishop
Halifax, and presented a very youthful appearance. Her step-children,
who never liked her, declared that on the day after her marriage one of
her eyebrows fell off into her soup. But to me she was always very kind,
and I was fond of her, in spite of her many ancient frivolities. With
Lady Paul lived her sister Caroline Halifax, a very pretty pleasant old
lady, who adored her, and thought "my sister Bessy" the most beautiful,
illustrious, and cultivated woman in the world.

It was in April 1850 that a happy missing of his train at Bath produced
a visit at Lyncombe from Arthur Stanley, who was horrified at my
ignorance, and at the absence, which he discovered, of all pains in
teaching me. His representations to my mother at last induced her to
promise to remove me, for which I shall be eternally grateful to him in
recollection. Nevertheless I was unaccountably left at Lyncombe till
Christmas, nine wretched and utterly useless months; for when he knew I
was going to leave, after my return in the summer, Mr. R. dropped even
the pretence of attempting to teach me, so that I often remained in
total neglect, without any work whatever, for several weeks. In their
anger at the distant prospect of my escaping them, the R.'s now never
spoke to me, and my life was passed in _total_ and miserable silence,
even at meal-times. If it had not been for the neighbourhood of Bath, I
should often have been many weeks together without speaking a single
word. My mother in vain remonstrated over my sickeningly doleful
letters, and told me to "catch all the sunbeams within reach;" I could
only reply there were no sunbeams to catch--that "you would think at
meals that you were in the Inquisition from the cold, morose, joyless,
motionless faces around the table." Then Aunt Esther would make my
mother urge me to accept all these small trials, these "guidings," in a
more Christian spirit, which made me furious: I could not express
religious sentiments when such sentiments were quite unborn. Besides, I
might have answered that "when St. Paul said we were to put off the old
man, he did not mean we were to put on the old woman."[53] I also wrote
to my mother--


     "We are in the last extremities as regards food. I will give you a
     perfectly correct account of the last few days. Saturday, dinner,
     boiled beef. Sunday, breakfast, ditto cold with bread and butter.
     Luncheon, a very small portion of ditto with dry bread and part of
     the rind of a decayed cheese. Dinner, a little of ditto with a
     doughy plum-tart. Monday, breakfast, ditto with two very small
     square pieces of bread. Luncheon, ditto with bread and ... butter!
     Dinner, ditto and a rice-pudding. Tuesday, breakfast, ditto;
     luncheon, a very small fragment of ditto and one potato apiece
     doled round. Dinner, ditto. Wednesday, breakfast, scraps of ditto;
     luncheon, fat and parings of ditto. We all have to sit and do our
     work now by the light of a single bed-candle. Oh! I am more
     thankful every day that you will at last let me leave this place.
     Any change must be for the better, and I should not mind if it was
     to the centre of the desert, if I could only feel I should learn
     something, for I am learning _nothing_ here, and never have learnt
     anything.... Would you very much mind giving me an umbrella, for I
     have got wet through almost every day: on Sundays it is especially
     inconvenient. Mr. R. asked me the other day how I liked the
     thoughts of going away!--but I was very good, and only said 'I
     should not _mind_ it very much!'"

My only reprieve from the misery of Lyncombe in 1850 was in a three
days' visit to my half-uncle Gustavus Hare at Exmouth. I describe to my
mother the extraordinary sermon which I heard there from the Dean of
Exeter, on the theory that the object of St. Paul's visit to Jerusalem,
as described in the Acts of the Apostles, was to attend the deathbed of
the "most blessed Virgin." I was greatly delighted with sketching the
then ruined sanctuary of St. John in the Wilderness--an old grey tower
covered with moss and lichen and a huge yew-tree, in a solitary opening
amid woods. Another day we saw Bradley Manor, near Newton, "with its
chapel used as a hen-roost and a peacock perched upon the altar," and
the second Mrs. Hare Naylor's grave at Highweek, "overlooking the
beautiful wooded hills and the still blue waters of Teignmouth harbour."

Whilst at my tutor's, I had saved up every penny I could--actually by
pennies--to go to Berkeley Castle, and at last, by going without food
the whole day (as I had no money for _that_), I accomplished the
excursion. To me, it was well worth all the suffering it cost, and I
wrote seven sheets to my mother about the great hall with its stained
windows, the terraces with peacocks sunning themselves on the carved
balustrades, the dark picture-hung staircase, the tapestried bedrooms,
and above all, the unspeakably ghastly chamber of Edward the Second's
murder, approached through the leads of the roof by a wooden bridge
between the towers--"dim and dark, with a floor of unplaned oak, and the
light falling from two stained windows upon a white head of Edward in a
niche, and an old bed with a sword lying upon it in the position in
which it was found after the murder." Then in the park were "the
descendants of the stags which were harnessed to the king's bier, and
which, for want of horses, drew him to his grave at Gloucester."

In the dreary solitude of my life at Lyncombe (as how often since!)
drawing was a great resource, and much practice gave me facility in
sketching. At this time I was very conceited about it, thought my
drawings beautiful, and, as an inevitable consequence, fell violently
into "the black stage," in which they were--abominable! In the
holidays, however, my pride was well taken down by my mother, who
herself drew with great taste and delicacy. She would look at my drawing
carefully, and then say, "And what does this line mean?"--"Oh, I thought
... it looked well."--"Then, if you do not know exactly what it means,
take it out at once." This was the best of all possible lessons.

The chief variety of our summer was spending two days in the little inn
at Penshurst--seeing and drawing the fine old house there and Hever
Castle, and a day at Winchelsea, where we slept at the primitive little
public-house, and sketched from breakfast to sunset.

[Illustration: THE RYE GATE, WINCHELSEA.]

In the autumn, at Mr. Landor's house, I first met Miss Carolina
Courtenay Boyle,[54] Queen Adelaide's ex-maid of honour, with whom,
partly through my love of drawing, I made a great friendship. Accustomed
as I was to the inferior twaddle which formed the conversation of the
Maurice sisters, or the harsh judgments of those who considered
everything pleasant to be sinful, Miss Boyle was a revelation to me. I
was as one mesmerised by her. Hitherto my acquaintance with women had
been chiefly with the kind who thought ample compensation for having
treated me with inordinate unkindness and selfishness to be contained in
the information that they would not fail to remember me in their
prayers. It was a new experience, not only that a beautiful and clever
lady should try to make herself agreeable, but that she should think it
worth while to make herself agreeable _to me_. No wonder I adored her.
She was then living with her mother Lady Boyle in the same house of
Millard's Hill, near Frome, in which my great-aunts Caroline and
Marianne Hare had lived before; and, to my great surprise and delight, I
was allowed to go by the coach to spend two days with her there. It was
on this occasion that I first wore a morning-coat instead of a jacket,
and very proud I was of it. Apropos of dress, at this time and for many
years afterwards, all young gentlemen wore straps to their trousers, not
only when riding, but always: it was considered the _ne plus ultra_ of
snobbism to appear without them. The said trousers also always had
stripes at the sides, which, beginning like those of soldiers, grew
broader and broader, till they recalled the parti-coloured hose of
Pinturicchio: then they disappeared altogether.

The house of Millard's Hill, when the Boyles inhabited it, was quite
enchanting, so filled with pictures, carvings, and china; and Miss Boyle
herself was a more beautiful picture than any of those upon her
walls--still wonderfully striking in appearance, with delicately
chiselled features and an unrivalled complexion, while her golden-grey
hair, brushed back and cut short like a boy's (owing to a _coup de
soleil_ long before), added a marvellous picturesqueness. A greater
contrast to the pinched and precise evangelical women whom alone I was
usually permitted to visit could at this time scarcely be imagined.
Wonderful were the stories which she had to tell me, and delighted to
tell me, of her past life and sufferings, "through which only God and
religion" had helped her, with the moral attached that since the few
whom she had idolised were taken away, she must now live for all. She
talked much also of her great anxiety about dear old Landor, "that God
would change and _rebuild_ his soul." Lady Boyle, a sweet and beautiful
old lady,[55] was now quite paralysed, and her daughter would sit for
hours at her feet, soothing her and holding her hands. I remember as
especially touching, that when Miss Boyle sang hymns to her mother, she
would purposely make a mistake, in order that her sick mother might have
"the pleasure of correcting her."

When we went out, Miss Boyle's dress--a large Marie Antoinette hat and
feathers and a scarlet cloak--at that time considered most
extraordinary--excited great sensation. With her I went to Longleat; to
Vallis, of which I have often been reminded in seeing Poussin's
pictures; and to Marston, where old Lord Cork was still living, with his
daughter-in-law Lady Dungarvan and her children. An immense number of
the Boyles--"the illustrious family" by whom, our Dr. Johnson said,
"almost every art had been encouraged or improved"--were at this time
residing at or around Marston, and none of them on terms with one
another, though they were all, individually, very kind to me. I now
first made acquaintance with Miss Boyle's younger sister Mary, whom I
knew better many years after, when I learned to value her wonderful
sympathy with all the pathos of life, as much as to admire her quick wit
and inimitable acting.[56] Landor used to say of her, "Mary Boyle is
more than clever, she is profound;" but it is her quickness that remains
by one. Of her lively answers it is difficult to give specimens, but I
remember how one day when she neglected something, Lady Marion Alford
said to her, "What a baby you are, Mary," and she answered, "Well, I
can't help it; _I was born so_."

Another day Sir Frederic Leighton had promised to go to her, and, after
keeping her waiting a long time, had disappointed her. She met him at
the Academy party that evening, and he made a feint of kneeling down to
beg her pardon--"Oh, pray rise up," she exclaimed; "people might think I
was forgiving you."

But to return to Millard's Hill. In the evenings Miss Boyle took a
guitar and played and sang--strange wild Spanish songs, which seemed
perfectly in accordance with her floating hair and inspired mien. King
William IV. desired her to play to him, which she dreaded so much, that
when she was sent to fetch her guitar, she cut every string and then
frizzled them up, and came back into the royal presence saying that her
guitar was quite broken and she could not play. To her terror, the King
sent for the guitar to see if it was true, but he was deceived. Queen
Adelaide's death had made a great change in Miss Boyle's life, but she
received the greatest kindness from the Queen's sister, Duchess Ida of
Saxe-Weimar. When I was with her, she was looking forward to a homeless
life after her mother's death, which could not be far distant, but was
trusting in the family motto--"God's providence is my inheritance."

Soon after my return from Millard's Hill, I went to my grandfather Sir
John Paul at the Hill House near Stroud--a much-dreaded visit, as I had
never before seen most of the near relations amongst whom I so suddenly
found myself.

From the Hill House I wrote to my mother--

     "_Dec. 19, 1850._--Lyncombe is done with! my own Mother, and oh! I
     cannot say how delightful it was, in parting with so many persons
     terribly familiar through two years and a half of misery, to know
     that I should never see them again.

     "At Stroud Lady Paul's pony-carriage was waiting, and we drove
     swiftly through some deep valleys, the old coachman, twenty-five
     years in the family, telling me how he had seen and nursed me when
     a baby, and how glad he was that I was come to see my grandfather.
     We turned up by a house which he said was my 'Aunt Jane's,'[57]
     through a steep lane overhung by magnificent beech-trees, and then
     round a drive to this hill-set mansion, which has a fine view over
     wood and valley on one side, and on the other a garden with
     conservatories and fountains.

     "As the bell rang, a good-natured, foreign-looking man came out to
     welcome me, and told me he was my Uncle Wentworth,[58] introduced
     me to his boy Johnnie, and took me into a large cheerful room
     (like the chintz room at Eridge), where the bright-eyed old Sir
     John was sitting with Lady Paul and my aunt Minnie Bankhead. Lady
     Paul kissed me, and it was not half so formidable as I expected....
     Aunt Minnie is very handsome, and amuses everybody with her
     stories. She has just brought back His Excellency her husband from
     Mexico, where she has had the most wonderful adventures."




V

SOUTHGATE

    "Stern lawgiver, yet thou dost wear
      The Godhead's most benignant grace;
    Nor know we anything so fair
      As is the smile upon thy face."

    --WORDSWORTH, _Ode to Duty_.

    "Duties bring blessings with them."

    --SOUTHEY, _Roderick_.

     "In the acquisition of more or less useless knowledge, soon happily
     to be forgotten, boyhood passes away. The schoolhouse fades from
     view, and we turn into the world's high-road."--J. K. JEROME.


My new tutor, the Rev. Charles Bradley, was selected by Arthur Stanley,
who had been acquainted with his brother, afterwards Master of
University College at Oxford. I went over from Lime to see him at
Hastings, and at once felt certain that, though he was very eccentric,
his energy and vivacity were just what would be most helpful to me. His
house was an ugly brick villa standing a little way back from the road
in the pretty village of Southgate, about ten miles from London, and he
had so many pupils that going there was like returning to school. The
life at Southgate for the next two years was certainly the reverse of
luxurious, and I did not get on well with my tutor owing to his
extraordinary peculiarities, and probably to my many faults also; but I
feel that mentally I owe everything to Mr. Bradley. "Vita sine proposito
languida et vaga est"[59] was the first principle he inculcated. He was
the only person who ever taught me anything, and that he did not teach
me more than he did was entirely my own fault. He had a natural
enthusiasm for knowledge himself, and imparted it to his pupils; and the
energy and interest of the lessons at Southgate were perfectly
delightful--every hour filled, not a moment wasted, and a constant
excitement about examinations going on. I am sure that the manly vigour
of my surroundings soon began to tell on my character as much as my
mind, and at Southgate I soon learned to acquire more openness in
matters of feeling, and a complete indifference to foolish sneers. Mr.
R. for two years and a half had totally, systematically, and most
cruelly neglected me: Mr. Bradley fully did his duty by me--to a degree
of which I have only in after years learned the full value.

When we had a holiday at Southgate, it was the well-earned reward of
hard work on the part of the pupils, not the result of idleness on the
part of the tutor, and our holidays were intensely enjoyable. As he
found he could trust me, Mr. Bradley let me make long excursions on
these holidays--to Hatfield, St. Albans, Epping Forest, and often to
London, where my happy hunts after old buildings and historic
recollections laid the foundation of a work which I at that time little
looked forward to.[60] Sometimes also I went to the Stanleys', ever
becoming increasingly attracted by the charm, intelligence, and wisdom
of my "Aunt Kitty." She was very alarming with her

    "Strong sovereign will, and some desire to chide."[61]

But the acuteness of her observation, the crispness of her conversation,
and the minute and inflexible justice of her daily conduct, ever showed
the most rare union of masculine vigour with feminine delicacy.

My aunt was very intimate with the Miss Berrys, who both died in 1852,
Agnes in January, Mary in November. Their celebrity began with their
great intimacy at Devonshire House and Lansdowne House: the old Duchess
of Devonshire was their great friend. I believe they were not clever in
themselves, but they had a peculiar power of drawing clever people
around them. They had both been engaged, Mary to the O'Hara, Agnes to
the Mr. Ferguson who married Lady Elgin. They were very kind-hearted,
and were, as it were, privileged to say rude things, which nobody
minded, at their parties. Often, when a fresh person arrived towards the
end of the evening, Miss Berry would say before all the other guests,
"You see I've been able to get no one to meet you--no one at all." She
would go out of the room whilst she was pouring out the tea, and call
out over the stairs, "Murrell, no more _women_, no more _women_;" and
Murrell, the butler, understood perfectly, and put out the lamp over the
door. A few very intimate friends would still come in, but, when they
saw the lamp was out, ladies generally drove away. Latterly, the Miss
Berrys tried to draw in a good deal. A sort of _jeu d'esprit_ went round
to their friends, thanking them for past favours, and asking for a
continuance on a smaller scale. It was never quite understood, but was
supposed to mean that they did not wish to see quite so many. The death
of Miss Agnes was like that of the wife. She had always been touching in
that she could never understand how any one could like her better than
her sister. She was the housekeeper, and she did what other housekeepers
seldom do--she had the soup brought up to her every day whilst she was
dressing, and tasted it, and would say, "There must be a little more
sugar," or "There is too much salt," so that it was always perfect and
always the same.

I think it must have been at this time also that I was taken to see the
venerable Lady Louisa Stuart, who died soon afterwards.[62] I am glad
that I can thus always retain a vivid recollection of the daughter of
the famous Lord Bute and grand-daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as
a very old lady of ninety-four, in a large cap, sitting in an
old-fashioned high-backed chair covered with white stuff, in a room of
extreme bareness.

Great was my excitement, on first going to Southgate. I stayed on the
way with the Stanleys, to see the Exhibition (of 1851) which was then
in full preparation, and the procession at the opening of Parliament.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_6 Grosvenor Crescent, Feb. 3, 1851._--The exterior of the Crystal
     Palace is disappointing, I had imagined it so much higher, but the
     interior is and looks gigantic. The most striking feature is the
     great tree: it is wonderful to see its huge branches enclosed quite
     to the topmost twigs, and the details of the building are
     beautiful."


     "_Feb. 4._--I went to the Bunsens' house to see the procession.
     There was a crowd of people on the terrace when the great gun
     announced that the Queen had left the palace, and already from
     distant parts of the avenue cries of 'God save the Queen' and
     'Hurrah!' The procession of Lifeguards in their panoply of
     glittering helmets and breastplates was beautiful. Then came the
     six gorgeous carriages with the household, and lastly the eight
     cream-coloured horses drawing the great glass coach. Prince Albert
     in his great boots sat on the side nearest to us, opposite the
     Duchess of Sutherland in a diamond tiara; and on the other, the
     Queen, in a crown and glistening dress of embroidered silver, kept
     bowing to the shouts of her subjects--so much indeed that I heard a
     poor Irish-woman exclaim--'Och indeed, and mustn't the poor thing
     get tired of nodding her head about so.' ... There were forty
     people at luncheon with the Bunsens afterwards."


     "_Southgate, Feb. 8, 1851._--My own dearest mother, at last I am
     writing from my own room at Southgate. I joined the omnibus at a
     public-house at the bottom of Snow Hill,[63] and drove here through
     the moonlight, arriving at 10 P.M. We stopped at a large gate in a
     wall, which was opened by a stable-boy, who led the way across a
     grass-plat with trees. Mr. Bradley met me in the hall, and took me
     to see Mrs. Bradley, and then to my room, which at first seemed
     most dreary, cold, and comfortless."


     "_Feb. 9._--I have already seen enough of the life here to know a
     good deal about it. Mr. Bradley is an excellent tutor, though I
     could never like him as a man. He is much too familiar with his
     pupils, pulls their hair or hits them on the toes with the poker
     when they make mistakes: he will peer into their rooms, and if he
     finds a coat, &c., lying about, will fine them a penny, and there
     is a similar fine if you do not put the chair you have sat upon at
     dinner close up against the wall when you have done with it. The
     tradespeople are allowed to put in their bills, 'Pane of glass
     broken by Portman or Brooke,' &c. When I asked him to lend me a
     pen, he said, 'Oh, I don't provide my pupils with pens.' When he
     wanted to send a parcel to Miss Jason, he told her brother he
     should come upon him for the postage. The first thing he said to me
     after I entered the house was--pointing to the sideboard--'Mind you
     never take either of those two candles; those are Mrs. Bradley's
     and mine' (we have sickly-smelling farthing dips in dirty japanned
     candlesticks). These are instances to give you an idea of the man.

     "If you have three indifferent marks from the mathematical master,
     you have either to stay in all the next half-holiday, or to receive
     three severe boxes on the ear!--a thing which I imagine would not
     be borne at any other private tutor's, but Bradley seems to have
     magic power. His inquisitiveness about trifles is boundless. If I
     bring down a book--'What is that book? Was it a present? Who from?
     Where was it bought? How much did it cost?'

     "When I came down to prayers this morning (at eight, being Sunday),
     I found all the pupils assembled. I am the smallest but one, and
     look up at the gigantic Portman, who is only thirteen. Then we had
     breakfast. Cold beef and ham were on the table, a huge loaf, and
     two little glasses of butter. Mrs. Bradley poured out the tea,
     while Bradley threw to each pupil an immense hunch off the loaf,
     saying with mine, that I 'must not leave any, or any fat at dinner,
     that was never allowed; and that I must always say first what I
     wanted, much or little, fat or not.' After breakfast the pupils all
     gathered round the fire and talked. Soon Bradley made us sit down
     to work, myself at Greek Testament, till it was time to go to
     church, whither we went, not quite in a schoolboy procession, but
     very nearly. The church was 'Weld Chapel,' a barn-like building,
     with round windows and high galleries. At dinner there was cold
     roast and boiled beef, and plum and custard pudding, good and
     plain, but with severe regulations. We did not have any time to
     ourselves except three-quarters of an hour after afternoon church,
     after which we went down to a sort of Scripture examination, with
     such questions as, 'How do we know that Salome was the mother of
     Zebedee's children?' I wrote what I thought an excellent set of
     answers, but they proved sadly deficient, and I am afraid I _am_ a
     dunce.... I am writing now after prayers, in forbidden time, and in
     danger of having my fire put out for a month! Do not think from my
     letter that I dislike being here. Oh, no! work, work, is the one
     thing I need, and which I must and will have, and, if I have it,
     all petty troubles will be forgotten. Good-night, my own dear
     blessed mother."


     "_Feb. 10._--Half my first work-day is over, and I have just washed
     my hands, sooty with lighting my own fire, to write before dinner.
     At half-past nine we all sat down to work at the long table in the
     dining-room. I was directed to do Euripides while the 'schemes'
     (tables of work) of the others were prepared, and we went on till
     half-past twelve, when Bradley said, 'You've done enough.' Then
     Campbell asked me to walk with him and Walker to the station....
     All my companions seem very old."


     "_Feb. 12._--On Wednesday afternoon I went a long walk with
     Campbell. The country looks most dreary now, and mostly hidden by
     London fog, still I think there are bits which I could draw....
     When we came home I ached with cold and my fire was out. Mrs.
     Bradley is certainly most good-natured; for happening to pass and
     see my plight, she insisted on going down herself to get sticks,
     laying it, and lighting it again. When I was going to bed, too, the
     servant came up with a little bason of arrowroot, steaming hot, and
     some biscuits, which 'Missis thought would do my cold good.'

     "Bradley improves greatly on acquaintance, and is very kind to me,
     though I am sorry to say he finds me far more backward and stupid
     than he expected, especially in grammar. He has a wonderfully
     pleasant way of teaching, and instead of only telling us we are
     dunces and blockheads, like Mr. R., he helps us not to remain so.

     "He was exceedingly indignant yesterday at receiving a letter from
     Lord Portman to say that his son had complained of the dreadful
     damp of the house, that his shirts put out at night were always wet
     before morning. After expatiating for a long time upon the
     unkindness and impropriety of Portman's conduct in writing to
     complain instead of asking for a fire, he ended good-humouredly by
     insisting on his going out into a laurel bush in the garden with
     Forbes, to receive advice as to improved conduct for the future!
     All this every pupil in the house was called down to witness:
     indeed, if any one does wrong, it is Bradley's great delight to
     make him a looking-glass to the others. Sometimes he holds up their
     actual persons to be looked at. If they are awkward, he makes them
     help the others at meals, &c., and all his little penances are made
     as public as possible."


     "_Feb. 14._--The days go quickly by in a succession of lessons, one
     after the other. I am much happier already at Southgate than I
     ever was anywhere else, for Bradley's whole aim, the whole thought
     of his soul, is to teach us, and he makes his lessons as
     interesting as Arthur (Stanley) himself would. I like all my
     companions very much, but Walker best; and, though I am the
     smallest, thinnest, weakest fellow here, I do not think they like
     me the worse for it."


     "_Feb. 16._--Yesterday, after work, I went by train to Hatfield
     House, provided with a large piece of cake for luncheon by Mrs.
     Bradley.... You may imagine my delight, as I expected something
     like Penshurst at best, to see tower after tower, and pile after
     pile of the most glorious old building, equally splendid in colour
     and outline--far the most beautiful house I ever saw. It was a
     perfect day, the sun lighting up the glorious building, and making
     deep shadows upon it, and glinting through the old oaks in the park
     upon the herds of deer.... The train was forty minutes late, and it
     was quite dark when I got back, but Mrs. Bradley's good-nature gave
     me a welcome and a hot meat tea, whereas with Mrs. R. there would
     indeed have been cold behaviour and cold tea--if _any_.

     "The only way of getting on with Bradley is the most entire
     openness, and answering all his questions as shortly and simply as
     possible.... After Cicero he always gives us a composition to
     translate into Latin out of his own head, most extraordinary
     sometimes, though in the style of what we have been reading. I am
     already beginning to find Cicero quite easy, and am beginning at
     last even to make some little sense of Euripides."

     "_Feb. 21._--At half-past six I hear knocking without intermission
     at my door, which it is generally a long time before I am
     sufficiently awake to think other than a dream. Presently I jump
     up, brush my own clothes, seize my Cicero, and look it over while I
     dress, and at half-past seven rush downstairs to the dining-room.
     For some minutes the stairs are in a continual clatter. Meantime I
     retire into a window in agonies of agitation about my Cicero, till
     Bradley comes in rubbing his hands, and sits down in an arm-chair
     by the fire: I sit down by him, and Hill on the other side of me,
     like a great long giant. I generally do this lesson very ill,
     partly from want of presence of mind, partly from inattention, and
     partly because I am scarcely awake: however, Bradley makes it not
     only instructive but interesting, always giving us funny sentences
     out of his own head to construe into the sort of Latin we are
     doing. I quite enjoy my lessons with him, only he must think me
     _such_ a dunce. After the lesson is construed, I sometimes have to
     do it all through by myself, or the others do it and I correct them
     (if I can). Sometimes the poker is held over their toes, when,
     without exception, they do it worse than before, and down it comes.
     Then we parse.

     "Then a little bell tinkles. Portman cuts the bread, Bradley the
     ham, and I help to set chairs in two rows from the fire, while the
     others hang over it, very grim and cold. Two maidens and a
     stable-boy come in, we sit in two rows confronting each other, and
     Bradley in the oddest possible tone reads a chapter in 'Proverbs'
     and a prayer. Then the chairs are put to the table: I sit next but
     Hill to Mrs. Bradley, which means I am fourth eldest, Walker on
     the other side of me, Forbes and Campbell opposite. At breakfast
     every one talks of plans for the day, Forbes and Portman of hounds,
     races, and steeplechases, Campbell of church windows; it is very
     different from the silent meals at Lyncombe.

     "We do not begin regular work again till half-past nine, though I
     generally prepare mine, but sometimes Forbes persuades me to come
     out and give them a chase, that is, to run away as hard as I can,
     with all the others yelping like hounds at my heels; but the scene
     of these chases is only a square walled garden and orchard, and
     there are no places for concealment. We come in very dirty, and
     Buchan is sometimes made to wear his dirty shoes round his neck, or
     to have them under his nose all worktime.

     "I work in my room till ten, when I come in with Walker for the
     second Cicero lesson, which is even pleasanter than the other.
     Afterwards we write Latin compositions out of our own heads! Then I
     sometimes say Greek grammar, or else work in my own room again till
     twelve, when I go down to the young Cambridge wrangler, who is
     teaching some one all worktime, but with whom I do nothing except
     for this half-hour. He looks very young and delicate and is
     childish in manner, and generally gets into a fix over a fraction,
     and so do I, but we fumble and whisper together over arithmetic
     till half-past twelve. Meanwhile my letters have generally come,
     books are clapped together, and I run upstairs to write to you.

     "A dinner-bell rings at half-past one, and the others come in from
     the drawing-room, whither they adjourn before dinner, with the
     penalty of a penny if they lean against the mantelpiece, as they
     might injure the ornaments. We have the same places at dinner, an
     excellent dinner always--variety of food and abundance of it.
     Afterwards I generally read, while the others play at quoits, and
     at half-past two I go out walking with Campbell, coming in to begin
     work at five. At half-past five Walker and I come in with
     Euripides, which is the last repetition: then I work in my own room
     till six, when we have tea, with bread and butter and cake. After
     tea the drawing-room is open to the public till half-past seven,
     when we all begin to prepare work for the next day, and write Latin
     exercises till nine, when prayers are read. Afterwards the younger
     ones generally go to bed, but some of us sit up talking or playing
     chess, &c., till nearly eleven.

     "I like the sort of life excessively--the hardly having a moment to
     one's self, as the general working 'subject' takes up all leisure
     time--the hardly having time even to make acquaintance with one's
     companions from the succession of all that has to be done. No one
     thinks it odd if you do any amount of work in your own room; of
     course they laugh at you as 'a bookworm,' but what does that
     signify?

     "I have forgotten to tell you that between breakfast and the chase,
     Hill and I are examined in three chapters of the Bible which we
     prepare beforehand. Bradley asks the most capital questions, which
     one would never think of, and we have to know the geography
     perfectly. I am astonished to find how indescribably ignorant I
     am."

     "_Feb. 23._--I daily feel how much happier I am with the Bradleys
     than I have ever been before. Compared to Lyncombe, Southgate is
     absolute paradise, the meals are so merry and the little
     congregations round the fire afterwards, and work is carried on
     with such zest and made so interesting.

     "Yesterday, after work, I went to Waltham Abbey--a long walk to
     Edmonton, and then by rail to Waltham. I was very anxious to see
     what a place so long thought of would be like--a tall white tower
     rising above trees, a long rambling village street, and then the
     moss-grown walls of the church. The inside is glorious, with
     twisted Norman pillars, &c., but choked with pews and galleries.
     The old man who showed it said he was 'quite tired of hearing of
     church reform and restoration, though the pillars certainly did
     want whitewashing again sadly.' ... There is an old gothic gateway
     on the brink of the river Lea."


     "_March 9, Harrow._--Having got through 'the subject'--Cicero and
     Greek grammar--yesterday morning, with much trembling but
     favourable results, I set off to come here. With a bundle like a
     tramp, I passed through Colney Hatch, Finchley, and Hendon, keeping
     Harrow steeple and hill well in view, and two miles from Harrow met
     Kate in her carriage. This morning we have been to church, and I
     have since been to Mrs. Brush, the Pauls' old servant, whom I knew
     so well when at school here, and who came out exclaiming, 'O my
     dear good little soul, how glad I be to see ye!'"

     _"Southgate, March 14._--I must tell my mother of my birthday
     yesterday. Mr. and Mrs. Bradley made me order the meals, and do
     very much what I liked. The tutor, who can be as savage as a lion
     during work, relapses into a sucking-lamb when it is over. My
     health was drunk all round at dinner, and 'a truce' given
     afterwards, which I employed in going with little Fitzherbert
     Brooke to the old church at Chingford, close to Epping Forest--a
     picturesque, deserted, ivy-covered building, looking down over the
     flat country which I think so infinitely interesting, with the
     churches and towers of London in the distance.

     "To-day there has been a great fuss, and it will probably have some
     dreadful ending. In the middle of work we were all suddenly called
     down, and Bradley, with his gravest face, headed a procession into
     the garden, where all across one of the flower-beds were seen
     footmarks, evidently left by some one in the chases yesterday. The
     gardener was called, and said he saw _one of the party_ run across
     yesterday, but he was not allowed to say a word more. Then Bradley
     said he should allow a day in which the culprit might come forward
     and confess, in which case he would be forgiven and no one told his
     name, otherwise the shoes of yesterday, which have been locked up,
     would be measured with the footprints, and the offender sent away."


     "_March 15._--The plan has quite answered. In the evening, Bradley
     told me the offender had given himself up. No one knows who it is,
     and all goes on as before. Some of the others are given a
     tremendous punishment for running through some forbidden laurel
     bushes--the whole of 'Southey's Life of Nelson' to get up with the
     geography, and not to leave the house till it is done, no second
     course, no beer, and ... to take a pill every night."

     "_April 2._--The other day I was very careless in my work, and was
     asked where my mind was, and as I could not tell, Campbell was sent
     upstairs to fetch--my mind! and came down bearing two little pots
     of wild anemones, which were moved about with me as my 'mind,' to
     the great amusement of the others.... If I should ever _seem_ to
     complain of anything here in my letters, mind you never allude to
     it to the Bradleys, as there is only one thing which Bradley
     _never_ forgives a pupil, and that is having caused him to write a
     letter."


     "_April 7._--Yesterday I went with Campbell and Edgecombe to
     Hatfield, whence we ran all the way to St. Albans, an effort, but
     quite worth while, though we had only an hour there."


     "(After the Easter vacation), _April 27._--When I opened my eyes
     this morning on the wintry wilderness here, what a change it was
     from Lime--withered sooty evergreens, leafless trees, trampled
     grass, and thick London fog--I think the angels driven out of
     Paradise must have felt as I do, only I have a bad headache
     besides.... All here is the same as when we left, to the drawling
     sermon of Mr. Staunton about faith, grace, and redemption, sighing
     and groaning and hugging the pulpit-cushion the while. It is
     bitterly cold, but the law of the house allows no more fires....
     Even Fausty's white hair, which still clings to my coat, has its
     value now."


     "_April 29._--Bradley has now taken a notion that I am dreadfully
     self-conceited, so I am made to sit on a high chair before him at
     lessons like a little school-boy, and yesterday, for mistakes in my
     Latin exercise, I was made to wear my coat and waistcoat inside out
     till dinner-time."


     "_May 11._--Yesterday, I went by train to Broxbourne, and walked
     thence by Hoddesdon across the bleak district called the Rye, till
     I saw an oasis of poplars and willows by the river Lea, and a red
     brick tower with terra-cotta ornaments, twisted chimney,
     flag-staff, and a grey arched door below. I had not expected it, so
     you may imagine how enchanted I was to find that it was the tower
     of the Rye-House. In that road Charles and James were to have been
     murdered on their return from Newmarket, and for the plot conceived
     in that tower Algernon Sidney and William Lord Russell died!

     "Bradley is now alternately very good-natured and very provoking.
     He continually asks me if I do not think him the most annoying,
     tiresome man I ever met, and I always say, 'Yes, I do think so.' In
     return, he says that I am sapping his vitals and wearing him out by
     my ingratitude and exaggerations, but he does not think so at
     all."


     "_May 18._--I have been to Harrow. Mr. Bradley lent me a horse, to
     be sent back by the stable-boy after the first six miles, so I
     easily got through the rest.... I had many hours with Kate, and
     came away immediately after dinner, arriving at exactly ten minutes
     to ten--the fatal limit; so Bradley was pleased, and welcomed me,
     and I did _not_ go supperless to bed."


     "_June 8, 1851._--Yesterday I walked to Dyrham Park near Barnet, to
     pay a visit to the Trotters. It is a handsome place.... I wrote
     upon my card, 'Will you see an unknown cousin?' and sending it in,
     was admitted at once. I found Mrs. Trotter[64] in the garden. She
     welcomed me very kindly, and seven of her nine children came
     trooping up to see 'the unknown cousin.' Captain Trotter is
     peculiar and peculiarly religious. I had not been there a minute
     before he gathered some leaves to dilate to me upon 'the beauty of
     the creation and the wonderful glory of the Creator,' with his
     magnifying-glass. He builds churches, gives the fourth of his
     income to the poor, and spends all his time in good works. I stayed
     to tea with all the children. The gardens are lovely, and the
     children have three houses in the shrubberies--one with a
     fireplace, cooking apparatus, and oven, where they can bake;
     another, a pretty thatched cottage with Robinson Crusoe's tree near
     it, with steps cut in it to the top."


     "_June 11._--The first day of our great examination is over, and I
     have written seventy-three answers, some of them occupying a whole
     sheet."


     "_June 12._--To-day has been ten hours and a half of hard writing.
     I was not plucked yesterday!"


     "_June 15._--I reached Harrow by one, through the hot lanes peopled
     with haymakers. I was delayed in returning, yet by tearing along
     the lanes arrived at ten exactly by my watch, but by the hall-clock
     it was half-past ten. Bradley was frigidly cold in consequence, and
     has been ever since. To-day at breakfast he said, 'Forbes may
     always be depended upon, but that is not the case with _every
     one_.'"


     "_June 20._--I have had an interesting day!--examinations all
     morning--the finale of Virgil, and then, as a reward, and because
     neither of my preceptors could attend to me, Bradley said I might
     go where I liked; so I fixed on Hertford, and, having walked to
     Ponder's End, took the train thither.... From Hertford, I walked to
     Panshanger, Lord Cowper's, which is shown, and in the most
     delightful way, as you are taken to the picture-gallery, supplied
     with a catalogue, and left to your own devices. The pictures are
     glorious and the gardens are quaint, in the old style. At Ware I
     saw the great bed, but the owners would not let me draw it on any
     account, because they were sure I was going to do it for the
     Pantomime. The bed is twelve feet square and is said to have
     belonged to Queen Elizabeth.

     "In the Bible examination I am second, in spite of having said
     that Ishmael married an Egyptian, and having left out 'They drank
     of that rock which followed them' in answer to the question 'What
     were the miracles ordained to supply the temporal wants of the
     Israelites in the wilderness?'"


     "_June 25._--I am enchanted--quite enchanted that we are really
     going to Normandy.... I feel satisfied, now the end of the quarter
     is come, that I never was happier anywhere in my life than I have
     been here, and that I have done more, learned more, and thought
     more in the few months at Southgate than in all the rest of my life
     put together."

While I was away, my mother's life at Hurstmonceaux had flowed on in a
quiet routine between Lime and the Rectory. She had, however, been much
affected by the sudden death of Ralph Leycester, the young head of her
family,[65] and cheerful, genial owner of Toft, her old family home.
Chiefly, however, did she feel this from her share in the terrible
sorrow of Ralph's eldest sister, her sister-like cousin Charlotte
Leycester; and the hope of persuading her to have the change and of
benefiting her by it, proved an incentive to make a short tour in
Normandy--a plan with which I was intensely delighted. To go abroad was
positively enchanting. But _anything_ would have been better than
staying at Hurstmonceaux, so overrun was it with Maurices. I suppose
they sometimes meant well, but what appalling bores they were! "La bonne
intention n'est de rien en fait d'esprit."[66]

We crossed to Boulogne on a sea which was perfectly calm at starting,
but on the way there came on one of the most frightful thunderstorms I
ever remember, and the sea rose immediately as under a hurricane. A lady
who sate by us was dreadfully terrified, and I have no doubt remembers
now the way in which (as the waves swept the deck) my mother repeated to
her the hymn--"Oh, Jesus once rocked on the breast of the billow." I
have often seen in dreams since, our first entrance into a French
harbour, brilliant sunshine after the storm, perfectly still water after
the raging waves, and the fishwomen, in high white caps like towers
(universal then) and huge glittering golden earrings, lining the railing
of the pier.

We saw Amiens and had a rapid glimpse of Paris, where we were all
chiefly impressed by the Chapelle St. Ferdinand and the tomb of the Duke
of Orleans, about whom there was still much enthusiasm. During this
visit I also saw three phases of old Paris which I am especially glad
to remember, and which I should have had no other opportunity of seeing.
I saw houses still standing in the Place du Carrousel between the
Tuileries and the then unfinished Louvre: I saw the Fontaine des
Innocents in the middle of the market, uncovered as it then was: and I
saw the Tour de S. Jacques rising in the midst of a crowd of old houses,
which pressed close against it, and made it look much more picturesque
than it has done since it has been freed from its surroundings. On
leaving Paris, we spent delightful days at Rouen, and visited, at
Darnetal, the parents of M. Waddington, who became well known as
Minister of Foreign Affairs at Paris, and ambassador in England. From
Havre we went by sea to Caen, arriving full of the study of Norman
history and determined to find out, in her native place, all we could
about Gunnora, Duchess of Normandy (grandmother of William the
Conqueror), from whose second marriage both my mother and Charlotte
Leycester were directly descended.

Very delightful were the excursions we made from Caen--to Bayeux with
its grand cathedral and the strange strip of royal needlework known as
"the Bayeux Tapestry:" and to the quaint little church of Thaon and
Château Fontaine Henri, a wonderfully preserved great house of other
days. Ever since I have had a strong sense of the charm of the wide
upland Normandy plains of golden corn, alive with ever-changing cloud
shadows, and of the sudden dips into wooded valleys, fresh with streams,
where some little village of thatched cottages has a noble church with a
great spire, and an area wide enough to contain all the people in the
village and all their houses too. The most beautiful of all the breaks
in the cornland occurs at Falaise, where the great castle of Robert the
Devil rises on a precipice above a wooded rift with river and watermills
and tanners' huts, in one of which Arlette, the mother of the Conqueror,
and daughter of the tanner Verpray, was born.

From Falaise we went to Lisieux, which was then one of the most
beautiful old towns in France, almost entirely of black and white timber
houses. It was only a few miles thence to Val Richer, where we spent the
afternoon with M. Guizot--"grave and austere, but brilliantly
intellectual," as Princess Lieven has described him. His château was
full of relics of Louis Philippe and his court, and the garden set with
stately orange-trees in large tubs like those at the Tuileries. My
mother and cousin returned to England from hence, but I was left for
some weeks at Caen to study French at the house of M. Melun, a
Protestant pasteur, in a quiet side-street close to the great Abbaye aux
Dames, where Matilda of Flanders is buried.

     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Caen, July 26, 1851._--It was very desolate, my own mother, being
     left alone in that square of Lisieux, and the old houses seemed to
     lose their beauty, the trees and cathedral to grow colourless,
     after you were all gone, so that I was glad when the diligence came
     to take me away. It was a long drive, passing through 'Coupe
     Gorge,' a ravine where Napoleon, hearing diligences were often
     robbed there, made one man settle, saying that others would soon
     follow, and now there is quite a village.

     "I have a pleasant room here, with a clean wooden floor, and a view
     of S. Pierre from the window. Its only drawback is opening into the
     sitting-room where Mr. T., my fellow-pensionnaire, smokes his
     pipes. He is a heavy young man, very anxious to impress me with the
     honour and glory of his proficiency as a shot and cricketer, and of
     the Frenchmen he has knocked down and 'rather surprised.' We had
     prayers in Madame Melun's bedroom, she being dressed, but 'le
     petit' snoring in bed. The whole family, including _les petits_,
     have a great meat breakfast with wine, followed by bowls of sour
     milk.... Such a touching funeral procession has just passed up the
     Rue des Chanoines, a young girl carried on a bier by six of her
     companions in white dresses and wreaths."


     "_Sunday, July 27_.--Yesterday I went a walk with M. Melun to the
     Prairie, where the races are going on. This morning he preached
     about them and the evils of the world with the most violent action
     I ever saw--stamping, kicking, spreading out his arms like the
     wings of a bird, and jumping as if about to descend upon the altar,
     which, in the _Temple_, is just under the pulpit. This afternoon I
     have been again to the service, but there was no congregation; all
     the world was gone to the races, and, M. Melun says, to perdition
     also."


     "_July 28._--It is such a burning day that I can hardly hold my
     head up. Everything seems lifeless with heat, and not a breath of
     air. I never missed a green tree so much: if you go out, except to
     the Prairie, there is not one to be seen, and even the streets are
     cool and refreshing compared with the barren country. Tens of
     thousands of people collected in the Prairie this morning, half to
     see the races, half the eclipse of the sun, for they both began at
     the same moment, and the many coloured dresses and high Norman caps
     were most picturesque."


     "_July 30._--It is like the deadly motionless heat of 'The Ancient
     Mariner;' I suppose the eclipse brings it ... the baking is
     absolute pain.... It is tiresome that the whole Melun family think
     it necessary to say 'bon jour' and to shake hands every time one
     goes in and out of the house, a ceremony which it makes one hotter
     to think of."


     "_July 31._--The heat is still terrific, but thinking anything
     better than the streets, I have been to Thaon--a scorching walk
     across the shadeless cornfields. The church and valley were the
     same, but seemed to have lost their charm since I last saw them
     with my mother. I have my French lesson now in the little
     carnation-garden on the other side of the street."


     "_August 1._--I have been by the diligence to Notre Dame de la
     Deliverande, a strange place, full of legends. In the little square
     an image of the Virgin is said to have fallen down from heaven: it
     was hidden for many years in the earth, and was at length
     discovered by the scratching of a lamb. Placed in the church, the
     Virgin every night returned to the place where she was disinterred,
     and at last the people were obliged to build her a shrine upon the
     spot. It is an old Norman chapel surrounded by booths of relics,
     and shouts of 'Achetez donc une Sainte Vierge' resound on all
     sides. Latterly, to please the fishermen, the worship of the Virgin
     has been combined with that of St. Nicholas, and they appear on the
     same medal, &c. When a crew is saved from shipwreck on this coast,
     it instantly starts in procession, barefoot, to 'La Deliverande,'
     and all the lame who visit the chapel are declared to go away
     healed.... In a blaze of gold and silver tinsel, surrounded by the
     bouquets of the faithful and the crutches of the healed, is the
     image which 'fell down from heaven,'--its mouldering form is
     arrayed in a silver robe, and, though very old, it looks unlikely
     to last long. I went on with M. Melun to Bernières, where there is
     a grand old church, to visit a poor Protestant family, the only one
     in this ultra-Catholic neighbourhood. They had begged the minister
     to come because one of the sisters was dead, and the whole party
     collected while he prayed with them, and they wept bitterly.
     Afterwards we asked where we could get some food. 'Chez nous, chez
     nous,' they exclaimed, and lighting a fire in their little mud room
     with some dried hemp, they boiled us some milk, and one of the
     sisters, who was a baker, brought in a long hot roll of sour bread,
     for which they persistently refused any payment.... I have had an
     English invitation from Madame de Lignerole in these words--'Will
     you be so very kind as to allow me to take the liberty of
     entreating you to have the kindness to confer the favour upon me of
     giving me the happiness of your company on Friday.'"


     "_August 2._--We went to-day to see M. Laire, an old antiquary who
     has lived all his life upon vegetables. His house is very
     attractive; the court, full of flowers mixed with carvings and
     Celtic remnants, borders on the willows which fringe the Odon, and
     the rooms are crammed with curiosities and pictures relating to
     Caen history. The old man himself is charming, and spends his life
     in collecting and giving away. He gave me a medallion of
     Malesherbes, and many other things."


     "_August 2._--I have been to dine with the Consul, Mr. Barrow.
     Under his garden is the quarry whence the stone was taken which
     built Westminster Abbey. It undermines all the grounds, and once,
     when a part fell in, the hot air which came out made it quite hot
     in winter. Mr. Barrow has built a conservatory over the spot, which
     needs no other heat, and plants flourish amazingly, though only
     camellias and smooth-leaved plants will do, as others are too much
     affected by the damp."

Want of money was still always the great trouble of my boyhood, as my
dear mother never could be persuaded to see the necessity of my having
any, and after she had made a minute calculation of the necessary
pennies that came into her head, always gave me just that sum and no
more, never allowing anything for the ever-recurring incidents and
exigencies of daily life. When I was sixteen she was persuaded to allow
me £10 a year, but out of this I was expected to buy all the smaller
articles of dress, boots, hats, gloves, &c., so, as may be imagined, my
annual allowance was almost nil; and my excursions at Southgate had been
only possible by starvation, and because the third-class ticket to
London cost only fourpence. When I was left at Caen, just the absolutely
needful sum for my return journey was given me, and no allowance made
for any personal expenses of my stay--for washer-woman, fees to
servants, or payments for the many purchases which my mother wrote to
desire me to make for her. Thus, when the time came for setting out
homewards, with the nine packages which were to be taken to my mother, I
was in the greatest embarrassment, and many were my adventures; yet my
dread of a sea-voyage still made me refuse altogether to go by Havre and
Southampton, and my longing to see a historical spot which I had long
read and heard of made me determine if possible--if I half died for it
on the way--to visit St. Denis, a place I had always had a special
longing after. The journey entailed a singular chapter of accidents.

During the whole of the first long day--twelve hours' diligence
journey--I had nothing whatever to eat but a brioche and some plums; but
at seventeen starvation is not one of the worst things in life, and when
I arrived at Evreux, the fair of St. Taurinus, the patron saint of the
place, was going on, and I was in ecstasies the next morning over the
costumes which it brought into the town, as well as over the old
Bishop's Palace and the beautiful cathedral with its lace-work
architecture.

From Evreux the diligence had to be taken again to Bonnières, where I
joined the railway to Paris, and in the evening reached St. Denis. I
had no money to go to a hotel, but spent the night in a wretched café
which was open for carters under the walls of the cathedral, where I got
some sour bread and eggs, having had no food all day. At five in the
morning the doors of the Abbey were opened, and in my raptures over the
monuments of Dagobert, Francis I., &c., I forgot all my
miseries--especially in the crypt, full then of royal tombs and statues.
At half-past twelve, when I was ready to leave, I found that no more
trains for Boulogne would stop at St. Denis that day, and that I must
return to Paris. I went in the omnibus, but owing to my ignorance of
French, was carried far beyond my point, and had to be dropped, with all
my packages, in a strange street, whence with some difficulty I got a
porter to drag my things to the station, but arrived when the train was
just gone, and no other till half-past seven, and it was then two.
Hungry and forlorn, I made my way, losing it often, on foot, to the
Tuileries gardens, where I felt that the beauty of the flowers repaid me
for the immense walk, though I was disconcerted when I found that
sitting down on a chair cost the two sous I had saved to buy bread with.
In my return walk, ignorance and mistakes brought me to the railway for
Rouen (Gare S. Lazare), instead of that for Boulogne (Gare du Nord).
However, in time I reached the right place.

As we were half-way to the coast in the express, a strong smell of
burning was borne on the wind, and the carriage soon filled with smoke.
Looking out, we saw a line of screaming faces, and the roof of one of
the front carriages in flames. Pieces of burning stuff rushed flaming
past. A young lady in our carriage--"Gabrielle"--fell on her knees and
said her prayers to the Virgin. Suddenly we stopped, and heard the rush
of water above us. The engine-driver, to save the train, had, with
terrible risk to the passengers, pushed on at a frightful speed to the
_pompe d'incendie_ of Pontoise.

At half-past one in the morning we reached Boulogne. I was told that the
steamer for Folkestone would not start for an hour. An official in blue
with silver lace said that he would call for me then. At the time, but
rather late, he came. A cab was ready, and we were only just in time to
catch the steamer. The official, as I was going on board, desired that I
would pay my fare. I supposed it was all right, and gave up almost all
my few remaining shillings. I was assured the packet was the one for
Folkestone, and, though surprised at having no ticket, supposed it was
because most of the passengers had through tickets from Paris to London,
and because my going on was an afterthought.

The steamer started, but, before leaving the harbour, concussed with
another vessel, which broke one of the paddle-boxes and delayed us an
hour. Meantime it began to pour in torrents, the deck swam with water,
and before we got out to sea the wind had risen and the sea was very
rough. The vessel was fearfully crowded with three hundred and fifty
people going to the Hyde Park Exhibition, and more than half of them
were sea-sick.

At last day broke, and with it the English coast came in sight. But it
was very odd; it was not a coast I knew, and Dover Castle seemed to be
on the wrong side. Then a man came for the tickets, and said I must have
had one if I had paid: as I had not one, I could not have paid. It was
in vain that I protested I had paid already. "When I get to Folkestone,"
I said, "I should see some one who could prove my identity," &c. The man
grinned. "It will be a long time before _you_ get to Folkestone," he
said, and he went away. Then I saw Dover Castle fade away, and we still
coasted on, and I saw a little town which looked strangely like the
pictures of Deal. At last a man next to me, recovering from a paroxysm
of sea-sickness, said, "You think you're in the boat for Folkestone, but
you are in the boat for London!" I had been swindled at Boulogne by a
notorious rogue. Some weeks afterwards I saw in the papers that he had
been arrested, after a similar case.

I was in despair, not so much because of the long voyage, as because to
_pay_ for it was impossible. We were not to reach London till four in
the afternoon. I implored the captain to set me down, we were so near
the coast. "No," he said, "go to London you must."

At last, as we passed Margate, he said I might perhaps get out, but it
was rather too much to sacrifice the comfort of three hundred and fifty
passengers to one. However, the three hundred and fifty seemed very glad
of a break in the monotony of their voyage, and as there was another
passenger anxious to land, a boat was hailed and reached the vessel. All
my packages were thrown overboard and I after them, with injunctions to
sit perfectly still and hold fast, as it was so frightfully rough. The
injunctions were unnecessary, since, exhausted as I was, I very soon
became unconscious, as I have so often done since in a rough sea.

It was too rough to land at the pier, so we were landed on a ridge of
rocks at some distance from the shore. Seeing all my packages, the
coastguardsmen naturally took us for smugglers, and were soon on the
spot to seize our goods and carry them to the custom-house. Here I had
to pay away all that remained to me except sixpence.

With that sixpence I reached Ramsgate.

There were four hours to wait for a train, and I spent it in observing
the directions on the luggage of all arriving passengers, to see if
there was any one I could beg of. But no help came; so eventually I told
my story to the station-master, who kindly gave me a railway pass. At
Ashford I had four hours more to wait, and I lay almost unconscious
(from want of food) upon the floor of the waiting-room. Lying thus, I
looked up, and saw the astonished face of my cousin Mary Stanley gazing
in through the window at me. She was leaving in two minutes for France,
but had time to give me a sovereign; with that sovereign, late in the
night, I reached home in a gig from Hastings.


     _To_ MY MOTHER (after returning to Southgate).

     "_August 27, 1851._--I have just got your dear letter to refresh me
     after the first morning's work. It is strange to have to give
     oneself to Latin again after having thought of nothing but French
     for so long."


     "_August 28._--When I hear of all you are doing, I cannot but long
     to be with you, and yet I am very happy here in finding it so much
     less disagreeable than I expected, the Bradleys perfection, Walker
     very nice, and Portman delightful."


     "_Sept. 12, 1851._--I have just been to the old chapel in Ely Place
     and to the Savoy.... One may study architecture just as well in
     London as abroad: I had no idea before what beautiful bits are
     there."


     "_Oct. 18._--I have had an unfortunate trouble with Bradley lately.
     I am sure I have done right, but it is very unfortunate indeed. I
     will tell you all about it. In my Latin exercise I put 'quo velis'
     for 'go your way,' meaning 'go where you like,' which I thought was
     the meaning of that English sentence. Bradley scratched it out, and
     I said, 'But "go your way" does mean go where you like.' He thought
     I contradicted him and was very angry, and appealed to the opinion
     of every one at the table. They said it meant 'go away.' He said I
     was very obstinate, and wrote down, '"I have a bad headache, go
     your way"--what does that mean?' I wrote, 'Go wherever you like.' I
     thought no more was going to happen, but, to my astonishment,
     heard him send for Mrs. Bradley, who wisely refused to come. Then,
     in a voice in which he never spoke to me before, he ordered me to
     go into the drawing-room. I did, and asked Mrs. Bradley her opinion
     (not able to believe he could really mind being differed from). He
     followed in a moment, very angry, and said, 'Walk up to your room,
     if you please, Mr. Hare, this instant.' I prepared to obey, but he
     posted himself in the doorway and pushed me back into a chair. He
     then asked me again to explain the sentence. I said of course he
     was the only judge about the Latin passage, but that in English 'go
     your way' might certainly be taken to mean 'go where you like.' He
     said, 'If you are going to differ from me in this way, I shall not
     attempt to teach you any more.' All that day, morning, afternoon,
     and evening, I laboured or twaddled at arithmetic with Mr. Howse.
     Late in the evening Bradley took me for a whole hour by myself and
     tried to persuade me to say 'go your way' _never_ meant 'go where
     you like.' I said if I did, it would not be true, but that I was
     very sorry to have differed from him, and had never meant in the
     least to contradict him. But it is no use; he quotes from the
     Bible--'"The house divided against itself falleth," therefore I
     cannot teach you any more.' I went to him again and said 'if I had
     seemed the least ill-tempered I begged his pardon.' He said I had
     not seemed at all ill-tempered, I had only _differed from him_. You
     need not be alarmed, however, for he will never send away for such
     a trifle the pupil who loves him best in spite of all his
     eccentricities: I have only told you all this in _case_ anything
     more should happen. As I called on the B.'s to-day, I asked,
     without explanation, what they thought 'go your way' meant. They
     said at once, 'Go where you like.'"


     "_Oct. 21._--Dearest mother, the dispute with Bradley has now
     assumed so much more serious an aspect that I am afraid it cannot
     end well. For two days he said nothing more about it, so I did not
     volunteer anything: he was only very unpleasant in his manner to
     and about me.

     "This morning he called me into his dressing-room and talked. He
     said that now he must write to you. But now he harps upon my
     setting up my opinion, and having said in the first moment, 'I
     always have thought so, and always shall think so.' In vain have I
     acknowledged that this was a very improper speech, that I only said
     such a thing hastily in a moment of annoyance, and in vain have I
     begged his pardon repeatedly, and offered to do so, if he wished
     it, before all his pupils. He says mine has been a successful
     instance of open rebellion. I have in vain tried to convince him
     how foolish a thing it will sound if I am sent away or go away
     merely because my opinion has differed from his: he now says it
     will be because I have 'rebelled against him'--though it would be
     strange indeed if I had wished to 'rebel' against the only tutor I
     have ever liked, from whom I have received so much kindness and
     learnt so much. I did not think it would come to this, and even now
     I cannot think I have done wrong, except in one hasty speech, which
     I am very sorry for.

     "I am so sorry you should be troubled by this, dear mother, and
     even now I think Bradley will not be so infatuated--so really
     _infatuated_ as to send away the only one of his pupils who likes
     him much, or would be really sorry to go."


     "_Oct. 22._--Only a few words, my own dear mother, to say we are
     all going now very much as if nothing had happened. I thought
     yesterday morning I should certainly have to go away, as Bradley
     repeatedly declared he would never hear me another word again,
     because I had differed from him before all his pupils. But at
     Cicero time he called me down and asked, 'Why did you not come down
     to your Cicero?' I said, 'Because I was packing up, as you said you
     would never hear me another word again.' He said, 'Oh, you may put
     whatever qualification on my words you like: _whatever you like_.'
     So I came down, and he took no notice, and I have come down ever
     since, and he treats me as if nothing had happened. He must have
     thought better of it.

     "Mrs. Bradley sent me a beautiful myrtle branch from the
     nursery-garden, as a sign that all was right, I suppose: and I have
     expressed all penitence that can possibly be expressed."


     "_Nov. 13._--Yesterday I even let Bradley use his stick over the
     Virgil to put him into a good humour, and then asked for leave to
     go to the Temple Church ... and afterwards, brimful of the
     descriptions in Knight's 'London,' I went to Crosby Hall and to St.
     Helen's, Bishopsgate, full of delightful tombs. My coats are in
     holes and my shoes have no soles, so will you please give me some
     money to mend them?"


     "_Nov. 23._--To-day I have seen Smithfield, and St. Bartholomew's,
     and the Clerk's Well of Clerkenwell. I wonder if my 'kind good
     Mama,' as Mrs. Barrington calls her in writing, will let me go to
     see my cousins the Brymers at Wells before Christmas: old Mr.
     Liddell has given me some money to take me there."

[Illustration: IN ST. HELEN'S, BISHOPSGATE.]

     "_Harrow, Nov. 25, Sunday._--Yesterday I walked here with my
     bundle, meeting Kate at the foot of the hill.... To-day we have
     been to the Chapel Royal at St. James's, where Dr. Vaughan had to
     preach a funeral sermon for the King of Hanover.[67] The old Duke
     of Cambridge was there, and startled people by the cordiality of
     his loud assent--'By all means!' to the invitation 'Let us pray.' I
     must leave early to-morrow morning, as I have promised to be at
     Southgate at 9 A.M."


     "_Nov. 28._--We are in the depth of examinations. Some of the
     fellows are so excited about them, that they do not go to bed at
     all, only lie down on the rug at 5 A.M. for a short rest before
     dawn. To-morrow is the 'great Napoleon stakes, when all the horses
     are to run.' I think we shall have a pretty jumble, as we are to go
     to sleep on Napoleon and wake on Charles V.--such a confusion of
     campaigns (fifteen of Napoleon's) and places, and the passage and
     flow of all the rivers the two heroes ever crossed."


     "_Dec. 15._--On Thursday evening all the other fellows rushed up to
     my room shouting 'Ichabod! Hare is plucked in Charles V.' They were
     enchanted, because they thought it so conceited of me to take up
     the additional subject; but their triumph was a short one, for it
     was soon discovered that only half the marks had been added up.

     "Friday was a very long examination in the Bible. Amongst the
     questions were--'Give the size, population, and government of
     Nineveh; the route of Jonah to Nineveh from Joppa; the religions of
     the sailors; where you suppose Tarshish to be, and the reason of
     your supposition; who were Tirshakeh, Adoram, &c.' It was a most
     interesting examination to get up. Yesterday was Euclid. It was
     much easier than I expected, and finished by twelve, so Bradley
     sent me to London on a commission. I had also time to go to the
     Bunsens, who were at luncheon, but when I sent in my card, they
     sent for me into the dining-room. Several gentlemen were there: I
     believe one of them was the Duke of Nassau. Madame Bunsen is always
     most kind in her welcome."

My visit to Wells took place, and was most delightful. Mrs. Brymer was
the eldest granddaughter of John Lyon of Hetton, youngest brother of my
great-grandmother Lady Anne Simpson, and she and her husband Archdeacon
Brymer were most kind, genial, benevolent people, who had no children,
but lived very luxuriously in a charming house in "the Liberty" at
Wells. I had made their acquaintance at Bath when I was with Mrs.
Barrington. Though it was bitterly cold weather, I made many drawings of
Wells, which I have always thought the most perfectly beautiful
cathedral town in England, with its clear rushing water, old palace and
gateways, grand cathedral, and luxuriant surrounding orchards. It was a
visit I looked forward to repeating very often, but the kind Archdeacon
and his wife died--almost at the same time--very soon afterwards.

All through the year 1851 the Père La Vigne had been preaching
constantly at Rome at the Church of S. Luigi dei Francesi. "Italima"
had gone to hear him, with many other Protestant ladies. One evening she
said to her faithful Victoire that she wished to be dressed very early
the next morning--in black, with a veil, as if for the Sistine. Victoire
did her bidding, and she went out early, and returned in the course of
the morning, when she called Victoire to her, and said, embracing her,
"A présent nous sommes vraiment soeurs; nous avons été toujours
soeurs; à présent nous le sommes doublement."--"Qu'est que cela veut
dire?" said Victoire to herself.--"Je suis devenue catholique,"
continued Italima; "je l'ai été toujours au fond du coeur, à présent
je le suis en réalité." She then called Félix and took him by the
hand--"Victoire vous expliquera tout," she said. Lady Lothian had been
the "marraine," and, added to the influence of the Père La Vigne, had
been that of Manning, himself a recent convert to the Catholic Church.
That evening Italima said to Victoire, "Nous allons avoir la guerre dans
la maison," and so it was. My sister discovered (at a ball, I believe)
the next day what had happened, and she was quite furious--"en vraie
tigresse." "Il n'y avait pas de reproches qu'elle ne faisait à sa mère"
(records Victoire); "elle disait à sa mère qu'elle ne voulait plus de
elle. Elle se renferma avec sa tante. Cela dura plus que deux ans." To
Victoire herself she never spoke at all for several months.

For two whole years my sister deserted the drawing-room of Palazzo
Parisani, and lived shut up with her aunt in her boudoir. Their chief
occupation was drawing in charcoal, in which singular art they both
attained a great proficiency. Esmeralda never spoke to her mother unless
it was necessary. Italima must have led rather a dreary life at this
time, as other events had already weakened her connection with the
members of her own family and most of her old friends, and her change of
religion widened the breach for ever.

Lord and Lady Feilding[68] had been most active in urging and assisting
Italima's change of religion, and they now turned to my sister, leaving
no means untried by which they might make her dissatisfied with the
Protestant faith. As they left Rome, Lord Feilding put into her hand a
long controversial letter, imploring her to study it. That very spring
his own faith had been strengthened by a supposed miracle in his family.
Lady Feilding had long been ill, and had partly lost the use of her
limbs from sciatica. She had to be carried everywhere. All kinds of
baths and doctors had been tried in vain. The case was almost given up,
when Pope Pius IX. advised him to apply to a family of peasants living
in the mountains above Foligno, who possessed a miraculous gift of
healing. St. Peter, it was said, had passed by that way and had lodged
with them, and, on taking leave, had said that of silver and gold he had
none to give them, but that he left with them his miraculous gift of
healing, to be perpetuated amongst their descendants. A messenger was
despatched to this favoured family, and returned with a venerable old
peasant, respectably dressed, who went up to Lady Feilding, and, after
reciting the Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, and Apostles' Creed, said, "Per
l'intercessione dei Sti. Apostoli S. Pietro e S. Paolo siete guarita da
tutti i mali come speriamo." He passed his hand rapidly over her limbs,
and making the sign of the cross, said, "In nomine Patris et Filii et
Spiritus Sancti"--and added, "E finito." Then Lady Feilding felt her
limbs suddenly strengthened, and rising, walked upstairs like other
people, which she had not done for many months, and the same afternoon
went to St. Peter's to return thanks, walking all over that enormous
basilica without pain.[69][70] Her illness returned slightly, however,
in the following winter, and in the summer of 1853 she died of
consumption at Naples. Her death was a great grief to Italima.

It was in the Carnival of 1852, immediately after her mother's change of
religion, that my sister, after the then fashion of Roman ladies, was
seated in one of the carriages which in a long line were proceeding
slowly up the Corso, and whose inmates were employed in pelting those of
the carriages which met them with bouquets and bonbons. As she was
eagerly watching for her friends amongst those who passed, my sister
observed in one of the carriages, dressed in deep mourning among the gay
maskers, a lady who clasped her hands and looked at her fixedly. The
expression of the lady was so peculiar, that when her carriage reached
the end of the Corso and turned round at the Ripresa dei Barberi, my
sister watched carefully for her reappearance in the opposite line of
carriages which she was now again to meet. Again she saw the lady, who
again looked at her with an expression of anguish and then burst into
tears. The third time they met, the lady laid upon my sister's lap a
splendid nosegay of azaleas and camellias, &c., quite different from the
common bouquets which are usually thrown about in the Carnival.

When my sister went home, she told her little adventure to her aunt and
mother while they were at dinner, but it did not make any great
impression, as at Rome such little adventures are not uncommon, and do
not create the surprise they would in England.

The next morning at breakfast the family were again speaking of what had
happened, when the door opened, and Félix came in. He said that there
was a lady in the passage, a lady in deep mourning, who gave her name as
the Comtesse de Bolvilliers, who wished to speak to Italima at once on
important business. At that time there were a great many lady
_quêteuses_ going about for the different charities, and most of them
especially anxious to take advantage of the new convert to their Church.
Therefore Italima answered that she was unable to receive Madame de
Bolvilliers, and that she knew no such person. In a minute Félix
returned saying that Madame de Bolvilliers could not leave the house
without seeing Mrs. Hare, for that her errand involved a question of
life and death. She was then admitted.

The lady who came into the room at Palazzo Parisani was not the lady my
sister had seen in the Corso. She said she was come to tell a very sad
story, and besought Italima to have patience with her while she told it,
as she was the one person who had the power of assisting her. She said
that she had a sister-in-law, another Countess de Bolvilliers, who was
then living at the Palazzo Lovati in the Piazza del Popolo: that at the
beginning of the winter her sister-in-law had come to Rome accompanied
by her only daughter, in whom her whole life and love were bound up:
that her daughter was of the exact age and appearance of my sister, and
that she (the aunt) felt this so strongly, that it seemed to her, in
looking upon my sister, as if her own niece was present before her: that
soon after they came to Rome her niece had taken the Roman fever, and
died after a very short illness: that her sister-in-law had been almost
paralysed by grief, and had fallen into a state of mental apathy, from
which nothing seemed able to rouse her. At last fears were entertained
that, if her body recovered, her mind would never be roused again, and,
two days before, the doctors had advised resorting to the expedient of a
violent mental transition, and had urged that as Madame de Bolvilliers
had remained for several months in her room, in silence and darkness,
seeing no one, she should suddenly be taken out into the full blaze of
the Carnival, when the shock of the change might have the effect of
re-awakening her perceptions. At first the experiment had seemed to
succeed; she had taken notice and recovered a certain degree of
animation; but then, in the Carnival, she had seen what she believed to
be her daughter returned from the grave; upon her return home, she had
fallen into the most fearful state of anguish, and they had passed the
most terrible night, the unhappy mother declaring that her lost daughter
had returned to life, but was in the hands of others. The sister-in-law
implored that Italima would allow her daughter to return home with her
to the Palazzo Lovati, in order to prove that she was a living reality,
and not what she was believed to be.

My sister at once put on her bonnet and walked back with the second
Countess de Bolvilliers to the Palazzo Lovati, where the family rented
the small apartment at the back of the courtyard. When they entered her
room, the unhappy mother jumped up, and throwing her arms round my
sister, declared that she was her daughter, her lost daughter, come back
to her from the dead. Gradually, but very gradually, she was induced to
believe in my sister's separate identity. When she became convinced of
this, she declared her conviction that a person who so entirely
resembled her daughter in appearance and manners must resemble her in
character also; that she was herself very rich (her husband had been a
Russian), and that if my sister would only come to live with her and be
a daughter to her in the place of the one she had lost, she would devote
her whole life to making her happy, and leave all her fortune to her
when she died. My sister declared that this was impossible; that she had
a mother of her own, whom she could not leave; that it was impossible
for her to live with Madame de Bolvilliers. The Countess flung herself
upon her knees, and implored and besought that my sister would
reconsider her determination, but Esmeralda was inexorable. The
Countess then said that she was of a very jealous disposition; that it
was quite impossible that she could go on living in the world, and
feeling that her daughter's living representative was the child of
another,--that she should leave the world and go into a convent. My
sister, whose antagonism to Roman Catholicism was just then at its
height, besought her to reconsider this, urged the many opportunities
which were still left to her of being useful in the world, and the folly
of throwing away a life which might be devoted to the highest aims and
purposes. But Madame de Bolvilliers, on her part, was now firm in her
determination. Esmeralda then begged that she might sometimes be allowed
to hear from her, and said that she should be glad to write to her;
that, though she could not live with her and be her daughter, she could
never lose the interest she already felt about her. But Madame de
Bolvilliers said, "No! she could not have half love; she must either
have my sister altogether, or she must never hear from her; that would
try her and tantalise her too much." My sister then begged that she
might at any rate be allowed to hear of her once--of her well-being and
happiness, and, after much entreaty, Madame de Bolvilliers said, "Yes,
after a year has expired, if you inquire at a certain house in the Rue
S. Dominique at Paris, you shall hear of me, but not till then." She
then went into the next room, and she came back with a number of jewels
in her hands. "These," she said, "were the jewels my daughter wore when
she was with me. I must have one last pleasure--one last consolation in
this world, in fastening them upon the person of my daughter's living
representative upon earth." And so saying, she fastened the necklace,
bracelets, &c., upon my sister, who possessed these, the Bolvilliers
jewels, till the day of her death. More than a year elapsed and nothing
whatever was heard of the Countess.

[Illustration: LE TOMBEAU NAPOLEON.]

In 1854, Italima and my sister were passing through Paris. They drove to
see the Tombeau Napoleon, which was then newly erected at the Invalides.
As they returned, and as they were turning a corner, the name "Rue S.
Dominique" caught my sister's eyes. "Oh," she said, "the year has
expired, and this is the place where we were to inquire after the
Countess de Bolvilliers;" and in spite of her mother's assurance that it
was useless to look for her, she insisted upon driving to the number the
Countess had indicated; but the portress declared that she knew of no
such person as Madame de Bolvilliers. Upon this Italima said, "Well, now
you see how it is; I always told you she gave you a false direction,
because she did not wish you to find her out, and you will never
discover her." "But to find her I am perfectly determined," said my
sister, and she insisted on getting out of the carriage and knocking at
every door down the long extent of the Rue S. Dominique to make
inquiries, but without any result. Her mother followed in the carriage,
very angry, but quite vainly urging her to get in. Having done one side
of the street, Esmeralda insisted upon going up the other, and inquiring
at every door in the same way. Her mother stormed to no purpose. She
then insisted upon going back to the first house and inquiring who did
live there. "Oh," said the portress, "it is a convent of the Sacré
Coeur." When my sister heard this, she asked for the Superior, and
said, "Is there any one here whose real name it may generally be thought
better to conceal, but who was once known in the world as the Countess
de Bolvilliers?" And the Superior said, "_You_ then are the lady who was
to come from Rome in a year's time: you are exactly the person who has
been described to me. Yes, Sister Marie Adelaïde was once known in the
world as Madame de Bolvilliers."

When my sister saw the Countess in her nun's dress, she found her
perfectly calm and satisfied. She no longer reproached my sister for not
having consented to live with her. She did not regret the step she had
taken; she was perfectly happy in her convent life with its regular
duties and occupations. She was also pleased that my sister should
frequently go again to see her. My sister went very often, and, while
visiting her, was introduced to the famous controversialist nun Madame
Davidoff, by whose teaching and arguments she was converted to the Roman
Catholic Church.

The last thing Italima wished was that her daughter should become a
Roman Catholic, for my sister was at that time a considerable heiress,
the whole of her aunt's fortune being settled upon her, as well as that
which Italima had derived from Lady Anne Simpson. And Italima knew that
if my sister changed her religion, her aunt, a vehement Protestant,
would at once disinherit her.

My sister said nothing to her mother of what was going on. It was
supposed that Madame de Bolvilliers was the only cause of her visits to
the Sacré Coeur. She also said nothing to her aunt, but her aunt
suspected that all was not right. My sister had abstained from going to
church on one pretext or another, for several Sundays. Easter was now
approaching. "You will go to church with me on Good Friday, won't you,
Esmeralda?" Aunt Eleanor kept saying.

At last Good Friday came. Aunt Eleanor, according to her habit, went in
early to see my sister before she was up. My sister was more
affectionate than usual. As soon as her aunt was gone, she got up and
dressed very quickly and went off with her maid to the Sacré Coeur.
In her room she left three letters--one to her mother, bidding her come
to the church of the convent on a particular day, if she wished to see
her received: one to her aunt, telling her that her determination was
irrevocable, but breaking it to her as gently as she could: and one to
her greatest friend, Marguerite Pole, begging her to go at once to her
aunt to comfort her and be like a daughter in her place. "When Miss Paul
read her letter," said Victoire, "her lips quivered and her face became
pale as ashes. But she said no word to any one: it was quite awful, she
was so terribly calm. She took up her bonnet from the place where it
lay, and she walked straight downstairs and out of the house. We were so
alarmed as to what she might do, that I followed her, but she walked
quite firmly through the streets of Paris, till she reached Sir Peter
Pole's house, and there she went in." Aunt Eleanor went straight up to
Sir Peter Pole, and told him what had happened. Sir Peter was a very
excitable man, and he immediately rang the bell and sent for his
daughter Marguerite. When she came he said, "Esmeralda Hare is about to
become a Roman Catholic; now remember that if you ever follow her
example, I will turn you out of doors then and there with the clothes
you have on, and will never either see you or hear of you again as long
as you live." The result of this was that within a week Marguerite Pole
had become a Roman Catholic. Of what happened at this time my sister has
left some notes:--

     "It was Madame Davidoff who led Marguerite Pole across the
     courtyard of the Sacré Coeur to the little room at the other side
     of it, where the Père de Ravignan was waiting for her. As she
     opened the door he looked up in an ecstasy. 'Voilà trois ans,' he
     said, 'que je prie pour votre arrivée, et vous voilà enfin.' She
     was quite overcome, and told him that for three years she had seen
     a figure constantly beckoning her forward, she knew not whither.
     The Père de Ravignan answered, 'I believe that you will see that
     figure for the last time on the day of your première communion;'
     and so it was: the figure stood by her then, and afterwards it
     disappeared for ever.

     "At the first Sir Peter had said that he would turn Marguerite out
     of doors, and his fury knew no bounds. One evening Marguerite sent
     her maid privately to me with a note saying, 'To-morrow morning I
     shall declare myself: to-morrow my father will turn me out of
     doors, and what _am_ I to do?' 'Oh,' I said, 'only have faith and
     watch what will happen, for it will all come right.' And sure
     enough, so it seemed at the time, for the next morning Sir Peter
     sent for his housekeeper and said to her, 'I've changed my mind;
     Miss Marguerite shall not go away; and I've changed my mind even so
     much that I shall send to Mrs. Hare and ask her to take me with her
     when she goes to see her daughter make her première communion.'

     "It was quite a great function in the church of the Sacré Coeur.
     I was terrified out of my wits when I saw the crowd in the church,
     and in the chancel were the Bishop, the Papal Nuncio, and all the
     principal clergy of Paris, for it was quite an event. Marguerite
     and I were dressed in white, with white veils and wreaths of white
     roses. As the Papal Nuncio came forward to place his hands on our
     heads, in the very act of confirmation, there was a fearful crash,
     and Sir Peter fell forward over the bench just behind us, and was
     carried insensible out of the church. Mamma went with him, for she
     thought he was dying. When he came to himself his first words
     were--'Louisa, Louisa! I have seen Louisa.' He had seen Lady Louisa
     Pole.

     "When Lady Louisa was dying she said to Marguerite, 'My child,
     there is one thing I regret; it is that I have had doubts about the
     Roman Catholic Church, and that I have never examined.'"

Of this time are the following notes by Victoire:--

     "When your sister first insisted upon going to the Sacré Coeur,
     she said it was 'pour voir.' 'O comme c'est drôle,' I said to
     Madame Hare. But your sister was always obstinate in her own
     intentions. 'Je veux examiner la religion catholique au fond,' she
     said, 'ainsi que la religion protestante.' She got all the books.
     She read those on both sides. Then she went to the Sacré Coeur
     again. Her maid went to her three times a day. One day she took her
     a great many things. 'What is it you take to Mademoiselle?' I said.
     'I take what she ordered me,' answered the maid, and I said no
     more: but it was really the white dress, the veil, and all that was
     required for the reception. The next day I had a note from
     Mademoiselle asking me to come to her at eight o'clock. I showed it
     to Madame. 'Eh bien, nous irons ensemble,' she said, and we went
     together in the carriage. When we reached the Sacré Coeur, we
     were shown at once to the chapel, and then I began to suspect. All
     the nuns were assembled. At last a door opened and your sister came
     in, all in white, with a long white veil on her head. She walked in
     firm and erect, and knelt down at a _prie Dieu_ in the aisle. The
     Père de Ravignan made a most touching discourse. He bade her, if
     she still felt any doubts, to remember that there was still time;
     he urged her not to come forward without true faith. At the end of
     his discourse she walked firmly up to the altar and knelt on the
     steps. She remained there while mass was said. After it was over
     she was taken into the garden. There she embraced her mother and
     me. A collation was then served.... Nothing was said about her
     going away. 'Voulez vous amener votre fille?' said one of the nuns
     at last to Madame Hare. 'Je la laisse parfaitement libre maintenant
     et toujours,' she replied. 'Oh comme Mademoiselle était belle ce
     jour-là; elle était fraîche, elle allait si bien avec ce grand
     voile blanc, et ses beaux cheveux noirs, et ses grands yeux: elle
     avait du couleur, elle était vraiment ravissante! elle était
     radieuse!... Dans ce temps-là elle était la reine de tous les
     bals--à l'ambassade, à la cour, partout: mais elle n'était jamais
     plus ravissante de sa beauté que ce jour-là dans le couvent.'"

The Dowager Lady Lothian[71] once told me that in the letter of
condolence which Madame Davidoff wrote to my sister after her mother's
death she said, "The cross which you saw on the day of your first
communion has been very heavy, but it has never crushed you." On the day
of her first communion she saw a huge black cross between her and the
altar. She lay on the ground, and it advanced to crush her, only it
seemed as if an invisible power upheld it, and then she saw that the top
was wreathed with flowers. Oh, how prophetic was this vision of the
cross!

A few days after her reception, Sir Peter Pole fulfilled his word with
regard to his daughter Marguerite. He turned her out of his house, and
he never would allow her name to be mentioned again. Not only to her
father, but to my sister, and to her own sister, Alice Pole, every trace
of her was lost. How my sister met Marguerite Pole again, and of her
extraordinary history in after years, will be told later in these
volumes.

I have been anticipating greatly, but it seems impossible to break up a
connected story into the different years in which their events occurred.
Meantime, without any romantic excitement and far removed from religious
controversy, our quiet existence flowed on; though I was always fond of
my sister and deeply interested in the faint echoes which from time to
time reached me from her life.

Mrs. Alexander was now settled at the Rectory at Hurstmonceaux, and she
ruled as its queen. Uncle Julius consulted her even on the smallest
details; she ordered everything in the house, she took the leading part
with all the guests, everything gave way to her. And the odd thing was
that Mrs. Julius Hare (Aunt Esther), instead of being jealous,
worshipped with greater enthusiasm than any one else at the shrine of
the domestic idol. I have met many perfectly holy and egotistical women,
but Mrs. Alexander was the most characteristic specimen.

[Illustration: CANON STANLEY'S HOUSE, CANTERBURY.]

In the summer of 1851, Arthur Stanley had been appointed to a canonry at
Canterbury, which was a great delight to me as well as to him. "One of
my greatest pleasures in going to Canterbury is the thought of
Augustus's raptures over the place and the cathedral," he wrote to my
mother. And truly I did enjoy it, and so did he. The eight years he
spent at Canterbury were certainly the happiest of his life. We spent
part of my winter holidays there with him and his family. Mrs. Grote
used to describe Arthur truly as "like a sausage, packed so full of
information;" and, with many peculiarities, he was the most charming of
hosts, while his enthusiastic interest peopled every chapel, every
cloister, every garden, with historic memories. Arthur Stanley's was now
the most stimulating companionship possible. He had lost all the
excessive shyness which had characterised his youth, and talked on all
subjects that interested him (ignoring those which did not) with an
eloquence which "se moque de l'éloquence," as Pascal says. His canonry
was situated in its own garden, reached by the narrow paved passage
called "the Brick Walk," which then intersected the buildings on the
north-east of the cathedral. Just behind was the Deanery, where the
venerable Dean Lyall used to be seen walking up and down daily in the
sun in the garden which contained the marvellous old mulberry tree, to
preserve the life of which a bullock was actually killed that the tree
might derive renewed youth from its blood. The fact that a huge bough
rent asunder[72] from this old tree had taken root, and become even more
flourishing than the parent stem, was adapted as an illustration by
Arthur Stanley in a lecture in which he likened the two trees to the
Churches of Rome and England.

Enchanting indeed were the many ancient surroundings of the mighty
cathedral--the Baptistery with its open arches and conical roof half
buried in ivy; the dark passage haunted by "Nell Cook;" the Norman
staircase, so beautiful in colour; the Pilgrim's Inn, down a narrow
entry from the street; the many tombs of the archbishops; and most of
all the different points through which one could follow Thomas à Becket
so vividly through his last hours from his palace to his martyrdom. I
made many drawings, chiefly in pencil and sepia, for my mother and aunt
deprecated colour. "Until you can draw perfectly you have no right to
it. Do one thing well, and not two badly," they said. Of course they
were right; and though often abashed and distressed by Aunt Kitty's
dictum--"Crude, coarse, harsh, and vulgar," after looking at my
sketches, I always felt the slight meed of praise just possible from her
lips a prize well worth striving for. I owe much to her (as to my
mother's) constant inquiry, after I had done a drawing I was conceitedly
proud of, as to what each line meant, and unless I could give a good
account of its intention, desiring me to rub it out; thus inculcating
the pursuit of _truth_, which she urged in drawing as in all else,
instead of striving after unattainable excellence.

[Illustration: SITE OF BECKET'S SHRINE, CANTERBURY.]

One great interest of this winter was going with Arthur Stanley
excursions to Bozledeane Wood and tracing out on the spot the curious
history of the so-called Sir William Courtenay, which is so strangely at
variance with the usually matter-of-fact character of the present
century. Briefly, the story is that of John Nichols Tom, son of a
maltster at Truro, who ran away from his wife, and, going to Canterbury,
announced himself as Sir William Courtenay, and laid claim to the title
and rights of the Earls of Devon. His dress was most extraordinary--a
scarlet robe with a crimson hanger. He was taken up, tried for perjury,
and confined in a lunatic asylum, but, while there, contrived to
interest Sir Edward Knatchbull in his behalf, and obtained his release
by Sir Edward's influence with Lord John Russell. On his return to
Canterbury in 1838, he gave out that he was not only Sir William
Courtenay, but Jesus Christ himself. It was not so much his dress, as
his long flowing hair, his beard, his perfect proportions, his beauty
and height, which lent themselves to his story, and his wonderful
resemblance to the well-known pictures of the Saviour. The rustics and
tradesmen welcomed him, and really believed in him. With forty of his
most devoted disciples he took up his abode in a village near
Canterbury. He was always preaching, and the chief part of his doctrine
was faith--faith in himself. He formed a plan of storming Canterbury and
seizing the cathedral on Whitsunday, when all the people were at the
service there. But this plan was frustrated and he lived in comparative
quietude till Michaelmas. Then a constable was sent to arrest him. The
constable found Courtenay with his forty disciples at breakfast at a
farmhouse near Bozledeane Wood, and when Courtenay saw him approach, he
went out, shot him, and leaving him writhing in agony upon the ground,
returned, perfectly unruffled, to finish his repast. After breakfast
"Sir William Courtenay" led his disciples down the path, which still
remains, into a hollow by a little stream in the heart of the wood. Here
his followers, under Colonel Armstrong, a fanatical leader from
Canterbury, threw up an earthwork, behind which they entrenched
themselves, and here they were surrounded by a body of troops sent out
in three bands to encompass them. Lieutenant Bennet, who was in command,
was sent forward to parley with the impostor. Courtenay, who stood under
a tree, waited till he came close up, and then shot him through the
heart! The troops then rushed forwards, but the fanatics, though greatly
astonished at the death of Courtenay, who, in spite of his professed
invulnerability, fell in the first onset, fought with fury, and defended
themselves with their bludgeons against the muskets of the soldiers. At
last seven of them were killed and the rest taken prisoners.

Mr. Curteis, the Principal of St. Augustine's College, who went with us
to Bozledeane Wood, described the scene after the battle, the pools of
blood, the trees riddled with shot, the bodies lying in the
public-house, and the beautiful hair of Courtenay being cut off and
distributed amongst the people. It was fourteen years afterwards that we
visited the spot. We went to the farmhouse where the last breakfast was
held and the gate where the constable was shot. The view was beautiful
over the Forest of Blean to the sea, with the line of the Isle of
Sheppey breaking the blue waters. A boy guided us down the tangled path
to the hollow where the battle took place by the little stream, said to
be now frequented by the white squirrel and badger. The "stool" of the
tree under which Courtenay stood had lately been grubbed up. The boy
described Courtenay and his forty men lying on a green mossy bank
talking, the evening before they were attacked, and his giving
"bull's-eyes" to all the children on the morning of the battle.
Courtenay had great powers of attracting all who came in contact with
him. A girl belonging to the farmhouse (who on a previous occasion had
knocked his arm aside when he would have shot a magistrate) rushed about
during the engagement to give water and help to the dying, perfectly
regardless of the bullets which were flying around her. And after his
death his wife turned up, "Mrs. Tom" from Truro, most deeply afflicted,
for "he was the best of husbands!"

I liked better being with the Stanleys at Canterbury than in London,
where they talked--as people in London do talk, and where my dearest
mother, who had lived only in the narrowest groove latterly, and
especially as to religious things, often felt it necessary to "testify
to her religious profession" in a way which was even more a
mortification than a pain to me. After we began to go abroad, and she
was removed from the "mutual admiration society" at Hurstmonceaux, she
took a wider view of everything,[73] and had a far better and more
general influence in consequence. But there was a time when my mother,
so infinitely tender and gentle in her own nature, almost seemed to have
lost her hold upon the liberality and gentleness of the Christian
gospel in her eager espousal of the doctrine of fire and worms beyond
the grave. I think it is St. Jerome who says, "Desire rather to act
Scripture than to write about it, to do rather than to say holy things."


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Southgate, Feb. 10, 1852._--My own dearest mother, I am settled
     here again after my most happy holidays, with the old faces round
     me, and the old tiresome conversation about nothing but the
     comparative virtues of ruff pigeons and carriers.... The last part
     of the holidays at Canterbury was indeed perfectly delightful, and
     I enjoyed it--oh! so much. I shall work very hard, and tell Arthur
     I shall be quite ready for an examination on Pericles, Marathon,
     and Arbela when I see him again. I am afraid Aunt Kitty thought me
     awfully ignorant of Greek history, but I really never have had
     anything to do with it.[74] I think of you and your walk through
     the beautiful cloister when I plod through the muddy village to our
     hideous chapel. It is very smoky and dirty and misty, but--I will
     not be discontented."


     "_Feb. 14._--And now I think of my dearest mother at home again,
     sitting in the evening in her own arm-chair in Peace Corner, with
     her little table and her Testament, and John and my Fausty[75]--all
     white and clean--bringing in the supper, and, oh! how nice it must
     be!"

[Illustration: STEPS AT LIME.]

It was very soon after her return from Canterbury that my mother, going
to visit a sick woman in the village, slipped down a turfy frostbound
bank near some steps in the garden at Lime. Unable to make any one hear
her cries for help, she contrived to crawl to the back part of the
house, whence she was carried to a sofa, and a doctor was sent for, who
found that her leg was broken. After very many weeks upon a sofa, all
lameness was cured, but the confinement, to one used to an active life,
told seriously upon her health, and my dearest mother was always liable
to serious illness from this time, though her precious life was
preserved to me for nineteen years to come. Henceforward I never left
her without misery, and when with her was perhaps over-anxious about
her. Mr. Bradley wisely sent me at once to her for a day that I might be
reassured, and I feel still an echo of the pang with which I first saw
her helpless--as I so often saw her afterwards. How I remember all the
sheltered spots in which Lea and I found primroses for her in the one
day I was at home in this bitterly early spring!


     _To_ MY MOTHER (after returning to Southgate).

     "_March 13, 1852._--Yesterday we had 'a truce,' so I hurried to see
     Gerard's Hall in Bow Lane before its demolition. It has latterly
     been an inn, with a statue of Gerard the Giant over the door. A
     wooden staircase leads into the wine-cellar, once Gerard's Crypt,
     possessing slender arches and pillars, most beautiful in colour,
     and forming wonderful subjects for pictures, with pewter pots and
     stone pitchers thrown about in confusion."


     "_April 29._--I have been to see Mrs. Gayford, the nurse who
     brought me over to England. She is very poor, and lives in an attic
     in the New Wharf Road, but was enchanted to see me. I sate upon the
     old seachest which has been often with her to India, and heard the
     history of her going to Mannheim and meeting my father with his
     'weak baby--very passionate, you know, but then it's in the nature
     of such young gentlemen to be so.' And then she described the
     journey and voyage, and my ingratitude to a lady who had been very
     kind to me by slapping her in the face when she was sea-sick."


     "_June 15._--We are in the midst of an examination in Thierry's
     'Norman Conquest.' At nine we all assemble in the dining-room, and
     the greatest anxiety is exhibited: the 'prophets' proclaim their
     views on the issue of the day, and the 'hunters' speculate upon the
     horses who are to 'run in the Thierry stakes.' Bradley comes in
     with the papers and gives one to each, and from that time we are in
     custody: no one can exchange a word, and two fellows may never go
     up to the table together. When we have done that set of questions,
     generally between one and three o'clock, we are at liberty till
     five, and then we are in custody again till we have done the next,
     at nine, ten, or eleven. Bradley is on guard all day, or, if he is
     obliged to go out, Mrs. B. mounts guard for him. They cannot employ
     themselves, as they have always to wander up and down the rows of
     writers with their eyes.... I like the life during these
     examinations, there is so much more excitement than over ordinary
     work, and one never has time to get stupid, but the others do
     nothing but bemoan themselves."

I think it must have been on leaving Southgate for the summer that I
paid a visit of one day to "Italima" and my sister in a house which had
been lent them in Grosvenor Square. It was then that my sister said,
"Mamma, Augustus is only with us for one day. We ought to take the
opportunity of telling him what may be of great importance to him: we
ought to tell him the story of the 'Family Spy.'" What I then heard was
as follows:--

For many years my sister had observed that she and her mother were
followed and watched by a particular person. Wherever they went, or
whatever they did, she was aware of the same tall thin man dressed in
grey, who seemed to take a silent interest in all that happened to them.
At last this surveillance became quite disagreeable and they tried to
escape it. One spring they pretended that they were going to leave Rome
on a particular day, announced it to their friends, and made secret
preparations for quitting Rome a week earlier. They arrived in safety
within a few miles of Florence, when, looking up at a tall tower by the
side of the road, my sister saw the face of the Family Spy watching
them from its battlements. Another time they heard that the Spy was ill
and confined to his bed, and they took the opportunity of moving at
once. As their vetturino carriage turned out of the piazza into the Via
S. Claudio, in order to attain the Corso, which must be passed before
reaching the gate of the city, the narrow street was almost blocked up
by another carriage, in which my sister saw the emaciated form of the
Family Spy propped on pillows and lying on a mattress, and which
immediately followed them. Constant inquiries had long since elicited
the fact that the Spy was a Sicilian Marquis who had been living at
Palermo when my parents were there, and whose four children were exactly
the same age as _their_ four children. Soon afterwards his wife and all
his children were swept away at one stroke by the cholera, and he was
left utterly desolate. With characteristic Sicilian romance, he
determined to create for himself a new family and a new interest in life
by adopting the other family, which was exactly parallel to his own, and
of which only the father had been removed--but adopting it by a
mysterious bond, in which the difficulty of a constant surveillance
should give entire occupation to his time and thought. When Italima
heard this, after making inquiries about him which proved satisfactory,
she sent to the Spy to say that she thought it much better this secret
surveillance should end, but that she should be happy to admit him as a
real friend, and allow him to see as much as he liked of the family in
which he took so deep an interest. But, though expressing great
gratitude for this proposal, the Spy utterly declined it. He said that
he had so long accustomed himself to the constant excitement of his
strange life, that it would be quite impossible for him to live without
it; that if ever an opportunity occurred of rendering any great service
to the family whose fortunes he followed, he would speak to them, but
not till then.

When I had been told this story, my sister and Italima took me out in
the afternoon to drive in the Park. As we were passing along the road by
the Serpentine, my sister suddenly exclaimed, "There, look! there is the
Family Spy," and, among those who walked by the water, I saw the tall
thin grey figure she had described. We passed him several times, and he
made such an impression upon me that I always knew him afterwards. My
sister said, "If you look out at ten o'clock to-night, you will see him
leaning against the railing of Grosvenor Square watching our
windows,"--and so it was; there was the tall thin figure with his face
uplifted in the moonlight.

In 1852 the extravagance of my two brothers Francis and William was
already causing great anxiety to their mother. Francis, who had lately
obtained his commission in the Life-Guards through old Lord Combermere,
had begun to borrow money upon the Gresford estate. William, who was in
the Blues, with scarcely any fortune at all, had plunged desperately
into the London season. When winter approached, their letters caused
even more anxiety on account of their health than their fortunes: both
complaining of cough and other ailments. One day, in the late autumn of
1852, my sister, coming into the diningroom of the Palazzo Parisani,
found her mother stretched insensible upon the hearth-rug, with a letter
open in her hand. The letter was from the new Sir John Paul, who had not
in the least got over his first anger at his sister's change of
religion, and who wrote in the cruellest and harshest terms. He said,
"Your eldest son is dying. It is quite impossible that you can arrive in
time to see him alive. Your second son is also in a rapid decline,
though if you set off at once and travel to England without stopping,
you may still be in time to receive his last words."

Palazzo Parisani was at once thrown into the utmost confusion, and all
its inmates occupied themselves in preparing for immediate departure.
Owing to the great number of things to be stowed away, it was, however,
utterly impossible that they should leave before the next morning.
Italima's state of anguish baffles description, for Francis was her
idol. In the afternoon my sister, hoping to give her quiet, persuaded
her to go out for an hour and walk in the gardens of the Villa Medici,
where she would not be likely to meet any one she knew. In the long
arcaded bay-walks of the villa she saw a familiar figure approaching. It
was the "Family Spy." He came up to her, and, to her amazement, he began
to address her--he, the silent follower of so many years! He said, "The
time has now come at which I can serve you, therefore I speak. This
morning you received a letter." Italima started. "You are surprised that
I know you have the letter, and yet I am going to tell you all that was
in that letter," and he repeated it word for word. He continued--"I not
only know all that was in your letter and the distress in which it has
placed you, but I know all the circumstances under which that letter was
written, and I know all that has happened to your sons since: I know
all about your sons. Your son Francis was taken ill on such a day: he
saw such and such doctors: he is already much better: there is no
danger: you may be quite easy about him. Your son William is not in
danger, but he is really much the more ill of the two. Dr. Fergusson has
seen him, and a foreign winter is prescribed. It will not do for you to
go to England yourself, but yet he is not well enough to travel alone.
You have an old servant, Félix, who came to you in such a year, and who
has been with you ever since. You must send him to fetch William, and
here is a paper on which I have written down all the trains and steamers
they are to travel by, both in going and returning." So saying, and
having given the paper to Italima and bowing very low, the Family Spy
retired. Italima went home. She acted entirely on the advice she had
received. She unpacked her things and remained in her palazzo at Rome.
She sent Félix, as the Spy had directed: he travelled according to the
written programme, and in a fortnight he returned to Rome bringing
William back with him. The Spy never spoke to any member of the family
again.

It is anticipating, but I may mention here that when we went to Rome in
1857, I wondered if we should see the Family Spy. I spoke of it to my
mother. As we passed through the Porta del Popolo, he was the first
person who met us. I saw him very often that winter, and again when I
was at Paris with my sister in October 1858. That winter my sister often
saw him at Rome. The next year was marked by our great family
misfortunes. My sister always expected that somehow or other he would
come to the rescue of the lost fortunes, but he never did. Some time
after she heard that he had died very suddenly about that time.

When I returned to my mother in the summer of 1852, she was at
Eastbourne with Charlotte Leycester and very ill. It was the earliest
phase of the strange hysteria with which I was afterwards so
familiar--sudden flushings with a deathly chill over her face, and
giddiness, sometimes followed by unconsciousness, occasionally by a
complete apparent suspension of life, a death-like trance without breath
or pulsation, lasting for hours, or even for many days together. It is a
very rare illness, but it is known to doctors, and I believe it is
called "Waking coma." In this summer I first began the anxious watchings
of first symptoms--the swelling of my mother's fingers around her rings,
and then by a kiss searched if the alarming chill had already taken
possession of her face. Happily, the heavenly state of mind in which she
always lived took away from her the terror of these illnesses; the
visions which beset her waking and sleeping were of all things good and
beautiful: the actual trances themselves were to her a translation into
heavenly places and to the companionship of the blessed, and, for those
who looked upon her, a transfiguration.

When my mother was able to move, it was decided that she must try
foreign air, which then and often afterwards completely restored her to
health for the time. It was settled that we should go to Heidelberg, and
as her cousin Charlotte Leycester was to travel with her, I was able to
precede her for a few days in the old Belgian towns, which, as I was
then in the first enthusiasm about foreign travel, I looked upon as
absolutely entrancing.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_St. Omer, July 15, 1852._--I shall never feel the day is properly
     over till it has been shared with my own dear mother. I have only
     left you a few hours, and yet, at an expense of one pound, how
     great is the change!... We embarked at Dover at one, with a
     cloudless sky and rippling waves, and an Irish lady near me was
     most amusing, telling anecdotes first in French to her neighbour
     on the other side and then in English to me. But half-way across
     the Channel the thickest of fogs came on, we made no way, and cries
     and whistles were kept up without cessation. Then it grew rough,
     the Irish lady's jokes became less vivacious, and at last she
     followed almost all the other passengers to the side of the vessel.
     At five o'clock sea and fog subsided and we went on, but then the
     tide had gone from the harbour, and when we were a mile and a half
     from Calais, all the passengers were transferred to open boats. As
     we were rowed in under the long pier, the beautiful fishing-nets
     were being drawn up out of the calm waters, and the old French
     faces with the high white caps and large gold earrings were looking
     down as last year.... The railway journey was delicious through the
     rich flat country, and the churches here, of the two missionary
     saints, Bertin and Omer, are most interesting."


     "_Bruges, July 17._--The heat is so intense that I am more inclined
     to watch the perfectly motionless branches of the acacia under the
     window than to do my duty by the sights. The old town and its
     people all seem lulled to sleep by the oppression. Yet the Dyver
     Canal is delightful, with its strange old towers and its poplar
     trees, and the market on its bank filled with Dutch fishwives in
     bright costumes.... My straw hat attracts much attention. 'Voilà le
     costume anglais,' I hear the people say.... The _table d'hôte_ was
     very amusing, musicians playing the while on harp, guitar, and
     flute. To-night there is to be a procession which has had no equal
     for a hundred years.

     "This morning I went to the Béguinage, a little village with walls
     of its own in the middle of the town. The sweet-faced Béguine nuns
     in long white veils were chanting the service in the church, ranged
     in the stalls of the choir. They wore long trains, which they took
     up when they came out of church. A priest was there, but the abbess
     seemed to take his part in officiating.[76] ... The streets are
     beautifully decorated for the procession, planted with living
     fir-trees, half the height of the houses, which, as they are very
     narrow, gives the effect of an avenue; but, behind, the houses are
     hung with flags and tapestry. In some streets altars are raised,
     surrounded with orange-trees and flowers.

     "10 P.M.--The ceremonial was to celebrate 'the jubilee of the
     Carmelite tonsure.' ... The streets were all hung with flowers and
     tapestry, and garlands made a flower canopy across them, beneath
     which streamed crowds of peasants from every town in Belgium. Each
     pine-tree was a huge Christmas-tree with thousands of wax-lights
     blazing in the motionless air. Many hundreds of clergy formed the
     procession, and Capuchins and Carmelites and Franciscans, many with
     bare feet and flowing beards. There were also hundreds of
     torch-bearers and children swaying censers. Then came troops of
     young girls, 'brides of Christ,' in white, with garlands: then a
     beautiful little boy as St. John leading his lamb by a string;
     then Jesus, Mary, and Joseph--Mary crowned with a veil covered
     with golden stars, and endless winged cherubs in attendance; then
     abbots and canons; and lastly, under a crimson canopy, in a violet
     robe, the Bishop bearing the Host.

     "The scene in the Grande Place was magnificent. Along the base of
     the _halles_ burning torches rolled up their smoke around the
     belfry and the brilliant banners, and the sea of faces was
     motionless in expectation. It was a tremendous moment when the
     immense mass of clergy had sung a hymn around the altar in the
     square, and the Bishop took off his mitre and knelt upon the rushes
     before the Sacrament. Then, as he lifted the Host in his hands, the
     music ceased, and the whole multitude of people fell almost
     prostrate in silent prayer."

After visiting Ghent, Malines, Antwerp, and Louvain, I joined my mother
and her companions at Brussels, and we proceeded by the Rhine and
Frankfort to Heidelberg, where we found a charming apartment almost at
the castle gate, at the back of a baker's shop, with a little
oleander-fringed garden high on the hill-top, overlooking the town and
river. Two sisters and their cousin waited upon us. The castle gardens
were like our own, and delicious in their shade and freshness and the
scent of their roses and lilacs; and the courtyards and towers were
full of inexhaustible interest. We were never weary here of studying the
history of the English Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and finding out her
connection with the different parts of the castle, and her little garden
with its triumphal arch was our favourite resort. We seldom went down
into the town except on Sundays, when the famous Dr. Schenkel preached
in St. Peter's Church at the foot of our hill. In the evenings we used
to walk along the edge of the hills, through flower-fringed lanes, to
the clear springs of Wolfsbrunnen, where there was a sort of nursery of
trout (_florellen_). The students shared the gardens with us, with their
ridiculous dress and faces scarred for life in the silly duels at the
Hirsch Gasse, which they looked upon as a distinction, and which
generally arose from quarrels about giving way to each other in the
street. They often, consequently, spent six hours a day in practising
the sword-exercise, to the ruin of their studies. When we were at
Heidelberg, all the clothes in the place used to be sent to be washed in
the village of Spiegelhausen, because there the water was softer, and
when its hills were covered with the linen of the whole town they
produced the oddest effect. A large Heidelberg family considered it a
great point of honour to have linen enough to last them six months, so
as only to send it to be washed twice in the year, when it went in a
great waggon to Spiegelhausen. A young lady always endeavoured to have
this quantity at her marriage.

Lodging in the castle itself was M. Meyer,[77] afterwards a kind of
secretary to the Empress Augusta of Germany, a most singular man, who
was then employed upon an enormous poem, which he believed would throw
Dante into the shade, though it has passed quite unnoticed. He delighted
to read us some of its endless cantos in the castle gardens, and we
tried to look as if we understood and appreciated. But he was really
very kind to us, and was a most amusing companion in the long walks
which he took us--to the Angel's Meadow, a small green space in the
forests high on the mountains beyond the river, and elsewhere. I shared
his admiration for Mrs. Hamilton (_née_ Margaret Dillon, the maid of
honour), who was at that time in the zenith of her beauty and
attractiveness, and was living at Heidelberg with her husband and
children.

We spent a day at Schwetzingen, where at that time was living the Grand
Duchess Stephanie, the daughter of the Comte de Beauharnais and
great-niece of the Empress Josephine, who had been adopted by Napoleon,
and married against her will (1806) to the Prince of Baden. My aunt,
Mrs. Stanley, was very intimate with her, and had much that was
interesting to tell of her many trials.

It was during the latter part of our sojourn at Heidelberg that the
Stanleys (Aunt Kitty, Arthur, and Mary), with Emmie Penrhyn, came to
stay with us on their way to spend the winter at Rome, a journey which
at that time was looked upon as a great family event. With them I went
to Spires and its beautiful cathedral, and on the anniversary of my
adoption we all went over to Mannheim, and dined at the hotel where,
seventeen years before, I, being fourteen months old, was given away to
my aunt, who was also my godmother, to live with her for ever as if I
were her own child, and never to see my own parents, as such, any more.
I dwell upon this because one of the strangest coincidences of my
life--almost too strange for credence--happened that day at Mannheim.

When we returned to the station in the evening, we had a long time to
wait for the train. On the platform was a poor woman, crying very
bitterly, with a little child in her arms. Emmie Penrhyn, who was
tender-hearted, went up to her, and said she was afraid she was in some
great trouble. "Yes," she said, "it is about my little child. My little
child, who is only fourteen months old, is going away from me for ever
in the train which is coming. It is going away to be adopted by its
aunt, who is also its godmother, and I shall never, never have anything
to do with it any more."

It was of an adoption under _exactly_ the same circumstances that we had
been to Mannheim to keep the seventeenth anniversary!

After parting with the Stanleys, we left Heidelberg on the 26th of
August and made a little tour.


     _To_ MRS. ALEXANDER.

     "_Coblentz, Sept. 1._--Here we are again at Coblentz, in a room
     looking on the friendly Rhine, with Ehrenbreitstein all new and
     yellow on the other side the water, and the older houses of the
     town below us.

     "Our little tour has been most successful. We went first to Baden,
     and spent the afternoon in driving up through the forest to the
     Alte Schloss, coming down in a splendid sunset--the golden Rhine
     gleaming in a red valley through the dark pines. The next morning,
     as I was being shown over the Neue Schloss, I asked about the Grand
     Duchess Stephanie and the Princess Wasa, when the guide rushed to a
     window and said, 'Come quick, for the princesses are riding out of
     the courtyard upon their asses, as they do every morning before
     breakfast;' but I saw little more than their shadows flit across
     the court as their donkeys clattered through the gate. I was shown
     the circular opening through which prisoners bound in a chain used
     to be let down into the _oubliettes_ and their subterranean
     judgment-hall, and the place where they had to give the _baiser de
     la Vierge_, when they fell through a trap-door upon wheels set
     round with knives which cut them to pieces.

     "Next day we went to Strasbourg--so hot it was!--and then to Metz,
     where the cathedral is poor outside, but most glorious within--a
     vista of solid round pillars terminating in a blaze of stained
     glass. In one of the towers is 'Groggy,' a real dragon, dried.

     "A diligence took us to Sierck on the Moselle, where we had a long
     time to wait, and mother sate and drew whilst I rambled about. It
     was evening before the churches of Treves appeared above the
     river-bank. We stayed at the charming Rothes Haus, with the little
     cross opposite commemorating the fiery vision of Constantine, which
     is supposed to have taken place there. Treves has a wonderful round
     of sights--the Roman baths, a beautiful ruin with tall brick
     arches, brilliant still in colour: thence up the vine-clad hill to
     where a gap between two ruined walls forms the entrance of the
     amphitheatre: back by the Porta Nigra, noblest of Roman gateways,
     with the hermitage whither S. Simeon was brought from Syracuse by
     Archbishop Poppo, and where he spent the rest of his life: finally
     to the cathedral, and the Liebfrauenkirche with lovely cloisters
     filled with flowers.

     "We made great friends with the old sacristan at the cathedral, who
     gave us an extraordinary account of the last exhibition of its
     great relic, the 'Heilige Rock,' or seamless coat of the Saviour,
     when 30,000 persons passed through the church every day, weeping
     and sobbing, singing and praying as they went. The coat is only
     exhibited every twenty-five years, and awaits its next resurrection
     entombed in a treble coffin before the high altar. It has certainly
     done great things for Treves, as the cathedral has been restored, a
     capital hospital built, and all the fortunes of the citizens made
     by its exhibition. The sacristan was delighted to find that I also
     was a 'Romische Burgher,' but hoped that in a few years I should
     'want some more cloth putting into my coat.'"


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Namur, Sept. 2._--Here I am, alone and dreary in the world once
     more.... It always seems as if I could have done a great deal more
     for you, and been more gentle and loving when I am gone, but I am
     sure my own darling mother will never really have thought me
     wanting in gratitude to her."

            *       *       *       *       *

     "_Braine le Comte, Sept. 3._--I believe no one has such misfortunes
     as I have. I was at the Namur station at six this morning, and
     here by eight. Then the guard suggested my going into the
     waiting-room, as there was half-an-hour to wait before the train
     came up for Calais, for which I had a through ticket. I had no
     summons to the train: it came up on the opposite side of the
     station (concealed by another train) in five minutes, and I was
     left behind, and there is no train again till past seven o'clock
     this evening, and then only to Lille!--eleven hours to wait!"


     "_Southgate, Sept. 4._--As the dreary hours at Braine le Comte
     waned, two English families arrived from Namur, and with two
     ladies, 'Alice and Sybil,' and the boys of Sybil, I sallied out to
     see Braine le Comte, and then into the forest to pick bilberries
     for the luncheon which I had no money to buy. Then I arrived in the
     night at Lille, and being unable to find a hotel in the dark, and
     indeed having no money to pay for going to one, wandered about till
     at length I collapsed altogether on the doorstep of one of the
     houses. Here I was found by some of the old market-women when they
     arrived for the opening of the market at dawn, and they took me
     into the _halles_, and made me share their early breakfast. This
     was a kind of black broth in a huge wooden bowl, into which we all
     dipped a great spoon in turns, but it was most welcome, and the old
     women were very kind to me."

It was a great pleasure this autumn to pay a little visit to my mother's
old friend Miss Clinton, whose frequent visits to Lime had counted as
some of the happiest days of my childhood. She was essentially what the
French call "_bonne à vivre_," so good-humoured and cheerful, and so
indulgent to the faults of others. The crystal stream of her
common-sense had always seemed to stir up the stagnant quagmire of
religious inanities which the Maurice sisters had surrounded us with at
Hurstmonceaux.


     "_Cokenach, Oct. 3._--I was so glad to come here for two days. The
     dear old Stoke carriage with Lou Clinton[78] in it met me at
     Royston. She took me first to see the antiquities--Lady Rohesia's
     chapel and Roysie's Cave, which gave the place its name, and a
     house where James I. stayed when he came hunting, in which his
     bedroom is preserved with its old furniture: in the garden is the
     first mulberry-tree planted in England. We reached Cokenach by the
     field roads.

     "I was taken up at once to Lady Louisa,[79] who sate, as years ago,
     in her large chair by the blazing firelogs, with all her baskets of
     papers round her, and her table covered with things."

As it was considered a settled point that I was to take Orders when I
was grown up (a point on which no single member of the family allowed
any discussion or difference of opinion), and that I was then to have
the rich family living of Hurstmonceaux, in the gift of my brother
Francis, my whole education up to this time had been with that
intention. My mother, therefore, was quite enchanted when my admiration
of the Béguinages which I had seen in Belgium led me, in the autumn of
1852, to devote every spare moment to a sort of missionary work in the
low wretched districts of Southgate. I had read in St. Vincent de Paul:
"L'action bonne et parfaite est le véritable caractère de l'amour de
Dieu ... c'est l'amour _effectif_ qu'il faut à Dieu," and I determined
to try to act upon it.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Sept. 29, 1852._--I have now regularly entered on my parochial
     duties. There is a long strip of cottages in the village, yet out
     of Southgate parish, and which the clergyman of their own parish
     will have nothing to do with, as those of the inhabitants who go to
     church go to Southgate, so that he gets no marriage fees. The
     people would have been dreadfully neglected if Mrs. Bradley had not
     taken care of them, and as it is, they are in a very bad state,
     most of the men drunkards, and their wives and children starving.
     As the houses look out upon an open drain, they teem with illness
     for which there is no remedy. The children spend their days in
     making mud-pies upon the road.... I have now got all these cottages
     as my peculiar province.

     "Most of the people cannot, or fancy they cannot, go to church, so
     I offered to have a sort of 'cottage reading' every Tuesday in the
     house of one of the better people--a Mrs. Perry. I was rather
     alarmed, though glad, to see how many came.... I tried to make the
     reading as interesting and easy as I could, and afterwards ventured
     upon a little 'discourse.'

     "It was strange to find this really heathen colony--for they know
     _nothing_--close by, and I am glad to have a foretaste of what my
     life's work will be like."


     "_Southgate, October 12._--Mr. Bradley is in nothing so
     extraordinary as in the education of his children. All the moral
     lessons to his little daughter Jesse are taken from reminiscences
     of his 'poor dear first wife,' who never existed. I am used to it
     now, but was amazed when I first heard little Jesse ask something
     about 'your poor dear first wife, papa,' and he took out a
     handkerchief and covered over both their heads that no one might
     see them cry, which the little girl did abundantly over the
     touching story told her. Little Charlie's education was carried on
     in a similar way, only the model held up to him was a son of Mrs.
     Bradley's by an imaginary first husband, who 'died and is buried in
     Oxfordshire.' Little Moses's mamma, 'Mrs. Jochebed Amram,' is also
     held up as an effective example of Christian piety and patience,
     but Moses himself never touches their feelings at all. I must send
     you one of the allegories which I have heard Bradley tell his
     children; it is such a characteristic specimen:--

     "'Now I will tell you a story about Hare. When Hare was a little
     child he lived at Rome: you know what we call it?--("Oh yes, papa,
     Babylon.")--Well, he lived at Babylon, and he was a very good
     little boy then, but he used to walk about dressed in scarlet, for
     they all wore scarlet there. One day a man was seen in the streets,
     very beautiful, a stranger with silver wings. And he said, "Are you
     little Hare, and would you like to go with me and learn how to be
     good?" for he was an angel. And little Hare said, "Oh yes, that is
     what I always like to be and try to be, and I shall like very much
     to go."

     "'So the angel took little Hare up and carried him away on his
     back: and his poor mother went up and down the streets of Babylon
     crying and wringing her hands, for she did not know where her dear
     boy was gone.

     "'But the angel carried Hare to the Happy Island, where all manner
     of little children were living--Ada and Angelina, and numbers of
     others. All these little children came to Hare and asked why he
     came there in his scarlet dress without getting it washed, because
     they all wore white robes, and they told him he must get his robes
     washed too. But he said he liked his scarlet clothes, and did not
     wish to have white robes like theirs, and he was very sullen and
     angry.

     "'So then the angel and the children left him alone and took no
     notice of him. But after a time he observed that all the other
     children had little wings while he had none, and he felt sorry when
     the great angel passed by every day and took no notice of him, and
     at last he said, "How sorry I am to have spoken as I did, and how
     much I should like to have my robes washed and made white like
     those of the Happy Island children."

     "'And the instant he said these words, his scarlet dress fell off,
     and he had beautiful white robes given him, and he felt a strange
     sensation in his shoulders, for little wings were growing there.
     And all the little children came up and kissed him, and cried,
     "Hosanna! hosanna! he is good; and he has got little wings like
     us."

     "'So Hare lived on in the island, till, one day, the angel said,
     "Have you ever thought what your poor mother is doing now, and
     would you not like to go back to her?" And Hare said, "But can I
     always be good and have white robes and wings if I go back to
     Babylon?" And the angel said, "No, but you can try," and he took
     Hare on his back and flew off and off till he came to Babylon,
     where he set Hare down in the streets: and all the people looked at
     him, and when they saw his white robes and his wings, they said,
     "Why, there is a little angel come!"

     "'And Hare went to his mother when she was asleep, and when she
     awoke she thought it was a dream, but he said, "No, mother, it is
     no dream. I have been in the Happy Island all this time, and I have
     come back good." Then his mother, when she saw his wings, said,
     "Oh, go on being good, and then your wings will grow larger and
     larger, till at last you will not only be able to go back yourself
     to the Happy Isle, but to take me with you." And Hare wished to do
     this, but nevertheless Babylon is a bad place, and as he went out
     in the streets his dress became soiled with their mud, and he
     mingled and played with its children till his wings grew smaller
     and smaller, and at last they fell off altogether.

     "'Still, if you were to examine Hare on the bare shoulders when he
     is undressed, you would see the stumps where the wings were.'"

On the 17th of November I went up to London for the funeral of the Duke
of Wellington on the following day. Very late at night Arthur Stanley
arrived, having travelled day and night from Rome on purpose. We had to
set off at four o'clock next morning to reach our reserved seats in St.
Paul's, though I do not think the service began till twelve. We were
four hours in the long chain of carriages wending at a foot's pace
towards St. Paul's. A number of curious cases of robbery occurred then.
I remember one, of an old gentleman in a carriage before us, who was
leaning out of the carriage window with a pair of gold spectacles on his
nose. A well-dressed man approached him between the two lines of
carriages and said, "Sir, don't you know that you're very imprudent in
leaning out of the carriage window on this occasion with such a very
valuable pair of gold spectacles upon your nose? An _ill-disposed_
person might come up and whip off your spectacles like _this_"--and,
suiting the action to the word, he whipped them off, and escaped
between the opposite line of carriages, leaving the old gentleman
without any chance of redress.

The ceremony in St. Paul's was sublime beyond any power of words to
describe. I recollect as one of the most striking features the figure of
Dean Milman--bent almost double, with silver hair--who had been present
at the funeral of Nelson in 1806, when he "heard, or seemed to hear, the
low wail of the sailors who encircled their Admiral." My mother saw the
procession from the Bunsens' house at Carlton Terrace.

In the winter of 1852-53 I passed through one of those phases of
religious conviction which ultra-Evangelicals would call a
"conversion"--an awakening at a distinct time which I can remember
(January 11) of the strongest feeling of repentance for past sin and
desire for improvement. "O amare! O ire! O sibi perire! O ad Deum
pervenire," are words of St. Augustine which expressed my whole feeling
at the time. I have no doubt that this feeling--exaggerated and violent
as it was--was perfectly sincere at the time, and possibly in some way
may have had a wholesome influence on my life. But I am quite sure that
in other ways it had a very _unwholesome_ influence, and that the habit
of self-introspection and self-examination which I then felt a duty, and
which many clergymen inculcate, is most injurious, as destroying
simplicity of character, by leading an individual to dwell upon himself
and his own doings, and thus causing him to invest that self and those
doings with a most undue importance. I have always in later years, where
I have had any influence, done all I could to discourage and repress
these sudden religious "awakenings," producing unnatural mental
sufferings at the time, and usually lapsing into an undesirable rebound.
With an imaginary reality of conviction, young people are often led into
hypocrisy, from a sense of the meritoriousness of that very hypocrisy
itself in the eyes of many. I am quite sure that a simple Christian life
of active benevolence and exertion for others, of bearing and
forbearing, is the wholesome state--a life which is freed from all
thoughts of self-introspection, and from all frantic efforts (_really_
leading aside from simple faith in a Saviour) after self-salvation. I
dwell upon this here for a moment, though I dislike to do so, because no
narrative of my life could be true without it.

The last nine months of my stay at Southgate were less pleasant than the
preceding ones, as Mr. Bradley had ceased to like me, and, though he
fully did his duty by me in work-time, plainly showed, out of working
hours, that he would be very glad when the time came for our final
separation. This change arose entirely from my resistance, backed up by
Dr. Vaughan at Harrow, to many of his absurd punishments. I was now
nearly nineteen, and I offered to bear any amount of _rational_
punishment he chose, but utterly refused to wear my coat inside out, and
to run with a tin kettle tied to my coattail through the village, &c.,
which were the punishments he liked to impose.

But our final dispute came about in this way:--

My Latin prose was always the greatest stumbling-block in my work, and I
was most trying, and inveterately careless over it, making the same
mistake over and over again. At last Bradley decreed publicly, that for
each of my commonest blunders, one of my companions should--kiss me!
They thought it great fun, but I declared I would not submit. The decree
had a good effect so far, that, for a very long time--a most unusually
long time, the mistakes were evaded. At last, after about three weeks, a
morning came when one of the mistakes occurred again. The fellow
appointed to kiss me for this mistake was a big Scotchman named Buchan.
Immediately the whole room was in motion, and Buchan in hot pursuit. I
barricaded the way with chairs, jumped on the table, splashing right and
left from all the inkstands, but eventually I was caught and--kissed.

In a blind fury, scarcely knowing what I did, I knocked Buchan's head
against the sharp edge of the bookcase, and, seizing a great Liddell and
Scott Lexicon, rushed upon Bradley, who was seated unsuspecting in a low
chair by the fire, and, taking him unawares, banged him on the bald
scalp with the lexicon till I could bang no longer. Bradley, after this,
naturally said I must leave. I instantly fled over hedge and ditch
fourteen miles to Harrow, and took refuge with the Vaughans, and after a
day or two, Dr. Vaughan, by representing the fatal injury it would do me
to be left tutorless just when I was going up to Oxford, persuaded
Bradley to take me back and teach me as before. But this he consented to
do only on condition that he was never expected to speak to me out of
work-time, and he never did. My Southgate life henceforth was full of
(in many ways well-deserved) petty hardships, though they were made
endurable, because the time in which they had to be endured became every
day more limited.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Southgate, Feb. 6, 1853._--Bradley of course keeps aloof, but is
     not unkind to me, and it seems nothing to come back here, with
     Oxford as a bright guiding-star.... I now work all day as if it
     were the last day of preparation, and Walker and I question each
     other in the evening."


     "_Feb. 12._--I have been in my Southgate district all afternoon.
     The wretchedness and degradation of the people is such as only
     sight can give an idea of. In the last house in the upper alley
     live the Gudgeons, where two children were born a few days ago, and
     died a few hours after. I found Mrs. Gudgeon downstairs, for she
     had brought the thing she called a bed there, because, she said, if
     she was upstairs the children banging the doors maddened her. Two
     dirty shaggy children, never washed or combed since their mother
     was taken ill, were tugging at her; the eldest daughter, in
     tattered clothes and with dishevelled hair, was washing some rags,
     the fumes of which filled the room, while the floor was deep in
     dirt. Since the mother has been ill she has had the only blanket
     the family possess, so that she says the children howl with cold
     all night."


     "_Feb. 13._--To-day I found six of the Gudgeon children sitting on
     three-legged stools, huddled round a miserable fire, the door
     locked to prevent their running out into the snow. The mother said
     'the Almighty knew what was good when He took the two babies; He
     knew I couldn't tell what in the world I was to do with
     them--though they were pretty babies, they were, every bit like
     little waxwork dolls. I sent for the doctor, but it was a cold
     night, and I was a poor woman, so he wouldn't come; if he had come,
     I should have known they wouldn't live, and should have had them
     baptized, and then I should have been happier about them.' I asked
     where the family all contrived to sleep. 'Why, sir,' she said, 'you
     know we have but two beds, and I sleep in the middle of one with
     Martha on one side and Polly on the other, and Lisa has her head
     out at the bottom, and sleeps at our feet; and father sleeps in the
     little bed, with Emma on one side and Tom on the other, and Georgie
     he lies at their feet, and Lu she lies with her grandmother.'"

     "In another cottage I found that a good woman, Mrs. Caius, had just
     taken in a dwarf child who had been much ill-treated by the woman
     that took care of it. It had been dashed to and fro with
     convulsions for three hours, and now its limbs were quite rigid and
     stiff. It had not been stripped or washed for days, and its face
     was so begrimed with dirt that the features were scarcely
     discernible."


     "_February 19._--Aunt Kitty has done a most kind act in securing
     Mr. Jowett's protection for me at Oxford. I have had a kind note
     from him, in which his using my Christian name at once is very
     reassuring, though the fact that the seventeenth word he ever
     addressed to me is a Latin one looks rather formidable for future
     conversations."

Unfortunately, when I was just prepared to go up to Oxford for
"Matriculation," I caught a violent chill while learning to skate, and,
just when I should have started, became most seriously ill with
inflammation of the lungs. As soon as I was able to be moved, I went to
the Vaughans at Harrow, where I soon recovered under kind care and
nursing. I always feel that I owe much in every way to the kindness and
hospitality of my cousin Kate during these years of my life. As the
authorities at the University were induced to give me a private
examination later, in place of the one I had missed, I only remained at
Southgate for a few days more.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_March 13._--My mother will like a letter on my nineteenth
     birthday--so very old the _word_ makes it seem, and yet I feel just
     as if I were the dear mother's little child still; only now every
     year I may hope to be more of a comfort to her.

     "Yesterday afternoon I went with Papillon to take leave of the
     (Epping) Forest. It was a perfect day; such picturesque lights and
     shades on the Edmonton levels. We went through Chingford
     churchyard, and then through the muddy forest to the old Hunting
     Lodge, which I had never reached before, and felt to be the one
     thing I _must_ see. It is a small, gabled, weather-beaten house,
     near a group of magnificent oaks on a hill-top. Inside is the
     staircase up which Elizabeth _rode_ to dinner in her first ecstasy
     over the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Afterwards, I suppose
     because she found it easy, she had a block put at the top from
     which she mounted to ride down again. To prove the tradition, a
     pony is now kept in the house, on which you may ride up and down
     the stairs in safety. The lodge is still inhabited by one of the
     oldest families of forest-rangers, who have been there for
     centuries: in a room upstairs are the portraits of their ancestors,
     and one bedroom is surrounded with tapestry which they declare was
     wrought by the Queen's own needle.

     "And to-morrow I am going to Oxford--how exciting!"




VI

OXFORD LIFE

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 [Greek:
     Iêsous Christos]--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
subpoenaed 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

From a portrait by G Richmond]

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.

     JOURNAL.


     "_Jan. 1, 1855._--With mother to the Rectory this afternoon,
     wrapped up in the carriage. I went to Uncle Julius in his room. He
     does seem now most really ill: I have never seen him more so. He
     bemoaned his never being able to do anything now. Looking at his
     mother's picture[100] hanging opposite, he said what a treasure it
     was to him. His face quite lighted up when he saw my mother, but
     (naturally perhaps) he had not the slightest pleasure in seeing me,
     and his tone instantly altered as he turned to me from wishing her
     good-bye."


     "_Jan. 2._--Mother and I walked towards the school, but clouds
     gathering over the downs and level warned us home again. In the
     afternoon I was too ill to go out in the damp, but the crimson
     sunset cast beautiful gleams of light into the room, and mother
     went out to enjoy it in the garden."


     "_Jan. 3._--We accomplished a visit to the new school-mistress in
     the midst of her duties. A bright sunny spring morning, every
     little leaf looking up in gladness, and just that soft sighing
     breeze in the garden, with a freshness of newly-watered earth and
     dewy flowers, which is always associated with Lime in my mind. How
     beautiful--how peaceful--is our little home! Circumstances often
     prevent my enjoying it now, but if I left it, with what an
     intensity of longing love should I look back upon days spent here.
     In the afternoon I was very impatient of incessant small
     contradictions, and in the evening felt as if I had not been quite
     as loving or devoted to my mother as I might have been for the last
     few days--not throwing myself sufficiently into every little
     trivial interest of hers. Yet this I wish to do with all my heart;
     and as for her wishes, they ought to be not only fulfilled, but
     anticipated by me.... What I was reading in 'North and South'
     perhaps made me more sensitive, and caused me to watch my mother
     more intently this evening, and it struck me for the first time
     that she suffered when her cheek was so flushed and her eyes shut,
     and her hand moved nervously upwards. Perhaps it was only some
     painful thought, but it has often made me turn from my book to
     watch her anxiously when she was not looking."


     "_Jan. 4._--We drove along the Ninfield road, fresh and open, with
     the wind whistling through the oaktrees on the height, and then
     went to the Rectory. Mother went to Uncle Julius first, and then
     wished me to go. It was very difficult to find anything to say, for
     his illness had made him even more impatient than usual, at any
     word of mine, whatever it might be about."

When we went to the Stanleys' empty house in Grosvenor Crescent, we left
Uncle Julius very feeble and ill at Hurstmonceaux. As soon as we reached
London, my mother was attacked by severe bronchitis, and with this came
one of her alarming phases of seeing endless processions passing before
her, and addressing the individuals. Sometimes in the morning she was
more worn than in the evening, having been what she called "maintaining
conversation" all night long. In the hurry of after years, I have often
looked back with surprise upon the stagnant _lull_ of life in these
winters, in which I scarcely ever left my mother, and, beyond chafing
her limbs, reading to her, preparing remedies for all phases of her
strange malady, scarcely _did_ anything; yet always felt _numb_ with
fatigue when evening came, from the constant tension of an undivided
anxiety. It was very severe weather, and if I was ever able to go out,
it was for a rush up Piccadilly and Regent Street, where I always
enjoyed even the sight of human movement amongst the shivering bluenosed
people after the intensity of my solitude; for of visitors we had none
except Lady Frances Higginson and her daughter Adelaide,[101] who came
every morning to see my mother. At this time Henry Alford, afterwards
Dean of Canterbury, was preaching at Quebec Chapel, and I used to go to
hear him on Sundays.

JOURNAL.

     "_6 Grosvenor Crescent, Jan. 21._--The mother had fever again in
     the night, and told Lea in the morning that she had been in the
     Revelations, and she seemed indeed to have seen all that is there
     described. She has talked much since of the Holy City and the
     golden palace as of something she had looked upon. 'What a comfort
     it is,' she said, 'that my visions do not take me to Hurstmonceaux:
     I do not know how I could bear that.' It is indeed a comfort. She
     seems always only to see things most beautiful, and more of heaven
     than of earth.

     "'After you left me last night,' she said, 'I heard on one side of
     my bed the most beautiful music. Oh, it was most beautiful! most
     grand!--a sort of military march it seemed--ebbing and rising and
     then dying softly and gently away. Then, on the other side of my
     bed, I saw an open cloister, and presently I saw that it was lined
     with charity-school children. By-and-by Charlotte came out amongst
     them. Now, I thought, I can see, by watching her, whether this is a
     picture or whether it is a reality: but, as my eyes followed her,
     she took out her handkerchief and did everything so exactly as
     Charlotte really does, that I felt sure it was a reality.'

     "This morning, as I have been sitting by my mother, I have
     listened. As she lay dozing, she spoke in pauses--'I see the
     sea--It is a very misty morning, a _very_ misty morning--There is a
     white boat tossing in the distance--It is getting black, it is so
     very misty--There is something coming--It is a great ship--They
     have put up a sail--It is very misty--Now I can scarcely see
     anything--Now it is all black.'"

     "_Jan. 23, 1855._--Before I was up, John came and said he thought
     there was a worse account from Hurstmonceaux. Soon Lea came, and I
     asked eagerly what it was. 'It is over. He is gone. The Archdeacon
     is dead!' One had always fancied one expected this, but the reality
     is a different thing--that he who had always in one way or another
     influenced daily thoughts and occupations had utterly passed out of
     one's life--would never influence it again.

     "My mother was very calm. She had taken it quite quietly and laid
     down again to rest. When I went down, she cried, and also when
     Charlotte came, but she was calm beyond our hopes. It was a long
     painful day, in which it seemed almost sacrilegious to go about the
     ordinary work of life. Personally, however, I have only the regret
     for Uncle Julius which one feels for a familiar and honoured figure
     passing out of life. It is only 'a grief without a pang.'"[102]

     "_Jan. 29._--We reached home by midday. Mrs. Alexander came in the
     afternoon, and described his last words as 'Upwards--upwards.' In
     the evening Arthur Stanley and George Bunsen arrived."

     "_Jan. 30._--I went to the Rectory with Arthur at eleven.... In the
     midst of the library, amongst Uncle Julius's own books and papers,
     all that was mortal of him was once more present. It lay in a black
     coffin inscribed--'Julius Charles Hare. Born at Bologna. Died at
     Hurstmonceaux.' But his spirit?--how I wondered if it was present
     and saw us as we stood there.

     "Through the open door of the drawing-room I saw all the bearers
     come in, in their white smock-frocks and crape bands, and go out
     again, carrying him for the last time over his own threshold. On,
     on they passed, into the snowy drive, with the full sunshine
     falling upon the pall, while the wind caught its white edges and
     waved them to and fro. Then some one called us, and I followed with
     Uncle Gustavus Hare immediately behind the coffin, six clergy who
     had been especially valued by Uncle Julius carrying the pall, and
     Arthur Stanley, Orby Shipley,[103] the Bishop of St. David's, and
     a number of other friends following, and then a long
     procession--clergy, schools, parishioners.

     "On, down the shrubbery, with the snow still glittering on the
     evergreen leaves, to the gate, where many more people fell into the
     ranks behind. The wind was shrill and piercing, and, fresh from a
     sick-room, I felt numbed with the cold and fatigue. At Gardner
     Street all the shutters were shut, and the inmates of every house
     stood at their doors ready to join the procession. Amongst those
     waiting in front of the blacksmith's was old Edward Burchett.
     Strange to think that he should have known my great-grandfather,
     and lived in Hurstmonceaux Castle (where he was 'clock-winder') in
     its palmy days, and that he should be living still to see the last
     Hare 'of Hurstmonceaux' carried to his grave.

     "More crowds of people joined from Windmill Hill and Lime Cross; it
     was as if by simultaneous movement the whole parish came forward to
     do honour to one who had certainly been as its father for
     twenty-two years. As the procession halted to change bearers at the
     bend of the road, I knew that my mother was looking out and could
     see it from her window. An immense body of clergy joined us at
     Hurstmonceaux Place, and many very old and familiar people--old
     Judith Coleman led by a little girl, old Pinnock on his crutches,
     and others. At the foot of the church hill three black-veiled
     figures--Aunt Esther and her sisters--were waiting.

     "The effect was beautiful of passing through the churchyard with a
     pure covering of untrodden snow into the church lighted by full
     sunshine, and looking back and seeing the hill and the winding
     road filled with people as far as the eye could reach.

     "The coffin was laid before the altar; the clergy and people
     thronged the church. I seemed to hear nothing but the voice of
     Arthur Stanley repeating the responses at my side.

[Illustration: HURSTMONCEAUX CHURCH.]

     "Then we went out to the grave. There, around the foot of the
     yew-tree, by the cross over the grave of Uncle Marcus, were grouped
     all the oldest people in the parish. Mr. Simpkinson read, the
     clergy standing around the open grave responded; and, as with one
     voice, all repeated the Lord's Prayer, which, broken as it was by
     sobs, had a peculiar solemnity, the words 'Thy will be done'
     bringing their own especial significance to many hearts."

The weeks which succeeded my uncle's funeral were occupied by hard work
at the Rectory for his widow, chiefly making a catalogue of the fourteen
thousand volumes in the library, which she gave for the most part to
Trinity College. Uncle Julius had intended them as a provision for her,
to whom he had very little money to bequeath; but she chose thus to
dispose of them, and it was useless to contend with her. In the same way
she decided upon giving away all the familiar pictures and sculptures,
the former to the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. My mother felt
parting as I did with all these beautiful inanimate witnesses of our
past lives--the first works of art I had known, the only ones which I
then knew intimately. They have not been much valued at Cambridge, where
the authorship of most of the pictures has been questioned; but whoever
they were by, to us, who lived with them so much, they were always
delightful.

     JOURNAL.


     "_Feb. 14, 1855._--Mother and I were standing on the steps of the
     Rectory greenhouse when the carriage came to take me away (to
     return to Oxford). I shall always remember that last moment. The
     warm air fragrant with the flowers: the orange-trees laden with
     golden fruit: the long last look at the Roman senator and his wife
     sitting in their niche: at the Raffaelle, the Luini, the
     Giorgione--and then the place which had been the occasional
     interest and the constant misery of my childhood existed for me no
     longer."


     _To_ MY MOTHER (from Oxford).

     "_March 13._--Your letter was the first thing to greet the opening
     of my twenty-first year. Being of age is a great thing, I am told,
     but really it makes no difference to me. Only I hope that each year
     will help me to be more of a comfort and companion to you, and then
     there will be some good in growing old. In the evening my birthday
     was celebrated here by a 'wine,' at which there was a good deal of
     squabbling as to who should propose my health--the senior
     collegian, the senior scholar, or an old Harrovian; but it ended in
     the whole company doing it together, with great cheering and
     hurrahing, and then Coleridge proposed that they should give 'He's
     a jolly good fellow,' with musical honours--and a fine uproar there
     was. I had a number of charming presents from college
     friends--books, prints, and old china."

I was so anxious about my next public examination--"Moderations"--that,
as my mother seemed then tolerably well, I had begged to be allowed to
pass most of the Easter vacation in Oxford, studying uninterruptedly in
the empty college. This examination was always the most alarming of all
to me, as I had been so ill-grounded, owing to Mr. R.'s neglect, and
grammar was the great requirement. Indeed, at more than double the age I
was then, the tension and anxiety I was in often repeated itself to me
in sleep, and I woke in an agony thinking that "Moderations" were coming
on, and that I was not a bit prepared! One day, in the midst of our
work, I went in a canoe down Godstowe river, accompanied by a friend
(who had also "stayed up") in another canoe, as far as the ruin, and we
dined at the little inn. The spring sun was peculiarly hot, and I
remember feeling much oppressed with the smell of the weeds in the
river, being very unwell at the inn, and reaching college with
difficulty. Next day I was too ill to leave my bed, and when the doctor
came he said I had the measles, which soon developed themselves (for the
second time) with all violence. I was so ill, and so covered with
measles, that the doctor said--the ground being deep in snow--that it
was as much as my life was worth to get up or risk any exposure to cold.
Ten minutes afterwards a telegram from Lime was given to me. It came
from Mrs. Stanley (evidently already summoned), and bade me come
directly--my mother was seriously ill.

My decision was made at once. If I exposed myself to the cold, I should
_perhaps_ die; but if I stayed still in the agony of anxiety I was in, I
should _certainly_ die. I sent for a friend, who helped me to dress and
pack, summoned a fly and gave double fare to catch the next train. It
was a dreadful journey. I remember how faint I was, but that I always
sate bolt upright and determined not to give in.

I recollected that my mother had once said that if she were very ill,
her cousin Charlotte Leycester must not be prevented coming to her. So
as I passed through London I called for her, and we went on together. It
was intensely cold, and my measles were all driven in; they never came
out again--there was not time. There was too much to think of; I could
not attend to myself, however ill I felt. I could only feel that my
precious mother was in danger. John met me at the door of Lime--"You are
still in time." Then Aunt Kitty and Lea came down, Lea very much
overcome at seeing me--"I can bear anything now you are here."

My mother lay in still, deep stupor. She had not been well during the
last days which Aunt Esther spent at the Rectory, feeling too acutely
for her. When Aunt Esther left the Rectory finally and moved to Lime
with Mrs. Alexander, my mother was ready to welcome them. But it was a
last effort. An hour after they arrived she collapsed. From that time
she had lain rigid for sixty hours: she seemed only to have an inner
consciousness, all outward sense was gone. We knew afterwards that she
would have spoken if she could--she would have screamed if she could,
but she could not. Still Dr. Hale said, "Whilst that inner consciousness
appears to last there is hope."

When I went to her, she lay quite still. Her face was drawn and much
altered. There was no speculation in her eyes, which were glassy and
fixed like stone. One cheek alone was flushed and red as vermilion. I
went up. She did not notice me. There was no gleam, no significance, no
movement, but when they asked if she knew I was come, she articulated
"Yes."

I could not sleep at night and listened through the dressing-room wall.
Suddenly I heard her cry out, and John Gidman stood by my bedside
sobbing violently--"You must be told she is worse." I went into the
room. She was in violent delirium. Aunt Kitty was trying to calm her
with texts of Scripture; Lea was kneeling in her dressing-gown at the
foot of the bed. I was determined she should not die. I felt as if I
were wrestling for her life. I _could_ not have spared her then. But God
had mercy upon my agony. She became calmer. Suddenly, in the morning, as
I was sitting by her, she said, "Augustus, fetch me a piece of bread." I
did. She ate it. From that time gradually--very gradually--she dawned
back into life from her sixty hours' trance, whilst I was watching over
her every minute. Four days afterwards came Easter Eve. When I went in
that morning, she was quite herself. "What a beautiful quiet morning,"
she said; "it is just such a day as Easter Eve ought to be. To me this
is the most solemn day of all the year, for on it my Saviour was neither
on earth nor in heaven, at least in his bodily form.... I am so glad
that I learnt Wesley's hymn ("All blessing, glory, honour, praise")
before I was ill: I can say it now." I see in my journal that on that
afternoon of my darling mother's restoration I walked to the Rectory,
and the garden was bright and smiling as ever, in the oak-walks it
seemed as if the shadow of him who paced it so often must sometimes be
walking still. There was no furniture left in the house except
bookcases, and I was astonished then to realise for the first time how
bare walls cannot speak to one; it is the objects which they have
enclosed that have the human interest.

     JOURNAL.


     "_April 8, 1855._--The mother has greeted me with 'A blessed Easter
     to you, darling--Christ is risen.' Last night tears came into her
     eyes as she remembered that Uncle Julius would never say those
     words to her again, but to-day she is bright and smiling, and the
     sunshine outside seems reflected from her. The others have been to
     church, so I have been alone most of the day in her sick-room."


     "_April 9._--In my mother's room most of the day. My Oxford work is
     sadly hindered; but that is not my first duty."


     "_April 14._--The dear mother came downstairs for the first time
     since her illness, and was delighted with the flowers--the heaths
     and cinerarias in the window recesses, and the masses of violets in
     the garden. There was much to be told that was new to her, of all
     that had happened since she went upstairs, but which had to be told
     very cautiously, for fear of over-excitement. Arthur Stanley, who
     has been here some days, examined me in my work, and in the
     afternoon we had a delightful walk through the woods to the
     farmhouse of the Hole."

[Illustration: LIME, FROM THE GARDEN.]

     "_April 15._--Arthur preached in the church on the spies bringing
     back to the Israelites the fruits of the promised land--going on to
     describe how the fruits of _our_ promised land were given us in the
     lives of those who were gone before--that these were the fruits of
     the Spirit spoken of in three verses of the Bible--verses better
     known perhaps and more loved than any others by the people of
     Hurstmonceaux. The first was written on the distant grave of one
     whom many of them had never seen, but whom all of them had heard
     of--Augustus, whose fruit was 'gentleness, and meekness, and long
     suffering.' The second was the verse inscribed on the older of the
     crosses under their own yew-tree: 'righteousness and truth' were
     the especial points which Marcus bore. The third was written on the
     latest and most loved cross: it told of 'wisdom'--that was Julius's
     fruit."


     "_April 16._--I left my darling mother to return to my work at
     Oxford. I remained with her till John tapped at the door to say the
     carriage was there. 'God bless you, my own darling--God bless you,
     dearest'--and I was gone, leaving my sweetest one looking after me
     with a smile upon her face. Oh, what a blessing it has been to
     leave her thus! How different this leaving Lime might have been,
     with no sense of home remaining, except in the shadow of the
     yew-tree and by the crosses in the churchyard!"

I might write of my mother as Chalmers of the Duchesse de Broglie: "Her
prayers poured forth in her domestic circle, falling upon my ears like
the music of Paradise, leave their fragrance behind them, and sweet is
their remembrance."

On my way back to Oxford, I first saw the beautiful Empress Eugenie on
her passage through London to Windsor with the Emperor Napoleon III.
They had a most enthusiastic reception, the streets were thronged
everywhere, and it was a very fine sight. Almost immediately after
reaching college I was "in the Schools" for "Moderations," but did very
well, as I had employed every available moment in preparing myself.
Nevertheless, I was too anxious to go to fetch my own _testamur_, and
vividly recall the feeling of ecstasy with which, from my high oriel
window, I saw my friend Milligan come waving it round the corner of the
High Street. A delightful feature of this term, which I always remember
with pleasure, was an excursion by rail to Evesham and its abbey, just
when the apple-orchards, with which the whole vale is filled, were in
bloom like a great garden. As summer approached, we were frequently on
the river. George Sheffield generally "punted" me, and Milligan floated
alongside in a canoe. Another expedition of very great interest to me
was that to Chalfont St. Giles in Buckinghamshire, where I saw the
Vatche, the home of my great-great-grandfather, Bishop Hare, who married
its heiress, a very attractive and charming place, which was sold by my
great-grandfather. The "Hare Mausoleum," a hideous brick building, was
then standing, attached to the church, and there Bishop Hare and many of
his descendants were buried, the last funeral having been that (in 1820)
of Anna-Maria Bulkeley, daughter of my grandfather's sister. The minute
descriptions, with which I was familiar, in the letters of Bishop Hare
and his widow, gave quite a historic charm to the scenes at
Chalfont--the window where Mary Hare sate "in her great house, much too
big and good for her, with as few servants as she could make shift
with," and watched her "deare lord carried to church"--the steep lane
down which the stately procession, in which "there were no bishops for
pall-bearers because it was too cold for them to come into the country,"
passed with such difficulty--the manor pew, where Mary Margaret Hare
complained over "Laurentia and all the troublesome little children"--the
almshouses, built and endowed by the Robert Hare who married Miss
Selman.

The installation of Lord Derby as Chancellor and the reception of
Disraeli (then still a dandy in ringlets, velvet waistcoat, and
prominent gold chains) made the "Commemoration" of this year especially
exciting; though my pleasure in it was damped by the sudden news of the
failure of Sir John Paul's[104] bank in the Strand, and fear for its
effect upon my "real mother" and sister, who lost about two thousand a
year by this catastrophe, though it was not this cause which involved
them in the irretrievable ruin that afterwards befell them.

The longer I lived at Oxford, the more I learnt how little I could
believe anything I heard there. Connected with a college of which many
of the members belonged to the _lower_ upper classes of society, I had
peculiar opportunities for observing how often young men thought it
worth while to pretend to a position and acquaintances which did not
belong to them. One instance of this is too extraordinary to be omitted.
From the very beginning of February, certain men in Hall (the great
place for gossip and scandal) had spoken constantly of a certain Mrs.
Fortescue, who had come to reside in Oxford, an exceedingly clever
person and very highly connected. The subject did not interest me in the
least, but still I heard of her so often, that I could not help being
familiar with her name. Gradually her acquaintance seem to extend; men
said, "I don't _exactly_ know Mrs. Fortescue, but my family do"--or "my
friend so and so means to introduce me," and so on. Mrs. Fortescue's
witty sayings also were frequently repeated and commented upon. After
some months it was said that Mrs. Fortescue was going to give a ball,
for which there was anxiety to procure invitations--some men "had them,
but did not mean to go,"--others were "sure to have them." As I did not
wish to go, the subject was of very slight importance to me.

Within a week of the alleged date of Mrs. Fortescue's ball, my friend P.
came late at night to see me. He said, "I have a dreadful thing to tell
you. I have a secret to reveal at which you will be aghast.... _I am
Mrs. Fortescue!_" Early in the year, observing how apt men were to
assume intimacies which they did not possess, he and one or two other
friends had agreed to talk incessantly of one person, a wholly imaginary
person, and, while "making her the fashion," see if, very soon, a number
of men would not pretend to be intimate with her. Dozens fell into the
trap. In a certain class of men, every one was afraid of being behind
his neighbour in boasting of an intimacy, &c., with one who was praised
so highly. They even pretended to have received invitations to the
imaginary ball. But the trick had assumed much greater dimensions than
ever was intended at first; many people had been duped whose fury at
the discovery would be a serious matter; many Oxford ladies had been
asked to the ball, and, in fact, there was nothing to be done _now_ but
to go through with the whole drama to the end--the ball must take place!
P. was quite prepared for the emergency of having to represent Mrs.
Fortescue, but positively refused to go through it alone. His object was
to implore me to help him out by appearing in some assumed character.
This I for a long time refused, but at length assented to get up all the
statistics of the neighbouring great house of Nuneham, and to arrive as
Miss Harcourt, an imaginary niece of Lady Waldegrave, just come from
thence. I was well acquainted with the best Oxford dressmaker, with whom
one of my friends lodged, and she undertook to make my dress; while
various styles of hair were tried by another person, who undertook that
department, to see which produced the most complete disguise.

When the evening of the ball arrived, I took care to reach "Wyatt's
Rooms" very early. Only a number of men and a very few ladies were
there, when "Miss Harcourt--Miss Amy Leighton" were shouted up the
staircase, and I sailed up (with another undergraduate, who represented
my somewhat elderly companion) in a white tulle dress trimmed with a
little gold lace and looped up with blue cornflowers, a wreath (wreaths
were worn then) of the same, and a blue opera-cloak. Mrs. Fortescue, an
elderly handsome woman, quite on the _retour_, dressed in crimson satin,
came forward to meet me and kissed me on both cheeks, and I was
introduced to a lady--a _real_ lady--by whom I sate down. It is
impossible to detail all the absurdities of the situation, all the
awkward positions we were thrown into (Mrs. Fortescue had engaged her
servants, being then in morning toilette, days before). Suffice it to
say that the guests assembled, and the ball and the supper afterwards
went off perfectly, and gave boundless satisfaction. I only refused to
dance, pretending to have sprained my ankle in coming down in the train
some days before; but I limped round the room on the arm of my own
doctor (who never discovered me) between the dances, and examined the
pictures on the walls. Mrs. Fortescue was inimitable. The trick was
never discovered at the time, and would still be a secret, but that a
friend, to whom I had revealed the story on promise of _strict secrecy_,
repeated it long afterwards to P.'s elder brother. In June my mother
visited me at Oxford, on her way to West Malvern, where we had
delightful rooms overlooking the Herefordshire plains, in the house of
"Phoebe Gale," who had long been a valued servant in the family. We
much enjoyed delightful drives with the Leycesters in the neighbourhood;
also frequently we went to see the Miss Ragsters, two remnants of one of
the oldest families in Worcestershire, who, in a great age, were living,
very poor, in a primitive farmhouse, with their one servant Betty--"the
girl" they always called her, who still wore a pinafore, though she had
been in their service forty-seven years. Their life had never varied:
they had never seen a railway, and had never even been to Little
Malvern. They gave a curious account of the poet Wordsworth coming to
luncheon with them.

From Malvern I went to the Wye with Willie Milligan. "Never," as I wrote
to my mother, "was there a companion so delightful, so amusing, so
charming and good-natured under all circumstances--and his circumstances
were certainly none of the most brilliant, as he lost all his luggage at
the outset, and had to perform the whole journey with nothing of his own
but a comb and a tooth-brush." Wherever we went, he made friends,
retailing all the local information gained from one person to the next
he met, in the most entertaining way. Especially do I remember one
occasion at Chepstow. I was drawing the castle, surrounded by about a
hundred little children, and he made himself so charming to them, and
was so indescribably entertaining, that one after the other of the
little things succumbed, till at last the whole party were rolling on
the ground in fits of uncontrollable laughter. On this visit to Chepstow
I remember the touching incident of our walking in the churchyard late
at night, and seeing a woman bring a number of glow-worms to put upon
her child's grave, that she might still see it from the window of her
cottage. We saw Tintern, Raglan, Goodrich (the great collection of
"Meyrick's Ancient Armour" was there then), and Ross, with its old
market-house, still standing, owing to the recent defence of the
market-women, who had positively refused to enter a new one which had
been built for them. A shorter expedition from Malvern was one which I
made with Emma Leycester to Worcester, which resulted in a story I
published in a magazine years afterwards--"The Shadows of Old
Worcester." In one of the passages of the china manufactory we saw a
figure of "Tragedy"--a magnificently handsome woman with a wreath of
laurel on her head. Was it Mrs. Siddons? "No," said the guide, "it was
modelled from a poor girl who used to work here, and who was murdered by
her lover _last night_."

From Malvern we drove through the rose-fringed lanes by Ledbury to
Hereford, and then went to stay at Tickwood, in Shropshire, with my
uncle's old friend Mr. Hull, and Mrs. Butler, my mother's early
instructress, who lived there to take care of his only child by his
second wife (Miss Rowe)--Rowna--whose great wealth was her only fault in
her father's eyes. Afterwards we went to meet our old friends, the
Tayleurs of Buntingsdale, at the quaint old Raven Inn at Shrewsbury, and
thence proceeded to Llangollen and Valle Crucis. Plas Newydd, the house
of "the ladies of Llangollen,"[105] was still in existence--a very
ridiculous little place; and "the ladies" had had successors, Miss
Andrews and Miss Lolly!--of whom Miss Lolly still survived. A beautiful
varied drive by Corwen and Bettwys y Coed took us to the Penrhyn Arms
at Capel Curig, where my mother had often been in her childhood, and
where, at the bottom of the garden, is the noble view of Snowdon across
lake and moorland, so well known from pictures innumerable. From
Llanberis I ascended Snowdon, which in my recollection is--from its
innate picturesqueness, not its views--the only mountain in Europe worth
ascending, except Soracte. Afterwards we went to the William
Stanleys[106] at Penrhôs in Anglesea, and it was a very pleasant visit,
as Mrs. William Stanley was a most kind and amusing person, good-natured
to young people, and exceedingly pleased with my delight over all she
showed me, especially over the rocks--so glorious in colour--near the
South Stack lighthouse. It recalls oddly the extreme poverty as to
pocket-money in which I spent my youth, when I remember that the sum of
£2 which my Aunt Lucy gave me at Penrhôs was at twenty-one the largest
present in money that I had ever yet received in my life. I spent it in
the purchase of Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art."

After visiting Penrhyn Castle, we went to take lodgings near the Albert
Ways at Conway, of which I recollect nothing remarkable except the
exemplification of "cast not your pearls before swine" in the frantic
eagerness the pigs at Towen showed to get at the mussels from which the
tiny pearls found there (and sold at two shillings an ounce) were being
extracted by the pearl-fishers. Our next visit was to Bodelwyddelan, the
fine place of Sir John and Lady Sarah Williams. We went afterwards to
Alton Towers, Ham in Dovedale, Matlock, and Rowsley--whence I saw
Chatsworth and spent several days in drawing the old courts of Haddon
Hall.

All through the past winter the Crimean War had been an absorbing
interest, people had sobbed in the churches when the prayer for time of
war was read, and even those not immediately concerned had waited in
agonised expectation for the news from the Alma, Inkermann, the Redan.
While we were at Lichfield came the news of the capture of Sebastopol,
announced by the bells of the cathedral, followed by all the churches,
and every town and village became gay with flags from every window.

In returning home this year, I felt even more anxious than before to
improve and educate myself, and always got up for the purpose as early
as I could, recollecting how Chevalier Bunsen, by always getting up four
hours before other people, made his year into sixteen months instead of
twelve. Beginning to think of colour in sketching now tended to make me
even more observant than I had been of the wonderfully artistic elements
of the scenery around our home--the long lines of the levels with their
fleeting shadows, the delicate softness of the distant downs, the trees
embossed in their dark green against the burnt-up grass of the old
deer-park.

     JOURNAL.

     "_Sept. 24, 1855._--We have had a visit from Miss Rosam, the last
     of the old Sussex family who once lived at Lime. She said when she
     was here as a little child the old convent was still standing. She
     remembered the deep massive Saxon (?) archway at the entrance and
     the large dark hall into which it led.

     "'Were there any stories about the place?' I asked.

     "'Nothing but about the fish; of course you know that?'

     "'No, I don't; do tell me.'

     "'Well, I don't say that it's true, but certainly it is very
     generally believed that the whole of the great fish-ponds were once
     entirely filled with gold and silver fish, and the night my
     grandfather died all the fish died too. And then perhaps you do not
     know about the horse. My grandfather had a very beautiful horse,
     which he was very fond of, and though it was so old and infirm that
     it could scarcely drag its legs along, he would not have it made an
     end of, and it still remained in the field. But the night my
     grandfather died, a man saw the horse suddenly spring up and race
     at full gallop over the field, and at the moment my grandfather
     died the horse fell down and died too.'

     "Just now we have a full moon, and the reflections in the pond are
     so clear that you can see the fish dance in the moonbeams. The
     mother says, 'It is difficult to realise that this same moon, ever
     serene and peaceful, is looking down upon all the troubles and
     quarrels of the earth.'"


     "_Sept. 29._--We came in the morning to Eastbourne, which is much
     altered and enlarged, only a few of the old familiar features left
     as landmarks--Sergeant Bruce's house, No. 13--O _how_ I suffered
     there!--Miss Holland's, outside which I used to wait in my agonies
     of grief and rage--the beach where as a little child I played at
     building houses."


     "_Oct. 4._--In spite of threatening clouds, we drove to Wilmington,
     whence I walked with Mr. Cooper to Alfriston, a most wild
     out-of-the-way place, just suited for the beautiful 'effects' of
     Copley Fielding. The cruciform church, with its battered shingled
     spire, stands on a little hill, and, with a few wind-stricken
     trees around it, is backed by a hazy distance of downs, where the
     softest grey melts into the green. When we were there, all the
     clouds were tossed into wild forms, with only a gleam of frightened
     sunshine struggling through here and there."

[Illustration: ALFRISTON.]

     "_Oct. 7._--I fear I rather distressed mother to-day by reverting
     to the Rectory miseries, the recollection of which was aroused by
     finding an old journal. I will never do it again. My darling mother
     has been given back to me from the brink of the grave to love and
     to cherish, and, whatever it costs me, can I ever say anything to
     cause her even one flush of pain? My will is strong, I know, and it
     shall be exercised in always ignoring my own troubles and
     prejudices, and never forgetting to anticipate each thought, each
     wish of hers. Henceforward I am determined to have no separate
     identity, and to be only her reflection."


     "_Oct. 25._--Went to see old Mrs. Pinnock. She was lying on her
     rag-bed in her wretched garret, sadly changed now from the old
     woman who, two years ago, would go in the spring-time to Lime Wood
     that she might see the bluebells and listen to the nightingales.
     Now her old husband sate by, pointing at her worn, dying form, and
     exclaiming,'Poor cratur! poor cratur!' She fumbled her poor
     shrunken hands over the bedclothes and murmured, 'God bless you,
     sir; may God bless you.' They are probably the last words I shall
     ever hear from her, and she has always been an object of interest.
     As I read 'Shadows' this last evening to the mother, I could not
     help feeling how like some of them my own home reminiscences must
     some day become, so sad and so softened. But it is no use to think
     about the future, for which only God can arrange. 'Good-night,
     darling, comfort and blessing of my life,' mother said to me
     to-night. 'I will try not to be too anxious. May you be preserved,
     and may I have faith. Good-night, my own Birdie.'"


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Chartwell_ (Mr. Colquhoun's), _Oct. 18, 1855._--This is a
     beautiful neighbourhood.... How every hour of the day have I
     thought of my sweetest mother, and longed to know what she was
     doing. We have been so much together this vacation, and so
     uncloudedly happy, that it is unnatural to be separate; but my
     darling mother and I are never away from one another in heart,
     though we so often are in body. And what a blessing it is for me to
     have left my mother so well, and to feel that she can still take so
     much interest and be so happy in the old home, and that I may go on
     cheerily with my Oxford work."


     "_Harrow, Oct. 11, 1855._--No one is here (with the Vaughans)
     except Mr. Munro, whom I find to be the author of 'Basil the
     Schoolboy,' which he declares to be a true picture of Harrow life
     in his time. A Mr. Gordon has called, who gave a most curious
     account of his adventures after having been at school here three
     days, and how his companions, having stoned their master's lapdog
     to death, forced him to eat it uncooked!"[107]


     "_Portishead, Nov. 10._--How often I have thought of my mother when
     sitting here in the little bow-window, surrounded by the quaint
     pictures and china, and the old furniture. Miss Boyle[108] is in
     her great chair, her white hair brushed back over her forehead. The
     Channel is a dull lead-colour, and the Welsh mountains are half
     shrouded in clouds, but every now and then comes out one of those
     long gleams and lines of light which are so characteristic of this
     place. The day I arrived, a worn-out clockmaker and a retired
     architect came to spend the evening and read Shakspeare, and Miss
     Boyle made herself quite as charming to them as she has doubtless
     been all summer to the archduchesses and princesses with whom she
     has been staying in Germany. The next day we went to Clevedon, and
     saw the old cruciform church above the sea, celebrated in 'In
     Memoriam,' where Arthur Hallam and his brothers and sisters are
     buried. From the knoll above was a lovely view of the
     church--immediately below was a precipice with the white breakers
     at the bottom, which beyond the church ripple up into two little
     sandy bays: in the distance, the Welsh mountains, instead of blue,
     were the most delicate green. We returned by Clapton, where, beside
     an ancient manor-house, is a little church upon a hill, with a
     group of old yew-trees."


     "_Oxford, Nov. 15._--On Monday, Miss Boyle came in my fly to
     Bristol, her mission being to break a man she had met with of
     drunkenness, having made a promise to his wife that she would save
     him. She said that she had shut herself up for hours in prayer
     about it, and that, though she did not know in the least how it was
     to be done, she was on her way to Bristol to _do_ it. One day, as
     we were walking, we met a woman who knew that she had seen her in a
     drunken state. 'You will never speak to me again, ma'am,' said the
     woman; 'I can never dare see you again.'--'God forbid,' answered
     Miss Boyle. 'I've been as great a sinner myself in my time, and I
     can never forsake you because you've done wrong: it is more reason
     why I should try to lead you to do right.' I had an interesting
     day at Bath with dear old Mr. Landor, who sent his best
     remembrances to you--'the best and kindest creature he ever knew.'"


     "_Oxford, Nov. 21._--I have been dining at New College and drinking
     out of a silver cup inscribed--'Ex dono Socii Augustus Hare.'

     "Yesterday I went to luncheon at Iffley with Miss Sydney Warburton,
     authoress of 'Letters to my Unknown Friends,' and sister of the
     Rector--a most remarkable and interesting person. She had been
     speaking of the study of life, when the door opened and a young
     lady entered. Miss Warburton had just time to whisper 'Watch
     her--_she_ is a study indeed.' It was Mrs. Eliot Warburton,
     uninteresting in her first aspect, but marvellously original and
     powerful in all she said."


     "_Nov. 26._--I have been a long drive to Boarstall Tower, which is
     like an old Border castle, with a moat and bridge. It was defended
     during the Civil Wars by a Royalist lady, who, when starved out
     after some months' siege, made her escape by a subterranean
     passage, carrying off everything with her. Afterwards it was always
     in the hands of the Aubreys, till, in the last century, Sir Edward
     Aubrey accidentally poisoned his only and idolised son there. The
     old nurse imagined that no one knew what had happened but herself,
     and she spent her whole life in trying to prevent Sir Edward from
     finding out what he had done, and succeeded so well, that it was
     years before he discovered it. At last, at a contested election, a
     man in the opposition called out, 'Who murdered his own son?' which
     led to inquiries, and when Sir Edward found out the truth, he died
     of the shock.

     "Mrs. Eliot Warburton and her sister-in-law have just been to
     luncheon with me in college, and I am as much charmed with them as
     before."


     "_Dec. 3._--I have been to spend Sunday at Iffley with the
     Warburtons."

I have inserted these notices of my first acquaintance with the
Warburtons, because for some years after this they bore so large a share
in all my interests and thoughts. Mrs. Eliot Warburton at that time
chiefly lived at Oxford or Iffley with her two little boys. Her brother,
Dr. Cradock, was Principal of Brazenose, and had married Miss Lister,
the maid of honour, with whom I became very intimate, scarcely passing a
day without going to Dr. Cradock's house. Miss Warburton died not long
afterwards, but Mrs. Eliot Warburton became one of my dearest friends,
and not mine only, but that of my college circle; for she lived with us
in singular, probably unique intimacy, as if she had been an
undergraduate herself. Scarcely a morning passed without her coming to
our rooms, scarcely an afternoon without our walking with her or going
with her on the river. It was a friendship of the very best kind, with a
constant interchange of the best and highest thoughts, and her one
object was to stimulate us onwards to the noblest aims and ambitions,
though I believe she overrated us, and was mistaken in her great desire
that her two boys should grow up like Sheffield and me. We gave her a
little dog, which she called "Sheffie" after him. We often went to a
distant wood together, where we spent whole hours amongst the primroses
and bluebells or wandered amongst "the warm green muffled Cumnor hills,"
as Matthew Arnold calls them; in the evenings we frequently acted
charades in Mrs. Cradock's house. Our intimacy was never broken while I
stayed at Oxford. But I never saw my dear friend afterwards. In 1857 I
heard with a shock of what it is strange that I had never for an instant
anticipated--her engagement to make a second marriage. She wrote to tell
me of it herself, but I never heard from her again. She had other
children, girls, and a few years afterwards she died. Her death was the
first great sorrow I had ever felt from death out of my own family. Her
memory will always be a possession to me. I often saw her husband
afterwards in London, but as I had never seen him with her, it is
difficult for me to associate him with her in my mind.

     JOURNAL.

     "_Lime, Dec. 23, 1855._--I have found such a true observation in
     'Heartsease'--'One must humble oneself in the dust and _crawl_
     under the archway before one can enter the beautiful palace.' This
     is exactly what I feel now in waiting upon my mother. When sensible
     of being more attentive and lovingly careful than usual, I am, of
     course, conscious that I must be deficient at other times, and so
     that, while I fancy I do all that could be done, I frequently fall
     short. A greater effort is necessary to prevent my mind being even
     preoccupied when it is possible that she may want sympathy or
     interest, even though it may be in the very merest trifles.

     "The dear mother says her great wish is that I should study--drink
     deep, as she calls it--in Latin and Greek, for the strengthening of
     my mind. It is quite in vain to try to convince her that college
     lectures only improve one for the worse, and that I might do myself
     and the world more good by devoting myself to English literature
     and diction, the one only thing in which it is ever possible that I
     might ever distinguish myself. Oh, how I wish I could become an
     author! I begin so now to thirst after distinction of some kind,
     and of that kind above all others: but I know my mind must receive
     quite a new tone first, and that my scattered fragments of sense
     would have to be called into an unanimous action to which they are
     quite unaccustomed.

     "The Talmud says 'that there are four kinds of pupils--the sponge
     and the funnel, the strainer and the sieve; the sponge is he who
     spongeth up everything; and the funnel is he that taketh in at this
     ear and letteth out at that: the strainer is he that letteth go the
     wine and retaineth the dross; the sieve is he that letteth go the
     bran and retaineth the fine flour.' I think I have begun at least
     to _wish_ to belong to the last.

     "It has been fearfully cold lately, and it has told sadly upon the
     mother and has aged her years in a week. But she is most sweet and
     gentle--smiling and trying to find amusement and interest even in
     her ailments, and with a loving smile and look for the least thing
     done for her."

Soon after this was written we went to London, and the rest of the
winter was spent between the house of Mrs. Stanley, 6 Grosvenor
Crescent, and that of my Uncle Penrhyn at Sheen. At Grosvenor Crescent I
often had the opportunity of seeing people of more or less interest, for
my Aunt Kitty was a capital talker, as well as a very wise and clever
thinker. She had "le bon sens à jet continu," as Victor Hugo said of
Voltaire. She also understood the art of showing off others to the best
advantage, and in society she never failed to practise it, which always
made her popular; at home, except when Arthur was present, she kept all
the conversation to herself, which was also for the best. Macaulay often
dined with her, and talked to a degree which made those who heard him
sympathise with Sydney Smith, who called him "that talking machine,"
talked of his "flumen sermonis," and declared that, when ill, he dreamt
he was chained to a rock and being talked to death by Macaulay or
Harriet Martineau. This year also I met Mrs. Stowe, whose book "Uncle
Tom's Cabin" made at the time a more profound impression in England than
any other book I ever remember. She was very entertaining in describing
her Scotch visits. Inverary she had liked, but she declared with
vehemence that she would "rather be smashed into triangles than go to
Dunrobin again."

END OF VOL. I.

_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_Edinburgh and London_




THE STORY OF MY LIFE

VOL. II

[Illustration: Maria Hare.

From a portrait by Canaveri]




THE STORY OF
MY LIFE

BY

AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE

AUTHOR OF "MEMORIALS OF A QUIET LIFE,"
"THE STORY OF TWO NOBLE LIVES,"
ETC. ETC.

VOLUME II

LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1896
[_All rights reserved_]

_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_At the Ballantyne Press_



    CONTENTS

                                  PAGE

    OXFORD LIFE                      1
    FOREIGN LIFE                    32
    WORK IN SOUTHERN COUNTIES      130
    WORK IN NORTHERN COUNTIES      259
    HOME LIFE WITH THE MOTHER      367




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOL. II



    MARIA HARE.   _From G. Canevari._   (_Photogravure_)  _Frontispiece_
                                                                    PAGE
    DRAWING-ROOM, LIME                                                15
    FROM THE DEAN'S GARDEN, CANTERBURY                                24
    LA MADONNA DEI. SASSO, LOCARNO                                    45
    IN S. APOLLINARE NUOVO, RAVENNA                                   48
    LORETO                                                            51
    MACERATA                                                          53
    CIVITA CASTELLANA                                                 55
    VALMONTONE                                                        77
    ROCCA JANULA, ABOVE SAN GERMANO                                   79
    CAPRI                                                             82
    PÆSTUM                                                            83
    VALLOMBROSA                                                       85
    AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE.  _From G. Canevari._
      (_Photogravure_)                             _To face_          96
    PONTE ALLA MADDALENA, LUCCA                                       96
    PIETRA SANTA                                                     102
    IL VALENTINO, TURIN                                              107
    VILLAR, IN THE VAUDOIS                                           110
    NOTRE DAME, PARIS                                                117
    THE PONT NEUF, PARIS                                             124
    PORT ROYAL                                                       126
    CATHERINE STANLEY.   _From E. U. Eddis._
      (_Photogravure_)                             _To face_         132
    CANON STANLEY'S HOUSE, OXFORD                                    136
    HODNET CHURCH                                                    159
    GIBSIDE                                                          181
    OLD BEECHES, HURSTMONCEAUX PARK                                  227
    THE ABELES, LIME                                                 245
    MENTONE                                                          248
    GRIMALDI                                                         251
    DOLCEACQUA                                                       254
    PEGLIONE                                                         255
    VENTIMIGLIA                                                      257
    AT DURHAM                                                        262
    ON ALLEN WATER, RIDLEY HALL                                      273
    FORD CASTLE, THE TERRACE                                         281
    VIEW FROM HOLMHURST. (_Full-page woodcut_)      _To face_        286
    ENTRANCE TO HOLMHURST: "HUZ AND BUZ"                             287
    ALDERLEY CHURCH AND RECTORY                                      293
    WARKWORTH, FROM THE COQUET                                       352
    WINTON CASTLE                                                    355
    THE CHEVIOTS, FROM FORD                                          361
    CARROZZA                                                         371
    ROMAN THEATRE, ARLES                                             378
    HÔTEL DU MAUROY, TROYES                                          379
    THE KING OF BOHEMIA'S CROSS, CRECY                               380
    S. FLAVIANO, MONTEFIASCONE                                       386
    OSTIA                                                            391
    THEATRE OF TUSCULUM                                              392
    AMALFI                                                           397
    COURMAYEUR                                                       410
    ANNE F. M. L. HARE. _From G. Canevari._
      (_Photogravure_)                               _To face_       416
    ARS                                                              421
    TOURS                                                            465
    AT ANGOULÊME                                                     467
    PAU                                                              471
    BÉTHARRAM                                                        481
    BIARRITZ                                                         489
    THE PAS DE ROLAND                                                491
    S. EMILION CATHEDRAL DOOR                                        494
    AMBOISE                                                          496





VII

OXFORD LIFE

     "A few souls brought together as it were by chance, for a short
     friendship and mutual dependence in this little ship of earth, so
     soon to land her passengers and break up the company for ever."--C.
     KINSGLEY.

                  "To thine own self be true,
    And it must follow, as the night the day,
    Thou canst not then be false to any man."
    --SHAKSPEARE, _Polonius to Laertes_.

"If you would escape vexation, reprove yourself liberally and others
sparingly."--CONFUCIUS.


It was the third year of our Oxford life, and Milligan and I were now
the "senior men" resident in college; we sat at one of the higher tables
in hall, and occupied stalls in chapel. We generally attended lectures
together, and many are the amusing tricks I recall which Milligan used
to play--one especially, on a freshman named Dry--a pious youth in green
spectacles, and with the general aspect of "Verdant Green." An
undergraduate's gown is always adorned with two long strings behind;
these strings of Dry, Milligan adroitly fastened to mine, and, inventing
one excuse after another, for slipping round the room to open the door,
shut a window, &c., he eventually had connected the whole lecture in one
continuous chain; finally, he fastened himself to Dry _on the other
side_; and then, with loud outcries of "Don't, Dry,--don't, Dry," pulled
himself away, the result being that Dry and his chair were overturned,
and that the whole lecture, one after another, came crashing on the top
of him! Milligan would have got into a serious scrape on this occasion,
but that he was equally popular with the tutors and his companions, so
that every possible excuse was made for him, while I laughed in such
convulsions at the absurdity of the scene, that I was eventually
expelled from the lecture, and served as a scapegoat.

I think we were liked in college--Milligan much better than I. Though we
never had the same sort of popularity as boating-men and cricketers
often acquire, we afforded plenty of amusement. When the college gates
were closed at night, I often used to rush down into Quad and act "Hare"
all over the queer passages and dark corners of the college, pursued by
a pack of hounds who were more in unison with the general idea of Harrow
than of Oxford. One night I had been keeping ahead of my pursuers so
long, that, as one was apt to be rather roughly handled when caught
after a very long chase, I thought it was as well to make good my escape
to my own rooms in the New Buildings, and to "sport my oak." Yet, after
some time, beginning to feel my solitude rather flat after so much
excitement, I longed to regain the quadrangle, but knew that the
staircase was well guarded by a troop of my pursuers. By a vigorous
_coup d'état_, however, I threw open my "oak," and seizing the handrail
of the bannisters, slipped _on_ it through the midst of them, and
reached the foot of the staircase in safety. Between me and the
quadrangle a long cloistered passage still remained to be traversed, and
here I saw the way blocked up by a figure approaching in the moonlight.
Of course it must be an enemy! There was nothing for it but desperation.
I rushed at him like a bolt from a catapult, and by taking him unawares,
butting him in the stomach, and then flinging myself on his neck,
overturned him into the coal-hole, and escaped into Quad. My pursuers,
seeing _some one_ struggling in the coal-hole, thought it was I, and
flung all their sharp-edged college caps at him, under which he was
speedily buried, but emerged in time to exhibit himself as--John
Conington, Professor of Latin!

Meantime, I had discovered the depth of my iniquity, and fled to the
rooms of Duckworth, a scholar, to whom I recounted my adventure, and
with whom I stayed. Late in the evening a note was brought in for
Duckworth, who said, "It is a note from John Conington," and read--"Dear
Duckworth, having been the victim of a cruel outrage on the part of some
undergraduates of the college, I trust to your friendship for me to
assist me in finding out the perpetrators," &c. Duckworth urged that I
should give myself up--that John Conington was very good-natured--in
fact, that I had better confess the whole truth, &c. So I immediately
sat down and wrote the whole story to Professor Conington, and not till
I had _sent_ it, and it was safe in his hands, did Duckworth confess
that the note he had received was a forgery, that he had contrived to
slip out of the room and write it to himself--and that I had made my
confession unnecessarily. However, he went off with the story and its
latest additions to the Professor, and no more was said.

If Milligan was my constant companion in college, George Sheffield and I
were inseparable out of doors, though I often wondered at his caring so
much to be with me, as he was a capital rider, shot, oarsman--in fact,
everything which I was not. I believe we exactly at this time, and for
some years after, supplied each other's vacancies. It was the most
wholesome, best kind of devotion, and, if we needed any ennobling
influence, we always had it at hand in Mrs. Eliot Warburton, who
sympathised in all we did, and who, except his mother, was the only
woman whom I ever knew George Sheffield have any regard for. It was
about this time that the Bill was before Parliament for destroying the
privileges of Founder's kin. While it was in progress, we discovered
that George was distinctly "Founder's kin" to Thomas Teesdale, the
founder of Pembroke, and half because our ideas were conservative, half
because we delighted in an adventure of any kind, we determined to take
advantage of the privilege. Dr. Jeune, afterwards Bishop of
Peterborough, was Master of Pembroke then, and was perfectly furious at
our audacity, which was generally laughed at at the time, and treated as
the mere whim of two foolish schoolboys; but we would not be daunted,
and went on our own way. Day after day I studied with George the
subjects of his examination, goading him on. Day after day I walked down
with him to the place of examination, doing my best to screw up his
courage to meet the inquisitors. We went against the Heads of Houses
with the enthusiasm of martyrs in a much greater cause, and we were
victorious. George Sheffield was forcibly elected to a Founder's-kin
Scholarship at Pembroke, and was the last so elected. Dr. Jeune was
grievously annoyed, but, with the generosity which was always
characteristic of him, he at once accorded us his friendship, and
remained my most warm and honoured friend till his death about ten years
afterwards. He was remarkable at Oxford for dogmatically repealing the
law which obliged undergraduates to receive the Sacrament on certain
days in the year. "In future," he announced in chapel, "no member of
this college will be compelled to eat and drink his own damnation."

In urging George Sheffield to become a scholar of Pembroke, I was
certainly disinterested; without him University lost half its charms,
and Oxford was never the same to me without "Giorgione"--the George of
Georges. But our last summer together was uncloudedly happy. We used to
engage a little pony-carriage at the Maidenhead, with a pony called
Tommy, which was certainly the most wonderful beast for bearing fatigue,
and as soon as ever the college gates were opened, we were "over the
hills and far away." Sometimes we would arrive in time for breakfast at
Thame, a quaint old town quite on the Oxfordshire boundary, where John
Hampden was at school. Then we would mount the Chiltern Hills with our
pony, and when we reached the top, look down upon the great
Buckinghamshire plains, with their rich woods; and when we saw the
different gentlemen's places scattered about in the distance, we used to
say, "There we will go to luncheon"--"There we will go to dinner," and
the little programmes we made we always carried out; for having each a
good many relations and friends, we seldom found we had _no_ link with
any of the places we came to. Sometimes Albert Rutson would ride by the
side of our carriage, but I do not think that either then or afterwards
we quite liked having anybody with us, we were so perfectly contented
with each other, and had always so much to say to each other. Our most
delightful day of all was that on which we had luncheon at Great Hampden
with Mr. and Lady Vere Cameron and their daughters, who were slightly
known to my mother; and dined at the wonderful old house of Chequers,
filled with relics of the Cromwells, the owner, Lady Frankland Russell,
being a cousin of Lady Sheffield's. Most enchanting was the late return
from these long excursions through the lanes hung with honeysuckle and
clematis, satiated as we were, but not wearied with happiness, and full
of interest and enthusiasm in each other and in our mutual lives, both
past and present. One of the results of our frequent visits to the
scenes of John Hampden's life was a lecture which I was induced to
deliver in the town-hall at Oxford, during the last year of my Oxford
life, upon John Hampden--a lecture which was sadly too short, because at
that time I had no experience to guide me as to how long such things
would take.

It was during this spring that my mother was greatly distressed by the
long-deferred declaration of Mary Stanley that she had become a Roman
Catholic.[109] A burst of family indignation followed, during which I
constituted myself Mary's defender, utterly refused to make any
difference with her, as well as preventing my mother from doing so; and
many were the battles I fought for her.

A little episode in my life at this time was the publication of my first
book--a very small one, "Epitaphs for Country Churchyards." It was
published by John Henry Parker, who was exceedingly good-natured in
undertaking it, for it is needless to say it was not remunerative to
either of us. The ever-kind Landor praised the preface very much, and
delighted my mother by his grandiloquent announcement that it was "quite
worthy of Addison!"

At this time also my distant cousin Henry Liddell was appointed to the
Deanery of Christ Church. He had previously been Headmaster of
Westminster, and during his residence there had become celebrated by his
Lexicon. One day he told the boys in his class that they must write an
English epigram. Some of them said it was impossible. He said it was not
impossible at all; they might each choose their own subject, but an
epigram they must write. One boy wrote--

    "Two men wrote a Lexicon,
      Liddell and Scott;
    One half was clever,
      And one half was not.
    Give me the answer, boys,
      Quick to this riddle,
    Which was by Scott
      And which was by Liddell?"

Dr. Liddell, when it was shown up, only said, "I think you are rather
severe."

As to education, I did not receive much more at Oxford this year than I
had done before. The college lectures were the merest rubbish; and of
what was learnt to pass the University examinations, nothing has since
been of use to me, except the History for the final Schools. About
fourteen years of life and above £4000 I consider to have been wasted on
my education of nothingness. At Oxford, however, I was not idle, and the
History, French, and Italian, which I taught myself, have always been
useful.

     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Oxford, Feb. 19, 1856._--Your news about dear Mary (Stanley) is
     very sad. She will find out too late the mistake she has made:
     that, because she cannot agree with everything in the Church of
     England, she should think it necessary to join another, where, if
     she receives anything, she will be obliged to receive everything. I
     am sorry that the person chosen to argue with her was not one whose
     views were more consistent with her own than Dr. Vaughan's. It is
     seldom acknowledged, but I believe that, by their tolerance, Mr.
     Liddell and Mr. Bennett[110] keep as many people from Rome as other
     people drive there. I am very sorry for Aunt Kitty, and hope that
     no one who loves her will add to her sorrow by estranging
     themselves from Mary--above all, that _you_ will not consider her
     religion a barrier. When people see how nobly all her life is given
     to good, and how she has even made this great step, at sacrifice to
     herself, because she believes that good may better be carried out
     in another Church, they may pity her delusion, but no person of
     right feeling can possibly be angry with her. And, after all, she
     has not changed her religion. It is, as your own beloved John
     Wesley said, on hearing that his nephew had become a Papist--'He
     has changed his opinions and mode of worship, but has not changed
     his religion: that is quite another thing.'"

       *       *       *       *       *

     JOURNAL.

     "_Lime, March 30, 1856._--My mother and I have had a very happy
     Easter together--more than blessed when I look back at the anxiety
     of last Easter. Once when her bell rang in the night, I started up
     and rushed out into the passage in an agony of alarm, for every
     unusual sound at home has terrified me since her illness; but it
     was nothing. I have been full of my work, chiefly Aristotle's
     Politics, for 'Greats'--too full, I fear, to enter as I ought into
     all her little thoughts and plans as usual: but she is ever loving
     and gentle, and had interest and sympathy even when I was
     preoccupied. She thinks that knowledge may teach humility even in a
     spiritual sense. She says, 'In knowledge the feeling is the same
     which one has in ascending mountains--that, the higher one gets,
     the _farther_ one is from heaven.' To-day, as we were walking
     amongst the flowers, she said, 'I suppose every one's impressions
     of heaven are according to the feeling they have for earthly
     things: I always feel that a garden is my impression--the _garden_
     of Paradise.' 'People generally love themselves first, their
     friends next, and God last,' she said one day. 'Well, I do not
     think that is the case with me,' I replied; 'I really believe I do
     put you first and self next.' 'Yes, I really think you do,' she
     said."

When I returned to Oxford after Easter, 1856, my pleasant time in
college rooms was over, and I moved to lodgings over Wheeler's bookshop
and facing Dr. Cradock's house, so that I was able to see more than ever
of Mrs. Eliot Warburton. I was almost immediately in the "Schools," for
the classical and divinity part of my final examination, which I got
through very comfortably. While in the Schools at this time, I remember
a man being asked what John the Baptist was beheaded for--and the
answer, "Dancing with Herodias's daughter!" Once through these Schools,
I was free for some time, and charades were our chief amusement, Mrs.
Warburton, the Misses Elliot,[111] Sheffield, and I being the principal
actors. The proclamation of peace after the Crimean War was
celebrated--Oxford fashion--by tremendous riots in the town, and
smashing of windows in all directions.

At Whitsuntide, I had a little tour in Warwickshire with Albert Rutson
as my companion. We enjoyed a stay at Edgehill, at the charming little
inn called "The Sun Rising," which overlooks the battlefield, having the
great sycamore by its side under which Charles I. breakfasted before the
battle, and a number of Cavalier arms inside, with the hangings of the
bed in which Lord Lindsey died. From Edgehill I saw the wonderful old
house of the Comptons at Compton-Whinyates, with its endless secret
staircases and trap-doors, and its rooms of unplaned oak, evidently
arranged with no other purpose than defence or escape. We went on to
Stratford-on-Avon, with Shakspeare's tomb, his house in Henley Street,
and the pretty old thatched cottage where he wooed his wife--Anne
Hathaway. Also we went to visit Mrs. Lucy (sister of Mrs. William
Stanley) at Charlecote, a most entertaining person, with the family
characteristic of fun and goodhumour; and to Combe Abbey, full of relics
of Elizabeth of Bohemia and her daughters, who lived there with Lord
Craven. Many of the portraits were painted by her daughter Louisa. A few
weeks later I went up to the Stanleys in London for the Peace
illuminations--"very neat, but all alike," as I heard a voice in the
crowd say. I saw them from the house of Lady Mildred Hope, who had a
party for them like the one in Scripture, not the rich and great, but
the "poor, maimed, halt, and blind;" as, except Aldersons and Stanleys,
she arranged that there should not be a single person "in society"
there.

     JOURNAL.

     "_Lime, June 8, 1856._--I had found the dear mother in a sadly
     fragile state, so infirm and tottering that it is not safe to leave
     her alone for a minute, and she is so well aware of it, that she
     does not wish to be left. She cannot now even cross the room alone,
     and never thinks of moving anywhere without a stick. Every breath,
     even of the summer wind, she feels most intensely. '"The Lord
     establish, _strengthen_ you," that must be my verse,' she says."


     "_June 15._--I am afraid I cannot help being tired of the mental
     solitude at home, as the dear mother, without being ill enough to
     create any anxiety, has not been well enough to take any interest,
     or have any share in my doings. Sometimes I am almost sick with the
     silence, and, as I can never go far enough from her to allow of my
     leaving the garden, I know not only every cabbage, but every leaf
     upon every cabbage."

[Illustration: DRAWING-ROOM, LIME.]

     "_June 29._--We have been for a week with the Stanleys at
     Canterbury, and it was very pleasant to be with Arthur, who was his
     most charming self."

Early in July, I preceded my mother northwards, made a little sketching
tour in Lincolnshire, where arriving with little luggage, and drawing
hard all day, I excited great commiseration amongst the people as a poor
travelling artist. "Eh, I shouldn't like to have such hard work as
_that_ on. Measter, I zay, I should'na like to be you."

At Lincoln I joined my mother, and we went on together to Yorkshire,
where my friend Rutson lent us a charming old manor-house, Nunnington
Hall near Helmsley, the centre of an interesting country, in which we
visited the principal ruined abbeys of Yorkshire. My mother entirely
recovered here, and was full of enjoyment. On our way to Harrogate, a
Quakeress with whom we travelled persecuted me with "The Enquiring
Parishioner on the Way to Salvation," and then, after looking at my
sketches, hoped that "one so gifted was not being led away by Dr.
Pusey!" At Bolton we stayed several days at the Farfield Farm, and
thence drove through Swale Dale to Richmond. On our way farther north, I
paid my first visit to my cousins at Ravensworth, and very alarming I
thought it; rejoining my mother at Warkworth, a place I have always
delighted in, and where Mrs. Clutterbuck[112] and her daughters were
very kind to us. More charming still were the next few days spent with
my kind old cousin Henry Liddell (brother-in-law of my Aunt Ravensworth)
in Bamborough Castle.

We visited Dryburgh and Jedburgh, and the vulgar commonplace villa, with
small ill-proportioned rooms looking out upon nothing at all, out of
which Sir Walter Scott created the Abbotsford of his imagination.
Charlotte Leycester having joined us, I left my mother at the Bridge of
Allan for a little tour, in the first hour of which I, Italian-fashion,
made a friendship with one with whom till her death I continued to be
most intimate.

     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Tillycoultry House, August 12, 1856._--My mother will be
     surprised that, instead of writing from an inn, I should date from
     one of the most beautiful places in the Ochils, and that I should
     be staying with people whom, though we met for the first time a few
     hours ago, I already seem to know intimately.

     "When I left my mother and entered the train at Stirling, two
     ladies got in after me; one old, yellow, and withered; the other,
     though elderly, still handsome, and with a very sweet interesting
     expression. She immediately began to talk. 'Was I a
     sportsman?'--'No, only a tourist.'--'Then did I know that on the
     old bridge we were passing, the Bishop of Glasgow long ago was hung
     in full canonicals?' And with such histories the younger of the two
     sisters, in a very sweet Scottish accent, animated the whole way to
     Alloa. Having arrived there, she said, 'If we part now, we shall
     probably never meet again: there is no time for discussion, but be
     assured that my husband, Mr. Dalzell, will be glad to see you.
     Change your ticket at once, and come home with me to Tillycoultry.'
     And ... I obeyed; and here I am in a great, old, half-desolate
     house, by the side of a torrent and a ruined churchyard, under a
     rocky part of the Ochils.

     "Mr. Dalzell met us in the avenue. He is a rigid maintainer of the
     Free Kirk, upon which Mrs. Huggan (the old sister) says he spends
     all his money--about £18,000 a year--and he is very odd, and passes
     three-fourths of the day quite alone, in meditation and prayer. He
     has much sweetness of manner in speaking, but seems quite hazy
     about things of earth, and entirely rapt in prophecies and thoughts
     either of the second coming of Christ or of the trials of the Kirk
     part of his Church on earth.

     "Mrs. Dalzell is quite different, truly, beautifully, practically
     holy. She 'feels,' as I heard her say to her sister to-night, 'all
     things are wrapt up in Christ.' The evening was very long, as we
     dined at four, but was varied by music and Scotch songs.

     "The old Catholic priest who once lived here cursed the place, in
     consequence of which it is believed that there are--no little
     birds!"


     "_Dunfermline, August 13._--This morning I walked with Mr. Dalzell
     to Castle Campbell--an old ruined tower, on a precipitous rock in a
     lovely situation surrounded by mountains, the lower parts of which
     are clothed with birch woods. Inside the castle is a ruined court,
     where John Knox administered his first Sacrament. On the way we
     passed the little burial-ground of the Taits, surrounded by a high
     wall, only open on one side, towards the river Devon."


     "_Falkland, August 14._--After drawing in beautiful ruined
     Dunfermline, I drove to Kinross, and embarked in the 'Abbot' for
     the castle of Loch Leven, which rises on its dark island against a
     most delicate distance of low mountains.... There is a charming
     oldfashioned inn here, and a beautiful old castle, in one of the
     rooms of which the young Duke of Rothesay was starved to death by
     his uncle."


     "_St. Andrews, August 15._--This is a glorious place, a rocky
     promontory washed by the sea on both sides, crowned by Cardinal
     Beaton's castle, and backed by a perfect crowd of ecclesiastical
     ruins. The cathedral was the finest in Scotland, but destroyed in
     one day by a mob instigated by John Knox, who ought to have been
     flayed for it. Close by its ruins is a grand old tower, built by
     St. Regulus, who 'came with two ships' from Patras, and died in one
     of the natural caves in the cliff under the castle. In the castle
     itself is Cardinal Beaton's dungeon, where a Lord Airlie was
     imprisoned, and whence he was rescued by his sister, who dressed
     him up in her clothes."


     "_Brechin, August 17._--The ruin of Arbroath (Aberbrothock) is most
     interesting. William the Lion is buried before the high altar, and
     in the chapter-house is the lid of his coffin in Scottish marble,
     with his headless figure, the only existing effigy of a Scottish
     king. In the chapter-house a man puts into your hand what looks
     like a lump of decayed ebony, and you are told it is the 'blood,
     gums, and intestines' of the king. You also see the skull of the
     Queen, the thigh-bone of her brother, and other such relics of
     royalty. Most beautiful are the cliffs of Arbroath, a scene of
     Scott's 'Antiquary.' From a natural terrace you look down into deep
     tiny gulfs of blue water in the rich red sandstone rock, with every
     variety of tiny islet, dark cave, and perpendicular pillar; and,
     far in the distance, is the Inchcape Rock, where the Danish pirate
     stole the warning bell, and was afterwards lost himself; which gave
     rise to the ballad of 'Sir Patrick Spens.' The Pictish tower here
     is most curious, but its character injured by the cathedral being
     built too near."

I have an ever-vivid recollection of a most piteous Sunday spent in the
wretched town of Brechin, with nothing whatever to do, as in those days
it would have made my mother too miserable if I had travelled at all on
a Sunday--the wretched folly of Sabbatarianism (against which our
Saviour so especially preached when on earth) being then rife in our
family, to such a degree, that I regard with loathing the recollection
of every seventh day of my life until I was about eight-and-twenty.[113]
After leaving Brechin, I saw the noble castle of Dunottar, and joined my
mother at Braemar, where we stayed at the inn, and Charlotte Leycester
at a tiny lodging in a cottage thatched with peat. I disliked Braemar
extremely, and never could see the beauty of that much-admired valley,
with its featureless hills, half-dry river, and the ugly castellated
house of Balmoral. Dean Alford and his family were at Braemar, and their
being run away with in a carriage, our coming up to them, our servant
John stopping their horses, the wife and daughters being taken into our
carriage, and my walking back with the Dean, first led to my becoming
intimate with him. I remember, during this walk, the description he
gave me of the "Apostles' Club" at Cambridge, of which Henry Hallam was
the nucleus and centre, and of which Tennyson was a member, but from
which he was turned out because he was too lazy to write the necessary
essay. Hallam, who died at twenty-two, had "grasped the whole of
literature before he was nineteen." The Alfords were travelling without
any luggage, and could consequently _walk_ their journeys anywhere--that
is, each lady had only a very small hand-bag, and the Dean had a
walking-stick, which unscrewed and displayed the materials of a
dressing-case, a pocket inkstand, and a candlestick.

On our way southwards I first saw Glamis. I did not care about the
places on the inland Scottish lakes, except Killin, where our cousin
Fanny Tatton and her friend Miss Heygarth joined us, and where we spent
some pleasant week-days and a most abominable Sunday. We afterwards
lingered at Arrochar on Loch Long, whither Aunt Kitty and Arthur Stanley
came to us from Inverary. We returned to Glasgow by the Gareloch, which
allowed me to visit at Paisley the tomb of my royal ancestress, Marjory
Bruce. At Glasgow, though we were most uncomfortable in a noisy and very
expensive hotel, my mother insisted upon spending a wretched day,
because of--Sunday! We afterwards paid pleasant visits at Foxhow and
Toft, whence I went on alone to Peatswood in Shropshire (Mr. Twemlow's),
and paid from thence a most affecting visit to our old home at Stoke,
and to Goldstone Farm, the home of my dear Nurse Lea. Hence I returned
with Archdeacon and Mrs. Moore to Lichfield, and being there when the
grave of St. Chad was opened, was presented with a fragment of his
_body_--a treasure inestimable to Roman Catholics, which I possess
still.

During the remaining weeks of autumn, before I returned to Oxford, we
had many visitors at Lime, including my new friend Mrs. Dalzell, whose
goodness and simplicity perfectly charmed my mother.

[Illustration: FROM THE DEAN'S GARDEN, CANTERBURY.]

We passed the latter part of the winter between the Penrhyns' house at
Sheen, Aunt Kitty's house of 6 Grosvenor Crescent, and Arthur Stanley's
Canonry at Canterbury. With Arthur I dined at the house of Mr. Woodhall,
a Canterbury clergyman, now a Roman Catholic priest, having been
specially invited to meet (at a huge horseshoe table) "the middle
classes"--a very large party of chemists, nurserymen, &c., and their
wives, and very pleasant people they were. I used to think Canterbury
perfectly enchanting, and Arthur was most kind and charming to me. While
there, I remember his examining a school at St. Stephen's, and asking
the meaning of bearing false witness against one's neighbour--"When
nobody does nothing to nobody," answered a child, "and somebody goes
and tells."

In returning to Oxford in 1857, I terribly missed my constant companions
hitherto--Milligan and Sheffield, who had both left, and, except perhaps
Forsyth Grant, I had no real friends left, though many pleasant
acquaintances, amongst whom I had an especial regard for Tom Brassey,
the simple, honest, hardworking son of the great contractor and
millionaire--afterwards my near neighbour in Sussex, whom I have watched
grow rapidly up from nothing to a peerage, with only boundless money and
common-sense as his aides-de-camp. The men I now saw most of were those
who called themselves the [Greek: dôdeka]--generally reputed "the fast
men" of the college, but a manly high-minded set of fellows. Most of my
time was spent in learning Italian with Count Saffi, who, a member of
the well-known Roman triumvirate, was at that time residing at Oxford
with his wife, _née_ Nina Crauford of Portincross.[114] I was great
friends with this remarkable man, of a much-tried and ever-patient
countenance, and afterwards went to visit him at Forli. I may mention
Godfrey Lushington (then of All Souls) as an acquaintance of whom I saw
much at this time, and whom I have always liked and respected
exceedingly, though our paths in life have not brought us often together
since. It was very difficult to distinguish him from his twinbrother
Vernon; indeed, it would have been impossible to know them apart, if
Vernon had not, fortunately for their friends, shot off some of his
fingers.

In March (1857) I was proud to receive my aunt, Mrs. Stanley, with all
her children, Mrs. Grote, and several others, at a luncheon in my rooms
in honour of Arthur Stanley's inaugural lecture as Professor of
Ecclesiastical History, in which capacity his lectures, as indeed all
else concerning him, were subjects of the greatest interest to me, my
affection for him being that of a devoted younger brother.

I was enchanted with Mrs. Grote, whom De Tocqueville pronounced "the
cleverest woman of his acquaintance," though her exterior--with a short
waist, brown mantle of stamped velvet, and huge bonnet, full of
fullblown red roses--was certainly not captivating. Sydney Smith always
called her "Grota," and said she was the origin of the word grotesque.
Mrs. Grote was celebrated for having never felt shy. She had a passion
for discordant colours, and had her petticoats always arranged to
display her feet and ankles, of which she was excessively proud. At her
own home of Burnham she would drive out with a man's hat and a
coachman's cloak of many capes. She had an invalid friend in that
neighbourhood, who had been very seriously ill, and was still intensely
weak. When Mrs. Grote proposed coming to take her for a drive, she was
pleased, but was horrified when she saw Mrs. Grote arrive in a very high
dogcart, herself driving it. With great pain and labour she climbed up
beside Mrs. Grote, and they set off. For some time she was too exhausted
to speak, then she said something almost in a whisper. "Good God! don't
speak so loud," said Mrs. Grote, "or you'll frighten the horse: if he
runs away, God only knows when he'll stop."

On the occasion of this visit at Oxford, Mrs. Grote sat with one leg
over the other, both high in the air, and talked for two hours, turning
with equal facility to Saffi on Italian Literature, Max Müller on Epic
Poetry, and Arthur on Ecclesiastical History, and then plunged into a
discourse on the best manure for turnips and the best way of forcing
Cotswold mutton, with an interlude first upon the "harmony of shadow"
in watercolour drawing, and then upon rat-hunts at Jemmy Shawe's--a low
public-house in Westminster. Upon all these subjects she was equally
vigorous, and gave all her decisions with the manner and tone of one
laying down the laws of Athens. She admired Arthur excessively, but was
a capital friend for him, because she was not afraid of laughing--as all
his own family were--at his morbid passion for impossible analogies. In
his second lecture Arthur made a capital allusion to Mr. Grote, while
his eyes were fixed upon the spouse of the historian, and when she heard
it, she thumped with both fists upon her knees, and exclaimed loudly,
"Good God! how good!" I did not often meet Mrs. Grote in after life, but
when I did, was always on very cordial terms with her. She was, to the
last, one of the most original women in England, shrewd, generous, and
excessively vain. I remember hearing that when she published her Life of
her husband, Mr. Murray was obliged to insist upon her suppressing one
sentence, indescribably comic to those who were familiar with her
uncouth aspect. It was--"When George Grote and I were young, we were
equally distinguished by the beauty of our persons and the vivacity of
our conversation!" Her own true vocation she always declared was that of
an opera-dancer.

Arthur Stanley made his home with me during this visit to Oxford, but
one day I dined with him at Oriel, where we had "Herodotus pudding"--a
dish peculiar to that college.

     JOURNAL.


     "_Lime, Easter Sunday, April 12, 1857._--I have been spending a
     happy fortnight at home. The burst of spring has been
     beautiful--such a golden carpet of primroses on the bank,
     interspersed with tufts of still more golden daffodils, hazels
     putting forth their fresh green, and birds singing. My sweet mother
     is more than usually patient under the trial of failure of
     sight--glad to be read to for hours, but contented to be left
     alone, only saying sometimes--'Now, darling, come and talk to me a
     little.' On going to church this morning, we found that poor
     Margaret Coleman, the carpenter's wife, had, as always on this day,
     covered Uncle Julius's grave with flowers. He is wonderfully missed
     by the people, though they seldom saw him except in church; for, as
     Mrs. Jasper Harmer said to me the other day, 'We didn't often see
     him, but then we knew he was always _studying_ us--now wasn't he?'"

A subject of intense interest after my return to Oxford was hearing
Thackeray deliver his lectures on the Georges. That which spoke of the
blindness of George III., with his glorious intonation, was
indescribably pathetic. It was a great delight to have George Sheffield
back and to resume our excursions, one of which was to see the May Cross
of Charlton-on-Ottmoor, on which I published a very feeble story in a
magazine; and another to Abingdon, where we had luncheon with the
Head-master of the Grammar School, who, as soon as it was over,
apologised for leaving us because he had got "to wallop so many boys."
All our visits to Abingdon ended in visits to the extraordinary old
brothers Smith, cobblers, who always sat cross-legged on a counter, and
always lived upon raw meat. We had heard of their possession of an
extraordinary old house which no one had entered, and we used to try to
persuade them to take us there; but when we asked one he said, "I would,
but my brother Tom is so eccentric, it would be as much as my life is
worth--I really couldn't;" and when we asked the other he said, "I
would, but you've no idea what an extraordinary man my brother John is;
he would never consent." However, one day we captured both the old men
together and over-persuaded them (no one ever could resist George), and
we went to the old house, a dismal tumble-down building, with shuttered
windows, outside the town. Inside it was a place of past ages--old
chairs and cupboards of the sixteenth century, old tapestries, and old
china, but all deep, deep in dust and dirt, which was never cleaned
away. It was like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty after the hundred
years' sleep. I have several pieces of china out of that old house
now--"Gris de Flandres ware."

In June I made a little tour, partly of visits, and from Mrs. Vaughan's
house at Leicester had an enchanting expedition to Bradgate, the ruined
home of Lady Jane Grey, in a glen full of oaks and beeches of immense
age.

In my final (History and Law) Schools I had passed with great ease, and
had for some time been residing at Oxford as a Bachelor, having taken my
degree. But as one friend after another departed, the interest of Oxford
had faded. I left it on the 13th of June 1857, and without regret.




VIII

FOREIGN LIFE

    "Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
      Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
    Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,
      I drew it in as simply as my breath."--ROSSETTI.

     "A good mental condition includes just as much culture as is
     necessary to the development of the faculties, but not any burden
     of erudition heavy enough to diminish (as erudition so often does)
     the promptitude or elasticity of the mind."--HAMERTON, _French and
     English_.

     "Who thinks the story is all told at twenty? Let them live on and
     try."--_Hitherto._


In June 1857 we left Lime for a long residence abroad. My mother's
doctors had declared that being thoroughly imbued with heat in a warm
climate was the only way in which her health could be permanently
benefited. It was a journey so long prepared for by historical studies,
that I imagine few people have gone to Italy with a more thorough
knowledge of what they would find there than we possessed.

We took our two old servants, Lea and John (Gidman), abroad with us, and
Charlotte Leycester accompanied us to Lucerne, where the family was
established for the hot summer months at the Pension Faller, which
stands at the end of a long green terrace behind the cathedral
cloisters, with a glorious view of Mont Pilate and all the range of
mountains on the other side of the lake. George Sheffield came out to
Lucerne to accompany me thence to Austria; but as he was very young at
the time, and his college examinations were not over, we had to gain his
parents' consent to this project by consenting to his having a tutor,
and chose for this purpose our common acquaintance Robinson Duckworth,
afterwards tutor to Prince Leopold. The arrangement did not answer,
though it must be confessed that we treated Duckworth very ill, and were
always playing him tricks. One night at Linz, for instance, we were
greatly annoyed by finding he would have to sleep in our room, which was
a very large one. He went out to listen to the band in the evening, and
we spent the time of his absence in drawing the third bed into the
middle of the room, and arranging it like a kind of catafalque, with
lighted candles at the four corners. We then went to bed ourselves and
pretended to be deep in slumber. When Duckworth came in, though two
people could just manage to move the heavy bed to its pedestal, it was
quite impossible for him alone to move it back again, and he was obliged
to go to bed upon it--and most absurd he looked in the morning. I do not
think he ever quite forgave us for this trick.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.


     "_Constance, July 24._--The Falls of Schaffhausen, with the dashing
     and roaring emerald water, were quite glorious. We came here from
     thence by steamer--the entrance to Constance very lovely, and the
     distant Alps lighted with the most delicate pink hues of sunset.
     The inn is close to the lake-pier and to the old Council-house. We
     have walked to the field at Bruhl where Huss was burnt, and since
     then Duckworth has been serenading the nuns of a Franciscan convent
     under their windows with airs out of 'Don Giovanni.'"


     "_July 26._--We were called at four, and my companions went out
     fishing, and returned dragging an immense pike which they had
     caught. Meanwhile I had seen the Minster and drawn the Kauf-haus,
     and was ready to leave with them at nine. We had a delicious
     journey across the still lake, Sheffield and I sitting quite down
     in the bow of the boat, where we had nothing before us but the soft
     blue lake and distant snows, and where we cut through air and water
     at the same time."


     "_July 29._--Yesterday we embarked at Donauwörth on the Danube
     steamer--crowded, filthy, and ceaselessly vibrating--the river the
     colour of pea-soup, with sandbanks on which we stuck every five
     minutes. There was no relief to the hideous monotony of the nine
     hours' voyage, the blackened swamps only changing into barren
     sandhills, on which a few ragged hops were vainly struggling for
     existence. But to-day in grand old Ratisbon has made up for
     yesterday's sufferings. Sheffield and I had great fun in making an
     expedition to the palace of the Prince of Thurm and Taxis. Numbers
     of people were out, and we discovered it was to greet the two young
     princes, who were to return that day from their travels: so we
     represented them, bowed to the right and left all through the
     street, and finally being set down at the palace, escaped into the
     garden and out the other way: what became of the real princes we
     have not heard. After all our audacity and impertinence in pushing
     through the Prince's courtyard and intruding upon his garden, we
     were rather touched by coming upon a placard inscribed--'The
     possessor of this garden, who has nothing nearer his heart than the
     promotion of universal pleasure, bids you--_welcome!_'"


     "_August 1._--In early morning we were on board the Danube steamer.
     Immediately after, three very common-looking men came on board by a
     boat, and descended at once to the cabin. Soon a neighbour
     whispered that one of them was the Archduke Albrecht, Governor of
     Hungary,--and behold, in a few minutes the three strangers emerged,
     dressed in gorgeous uniforms and glittering with orders.... All
     along the shore were crowds of bowing and curtseying people. At the
     hotel at Linz the Archduchess and her two daughters were waiting
     for the Archduke on the balcony of the inn; and their presence
     brought a splendid band under the window in the evening. This
     morning the whole family came on board, amid guns firing and crowds
     of people, to whom we thought the Archduchess would have bowed her
     head off. The presence of royalties gave us a better steamer, and
     before reaching Vienna the scenery of the Danube improved,
     especially at the rocks and castle of Dürnstein, where Richard
     Coeur-de-Lion was imprisoned."


     "_August 4._--Vienna would be delightful if it were not for the
     heat, but the grass is all burnt brown, and the trees almost black.
     Sheffield and I have driven to the old convent called
     Klosterneuburg, and in returning saw at Nussdorf the arrival of the
     Archduke Maximilian and his lovely wife,[115] radiant, unaffected,
     captivating all who saw her."


     "_August 6._--We have been to the country-palace of Laxenburg--a
     terrible drive in a sirocco, which made both Sheffield and me as
     ill as a sea-voyage. Laxenburg was the palace of Maria Theresa, and
     has an English park, only the grounds are full of gothic temples,
     &c., and an imitation dungeon fortress, with an imitation prisoner
     in it, who lifts his hands beseechingly and rattles his chains as
     you approach. Princess Charlotte was to have her first meeting with
     all the imperial family in the afternoon, and we waited for the
     public appearance of the royalties after dinner. We saw them emerge
     from the palace, and then ran down to the lake to see them embark.
     The imperial party arrived in carriages at the water's edge, and
     were set down under some old plane-trees, where their barges were
     ready, with rowers in sailors' dresses. First came the Empress,
     looking very lovely and charming, bowing her way to her own boat,
     which was distinguished by its blue cloth linings. Then came the
     Emperor, _running_ as hard as he could, to be in time to hand her
     in: then sweet-looking Princess Charlotte, with a radiantly happy
     and not at all a shy expression; the mother of the Empress;
     Princess Marguerite; the Queen of Saxony; and the Archduchess
     Albrecht. All these entered the imperial boat, which was followed
     by another with three old countesses, and then all the court ladies
     in other boats. The Emperor and the Archdukes Leopold and Heinrich
     rowed themselves. There could hardly be a prettier scene--no crowd,
     no staring, and sunset on the water as the little fleet glided in
     among the cypress-covered islets. The last I saw of them was one of
     the princesses seizing hold of the old countesses' boat, and
     rocking it violently to give them a good fright.

     "Throughout our travels we have perpetually fallen in with two
     solitary ladies. Yesterday one of them said to Duckworth, 'I beg
     your pardon, perhaps I ought not to ask, but the melancholy
     gentleman (meaning me) must have had a very severe disappointment;
     was it recent?--he seems to take on very much. Well, my idea is one
     must always be crossed three times before love runs smooth.'
     Duckworth asked where they were going. 'Oh, where is it?' said the
     younger lady; 'I quite forget the name of the place; something very
     long, I know.'--'Oh, Constantinople, my dear, that's the name, and
     then we go to a place they call Smyrna, and then to Algeria; for
     you see we've been to Rome and Naples, and if you don't mind
     travelling, it's just the same thing whether you go to one place or
     another.'"


     "_Aussee in Styria, August 8._--The last thing Sheffield and I did
     together was to go to the Capuchin vault, where all the sovereigns
     of the House of Hapsburg lie in gorgeous sarcophagi and coffins:
     amongst them Maria Theresa, and the husband by whose grave she came
     to pray every Friday in this dark vault. In one corner was the
     little Archduchess Sophia, only dead two months, her coffin heaped
     still with the white garlands deposited by her father and mother,
     who--are out of mourning for her.

     "After parting with my companions, I went by train to Modling, and
     drove through the Wienerwald to Heiligenkreutz,[116] a gigantic
     monastery on the edge of a perfectly desolate moor, but in itself
     magnificent, with a quadrangle larger than 'Tom Quad' at Oxford.
     Daylight was waning, and I hastened to get the Sacristan to show me
     the 'Heilige Partikel,' which is kept in a venerable old leather
     case, and set in a huge golden cross covered with jewels. There are
     beautiful cloisters, and several chapels of the fourteenth
     century, and in one of them a fountain, so large that its sound is
     that of a waterfall. From Baden I crossed the Simmering pass to
     Bruck-an-der-Mur. Here all the travellers who descended from the
     train drew diligence tickets by turns, and as mine was only No. 11,
     I came in for the rickety board by the driver! What a road it was,
     in which the heavy wheels alternately sank into quagmires of deep
     mud, or jolted over the piles of stones which were thrown down to
     fill them up. The dank marshy plain was covered with driving white
     fog, from which one could only take refuge in the fumes of bad
     tobacco around one.

     "When at length it was my turn to change, it was into an old car
     with leathern curtains, and horses so feeble that the passengers
     were obliged to get out and plod through the thick mud at every
     incline. I had a German companion, who smoked all night in my face.

     "All through the night a succession of these cars was kept up, the
     company being turned out every two hours in some filthy village
     street, while another wretched old carriage was searched for and
     brought out. The taverns at which we stopped were most miserable.
     In the only one I entered the old landlady came out in her
     nightgown, and seizing my straw hat from my head, placed it on the
     top of her own top-knot, exclaiming, 'Schöne Strohhut.' Not till
     midday did we arrive here, and then found the inn full and the
     hills shrouded in mist--the 'Mountains of the Dead,' as the
     surroundings of this lonely lake are called, appalling in their
     white winding-sheets."


     "_Salzburg, August 14._--During my first days in the Salzkammergut,
     I might have been inside a kitchen boiler, so thick and white was
     the steam. But the landlord at Ischl said it was not likely to
     clear, and, wearied of waiting and longing to see _something_, I
     went off to the Traunsee, where, to my surprise, the mist suddenly
     gave way, the sun appeared, and in a few minutes the heavy veil
     rolled back, and the beautiful blue lake and high forest-clad
     mountains were disclosed as if by magic. In a few minutes after
     shivering, we were all complaining of heat again, and then
     luxuriating in the cool breeze as we steamed slowly under the great
     purple Traunstein. At Gmünden[117] we dined at the little inn,
     served by ladies in gold helmets, with great silver chains round
     their necks. I drove on to the fall in an _Einspanner_. It is a
     miniature Schaffhausen, and the colour of the water most beautiful.
     On the following day an old Colonel Woodruffe and his wife took me
     with them to Hallstadt, where we were rowed by women in crimson
     petticoats down the lovely lake to the village. The scenery is
     magnificent--jagged mountains melting into beautiful chestnut woods
     which reach to the water's edge, and at the end of the lake the
     little town, with its picturesque wooden houses and beautiful
     gothic chapel. The population consists of nine hundred Roman
     Catholics and nine hundred Protestants, who live together most
     amicably. No vehicle can enter the town, for the streets are narrow
     gullies, with staircases from one house to another.

     "My new friends left me at Hallstadt, and early next morning I was
     up, and in the forest, to see the Wildbach waterfall, an exquisite
     walk, through green glades carpeted with cyclamen and columbines,
     with great masses of moss-grown rock tossed about amongst the
     trees, and high mountains rising all around. The goats were just
     getting up and coming out of their sheds, ringing their little
     bells as they skipped about amongst the rocks, and the flowers were
     all glistening with dew--no human being moving, except the
     goatherds directing their flocks up the mountain paths. I reached
     the waterfall, in its wild amphitheatre of rock, before the sun,
     and saw the first rolling away of the morning mist, and the clear
     mountain torrent foaming forth in its place; while far beyond was
     the great snowy Dachstein.

     "At nine, a little boat took me to the Gosauswang at the other end
     of the lake, and while I was waiting there for an _Einspanner_,
     four travellers came up, one of whom--a pleasant-looking
     clergyman--introduced himself as Mr. Clements, the Rector of Upton
     St. Leonards, and informed me that his companions were his brother,
     just returned from Australia, and the two young Akers of Prinknash.

     "As soon as they were gone off in their boat, my little carriage
     came, and I had a glorious drive, up the banks of the torrent
     Gosau, to open mountain pastures, backed by a magnificent range of
     bare rocky peaks. There is only a footpath from the 'Schmidt' to
     the Vorder See, set in the loveliest of forests, and backed by
     noble rugged peaks and snowy glaciers. The colour of the lake was
     indescribable, but oftenest like a rainbow seen through a
     prism--the purple, green, and clear blue melting into each other,
     and the whole transparent as crystal, showing all the bright stones
     and pebbles in the immense depths and reflecting all the snow-peaks
     beyond. When I returned to the inn, the Clements' party had
     arrived, and finding they were going the same way, I engaged to
     travel with them to Innsbruck.

     "On Friday we all went again to the Vorder See, and then, taking a
     woodcutter as guide, scrambled on for two hours through woods and
     rocks to the Hinter See,[118] which is like a turquoise set in the
     mountains.

     "We returned together to Ischl, and left in a carriage next day. At
     the end of St. Wolfgang Lake we engaged a boat and crossed to the
     curious old gothic church which contains the shrine of St.
     Wolfgang, and his rocky bed projecting through the pavement of a
     chapel, upon which the peasants throw kreutzers through a grating.
     We did not arrive at Salzburg till dark. What a fine old town it
     is!--but what most interested me was seeing here an old lady in
     black walking to church with a lady behind her. It was the Kaiserin
     Caroline, widow of the Emperor Francis I., grand-daughter-in-law of
     Maria Theresa, niece of Marie Antoinette, sister-in-law of Marie
     Louise!"


     "_Reichenhall, August 26._--From Salzburg we visited the mines of
     Hallein, into which we descended in full miner's costume--thick
     white trousers, smock-frock, cap, and a leathern apron _behind_.
     The guide gave us each a light, and marshalled us in single file
     through the narrow dark passages. On the summit of the first
     descent, we were all made to sit down upon our leathern aprons, to
     put our legs round each others' heads, hold a rope, and then slide
     off like a train into the dark abyss--alarming at first, and then
     very amusing. After three slides, we reached a black lake like the
     Styx, with lamps glittering like stars on faraway rocks. Here a
     boat moved by invisible hands came soundlessly gliding towards us:
     we stepped in, and in death-like silence, without oars or rowers,
     floated across the ghastly waters. On the opposite bank a wooden
     horse was waiting, on which we were made to sit, each behind the
     other, and, when we were mounted, rushed away with the speed of a
     whirlwind through the dark unearthly passages. At last, what looked
     like a twinkling star appeared in the distance, and it gradually
     increased till we emerged in open daylight. It is a most
     extraordinary expedition, but as the salt is all black, there is no
     beauty. We went on to Berchtesgaden and the Königsee and Obersee,
     but the wet weather only cleared enough to show us the beauties of
     the myrtle-green water."

It was a most wearisome journey then--two days of twelve hours in a
carriage--to Innsbruck, where I parted with my companions. Hence a
terrible long diligence journey of seventeen hours brought me to Botzen.
The driver beguiled the way by telling me the history of his life--how
when quite young he had given up smoking, and constantly put by all the
money he should have spent on tobacco, in the hope of using it in
revisiting Naples and the Island of Ischia, where he had been in boyhood
as a soldier; but that two years before these designs had been cut
short, because one day, when he returned with his diligence from Verona,
he found his house burnt to the ground, and nothing saved except six
silver spoons which his wife had carried off in her apron.

From Botzen I went to Meran and Trafoi, whence I walked across the
Stelvio to the Baths of Bormio; but this part of the tour was not
enjoyable, as my sufferings were always so great from bad weather, and
hunger owing to want of money. Still less pleasant were the immense
journeys afterwards by Finstermuntz and the Great Arlberg, along
horrible roads and in wretched diligences, which, in these days of
luxurious railway travelling, we should think perfectly unendurable. At
Wesen, on the Lake of Wallenstadt, I had the happiest of meetings with
my dear mother and her old servants, and vividly does the impression
come back to me of the luxurious sense of rest in the first evening, and
of freedom from discomfort, privation, and want.

[Illustration: LA MADONNA DEL SASSO, LOCARNO.[119]]

We crossed the Bernardino to Locarno, where we were joined by mother's
widowed niece, Mrs. Charles Stanley, and by her friend Miss Cole. There
were many circumstances which made me see the whole of North Italy
through jaundiced eyes at this time, so that Milan, Venice, and even
beautiful Verona, became more associated in my mind with mental and
bodily fatigue than with any pleasure. One of the happiest
recollections which comes back to me is an excursion alone with my sweet
mother to the old deserted convent of Chiaravalle near Milan, and the
grave of the enthusiast Wilhelmina. At Venice we had much pleasure in
sight-seeing with Miss Louisa Cole, and her cousins Mr. and Miss Warre,
the latter of whom afterwards married Froude the historian.

At Padua we engaged two _vetturino_ carriages, in one of which our
companions travelled, and in the other my mother and I with our two old
servants. The first day's journey, through the rich plain of the vintage
in October, was very pleasant, meeting the immense wains and waggons
laden with grapes, and the merry peasants, who delighted to give us
large ripe bunches as we passed. But we had a perilous passage of the
swollen Po, on which our carriage was embarked in a large boat, towed
with ropes by numbers of men in smaller boats. In our long journey in
our roomy excellent carriage--our home for about three weeks--we were
provided with a perfect library of books, for my mother was quite of the
opinion of Montaigne when he said, "Je ne voyage sans livres, n'y en
paix, n'y en guerre. C'est la meilleure munition j'aye trouvé à cet
humain voyage." So we studied the whole of Arnold, Gibbon, Ranke, and
Milman at this time. The slower the mode of travel, the greater its
variety. In the middle of the day the _vetturini_ rested often in some
picturesque town, where there were churches, convents, and pictures to
sketch or visit; sometimes in quiet country inns, near which we wandered
in country lanes, and collected the wild-flowers of the district. How
vividly the recollections of these quiet weeks come back to me--of the
charm of our studies and the weekly examination upon them: of the novel
which my mother and I used afterwards to tell each other alternately, in
which the good characters lived at a place called "Holmhurst," but
somehow contrived to have always some link with the scenes through which
we were travelling: of our early luncheon of bread and preserved
apricots: of our arrival in the evenings at rooms which had always a
wholesome barn-like smell, from the fresh straw under the carpets: of
the children, who scampered along by the sides of the carriage calling
out "Tà-tà"--as short for Carità: of my mother screaming at Ferrara as
she ran away from a white spectral figure, with eyes gleaming out of
holes in a peaked hood and rattling a money-box--a figure to which we
became well accustomed afterwards as a _Frate della Misericordia_: of
the great castle of Ferrara, whose picturesque outlines seemed so
strangely familiar till I recollected where I had seen them--at the
bottom of willow-patterned washing-basins.

[Illustration: IN S. APOLLINARE NUOVO, RAVENNA.[120]]

Ravenna was at this time reached by a wearisome journey through marshy
flats overgrown by a dark-berried plant much used in the making of dye:
we afterwards imported it to Hurstmonceaux. The Stanleys, whom we seldom
contradicted, had greatly opposed our going thither, so that our journey
to Ravenna had the charm of eating forbidden fruit; but I was able to
silence their angry reproaches afterwards for having "taken my mother
into so unhealthy a climate" by finding in Gibbon the remark that
Ravenna, though situated in the midst of foetid marshes, possesses one
of the most salubrious climates in Italy! My mother was even more
enchanted with the wonderful old city than myself, especially with the
peerage of martyrs in the long palm-bearing procession in the mosaics of
S. Apollinare Nuovo, and with the exquisite and ever-varied loveliness
of the Pineta.

Deeply interesting was the historical journey afterwards along the
shores of the Adriatic--the sunset on the Metaurus--the proud ruins of
Roman Rimini, where also we went to see the soft lustrous picture known
as "the winking Virgin," and accidentally met the father of the painter
in the church--the Rubicon and Pesaro; Sinigaglia and Fano; and the
exquisitely beautiful approach to Ancona, with the town climbing up the
steep headland crowned by the cathedral, and the blue sea covered with
shipping. In many ways Ancona has always seemed to me more beautiful
than Naples. I have seen much of all these towns since, but there is
nothing now like the halcyon days of _vetturino_ travelling, with the
abundant time for seeing and digesting everything, and the quiet regular
progression, without fuss or fatigue, or anything to mar mental
impressions.

From Ancona we went to Loreto, a lovely drive then, through ranges of
hills, sweeping one behind another like files of an advancing army, and
crested sometimes by the picturesque roofs, domes, and towers of an old
town; sometimes clothed to their summits with olives and pines,
vineyards and mulberry-gardens. Here and there a decayed villa stood by
the roadside in its overgrown garden, huge aloes and tall cypresses
rising from its tangled grass and periwinkles. Very lovely was the
ascent to Osimo, thronged with the students of the old university town
in their black cloaks, amongst whom was the Cardinal-bishop, going for a
walk in crimson stockings, sash, and gloves, with two footmen in cocked
hats strutting behind him.

[Illustration: LORETO.[121]]

Nothing can be grander than the situation of Loreto, and the views from
it over the surrounding country--the walls overlooking a wide sea-view
as well. A building like a huge castle, with massive semicircular
towers, dominates the town, and is the fortress which guards the holy of
holies--the Santa Casa. We were called at five to go to the church. It
was still pitch dark, but many pilgrims had already arrived, and waited
with us in a corridor till the doors were opened. The scene inside was
most singular--the huge expanse quite dark, except where a blaze of
light under the dome illuminated the marble casing of the Santa Casa, or
where a solitary lamp permitted a picture or an image to loom out of
the chaos. The great mass of pilgrims knelt together before the shrine,
but here and there a desolate figure, with arms outstretched in
agonising prayer, threw a long weird shadow down the pavement of the
nave, while others were crawling on hands and knees round the side walls
of the house, occasionally licking up the sacred dust with their
tongues, which left a bloody trail upon the floor. At either door of the
House, the lamplight flashed upon the drawn sword of a soldier, keeping
guard to prevent too many people pressing in together, as they
ceaselessly passed in single file upon their knees, to gaze for a few
seconds upon the rugged walls of unplastered brick, blackened with soot,
which they believed to be the veritable walls of the cottage at
Nazareth. Here, in strange contrast, the negress statue, attributed to
St. Luke, gleams in a mass of diamonds. At the west end of the House was
the window by which the angel entered! The collection of jewels and
robes in the sacristy was enormous, though the priests lamented bitterly
to us over the ravages of the Revolution, and that now the Virgin had
only wardrobe sufficient to allow of her changing her dress _once_
instead of three times every day of the year.

[Illustration: MACERATA.[122]]

We travelled afterwards through a country seldom visited now--by
hill-set Macerata and Recanati, and picturesque Tolentino with its
relics of S. Nicolas, into the central Apennines, where Sabbatarianism
doomed us to spend a most miserable Sunday at the unspeakably wretched
inn of La Muccia. From Foligno we made an excursion to Assisi, then
filled with troops of stately Franciscan monks--all "_possidenti_;" and
by the Clitumnus temple, Spoleto, and Narni to Terni. At Civita
Castellana the famous robber chief Gesparoni was imprisoned at this
time, this year being the thirty-third of his imprisonment. Miss Cole
and I obtained an order to visit him and his band, tall gaunt forms in a
large room in the castle. The chieftain had a long white beard: we
bought a little knitted cap of his workmanship. There was a ghastly
sensation in being alone for a few minutes with this gang of men, who
had all been murderers, and mostly murderers of many.

Breathlessly interesting was the first approach to Rome--the
characteristic scenery of the Campagna, with its tufa quarries, and its
crumbling towers and tombs rising amidst the withered thistles and
asphodels; its strange herds of buffaloes; then the faint grey dome
rising over the low hills, and the unspoken knowledge about it, which
was almost too much for words; lastly, the miserable suburb and the
great Piazza del Popolo.

I never shall forget the ecstasy of awaking the next morning in the
Hôtel d'Angleterre, and feeling that the longed-for desire of many years
was realised. We engaged apartments in the upper floor of the Palazzo
Lovati in the Piazza del Popolo--cold dreary rooms enough, but from my
mother's bedroom there was a lovely view to St. Peter's across the
meadows of S. Angelo.

[Illustration: CIVITA CASTELLANA.[123]]

Naturally one of my first visits was to Mrs. Hare and my sister, whom I
found established in the first floor of the Palazzo Parisani, which
occupies two sides of the little Piazza S. Claudio, a dismal little
square, but which my sister regarded with idolatry, asserting that there
was no house half so delightful as the Palazzo Parisani, no view which
could be compared in interest to that of the Piazza S. Claudio. Making
acquaintance with my sister at this time was to me like the perpetual
reading of an engrossing romance, for nobody ever was more amusing, no
one ever had more power of throwing an interest into the commonest
things of life. She did not colour her descriptions, but she saw life
through a prism, and imparted its rays to others. Her manner, her dress,
all her surroundings were poetical. If one went to dine with her, the
dinner was much the same as we had at home, but some picturesquely hung
grapes, or a stalk of _finocchio_, or some half-opened pomegranates,
gave the table an _air_ which made it all seem quite different.

"Italima" liked my coming and going, and was very angry if I did not
come, though she never professed any maternal affection for me. I often
found myself in difficulties between my two mothers. My adopted mother
would sometimes take an alarm that I was going too often to Italima, and
would demand my presence just on the particular occasion when "Italima"
had counted upon it; in which case I always gave way to her. And indeed,
as a rule, I always spent _all_ my time with my mother, except about two
evenings in the week, when I went to Italima and the Palazzo Parisani.
On rare occasions, also, I went out "into the world" with Italima and
my sister, to balls at the Palazzo Borghese, and at the Palazzo di
Spagna, where old Queen Christina of Spain was then living, an
interesting historic figure to me as the sister of the Duchesse de Berri
and great-niece of Marie Antoinette. She was very hospitable, and her
parties, approached through an avenue of silver candelabra representing
palm-trees--spoils from the Spanish convents--were exceedingly
magnificent. At her suppers on Fridays, one side of the room was laid
for "_maigre_," the other for "_gras_," and when the doors were opened,
there was a general scrimmage to reach the delicious viands on the
"_maigre_" table. After each of her receptions, it was the rule that
five cards should be left by each guest--for herself, for her husband
the Duc de Rianzares (who had been a common soldier), for her master of
the household, for her equerry, and for her lady-in-waiting. The
principal balls were those given by Princess Borghese, at which many
cardinals were present, but would sit down to whist in a room apart from
the dancers. A great feature of the Borghese parties at this time was
the Princess-mother, who always sat in a conspicuous place in the
anteroom, and to whom all the guests were expected to pay their court.
By birth she was Adèle de la Rochefoucauld, and she was the mother of
three princes--Marc-Antonio Borghese, Aldobrandini, and Salviati. She
was "sage, souple, et avide des biens," as Voltaire says of Mazarin, and
it was she who--probably most unjustly--had then the reputation of
having poisoned the beautiful Princess Guendolina, first wife of
Marc-Antonio, with all her sons, in order that her own son might marry
her niece, Thérèse[124] de la Rochefoucauld, which he afterwards did. A
conspicuous figure was the beautiful young Princess del Drago, one of
the daughters of Queen Christina's second marriage, whose husband had a
most fiendish face. I often saw the blind Duke of Sermoneta, celebrated
for his knowledge of Dante, and his witty canonical brother, Don Filippo
Caiëtani, generally known as "Don Pippo." The then Duchess of Sermoneta
was "Margherita," _née_ Miss Knight, a most ghastly and solemn woman to
outsiders, but much beloved by those who knew her intimately.

The Prince of Piombino, who lived in exile or seclusion after the change
of government in Rome, was then flourishing in his immense palace in the
Corso, and his children, then young married people, were the life of
all the parties. Of these, Rudolfo, Duke of Sora, had married the
saint-like Agnese, only surviving child of Donna Guendolina Borghese,
who was supposed only by absence to have escaped the fate of her mother
and brothers. Of his sisters, Donna Carolina was the clever, brilliant
Princess Pallavicini, and Donna Giulia had married the Duke of Fiano,
who lived in the neighbouring palace, and by marrying her had broken the
heart of Mademoiselle Judith Falconnet.[125]

One of the Romans whom I saw most frequently was the Princess Santa
Croce, living in the old historical palace which has the reputation of
being the only haunted house in Rome, where two statues of cardinals
come down from their pedestals and rattle their marble trains up and
down the long galleries. The Princess was one of the daughters of Mr.
Scully in Ireland. He had three, of whom two were beautiful, clever, and
brilliant, but the third was uninteresting. The two elder Miss Scullys
went out into the world, and were greatly admired and much made of; but
the youngest stayed at home like Cinderella, and was never known at all
except as "the Miss Scullys' younger sister." Many people wished to
marry the elder Miss Scullys; but they said "No, for we have a
presentiment that we are to marry dukes, and therefore we will wait."
But no dukes came forward, and at length old Mr. Scully died, leaving
his daughters three great fortunes; and being Roman Catholics, without
any particular call or claim, they determined to visit Rome before they
settled in life. They took many introductions with them, and on their
arrival the good looks, cleverness, and wealth of the elder sisters
created quite a sensation; but people asked them, Roman-fashion, "what
was their vocation," for in Rome all Catholic ladies are expected to
have decided this. Then they said they had never thought of it, and they
went to spend a week in the convent of the Trinità de' Monti to consider
it. When the day came on which the three Miss Scullys were to declare
their vocation, all Rome was interested, and the "great world" thronged
the parlours of the Trinità de' Monti to hear it; but the expectants
were petrified when the two elder Miss Scullys came out, for they had
found their vocation, and it was a convent! No doubt whatever was felt
about the youngest--"of course she would follow her sisters." But no;
she had found her vocation, and it was marriage! and the youngest Miss
Scully, additionally enriched by half the fortunes of her two elder
sisters, went out into the world, and in three weeks she had accepted
the great Roman Prince of Santa Croce, who claims descent from Valerius
Publicola. I often used to watch with interest the Princess Santa Croce,
who went to confess and pray at the convent of the Villa Lante (which
Roman princesses are wont to frequent), for the two portresses who
opened the doors were her two elder sisters, the proud Miss Scullys: it
was the story of Cinderella in real life. I was at Rome years afterwards
(1864) when the Princess Santa Croce died. All the princesses lie in
state after death, but by old custom, the higher their rank, the lower
they must lie, and the Princess Santa Croce was of such excessively high
rank, that she lay upon the bare boards.

I think that it was towards the middle of our stay in Rome that I
received a summons to a private audience of Pius IX. Italima and my
sister went with me. We went in evening dress to the Vatican in the
middle of the day, and were shown into a gallery where a number of
Monsignori were standing. Amongst them was Monsignore Talbot, who asked
me if I did not feel very much agitated. I said "No," and he answered,
"But every one must be agitated when they are about to stand in the
presence of the Vicar of Christ"--and at that moment he drew aside a
portière, and we found ourselves at one end of a long hall, at the other
end of which a sturdy figure with a beneficent face, in what looked like
a white dressing-gown, was standing leaning his hand upon a table: it
was Pius IX. We had been told beforehand that, as we had asked for a
_private_ audience, we must perform all the genuflections, three at the
doorway, three in the middle of the room, and three at the feet of the
Pope, and the same in returning; and Italima had declared that the
thought of this made her so nervous that we must do all the talking. But
Italima had often been to the Pope before, and she was so active and
agile, that by the time my sister and I got up from the third
genuflection in the doorway, she was already curvetting in the centre of
the hall, and we heard the beautiful voice of the Pope, like a silver
bell, say, "E come sta la figlia mia--e come sta la cara figlia mia,"
and by the time we were in the middle of the apartment she was already
at the feet of the Pope. Eventually my sister and I arrived, and flung
ourselves down, one on each side of Italima, at the feet of the Pope,
who gave us his ring to kiss, and his foot, or rather a great raised
gold cross upon his white slipper. "E questa la figlia?" he said,
pointing to my sister. "Si, Sua Santità," said Italima. "Ed e questo il
figlio?" he said, turning to me. "Si, Sua Santità," said Italima. Then
my sister, who thought it was a golden opportunity which she would never
have again, and which was not to be lost, broke through all the rules of
etiquette, and called out from the other side of the daïs, clasping her
hands, "Ma, Sua Santità, il mio fratello e stato Protestant."

Then the Pope turned to me and spoke of the great privilege and blessing
of being a Catholic, but said that from what he had heard of me he felt
that I did not deserve that privilege, and that therefore he could not
wish that I should enjoy its blessings. He said much more, and then
that, before I left, I should make him a "piccolo piccolino promessino"
(the least little bit of a promise in the world), and that I should
remember all my life that I had made it at the feet of Pius IX. I said
that I should wish to do whatever Sua Santità desired, but that before I
engaged to make a promise I should like to know what the promise was to
be about. "Oh," said the Pope, smiling, "it is nothing so very
difficult; it is only something which a priest in your own Church might
ask: it is that you will say the Lord's Prayer every morning and
evening." "Yes," I replied, "I shall be delighted to make Sua Santità
the promise; but perhaps Sua Santità is not aware that the practice is
not unusual in the Church of England." Then, almost severely for one so
gentle, the Pope said, "You seem to think the promise a light one; I
think it a very serious one; in fact, I think it so serious, that I will
only ask you to promise to use one petition--'Fiat voluntas tua, O Deus,
in terris ut in coelo,' and remember that you have promised that at
the feet of Pius IX." Then he blended his farewell very touchingly into
a beautiful prayer and blessing; he blessed the things--rosaries,
&c.--which my sister had brought with her; he again gave us his ring and
the cross on his foot to kiss, and while he rang the little bell at his
side, we found our way out backwards--quite a geometrical problem with
nine genuflections to be made on the way.

I was often in the convent of the Trinità when I was at Rome in 1857,
for visitors are allowed there at certain hours, and a great friend of
my sister's, Adèle, Madame Davidoff, was then in the convent, having
been sent to Rome on an especial mission to the Pope on matters
connected with the French convents of the Sacré Coeur. Madame Davidoff
("Madame" only "in religion," as "a spouse of Christ") was daughter of
the Maréchale Sebastiani, the stepmother of the murdered Duchesse de
Praslin, and was grand-daughter of the Duchesse de Grammont, who founded
the Sacré Coeur. Her own life had been very romantic. One winter there
was a very handsome young Count Schouvaloff in Rome, whom my sister knew
very well. She had been one day in the convent, and Madame Davidoff had
accompanied her to the outer door, and was standing engrossed with last
words, leaning against the green baize door leading into the church.
Suddenly a man appeared, coming through the inner door of the convent,
evidently from visiting the Abbess. "Mais c'est le Comte Schouvaloff!"
said Madame Davidoff to my sister, and pushing the baize door behind
her, suddenly disappeared into the church, while Schouvaloff, seeing her
suddenly vanish, rushed forward to my sister exclaiming, "Oh, c'est
elle--c'est elle! Oh, mon Adèle, mon Adèle!" He had been on the eve of
marriage with her, when she had thought herself suddenly seized by a
conventual vocation, had taken the veil, and he had never seen her
since. The next day Count Schouvaloff left Rome. He went into retreat
for some time at the Certosa of Pavia, where total silence is the rule
of daily life. He took orders, and in a few years, having a wonderful
gift for preaching, was sent on a mission to Paris; but the shock of
returning to the scenes of his old life was too much for him, and in a
few days after reaching Paris he died.

When I knew Madame Davidoff, she still possessed an extraordinary charm
of conversation and manner, and the most exuberant eloquence of any
person I have ever seen. Her one object was conversion to the Roman
Catholic faith, and into that she threw all her energies, all her charm
and wit, and even her affections. Her memory was as prodigious as that
of Macaulay, and she knew all the controversial portions of the great
Catholic writers by heart. What was more extraordinary still was, that
having many "cases" going on at the same time (for people used to go to
visit her and sit round her anteroom like patients at a fashionable
dentist's), she never confounded one with another in her mind, never
lost time, and always went on exactly where she left off. But her love
of ruling made Madame Davidoff less popular within the walls of her
convent than with the outside world; and after her return to Paris, the
means which she often took to attain the ends to which she devoted her
life brought such trouble to the convent of the Sacré Coeur, that the
nuns refused to keep her amongst them, and she afterwards lived in the
world, giving frequent anxiety to her sister, the Marquise de Gabriac,
and to Lord Tankerville and Lady Malmesbury, her cousins. During my
first visit at Rome, I saw Madame Davidoff often, and, after a courteous
expression of regret that I was sure to be eternally damned, she would
do her best to convert me. I believe my dear mother underwent great
qualms on my visits to her. But her religious unscrupulousness soon
alienated me, and I had a final rupture with her upon her urging me to
become a Roman Catholic secretly, and to conceal it from my adopted
mother as long as she lived. Other Roman Catholics who made a vehement
effort for my perversion were Monsignor Talbot and Monsignor Howard, the
latter of whom I had known as a very handsome dashing young guardsman a
few years before, but who afterwards became a Cardinal. There was a
most ridiculous scene when they came to the Palazzo Lovati, where
Monsignor Howard made so violent a harangue against Protestantism that
Monsignor Talbot was obliged to apologise for him. Roman Catholics with
whom we were intimate from circumstances were the ex-Jew Mr. Goldsmid
and his wife. Mr. Goldsmid had been converted by the Père Ratisbon,
whose own conversion was attributed partially to the image of the Virgin
in the Church of Andrea delle Fratte, and partly to the prayers of M. de
la Ferronays, which are believed to have endowed the image with speech.

A really excellent Roman Catholic priest of whom I saw much was
Monsignor Pellerin, Bishop in Cochin-China. His conversation was liberal
and beautiful, and he had the simplicity of a mediæval saint. He was at
that time about to return to China, with a great probability of
martyrdom. On his last day in Rome he celebrated mass in the Catacombs
in the Chapel of Santa Cecilia, a most touching sight even to those who
were not of his faith. On taking leave, he gave me a small silver
crucifix, which I treasured for a long time, then it disappeared: I
always thought that Lea made away with it, in the fear that it might
make me a Roman Catholic. I heard of the close of Monsignor Pellerin's
self-sacrificing life in China several years later.

Amongst the English we had many pleasant friends, especially the George
Cavendishes and the Greene Wilkinsons, who had a great fortune left to
them for opening a pew-door to an old gentleman: it used to be said that
they ought to take "Pro Pudor" as their motto.

But no notice of our familiar society at Rome can be complete which does
not speak of "Auntie"--Miss Paul--the sister of "Italima," who lived her
own life apart in two rooms in a corner of the Parisani Palace, where
she saw and observed everything, and was very ready to make her quaint
original remarks upon what she had observed when she joined the rest of
the family, which was only in the evenings. I never saw "Auntie"
otherwise than desperately busy, sometimes with immense rolls of
embroidery, sometimes with charcoal-drawing, often with extraordinary
and most incomprehensible schemes for recovering the very large fortune
she had once possessed, and which she had lost in "the Paul Bankruptcy."
Italima was not at all kind to her, but this did not affect her in the
least: she went her own way, and when she was most soundly abused, it
only seemed to amuse her. My sister she absolutely adored, and then and
afterwards used to think it perfect happiness to sit and watch her for
hours, not being able to hear a word she said on account of her
deafness. I was exceedingly fond of "Auntie," and used to delight to
escape from the ungenial atmosphere of Italima's great drawing-room to
the busy little den in the corner of the palace, where I was always a
welcome visitor, and always found something amusing going on.

When we arrived in Rome, my sister Esmeralda was supposed to be
partially engaged to Don Emilio Rignano, eldest son of the Duke Massimo,
whom she had known well from childhood. Emilio at one time passed every
evening at the Palazzo Parisani; but during this winter Donna Teresa
Doria appeared in the world, and the old Duchess Massimo, who hated
Anglo-Roman alliances, by a clever scheme soon compelled her son to
consent to an engagement with her. Having learnt this, Esmeralda refused
ever to receive Emilio again. On the day before his marriage, however,
he found her in the Church of S. Claudio, and tried to make her marry
him at once by the easy Roman form, "Ecco il mio marito--Ecco la mia
moglie," but she would not listen to him. Then, when she drove to the
Villa Borghese, he pursued the carriage, regardless of the people in the
street. His hat fell off, but he would not stop: he seemed to have lost
his senses.

At a marriage in high life in Rome, the guests are often asked, not to
the actual ceremony, but to St. Peter's afterwards, to see the bridal
pair kiss the foot of the famous statue. When the Duke and Duchess
Rignano entered St. Peter's, they were piteous to see: they would not
look at each other. Old Lady Rolle was there, standing by the statue,
and when they came near she said audibly, "What a wicked scene! what a
sinful marriage!" And Emilio heard her, gave her one look of agony, and
flung himself down on the pavement in front of the statue.

As Duchess Rignano, Teresa Doria was wretched. We saw her afterwards at
Genoa, in the old Doria Palace, with her mother, whose death was
hastened by the sight of her daughter's woe and her own disappointed
ambition. Before long the Duchess Teresa was separated from her husband.
Her tragical fate was a good thing for her sisters: the second sister,
Guendolina, made a happy marriage with the Conte di Somaglia in the
Marchi, and the youngest, Olimpia, was allowed to remain long unmarried.
This last daughter of the house of Doria was described by her mother as
so very small when she was born, that they swathed her in flannel and
laid her in the sun, in the hope that it would make her grow like a
plant. I was one day at the house of Mrs. de Selby, cousin of Princess
Doria, when her servant threw open the door and announced in a
stentorian voice, _allo Romano_--"La sua Eccellenza l'illustrissima
Principessina la Donna Olimpia di Doria,"--and there marched in a
stately little maiden of eight years old!

Cardinal Antonelli obtained an order for my sister and me to visit the
Madre Makrina, the sole survivor of the Polish nuns who were martyred
for their faith in the terrible persecution at Minsk. The nuns were
starved, flogged to death, buried alive, subjected to the most horrible
cruelties. Three escaped and reached Vienna, where two of them
disappeared and never were heard of again. After a series of
unparalleled adventures and escapes, the Abbess, the Madre Makrina,
arrived in Rome. Pope Gregory XVI. received her kindly, but made her
tell her whole story once for all in the presence of sixty witnesses,
who all wrote it down at once to ensure accuracy, and then he shut her
up, for fear she should be turned into a saint and object of pilgrimage.
It was not generally known what had become of the Madre Makrina--it was
a mystery in Rome--but we were able to trace her to the tiny convent of
the Monacche Polacche, which has since been destroyed by the Sardinian
Government, but which then stood near the Arch of Gallienus, nearly
opposite the Church of S. Eusebio. Italima wished to go with us, but we
could only obtain an order for two. When we rang the convent bell and
had shown our permit through the grille, a portress from within drew a
bolt which admitted us to a little room--den rather--barred with iron,
and with an iron cage at one side, behind which the portress, a very fat
old woman, reappearing, asked us many questions about ourselves, the
Pope, the state of Rome generally. At last we got tired and said, "But
shall we not soon see the Madre Makrina?"--"_Io_ sono la Madre Makrina,"
said the old woman, laughing. Then we said, "Oh, do tell us the story of
Minsk."--"No," she replied, "I promised at the feet of Pope Gregory XVI.
that I would never tell that story again: the story is written down,
you can read it, but I cannot break my promise."--"How dreadfully you
must have suffered at Minsk," we said. "Yes," she answered, and, going
backwards, she pulled up her petticoats and showed us her legs, which
were enormously fat, yet, a short distance above the ankles, were quite
eaten away, so that you could see the bones. "This," she said, "was
caused by the chains I wore at Minsk." The Madre Makrina, when we took
leave, said, "I am filled with wonder as to how you got admittance. I
have never seen any one before since I came here, and I do not suppose I
shall ever see any one again, so I will give you a little memorial of
your visit!" and she gave me a tiny crucifix and medal off her chain. I
have it still.

When the Emperor Nicholas came to Rome, he went to pay his respects to
the Pope, who received him very coldly. "You are a great king," said
Pius IX. "You are one of the mightiest monarchs in the world, and I am a
feeble old man, the servant of servants; but I cite you to meet me
again, to meet me before the throne of the Judge of the world, and to
answer _there_ for your treatment of the nuns at Minsk."

But of the gathering up of reminiscences of Roman life there is no end,
and, after all, my normal life was a quiet one with my mother, driving
with her, sketching with her, sitting with her in the studio of the
venerable Canevari,[126] who was doing her portrait, spending afternoons
with her in the Medici gardens, in the beautiful Villa Wolkonski, or in
the quiet valley near the grove and grotto of Egeria.

In the mornings we generally walked on the Pincio, and there often
noticed a family of father, mother, and daughter working on the terrace,
as the custom then was, at rope-making. One day a carriage passed and
re-passed with a solitary gentleman in it, who at last, as if he could
no longer restrain himself, jumped out and rushed towards the group
exclaiming, "C'est elle! c'est elle!" Then he became embarrassed,
retired, and eventually sent his servant to beg that the mother would
bring some of her cord to his house the next morning. She obeyed, and on
entering his apartment was struck at once by a portrait on the wall.
"That is the picture of my daughter," she said. "No," he replied, "that
is the portrait of my dead wife." He then proceeded to say that he must
from that time consider himself affianced to her daughter, for that in
her he seemed to see again his lost wife, and he insisted on
establishing the old woman and her daughter in comfortable lodgings,
and hiring all kinds of masters for the latter, saying that he would go
away and leave her to her studies, and that in a year he should come
back to marry her, which he did. In England this would be a very
extraordinary story, but it was not thought much of at Rome.

[Illustration: VALMONTONE.[127]]

I have always found that the interests of Rome have a more adhesive
power than those of any other place, and that it is more difficult to
detach oneself from them; and even in this first winter, which was the
least pleasant I have spent there--the conflicting requirements of my
two mothers causing no small difficulty--I was greatly distressed when
my mother, in her terror of Madame Davidoff and Co., decided that we
must leave for Naples on the twenty-third of February. What an
unpleasant companion I was as we drove out of the Porta S. Giovanni in
the large carriage of the _vetturino_ Constantino, with--after the
custom of that time--a black Spitz sitting on the luggage behind to
guard it, which he did most efficaciously. I remember with a mental
shiver how piteously the wind howled over the parched Campagna, and how
the ruins looked almost frightful in the drab light of a sunless winter
morning. But though the cold was most intense, for the season really
was too early for such a journey, our spirits were revived by the
extreme picturesqueness of the old towns we passed through. In
Valmontone, where the huge Doria palace is, we met a ghastly funeral, an
old woman carried by the Frati della Misericordia on an open bier, her
withered head nodding to and fro with the motion, and priests--as Lea
said--"gibbering before her." Here, from the broad deserted terrace in
front of the palace, we looked over the mountains, with mists drifting
across them in the wind; all was the essence of picturesqueness,
raggedness, ignorance, and filth. By Frosinone and Ceprano--then the
dreary scene of the Neapolitan custom-house--we reached San Germano,
where the inn was in those days most wretched. In our rooms we were not
only exposed to every wind that blew, but to the invasions of little
Marianina, Joannina, and Nicolina, who darted in every minute to look at
us, and to the hens, who walked about and laid their eggs under the bed
and table. Most intensely, however, did we delight in the beauties of
the glorious ascent to Monte Cassino and in all that we saw there.

How well I remember the extreme wretchedness of our mid-day
halting-places in the after journey to Capua, and wonder how the
pampered Italian travellers of the present day would put up with them;
but in those days we did not mind, and till it was time to go on again,
we drew the line of old crones sitting miserably against the inn-wall,
rocking themselves to and fro in their coloured hoods, and cursing us in
a chorus of--

    "Ah, vi pigli un accidente
    Voi che non date niente,"

if we did not give them anything.

[Illustration: ROCCA JANULA, ABOVE SAN GERMANO.[128]]

While we were at Naples, every one was full of the terrible earthquake
which in December had been devastating the Basilicata. Whole towns were
destroyed. It was as after a deep snow in England, which covers fields
and hedges alike; you could not tell in the mass of débris whether you
were walking over houses or streets. The inhabitants who escaped were
utterly paralysed, and sat like Indian Brahmins with their elbows on
their knees, staring in vacant despair. Hundreds were buried alive, who
might have been extricated if sufficient energy had been left in the
survivors. Others, buried to the middle, had the upper part of their
bodies burnt off by the fire which spread from the ruined houses, and
from which they were unable to escape. Thousands died afterwards from
the hunger and exposure.

Whilst we were at Naples my mother lost her gold watch. We believed it
to have been stolen as we were entering the Museo Borbonico, and gave
notice to the police. They said they could do nothing unless we went to
the King of the Thieves, who could easily get it back for us: it would
be necessary to make terms with him. So a _ragazaccio_[129] was sent to
guide us through one of the labyrinthian alleys on the hill of St. Elmo
to a house where we were presented to the King of Thieves. He mentioned
his terms, which we agreed to, and he then said, "If the watch has been
stolen anywhere within twelve miles round Naples, you shall have it in
twenty-four hours." Meanwhile the watch was found by one of the custodes
of the Museo at the bottom of that bronze vase in which you are supposed
to hear the roaring of the sea; my mother had been stooping down to
listen, and the watch had fallen in. But the story is worth mentioning,
as the subserviency of the police to the King of the Thieves was
characteristic of public justice under Ferdinand II.


     _To_ MY SISTER.

     "_Sorrento, March 7, 1858._--Some people say Sorrento is the most
     beautiful place in the world, and I believe that even my
     town-loving sister, if she could gaze over the golden woods in the
     sunset of this evening, and see the crimson smoke float over dark
     Vesuvius and then drift far over the blue sea, would allow it to be
     more inspiring than the Piazza S. Claudio! Then to-day the mother
     and her three companions have been riding on donkeys to the lovely
     Vigna Sersale through a fringe of coronilla and myrtle, anemones
     and violets.... It is a comfort here to be free from the begging
     atmosphere of Naples, for in Sorrento people do not beg; they only
     propose 'mangiare maccaroni alla sua salute.'"


     "_April 4._--We have had a charming cruise in the 'Centaur'--the
     sea like glass, the view clear. Captain Clifford sent his boat to
     fetch us, and we sat on deck in arm-chairs, as if on land. In tiny
     fishing-boats, lying flat on our backs, we entered the Grotta
     Azurra (of Capri), like a magical cavern peopled with phantoms,
     each face looking livid as the boats floated over the deep blue
     water. Then we scrambled up to the fortress-palace of Tiberius, our
     ascent being enlivened by a tremendous battle between the
     midshipmen and the donkey-women, who finally drew their stilettos!

     "Amalfi is most romantic and lovely. We were there ten days, and
     spent the mornings in drawing amongst the purple rocks and sandy
     bays, and the afternoons in riding up the mountain staircases to
     the Saracenic rock-built castles and desolate towns.

     "The mother thinks I have grown dreadfully worldly under your
     influence, and that my love for wild-flowers is the only hopeful
     sign remaining!"

[Illustration: CAPRI.[130]]

[Illustration: PÆSTUM.[131]]

From Salerno we made a glorious expedition to Pæstum, but on our return
found our servant, John Gidman, alarmingly ill in consequence of a
sunstroke while fallen asleep on the balcony at Amalfi. His sufferings
were dreadful, and he remained between life and death for a long time,
and I believe was only eventually saved by the violent bleedings (so
often inveighed against) of an Italian doctor. This delayed us long at
the dull Salerno, and afterwards at La Cava, where I comforted myself
by much drawing at Salvator Rosa's grotto in the valley below the old
Benedictine convent.

In May our companions returned to England, and having no one but
ourselves to consider, we planned to make our own northern _vetturino_
journey as interesting as possible. I think it was a description in
"Dennis" which made us take the route by Viterbo and Orvieto, but we
went there and saw it with enthusiasm, as afterwards Perugia--to which
we zigzagged back across the Apennines, and Cortona, where the hill was
redolent with great wild yellow roses, and where I drew the tomb of S.
Margherita in the monastery, to the great delight of the monks, who
regaled us with snuff and wine.

Whilst we were at Florence, living in the Casa Iandelli, I made a
delightful excursion to Vallombrosa, driving in a little carriage to
Pelago, and thence riding on a cart-horse up the forest-clothed mountain
by the rough track which emerges on a bright green lawn, then covered
with masses of lilies and columbine, and other spring flowers of every
description. All around the dark forests swept down from the mountains
towards the convent, where the hospitable monks entertained me with a
most excellent dinner, and the abbot showed the manuscripts.

[Illustration: VALLOMBROSA.]

On my return, I found my mother so convulsed with laughter that it was
long before she was able to explain the cause of it. At last she showed
me a letter in her hand, which was a violent declaration of love and
proposal of marriage from one Giorgio
Rovert--"bello--possidente--avocato"--who was even then waiting at
Siena to know if his "fiamme d'amore" was responded to, and if he might
hasten to Florence to throw himself at the feet of the object of his
adoration. For some time we were utterly bewildered, but at length
recollected that at Rome a young man had constantly followed the cousin
who was with us, had lifted the heavy curtains for her at the entrance
of the churches, found her places in a mass-book, &c., and we concluded
that he must have tracked her to the Palazzo Lovati, inquired of the
porter who lived there, and hearing it was "Mrs. Hare," had followed
_us_ to Florence. Lady Anne S. Giorgio coming in soon after to see us,
undertook to answer the letter, and did so most capitally; but Giorgio
Rovert did not break his heart, and within three weeks we heard of him
as proposing to old Lady Dillon!

The Lady Anne S. Giorgio I have mentioned began at this time to fill a
great part in our life. She was a Roman Catholic, and used to say that
she had become so (at sixteen) on account of the poor apology which she
found made for Protestantism in Robertson's "Charles V.," which she had
been reading. After she was a widow, she became a member of a Tertiary
Order which binds its votaries to forsake the vanities of the world, to
wear a cross, and be dressed in black. She used to be very anxious for
my conversion, and have special prayers to that intent on St.
Augustine's Day. She read through Madame de Sévigné every year, and her
library of books excited the astonishment of her poorer neighbours, who
said, "O la Contessa e tanto buona; legge sempre; prega sempre; e tanto
buona," for they cannot understand any one reading anything but
religious books.

Lady Anne was one of the daughters of that beautiful Lady Oxford whose
offspring were named "the Harleian Miscellany." Lady Oxford lived at
Genoa with her daughters, leaving Lord Oxford in England, and during her
Italian life had many strange adventures, and one of a most terrible
kind, the story of which was related to me by Dr. Wellesley, who was
present at the time, but I will omit it. Of the weird stories of the
other sisters I will say nothing, but Lady Anne in her youth was engaged
to a young Italian, who, with the ugly name of Boggi, was yet of a very
good family. However, before they could be married, Boggi died, and the
Harleys returned to England. While there, Lady Anne wished to marry her
music-master, but her family would not hear of it, and by the harshness
of their opposition made her life miserable. Having striven vainly for
some years to win the consent of her family, Lady Anne wrote to Madame
Boggi, the mother of her late betrothed, with whom she had always kept
up a communication, to say that she was in wretched health and spirits,
that she required change terribly, and that she was very unhappy because
her family violently opposed her marriage with a very excellent young
Italian--but she did not say who he was. Madame Boggi replied by saying
that nothing could give her greater happiness than having her dearest
Annie with her, and imploring her to come out to her at once. The Harley
family consented, thinking that the change might cure Lady Anne's
heartache, and she went out to Madame Boggi, who had always said that
she looked upon her as a daughter because she was once engaged to her
dead son.

While Lady Anne was with Madame Boggi, she heard that her Italian lover
had returned to Italy to join his friends, but that he had been stopped
by illness at some place in the north of Italy, and was lying in a very
critical condition. I cannot say how Lady Anne persuaded Madame Boggi,
but she did persuade her to consent to her going off to nurse her lover,
and, unmarried girl as she was, she nursed him through all his illness.
He died, but his brother, who came to him when he was dying, was so
touched by Lady Anne's devotion, that he afterwards proposed to her, and
she married him.

The husband of Lady Anne was only a "cavaliere." They were dreadfully
poor, and lived at a little farm somewhere in the hills above Spezia,
where two boys and a girl were born. But Lady Anne did not mind poverty;
she fattened her chickens and pigs for market, she studied botany and
all the ologies by herself, and she taught her children. After she
became a widow, she heard one day that her father, Lord Oxford, from
whom she had been separated from childhood, was passing through Italy,
and she threw herself in his way upon the staircase in the inn at
Sarzana. When he found who she was, he was delighted both with her and
her children. He said, "I have done nothing for you hitherto, and I can
do nothing for you after my death, for my affairs are arranged and they
cannot be altered; but whatever you ask me to do _now_ shall be
granted." "Then," said Lady Anne, "you have always looked down upon me
and despised me, because my husband was a simple 'cavaliere.' You are
going to Rome: get me created a Countess in my own right, and then you
will despise me no more." And Lord Oxford went to Rome, and, by his
personal influence with the Pope, to whom he had great opportunities of
being useful, his daughter Anne was created a Countess in her own right,
and her sons became titular Counts and her daughter a Countess.

It was in this summer of 1858, while we were at Florence, that Lady Anne
came to "Italima" (for she had known my father intimately in her palmy
days) and said, "You know how I have lived like a hermit in my
'_tenuto_,' and meanwhile here is Carolina grown up, and Carolina must
marry somebody, and that somebody you must find, for you are almost the
only person I know." And, to her surprise, Italima was able to answer,
"It is really very odd, but Mrs. de Selby, the cousin of the Princesses
Doria and Borghese, was here this morning, and she said, 'Here is
Roberto, and I want to find somebody for him to marry. I do not want a
fortune, we have plenty of money, but it must be a girl of good family,
and if she is partly English so much the better.'"

We went to the betrothal dinner of Robert Selby and Carolina di S.
Giorgio, and afterwards we ran about the Torrigiani gardens in the still
summer evening, and made round our straw hats wreaths of the fireflies,
which, when they are once fixed, seldom fly away. Carolina was
afterwards a great friend of ours, and most entertaining and clever. She
could imitate an old priest scolding and taking snuff so exactly, that
if you shut your eyes you thought one must be in the room; and she used
to create for herself little dramas and tragedies, in which she was as
pathetic as she was at other times comic. As a mother she was most
unfortunate. Several of her children were poisoned by eating "fungi" at
a trattoria outside the Porta del Popolo, and she herself nearly died
from the same cause. After Robert Selby's death she married again, and
went to live at Leghorn.

I was very sorry afterwards that during this visit we never saw Mrs.
Browning, who died in 1861, before we were at Florence again. We used to
hear much of her--of her peculiar appearance, with her long curls, and
(from illness) her head always on one side; of the infinite charm of her
conversation; of her interest in spiritualism; how she would endeavour
to assert her belief in it in her little feeble voice, upon which
Browning would descend in his loud tones; but they were perfectly
devoted to each other.

Another person whom we often saw at Florence was the foolish wife of our
dear old Landor, who never ceased to describe with fury his passionate
altercations with her, chiefly caused apparently by jealousy. Landor was
still living at Bath at this time.

In the Cascine at Florence we found the same old flower-woman who had
been there when I was a baby in the Prato, where I was taught to walk.
She used to drive to the Cascine with her flowers in a smart carriage
with a pair of horses, and would smile and kiss her hands to us as we
passed. It was contrary to good Florentine manners not to accept the
flowers which she offered to every one she saw when she arrived where
the carriages were waiting, but they were never paid for at the time;
only a present was sent occasionally, or given by foreigners when they
left Florence, and she came to the station to see them off and present a
farewell bouquet. I merely mention these customs because they are
probably dying out, perhaps are already extinct.

My cousin Lady Normanby was at this time resident in her beautiful
Florentine villa, with its lovely garden of roses and view over
Florence, and she was very kind to us.

We were at Florence this year during the festival of Corpus Domini, and
saw that curious procession, chiefly consisting of little boys in white
dominos, and brown monks and brothers of the Misericordia; but,
following the Archbishop under his canopy, came the Grand Duke on foot,
with all the male members of the Corsini and Guicciardini families, and
the young Archdukes in white satin trains.

We saw also the Foundling Hospital, where all the children were brought
up and nursed by goats, and where, when the children cried, the goats
ran and gave them suck.

About the 10th of June we settled at Lucca baths, in the pleasant little
Casa Bertini, a primitive house more like a farm-house than a villa, on
the steep hillside above the Grand Duke's palace, possessing a charming
little garden of oleanders and apple-trees at the back, with views down
into the gorge of the river, and up into the hilly cornfields, which
were always open to us. Very delightful were the early mornings, when
the mother, with book and camp-stool, wandered up the hill-path,
fringed with flowers, to the Bagni Caldi. Charming too the evenings,
when, after "_merenda_" at four o'clock in the garden, we used to go
forth, with all the little society, in carriages or on horseback, till
the heavy dews fell, and drove us in by the light of the fireflies. A
most pleasant circle surrounded us. Close by, in a large cool villa with
a fountain, was the gentle invalid Mrs. Greville (_née_ Locke), singing
and composing music, with her pleasant companion Miss Rowland. Just
below, in the hotel of the villa, "Auntie" was living with the George
Cavendishes, and in the street by the river the pretty widow, Mrs.
Francis Colegrave, with her children, Howard and Florence, and her
sister Miss Chichester.

An amusing member of the society at the Bagni, living in a cottage full
of curiosities, was Mrs. Stisted, the original of Mrs. Ricketts in "The
Daltons." She had set her heart upon converting the Duke of Parma to
Protestantism, and he often condescended to controversy with her. One
day she thought she had really succeeded, but driving into Lucca town
next day, to her horror she met him walking bare-headed in a procession
with a lighted candle in his hand. Then and there she stopped her
carriage and began to upbraid him. When he returned to the Bagni, he
went to see her and to reprove her. "There cannot," he said, "be two
sovereigns at Lucca; either I must be Duke or you must be Queen," and
ever after she was called the Queen of the Bagni. Colonel Stisted had a
number of curious autographs, the most interesting being the MS. of the
"Lines to an Indian air"--"I rise from dreams of thee"--found in the
pocket of Shelley after he was drowned.

Living beneath us all this summer were the Grand Ducal family, and we
saw them constantly. They were greatly beloved, but the Grand
Duchess-Dowager, who was a Sardinian princess, was more popular than the
reigning Grand Duchess, who was a Neapolitan Bourbon, and ultimately
brought about the ruin of the family by her influence. The Grand
Duchess-Dowager was the step-mother of the Grand Duke, and also his
sister-in-law, having been sister-in-law of his first wife. The
Hereditary Grand Duke was married to her niece, a lovely Saxon princess,
who died soon afterwards: it was said that he treated her very ill, and
that his younger brother protected her. We were at a very pretty ball
which was given on the festa of S. Anna, her patroness. The Grand Ducal
family generally went out at the same hour as ourselves. In the middle
of the day nothing stirred except the scorpions, which were a constant
terror. One was found in my bath in the morning, and all that day we
were in fearful expectation, as the creatures never go about singly; but
in the evening we met the companion coming upstairs. There were also
quantities of serpents, which in the evening used frequently to be seen
crossing the road in a body going down to the river to drink.

[Illustration: PONTE ALLA MADDALENA, LUCCA.][132]

[Illustration: Augustus J. C. Hare.

From a portrait by Canevari.]

Every Friday afternoon we had a reception in our hill-set garden, and
our maid Quintilia set out tea and fruit, &c., in the summer-house.
At the gate a basket was held, into which every one dropped a story as
they entered, and they were all read aloud after tea. One day, one of
these stories, a squib on Ultra-Protestants written by the younger Miss
Cavendish, led to a great fracas with the George Cavendishes, Admiral
and Mrs. Cavendish being perfectly furious with my gentle mother, who of
all people was the most innocent, as she could not have an idea of what
was in the stories till they were read aloud. Well do I remember coming
round the corner of the villa, and finding the Admiral storming at her
as she sat upon her donkey, with "My daughters shall never enter your
house again--they shall never enter it again!" and her sweet smile as
she replied, "Then, Admiral Cavendish, I have only to thank you so very
much for having so often allowed them to come to me hitherto,"--and the
Admiral's subdued look afterwards.

There was a little school established by the Grand Duchess just below
us, whither my mother sometimes went in the mornings. The children were
taught Scripture dialogues. One little girl would say to another, "Oh,
cara mia, cara amica mia, I have such a wonderful thing to tell you,"
and then would narrate how a babe was born in Bethlehem, &c., upon
which the hearer would exclaim, "O Gran Dio" in her amazement, and on
one occasion, with a cry of "O cielo!" pretended to faint away with
astonishment in the most natural way imaginable.

A long excursion from Lucca was that to Galicano, where a hermit with a
reputation of great sanctity was living under an overhanging cliff in
the mountains. He hid himself on our approach, but our large party
hunted him, and eventually unearthed him--an old dirty man in a brown
gown, with a chain of huge beads at his girdle. We wanted to see the
miraculous image of which he was guardian, but he would not show it
unless we were Catholics, and was much puzzled by my protesting that we
were, and my mother that we were not. However, at last he consented to
exhibit it, on condition that we all knelt, and that the ladies took off
their bonnets. We returned home much later than was expected, and so, as
we found afterwards, escaped seven bandits, who had been lying in wait
for us, and at last gave us up. The whole of the road from Lucca to
Galicano had then black crosses at intervals, commemorating the murders
committed there.

This summer at Lucca was altogether the greatest halt in my life I have
ever known. We seemed so removed from the world, and I was more free
from family snubbings than I had ever been before. But, all through the
time we were there, I had been far from well, and the doctor who was
consulted declared that I could not survive the severities of an English
winter. In spite of this, my mother never flinched in her determination
to return, for having once taken the impression (without the remotest
reason) that I had a tendency to Roman Catholicism, she had a far
greater terror of what she considered as danger to my soul than of any
danger to my body.

When we left the Bagni di Lucca on the 2nd of August, I left it in
despair. Behind us was a quiet, peaceful, and a far from useless life,
encircled by troops of friends, and supplying the literary and artistic
occupations in which I began to feel that I might possibly in time be
able to distinguish myself. Before me was the weary monotony of
Hurstmonceaux, only broken by visits from or to relations, by most of
whom I was disliked and slighted, if not positively ill-treated. I also
felt sure that all the influence of my aunts would be used with my
easily guided mother to force upon me the most uncongenial of
employments, which she was only too certain to allow them to advocate
as "especially desirable for Augustus, because they _were_ uncongenial!"
I was at this time also in more than usual disgrace, because disgust at
the sham Christians, sham Evangelicals, sham Protestants, with whom for
years I had been thrown, had induced me to avow my horror of Ordination.
In every way I felt myself unfitted for it. I wrote at this time--"'Some
fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith
they sprung up, because they had no depth of earth: and when the sun was
up, they were scorched; and, because they had no root, they withered
away.' If you want to know about my past religious 'impressions,' that
is just my story." Still the declaration of my determination not to take
Orders, dreaded and put off for years, cost me acutest suffering from
the pain and disappointment which I knew it inflicted upon my mother.

When we left Casa Bertini and descended the steep hill to our carriages,
we found that the whole society had been amusing themselves by dressing
in mourning, and were waiting to sing "a dirge" of their own
composition, as we drove away. But we had one or two more happy days. On
the morning after our arrival at Lucca town, we were astonished by
sounds of loud singing in the passage, and going out, found all those we
had so recently parted from at the Bagni singing in chorus some more
verses which they had composed as "a serenade," and bringing for us a
picture of the Ponte alla Maddalena, painted on a stone out of the
river. We quickly determined to spend the day in going with them to
Pisa, and making an excursion to the Gombo, where the Pisan pines end in
the sands by the seashore--and we did not return till midnight. It was
the custom at Lucca for those who drew to make little sketches in the
travellers' book at the hotel, and I had amused myself by doing one the
day before, and inscribing it "View from the Walls of Lucca," though it
was a wretched performance. When we came back, we found a most lovely
drawing opposite, inscribed--"View from the Walls of Lucca as it really
is." The Grand Duke's artist had been at the hotel in the interval.

[Illustration: PIETRA SANTA.[133]]

We travelled then with delicious slowness, only rolling onwards through
the most glorious scenery in the cool mornings and evenings, and resting
in the heat of mid-day, while, as at this time we only took our carriage
from place to place, we had no scruple in halting for days at Pietra
Santa, with its glorious views over the mountains, and old convents
embosomed in olives and cypresses; in making excursions to Serravezza
and to dismal Carrara; in lingering at La Spezia, where the avenue of
oleanders was in full blaze of bloom, and driving thence to Porto Venere
with its marble church and wonderful views along the cliffs--blue,
green, yellow, and coral-red, descending abruptly into the sea.

     _To_ MY AUNT ELEANOR PAUL.

     "_Lucca, August 3, 1858._--Once upon a time there was a lady
     advanced in years, who had an only child. They were sick and
     sorrowful, and the tempests of the world beat upon them. Driven
     from home, they wandered hither and thither, seeking rest and
     finding none, till at length one day they arrived, wearied and
     wayworn, at the entrance of a mountain valley. 'Alas!' they
     whispered, 'what place is this?'--'Take courage,' answered the
     trees and fountains; 'rejoice,' shouted the flowers, 'for this is
     the Happy Valley, where those who enter rest from all sickness and
     trouble: this is the place where people may have a halt in life,
     and where care and anxiety do not exist.' And when they heard these
     words, the countenances of the weary lady and her son were glad,
     and the flowers and the trees and the fountains laughed and shouted
     for joy in the ceaseless golden sunshine. For two months the
     strangers rested in the Happy Valley, and then once more the
     tempest howled to receive them, and the voices of the unseen
     sternly bade them depart; and slowly and sadly they arose, and went
     out again into the wilderness, where every solitary flower, every
     mountain and stream, seemed only an echo from a lost and beautiful
     past.

     "Oh, my auntie, do you know who the mother and son were, and what
     was the Happy Valley to which they looked back with so much loving
     regret?"


     "_La Spezia, August_ 8.--We have been to Carrara. Do you know, my
     auntie, that once upon a time there lived in the mountains of
     Carrara a race of funny little people called Fanticelle? They were
     the hobgoblins of the marble rocks, and were very merry, very
     useful, and highly respected by every one. Each marble had its own
     Fante; one was dressed in red, another in yellow, and others in
     stripes of various colours; but the Fante of the white marble wore
     only a simple dress as white as snow, and was greatly despised in
     consequence by her companions, who were so fashionably attired.
     Daily the poor white Fante was snubbed and insulted, and at last,
     when the ancient Romans came to make quarries, and cut and hacked
     her to pieces, and carried her remains away in carts, all the other
     Fanti smiled in their cold satire and said, 'It only served the
     vulgar creature right, for she did not even know how to dress
     herself, and sitting upon the mountain with nothing on but her
     night-dress was really quite indecorous.'

     "But when some years had passed, the great guardian spirit came to
     the mountains, and, stretching forth his wings, he gathered all the
     Fanti beneath them, and said, 'Now, my children, you shall go forth
     to see the world, and, when you return, you shall each say what is
     most highly esteemed by the lovers of art, and what it is that the
     children of men consider most beautiful and best.'

     "Thus the Fanti of Carrara flew forth to see the world! They
     alighted first in the square at Genoa. All around were huge and
     stately palaces, and in the centre the statue of a hero, with the
     world lying captive at his feet. But what the Fanti remarked most
     was that in the most magnificent chambers of every palace, and
     even upon the statue of the great Columbus himself, sat the
     semblance of their despised sister the white Fante, as if enshrined
     and honoured. 'Alas!' exclaimed the Fanti, 'what degraded notions
     have these Genoese; let us examine places better worth our notice.'
     So they came to Spain, and visited the Alhambra, but in every
     court, and even on the Fountain of Lions itself, they found the
     image of the white Fante seated before them. Thence they passed on
     to London, to Paris, to Berlin, to Vienna, but it was ever the
     same. In every gallery of statues, over the hearth of every palace,
     upon the altar of every church, it seemed as if the white Fante was
     reigning. 'Ah,' they exclaimed, 'can _all_ men be thus degraded?
     can _all_ good taste be banished from the earth? Let us see one
     more city nearer home, and from that let us form our judgment, for
     the inhabitants of these northern cities are not worthy to be
     ranked with mankind.'

     "So the Fanti came to Milan, and beneath the wings of the great
     guardian spirit, rejoicing in their approaching triumph, they
     entered its vast square. And behold the spirit drew back his wings,
     and they beheld a mighty and an awful vision! Before them stood
     their sister, the Fante of the milk-white rocks, but no longer
     humble, no longer to be restrained even within the bounds of the
     greatest palace upon earth. Majestic in beauty, invincible in
     power, she raised her mighty wings to heaven in the aisles of a
     vast cathedral, and mounted higher and higher as by an aërial
     staircase, till, far above all human things, she flung her
     snow-white tresses into the azure sky!

     "Then the Fanti of the coloured robes bowed their heads and
     trembled, and acknowledged in penitence and humility--'Truly the
     Fante of the white rocks is the most beautiful thing in the world!'

     "Who can go to Carrara, my auntie, and not feel this?"

We were for a few days at Turin. The society there was then, as it is
still, the very climax of stagnation. One of its most admired ornaments
was a beautiful young Contessa la Marmora. She did nothing all day,
absolutely nothing, but sit looking pretty, with her chin leaning on her
hand. Her mother-in-law was rather more energetic than herself, and
hoping to rouse her, left a new "Journal des Modes" upon her table. Some
days after, she asked what she thought of it. "Alas!" said the young
Countess, with her beautiful head still leaning upon her hand, "I have
been so much occupied, that I never have found time to look into it." In
all my acquaintance since with Italian ladies, I have always found the
same, that they are all intensely occupied, but that it is in
doing--nothing!

Since the dreadful epidemic at court, which swept away at once the
Queen, the Queen-Dowager, and the Duke of Genoa, the King had never
received, and as his eldest daughter, Madame Clotilde, was not old
enough to do so, there were no court parties. At the opera all the young
ladies sat facing the stage, and the old ladies away from it; but when
the ballet began there was a general change; the old ladies moved to the
front, and the young ones went behind.

[Illustration: IL VALENTINO, TURIN.[134]]

A great contrast to the Italians at Turin was Mr. Ruskin, whom we saw
constantly. He was sitting all day upon a scaffold in the gallery,
copying bits of the great picture by Paul Veronese. My mother was very
proud of my drawings at this time, and gave them to him to look at. He
examined them all very carefully and said nothing for some time. At last
he pointed out one of the cathedral at Perugia as "the least bad of a
very poor collection." One day in the gallery, I asked him to give me
some advice. He said, "Watch me." He then looked at the flounce in the
dress of a maid of honour of the Queen of Sheba for five minutes, and
then he painted one thread: he looked for another five minutes, and then
he painted another thread.[135] At the rate at which he was working he
might hope to paint the whole dress in ten years: but it was a lesson as
to examining what one drew well before drawing it. I said to him, "Do
you admire all Paul Veronese's works as you do this?" He answered, "I
merely think that Paul Veronese was ordained by Almighty God to be an
archangel, neither more nor less; for it was not only that he knew how
to cover yards of canvas with noble figures and exquisite colouring, it
was that it was all _right_. If you look at other pictures in this
gallery, or any gallery, you will find mistakes, corrected perhaps, but
mistakes of every form and kind; but Paul Veronese had such perfect
knowledge, he _never_ made mistakes."

The Charles Bunsens were at Turin, and we dined with them. With Mrs. C.
Bunsen was her brother, whom we thought a very dull, heavy young man.
Long afterwards he became very well known as the French Ambassador,
Waddington.

We saw Mr. Ruskin again several times in the Vaudois, whither we went
from Turin, and stayed for several days at La Tour, riding on donkeys to
the wild scene of the Waldensian battle in the valley of Angrogna, and
jolting in a carriage to the beautiful villages of Villar and
Bobbio--"une vraie penitence," as our driver expressed it, though the
scenery is lovely. My mother was charmed to find an old woman at La Tour
who had known Oberlin very well and had lived in his parish.

[Illustration: VILLAR, IN THE VAUDOIS.[136]]

Amongst the endless little out-of-the-way excursions which my mother,
Lea, and I have made together in little _chars-à-banc_, one of those I
remember with greatest pleasure is that from Vergogna up the Val
Anzasca. The scenery was magnificent: such a deep gorge, with purple
rocks breaking through the rich woods, and range upon range of distant
mountains, with the snows of Monte Rosa closing them in. We stayed at a
charming little mountain inn at Ponte Grande, where everything was
extraordinarily cheap, and wandered in the meadows filled with
globe-ranunculus and over-shadowed by huge chestnut-trees. In the
evening the charcoal-burners came down from the mountains, where we had
watched the smoke of the fires all day amongst the woods, and serenaded
us under our windows, singing in parts, with magnificent voices, most
effective in the still night. We were afterwards at Domo d'Ossola for a
Sunday for the extraordinary fête of the imaginary Santa Filomena--kept
all day with frantic enthusiasm, cannons firing, bells ringing, and
processions of girls in white, chaunting as they walked, pouring in from
all the country parishes in the neighbourhood.


     _To_ MRS. HARE (ITALIMA).

     "_Lausanne, Sept. 3, 1858._--At Martigny we found _Galignani_,
     which we had not seen for some days, and you will imagine my
     distress at the sad news about Mr. Landor with which they were
     filled.[137] Dear Mr. Landor! I had always hoped and intended to be
     near him and watch over the last years of this old, old friend. I
     feel certain that there is much, which the world does not know, to
     be said on his side. I have known Mrs. Y. for years ... and always
     prophesied that she would be the ruin of Mr. Landor some day. For
     the poems, no excuse can be offered except that he was so imbued
     with the spirit of the classical authors, that when he wished to
     write against Mrs. Y., he thought, 'How would Horace have written
     this?' and wrote accordingly, only that Horace would have said
     things a great deal worse.

    'Some thought far worse of him, and judged him wrong;
    But verse was what he had been wedded to,
    And his own mind did like a tempest strong
    Come to him thus, and drove the weary wight along.'[138]

     Whatever his faults are, I am sure you will feel that we who have
     known him well must draw a veil for ourselves over the failings of
     his old age, and remember only the many kind words of the dear old
     man, so tender in heart and so fastidious in taste, the many good
     and generous acts of his long life, and how many they are.

     "How much we have been struck with the _pale_ blue of the Swiss
     lakes compared with the deep blue of those of Italy."


     _To_ MY AUNT, ELEANOR PAUL.

     "_Dijon, Sept. 12, 1858._--We found Fribourg quite up to our
     expectations, quite worth coming all the way round by Switzerland
     to visit. And the organ, how magnificent it is! We went in the
     evening to hear it, when all the beautiful gothic church was
     wrapped in darkness, except the solitary gleam of light in the
     organ-loft, and we all sat long in breathless expectation. When the
     music came, it was like a story. One seemed to be sitting far up
     the nave of some great cathedral, and to hear from the distant
     choir the choristers chaunting a litany, answering one another,
     and then swelling and joining in a universal chorus. Then, while
     they were singing, it was as if a great storm arose, the hail
     rattled and the rain splashed against the windows, the thunder
     crashed overhead, and the wind howled around. And then a mighty
     earthquake convulsed and shook the church to its very foundations.
     But always, in the pauses of the storm, the sweet silvery voices of
     the choristers were heard above the roaring of the elements, and
     when the storm subsided, they joined in thanksgiving, which died
     away in the faint echoes of the surrounding hills. And all this was
     the organ!

     "We came by Morat to Neuchâtel. It is a pretty, though not a
     striking place; but the view of the vast mass of Mont Blanc and of
     all the Oberland Alps in the rose-coloured glow is magnificent. The
     mother made inquiries after many old acquaintances,[139] to find
     most of them dead, and those who were still living old, old ladies
     of ninety and of one hundred.

     "Did you ever hear of Doubs? We came through it yesterday, and it
     certainly seemed to us the most melancholy, ill-fated village we
     had ever seen. Some time ago there lived there a boy, whose
     stepmother was very cruel to him--so cruel that his whole aim and
     object in life was to obtain money enough to set up for himself and
     escape from her tyranny. At last he succeeded, and leaving his
     father's house with his heart full of bitterness, he invested his
     savings in a partnership with the owner of the village café, where
     he kept the accounts. One day his partner accused him of not
     giving him a fair share of the profits. This made him perfectly
     frantic--so furious that he determined to avenge himself by nothing
     less than the total destruction of his native place! He began by
     setting fire to his café, but the alarm was scarcely given when it
     was discovered that almost every other house was in flames. The
     inhabitants hurried from their beds, and were barely able to save
     themselves, their houses, cattle, and goods perishing at one blow.
     Only a few houses and the church escaped, in which the fugitives
     took refuge, and were beginning to collect their energies, when,
     after ten days, the fire broke out again in the night, and the rest
     of the village was consumed with all it contained, including a
     child of four years old. Between the two fires cholera had broken
     out, so that numbers perished from pestilence as well as exposure.
     The author of all the misery was taken and transported, but the
     town is only now beginning to rise again from its ruins, and the
     people to raise their spirits."

On reaching Paris, we found Italima and my sister at the Hôtel d'Oxford
et Cambridge. Greatly to my relief, my mother decided that, as she was
in perfect health and well supplied with visitors, it was an admirable
opportunity for my remaining abroad to learn French: this I was only too
thankful for, as it put off the evil day of my return to England, and
encountering the family wrath about my refusal to take Orders. With my
sister I spent an amusing day at Versailles on a visit to the Marquis
and Marquise du Prât, the latter a daughter of the Duc de Grammont, and
a very pretty, lively person. They lived in an ideal house of the
_ancienne régime_, where the chairs, picture-frames, carpets, even the
antimacassars, were carved or worked with the shields, crests, and
mottoes of the family.

After my sister left, the intrigues of Madame Davidoff, whom, in
compliance with my mother's wishes, I had refused to visit, brought
about my acquaintance with the Vicomte de Costa le Cerda, a
Franco-Spaniard and ardent Catholic, who constituted himself my
cicerone, and amongst other places took me to _séances_ of the Académie
de France, of which he was a member; and I should have been much
interested in seeing all the celebrated philosophers, politicians,
physicians, geologists, &c., if I had not been so ignorant of French
literature that I had scarcely heard of any one of them before. The
Marquis de Gabriac[140] (I forget how his office entitled him to do so)
sent me a medal which enabled me to visit all profane, and the
Archbishop of Paris a permission to enter all religious, institutions.
Using the latter, I went with De Costa to the Benedictines, Ursulines,
Carmelites, Petites Soeurs des Pauvres, and the OEuvre de la
Compassion for bringing up little homeless boys. On Sundays I heard Père
Félix, the philosophic Bourdaloue of the nineteenth century, preach with
his musical voice to vast enthralled audiences in Nôtre Dame.[141]

[Illustration: NOTRE DAME, PARIS.[142]]

Capital were the French lessons I received from the excellent M. Nyon,
to whom I have always felt indebted. After Italima left Paris, I lodged
with a Madame Barraud, who rented a small apartment at the back of a
court in the Rue des Saints-Pères. Here my wretched little room looked
out upon a blank wall, and was as thoroughly uncomfortable as it was
possible to be. The weather soon became bitterly cold, and, to prevent
being starved, I had to sit almost all day in the one poor uncarpeted
sitting-room with old Madame Barraud herself, who was a most
extraordinary character. Without the slightest apparent reason, a sudden
suspicion would seize her, and she would rush off to the kitchen. In
another minute she would return, wringing her hands, and would fling
herself down in a chair with--"Oh, que je suis malheureuse! Oh, que je
suis malheureuse! C'est une fille abominable cette Marie--cette tortue!
elle ne sait pas le service du tout," and then, before she had time to
take breath, she would run off to investigate the causes of a fresh
noise in the kitchen. You were never safe from her. Every moment that
old woman would dart in like a whirlwind, just to wipe off one speck of
dust she had discovered on the mirror, or to smooth some crease she
suspected in the tablecloth; and almost before you could look up she
was vanishing with her eternal refrain of "que je suis misérable! que je
suis malheureuse!"

The one subject of discussion till twelve o'clock was the déjeûner, from
twelve to six the dinner, and after that the déjeûner of the next
morning. Matters, however, were rather improved when Mademoiselle
Barraud was at home--a thoroughly sensible, sterling person, who was
generally absent on professional duties, being one of the first
music-mistresses of the day. Sometimes Madame and Mademoiselle had
friends in the evening, when it was amusing to see specimens of the
better sort of third-class Parisians.

I made very few friends at Paris, but the persons I saw oftenest were
the Marquise du Pregnier and her old mother, who remembered the Reign of
Terror and had lost both her parents by the guillotine. Occasionally I
went in the evening to the salon of Madame Mohl, wife of Julius Mohl,
the great Orientalist, but herself an Englishwoman, who had in early
life been intimate with Chateaubriand and present at his touching last
hours, when his friend Madame Recamier, beautiful to the end, sat
watching him with her blind eyes. Madame Mohl was a most
extraordinary-looking person, like a poodle, with frizzled hair hanging
down over her face and very short skirts. Her salon, at 120 Rue de Bac,
especially on Friday evenings, was at that time quite one of the social
features of Paris. One savant used to drop in after the other and sit
round her talking in a circle, and with a _finesse d'esprit_ all her
own, she would address each in turn in her quick sharp voice, always
saying something pungent or clever. Politics were the chief topic, and
though I remember Madame Mohl once saying that "political society was
not what could be called a _nourishing_ occupation," there were no
refreshments, however late the company stayed, but tea and biscuits. She
had always had a sort of salon, even when, as Miss Clarke, she lived
with her old mother in a very small apartment in the Abbaye-aux-Bois.
Ticknor speaks of her there as keeping a little _bureau d'esprit_ all
her own, _à la française_.

One night when I was shown into her salon, I found, to my horror, that I
was not only the first to arrive, but that the old lady was so engrossed
in administering a violent scolding to her husband, that she was
promenading the drawing-room half undressed, with her strange locks
still in curl-papers. It was a most ridiculous scene, and my premature
appearance not a little embarrassing to them both. I retreated into the
passage till Madame Mohl was "done up," though that operation was not
accomplished till many other guests had arrived.

M. Julius Mohl was the greatest contrast to his quicksilver wife. He
used to be called "_le bourru bienfaisant_," from his rough exterior and
genuine kindness of heart. He was really ten years younger than his
wife, though she considered sixty-eight the right age for a woman to
attain to, and never to her last day allowed that she had passed that
limit.

Madame Mohl was fond of describing how, when she was at Paris in her
childhood, her elder sister, Mrs. Frewen, was taken by their mother and
grandmother to the chapel royal at the Tuileries, where Marie Antoinette
was then living in a kind of half-captivity. She was a very little girl,
and a gendarme thought she would be crushed, and lifted her upon his
shoulders, on which she was just opposite the King and Queen. She
remembered, as in a picture, how on one side of them were first Madame
Royale, then Madame Elizabeth, then the little Dauphin.

The cause which led to Mrs. Frewen seeing Marie Antoinette at that time
was in itself very curious. She was returning from the south with her
mother (Mrs. Clarke) and her grandmother. They reached Bordeaux, where
they were to embark for England in a "smack." Their luggage was already
on board; but, on the night before starting, the grandmother had a vivid
dream that the smack was lost with all on board. In the morning she
declared that nothing on earth should induce her to go in it. The
daughter remonstrated vigorously about expense, but the old lady stood
firm. They were able to take off their smaller things, but all their
larger luggage had to be left. The smack went down on the Goodwin Sands
and all was lost; so the family came to Paris.[143]

Of all the evenings I spent at Paris, the most interesting was one with
the Archbishop, who kindly invited me to his old country château of
Issy, once a palace of the Prince de Condé, and very magnificent. The
Archbishop, however, only inhabited the porter's lodge, and all the rest
was left deserted. The Archbishop was playing at bagatelle with his
chaplains when we entered, upon which he seated himself opposite to us
(De Costa went with me) in an arm-chair. He was a fine old man with grey
hair, dressed in cardinal's robes and crimson stockings, with the chain
of a Grand Almoner of France round his neck. There was only one light
in the high dark room, a lamp close to his shoulder, which threw a most
picturesque light over him, like a Rembrandt portrait. He inquired about
my visits to the different "religious" in Paris, and spoke regretfully
of the difficulties encountered by the Petites Soeurs des Pauvres.
Then he talked to De Costa about his medical studies and about
phrenology. This led him to the great Napoleon, of whose habits he gave
a very curious account. He said that he believed his strange
phrenological development was caused by his extraordinary way of
feeding--that he never was known to take a regular meal, but that he had
a spit on which a chicken was always roasting at a slow fire, and that
whenever he felt inclined he took a slice. When demolished, the chicken
was instantly replaced. It was the same with sleep: he never went to bed
at regular hours, only when he felt sleepy. We had been warned that the
Archbishop himself went to bed at nine, as he always rose at four; so at
nine I got up and kissed his ring, as we always did then to the
cardinals at Rome, but the kind old man insisted on coming out after us
into the passage, and seeing that we were well wrapped up in our
greatcoats.

In October, Aunt Kitty (Mrs. Stanley) came for a few days to Paris, and
going about with Arthur Stanley was a great pleasure.

     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Paris, Oct. 19, 1858._--I have been much disturbed by my dearest
     mother's writing twice to Aunt Kitty to urge upon me the duty of
     instantly deciding upon some situation. It seems so useless to make
     oneself miserable in the interval because situations and
     professions do not drop from the clouds whenever one chooses to
     call for them. You know how I have dreaded the return to England,
     simply because I knew how wearing the family onslaught would be
     directly I arrived, and that all peace would be at an end, and it
     certainly was not likely to mend matters to write to complain to
     the Stanleys of how grievously I had disappointed you, and that
     therefore I must decide instantly! If my mother will consider, she
     will see that it is no question of exerting oneself. I know exactly
     what there is to be had and what there is not, and we both know how
     extremely improbable it is that I could get _anything_ without some
     knowledge of modern languages, at least of French. This therefore
     is evidently the first point, and whilst one is employed all day
     long in struggling and striving to attain it, is it not rather hard
     to see letters from England about waste of time, want of effort,
     &c.?

     "Were I to take an office in London _now_, the pay might possibly
     be as much as £60 a year, without any vacation, or any hope of
     advance in life, and even in the most miserable lodgings it would
     be difficult to live in London under £200 a year. However, if my
     mother hears of anything which she wishes me to take, I will
     certainly take it.

[Illustration: THE PONT NEUF, PARIS.[144]]

     "Aunt Kitty has been very kind, and I have enjoyed going about with
     Arthur. Yesterday we went to the Conciergerie, where, by help of
     the Archbishop's letter and an order from the Préfecture of Police,
     we contrived to gain admittance. It is in the centre of Louis the
     Ninth's palace, of which it was once the dungeon, and has been very
     little altered. The room in which Marie Antoinette was confined for
     two months before her execution has scarcely been changed at all.
     There are still the heavy barred doors, the brick floor, the cold
     damp smell, the crucifix which hung before the window and kneeling
     before which she received the viaticum, the place where the bed
     stood, upon which the Queen could not lie down without being
     watched by the guards--who never took their eyes off--from the
     wicket opposite. Opening out of the Queen's prison is the small
     narrow chamber in which Robespierre was confined for one day, but
     where he never slept--brought there at eight, tried at eleven,
     executed at four. This opens into a large room, now the chapel,
     once the prison of Madame Elizabeth, and afterwards the place in
     which the Girondists held their last dreadful banquet before
     execution, when they sang the Marseillaise around the dead man on
     the table, and are said to have composed 'Mourir pour la Patrie.'

     "To-day Arthur and I went by rail to Versailles, and took a little
     carriage thence to Port Royal. The country was lovely, the forest
     red and golden with autumnal tints. In a wooded valley, with a
     green lawn winding through it like a river, watered by a little
     brooklet, are the remains of Port Royal, the farmhouse where Racine
     and Pascal lived and wrote, the dovecot and fountain of Mère
     Angélique, the ruins of the church, the cemetery and cross, and
     'the Solitude' where the nuns sat in solemn council around a
     crucifix in the middle of the woods. In the house is a collection
     of old pictures of the celebrities connected with the place.
     Arthur, of course, peopled the whole place in imagination and
     description with the figures of the past, and insisted on our
     'walking in procession' (of two) down the ruined church.

     "We went on to Dampierre, a fine old château of the Duc de Luynes,
     with green drives and avenues; and then to Chevreuse, where we
     climbed up the hill to the ruined castle with machicolated towers
     and a wide view over the orange-coloured woods, where the famous
     Madame de Chevreuse lived."

[Illustration: PORT ROYAL.[145]]

     "_Nov. 8._--The cold is almost insupportable! Parisians are so
     accustomed to their horrible climate, that Madame Barraud cannot
     understand my feeling it, and I have great difficulty in getting
     even the one little fire we have, and am occupied all day in
     shutting the doors, which every one else makes a point of leaving
     open. Madame Barraud describes her own character exactly when she
     stands in the middle of the room and says with a tragic voice, 'Je
     suis juste, Monsieur, je suis bonne; mais, Monsieur, je suis
     _sévère_!' She is excellent and generous on all great occasions,
     but I never knew any one who had such a power of making people
     uncomfortable by petty grievances and incessant fidgetting. Though
     she will give me fifty times more food than I wish, nothing on
     earth would induce her to light the fire in my bedroom, even in the
     most ferocious weather, because it is not '_son habitude_'. 'La
     bonne Providence m'a donné un caractère,' she said the other day,
     recounting her history. 'Avec ce caractère j'ai fait un mariage de
     convenance avec M. Barraud: avec ce caractère, étant veuve, j'ai
     pris ma petite fille de douze ans, et je suis venue à Paris pour
     faire jouer son talent: avec ce caractère, quand les fils de mon
     mari m'ont fait des mauvaises tournées, je n'ai rien dit, mais je
     les ai quittés pour toujours, parceque je n'ai pas voulu voir le
     nom de mon mari paraître dans des querelles: je suis bonne,
     Monsieur, je suis juste, c'est ma nature; mais, Monsieur, je suis
     _sévère_; et je ne les reverrais _jamais_.' Just now she is
     possessed with the idea--solely based upon her having a new pair of
     shoes--that Marie, the maid, certainly has a lover concealed
     somewhere, and she constantly goes to look for him under the
     kitchen-table, in the cupboard, &c. She hangs up the chicken or
     goose for the next day's dinner in the little passage leading to my
     room, and in the middle of the night I hear stealthy footsteps, and
     a murmur of 'Oh, qu'il est gras! Oh, qu'il sera délicieux!' as she
     pats it and feels it all over."

At the end of November I returned to England. Two years after, when we
were in Paris on our way to Italy, I went to the Rue des Saints-Pères.
Madame Barraud was dead then, and her daughter, left alone, was
lamenting her so bitterly that she was quite unable to attend to her
work, and sat all day in tears. She never rallied. When I inquired, as
we returned through Paris, Mademoiselle Barraud had followed her mother
to the grave; constantly as she had been scolded by her, wearisome as
her life seemed to have been made, the grief for her loss had literally
broken her heart.

During the winter we were absent at Rome, our house of Lime was lent to
Aunt Esther (Mrs. Julius Hare) and Mrs. Alexander. Two cabinets
contained all our family MSS., which Aunt Esther knew that I valued
beyond everything else. Therefore, she forced both the cabinets open and
destroyed the whole--all Lady Jones's journals and letters from India,
all Bishop Shipley's letters--every letter, in fact, relating to any
member of the Hare family. She replaced the letters to my adopted mother
from the members of her own family in the front of the cabinets, and
thus the fact they had nothing behind them was never discovered till we
left Hurstmonceaux, two years after. When asked about it, Aunt Esther
only said, "Yes, I did it: I saw fit to destroy them." It was a strange
and lasting legacy of injustice to bequeath, and I think I cannot be
harsh in saying that only a very peculiar temperament could construe
such an act into "right-doing."




IX

WORK IN SOUTHERN COUNTIES

     "How can a man learn to know himself? By reflection never, only by
     action. In the measure in which thou seekest to do thy duty shalt
     thou know what is in thee. But what is one's duty? The demand of
     the hour."--GOETHE.

     "Il est donné, de nos jours, à un bien petit nombre, même parmi les
     plus délicats et ceux qui les apprécient le mieux, de recueillir,
     d'ordonner sa vie selon ses admirations et selon ses goûts, avec
     suite, avec noblesse."--SAINTE-BEUVE.

     "Every man has a separate calling, an end peculiar to
     himself."--FREDERICK SCHLEGEL.

     "The old lord-treasurer Burleigh, if any one came to the Lords of
     the Council for a licence to travel, he would first examine him of
     England: if he found him ignorant, he would bid him stay at home
     and know his own country first."--HENRY PEACHAM, 1622, _The
     Compleat Gentleman_.


Upon returning to England in the winter of 1858, I felt more bitterly
that ever the want of sympathy which had formerly oppressed me. Though I
had the most idolatrous love for my dearest mother, and the most
over-anxious wish to please her, there was then none of the perfect
friendship between us, the easy interchange of every thought, which
there was in later years; for she was still so entirely governed by her
sisters-in-law as scarcely to have any individuality of her own. Often,
often, did she pain me bitterly by suspecting my motives and questioning
my actions, even when I was most desirous of doing right; and from the
long habit of being _told_ that I was idle and ignorant, that I cared
for nothing useful, and that I frittered away my life, she had grown to
believe it, and constantly assumed that it was so. Thus all my studies
were embittered to me. I was quite sure that nothing I did would be
appreciated, so that it never seemed worth while to do anything, and I
became utterly deficient in that cheerfulness of disposition which is
the most important element in all private success.

As I write this, and remember the number of delightful intimates by whom
my after years have been surrounded, I find it difficult to realise that
I had at this time _no_ friends who, by mutual confidence, could help or
cheer me. The best of them, Milligan, was now settled in London, being
in full work in the Ecclesiastical Commission Office, and though always
very kind to me, he had now fallen into a new set of acquaintances and
surroundings, and had no time to bestow upon me individually. George
Sheffield I seldom saw; and I had no other friends worth speaking of.

At this time all the intellectual impetus I received, and without which
I should have fallen into a state of stagnation, came from the house of
my aunt, Mrs. Stanley. Her grace, ease, and tact in society were
unrivalled. At her house, and there alone, I met people of original
ideas and liberal conversation. In this conversation, however, I was at
that time far too shy to join, and I was so dreadfully afraid of my
aunt, who, with the kindest intentions, had a very cold unsympathetic
manner in private, that--while I always appreciated her--I was unable to
reap much benefit from her society. Perhaps my chief friend was my
cousin Arthur Stanley, whom I was not the least afraid of, and whom I
believe to have been really fond of me at this time; also, though he had
a very poor opinion of my present powers and abilities, he did not seem,
like other people, utterly to despair of my future.

[Illustration: Catherine Stanley]

By my mother's desire, Archdeacon Moore (an old friend of the Hare
family) had written to Sir Antonio Panizzi,[146] then the
autocratic ruler of the British Museum Library, with a view to my
standing for a clerkship there. But this idea was afterwards abandoned,
and it was owing to the kindness of my cousin Arthur and that of Albert
Way (our connection by his marriage with Emmeline Stanley) that I
obtained from John Murray, the publisher, the employment of my next two
years--the "Handbook of Berks, Bucks, and Oxfordshire."

The commission to undertake this Handbook was one which I hailed with
rapture. The work was in every respect welcome to me. I had an inner
consciousness that I could do it well, and that while I was doing it I
should be acquiring information and advancing my own neglected
education. Besides, the people with whom the work would necessarily
bring me in contact were just those who were most congenial. My
principal residence would be Oxford, associated with some of my
happiest days, and where it was now a real pleasure to be near Arthur
Stanley; while, if my mother were ill or needed me in any way, there was
nothing in my work which would prevent my returning to her, and
continuing it at home. Above all, the fact of my having the work to do
would silence the ceaseless insinuations to my mother as to my desire
for an idle life of self-indulgence. I knew nothing then of the
mercantile value of my labour. I did not know (and I had no one to
inform me) that I was giving away the earnest work of two years for a
pitiful sum,[147] which was not a tenth of its value, and which was
utterly insufficient to meet its expenses.

How well I remember my first sight of John Murray, when he came to dine
at the Stanleys' house in Grosvenor Crescent--his hard, dry questions,
his sharp, concise note afterwards, in which he announced the terms of
our hardly-driven bargain, received by me as if it had been the greatest
of favours. Perhaps, however, the very character of the man I had to
deal with, and the rules he enjoined as to my work, were a corrective I
was much the better for at this time. The style of my writing was to be
as hard, dry, and incisive as my taskmaster. It was to be a mere
catalogue of facts and dates, mingled with measurements of buildings,
and irritating details as to the "E. E.," "Dec.," or "Perp."
architecture even of the most insignificant churches, this being the
peculiar hobby of the publisher. No sentiment, no expression of opinion
were ever to be allowed; all description was to be reduced to its barest
bones, dusty, dead, and colourless. In fact, I was to produce a book
which I knew to be utterly unreadable, though correct and useful for
reference. Many a paper struggle did I have with John Murray the
third--for there has been a dynasty of John Murrays in Albemarle
Street--as to the retention of paragraphs I had written. I remember how
this was especially the case as to my description of Redesdale, which
was one of the best things I have ever done. Murray, however, was never
averse to a contribution from one whose name was _already_ distinguished
either by rank or literature, and when Arthur Stanley contributed
passages with his signature to my account of Oxford, they were gladly
accepted, though antagonistic to all his rules.

[Illustration: CANON STANLEY'S HOUSE, OXFORD.]

Arthur Stanley had been made Professor of Ecclesiastical History at
Oxford before we had gone abroad, and, while we were absent, a Canonry
at Christ Church, attached to the professorship, had fallen in to him.
The Canon's house was just inside the Peckwater Gate leading into Tom
Quad, and had a stiff narrow walled garden behind, planted with
apple-trees, in the centre of which Arthur made a fountain. It had been
a trouble to the Canon that it was almost impossible in his position to
make the acquaintance he wished with the young men around him, and in
this I was able to be a help to him, and in some way to return the
kindness which often gave me a second home in his house for many months
together. His helpless untidiness, and utter inability to look after
himself, were also troubles which I could at least ameliorate. I rapidly
made acquaintances in Christ Church, several of which developed into
friendships, and I was only too glad to accede to Arthur's wish that I
should invite them to his house, where they became his acquaintances
also. Of Christ Church men at this time I became most familiar with
Brownlow,[148] Le Strange,[149] Edward Stanhope,[150] Stopford,[151]
Addie Hay,[152] and my second cousin, Victor Williamson.[153] A little
later, at the house of Mrs. Cradock, I was introduced to "Charlie
Wood."[154] I did not think that I should like him at first; but we
became intimate over an excursion to Watlington and Sherborne Castle,
and he has ever since been the best and dearest of my friends. Very soon
in constant companionship, we drew together in the Bodleian and Christ
Church libraries, we read together at home, and many were the delightful
excursions we made in home scenes, forerunners of after excursions in
more striking scenes abroad. We also often shared in the little feasts
in Mrs. Cradock's[155] garden, where we used to amuse ourselves and
others by composing and reciting verses.

I frequently left Christ Church for a week or two upon exploring raids
into the counties on which I was employed, and used to bring back
materials to work up in Oxford, with the help of the Bodleian and other
libraries. Very early, in this time of excursions, I received an
invitation (often repeated) from Jane, Viscountess Barrington, a first
cousin of my real mother, to visit her at Beckett near Shrivenham. I had
seen so little then of any members of my real family, that I went to
Beckett with more shyness and misgivings than I have ever taken to any
other place; but I soon became deeply attached to my dear cousin Lady
Barrington, who began from the first to show an interest in me, which
was more that of a tenderly affectionate aunt than of any more distant
relation. Lord Barrington, the very type of a courteous English
nobleman, was also most kind. Of their daughters, two were
unmarried--Augusta, who was exceedingly handsome, brimful of very
accurate information, and rather alarming on first acquaintance; and
Adelaide, who was of a much brighter, gentler nature. I thought at this
time, however, that Lina, Lady Somerton, was more engaging than either
of her sisters. I often found her at Beckett with her children, of whom
the little Nina--afterwards Countess of Clarendon--used to be put into a
large china pot upon the staircase when she was naughty. Beckett was a
very large luxurious house in the Tudor style, with a great hall, built
by Thomas Liddell, Lady Barrington's brother. The park was rather flat,
but had a pretty piece of water with swans, and a picturesque
summer-house built by Inigo Jones. Much of the family fortune came from
Lord Barrington's uncle, Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham, who used to
say he was the only licensed poacher in England--"I Shute, by the grace
of God," &c. This old bishop, when his nephew brought his bride to visit
him--a wedding visit--at Mongewell, filled all the trees with rare
cockatoos and parrots, in the hope that when she heard them scream, she
would think they were the native birds of that district. Lord and Lady
Barrington took me, amongst other places, to see Mr. Aitkens of Kingston
Lyle--"the Squire" in Tom Hughes's "Scouring of the White Horse," and
also to see the creature itself, which is far more like a weasel than a
horse. The kindness of Lord Barrington also secured my favourable
reception at every other house in the county, and many were the visits I
paid in Berkshire at places described in my Handbook.

Much kindness was also shown me by old Lady Stanley of Alderley,[156]
who was often very violent, indeed quite furious, about her own
opinions; but full of the most sincere interest and kindness towards me
for my mother's sake. Holmwood, near Henley, whither I went several
times to visit her, was an enchanting place, with luxuriant lawn and
flowers, fine trees, and beautiful distant views. A succession of
grandchildren always filled the house, and found it most enjoyable, the
two unmarried aunts--Rianette (Maria Margaret) and Louisa--being, as one
of them (Lady Airlie) has often told me, "the good fairies of their
childhood." Like most Stanleys, they were peculiarly subject to what
that family calls "fits of righteous indignation" with all who differed
from them; but nobody minded. Having had the most interesting youth
themselves, during which their uncle (afterwards Bishop Stanley) and
other relations were always inventing something for their amusement,
they had a special gift for interesting others, so that those who went
to visit them always felt that though they received many and often
unmerited scoldings, their visit could never be dull. How well I
remember still Louisa Stanley's graphic imitation of many people of her
long-ago--especially of old Mr. Holland, the Knutsford doctor,[157] who
would come in saying, "Well, Miss Louisa, and how are we to-day? We must
take a little more rubbub and magnesia; and I would eat a leetle plain
pudden with a leetle shugger over it!" and then, ringing the bell,
"Would you send round my hearse, if you please?"

Lady Stanley herself had been the pupil of Gibbon at Lausanne, and had
much to tell of past days; and the pertinacity with which she maintained
her own opinions about them and everything else, rendered her
recollections very vivid and amusing. All the family, including my
mother, were so dreadfully afraid of Lady Stanley, that a visit to her
always partook of the nature of an adventure; but it generally turned
out to be a very charming adventure, and I always look back to her with
affectionate gratitude, and feel that there was a great charm in the
singleness, sincerity, and freshness of her character. When I was at
Holmwood, I used to engage a little carriage and go out for long
excursions of eight or ten hours into the country; and when I returned
just before dinner, Lady Stanley was so anxious to hear my adventures,
that she would not wait till I came down, but would insist upon the
whole history through the bedroom door as I was dressing.

If people were not afraid of her, Lady Stanley liked them the better for
it, and she always heartily enjoyed a joke. I remember hearing how one
day at Alderley she raged and stormed because the gentlemen sat longer
after dinner than she liked. Old Mr. Davenport was the first to come
into the drawing-room. "Well now, what _have_ you been doing?" she
exclaimed; "what _can_ you have found to talk about to keep you so
long?"--"Would you really like to know what we've been talking about,
my lady?" said Mr. Davenport. "Yes indeed," she stormed. "Well," said
Mr. Davenport very deliberately, "we talked first about the depression
in the salt (mines), and that led us on inadvertently to pepper, and
that led us to cayenne, and that, my lady, led us ... to yourself,"--and
she was vastly amused. One day her maid told her that there was a
regular uproar downstairs about precedence, as to which of the maids was
to come in first to prayers. "Oh, _that_ is very easily settled," said
Lady Stanley; "the ugliest woman in the house must always, of course,
have the precedence," and she heard no more about it.

Another house which I was frequently invited to use as a centre for my
excursions was that of my father's first cousin, Penelope, Mrs. Warren,
who was living in the old home of Lady Jones at Worting, near
Basingstoke. It was in a most dreary, cold, wind-stricken district, and
was especially selected on that account by Lady Jones, because of its
extreme contrast to the India which she abominated. Internally, however,
the old red-brick house was very comfortable and charming, and Mrs.
Warren herself a very sweet and lovable old lady, tenderly cared for by
her sons and daughters, many of whom were always about her, though only
one of the latter, Anna, was unmarried. Mrs. Warren had been the eldest
of the daughters of Dean Shipley, and the only one who never gave her
family any trouble, and who was invariably loved and honoured by its
other members. Her character through life had been that of a peacemaker,
and in her old age she seemed almost glorified by the effulgence of the
love which had emanated from her, no single member of the family having
a recollection of her which was not connected with some kindly word or
unselfish action.[158] That Lady Jones should bequeath Worting to her
was felt by all the other nephews and nieces to have been most natural.
"Who should it have been to, if not to Penelope?" She liked to talk of
old times, and her reminiscences were most interesting. She was also
very proud of her family, especially of the Mordaunts, and of our direct
descent, through the Shipleys, from the youngest son of Edward I. It was
on one of my early visits at Worting that I first made acquaintance with
my cousin Harriet, Mrs. Thornton, niece of Mrs. Warren, and one of the
daughters of Bishop Heber.[159] She described the second marriage of
her mother to Count Valsamachi in the Greek church at Venice, and the
fun she and her sister thought it to walk round the altar with huge
wedding favours in their hands. She was full of amusing stories of
India, from which she was just returned: would tell how one day she was
sitting next a Rajah who was carving a pie, and when he lifted the crust
a whole flock of little birds flew out--"Whir-r-r-r!" said the Rajah as
they flew all over the room; how, one day, being surprised that an
expected ham was not brought in to dinner, she went out and found it
lying in the court, with all the native servants round it in a circle
spitting at it; and how one day at the Cape she was told that a woman
was bitten by a venomous snake, and going out, found her eating a toad
as a remedy. One of Mrs. Thornton's stories, which I have often repeated
since, is so curious as to deserve insertion here.

     "M. de Sartines had been brought up by an old friend of his family
     who lived in Picardy. The château of his old friend was the home of
     his youth, and the only place where he felt sure that all his
     failings would be overlooked and all his fancies and wishes would
     be considered.

     "While he was absent from France on diplomatic service, M. de
     Sartines heard with great grief that his old friend was dead. In
     losing him, he lost not only the friend who had been as a second
     father, but the only home which remained to him in France. He felt
     his loss very much--so much, indeed, that for many years he did not
     return to France at all, but spent his time of leave in travelling
     in Italy and elsewhere.

     "Some years after, M. de Sartines, finding himself in Paris,
     received a letter from the nephew of his old friend, who had
     succeeded to the Picardy property. It was a very nice letter
     indeed, saying how much he and his wife wished to keep up old
     family ties and connections, and that though he was well aware that
     it would cost M. de Sartines much to revisit the château so
     tenderly connected with memories of the dead, still, if he could
     make that effort, no guest would be more affectionately welcomed,
     and that he and his wife would do their utmost to make him feel
     that the friendship which had been held had not passed away, but
     was continued to another generation. It was so nice a letter that
     M. de Sartines felt that he ought not to reject the hand of
     friendship stretched out in so considerate and touching a manner,
     and though it certainly cost him a great effort, he went down to
     the château in Picardy.

     "His old friend's nephew and his wife received him on the doorstep.
     Everything was prepared to welcome him. They had inquired of former
     servants which room he had occupied and how he liked it arranged,
     and all was ready accordingly. They had even inquired about and
     provided his favourite dishes at dinner. Nothing was wanting which
     the most disinterested solicitude could effect.

     "When M. de Sartines retired to his room for the night, he was
     filled with conflicting emotions. The blank which he felt in the
     loss of his old friend was mingled with a grateful sense of the
     kindness he had received from the nephew. He felt he could not
     sleep, or would be long in doing so; but having made up a large
     fire, for it was very cold weather, he went to bed.

     "In process of time, as he lay wakefully with his head upon the
     pillow, he became aware of the figure of a little wizened old man
     hirpling towards the fire. He thought he must be dreaming, but, as
     he listened, the old man spoke--'Il y a longtemps que je n'ai vu un
     feu, il faut que je me chauffe.'

     "The blood of M. de Sartines ran cold within him as the figure
     turned slowly round towards the bed and continued in trembling
     accents--'Il y a longtemps que je n'ai vu un lit, il faut que je me
     couche.'

     "But every fibre in M. de Sartines' body froze as the old man, on
     reaching the bed, drew the curtains, and seeing him, exclaimed--'Il
     y a longtemps que je n'ai vu M. de Sartines, il faut que je
     l'embrasse.'

     "M. de Sartines almost died of fright. But fortunately he did not
     quite die. He lived to know that it was his old friend himself. The
     nephew had got tired of waiting for the inheritance; he had
     imprisoned his uncle in the cellar, and had given out his death,
     and had a false funeral of a coffin filled with stones. The
     invitation to his uncle's friend was a _coup de théâtre_: if any
     suspicions had existed, they must have been lulled for ever by the
     presence of such a guest in the château. But on the very day on
     which M. de Sartines had arrived, the old gentleman had contrived
     to escape from his cell, and wandering half imbecile about the
     house, made his way to the room where he remembered having so often
     been with his friend, and found there his friend himself.

     "M. de Sartines saw the rightful owner of the castle reinstated,
     and the villainy of the wicked nephew exposed; but the old man died
     soon afterwards."

Here is another story which Mrs. Thornton told, apropos of the benefits
of cousinship:--

     "Frederick the Great was one day travelling incognito, when he met
     a student on his way to Berlin, and asked him what he was going to
     do there. 'Oh,' said the student, 'I am going to Berlin to look for
     a cousin, for I have heard of so many people who have found cousins
     in Berlin, and who have risen through their influence to rank and
     power, that I am going to try if I cannot find one too.' Frederick
     had much further conversation with him, and on parting said, 'Well,
     if you trust to me, I believe that I shall be able to find a cousin
     for you before you arrive at Berlin.' The student thanked his
     unknown friend, and they parted.

     "Soon after he reached Berlin, an officer of the court came to the
     student, and said that he was his cousin, and that he had already
     used influence for him with the King, who had desired that he
     should preach before him on the following Sunday, but that he
     should use the text which the King himself should send him, and no
     other.

     "The student was anxious to have the text, that he might consider
     his sermon, but one day after another of the week passed, and at
     last Sunday came and no text was sent. The time for going to church
     came, and no text had arrived. The King and the court were seated,
     and the unhappy student proceeded with the service, but still no
     text was given. At last, just as he was going up into the pulpit, a
     sealed paper was given to him. After the prayer he opened it, and
     it was ... blank! He turned at once to the congregation, and
     showing them the two sides of the paper, said, '_Here_ is nothing,
     and _there_ is nothing, and out of nothing God made the world'--and
     he preached the most striking sermon the court had ever heard."

Mrs. Thornton described how old Mr. Thornton had been staying in
Somersetshire with Sir Thomas Acland, when he heard two countrymen
talking together. One of them said to the other, who was trying to
persuade him to do something, "Wal, noo, as they say, 'shake an ass and
go.'" Mr. Thornton came back and said to Sir Thomas, "What very
extraordinary proverbial expressions they have in these parts. Just now
I heard a man say 'shake an ass and go'--such a _very_ extraordinary
proverbial expression." "Well," said Sir Thomas, "the fact is there are
a great many French expressions lingering in this neighbourhood: that
meant 'Chacun à son goût!'"

Of the new acquaintances I made in Oxfordshire, those of whose
hospitality I oftenest availed myself were the Cottrell Dormers, who
lived at the curious old house of Rousham, above the Cherwell, near
Heythrop. It is a beautiful place, with long evergreen shrubberies,
green lawns with quaint old statues, and a long walk shaded by yews,
with a clear stream running down a stone channel in the midst. Within,
the house is full of old family portraits, and has a wonderful
collection of MSS., and the pedigree of the family from Noah! Mr. and
Mrs. Dormer were quaint characters: he always insisting that he was a
Roman Catholic in disguise, chiefly to plague his wife, and always
reading the whole of Pope's works, in the large quarto edition, through
once a year; she full of kind-heartedness, riding by herself about the
property to manage the estate and cottagers, always welcoming you with a
hearty "Well, to be sure, and how do _you_ do?" She was a _maîtresse
femme_, who ruled the house with a sunshiny success which utterly set at
nought the old proverb--

    "La maison est misérable et méchante
    Où la Poule plus haut que le Coq chante."

Mrs. Dormer was somehow descended from one of the daughters of Sir
Thomas More, and at Cokethorpe, the place of her brother, Mr.
Strickland, was one of the three great pictures by Holbein of the family
of Sir Thomas More, which was long in the possession of the
Lenthalls.[160] Another place in the neighbourhood of Rousham which I
visited was Fritwell Manor, a most picturesque old house, rented by the
father of my college friend Forsyth Grant--"Kyrie." Fritwell is a
haunted house, and was inhabited by two families. When the Edwardes
lived there in the summer, no figure was seen, but stains of fresh blood
were constantly found on the staircase. When the Grants lived there, for
hunting, in the winter, there was no blood, but the servants who went
down first in the morning would meet on the staircase an old man in a
grey dressing-gown, bleeding from an open wound in the throat. It is
said that Sir Baldwin Wake, a former proprietor, quarrelled with his
brother about a lady of whom they were both enamoured, and, giving out
that he was insane, imprisoned him till real madness ensued. His prison
was at the top of the house, where a sort of large human dog-kennel
still exists, to which the unfortunate man is said to have been
chained.

I made a delightful excursion with "Kyrie" to Wroxton Abbey and
Broughton Castle--Lord Saye and Sele's--where we were invited to
luncheon by Mr. Fiennes and Lady Augusta, in the former of whom I most
unexpectedly found 'Twisleton'[161]--an old hero boy-friend of my Harrow
school-days, whom I regarded then much as David Copperfield did
Steerforth. The old castle is very picturesque, and the church full of
curious monuments.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Christ Church, Oxford, April 25, 1859._--Arthur and I dined last
     night at Canon Jelf's. He was for thirteen years tutor to the King
     of Hanover, and while at the court fell in love with Countess
     Schlippenbach, the Queen's lady-in-waiting, who married him.... Dr.
     Jelf told a great deal that was interesting about the King: how, as
     Prince George, he would insist upon playing at being his Eton fag,
     brush his clothes, make his toast, &c.: that he was with the Prince
     at the time of the fatal accident which caused his blindness, when,
     in the garden at Kew, having just given half-a-crown to a beggar,
     he was whisking his purse round and round, when the ring at the end
     went into his eye. A fortnight's anxiety followed, and then came
     the great grief of his dear Prince one day saying to him when out
     shooting, 'Will you give me your arm, sir? I don't see quite so
     well as I ought to do. I think we had better go home.' Afterwards,
     instead of murmuring, the Prince only said, 'Those who will not
     obey must suffer: you told me not to whisk my things about in that
     way, and I disobeyed: it is right that I should suffer for it.'

     "He gave many beautiful pictures of the King's after life: how the
     dear blind King, who bears no outward mark of his misfortune,
     always turns to the sun, as if seeking the light: of his marriage
     with his cousin of Saxe-Altenbourg, a true love-match: that he, the
     old tutor, was never forgotten, and that on his last birthday, when
     he least expected it, a royal telegram announced--'The King, the
     Queen, and the royal children of Hanover wish Dr. Jelf many happy
     new years.' The King always writes to Dr. and Mrs. Jelf on their
     wedding-day, which even their own family do not always remember,
     and on their silver-wedding he sent them a beautiful portrait of
     himself.

     "Arthur, I imagine, rather likes having me here, though no
     outsiders would imagine so; but he finds me useful after a fashion,
     and is much annoyed if I allude to ever going into lodgings. He
     certainly does _exactly_ what he likes when I am there, and is
     quite as unreserved in his ways as if nobody whatever was present.
     I am generally down first. He comes in pre-engrossed, and there is
     seldom any morning salutation. At breakfast I sit (he wills it so)
     at the end of the table, pour out his excessively weak tea, and put
     the heavy buttered buns which he loves within his easy reach. When
     we are alone, I eat my own bread and butter in silence; but if
     undergraduates breakfast with us, it is my duty, if I know
     anything about it, so to turn the conversation that he may learn
     what their 'lines' are, and converse accordingly. Certainly the
     merry nonsense and childlike buoyancy which cause his breakfast
     parties to be so delightful, make the contrast of his silent
     irresponsiveness rather trying when we are alone--it is such a
     complete 'you are not worth talking to.' However, I have learnt to
     enjoy the first, and to take no notice of the other; indeed, if I
     can do so quite effectually, it generally ends in his becoming
     pleasanter. In amiable moments he will sometimes glance at my MSS.,
     and give them a sanction like that of Cardinal Richelieu--'Accepi,
     legi, probavi.' After breakfast, he often has something for me to
     do for him, great plans, maps, or drawings for his lectures, on
     huge sheets of paper, which take a good deal of time, but which he
     never notices except when the moment comes for using them. All
     morning he stands at his desk by the study window (where I see him
     sometimes from the garden, which he expects me to look after), and
     he writes sheet after sheet, which he sometimes tears up and flings
     to rejoin the letters of the morning, which cover the carpet in all
     directions.[162] It would never do for him to marry, a wife would
     be so annoyed at his hopelessly untidy ways; at his tearing every
     new book to pieces, for instance, because he is too impatient to
     cut it open (though I now do a good deal in this way). Meantime, as
     Goethe says, 'it is the errors of men that make them amiable,' and
     I believe he is all the better loved for his peculiarities.
     Towards the middle of the day, I sometimes have an indication that
     he has no one to walk with him, and would wish me to go, and he
     likes me to be in the way then, in case I am wanted, but I am never
     to expect to be talked to during the walk. If not required, I amuse
     myself, or go on with my own work, and indeed I seldom see Arthur
     till the evening, when, if any one dines for whom he thinks it
     worth while to come out of himself, he is very pleasant, and
     sometimes very entertaining."

My mother spent a great part of the spring of 1859 at Clifton, whither I
went to visit her, afterwards making a _tourette_ by myself to
Salisbury, Southampton, Beaulieu, and Winchester.

     "_Salisbury, April 12, 1859._--At 8-1/2 I was out on bleak
     Salisbury Plain, where, as the driver of my gig observed, 'it is a
     whole coat colder than in the valley.' What an immense desert it
     is! The day, so intensely grey, with great black clouds sweeping
     across the sky, was quite in character with the long lines of
     desolate country. At last we turned off the road over the turf, and
     in the distance rose the gigantic temple, with the sun shining
     through the apertures in the stones. It was most majestic and
     impressive, not a creature in sight, except a quantity of rabbits
     scampering about, and a distant shepherd."

The latter part of June 1859 I spent most happily in a pony-carriage
tour in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire with my friend George Sheffield,
who had just passed his examination at the Foreign Office. It was on
this occasion that, as we were driving under a park wall in
Buckinghamshire, I said to George, "Inside that park is a very fine old
house, and inside the house is a very fine old sundial. We will go to
see the house, and we will take away the sundial;" and we _did_, though
at that moment I did not even know the name of the people who lived
there. The old house was the Vatche, which had belonged to my
great-great-grandfather, Bishop Hare, who married its heiress in the
reign of George II., and I had heard of the sundial from the
churchwarden of Chalfont, with whom I had had some correspondence about
my ancestor's tomb. It was made on the marriage of Bishop Hare with Miss
Alston and bore his arms. The family of Allen, then living at the
Vatche, allowed us to see the house, and my enthusiasm at sight of the
sundial, which was lying neglected in a corner, so worked upon the
feelings of Mrs. Allen, that she gave it me. It is now in the garden at
Holmhurst.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_June 16._--I have enjoyed a visit to the Henry Leycesters at
     White Place, which lies low in the meadows, but has the charm of a
     little creek full of luxuriant water-plants, down which Henry
     Leycester punts his guests into the Thames opposite Clifden; and
     how picturesque are the old yew-trees and winding walks of that
     beautiful place. Henry Leycester, to look upon, is like one of the
     magnificent Vandykes in the Brignole Palace at Genoa. Little Mrs.
     Leycester is a timid shrinking creature, who daily becomes terribly
     afraid of the domestic ghost (a lady carrying her head) as evening
     comes on. 'Imagine my feelings, Mr. Hare,' she says, 'my awful
     position as a wife and a mother, when my husband is away, and I am
     left alone in the long evenings with _her_.'"


     "_June 17, Christ Church._--Last week the Dean, with much
     imprudence, punished two Christ Church men most severely for the
     same offence, but _one more than the other_. The next night the
     Deanery garden was broken into, the rose-trees torn up and
     flower-beds destroyed, the children's swing cut down, and the name
     of the injured man cut in large letters in the turf. It has created
     great indignation.

     "My chief work, now I am at Oxford, is in the Bodleian, where I
     have much to look out and refer to, and where everything is made
     delightful by Mr. Coxe, the librarian,[163] who is not only the
     most accurate and learned person in the world, but also the most
     sympathetic, lively, and lovable. 'Never mind, dear boy,' he
     always says, the more trouble I give him. Anything more unlike the
     cut-and-dried type of Oxford Dons cannot be imagined. He has given
     me a plant (Linaria purpurea) from the tomb of Cicero.

     "I should like to take my Master's degree, but the fees will be
     about £20. I could then vote at the election. I should certainly
     vote against Gladstone, though Arthur says he should vote for him
     'with both hands and both feet.' ... I have great satisfaction in
     being here now, in feeling that I can be useful to Arthur, in
     preparing drawings for his lectures, &c., also that he really
     prefers my presence to my absence."


     "_July 4._--I sate up till twelve last night preparing 'the bidding
     prayer' for Arthur (who was to preach the 'Act Sermon to-day at St.
     Mary's)--immensely long, as the _whole_ of the founders and
     benefactors have to be mentioned. Imagine my horror when, after the
     service, the Vice-Chancellor came up to Arthur and demanded to know
     why _he_ had not been prayed for! I had actually omitted his name
     of all others! Arthur said it was all the fault of 'Silvanus.' In
     his sermon on Deborah, Arthur described how the long vacation,
     'like the ancient river, the river Kishon,' was about to form a
     barrier, and might wash away all the past and supply a
     halting-place from which to begin a new life: that the bondage
     caused by concealment of faults or debts might now be broken: that
     now, when undergraduates were literally 'going to their father,'
     they might apply the story of the Prodigal Son, and obtain that
     freedom which is truth."

[Illustration: HODNET CHURCH.]

In July I paid a first visit to my cousins, the Heber Percys, at Hodnet
Hall, in order to meet Countess Valsamachi (Mrs. Heber Percy's
mother).[164] The old Hodnet Hall was a long low two-storied house, like
an immense cottage, or rather like a beehive, from the abundant family
life which overcrowded it. The low dining-room was full of curious
pictures of the Vernons, whose heiress married one of the Hebers, but
when the pictures had been sent up to London to be cleaned, the cleaner
had cut all their legs off. At this time a debt of £40,000 existed upon
the Hodnet estate. Mr. Percy's father, the Bishop of Carlisle, had
promised to pay it off when certain fees came in. At last the fees were
paid, and the papers were in the house, only awaiting the signature of
the Bishop. That day he fell down dead. When it was told to his
children, they only said, "It is the will of God; we must not complain."

I had much conversation with Lady Valsamachi. Talking of religion, she
spoke of an atheist who once grumbled at the dispensation of a gourd
having such a slender stem, while an acorn was supported by an oak.
"When he had done speaking, the acorn fell upon his nose; had it been
the gourd, his nose would have been no more!"

We walked to where Stoke had been, so tenderly connected with past days.
All was altered, except the Terne flowing through reedy meadows. It was
less painful to me to see it than on my last visit, but cost me many
pangs.

I joined my mother at Toft, where our dear cousin Charlotte Leycester
was acting as mistress of the house, and gave us a cordial welcome to
the old family home. Greatly did my mother enjoy being there, and the
sight of familiar things and people. Especially was she welcomed by an
old woman named Betty Strongitharm; I remember how this old woman said,
"When I am alone, I think, and think, and think, and the end of all my
thinking is that Christ is all in all ... but I do not want to go to
heaven alone; I want to take a many others along with me."


     JOURNAL.

     "When we left Toft, we went to our cousins at Thornycroft. At
     Thornycroft was a labourer named Rathbone. One winter day, when his
     wife was in her confinement, she was in great want of something
     from Macclesfield, which her husband undertook to get for her when
     he went to his work in the town, but he said that he must take his
     little girl of ten years old with him, that she might bring it back
     to her mother. The woman entreated him not to take the child, as
     the snow was very deep, and she feared that she might not find her
     way home again. However, the father insisted, and set off, taking
     his little girl with him. The purchase was made and the child set
     off to return home with it, but she--never arrived.

     "When Rathbone reached home in the evening, and found that his
     child had not appeared, he was in an agony of terror, and set off
     at once to search for her. He traced her to Monk's Heath. People
     had seen her there, and directed her back to Henbury, but she
     seemed to have lost her way again. Rathbone next traced her to a
     farmhouse at Peover, where the people had had the barbarity to turn
     her out at night and direct her back to Henbury. Then all trace of
     her was lost.

     "At last Rathbone was persuaded by his friends and neighbours to
     apply to a woman whom they called 'the White Witch' at Manchester,
     and to her he went. She told him to look into a glass and tell her
     what he saw there. He looked into the glass and said, 'I see a man
     holding up his hat.' 'Well,' she said, 'then go on with your
     search, and when you meet a man holding up his hat, he will tell
     you where your child is.' So he returned and went again to search,
     taking another man with him. At length, as they were going down a
     lane, Rathbone exclaimed, 'There he is!'--'Who?' said the
     companion, for he only saw a man running and holding up his hat.
     That man told them that he had just found the body of a child under
     a tree, and there, near a pond, frozen to death, lay Rathbone's
     little girl.

     "When we were at Thornycroft, Rathbone was still overwhelmed with
     contrition for what he considered the sin of having consulted the
     witch."

From Cheshire we went to the English Lakes. The curious old King's Arms
Inn at Lancaster, described by Dickens, was then in existence, and it
was a pleasure to sleep there, and walk in the morning upon the high
terrace in front of the church and castle. From Ambleside, we spent a
delightful day in making the round by Dungeon Ghyll and Blea Tarn, where
we drew the soft grey peaks of Langdale Pikes, framed in dark
heather-covered rocks, and in the foreground the blue tarn sleeping amid
the pastures. From Keswick I ascended Skiddaw, and had a glorious view
across the billows of mountains to the sea and the faint outlines of the
Isle of Man. Another delightful day was spent with the mother and Lea in
Borrowdale. One of the most beautiful effects I have ever seen was in
crossing to Buttermere by Borrowdale Hawse, a tremendous wild mountain
chasm, into which the setting sun was pouring floods of crimson light as
we descended, smiting into blood the waters of the little torrent which
was struggling down beside us through the rocks. We arrived at
Buttermere very late, and found not a single room unoccupied in the
village, so had to return in the dark night to Keswick.

We were much interested in Dumfries, in many ways one of the most
foreign-looking towns in Britain, where we remained several days,
making excursions to the exquisitely graceful ruins of Lincluden Abbey;
to New Abbey (glorious in colour), founded by Devorgilda to contain the
heart of John Baliol; to the Irongray Church, where Helen Walker, the
original of Jeannie Deans, is buried, and where, on a rocky knoll under
some old oaks, is a desolate Covenanter's grave; to Ellisland, the
primitive cottage-home of Burns, overlooking the purple hills and clear
rushing Nith; and to the great desolate castle of Caerlaverock near
Solway Firth. The old churchyard of Dumfries reminded us of Père la
Chaise in its forest of tombs, but was far more picturesque. Burns is
buried there, with all his family. The exaggerated worship which follows
Burns in Scotland rather sets one against him, and shows how many a
saint got into the Calendar; for there are many there whose private
lives would as little bear inspection as his. His son, formerly a clerk
in Somerset House, had long been living at Dumfries upon a pension, and
died there three years before our visit. Many are the old red sandstone
gravestones in Dumfries and its neighbourhood bearing inscriptions to
Covenanters, telling how they were "martyrs for adhering to the word of
God, Christ's kingly government in his house, and the covenanted work
of Reformation against tyrannie, perjury, and prelacie."

Amongst our Roman friends had been Mrs. Fotheringham of Fotheringham,
whom we visited at the so-called Fotheringham Castle, a comfortable
modern house, in Forfarshire. We went with her to spend a day with the
charming old Thomas Erskine,[165] author of the "Essays," and since well
known from his "Letters." With him lived his two beautiful and venerable
old sisters, Mrs. Stirling and Mrs. Paterson, and their home of
Linlathen contained many noble Italian pictures. Another excursion was
to visit Miss Stirling Graham at Duntrune, a beautiful place overlooking
the blue firth and bay of St. Andrews. Miss Graham was the authoress and
heroine of "Mystifications," intimately bound up with all the literary
associations of Edinburgh in the first half of the nineteenth century.
She was also the nearest surviving relation of Claverhouse, and Duntrune
was filled with relics of him.[166] She was a great bee-fancier and
bee-friend, and would allow the bees to settle all over her. "My dear,
where can you have lived all your life not to know about bees?" she said
to a young lady who asked her some simple questions about them. At
Fotheringham, the principal relic is a portrait of "the Flower of
Yarrow" (said by Sir Walter Scott to have been such an ugly old woman at
seventy), singing from a piece of music. The last cannibals in Scotland
lived in a glen near Fotheringham, where carters and ploughmen were
perpetually disappearing. The glen was known to be the abode of robbers,
and at last a strong force was sent against them, and they were all
killed, except one little girl of ten years old, whom it was thought a
shame to destroy. She had not been with her preservers many days before
she said, "Why do you never eat man's flesh? for if you once ate that,
you would never wish to eat anything else again." My mother made an
excursion from Fotheringham to see Panmure, where the housekeeper said
to her that her Lord[167] was "very bad, for he had not killed a single
_beast_ that year."


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_August 22._--I went early by rail to Stonehaven, and walked to
     Dunottar. The sea was of the softest Mediterranean blue, and the
     walk along the edge of the cliffs, through the cornfields, looking
     down first on the old town and then on the different little coves
     with their curiously twisted and richly coloured rocks, most
     delightful. The castle is hidden by the uplands at first, but
     crowns the ridge of a magnificent rock, which runs far out into the
     sea, with a line of battered towers. In the depths are reefs
     covered with seaweed, between which the sea flows up in deep green
     pools.

     "A narrow ledge of rock, of which you can scarcely make out whether
     it is natural or artificial, connects the castle with the mainland,
     and here through an arch in the wall you look down into a second
     bay, where the precipices, crested by a huge red fragment of tower,
     descend direct upon the water. High up in one of the turrets lives
     the keeper, a girl, who said that she was so used to climbing, that
     she could go anywhere where there was the least rest for the sole
     of her foot; that she did not care to have anything to hold on by,
     and had never known what it was to be giddy. The 'Whigs' Vault' is
     shown, in which a hundred and twenty Covenanters were chained, and,
     beneath it, the awfully close stifling dungeon in which forty-eight
     were confined, and many of them suffocated. The place still remains
     where they were let down from the more airy vault above, and also
     the hole through which their food was transmitted to them. On one
     side of the dungeon is the well of brackish water which is said (as
     in the prison of St. Peter) to have sprung up in one night to
     quench their thirst; on the other, the hole which, in their
     agonised desperation, they scratched with their hands through the
     wall, and by which five-and-twenty tried to escape, but were all
     dashed to pieces against the rocks or taken, except two; while, if
     the dark night had only allowed them to see it, there is a little
     footpath near, by which they might all have passed in safety. In
     the castle also are the chamber in which the Regalia of Scotland
     were concealed, and the well once supplied by pipes, the cutting of
     which by Cromwell caused the surrender of the garrison."


     "_August 23, Eccles Greig, Montrose._--This is a charming place
     belonging to Kyrie's[168] father, and of which he is the heir. Miss
     Grant drove me to-day to Denfenella, a beautiful ravine of
     tremendous depth, where a lovely burn dashes over a precipice, and
     then rushes away to the sea through depths of rock and fern, amid
     which it makes a succession of deep shadowy pools. Endless are the
     Scottish stories about this place:

     "That Queen Fenella--the fairy queen--first washed her clothes in
     the bright shining Morne, and then walked on the tops of the trees,
     by which means she escaped.

     "That Queen Fenella, having murdered her husband, fled to
     Denfenella, where she flung herself over the rocks to escape
     justice.

     "That Queen Fenella, widow of Kenneth III., after the death of her
     husband and her own escape from the Castle of Kincardine, fled to
     Denfenella, where she was taken and put to death.

     "That Queen Fenella loved a beautiful youth, but that her enemies
     tried to force her to marry another; and that, rather than do so,
     she fled from her father's castle, which is at an immense distance
     from this, but, on reaching Denfenella, she felt that farther
     escape was hopeless, and let herself float down the stream and be
     carried away over the waterfall into the sea.

     "All the stories, however, agree in one fact, that at midnight the
     beautiful Fenella still always walks in the braes where she died,
     and still washes her clothes in the bright shining Morne.

     "We went on to the 'Came of Mathers,' a wild cove on the seashore
     with a ruined castle on the farthest point of an inaccessible
     precipice, beneath which the green waves rush through deep rifts of
     the rock, which is worn into caves and arches. The Sheriff of these
     parts was once very unpopular, and the lairds complained to King
     James, who said in a joke that it would be a very good thing if the
     Sheriff were boiled and cut up and made into browse. When the
     lairds heard this, they beguiled the Sheriff to Gavoch, where they
     had a huge caldron prepared, into which they immediately popped
     him, and boiled him, and cut him up. Then, literally to carry out
     the King's words, they each ate a part of him. Having done this,
     they were all so dreadfully afraid of King James, that they sought
     every possible means of escape, and the Laird of Arbuthnot, who had
     been one of the most forward in boiling the Sheriff, built this
     impregnable castle, where he lived in defiance of the King.

     "Beneath the castle is a deep cleft in the rock, which seems
     endless. It is said to continue in a subterranean passage to
     Lauriston. The drummer of Lauriston once went up it, and tried to
     work his way through, but he never was seen again; and at night, it
     is said, that the drummer of Lauriston is still heard beating his
     drum in the cavern beneath."

Upon leaving Eccles Greig, I joined my mother, and went with her to St.
Andrews, which I had always greatly desired that she should see. Even
more than the wonderful charm of the place at this time was that of
seeing much of the genial, witty, eccentric Provost, Sir Hugh Lyon
Playfair. He first came up to me when I was drawing--an old man in a
cloak--and invited me into his garden, whither we returned several
times. That garden was the most extraordinary place, representing all
the important facts of the history of the world, from chaos and the
creation of the sun down to the Reform Bill, "whence," said Sir Hugh,
"you may date the decline of the British Empire." On the same chart were
marked the lengths of all the principal ships, while representations of
the planets indicated their distance from the sun! No verbal
description, however, can recall the genial oddity of the garden's
owner. On Saturdays he used to open his garden to the public, and follow
in the crowd to hear their opinion of himself. He said they would often
say, "Ah! the poor Provost, he has more money than brains; he is sadly
deficient here," pointing to the forehead. Once some of the people said
to him, "We do so want to see the Provost; how _would_ it be possible to
see Sir Hugh?"--"Oh," he answered, "I think you had better go and look
in at the windows, and you will be sure to see him." So they all crowded
to the windows, but there was no one to be seen. "Oh," he said, "I'll
tell you why that is: that is because he is under the table. It is a way
Sir Hugh has. He is so dreadfully shy, that whenever he hears any one
coming, he always goes under the table directly." Presently, on going
out, they met an official, who, coming up, touched his hat and said, "If
you please, Sir Hugh, I've spoken to that policeman, as you ordered me,"
and the horrified people discovered their mistake, to Sir Hugh's intense
amusement.


     JOURNAL.

     "_August 30._--A stormy day, but I went by train to Tynehead for
     Crichton. Two old ladies of ninety got into the carriage after me.
     An old gentleman opposite made a civil speech to one of them, upon
     which she tartly replied, 'I don't hear a word, for I thank
     Almighty God for all His mercies, and most of all that He has made
     me quite deaf, for if I heard I should be obliged to speak to
     _you_, and I don't _want_ to speak to you.'

     "Crichton is a red ruined castle on a hill, with a distance of
     purple moorland, and inside is the courtyard so exactly described
     in 'Marmion.' With storm raging round it, it was awfully desolate.
     Close by is an old stumpy-towered thoroughly Scotch church."

After a visit to the Dalzels at North Berwick, my mother went south from
Durham. I turned backwards to pay my first visit to Mrs. Davidson--the
"Cousin Susan" with whom I was afterwards most intimate. "The beautiful
Lord Strathmore," my great-grandmother's brother, so often painted by
Angelica Kauffmann, who married "the Unhappy Countess," had two
daughters, Maria and Anna. After Lady Strathmore was released from her
brutal second husband, the one thing she had the greatest horror of for
her daughters was matrimony, and she did all she could to prevent their
seeing any one. But Lady Anna Bowes, while her mother was living in
Fludyer Street, made the acquaintance of a young lawyer who lived on the
other side the way, and performed the extraordinary acrobatic feat of
walking across a plank suspended across the street to his rooms,[169]
where she was married to him. The marriage was an unhappy one, but Mr.
Jessop did not survive long, and left Lady Anna with two young
daughters, of whom one died early: the other was "Cousin Susan." Lady
Anna was given a home (in a house adjoining the park at Gibside) by her
brother, John, Lord Strathmore, and her daughters were brought up in
sister-like intimacy with his (illegitimate) son, John Bowes. Susan
Jessop afterwards married Mr. Davidson of Otterburn, who, being a very
rich man, to please her, bought and endowed her with the old Ridley
property--Ridley Hall on South Tyne.

Cousin Susan was an active, bright little woman, always beautifully
dressed, and with the most perfect figure imaginable. No one except Mr.
Bowes knew how old she was, and he would not tell, but she liked to be
thought very young, and still danced at Newcastle balls. She was a
capital manager of her large estate, entered into all business questions
herself, and would walk for hours about her woods, marking timber,
planning bridges or summer-houses, and contriving walks and staircases
in the most difficult and apparently inaccessible places.

Ridley Hall was the most intense source of pride to Cousin Susan, and
though the house was very ugly, the place was indeed most beautiful. The
house stood on a grassy hill above the South Tyne Railway, with a large
flower-garden on the other side, where, through the whole summer, three
hundred and sixty-five flower-beds were bright with every colour of the
rainbow. I never saw such a use of annuals as at Ridley Hall--there were
perfect sheets of Colinsia, Nemophila, and other common things, from
which, in the seed-time, Cousin Susan would gather what she called her
harvest, which it took her whole evenings to thresh out and arrange. A
tiny inner garden, concealed by trees and rockwork, would have been
quite charming to children, with a miniature thatched cottage, filled
with the smallest furniture that could be put into use, bookcases, and
pictures, &c. Beyond the garden was a lovely view towards the moors,
ever varied by the blue shadows of clouds fleeting across them. Thence
an avenue, high above the river, led to the kitchen-garden, just where
the rushing Allen Water, seen through a succession of green arches, was
hurrying to its junction with the Tyne. Here one entered upon the wood
walks, which wound for five miles up and down hill, through every
exquisite variety of scenery--to Bilberry Hill Moss House, with its
views, across the woods, up the gorge of the Allen to the old tower of
Staward Peel--to the Raven's Crag, the great yellow sandstone cliff
crowned with old yew-trees, which overhangs the river--and across the
delicately swung chain-bridge by the Birkie Brae to a lonely tarn in the
hills, returning by the Swiss Cottage and the Craggy Pass, a steep
staircase under a tremendous overhanging rock.

During my first visits at Ridley Hall, words would fail to express my
enjoyment of the natural beauties of the place, and I passed many
delightful hours reading in the mossy walks, or sketching amongst the
huge rocks in the bed of the shallow river; but at Ridley more than
anywhere else I have learnt how insufficient mere beauty is to fill
one's life; and in later years, when poor Cousin Susan's age and
infirmities increased, I felt terribly the desolation of the place, the
miles and miles of walks kept up for no one else to enjoy them--the
hours, and days, and weeks in which one might wander for ever and never
meet a human being.

During my earlier visits, however, Cousin Susan would fill her house in
the summer, especially in the shooting season. There was nothing
particularly intellectual in the people, but a large party in a
beautiful place generally finds sources of enjoyment: which were always
sought on foot, for there was only one road near Ridley Hall, that along
the Tyne valley, which led to Hexham on the east and Haltwhistle on the
west. Constant guests and great friends of Cousin Susan were the two old
Miss Coulsons--Mary and Arabella--of Blenkinsop, primitive, pleasant old
ladies, and two of the most kind-hearted people I have ever known.
Cousin Susan delighted in her denomination of "the Great Lady of the
Tyne," and, in these earlier years of our intimacy, was adored by her
tenantry and the people of the neighbouring villages, who several times,
when she appeared at a public gathering, insisted on taking out her
horses and drawing her home. With her neighbours of a higher class,
Cousin Susan was always very exacting of attention, and very apt to take
offence.

But no account of Ridley Hall can be complete without alluding to the
dogs, of which there were great numbers, treated quite as human beings
and part of the family. An extra dog was never considered an infliction;
thus, when Cousin Susan engaged a new servant, he or she was always
told that a dog would be especially annexed to them, and considered to
belong to them. When the footman came in to put on the coals, his dog
came in with him; when you met the housemaid in the passage, she was
accompanied by her dog. On the first day of my arrival, Cousin Susan
said at dessert, "John, now bring in the boys," and when I was expecting
the advent of a number of unknown young cousins, the footman threw open
the door, and volleys of little dogs rushed into the room, but all white
Spitzes except the Chowdy-Tow, a most comical Japanese. Church service
at Ridley Hall was held at the Beltingham Chapel, where Cousin Susan was
supreme. The miserable little clergyman, who used to pray for
"Queen-Victori-[=a]," was never allowed to begin till she had entered
the church and taken her place in a sort of tribune on a level with the
altar. Many of the dogs went to church too, with the servants to whom
they were annexed. This was so completely considered a matter of course,
that I never observed it as anything absurd till one day when my
connections the Scotts (daughters of Alethea Stanley) came to the chapel
from Sir Edward Blackett's, and were received into Cousin Susan's pew.
In the Confession, one Miss Scott after another became overwhelmed with
uncontrollable fits of laughter. When I looked up, I saw the black noses
and white ears of a row of little Spitz dogs, one over each of the
prayer-books in the opposite seat. Cousin Susan was furiously angry, and
declared that the Scotts should never come to Ridley Hall again: it was
not because they had laughed in church, but because they had laughed at
the dogs!

Upon leaving Ridley Hall, I paid another visit, which I then thought
scarcely less interesting. My grandmother's first cousin, John, Earl of
Strathmore (who left £10,000 to my grandfather), was a very agreeable
and popular man, but by no means a moral character. Living near his
castle of Streatlam was a beautiful girl named Mary Milner, daughter of
a market-gardener at Staindrop. With this girl he went through a false
ceremony of marriage, after which, in all innocence, she lived with him
as his wife. Their only boy, John Bowes, was sent to Eton as Lord
Glamis. On his deathbed Lord Strathmore confessed to Mary Milner that
their marriage was false and that she was not really his wife. She said,
"I understand that you mean to marry me now, but that will not do: there
must be no more secret marriages!" and, ill as he was, she had every
one within reach summoned to attend the ceremony, and she had him
carried to church and was married to him before all the world. Lord
Strathmore died soon after he re-entered the house, but he left her
Countess of Strathmore. It was too late to legitimatise John Bowes.

Lady Strathmore always behaved well. As soon as she was a widow, she
said to all the people whom she had known as her husband's relations and
friends, that if they liked to keep up her acquaintance, she should be
very grateful to them, and always glad to see them when they came to
her, but that she should never enter any house on a visit again: and she
never did. My grandmother, and, in later years, "Italima," had always
appreciated Lady Strathmore, and so had Mrs. Davidson, and the kindness
they showed her was met with unbounded gratitude. Lady Strathmore
therefore received with the greatest effusion my proposal of a visit to
Gibside. She was a stately woman, still beautiful, and she had educated
herself since her youth, but, from her quiet life (full of
unostentatious charity), she had become very eccentric. One of her
oddities was that her only measurement of time was one thousand years.
"Is it long since you have seen Mrs. Davidson?" I said. "Yes, one
thousand years!"--"Have you had your dog a long time?"--"A thousand
years."--"That must be a very old picture."--"Yes, a thousand years
old."

Seeing no one but Mr. Hutt, the agreeable tutor of her son, Lady
Strathmore had married him, and by her wealth and influence he became
member for Gateshead. He was rather a prim man, but could make himself
very agreeable, and he was vastly civil to me. I think he rather
tyrannised over Lady Strathmore, but he was very well behaved to her in
public. Soon after her death[170] he married again.

[Illustration: GIBSIDE.]

Gibside was a beautiful place. The long many-orielled battlemented house
was reached through exquisite woods feathering down to the Derwent. A
tall column in the park commemorates the victory of George Bowes (the
father of the unhappy 9th Lady Strathmore, who married a Blakiston, the
heiress of Gibside) over Sir Robert Walpole at a Newcastle election.
There was a charming panelled drawing-room, full of old furniture and
pictures. The house had two ghosts, one "in a silk dress," being that
Lady Tyrconnel who died in the house while living there on somewhat too
intimate terms with John, Earl of Strathmore. He gave her a funeral
which almost ruined the estate. Her face was painted like the most
brilliant life. He dressed her head himself! and then, having decked her
out in all her jewels, and covered her with Brussels lace from head to
foot, he sent her up to London, causing her to lie in state at every
town upon the road, and finally to be buried in Westminster Abbey!

At the end of the garden was the chapel, beneath which many of my
Strathmore ancestors are buried--a beautiful building externally, but
hideous within, with the pulpit in the centre. During the service on
Sundays a most extraordinary effect was produced by the clerk not only
giving out the hymns, but singing them entirely through afterwards by
himself, in a harsh nasal twang, without the very slightest help from
any member of the congregation.

       *       *       *       *       *

After we parted at Paris in the autumn of 1858, Mrs. Hare and my sister,
as usual, spent the winter at Rome, returning northwards by the seat of
the war in Lombardy. Thence Esmeralda wrote:--

     "_Turin, May 25, 1859._--Instead of a _dolce far niente_ at
     Frascati or Albano, we have been listening to the roaring of
     cannon. The Austrians are said to be fourteen miles off, but there
     is no apparent excitement in the town. The juggler attracts a crowd
     around him as usual in the piazza, the ladies walk about with their
     fans and smelling-bottles, the men sing _vivas_. The town is
     guarded by the _guardia civile_; all the regular troops have left
     for the battlefield. The nobility are either shut up or walk about
     in the streets, for all their carriage and riding horses have been
     taken from them for the use of the army. Bulletins are published
     twice a day, and give a short account of the engagements. The
     Piedmontese are confident of ultimate success: fresh French troops
     are pouring in every day. The lancers came in this morning with
     flying colours, splendidly mounted, and were received with
     thundering applause, the people shouting and clapping their hands,
     waving their handkerchiefs, and decorating them with bouquets and
     wreaths of flowers. I hear the Emperor has been waiting for the
     arrival of this regiment to begin war in earnest, and a great
     battle is expected on Monday.... We left Genoa at night, and came
     on by the ten o'clock train to the seat of war. The French were
     mounting guard in Alessandria,--the Zouaves and Turcos in their
     African dress lounging at the railway station. The Austrians had
     been repulsed the day before in trying to cross the river; the
     cannon had been rolling all day, but the officers were chatting as
     gaily as if nothing had happened, and were looking into the railway
     carriages for amusement. I longed to stop at Alessandria and go to
     see the camp, but Mama would not hear of it. There were troops
     encamped at distances all along the line.... We have had no
     difficulty in coming by land, though people tried to frighten us.
     We proceeded by _vetturino_ to Siena: everything was quiet, and we
     met troops of volunteers singing 'Viva l'Italia'--so radiant, they
     seemed to be starting for a festival. Five hundred volunteers went
     with us in the same train, and when we arrived at Pisa, more
     volunteers were parading the streets amid the acclamations of the
     people. At Genoa, hundreds of French soldiers were walking about
     the town, looking in at the shop-windows. Prince Napoleon
     Bonaparte was walking about the Via Balbi with his hands in his
     pockets, followed by great crowds.

     "We packed up everything before leaving Palazzo Parisani, in case
     we should not be able to return there next winter. I will not think
     of the misery of being kept out of Rome; it would be too great.
     Perhaps you will see us in England this year, but it is not at all
     probable."

       *       *       *       *       *

Alas! my sister did not return to Rome that year, or for many years
after. "L'homme s'agite et Dieu le mêne."[171] Parisani was never again
really her home. A terrible cloud of misfortune was gathering over her,
accompanied by a series of adventures the most mysterious and the most
incredible. I should not believe all that happened myself, unless I had
followed it day by day; therefore I cannot expect others to believe it.
As Lucas Malet says, "English people distrust everything that does not
carry ballast in the shape of obvious dulness," and they are not likely,
therefore, to believe what follows. But it is _true_ nevertheless. In
narrating what occurred, I shall confine myself to a simple narrative of
facts: as to the source of the extraordinary powers possessed by the
lady who for some time exercised a great influence upon the fortunes of
our family, I can offer no suggestion.

When Mrs. Hare and my sister arrived at Geneva in June 1859, though
their fortunes had suffered very considerably by the Paul bankruptcy,
they were still in possession of a large income, and of every luxury of
life. To save the trouble of taking a villa, they engaged an excellent
suite of apartments in the Hôtel de la Metropole, where they intended
remaining for the greater part of the summer.

Soon after her arrival, Italima (Mrs. Hare) wrote to her banker for
money, and was much astonished to hear from him that she had overdrawn
her account by £150. Knowing that she ought at that season to have
plenty of money in the bank, she wrote to her attorney, Mr. B. (who had
the whole management of her affairs), to desire that he would pay the
rest of the money due into Coutts', and that he would send her £100
immediately. She had no answer from Mr. B., and she wrote again and
again, without any answer. She was not alarmed, because Mr. B. was
always in the habit of going abroad in the summer, and she supposed that
her letters did not reach him because he was away. Still, as she really
wanted the money, it was very inconvenient.

One day, when she came down to the table-d'hôte, the place next to her
was occupied by an elderly lady, who immediately attempted to enter into
conversation with her. Italima, who always looked coldly upon strangers,
answered shortly, and turned away. "Je vois, Madame," said the lady,
with a most peculiar intonation, "que vous aimez les princesses et les
grandeurs." "Yes," said Italima, who was never otherwise than perfectly
truthful, "you are quite right; I do." And after that--it was so very
singular--a sort of conversation became inevitable. But the lady soon
turned to my sister and said, "_You_ are very much interested about the
war in Italy: _you_ have friends in the Italian army: _you_ are longing
to know how things are going on. I _see_ it all: to-morrow there will be
a great battle, and if you come to my room to-morrow morning, you will
hear of it, for I shall be _there_."--"Yes," said Esmeralda, but she
went away thinking the lady was perfectly mad--quite raving.

The next morning, as my sister was going down the passage of the hotel,
she heard a strange sound in one of the bedrooms. The door was ajar, she
pushed it rather wider open, and there, upon two chairs, lay the lady,
quite rigid, her eyes distended, speaking very rapidly. Esmeralda
fetched her mother, and there they both remained transfixed from 10 A.M.
to 3 P.M. The lady was evidently at a great battle: she described the
movements of the troops: she echoed the commands: she shuddered at the
firing and the slaughter, and she never ceased speaking. At 3 P.M. she
grew calm, her voice ceased, her muscles became flexible, she was soon
quite herself. My sister spoke to her of what had taken place: she
seemed to have scarcely any remembrance of it. At 6 P.M. they went down
to dinner. Suddenly the lady startled the table-d'hôte by dropping her
knife and fork and exclaiming, "Oh, l'Empereur! l'Empereur! il est en
danger." She described a flight, a confusion, clouds of dust arising--in
fact, all the final act of the battle of Solferino. That night the
telegrams of Solferino came to Geneva, and for days afterwards the
details kept arriving. Everything was what the lady described. It was at
the battle of Solferino that she had been.

When my sister questioned the landlord, she learnt that the lady was
known as Madame de Trafford, that she had been _née_ Mademoiselle
Martine Larmignac (de l'Armagnac?), and that she was possessed of what
were supposed to be supernatural powers. Esmeralda herself describes
the next incident in her acquaintance with Madame de Trafford.

       *       *       *       *       *

     "One day when we were sitting in our room at Geneva, a lady came
     in, a very pleasing-looking person, perfectly _gracieuse_, even
     _distinguée_. She sat down, and then said that the object of her
     visit was to ask assistance for a charity; that Madame de Trafford,
     who was living below us, had given her sixty francs, and that she
     hoped we should not refuse to give her something also. Then she
     told us a story of a banker's family at Paris who had been totally
     ruined, and who were reduced to the utmost penury, and living in
     the greatest destitution at Lausanne. She entered into the details
     of the story, dwelling upon the beauty of the children, their
     efforts at self-help, and various other details. When she had
     ended, Mama said she regretted that she was unable to give her more
     than ten francs, but that she should be glad to contribute so much,
     and I was quite affected by the story, which was most beautifully
     told.

     "Meantime, Madame de Trafford, by her secondsight, knew that she
     was going to be robbed, yet she would not forego her usual custom
     of keeping a large sum of money by her. She wrapped up a parcel of
     bank-notes and some napoleons in a piece of newspaper, and threw it
     upon the top of a wardrobe in which her dresses were hung. She told
     me of this, and said she had hidden the money so well that it was
     unlikely that any one could find it.

     "In a few days, the lady came again to tell us of the improvement
     in the poor family, and she also went to see Madame de Trafford.
     She was alone with her, and Madame de Trafford told her about her
     money, and showed her the place where she had put it, asking her if
     she did not think it well concealed.

     "Some days after, when we came up from dinner, we found the same
     lady, the _quêteuse_, walking up and down the gallery fanning
     herself. She said she had been waiting for Madame de Trafford, but
     had found her apartment so hot, she had left it to walk about the
     passage. We all went into the public sitting-room together, but
     Mama and I stayed to read the papers, whilst the lady passed on
     with Madame de Trafford to her room beyond, as she said she wished
     to speak to her. Soon she returned alone, and began talking to us,
     when ... the door opened, and in came Madame de Trafford,
     dreadfully agitated, looking perfectly livid, and exclaiming in a
     voice of thunder, 'On m'a volé,' and then, turning to the lady, 'Et
     voilà la voleuse.' Then, becoming quite calm, she said coldly,
     'Madame, vous étiez seule pendant que nous étions à table; je vous
     prie donc de vous ... déshabiller.'--'Mais, Madame, c'est inoui de
     me soupçonner,' said the lady, 'mais ... enfin ... Madame....' But
     she was compelled to pass before Madame de Trafford into the
     bedroom and to undo her dress. In her purse were ten napoleons, but
     of these no notice was taken; she might have had them before. Then
     Madame de Trafford gave the lady five minutes to drop the notes she
     had taken, and came out to us--'Car c'est elle!' she said. In five
     minutes the lady came out of the room and passed us, saying,
     'Vraiment cette Madame de Trafford c'est une personne très
     exaltée,' and went out. Then Madame de Trafford called us. 'Venez,
     Madame Hare,' she said. We went into the bedroom, and in the corner
     of the floor lay a bundle of bank-notes. 'Elle les a jeté,' said
     Madame de Trafford."

       *       *       *       *       *

Of the same week my sister narrates the following:--

     "One Sunday morning, the heat was so great, I had been almost
     roasted in going to church. In the afternoon Madame de Trafford
     came in. 'Venez, ma chère, venez avec moi à vêpres,' she said. 'Oh,
     non, il y a trop de soleil, c'est impossible, et je vous conseille
     de vous garder aussi d'un coup de soleil.'--'Moi, je vais à
     l'église,' she answered, 'et aussi je vais à pied, parceque je ne
     veux pas payer une voiture, et personne ne me menera pour rien; il
     n'y a pas de charité dans ce monde.' And she _went_.

     "When she came back she said, 'Eh bien, ma chère, je suis allé à
     vêpres, mais je ne suis pas allé à pied. Je n'étais que sorti de
     l'hôtel, quand je voyais tous ces cochers avec leurs voitures en
     face de moi. "Et que feras tu donc, si tu trouveras la charité en
     chemin?" me disait la voix. "Je lui donnerai un napoléon." Eh bien,
     un de ces cochers, je le sentais, me menerait pour la charité: je
     le sentais, mais j'avançais toujours; et voilà que Pierre, qui nous
     avait amené avec sa voiture l'autre journée, me poursuivit avec sa
     voiture en criant, "Mais, madame, où allez vous donc: venez,
     montez, je ne veux pas vous voir vous promener comme cela; je vous
     menerai pour rien."--"Mais, Pierre, que voulez vous donc," je dis.
     "Mais montez, madame, montez; je vous menerai pour rien," il
     repetait, et je montais. Pierre m'emmenait à l'église, et voila la
     voix qui me dit, "Et ton napoléon," parceque j'avais dit que si je
     trouvais la charité en chemin, je lui donnerais un napoléon. Mais
     je n'ai pas voulu lui donner le napoléon de suite, parceque cela
     pouvait lui faire tourner la tête, et j'ai dit, "Venez, Pierre,
     venez me voir demain au soir. Vous avez fait un acte de la charité:
     Dieu vous recompensera."'

     "Madame de Trafford always wore a miniature of the Emperor Napoleon
     in a ring which she had: the ring opened, and inside was the
     miniature. The next morning she showed it to me, and asked me to
     get it out of the ring, as she was going to send the ring to a
     jeweller to be repaired. I got scissors, &c., and poked, and
     thumped, and pulled at the picture, but I could not get it out of
     the ring: I could not move it in the least.

     "In the morning Mama was with Madame de Trafford when Pierre came.
     I was not there. Pierre was a dull stupid Swiss lout of a _cocher_.
     'Madame m'a commandé de venir,' he said, and he could say nothing
     else.

     "Then Madame de Trafford held out a napoleon, saying, 'Tenez,
     Pierre, voilà un napoléon pour vous, parceque vous avez voulu faire
     un acte de la charité, et ordinairement il n'y a pas de charité
     dans ce monde.' ... But as Madame de Trafford stretched forth her
     hand, the ring flew open and the portrait vanished. It did not slip
     out of the ring, it did not fall--it vanished! it ceased to exist!
     'Oh, le portrait, le portrait!' cried Madame de Trafford. She
     screamed: she was perfectly frantic. 'Quel portrait?' said Pierre,
     for he had seen none: he was stupefied: he could not think what it
     all meant. As for Mama, she was so terrified, she rushed out of the
     room. She locked her door, she declared nothing should induce her
     to remain in the same room with Madame de Trafford again.

     "I went down to Madame de Trafford. She offered a napoleon to any
     one who would find the portrait. She was wild. I never saw her in
     such a state, never. Of course every one hunted, _garçons_,
     _filles-de-chambre_, every one, but not a trace of the portrait
     could any one find. At last Madame de Trafford became quite calm;
     she said, 'Je sens que dans une semaine j'aurai mon portrait, et je
     vois que ce sera un des braves du grand Napoléon qui me le
     rapportera.'

     "I thought this very extraordinary, and really I did not remember
     that there was any soldier of the old Napoleon in the house. I was
     so accustomed to Félix as our old servant, it never would have
     occurred to me to think of him. The week passed. 'C'est la fin de
     la semaine,' said Madame de Trafford, 'et demain j'aurai mon
     portrait.'

     "We had never told Victoire about the portrait, for she was so
     superstitious, we thought she might refuse to stay in the house
     with Madame de Trafford if we told her. But the next morning she
     came to Mama and said that a child who was playing in a garret at
     the top of the house had found there, amongst some straw, the
     smallest portrait ever seen, and had given it to Félix, and Félix
     had shown it to her, saying, 'Voila c'est bien fait çà; çà n'est
     pas un bagatelle; çà n'est pas un joujoux çà!' and he had put it
     away. 'Why, it is the lost portrait,' said Mama. 'What portrait?'
     said Victoire. Then Mama told Victoire how Madame de Trafford had
     lost the portrait out of her ring, and Félix took it back to her.
     It was when Félix took back the portrait that I first remembered he
     had been a soldier of the old Napoleon, and was even then in
     receipt of a pension for his services in the Moscow campaign.

     "Félix refused the napoleon Madame de Trafford had offered as a
     reward; but she insisted on his having it, so he took it, and wears
     it on his watchchain always: he almost looks upon it as a
     talisman."

       *       *       *       *       *

As Italima and Esmeralda saw more of Madame de Trafford, they learned
that she was the second wife of Mr. Trafford of Wroxham in Norfolk. He
did not live with her, because he said that when he married her he
intended to marry Mademoiselle Martine Larmignac, but he did not intend
to marry "Maricot," as she called the spirit--the "voice"--which spoke
through her lips, and live with Maricot he would not. He showed his wife
every possible attention, and placed implicit confidence in her. He left
her entire control of her fortune. He constantly visited her, and always
came to take leave of her when she set off on any of her journeys; but
he could not live with her.

One day Italima received a letter from her eldest son Francis, who said
that he knew she would not believe him, but that Mr. B. was a penniless
bankrupt, and that she would receive no more money from him. She did not
believe Francis a bit, still the letter made her anxious and
uncomfortable: no money had come in answer to her repeated letters, and
there were many things at Geneva to be paid for. That day she came down
to the table-d'hôte looking very much harassed. Madame de Trafford said
to my sister, "Your mother looks very much agitated: what is it?"
Esmeralda felt that, whether she told her or not, Madame de Trafford
would know what had happened, and she told her the simple truth. Madame
de Trafford said, "Now, do not be surprised at what I am going to say;
don't be grateful to me; it's my vocation in life. Here is £80: take it
at once. That is the sum you owe in Geneva, and you have no money. I
knew that you wanted that sum, and I brought it down to dinner with me.
Now I know all that is going to happen: it is written before me like an
open book,--and I know how important it is that you should go to England
at once. I have prepared for that, and I am going with you. In an hour
you must start for England." And such was the confidence that Italima
and Esmeralda now had in Madame de Trafford, such was her wonderful
power and influence, that they did all she told them: they paid their
bills at Geneva with the money she gave, they left Félix and Victoire to
pack up and to follow them to Paris, and they started by the night-train
the same evening with Madame de Trafford.

That was an awful night. My sister never lost the horror of it. "Madame
de Trafford had told me that extraordinary things often happened to her
between two and four in the morning," said Esmeralda. "When we went with
her through the night in the coupé of the railway-carriage, she was very
anxious that I should sleep. Mama slept the whole time. 'Mais dormez
donc, ma chère,' she said, 'dormez donc.'--'Oh, je dormirai bientôt,' I
always replied, but I was quite determined to keep awake. It was very
dreadful, I thought, but if anything _did_ happen, I would see what it
was. As it drew near two o'clock I felt the most awful sensation of
horror come over me. Then a cold perspiration broke out all over me.
Then I heard--oh, I cannot describe it! a most awful sound--a voice--a
sort of squeak. It spoke, it was a language; but it was a language I
did not understand,[172] and then something came out of the mouth of
Madame de Trafford--bur-r-r-r! It passed in front of me, black but
misty. I rushed at it. Madame de Trafford seized me and forced me back
upon the seat. I felt as if I should faint. Her expression was quite
awful. No one knows it but Mama. Some time after, Mr. Trafford spoke to
me of a hunchback in Molière, who had a voice speaking inside him, over
which he had no control, and then he said, 'What my wife has is like
that.'"

As they drew near Paris, Madame de Trafford began to describe her
apartments to my sister. It was like a description of Aladdin's palace,
and Esmeralda did not believe it. When they reached the station, Madame
de Trafford said, "I have one peculiarity in my house: I have no
servants. I used to have them, but I did not like them; so now, when I
am at Paris, I never have them: therefore, on our way from the station,
we will stop as we pass through the Rue St. Honoré, and buy the bread,
and milk, and candles--in fact, all the things we want." And so they
did.

The carriage stopped before a _porte cochère_ in the Champs Elysées,
where Madame de Trafford got a key from the concierge, and preceded her
guests up a staircase. When she unlocked the door of the apartment, it
was quite dark, and hot and stuffy, as closed rooms are, but when the
shutters were opened, all that Madame de Trafford had said as to the
magnificence of the furniture, &c., was more than realised--only there
were no servants. Madame de Trafford herself brought down mattresses
from the attics, she aired and made the beds, and she lighted the fire
and boiled the kettle for supper and breakfast.

Of that evening my sister wrote:--

     "I shall never forget a scene with Madame de Trafford. I had gone
     to rest in my room, but I did not venture to stay long. She also
     had been up all night, but that was nothing to her--_paresse_ was
     what she could never endure. When I went into her room, she had the
     concierge with her, but she was greatly excited. She was even then
     contending with her spirit. 'Taisez-vous, Maricot,' she was
     exclaiming. 'Voulez vous vous taire: taisez-vous, Maricot.' I saw
     that the concierge was getting very angry, quite boiling with
     indignation, for there was no one else present, and she thought
     Madame de Trafford was talking to her. 'Mais, madame, madame, je ne
     parle pas,' she said. But Madame de Trafford went on, 'Va-t'en,
     Maricot: va-t'en donc.'--'Mais, madame, je suis toute prête,' said
     the concierge, and she went out, banging the door behind her."[173]

       *       *       *       *       *

Madame de Trafford told my sister in Paris that her extraordinary power
had first come to her, as it then existed, many years before in the
Church of S. Roch. She had gone there, not to pray, but to look about
her, and, as she was walking round the ambulatory, there suddenly came
to her the extraordinary sensation that she _knew_ all that those
kneeling around her were thinking, feeling, and wishing. Her own
impression was one of horror, and an idea that the power came from evil;
but kneeling down then and there before the altar, she made a solemn
dedication of herself; she prayed that such strange knowledge might be
taken away, but, if that were not to be, made a vow to turn the evil
against itself, by using it always for good.

People suddenly ruined--whom Madame de Trafford called "the poor
rich"--she considered to be her peculiar vocation, because in her
younger life she had twice been utterly ruined herself. Once it was in
England. She had only a shilling left in the world, and, in her quaint
way of narrating things, she said, "Having only a shilling left in the
world, I thought what I had better do, and I thought that, as I had only
a shilling left in the world, I had better go out and take a walk. I
went out, and I met a man, and the man said to me, 'Give me something,
for I have nothing left in the world,' and I gave him sixpence, and I
went on. And I met a woman, and the woman said to me, 'Give me
something, for I have nothing whatever left in the world.' And I said,
'I cannot give you anything, for I have only sixpence left in the world,
so I cannot give you anything.' And the woman said, 'But you are much
richer than I, for you are well dressed; you have a good bonnet, a gown,
and shawl, while I am clothed in rags, and so you must give me
something.' And I thought, 'Well, that is true,' so I gave her the
sixpence, and I went on. At the corner of the street I found a sovereign
lying in the street. With that sovereign I paid for food and lodging.
The next day I had remittances from an uncle I had long supposed to be
dead, and who expressed the wish that I should come to him. He died and
left me his heiress: money has since then always flowed in, and I go
about to look for the poor rich." A presentiment would come to Madame de
Trafford, or the voice of Maricot would tell her, where she would be
needed, and she would set out. Thus she went to Geneva to help some one
unknown. She moved from hotel to hotel until she found the right one;
and she sat by person after person at the table-d'hôte, till she felt
she was sitting by the right one; then she waited quietly till the
moment came when she divined what was wanted.

The morning after their arrival in Paris, Madame de Trafford stood by my
sister's bedside when she awoke, ready dressed, and having already put
away most of the things in the apartment. As soon as breakfast was over,
a carriage came to take them to the station, and they set off for
Boulogne, where Madame de Trafford set her guests afloat for England
with £40 in their pockets. Thus they arrived on the scene of action.

Straight from London Bridge Station they drove to Mr. B.'s office. He
was there, and apparently delighted to see them. "Well, Mr. B., and pray
why have you sent me no money?" asked Italima. "Why, I've sent you
quantities of money," said Mr. B., without a change of countenance. "If
you write to Messrs. O. & L., the bankers at Geneva, you will find it's
all there. I have sent you money several times," and he said this with
such perfect _sangfroid_ that they believed him. Italima then said,
"Well now, Mr. B., I should wish to see the mortgages," because from
time to time he had persuaded her to transfer £46,000 of her own fortune
from other securities to mortgages on a Mr. Howell's estate in Cornwall.
Mr. B. replied, "Do you know, when you say that, it would almost seem as
if you did not quite trust me."--"That I cannot help," said Italima,
"but I should wish to see the mortgages."--"There is no difficulty
whatever," said Mr. B.; "you could have seen them last year if you had
wished: to-day you cannot see them because they are in the Bank, and the
Bank is closed, but you can fix any other day you like for seeing
them,"--and they fixed the following Wednesday. Afterwards Mr. B. said,
"Well, Mrs. Hare, you do not seem to have trusted me as I deserve, still
I think it my duty to give you the pleasant news that you will be richer
this year than you have ever been in your life. A great deal of money is
recovered from the Paul bankruptcy, which you never expected to see
again; all your other investments are prospering, and your income will
certainly be larger than it has ever been before." Italima was perfectly
satisfied. That evening she made my sister write to Mrs. Julius Hare and
say, "We are convinced that Mr. B. is the best friend we have in the
world. Augustus was always talking against him, and we have been brought
to England by a raving mad Frenchwoman who warned us against him; but we
will never doubt or mistrust him any more."

When the Wednesday came on which they were to see the mortgages, Italima
was not well, and she said to my sister, "I am quite glad I am not well,
because it will be an excuse for you to go and fetch the mortgages, when
we can look them over quietly together." My sister went off to Lincoln's
Inn, but before going to Mr. B., she called at the house of another
lawyer, whom she knew very well, to ask if he had heard any reports
about Mr. B. "I pray to God, Miss Hare, that you are safe from that
man," was all he said. She rushed on to the office. Mr. B. was gone: the
whole place was _sotto-sopra_: everything was gone: there were no
mortgages: there was no Mr. Howell's estate: there was no money: £60,000
was gone: there was absolutely nothing left whatever.

Never was ruin more complete! Italima and Esmeralda had _nothing_ left:
not a loaf of bread, not a penny to buy one--nothing. My sister said she
prayed within herself as to how she could possibly go back and tell her
mother, and it seemed to her as if a voice said, "Go back, go back, tell
her at once," and she went. When she reached the door of Ellison's
hotel, where they were staying, the waiter said a gentleman was sitting
with her mother, but it seemed as if the voice said, "Go up, go up, tell
her at once." When she went in, her mother was sitting on the sofa, and
a strange gentleman was talking to her. She went up to her mother and
said, "Mama, we are totally ruined: Mr. B. has taken flight: we have
lost everything we have in the world, and we never can hope to have
anything any more." The strange gentleman came in like a special
intervention of Providence. He was a Mr. Touchet, who had known Italima
well when she was quite a girl, who had never seen her since, and who
had come that day for the first time to renew his acquaintance. He was
full of commiseration and sympathy with them over what he heard; he at
once devoted himself to their service, and begged them to make use of
him: the mere accident of his presence just broke the first shock.

Lady Normanby was at Sydenham when the catastrophe occurred; she at once
came up to London and helped her cousins for the moment. Then Lady
Shelley, the daughter-in-law of Italima's old friend Mrs. Shelley (see
chap. i.), fetched them home to her at Boscombe near Bournemouth, and
was unboundedly kind to them. Sir Percy Shelley offered them a cottage
rent-free in his pine-woods, but they only remained there three weeks,
and then went to Lady Williamson at Whitburn Hall near Sunderland, where
I first saw them.

Everything had happened exactly as Madame de Trafford had predicted. My
sister wrote to me:--


     "The most dreadful news. We are _ruined_. Mr. B. has bolted, and is
     a fraudulent bankrupt. Nobody knows where he is. We are nearly
     wild. God help us. I hardly know what I am writing. What is to
     become of Francis and William? We hardly know what we have lost. I
     fear B. has seized on Mama's mortgages. Pray for us."


We received this letter when we were staying at Fotheringham. We were
very much shocked, but we said that when my sister talked of absolute
ruin, it was only a figure of speech. She and her mother might be very
much poorer than they had been, but there was a considerable marriage
settlement; that, we imagined, B. could not have possessed himself of.

But it was too true; he had taken everything. The marriage settlement
was in favour of younger children, I being one of the three who would
have benefited. Some years before, Mr. B. had been to Italima and
persuaded her to give up £2000 of my brother William's portion, during
her life, in order to pay his debts. On her assenting to this, Mr. B.
had subtly entered the whole sum mentioned in the settlement, instead of
£2000, in the deed of release, and the two trustees had signed without a
question, so implicit was their faith in Mr. B., who passed not only for
a very honourable, but for a very religious man. Mr. B. had used the
£2000 to pay William's debts, and had taken all the rest of the money
for himself. About Italima's own fortune he had been even less
scrupulous. Mr. Howell's estate in Cornwall had never existed at all.
Mr. B. had taken the £46,000 for himself; there had been no mortgages,
but he had paid the interest as usual, and the robbery had passed
undetected. He had kept Italima from coming upon him during the last
summer by cutting off her supplies, and all might have gone on as usual
if Madame de Trafford had not brought his victims to England, and
Italima had not insisted upon seeing the mortgages.

The next details we received were from my aunt Eleanor Paul.


     "_Sept._ 1, 1859.--B. is bankrupt and has absconded. They think he
     is gone to Sweden. The first day there were bills filed against him
     for £100,000, the second day for £100,000 more, all money that he
     swindled people out of. I have not suffered personally, as the
     instant I heard there was anything against him, I went to his
     house, demanded my securities, put them in my pocket, and walked
     away with them. But I fear B. has made away with all the mortgages
     your mother and sister were supposed to have, or that they never
     existed, as they are not forthcoming. It is supposed that he has
     also made away with all the trust-money, besides the £5000 left to
     your sister by her aunt. At this moment they are penniless.... Your
     mother went to B. as soon as she arrived and desired to have the
     mortgages. He promised to have them ready in a few days, and
     meantime he talked her over, and made her believe he was a most
     honourable man. Before the day came he had bolted...."


I went from Gibside to Whitburn to be there when Italima arrived. Her
despair and misery were terrible to witness. She did nothing all day
but lament and wail over her fate, and was most violent to my sister,
who bore her own loss with the utmost calmness and patience. Nothing
could exceed Lady Williamson's kindness to them. She pressed them to
stay on with her, and cared for them with unwearied generosity during
the first ten months of their destitution. Many other friends offered
help, and the Liddell cousins promised an annual subscription for their
maintenance; but the generosity which most came home to their hearts was
that of their old Roman friend Mr. William Palmer, who out of his very
small income pressed upon them a cheque for £150. In this, as in all
other cases of the kind, those who had least gave most. One idea was to
obtain admission for them to St. Catherine's Almshouses for ladies of
good family, but this was unwisely, though generously, opposed by my
Aunt Eleanor.


     "I am inclined to quarrel with you for ever mentioning the word
     'Almshouse.' I have lived with my sister during her richer days,
     and certainly do not mean to desert her in her distress. I only
     wish she could think as I do. We can live in a smaller domain very
     happily, and if the worst come to the worst, I have £300 a year,
     and if the Liddell family allow £150, that, with the colliery
     shares, would make up £500 a year between us: and I have every
     prospect of recovering at least a portion of my fortune, and if I
     do, shall have £200, perhaps £300 a year more, making £800. Knowing
     this, I think it wrong to make oneself miserable. Francis and
     William must work: they have had their share of the fortune. I am
     only waiting till something is settled with regard to my affairs,
     but desertion has never for a moment entered my brain, and I hope
     you never gave me credit for anything so barbarous."[174]


     _To_ MY MOTHER (before seeing Italima).

     "_Whitburn Hall_, _Sept._ 13.--Nothing can exceed Lady Williamson's
     kindness about Italima. Though she can ill afford it, she at once
     sent them £110 for present necessities.... She does not think it
     possible they can ever return to Rome, but having to part with
     Félix and Victoire is the greatest of their immediate trials. In
     addition to her invalid husband and son, Lady Williamson, the good
     angel of the whole family, has since her father's death taken the
     entire charge of his old sister, Mrs. Richmond--'Aunt Titchie.'
     Victor and I have just been paying a visit in her bedroom to this
     extraordinary old lady, who was rolled up in petticoats, with a
     little dog under a shawl by way of muff. She is passionately fond
     of eating, and dilated upon the goodness of the cook--'Her tripe
     and onions are de-licious!'--'I like a green gosling, and plenty of
     sage and stuffing, that's what _I_ like.'

     "She is a complete Mrs. Malaprop. 'I was educated, my dear,' she
     said, 'at a cemetery for young ladies;' but this is only a
     specimen. She is also used to _very_ strong language, and till she
     became blind, she used to hunt all over the country in top-boots
     and leathern breeches, like a man. When her husband died, she went
     up from Mrs. Villiers' house at Grove Mill to prove his will.
     Adolphus Liddell met her at the station, and helped her to do it,
     and then took her to the 'Ship and Turtle' and gave her real
     turtle--in fact, a most excellent luncheon. He afterwards saw her
     off at Euston. She is blind, you know, and took no notice of there
     being other passengers in the carriage, and greatly astonished they
     must have been, as he was taking leave of her, to hear the old lady
     say in her deliberate tones, 'Capital turtle! de-e-licious punch!
     Why, lor bless ye! I'd prove my husband's will once a week to get
     such a blow-out as that.'

     "I thought this place hideous at first, but it improves on
     acquaintance, and has its availabilities, like everything else:
     there is a fine sea with beautiful sands, and the flower-garden is
     radiant."


     "_Sept. 15._--I long for you to know Lady Williamson. Of all people
     I have ever known, she has the most _truly_ Christian power of
     seeing the virtues of every one and passing over their faults. She
     also has to perfection the not-hearing, not-seeing knack, which is
     the most convenient thing possible in such a mixed family circle.

     "Charlie Williamson arrived yesterday, and, with the most jovial
     entertaining manner, has all his mother's delicacy of feeling and
     excessive kindness of heart. When he heard of the B. catastrophe,
     he went up at once from Aldershot to see Italima in London. 'Your
     mother was quite crushed,' he says, 'but as for your dear sister,
     there isn't a girl in England has the pluck she shows. She never
     was down for a moment, not she: no, she was as cheery as possible,
     and said, "Mama, it is done, and it is not our fault, so we must
     learn to make the best of it." People may say what they like, but
     she is real downright good, and no mistake about it.'

     "I have been with Victor to Seaton Delaval--the 'lordly Seaton
     Delaval' of 'Marmion,' scene of many of the iniquities of the last
     Lord Delaval. It is a magnificent house, but the centre is now a
     ruin, having been burnt about eighty years ago, by the connivance,
     it is said, of its then owner, Sir Jacob Astley. There is a Norman
     chapel, full of black effigies of knights, which look as if they
     were carved out of coal, and in one of the wings is a number of
     pictures, including Lord Delaval's four beautiful daughters, one of
     whom married the village baker, while another was that Lady
     Tyrconnel who died at Gibside.

     "I hope I shall know all these cousins better some day. At present,
     from their having quite a different set of friends and
     associations, I always feel as if I had not a single thing to say
     to them, and I am sure they all think I am dreadfully stupid....
     But I am enchanted with Charlie Williamson, his tremendous spirits
     and amusing ways."


     "_Sept. 17._--At 8-1/2, as we were sitting at tea, Lady Williamson
     put her head in at the drawing-room door and said, 'Come down with
     me; they are arriving.' So we went to the hall-door just as the
     carriage drove up, and Italima got out and flung herself into Lady
     Williamson's arms.... Both she and Esmeralda looked utterly
     worn-out, and their account was truly awful.... Lady Normanby came
     at once to their assistance--but what touched them most was the
     kindness of dear good Charlie Williamson, who came up directly from
     Aldershot, bringing them all he had--£50."


     "_Sept. 18._--It has now come out that Mr. B. was the person who
     had Francis arrested, and he kept him in prison while he plundered
     his estate of £17,000. It has also transpired that when, on a
     former occasion, Sir J. Paul gave Mr. B. £1000 to pay Francis's
     debts, he never paid them, but appropriated the money. B. has
     robbed Italima of the whole of her own fortune besides her marriage
     settlement. Two years ago he arranged with the trustees and Italima
     to sell £2000 of the settlement fund to pay William's debts, and
     presented to the trustees, as they supposed, papers to sign for
     this purpose. They trusted to B. and did not examine the papers,
     which they now find empowered him to take possession not only of
     the £2000, but of the whole fund!"


     "_Sept. 19._--Italima's state is the most hopeless I ever saw,
     because she absolutely refuses to find hope or comfort or pleasure
     in anything, and as absolutely refuses to take any interest or
     bestir herself in any measures for the recovery of her lost
     fortune.... When any one tries to elicit what she recollects about
     the mortgages, she will begin the story, and then bury herself in
     the sofa-cushions, and say we are killing her by asking her
     questions, and that if we do not want her to die, she must be
     quiet. She is furious with me because I will not see that the case
     is quite hopeless, and quite acts up to her promise of never
     regarding me with the slightest affection.... The state of Italima
     is appalling, but my sister is perfectly calm. Lady Williamson is
     kindness itself; and as for Charlie, I never knew his equal for
     goodness, consideration, and generosity.

     "I wish you could hear Lady Williamson sing; even when she was a
     little girl, Catalani said that her voice was better than her own,
     and that if it were necessary for her to sing publicly, she would
     be the first singer in Europe."


     "_Sept. 21._--Italima is daily more entirely woe-begone, and her
     way of receiving her misfortunes more bitter.... It seems a trouble
     to her even to see her cousins so prosperous, while she ...! The
     Normanbys are here and most kind, though much out of patience with
     her.... Old Mrs. Richmond, who has been very kind throughout, sent
     for my sister the other day to her room, and gave her five pounds
     to buy winter clothes, and has sent for patterns to Edinburgh for a
     warm dress for her."


     "_Sandhutton Hall, Sept. 24._--I left Whitburn yesterday, very
     sorry to part with the dear kind cousins, with whom I had a tender
     leave-taking--not so with Italima, who took no more notice of my
     departure than she had done of my visit."

The only event of our home-autumn was the death of the Rector of
Hurstmonceaux, who had succeeded my uncle, and the appointment of the
charming old Dr. Wellesley[175] in his place. In November I was at
Harrow with the Vaughans, meeting there for the first time two sets of
cousins, Lord and Lady Spencer,[176] and Sir John Shaw-Lefevre,[177]
with two of his daughters. With the latter cousins I made a great
friendship. Then I returned to Oxford.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Christ Church, Dec. 6, 1859._-My whole visit here this time has
     been enjoyable. Arthur is always so very good and kind, so
     _knowing_ in what will give one pleasure: which I especially feel
     in his cordiality to all my friends when they come here. Then it is
     so interesting and delightful being perpetually examined by him in
     different parts of history, and charming to feel that I can in a
     small way be useful to him in looking out or copying things for his
     lectures, &c. Victor Williamson and Charlie Wood come in and out
     constantly.

     "Mr. Richmond the artist is here. I quite long to be Arthur, going
     to sit to him: he is so perfectly delightful: no wonder his
     portraits are always smiling."

In the winter of 1859-60 I made a much-appreciated acquaintance with Sir
George Grey, author of "Polynesian Mythology."


     JOURNAL.

     "_Dec. 15, 1859._--At the Haringtons' I met Sir George and Lady
     Grey. I was very anxious to make acquaintance, but much afraid that
     I should not have an opportunity of doing so, as I was never
     introduced. As they were going away, I expressed regret at having
     missed them before, and he hoped that we should meet another time.
     I suppose I looked very really sorry for not seeing more of him,
     for, after a consultation in the passage, he came back, and asked
     if I would walk part of the way with him. I walked with him all the
     way to Windmill Hill, where he was staying: he walked home with me:
     I walked home with him; and he home with me for the third time,
     when I was truly sorry to take leave, so very interesting was he,
     and so easy to talk to. We began about Polynesian Mythology--then
     poetry--then Murray, who, he said, had just paid Dr. Livingstone
     £10,000 as _his_ share of the profits on his book--then of Lord
     Dillon, who, he said, had led them the most jovial rollicking life
     when he went to Ditchley to look over MSS., so that he had done
     nothing.

     "Then he talked of the Church in the Colonies. He said that High
     Churchism had penetrated to the Cape to the greatest extent, and
     that the two or three churches where it was carried out were
     thronged as fashionable: that one of the views preached was, that
     religion was a belief in whatever you fancied was for your good, so
     that if you fancied that, our Lord being one with God, it would be
     well for you to have a mediator between yourself and Him, you ought
     then to believe in that mediator, and to invoke your guardian angel
     as the mediator most natural. Another tenet was that prayer was
     only 'a tracter' to draw down the blessings of God--that, as there
     were three kinds of prayer, so there were three kinds of
     tracters--that individual prayer would draw down a blessing on the
     individual, family prayer on a family, but that public prayer, as
     proceeding from the mouth of a priest, could draw down a blessing
     on the whole state. Sir George had heard a sermon on 'It is needful
     for you that I go away from you,' &c., proving that it _was_
     needful, because if not, Christ would have to have remained as an
     earthly king, have had to negotiate with other kings, meddle in
     affairs of state, &c.--also because he would have been made 'a
     lion' of--perhaps have become an object of pilgrimage, &c.

     "Sir George said that the Wesleyan Methodists lived a holier, more
     spiritual life in the Colonies, but then it was because religion
     was there so easy to them; in London it would not be so; that
     London, the place in the world most unsuited to Christianity, lived
     on a great world of gambling-houses, brothels, &c., as if there
     were no God; no one seemed to care. He said what a grand thing it
     would be if, in one of the great public services in St. Paul's or
     Westminster Abbey, the preacher were to shout out as his awful
     text--'Where art thou, Adam?'--and show how the Lord would look in
     vain for _His_ in most parts of London--where, _where_ had they
     hidden themselves?

     "Sir George told me an anecdote of a dog in New Zealand--that two
     officers were walking by the shore, and that one of them said, 'You
     declare your dog will do everything. I'll bet you he does not fetch
     that if you tell him,' and he threw his walking-stick into a canoe
     lying out at some distance in the shallow water, where the natives
     wade up to their waists to get into them, and where they are
     secured by strong hempen cords. The dog, when told, instantly swam
     out, but, as the man who made the bet had foreseen, whenever he
     tried to scramble into the canoe to get the stick, it almost upset,
     and at length, after repeated struggles, he was obliged to swim to
     shore again and lie down to rest. Once rested, however, without a
     second bidding, he swam out again, and this time gnawed through the
     cord, pulled the canoe on shore, and then got the stick out, and
     brought it to his master."[178]

I told Arthur Stanley much of this conversation with Sir George Grey.
Some time after, he was very anxious that I should go to hear Dr.
Vaughan preach in a great public service under the dome of St. Paul's. I
went, and was startled by the text--"Where art thou, Adam?"

In January 1860 I paid a delightful visit to Sir John Shaw-Lefevre at
Sutton Place, near Guildford, a beautiful old brick house with
terra-cotta ornaments, which once belonged to Sir Francis Weston, Anne
Boleyn's reputed lover. Besides the large pleasant family of the house,
Lord Eversley and his daughter were there, and Sophia, daughter of Henry
Lefevre, with Mr. Wickham, whom she soon afterwards married.


     JOURNAL.

     "_Sutton Place, Jan. 8._--Lord Eversley has been talking of
     Bramshill, the old home of Prince Henry, where Archbishop Abbott
     shot a keeper by accident, in consequence of which it became a
     question whether consecration rites received at his hands were
     valid. Lord Eversley did not believe that the oak in the park, from
     which the arrow glanced (with the same effect as in the case of
     Rufus), was the real tree, because it was _too_ old: oaks beyond a
     certain age, after the bark has ceased to be smooth, do not allow
     an arrow to glance and rebound.

     "The Buxtons sent me a ticket for Lord Macaulay's funeral, but I
     would not leave Sutton to go. Sir John went, and described that, as
     often in the case of funerals and other sad ceremonies, people, by
     a rebound, became remarkably merry and amusing, and that they had
     occupied the time of waiting by telling a number of uncommonly good
     stories. The sight of Lady Holland[179] and her daughters amongst
     the mourners had reproduced the bon-mot of Mrs. Grote, who, when
     asked how this Lady Holland was to be distinguished from the
     original person of the name, said, 'Oh, this is New Holland, and
     her capital is Sydney.'

     "Apropos of Macaulay, Sir John remarked how extraordinary it was in
     growing age to see a person pass away whose birth, education,
     public career, and death were all within your memory.

     "He said how unreadable 'Roderick Random' and 'Tom Jones' were now.
     A lady had asked to borrow 'Pamela' from his library, saying she
     well remembered the pleasure of it in her youth; but she returned
     it the next day, saying she was quite ashamed of having asked for
     anything so improper.

     "Yesterday was Sunday, and I groped my way through the dark
     passages to the evening service in the Catholic chapel, which has
     always been attached to the house. An old priest, seated on the
     steps of the altar, preached a kind of catechetical sermon upon
     Transubstantiation--'My flesh is meat _indeed_'--'and the poor
     Protestants have this in their Bibles, and yet they throw away the
     benefit of the _indeed_.' The sight was most picturesque--the dark
     old-fashioned roof, only seen by the light of the candles on the
     richly decorated altar, and the poor English peasants grouped upon
     the benches. It carried one back to the time before the
     Reformation. In his discourse, the old priest described his
     childhood, when he sat in the east wing of the house learning his
     catechism, and when there were only two Catholics in Guildford; and
     'what would these two solitary ones say now if they had seen the
     crowd in St. Joseph's Chapel at Guildford this morning? Yes, what
     would old Jem Savin say if he could rise up and see us now, poor
     man?'"


     _To_ MY MOTHER (after I had returned to my Handbook explorations).

     "_Aldermaston Hall, Berks, Jan. 14, 1860._--I came here from
     Newbury. The weather was so horrible, and the prospect of a damp
     lonely Sunday in an inn so uninviting, that I thought over all
     possible and impossible houses in the neighbourhood, and finally
     decided upon Aldermaston as the best, and have taken it by storm.

     "It was the dampest and dreariest of mornings as I came from the
     station, but this place looked beautiful in spite of it--a wild
     picturesque park, and a large house, full of colour inside, like a
     restored French château. Mrs. Higford Burr (who seems to live more
     in Italy than here) wears a sort of Greek dress with a girdle and a
     broad gold hem.... I was at once, as I rather expected, invited to
     stay _per l'amore d'Italia_, and my luggage sent for. This
     afternoon Mrs. Burr, who is a most tremendous walker, has taken me
     to Upton Court, the home of Arabella Fermor (Pope's Belinda), a
     charming old house with a ghost, which the farm-people described as
     'coming a clinkerin upstairs right upon un loike.'"


     "_Christ Church, Feb. 4._--I have had a terribly cold tour to
     Drayton-Beauchamp, Ashridge, Aylesbury, &c. The pleasantest feature
     was a warm welcome from Mrs. Barnard, wife of the great
     yeoman-farmer at Creslow Pastures, the royal feeding-grounds from
     the time of Elizabeth to Charles II., with a lovely and interesting
     old house overlooking Christ Low (the Christ's Meadow) and Heaven's
     Low (Heaven's Meadow). Thence I went to North Marston, where was
     the shrine of Sir John Shorne, a sainted rector, who preserved his
     congregation from sin by 'conjuring the devil into his boot.'
     Buckinghamshire is full of these quaint stories.

     "Arthur has just been making great sensation by a splendid sermon
     at St. Mary's, given in his most animated manner, his energies
     gradually kindling till his whole being was on fire. It was on,
     'Why stand ye here idle all the day long?--the first shall be last
     and the last first.' 'Why stand ye here idle, listless, in the
     quadrangle, in your own rooms, doing nothing; so that in the years
     to come you will never be able to look back and say, "In such a
     year, in such a term, I learnt this or that--that idea, that book,
     that thought _then_ first struck me"? Perhaps this may be a voice
     to the winds, perhaps those to whom it would most apply are even
     now in their places of resort, standing idle: probably even those
     who are here would answer to my question, "Because no man hath
     hired us."'

     "Then he described the powers, objects, and advantages of Oxford.
     Then the persons who had passed away within the year, leaving gaps
     to be filled up--the seven great masters of the English
     language,[180] the German poets and philosophers,[181] the French
     philosopher[182]--'and their praise shall go forth from generation
     to generation.' Then he dwelt on the different duties of the coming
     life to be prepared for, and he described the model
     country-clergyman (Pearson), the model teacher (Jowett), the model
     country-gentleman. Then came a beautiful and pictorial passage
     about the eleventh hour and the foreboding of the awful twelfth.
     The congregation was immense, and listened with breathless
     interest. When the signatures were being collected for the Jowett
     appeal, Arthur was hard at work upon them on Sunday when Mr. Jowett
     came in. Arthur said, 'You need not mind my being at work to-day,
     for I can assure you it is quite a Sunday occupation, a work of
     justice, if not of mercy.'--'Yes,' said Jowett, 'I see how it is:
     an ass has fallen into a pit, and you think it right to pull him
     out on the Sabbath-day.'"

Arthur Stanley used to see a great deal of Mr. Jowett during this
year--far too much, my mother thought when she was staying with him at
Oxford; for Jowett--kind and unselfish as a saint--was only "Christian"
in so far that he believed the central light of Christianity to spring
from the life of Christ. He occasionally preached, but his sermons were
only illustrative of practical duties, or the lessons to be learnt from
holy and unselfish lives. It was during this year, too, that the English
Church recognised with surprise that it was being shaken to its
foundations by the volume of--mostly feeble and dull--"Essays and
Reviews." But to turn to a very different religious phase.


     JOURNAL.

     "_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.

Here is the story as he gave it:--

     "In the time of my youth one of the cleverest and most agreeable
     women in Europe was Madame de Salis--the Countess de Salis--who had
     been in her youth a Miss Foster, daughter of the Irish Bishop of
     Kilmore. As a girl she had been most beautiful and the darling of
     her parents' hearts, but she married against their will with the
     Count de Salis. He was a Swiss Count, but he took her, not to
     Switzerland, but to Florence, where he hired a villa at
     Bellosguardo. There the life of Madame de Salis was a most
     miserable one: she had many children, but her husband, who cut her
     off from all communication with her friends, was exceedingly unkind
     to her. She was married to him for several years, and then she was
     mercifully released by his death. It was impossible for her to
     pretend to be sorry, and she did not pretend it: she hailed it as
     the greatest mercy that could have befallen her.[186]

     "Madame de Salis went back to Ireland, where her parents, the old
     Bishop of Kilmore and Mrs. Foster, were still alive, and welcomed
     her with rapture. But she had left them a radiant, beautiful,
     animated girl; she returned to them a haggard, weird, worn woman,
     with that fixed look of anguish which only the most chronic
     suffering can leave. And what was worst was that her health had
     completely given way: she never slept, she never seemed able to
     rest, she had no repose day or night: she became seriously ill.

     "All the best advice that could be procured was hers. There was a
     great consultation of doctors upon her case, and after it had taken
     place, the doctors came to the Bishop and said, 'The case of Madame
     de Salis is an extraordinary one; it is a most peculiar, but still
     a known form of hypochondria. She cannot rest because she always
     sees before her--not the horrible phantom which made her married
     life so miserable, but the room which was the scene of her
     suffering. And she never will rest; the image is, as it were,
     branded into her brain, and cannot be eradicated. There is only one
     remedy, and it is a very desperate one. It will probably kill her,
     she will probably sink under it, but it may have happy results.
     However, it is the only chance of saving her. It is that she should
     see the real room again. She can never get rid of its image: it is
     engraven upon her brain for life. The only chance is for her to
     connect it with something else.' When Madame de Salis was told
     this, she said that her returning to Florence was impossible,
     absolutely impossible. 'At any rate,' she said, 'I could not go
     unless my younger sister, Miss Foster, might go with me; then
     possibly I might think of it.' But to this Dr. and Mrs. Foster
     would not consent. The happiness of their lives seemed to have been
     extinguished when their elder daughter married Count de Salis, and
     if their beautiful younger daughter went abroad, perhaps she also
     would marry a foreigner, and then what good would their lives do
     them? However, Madame de Salis grew daily worse; her life was
     evidently at stake, and at last her parents said, 'Well, if you
     will make us a solemn promise that you will never, under any
     circumstances whatever, consent to your sister's marrying a
     foreigner, she shall go with you;' and she went.

     "Madame de Salis and Miss Foster went to Florence. They rented the
     villa at Bellosguardo which had been the scene of the terrible
     tragedy of Madame de Salis's married life. As they entered the
     fatal room, Madame de Salis fell down insensible upon the
     threshold. When she came to herself, she passed from one terrible
     convulsion into another: she had a brain fever: she struggled for
     weeks between life and death. But nature is strong, and when she
     did rally, the opinion of the Irish doctors was justified. Instead
     of the terrible companion of her former life and the constant dread
     in which she lived, she had the companionship of her beautiful,
     gentle, affectionate sister, who watched over her with unspeakable
     tenderness, who anticipated her every wish.... The room was
     associated with something else! Gradually, very gradually, Madame
     de Salis dawned back into active life. She began to feel her former
     interest in art; in time she was able to go and paint in the
     galleries, and in time, when her recovery became known, many of
     those who had never dared to show their sympathy with her during
     her earlier sojourn at Florence, but who had pitied her intensely,
     hastened to visit her; and gradually, as with returning health her
     brilliant conversational powers came back, and her extraordinary
     gift of repartee was restored, her salon became the most
     _recherché_ and the most attractive in Florence.

     "Chief of all its attractions was the lovely Miss Foster. When,
     however, Madame de Salis saw that any one especially was paying her
     sister attentions, she took an opportunity of alienating them, or,
     if there seemed to be anything really serious, she expressed to the
     individual her regret that she was unable to receive him any more.
     But at last there was an occasion on which Madame de Salis felt
     that more stringent action was called for. When a young Count
     Mastai, in the Guardia Nobile, not only felt, but showed the most
     unbounded devotion to Miss Foster, Madame de Salis did more than
     express to him her regret that untoward family circumstances
     prevented her having the pleasure of seeing him again; she let her
     villa at Bellosguardo, she packed up her things, and she took her
     sister with her to Rome.

     "The reputation of the two sisters had preceded them, and when it
     became known that the Madame de Salis who had had so romantic a
     history was come to Rome with her beautiful younger sister, all
     that was most intellectual and all that was most remarkable in the
     old Papal capital gathered around them. But now the scene had
     changed. It was no longer Madame de Salis who was the invalid. Miss
     Foster grew pale and languid and unable to occupy herself, and
     gradually she became so pale and so changed, and the cause of it
     was so evident, that Madame de Salis felt that she must choose
     between two alternatives: she must either break her word to her
     parents and save the life of her sister, or she must keep her
     promise to her parents and see her sister sink into the grave.

     "And she decided on the former course. She wrote two letters--one
     letter to Count Mastai, telling him that he might come back and see
     her sister again, and the other letter to the Bishop of Kilmore and
     Mrs. Foster. She said to her parents that she knew they measured a
     foreign marriage by her own dreadful life with Count de Salis: that
     in Count Mastai they must imagine the exact opposite of Count de
     Salis: that he was honourable, noble, chivalrous, generous,
     disinterested--in fact, that had she to seek through the whole
     world the person to whom with the greatest confidence she could
     commit her sister's happiness, she could not do otherwise than
     choose Count Mastai. This letter she sent too late to have the
     refusal which she knew it would bring. Count Mastai flew to the
     feet of the beautiful Miss Foster, and was accepted at once. The
     wedding-day was fixed, the wedding-dress was made, the
     wedding-feast was prepared.[187]

     "When the day came, all the friends of Madame de Salis collected in
     the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, where the marriage was to
     take place. According to the custom of brides in Rome, Miss Foster,
     accompanied by Madame de Salis, came first to the altar and waited
     for the bridegroom. He never came--he never came at all--he never,
     never, never was heard of again. And that is the end of the first
     part of the story.

            *       *       *       *       *

     "The second part of the story is quite different. It was the time
     of the great famine and pestilence in the Basilicata. The misery
     was most intense, hundreds perished daily everywhere. Every one who
     could get away did; those who could went to Switzerland, others
     went to Sicily; bishops abandoned their dioceses, priests abandoned
     their flocks: there was a general stampede.

     "But in that terrible time, as in all seasons of great national
     suffering, there were instances of extraordinary devotion and
     heroism. There was one young bishop of a Neapolitan diocese, who
     was absent in Switzerland at the time, who came back like San Carlo
     Borromeo over the Alps, who sold his library for the poor, who sold
     his carriages, who sold at last even his episcopal ring, who walked
     day and night in the hospitals, and by whose personal devotion many
     lives were saved, while thousands were cheered and encouraged by
     his example. The consequence was, that when the famine and the
     pestilence in the Basilicata passed away, at an early age--at a
     much earlier age than is usual--that young bishop was made a
     cardinal.

            *       *       *       *       *

     "The third part of the story is again quite different. It was when
     Pope Gregory XVI. lay upon his deathbed. There was the greatest
     possible difficulty about who should be his successor; one member
     of the Sacred College was too old, another was too young, another
     was too much bound up with the princely families: there seemed to
     be no one. The person who was of most influence at that time was
     Count Rossi, the French Ambassador, and he was very anxious for a
     liberal Pope, for some one who would carry out his own liberal
     views. One day as he was walking pensively, filled with anxieties,
     down the Corso, there passed by in a carriage that young bishop of
     the Basilicata, once Bishop of Imola, now Archbishop of Spoleto,
     who had been so distinguished during the famine. And when Count
     Rossi saw him, he felt _that_ is the man--_that_ is the man who
     would further my ideas and carry out my views. And by the wonderful
     influence of Count Rossi on separate individuals, and by his
     extraordinary powers of combination in bringing the mind of one
     person to bear upon another, that person was chosen Pope. And on
     the day on which he mounted the Papal throne as Pius IX., he
     revealed that he was the person who, as Count Mastai Ferretti in
     the Guardia Nobile, had been engaged to be married to the beautiful
     Miss Foster. He had belonged to a Jesuit family: he had been
     summoned on a Jesuit mission from which no one can shrink: his
     value to the Church had been estimated: he was sent off to the West
     Indies: letters were intercepted, and he was induced to believe
     that Miss Foster had ceased to care about him: he was persuaded to
     take Orders; he became bishop in the Basilicata, Bishop of Imola,
     Archbishop of Spoleto, Pope of Rome--and Miss Foster lived to know
     it.

            *       *       *       *       *

     "'Now,' said Dr. Hawtrey, 'if you ever tell that story, recollect
     to say that it is no mere story I have heard; it is part of my own
     life. Madame de Salis and her sister were my relations, and I was
     most intimate with them. I was there when Madame de Salis made her
     miserable marriage; I was there when she came back so terribly
     changed. I shared in the consultations as to whether her sister
     should go with her: I was with Dr. and Mrs. Foster when they
     received the letter about Count Mastai: I was there when they heard
     of the disappearance of the mysterious bridegroom: and I have lived
     to think of him as Pope.'"

I am surprised to find no letters recording the long and happy visit
which I made during the latter part of April 1860 to Chequers, the
beautiful old house of Lady Frankland Russell, to whom I had been
introduced by Lady Sheffield, who was her cousin. With this most
interesting old lady I made great friends and received the greatest
kindness from her. Owing to the marriage of Sir John Russell of Chequers
with Mrs. Rich, youngest daughter of Cromwell, the house was perfectly
full of Cromwell relics, and in its grand old gallery hung portraits of
the Protector, his mother, brother, his four daughters, two sons-in-law,
secretary, &c. Here, also, enclosed in a cabinet, was a very awful mask
taken from Cromwell's face after death, which Lady Frankland used to
uncover with great solemnity. In the garden was a wonderful wych elm,
said to have been planted by King Stephen, and behind rose the Chiltern
Hills, the most beautiful point of which--Velvet Lawn, covered with
indigenous box--was in the immediate neighbourhood.

All through the summer of 1860 we were occupied in considering our new
home. We sent for all the London agents' lists of places to be let or
sold south of the Humber, and many of these, in Kent, Surrey, Berks,
Bucks, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, I went to see, either with
or without my mother. If she were not with me, I wrote to her long
accounts, always concluding with saying, "They are not like Holmhurst,
not in the least like Holmhurst,"--Holmhurst being the ideal place in
the unwritten novels which my mother and I had been accustomed to
narrate to each other in our long journeys abroad. My being difficult to
satisfy gave the aunts an unusual handle for abuse, and plentifully did
they bestow it upon me. "What can it signify whether you have a view or
not? No one but you would care to waste your time in always looking out
of the window," &c., &c. Especially was indignation roused by my
refusing to consider an old house which the Stanleys were determined
upon our taking in Oxfordshire,[188] and which was to be had very cheap
because no servants could be persuaded to stay there on account of a
frightful apparition which was supposed to haunt it. At last we almost
despaired of finding any place to suit us, and determined to take the
farm of Belhurst at Hurstmonceaux to put our furniture in, and to go
abroad till quite a different set of places were to be disposed of. Just
then a neighbour sent us a Hastings paper with a very humble
advertisement marked, "At Ore, a house, with thirty-six acres of land,
to be let or sold." "What a horrible place this must be," I said, "for
which they cannot find one word of description;" for the very ugliest
places we had seen had often been described in the advertisements as
"picturesque manorial residences," "beautiful villas with hanging
woods," &c. But my mother rightly thought that the very simple
description was perhaps in itself a reason why we should see it, and
after breakfast we set off in the little carriage. It was a drive of
about fourteen miles. Long before we could arrive at Ore, we passed
under a grey wall overhung by trees. "It looks almost as if there might
be a Holmhurst inside that wall," I said. Then we reached a gate between
two clipped yew-trees, and a board announced, "This house is to be let
or sold." We drove in. It was a lovely day. An arched gateway was open
towards the garden, showing a terrace, vases of scarlet geraniums, and a
background of blue sea. My mother and I clasped each other's hands and
simultaneously exclaimed--"This is Holmhurst!"

The house was let then, and we were refused permission to see the
inside, but my mother bought the property at once: she was as sure as I
was that we should never like any other place as well.

We found that the name of the place was Little Ridge. There were six
places called Ridge in the neighbourhood, and it was very desirable to
change the name, to prevent confusion at the post-office and elsewhere.
Could we call it anything but Holmhurst? Afterwards we discovered that
Holmhurst meant an ilex wood, and our great tree is an ilex.

On September 24 my mother left Lime. The day before was Sunday, and very
sad--so many tearful farewells, so many poor women crying in the
churchyard as we passed through. I stayed at Lime to pack up and arrange
everything. On October 6, in the gloaming of the autumn evening, while
the sunlight was streaming through the diminishing leaves of the old
abele trees, and throwing long shadows upon the green lawn and bright
flower-beds, we took a last farewell of our dear Hurstmonceaux home.
Lea delivered up the keys, and we walked away (to the Rectory) up the
drive, our drive no longer.

     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Holmhurst, Oct. 8, 1860._--This morning we left Hurstmonceaux
     Rectory directly after breakfast, good old Dr. Wellesley quite
     affected, and Harriet Duly, and even begging Mrs. Havendon, crying
     bitterly on taking leave of Lea. We met a smart carriage with two
     white horses going to fetch the Arkcolls, who made a triumphal
     entry to Lime just after our departure. Winchester drove us, in
     order to bring back the horse--John and Romo (the dog) on the box:
     Lea and I with Julietta (the cat) and her kitten inside, and no end
     of provisions under the seats. We stopped first at Mrs. Taylor's
     farm, and she gave Lea a new loaf and some cheese to begin
     housekeeping with, and me some excellent cakes. Lea thought the
     drive charming. I walked up all the hills and we arrived about one
     o'clock. It was impossible to enter the gates on account of the
     waggons of the outgoing tenants, but Joe and Margaret Cornford from
     the lodge hailed us with the joyful news that they had themselves
     departed a few hours before."


     "_Oct. 9._--We began work at six, a lovely morning, and the view
     exquisite as I opened my window, the oak-trees with which the
     meadows are studded casting long shadows on the grass, the little
     pond glittering in the sun, and the grey castle rising against the
     softest blue sea beyond. John is awed by the magnitude of the
     grounds.... Julietta cries to go home, and would certainly set off,
     if it were not for little black pussy. I think the winding walks
     and obscure paths are enchanting, and the fir-woods are really
     large enough for you to 'inhale the turpentine air' as at
     Bournemouth."

[Illustration: THE ABELES, LIME.]

My mother came to Holmhurst in about ten days, but not to stay, as we
had arranged to break the transition between our two homes by spending
the winter at Mentone. We took the route to the south by Orleans (whence
I made a most interesting excursion to Notre Dame de Clery), Bourges,
and then lingered at Oranges, Avignon, &c. I have always looked back
upon the earlier part of this journey with remorse, as one in which I
took my mother a longer way, in cold weather, simply to gratify my own
wishes.

The dear mother, however, was very well, and this winter was therefore
perhaps the happiest of the many we have spent abroad. Mentone consisted
then only of the old town on a promontory above the sea, ending in a
little island-tower, and clambering up the sides of the hill to the
castle and cemetery. On either side were a very few villas scattered
amid the olive and orange groves. In one of these,[189] above the
terrace which led from the eastern gate of the town to the little chapel
of St. Anne, we rented the first floor. On the ground floor lived our
worthy landlord, M. Trenca, and his Swiss wife, with whom we made much
acquaintance. In the neighbouring villas also we had many friends, and
often gave little parties,--for the tiny society was most simple and
easily pleased. We all enjoyed Mentone, where we had no winter, and
breakfasted with windows wide open at Christmas. Our old servants, Lea
and John, amused themselves by collecting roots of anemones and other
plants; I drew, and sought materials for my little book "A Winter at
Mentone;" and my mother was always gay and happy, betaking herself every
morning with her camp-stool to draw in some sheltered nook, and
returning proud of having discovered some new pathlet, or some fresh
bank of rare flowers in the olive groves; and in the afternoons often
going to sit with and read or sing to some of the invalid visitors.

[Illustration: MENTONE.[190]]

     JOURNAL.

     "_Dec. 1860._--Our apartment has a bright salon looking towards the
     garden, with glass doors opening on a balcony. All the rooms except
     one overlook a vast expanse of blue sea, above groves of
     magnificent olivetrees, and from the garden a fresh scent of
     flowers is wafted up, even in December. From this garden the peaks
     of the Berceau are seen rising above the thickets of oranges and
     lemons, and beyond is a chain of rosecoloured rocks descending in
     an abrupt precipice to the blue waters of the bay, while on the
     farthest promontory Bordighera gleams white in the sunshine. Twice
     a day a lovely fairy vision salutes us; first, when, in the
     sunrise, Corsica reveals itself across the sapphire water,
     appearing so distinctly that you can count every ravine and
     indentation of its jagged mountains, and feel as if a boat would
     easily take you to it in an hour; and again in the evening, when,
     as a white ghost, scarcely distinguishable from the clouds around
     it, and looking inconceivably distant, it looms forth dimly in the
     pink haze of sunset.

     "We were here a very little while before several donkey-women
     presented themselves to secure our custom. We engaged ourselves to
     a wild Meg Merrilies figure in a broad white hat, with a red
     handkerchief tied underneath, and a bunch of flowers stuck jauntily
     in the side of her hair, who rejoices in the name of Teresina
     Ravellina Muratori de Buffa! With her we have made many excursions.
     It is impossible for anything to be more beautiful than the variety
     of green in the valleys: the blue-green of the gigantic euphorbias,
     which fringe the rocks by the wayside, the grey-green of the
     olives, the dark green of the old gnarled carouba trees, and the
     yellow-green of the canes and the autumnal vineyards. The walls are
     beautiful with their fringe of mesembryanthemum--'Miss Emily
     Anthem' as the servants call it. Most of the paths are a constant
     'excelsior,' and beginning with the steep yellow tufa rocks behind
     the town, gradually enter the pine-woods, and ascend towards the
     blue peaks of Sant' Agnese, which are always visible through the
     red stems of the pine-trees, and across the rich foreground of
     heath and myrtle. The trees are full of linnets, which the natives
     call 'trenta-cinque' from the sound of their note, and the air
     resounds with the cries of the donkey-drivers--'Ulla'--go on, and
     'Isa'--for shame."

     "_Jan. 11, 1861._--We have been climbing up to Grimaldi, whose
     broad sunny terrace is as Italian a scene as any on the Riviera,
     for it is crossed by a dark archway, and lined on one side with
     bright houses, upon whose walls yellow gourds hang in the sun, with
     a little church, painted pink and yellow, while the other side is
     overshadowed by old olive-trees, beneath which is seen the broad
     expanse of sea, here deep blue, there gleaming silver white in the
     hot sunshine. Children in bright handkerchiefs and aprons were
     playing about, and singing 'Tanta di gioja, tanto di contento,'
     while we were drawing.

     "Beyond Grimaldi the path becomes intensely steep, but we were
     repaid for going on when we reached to the top of the hills, as the
     scenery there is almost Alpine in its bold rocky foregrounds,
     beneath which yawns the deep black chasm of St. Louis, with a huge
     cliff towering above. On the scorched rock is Ciotti Superiore, a
     quaint cluster of houses, while the church, quite separated from
     the village, stands farther off, on the highest ridge of the
     mountain. Behind the church, the sea view is magnificent, embracing
     the coast, with its numerous bays, as far as the Estrelles, which
     turn golden and pink in the sunset; the grand mountain barriers,
     with all the orange-clad valleys running up into them; and S.
     Agnese rising out of the blue mist on its perpendicular cliff....
     And, even in this high situation, lovely narcissus and pink
     carnations were blooming in January.

     "People here are unconventional. When it began to rain on Tuesday,
     as we were going to a picnic, the coachman said 'Ah! le bon Dieu a
     oublié que c'est un jour de fêtes.'"

[Illustration: GRIMALDI.][191]

It was a great delight during our winter at Mentone that Lady Mary Wood
and her family were spending the winter at Nice with old Lady Grey, so
that my friend Charlie and I often met, and became greater friends than
ever, entirely sympathising in all we did and saw. I went to Nice to
spend some days with the Woods, and they came to Mentone for Easter,
when we saw the Mentonais assemble to "grind Judas's bones," and many
other of their strange ceremonies.


     "_Good Friday, 1861._--When Charlie and I went to S. Michele at
     eight o'clock in the evening, we found the church crowded from end
     to end with people chanting the Miserere, and radiant with a
     thousand waxlights. In the choir, under a canopy, upon a raised
     bier surrounded by a treble row of tall tapers, lay the body of
     Christ, for which the whole service was a funeral celebration. Soon
     after we arrived, a sudden hush in the crowd showed that something
     important was going to happen, and a huge friar's lanthorn carried
     in by a boy preceded the celebrated 'Pilgrim Preacher of the
     Riviera,' a Capuchin monk with a long white beard, who exercises
     his wonderful gift of preaching all along the Riviera during Lent.
     His sermon was short, but very graphic and striking. He began by
     describing a dreadful murder which people had committed upon the
     person of their kindest friend, with the horror it excited; and
     then, pointing to the white corpse which lay before him amid the
     blazing candles, he declared that those around him were themselves
     the perpetrators of the crime, and that the object of it was no
     other than their Saviour, whose image they saw there pale and
     bleeding before their eyes. Then, snatching the crucifix from the
     support by his side, he held it aloft to urge repentance by the
     sufferings there portrayed. As he concluded, soldiers filed into
     the church, and, amid rolling of drums and blowing of trumpets
     which intermingled with the chanting, the body was taken up and
     carried three times round the church by the Black Penitents,
     Mentonais nobles supporting a canopy over the bier."

With Charlie Wood, also, I went to Dolceacqua, which will always come
back to me as one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, with
its forest-clad mountains, its tall bridge, its blue river Nervia, and
the palatial castle of the Dorias on a cliff, with sunlight streaming
through its long lines of glassless windows. Almost equally picturesque
were Peglia and Peglione, the latter on the top of a conical rock, with
tremendous precipices and extraordinary mountain forms all around.

[Illustration: DOLCEACQUA.][192]

In the spring we went for a few days to S. Remo, accompanied by several
friends. With them, when my mother returned to Mentone, I travelled
farther along the Riviera, an excursion which was most amusing, as we
bargained for a little carriage from place to place, giving ridiculously
small sums, and living entirely like Italians. We went on to
many-towered Albenga, to Savona, and eventually to Genoa, making all
the excursions belonging to each place. From Genoa we joined Mr. and
Mrs. Strettel in an excursion to Porto Fino. When we returned, it was
too late to reach Mentone before Sunday, and my companions refused to
travel on that day, so we employed the interval in going to Piacenza,
Parma, and Modena! Thence we were obliged to telegraph to Mr. Strettel
(then chaplain at Genoa) to send us some money to get home with, which
we did in a series of little carriages as we had come, but travelling
all day and night, driving in the moonlight along the Riviera roads, or
often walking for miles at night upon the sands by the sea.

[Illustration: PEGLIONE.][193]

[Illustration: VENTIMIGLIA.[194]]

Mr. Petit, the famous ecclesiologist,[195] spent some time at Mentone
afterwards, and was very kind in taking me sketching excursions, as a
fourth in the carriage with his sister, Miss Emma Petit, and his niece,
Miss Salt. Mr. Petit was extraordinarily clever, especially as an
artist, but most eccentric. He covered the backs of his pictures with
caricatures of goblins, &c., representing the events of each day on
which the pictures were done. When they travelled, this extraordinary
family used to keep what they called "the Petit count:" if they met a
cat, it counted for so much--a black goat for so much more, and so on:
but if they met a royal prince, it annihilated the whole of the Petit
count, and the party would consequently go a whole day's journey out of
their way to evade a royal prince. Mr. Petit was most striking in
appearance, with a great deal of colour and snow-white hair and beard. I
remember the start which our donkey-boy François gave when he first saw
him, and his exclaiming, "Je crois, Monsieur, que c'est le frère du Père
Eternel!" One day I had gone with Mr. Petit and Miss Salt to
Ventimiglia, and we were returning at a most alarming speed (with their
horses, from Toulon, unaccustomed to the road) along the edge of an
almost unguarded and perpendicular precipice. Suddenly the horses made a
great dash, and I _felt_, rather than saw, that they were leaving the
road. I threw myself out instantly over the side of the carriage. As I
picked myself up, I had the horror of seeing the horses _over_, hanging
in the branches of an olive-tree which overhung the sea at a tremendous
height, and on the tiny plateau on which it grew. The carriage was
swaying to and fro on the wall, which it had broken down, and which was
rapidly giving way altogether. "Uncle, shall I get out?" said Miss Salt,
as coolly as if nothing was going on. "Yes," he said--and they both got
out. A crowd of men came and rescued the horses with ropes from their
perilous position, and we walked home.

As usual, in our return to England, we lingered much by the way. The
railway then only reached as far as Aix in Provence, and we joined it
there after a long _vetturino_ journey; then, after visiting the
wonderful deserted town of Les Baux near Arles and Vaucluse near
Avignon, we went to S. Laurent du Pont and the Grande Chartreuse,
greatly enjoying the beauty of the spring flowers there, as well as the
scenery.




X

WORK IN NORTHERN COUNTIES

    "Al ogni uccello suo nido par bello."

    --_Italian Proverb._

    "O my life! have we not had seasons
      That only said, Live and rejoice?
    That asked not for causes or reasons,
      But made us all feeling and voice."

    --LOWELL.


On our arrival in England, we were delighted with our little Holmhurst,
which we arranged to be as much like Lime as possible, while many of the
plants and shrubs we had brought with us, were, in the garden, a
perpetual reminder of our old home. To my mother, however, our return
was greatly clouded by the loss of her only brother, my Uncle Penrhyn,
who died at Sheen while we were at Mentone, passing away most
peacefully, surrounded by his family. This uncle is one of the few
figures connected with my childhood with whom I have no associations but
those of unvarying kindness, and in later years we had been brought
nearer to him in our long winter visits at Sheen, and we missed him
greatly.

My Handbook (nominally Murray's) of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and
Berkshire had been published during our winter absence: my little book
"A Winter at Mentone" appeared soon after our return. With Murray's
Handbook I had taken as much pains as if it were to appear in my own
name, and felt as strongly the responsibility of what Miss Edgeworth
calls "irremediable words," once past the press. The "Winter at Mentone"
fell perfectly flat, but Murray was so pleased with the laudatory
notices which followed the appearance of the Handbook, that he asked me
to select any other counties I liked. I chose Durham and Northumberland,
and after the middle of July went there for three months. In undertaking
these counties, I again assented to an arrangement by which I was never
repaid for my work; but the work was one which I liked extremely,
bringing me in contact with endless interesting persons, enabling me to
be much with "Cousin Susan," who gave me a second home at Ridley Hall,
and opening a field of historic study of the most interesting kind. On
the way north I went to the Vaughans at Doncaster, of which Dr. Vaughan
had lately become Vicar.


     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Doncaster, July 24, 1861._--The people here are a perpetual
     amusement to Kate, they are so quaint and original. She spoke to
     one old woman the other day about her sinful ways and the necessity
     for amendment. 'Na, na, Mrs. Vaughan,' she replied, 'I be got too
     old for Mr. Satan noo; he canna hurt I noo.' Another old woman who
     was brought into the hospital swore dreadfully all night long, to
     the great annoyance of her neighbours; but when they complained she
     said, 'Wal, I niver did it afore I coomed here, but I be gettin'
     old, and I canna help it--and it's the will o' God, and I canna
     help it.'

     "Kate said to an old man, 'What are you so low about, my man?'
     'Why,' he said, 'what wi' faith, and gas, and balloons, and
     steam-ingines a-booming and a-fizzling through t' warld, and what
     wi't' arth a going round once in twenty-four hours, I'm fairly
     muzzled and stagnated.'

     "I have been to call on the daughters of 'Presence-of-mind Smith,'
     who was Dean of Christ Church, and to the close of his life used to
     tell this story of himself. 'In my life,' he said, 'there has been
     one most fortunate incident. A friend of mine persuaded me to go
     out with him in a boat upon a lake. I did not wish to go, but he
     persuaded me, and I went. By the intervention of Providence, I took
     my umbrella with me. We had not been long on the lake when the
     violence of the waves threw my friend out of the boat drowning, and
     he sank. Soon, as is the case with drowning persons, he came up
     again, and clutched hold of the side of the boat. Then such,
     providentially, was my presence of mind, that I seized my umbrella
     and rapped him violently on the knuckles till he let go. He sank,
     and I was saved.'"

[Illustration: AT DURHAM.]

When I arrived at Durham, I presented myself at once to my cousins the
George Liddells, who lived at a dingy brick house in the suburb called
Old Elvet. They had never seen me before, but welcomed me with the
utmost kindness and hospitality, making me quite at home with them. I
took a little lodging close by, but they made me dine with them almost
every day, and I went constant expeditions with them, staying to dinner
at the neighbouring houses, Elemore, Aldin Grange, &c. Durham itself I
always found charming. The smoke only gave a picturesqueness of its own,
and on Sunday there was a Sabbath of nature, for when the chimneys
ceased smoking, the birds began to sing, the flowers to bloom, and the
sky to be blue. Sunday, however, was a severe day with the George
Liddells, almost entirely spent in going to church, reading prayers, and
listening to long sermons at home. Even on ordinary days, _after_ long
morning prayers, we were expected to read all the Psalms and Lessons for
the day, verse by verse, before we went out. But with all this, George
Liddell was the very dearest and kindest of old men, and I was very fond
too of his wife--"Cousin Louise"--who was most amusing and original.

Other cousins, who were intensely good to me at this time, were old
Henry Liddell, brother of my great-uncle Lord Ravensworth, and his wife,
who was daughter of Thomas Lyon of Hetton, my great-grandmother's
youngest brother. I had known them first at Bath many years before,
where they were kind to me when I had very few friends. With them lived
their daughters Charlotte and Amelia, and their youngest son William, a
very tall, very excellent, and very shy clergyman, who was his father's
curate at Easington. Here I paid my first visit to them. It is an ugly
village in the Black Country, but the Liddells' house was most
comfortable, having the sea close by, with delightful sands and rocks,
and many wooded "denes" running down to it, of which Castle Eden is
especially beautiful.

I remember one day, after returning from Easington, dining with Dr.
Phillpotts, the celebrated Bishop of Exeter, who had a Canonry at
Durham. He was very old, and was obliged to have a glass of wine given
to him to obtain strength to go in to dinner, and every one wished him
good-night when he left the dinner-table. He was good enough also to
send for me alone to wish success to my book, &c. It was my only sight
of this kindly old man, though I knew his daughter well, and valued her
many good qualities. They both died shortly afterwards. Amongst the
company at the Bishop's were Mr. and Mrs. Johnson of Akeley Heads, whom
I also visited at their own beautiful place, which is on a high terrace
overlooking Durham. It came to them in a curious way. Mr. Johnson was
at school at Durham, and went out with his two elder brothers to spend
the day with a rich old uncle who lived there. The eldest brother was
his uncle's heir. They were sent to play in the garden, and seeing there
a beautiful ripe peach upon the wall, they were unable to resist it, and
ate it up. Soon the uncle came into the garden to look for that
identical peach. "Where is my peach gone?" he said. The three boys were
dreadfully frightened, and the two eldest denied knowing anything about
it, but the youngest said, "We picked it and ate it up." The old man
said nothing, but went home and altered his will that very afternoon,
and when he was killed by an accident three weeks afterwards, his
youngest nephew was found to be the heir of Akeley Heads.

I was frequently invited by Dean Waddington, who was a man of stately
presence, "grand seigneur, fastueux, homme du monde," and had a great
reputation for learning and cleverness; but in my acquaintance with him
he seemed to care for nothing but his dinner, and his chief topic of
conversation was his sherry of 1815, for which he gave £12 a dozen.
"What with _diner à la Russe_, crinoline, and pale sherry," he said one
day, "England is fast going to the dogs."

     _To_ MY MOTHER.

     "_Dilston, August 28._--The Greys gave me a warm welcome to
     Dilston--Mr. Grey being agent for the Greenwich Hospital Estates
     there, and a great agriculturist. Dilston is lovely. The house
     stands on a terraced height, covered with hanging woods, beneath
     which flows the Devil's Water, the most beautiful of Northumbrian
     rivers, with trout dancing about in its transparent brown currents,
     and floating away over its crumpled-looking rocks. On the hilltop
     is the ruined castle of the Earl of Derwentwater, with his nursery,
     now overgrown by huge elder-trees, and the little chapel beneath
     which he was buried at night beside his ancestors. Below is the old
     grey pointed bridge, upon which, as he rode over, he repented of
     his rebellion and turned back to the castle, when his wife threw
     her fan at him, and calling him a coward, drove him forth to his
     destruction."


     "_Ridley Hall, Sept. 1._--'How happily the days of Thalaba roll by'
     might be applied to all the dwellers at Ridley Hall; for 'Cousin
     Susan' is so truly genial to her many guests, that they cannot fail
     to enjoy being with her."


     "_Chillingham Castle, Sept. 6._--I went with Cousin Susan to spend
     two days at Matfen, Sir Edward Blackett's, a large modern Tudor
     house with a church beside it, looking into a great park, and
     entered through a stately gothic hall. Sir Edward and Lady
     Blackett have not been married many years, but four of his
     daughters by his first wife are now out. Lady Blackett also had
     another Northumbrian husband, Mr. Orde of Whitfield, and, as
     daughter of Sir Charles Lorraine, was once thought a great beauty.
     Sir Edward drove me to see Aydon, a curious old castle which
     belongs to him.

     "Yesterday I came to Chillingham from Belford, a beautiful drive,
     over hills first, and then descending into moorland, purple with
     heather, and bounded by the Cheviots, which rose deep blue against
     the sunset sky. The castle, which is partly as old as King John, is
     built round a great courtyard, from which flights of stone steps go
     up to the principal apartments. On the stairs I found Lord
     Tankerville, a handsome middle-aged man, with grey hair, romping
     with his children. He is quite charming, so merry and so courteous.
     He took me at once to my room, which is high up in one of the old
     towers, and at eight we dined. Lady Tankerville is sister of the
     Duke of Manchester, very pretty, and looks quite a girl, though her
     three boys must be eight, nine, and ten years old."


     "_Chillingham, Sept. 8._--This park is quite as beautiful in its
     way as any scenery abroad, and much more so, I think, than any in
     Scotland. It is backed by the Cheviot Hills, and often broken into
     deep dells, with little streamlets rushing down them, and weird old
     oaks whose withered branches are never cut off, sheltering herds of
     deer. Great herds too of wild cattle, which are milk-white, and
     have lived here undisturbed from time immemorial, come rushing
     every now and then down the hillsides like an army, to seek better
     pasture in the valley. Deer of every kind are to be seen upon the
     hills, and Lady Tankerville hunts them furiously, tiring out twelve
     horses in succession, placed to await her at different points in
     the park. Nothing can be more lovely than the evening effects each
     day I have been here, the setting sun pouring streams of golden
     light into the great grey mysterious basins of the Cheviots, amid
     which Marmion died and Paulinus baptized the ancient Northumbrians.

     "If the place is charming, the people are even more so. The family
     is the happiest and most united I have ever seen. Lord Tankerville
     is the best and kindest of human beings. Lady Tankerville, whose
     spirits are so exuberant she scarcely knows how to get rid of them,
     dotes on her 'Hossinun,' plays with her children, gallops on her
     horses, hunts her deer, and manages her household, with equal
     vivacity. She is the most amusing person possible, is never ill,
     laughs fine-ladyism to scorn, and scrambles about the park,
     regardless of colds and crinolines, in all states of the weather.
     The three little boys, Charlie, Georgie, and Peddie, are all quite
     as engaging in their different ways, and the two little girls are
     lovely little creatures.

     "The prettiest story of an acceptance I ever heard of is that of
     Lord Tankerville. He was playing at billiards with Lady Olivia
     Montagu when he proposed, but she gave no definite answer. At last
     she said, 'I think we must go into the drawing-room now; we have
     been away long enough.'--'But what may I think, what may I say?' he
     asked in agitation. 'Say that we have played our game, and that
     you have won,' she answered.

     "Yesterday, as soon as luncheon was over, Lady Tankerville and I
     set off for a regular good sketching, in which she soon outstripped
     me, for her drawings are first-rate. In some she has been helped by
     Landseer, who is often here, and who has added beautiful misty
     backgrounds, and put herds of deer into her fern.

     "In the park is a beautiful old Peel tower, the home of the
     Hepburns."


     "_Chillingham, Sept. 10._--Lord Tankerville says, 'I do not see why
     any one should ever go away from a place as long as he can make
     himself happy there.' On that principle I should certainly never
     leave Chillingham, which is the pleasantest place I ever was at. I
     feel as if I had known Lord and Lady Tankerville all my life, his
     kindness and her fun make one so entirely at home; and as for
     Charlie, Georgie, and Peddie, there never were such little boys.

     "Yesterday I was awakened by the servant saying that an order had
     just come out to have breakfast ready in twenty minutes, as we were
     all going to Dunstanborough for the day. So we hurried down, and as
     soon as we had eaten our breakfast, set off in two little
     basket-carriages across the park and up the steep hills to the
     moors. At the top we found a larger carriage, packed with luncheon,
     and with plenty of wraps, for the day was most unpromising; but
     Lady Tankerville had quite made up her mind that it _should_ be
     fine, and that we _would_ enjoy ourselves; and so we most
     certainly did. The drive across the moorlands was charming, such
     sweeps of purple heather, with blue mountain distance. Then, after
     twelve miles, we descended through the cornland to Dunstanborough,
     and walked through the sandhills covered with rye-grass and bloody
     cranesbill to the castle, on a reef of basaltic rocks overhanging
     the sea, which in one place roars up beneath in a strange cavern,
     known as the Rumbling Churn. Lady Tankerville and I drew Queen
     Margaret's Tower, where she was concealed after the battle of
     Hexham, and then we picnicked and rambled about. Coming home we
     told stories. A tremendous shower came on, and then the sky cleared
     for a golden sunset over the mountains, and a splendid descent into
     the old deer-park."


     "_Bamborough Castle, Sept. 12._--Yesterday, at four, we set off on
     a gipsy picnic from Chillingham--little 'Co' (Corisande) on a pony,
     with the tea-things in panniers; Lady Tankerville, a fat Mr.
     Athelstane from Portugal, Charlie, Georgie, Peddie, and I walking.
     The pouring morning turned into a beautiful afternoon, and we had a
     delightful scramble through the ferny glades of the park, and up
     the steep craggy hills to the moorlands. Here Lady Tankerville went
     off through the heather to look after her little girl, and I told
     the three boys the story of Littlecot Hall, till the Shetland pony,
     'Piccolomini,' arrived by the longer path. Then we lighted a fire
     between two rocks, and Lady Tankerville and her children boiled a
     kettle and cooked omelets over a fire of heather and fern, and
     beautiful grapes, greengages, jam, and cakes unfitted us for the
     eight-o'clock dinner. Then we came down like bushrangers, breaking
     a path through the bracken, a great deal taller than ourselves, and
     seeing in the distance the herds of wild white bulls. One or two
     people came to dinner, but it was just the same simple merry meal
     as usual.

     "The Tankervilles sent me here to-day--twelve miles--in their
     carriage."


     "_Bamborough Castle, Sept._ 13.--It is very pleasant, as you will
     imagine, to be here again, and I have much enjoyed the delightful
     sands and the splendid green waves which came rolling in all
     yesterday afternoon. It was a lovely evening, warm enough to enjoy
     sitting out on the seat amongst the tall bent-grass, and to watch
     Holy Island quite distinct in the sunset, with all the little fleet
     of red-sailed herring-boats coming round from North Sunderland. Old
     Mrs. Liddell sits as usual in her deep window and looks through the
     telescope. Amelia wanders about with her black spaniel, and
     Charlotte rides furiously on the sands when out, and talks
     incessantly, though pleasantly, when in."


     "_Bamborough, Sept. 16._--Yesterday I set off at 8 A.M. in a
     dogcart for Holy Island, one of the castle cart-horses being
     harnessed for the purpose, and the castle joiner going with me to
     find old wood for repairs. It was a wild morning, but gleams of
     light made the country picturesque, and Waren Bay looked very
     striking, backed by its angular purple hills, and strewn with
     pieces of wreck, over which sea-birds were swooping. Only one bit
     of sand was visible when we reached the ford, but the horse plunged
     gallantly in. Then we had a very rough crossing of a quarter of an
     hour in a boat through the great green waves to the island, where
     we landed on the yellow rocks. Close by, on the green hill, stand
     the ruins, so well described in 'Marmion,' of St. Cuthbert's Abbey,
     the old cathedral of Lindisfarne--rather small after descriptions,
     but beautiful in colour, and its massive round pillars, with
     patterns upon them, almost unique in England. Beyond, was the still
     blue harbour filled with fishing-boats, and the shore was lined
     with men and women packing herrings in barrels of salt. At one
     corner of the bay rises the castle on a conical hill like a
     miniature Mont St. Michel, and Bamborough and Dunstanborough are
     blue in the hazy distance."


     "_Sept. 17._--Stephen Denison is here (my cousin by his marriage
     with Miss Fellowes[196]), and I have been with him to pay a long
     visit to Grace Darling's[197] old father, an interesting man, with
     as much information as it is possible for any one to have who has
     lived since he was one year old on a desolate island rock tending a
     lighthouse. He lent us his diary to read, which is very curious,
     and an awful record of wrecks and misery."

     [Illustration: ON ALLEN WATER, RIDLEY HALL.]


     "_Ridley Hall, Sept. 19._--Cousin Susan and her old friend Miss
     Coulson, with 'the boys' (the dogs), were waiting to welcome me in
     the avenue, when I got out at the private station here. The house
     is quite full of people, to whom it is amusing to help to do the
     honours. Great is the autumnal beauty of the place. I have been
     with Cousin Susan up the Birky Brae, and down by the Craggy Pass
     and the Hawk's Nest--streams of sunlight falling upon the rocks and
     river, and lighting up the yellow and red leaves which now mingle
     with the green. The dogs walked with us to church to-day--Tarlie
     was allowed to enter with the family, and Bloomer with the maids,
     but Perette, Bianca, Fritz, and the Chowdy-Tow were sent back from
     the door!

     "We have had a remarkable visit from an old Miss Clayton, an
     eccentric, strangely-attired, old, very old lady, who had travelled
     all the way from Chesters, on North Tyne, to see Staward Peel, and
     then had rambled on foot hither down the rocks by the Allen. Both
     she and her friend had fallen into the river in crossing the
     stepping-stones above the wood, and arrived, carrying a large
     reticule basket, and dripping with wet and mud, about five o'clock;
     yet, as soon as she had been dried and fed, she insisted on setting
     off again on foot to visit Haltwhistle and Bellister Castle before
     going home at night!"


     "_Streatlam Castle, Sept. 25._--I came with Cousin Susan to this
     curious place, to which our cousin Mr. Bowes[198] has welcomed us
     very cordially. The house is in a hollow--an enormous building of
     the last century, enclosing a mediæval castle. I sleep in the
     ghost-room, looking most grim and weird from its black oak with red
     hangings, and containing a tall bed with a red canopy. Here the
     only existing local Handbook says that 'the unfortunate Mary Queen
     of Scots expired in captivity.' I am afraid the next Handbook will
     be obliged to confess that she was beheaded at Fotheringay.

     "The long galleries are full of family portraits--Hyltons,
     Blakistons, and Bowes's--one of whom, Miss Bowes of Streatlam, was
     Mrs. John Knox! More interesting to me is the great picture of
     Mary Eleanor, the unhappy Countess of Strathmore,[199] walking in
     the gardens of Pauls-Walden. This house was the scene of her most
     terrible sufferings."


     "_Streatlam Castle, Sept. 27._--This is the oddest house I ever was
     in! Everything is arranged for you, from the moment you get up till
     the moment you go to bed, and you are never allowed to deviate from
     the rules laid down: I even write this in time stolen from the
     half-hour for dressing. We are called at eight, and at ten march in
     to breakfast with the same procession as at dinner, only at this
     meal 'Madame Bowes' does not appear, for she is then reclining in a
     bath of coal-black acid, which 'refreshes her system,' but leaves
     her nails _black_. After breakfast we are all set down to
     employments appointed for the morning. At twelve Madame appears,
     having painted the under-lids of her jet-black eyes with
     belladonna. At two the bell rings for luncheon, and we are fetched
     if not punctual to an instant. At three we are all sent out driving
     (the coachman having exact orders where to take us) immense drives
     (twenty-four miles to-day) in an open barouche and pair. At seven
     we dine in great splendour, and afterwards we sit in the oak
     drawing-room and talk about our ancestors!

     "The town of Barnard Castle is most picturesque, with a ruined
     castle of the Baliols. Dickens, in early life, used frequently to
     come down and stay there with some young artist friends of his. The
     idea of 'Humphrey's Clock' first sprung from Humphrey, the
     watchmaker in the town, and the picture in the beginning of the
     book is of the clock over the door of his shop. While at Barnard
     Castle, Dickens heard of the school at Bowes which he afterwards
     worked up as Dotheboys Hall. Many of these schools, at £15 and £20
     a year, existed at that time in the neighbourhood, and were
     principally used for the sons of London tradesmen, who, provided
     their sons got a moderate education, cared little or nothing what
     became of them in the meantime. Dickens went over to see the school
     at Bowes, and was carefully shown over it, for they mistook him for
     a parent coming to survey it, with a view of sending his son there.
     Afterwards the school was totally ruined. At one of Mr. Bowes's
     elections, the Nicholas Nickleby or former usher of the school, who
     was then in want of a place, wrote to him to say in what poverty he
     was. He 'had formerly been living with Mr. Shawe at Bowes, and they
     had been happy and prosperous, when Mr. Dickens's misguided volume,
     sweeping like a whirlwind over the schools of the North, caused Mr.
     Shawe to become a victim to paralysis, and brought Mrs. Shawe to an
     untimely grave.'"


     _"Morpeth Rectory, Oct. 8._--My present host is Mr. Francis Grey,
     an old likeness of his nephew, Charlie Wood: his wife, _née_ Lady
     Elizabeth Howard, is as sweet-looking as she is charming.

     "Friday morning was pouring, with a thick sea-fog hiding the
     country. Nevertheless Mr. Grey did not think it too bad for a long
     expedition, and drove me in his little pony-carriage a dreary
     twelve miles to Wallington, where we arrived about half-past
     twelve. Wallington is a huge house of the elder branch of the
     Trevelyans, represented in the North by Sir Walter, who is at the
     head of teetotallers and Low Churchmen, while his wife is a great
     friend of Ruskin, Rossetti, and all the Pre-Raphaelites. It is like
     a French château, with tall roofs and chimneys, enclosing a hall,
     once a court, which Lady Trevelyan and her artists have covered in
     and painted with beautiful fresco studies of Northumbrian birds,
     flowers, and insects, while the intervening spaces are filled with
     a series of large pictures of the chief events in Northumbrian
     history--very curious indeed.

     "Lady Trevelyan[200] is a little, bright, black-eyed woman, who was
     charmed to see us, and more to see my drawings, which Mr. Grey had
     brought. Any good opinion of me, however, which they led her to
     entertain was quelched by my want of admiration for some wretched
     little scraps by Ruskin--very scratchy sketches, after his manner.
     After luncheon, which was as peculiar as everything else (Lady
     Trevelyan and her artists feeding solely on artichokes and
     cauliflowers), we went to the upper galleries to look at more
     pictures.

     "Yesterday morning we went to the fine old Morpeth Church, which
     has been 'restored,' one of the stained windows having been put in
     by a poor old woman in the village. We saw her afterwards in her
     garden gathering cabbages, and I told her I had seen the window.
     'Eh, hinnie,' she said, 'and ain't it bonnie? and I be going to
     case it i' marble afore I dee, to mak it bonnier.' And then she
     said, 'And noo come ben, hinnie, my dear, and see me hoose;' and
     she showed me her cottage.

     "The Greys are one of the families who have a sort of language of
     their own. A bad cold the Greys always call a _Shelley_, because of
     a famous cold old Lady Shelley had when she came to stay with them.
     This was the Lady Shelley who, when her carriage, full of people,
     upset, and there was a great entanglement of legs, called out to
     the footman, who came to extricate them, 'John, the black ones are
     mine--the black ones are mine.'"


     "_Warkworth, Oct. 6._--It is very pleasant being here with my kind
     Clutterbuck cousins,[201] and this old-fashioned house, though
     small, is most refined and comfortable, with its pervading smell of
     roseleaves and lavender."


     "_The Rock, Alnwick, Oct. 10._--I am now staying with the father of
     a college friend, Charles Bosanquet, in a pleasant old-fashioned
     house, an enlarged 'Peel tower.' The family are very united, genial
     and kind; are friends of the Arnolds, Gaskells, &c., and related to
     Mr. Erskine of Linlathen. I like Charlie Bosanquet so much in his
     own home, that I am quite ashamed of not having tried to cultivate
     him more when at Oxford. Yesterday he drove me to Craster Tower,
     the old castellated house of the Crasters, a very ancient
     Northumbrian family, now well represented by the old Squire and his
     wife, their three tall daughters, and seven stalwart sons, one of
     whom was at college with me. After luncheon we went over the tower,
     its vaulted cellars and thickly walled rooms, and then walked to
     the wild heights of Dunstanborough, with its ruins overhanging the
     waves, and large white gulls floating up from the 'caverned shore'
     of 'Marmion.' Then we went to Embleton to see one of the curious
     fortified rectories of the North--fortified against the Scots."


     "_Ford Castle, Oct. 15._--I enjoyed my visit at Rock increasingly,
     and we made interesting excursions to Falloden and Howick. At the
     former we dined with Sir George and Lady Grey. On Sunday the
     beautiful little Norman chapel at Rock was filled from end to end
     with the whole population of the village, all responding, all
     singing, and forty-three (in that tiny place) remaining to the
     Sacrament. Mrs. Bosanquet says they are truly a God-fearing people.
     They live (as all over Northumbria) bound by the year like serfs,
     close around the large farms. At Rock the people seem perfectly
     devoted to the Bosanquets, who are certainly quite devoted to them.
     'My Missis herself can't feel it more than I do,' said the
     gamekeeper when he heard the sailor son was coming home.

     "Yesterday morning I set off directly after breakfast with Charles
     Bosanquet, in the sociable, on a long expedition. It was a really
     lovely day, and the drive over the wild moorlands, with the pink
     and blue Cheviot distances, was quite beautiful. At one we reached
     Hedgeley, where we had been asked to luncheon at the fine old house
     of the Carrs, looking up a mountain ravine, but a soldier-son first
     took us up to Crawley Tower, a neighbouring ruined Peel. At three
     we came on to Roddam, where an uncle and aunt of Charlie
     Bosanquet's live--a beautiful place, with a terraced garden almost
     overhanging the moorlands, and a dene stretching up into the
     Cheviots. I had ordered a gig to meet me and take me to Ford, where
     I arrived about half-past six, seeming to be driving into a sort of
     gothic castle of Otranto, as we passed under the portcullis in the
     bright moonlight. I found Lady Waterford sitting with her charming
     old mother, Lady Stuart de Rothesay.... Her drawings are
     indescribably lovely, and her singing most beautiful and pathetic.
     Several people appeared at dinner, amongst them Lord Waterford (the
     brother-in-law), who sat at the end of the table, a jovial
     white-headed young-old man."


     "_Ford Castle, Oct. 17._--Being here has been most pleasant, there
     is so much to do and see both indoors and out. Lady Waterford is
     perfectly charming.... She is now occupied in putting the whole
     architecture of the castle back two centuries. Painting is her
     great employment, and all evening she makes studies for larger
     drawings, which she works upon in the mornings. She is going to
     make a 'Marmion gallery' in the castle to illustrate the poem.

     [Illustration: FORD CASTLE, THE TERRACE.]

     "Yesterday we went to Palinsburn, where Paulinus baptized, and on
     to Branxton to see Mr. Jones, who is the great authority about the
     battle of Flodden, which he described to us till all the dull
     ploughed fields seemed alive with heroes and armies. He is coming
     to-night to talk about it again, for Flodden seems to be the great
     topic here, the windows of the castle looking out upon the
     battle-field. The position of the different armies and the site of
     Sybil's Well are discussed ten times a day, and Lady Waterford
     herself is still sufficiently a stranger here to be full of her
     first interest about it.

     "To-day the pony-carriage took me part of the way to the Rowting
     Lynn, a curious cleft and waterfall in the moorland, with a
     'Written Rock,' supposed to have been the work of ancient Britons.
     Thence I walked by a wild path along the hills to Nesbitt, where I
     had heard that there was a chapel of St. Cuthbert, of which I found
     no vestiges, and on to Doddington, where there is a Border castle.
     If you look on the map, you will see that this was doing a great
     deal, and I was very glad to get back at five to hot tea and a talk
     with Lady Stuart."


     "_Roddam, Oct. 20._--I had not promised to return here, and I was
     received almost rapturously, so welcome is any stray guest in this
     desolate place.... Sunday here was a curious contrast to that at
     Rock, for though there is a population of nine hundred, the Rector
     waited for us to begin afternoon service, as no one else came!"


     "_Roddam, Oct. 22._--Yesterday was terribly dark and cold, but we
     went a long expedition across the moorland to the Raven's Burn, a
     wild tumbling rivulet in a chaos of grey rocks, and thence by the
     farm of 'Blaw Weary'--picturesquely perched upon rocks which were
     covered with white goats, like a bit of Roman Campagna--to the
     'Raven's Rock' in a rugged cleft of the moorland. To-day I have
     been to Linhope Spout, a waterfall at the end of a gorge, and
     to-morrow we go to the Three Stone Burn, where there are Druidical
     remains."

     "_Ripley Castle, Yorkshire, Oct. 25._--Lady Ingilby (who is sister
     of Mr. Bosanquet of Rock) kindly pressed my coming here on my way
     south, and here I am. It is a fine old castle added to, about four
     miles from Harrogate, with beautiful gardens and a lovely
     neighbourhood. At the head of the stairs is the portrait of a Nun,
     who is said to descend from her picture at night and tap at the
     bedroom doors, when, if any one says, 'Come in'--in she comes.
     Eugene Aram was the gardener here, and the Ingilbys have all his
     letters. Cromwell insisted on taking the castle, but the then Lady
     Ingilby, a staunch Royalist known as 'Trooper Jane,' would not let
     him have either food or rest there, and sat opposite him all the
     night through with two loaded pistols in her girdle."


     "_Hickledon Hall, Yorkshire, Oct. 27._--Sir Charles Wood's carriage
     was waiting at Doncaster for me and a very nice young Seymour.[202]
     Charlie seems delighted to have me here, and I think Sir Charles
     quite charming, not a bit as if he had the government of all India
     upon his shoulders."

Many of the visits which I paid in 1861 laid the foundation of after
friendships, but chiefly that to Ford, whither I went again and again
afterwards, and where I have passed some of the happiest days of my
life. Lord and Lady Tankerville, after a few years, passed out of my
horizon--I never have quite known how or why. The Liddells, Mrs.
Clutterbuck and her daughters, and the saintly Lady Ingilby, added much
to my enjoyment for several years. This was especially happy for me, as
I see by my journals of the time how in the following winter I felt more
than ever depressed by the constant snubbing I received from different
members of my immediate family. Such snubs are trifling in themselves,
but, like constant dropping of water in one place, they wear away the
spirit at last. All this time my sister was bravely exerting herself in
cheering her mother and aunt, as well as in a clever (and eventually
successful) scheme for the improvement of their fortunes. Miss Hughan
(afterwards Lady John Manners) showed her at this time an unwearied
kindness which I can never forget.

     _To_ MY SISTER.

     "_Holmhurst, Dec. 18, 1861._--I went to-day to see three ladies
     take the veil in the convent at Hastings. I had to get up in the
     cold early morning and be in the chapel by half-past eight. At nine
     the Bishop of Brighton arrived in a gold robe and mitre, and took
     his place with his back to the altar, leaning against it. Then a
     side door opened, and a procession came in singing--some nuns, and
     the three brides of Christ dressed in white watered silk, lace
     veils, and orange flowers. There were six little bridesmaids also
     in white veils and wreaths. The brides looked ghastly livid, and
     one of them would have fallen if a nun had not rushed forward to
     support her. The Bishop then made them an address, the point of
     which was that they were not going into a convent for their own
     benefit or that of the world, but for 'the consolation of
     Christ'--_that_ was to be their work and duty through life--'the
     consolation of Christ for the sins of the world.' Then he fixed his
     eyes upon them like a basilisk and cried, 'Venite.' They tottered,
     quivered, but scarcely moved; again in a louder voice he called
     'Venite;' they trembled and advanced a few steps. Once more
     'VENITE,' and they all three fell down prostrate at his feet.

     "Then the most solemn music was played, the most agonising wailing
     dirges were sung, and the nuns coming behind with a great black
     pall, spread it over the prostrate figures. It was as if they were
     dead. The bridesmaids strewed flowers, rosemary and laurestinus, as
     they sang out of their books: the spectators cried and sobbed till
     they were almost hysterical; but nothing was to be seen but the
     sunlight streaming in upon a great black pall.

     "Then all the saints of the monastic orders were invoked and
     responded to, and then the nuns closed in, so that no one could see
     how the three novices were hurried away, only to reappear in their
     nun's dress. Then they received the Sacrament.

     "It is impossible to say how well this little Holmhurst seems
     suited to the mother. There is still a lingering of autumnal leaves
     and flowers, and the grey castle rises against a gleaming sea.
     Thinking of her, and of our home view as it is now, one cannot help
     recalling Keble's lines:--

    'How quiet shows the woodland scene,
      Each flower and tree, its duty done,
    Reposing in decay serene,
      Like weary men when age is won,
      Such calm old age as conscience pure
      And self-commanding heart ensure,
    Waiting their summons to the sky,
    Content to live, but not afraid to die.'"


     [Illustration: VIEW FROM HOLMHURST.]

     [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO HOLMHURST: "HUZ AND BUZ."]

     JOURNAL.

     "_Holmhurst, Dec. 27._--It was on Monday, the 16th, that I was
     sitting in my study in the twilight, when the mother came in
     suddenly. She had been down to Hastings with Mrs. Colegrave and
     Miss Chichester to see Florence Colegrave at the convent, and there
     first heard the dreadful news of the event of Saturday. Seeing her
     so much agitated terrified me to the last degree. I thought that it
     was Arthur who was dead, and when I heard that it was the Prince
     Consort, the shock was almost as great. It seems impossible to
     realise that one will not be able to say 'the Queen and Prince
     Albert' any more: it is a personal affliction to every one, and the
     feeling of sympathy for the Queen is overpowering. The Prince sank
     from the time he read the letter about the deaths of the King and
     Princes of Portugal. Then they tried to persuade him not to see
     the messengers who returned from taking the letters of condolence:
     he insisted upon doing so, and never rallied.... From the first the
     Prince thought that he should not live, and from the Wednesday Sir
     Henry Holland thought so too, and wrote in the first bulletin,
     '_Hitherto_ no unfavourable symptoms,' to prepare the public mind;
     but the Queen came into the anteroom, saw the bulletin, and
     scratched out the 'hitherto:' she would entertain no idea of danger
     till the last[203].... When the Prince was dying, he repeated the
     hymn 'Rock of Ages.' ... A letter from Windsor Castle to Mr. P.
     describes the consternation and difficulty as to how the Queen was
     to be told of the danger: no one would tell her. At last Princess
     Alice relieved them all by saying, 'I will tell her,' and took her
     out for a drive. During the drive she told the Queen that the
     Prince could not recover. When he died, the Queen gave one
     piercing, heart-rending scream, which echoed all over the castle,
     and which those who stood by said they could never forget, and
     threw herself upon the body. Then she rose and collected her
     children and spoke to them, telling them that they must rally round
     her, and that, next to God, she should henceforth look to them for
     support.

     "C. W. sends an odd story about the King of Portugal. After his
     death, Princess Alice made a drawing of him lying dead, and, at the
     top of the drawing, the gates of heaven, with Queen Stephanie
     waiting to receive the spirit of her husband. A little while after,
     M. Lavradio sent the Queen a long account of the King's illness, in
     which it was said that when the King lay dying he fell into a deep
     sleep, and woke up after some little time saying that he had
     dreamt, and wished he could have gone on dreaming, that he lay
     dead, and that his spirit was going up to heaven, and that at the
     gates he saw 'Stephanie' waiting to welcome him in. Everything
     fresh that one hears of Prince Albert makes one realise, 'Le prince
     était grand, l'homme l'était davantage.'"[204]

In the course of the winter I was at Miss Leycester's house in Wilton
Crescent, and saw there Miss Marsh and Sir Culling Eardley, both of whom
told me much that was curious. I remember Sir Culling Eardley's saying,
"I feel sure that the destruction of the temporal power will be the end
of the Papacy, and I am also sure that there is one person who agrees
with me, and that is Pio Nono!" He also told me that--

     "One morning Mrs. Pitcairn at Torquay told her husband that she had
     been very much disturbed by a dream. She said she had seen her
     little boy of four years old carried into the house dreadfully
     crushed and hurt, and that all the principal doctors in the
     town--Madden, Mackintosh, &c.--had come in one after the other to
     see him.

     "Her husband laughed at her fears, but said, 'Whatever you do,
     don't tell this to the boy; it would only frighten him
     unnecessarily.' However, Mrs. Pitcairn did not promise, and when
     her husband was gone out, she called her little boy to her, and
     taking him on her knee, spoke to him very seriously, saying, 'If
     anything happened to you now, where would you be?' &c.

     "That afternoon, the little boy went with his elder brother to see
     some new houses his father was building. In crossing the highest
     floor, the ill-fastened boards gave way, and he fell, passing
     through all the floors, in