Читать книгу The Story of My Life, volumes 4-6 - Augustus J. C. Hare - Страница 10

“ ‘I think it was Henri III.,’ said Lady Waterford, ‘who used to go to sleep with raw veal chops on his cheeks, and to cover his hands with pomade, and have them tied up to the top of the bed by silk cords, that they might be white in the morning.’ ”

“Oct. 21.—Lady Waterford talked of her maid Rebekah, who lived with her so long. ‘The mistake was that we were together as girls and used to romp together; and so, when I married, she thought she was to rule me. But she became the most dreadful tyrant: Tina used to say I wore her as a hair-shirt.’ ”

“Oct. 23.—Lady Waterford talked of ‘Grandmama Hardwicke’—how terrified she was of robbers: that one day, when she was going to cross a wide heathy common, she said, ‘If any one comes up to the carriage, I shall give up all I have at once: I shall give him no chance of being violent.’ Soon after, a man rode up. ‘Oh, take my money, but spare my life,’ exclaimed Lady Hardwicke, and threw her purse at him. ‘My good woman, I don’t want your purse,’ said the man, who was a harmless traveller.”

“Oct. 24.—Lord Houghton arrived. He is rather crusty, but most amusing. His conversation is always interesting, even when no one else can speak, and he seems to be saying, with Sydney Smith, to the art circle here—‘My dears, it’s all right; you keep with the dilettanti: I go with the talkettanti.’ He talked of Alnwick. ‘It was there I first met Père Hyacinthe. He did not strike me as anything remarkable. One evening he gave us a “Meditation.” It was just a falling into a topic and going on upon it; but nothing original or particular. I heard his sermons at Rome. He used to say a thing and then back out of it; but under the pulpit sat three Inquisitors, and they were finding him out all the time. One thing he said—speaking of religious differences—was, “N’oublions jamais que le premier crime du monde était une querelle entre deux sacerdos.” ’

“Lord Houghton talked of the Bonapartes, and of the graves of Josephine and Hortense at Rueil, and of Madame Mère. ‘I had a very narrow miss of seeing Madame Mère, and I am very sorry I did not do it, for it would only have cost a scudo. She was a very long time dying, it was a kind of lying in state, and for a scudo the porter used to let people in behind a screen which there was at the foot of the bed, and they looked at her through the joinings. I was only a boy then, and I thought there was plenty of time, and put it off; but one day she died.’

“Lord Houghton also said—

“ ‘One of the prettiest ghost stories I ever heard is that of General Radowitz. He was made Governor of Frankfort, and not being able to go himself, and having servants who had lived with him a long time and knew all his tastes, he sent them on before him to secure a suitable house and get everything ready. They chose an excellent house, with a large garden full of lilacs and laburnums, overlooking the glacis. When General and Madame Radowitz arrived some time after, they found everything as they wished, and began to question their old servants as to how they had got on, and especially as to the neighbours. The servants said that the next villa was inhabited by a person who was quite remarkable—a lady who was always known in Frankfort as the “weisse Frau,”—a very sweet, gentle person, who was full of charity and kindness, and greatly beloved. She had, however, quite lost her memory as to the past since the death, very long ago, of her lover in battle: she had even forgotten his name, and answered to all questions about him or her own past, “Ich weiss nicht! ich weiss nicht!” but always with a sweet sad smile. And she had lived in the place so long, that, every one belonging to her having passed away, no one really knew her history. Yet, while her mind was gone as to the past, as to the practical present she was quite herself, went to market and transacted her own affairs.

“ ‘Gradually the confidential maid of Madame Radowitz made friends with the servants of the “weisse Frau”—for the gardens of the two houses joined—and from servants’ gossip the Radowitz family learnt a good deal about her, and from all around they heard of her as greatly respected, but always the same, sad and sweet, always dressed in white, never remembering anything.

“ ‘One day the “weisse Frau,” who had taken a great fancy to the maid of Madame Radowitz, invited her to come to her at twelve o’clock the next day: she said she expected some one; indeed, she pressed the maid to come without fail. The maid told her mistress, who said certainly she had better go; she should on no account wish so excellent a person as the “weisse Frau” to be disappointed.

“ ‘When the maid went, she found the little salon of the “weisse Frau” in gala decoration, the table laid and bright with flowers, and places set for three. The Frau was not in her usual white dress, but in a curious old costume of rich brocade, which was said to have been intended for her wedding-dress. She still said she expected some one, but when asked who it was, looked distressed and bewildered, and only said “Ich weiss nicht!”

“ ‘As it drew near twelve o’clock she became greatly agitated—she said he was coming. At length she threw the windows wide open, and gazing out into the street, looked back and said, “Er kommt! er kommt!” She had a radiant expression no one remembered to have seen before; her eyes sparkled, every feature became animated—and as the clock struck twelve, she went out upon the landing, appeared to enfold some one invisible in her arms, and then walking very slowly back into the room, exclaimed “Hoffmann,” and sank down dead!

“ ‘In the supreme moment of life she had remembered the long-forgotten name.’

“On Wednesday Lady Waterford took her books and drawing, and went to the forge to spend the afternoon with ‘Frizzle’—a poor bedridden woman there, to whom thus, not by a rapid visit, she brings enough sunshine and pleasure once every week to last for the other six days. Often she sings by the bedside, not only hymns, but a whole variety of things. I drove Mrs. Fairholme to the Routing Lynn, and we came in for one of the fiercest storms I ever knew; not rain or snow, but lumps of ice, an inch and a half long, blowing straight upon us from the Cheviots. Lady Waterford came in delighted. ‘I do enjoy a difficult walk. When it is winter, and the ground is deep in snow and the wind blowing hard, I steal out and take a walk and enjoy it. I try to steal out unobserved; I do not like the servants to get into a state about me, but I am generally betrayed afterwards by a wet petticoat or something.’ ”

“Oct. 25.—Last night Lord Houghton talked much about Mrs. Harcourt’s diaries, which he had edited (she was lady in waiting to Queen Charlotte), but the royal family had cut out so much as to make them not worth publishing. When the poor Princesses heard of another German prince marrying, they used to say in a despairing tone, ‘Another chance lost.’

“At Weymouth, Mrs. Harcourt described going to see the royal family in the evening. ‘I ventured,’ she said, ‘to express my regret that the Queen should have had so unfavourable a morning for her water expedition,’ whereat Prince William somewhat coarsely replied, ‘I only wish the accursed bitch would have spewed her soul up, and then we should have had some peace in the house.’

“The Duke of York was the only one of his sons the King really cared for, and he said that the Duke’s faults were the cause of his madness.

“This morning, before leaving, Lord Houghton talked of Howick, that he thought it a very dull place, while Lady Waterford and I maintained that it was a most pleasant, attractive family home. He said the Greys were very self-important but not conceited: that he agreed with Charles Buller, who said, ‘No, the Greys are certainly not conceited: they only demand of you that you should concede the absolute truth of one single proposition, which is, that it has pleased Providence in its inscrutable wisdom to endow one family with every conceivable virtue and talent, and, this once conceded, the Greys are really rather humble than otherwise, because they feel they do not come up to their opportunities.’

“He said, ‘It is very interesting to remember that all the beasts are Saxon, but when they become meat they become Norman.’

To Miss Wright.

“Raby Castle, Oct. 31, 1873.—My visit here has been very pleasant, the Duchess cordial, and a delightful party. It includes Count Beust, the Austrian Ambassador, the Duchess of Bedford and Lady Ela, Sir James and Lady Colville, Mr. and Mrs. Leo Ellis, Mr. Doyle, Mr. Burke, Lady Chesham and her daughter, Lord and Lady Boyne, Lord Napier and his son, Henry Cowper (most amusing), Mr. Duncombe Shafto, and several others; but my chief pleasure has been making friends with young Lord Grimston, whom I think out and out one of the very nicest fellows I ever met.”

Journal.

“Raby Castle, Nov. 1.—The first morning I was here, as I was walking on the terraced platform of the castle with Lady Chesham, she talked of the silent Cavendishes, and said it was supposed to be the result of their ancestor’s marriage with Rachel, Lady Russell’s daughter; that after her father’s death she had always been silent and sad, and that her descendants had been silent and sad ever since. ‘Lord Carlisle and his brother were also silent. Once they travelled abroad together, and at an inn in Germany slept in the same room, in which there was also a third bed with the curtains drawn round it. Two days after, one brother said to the other, “Did you see what was in that bed in our room the other night?” and the other answered, “Yes.” This was all that passed, but they had both seen a dead body in the bed.’

“The Duchess expects every one to devote themselves to petits jeux in the evening, and many of the guests do not like it. There is also a book in which every one is expected to write something when they go away. There is one column for complaints: you are intended to complain that your happy visit has come to an end, or something of that kind. There is another column of ‘Why you came’—to which the natural answer seems to be ‘Because I was asked.’ Some one wrote—

‘To see their Graces

And to kill their grouses.’

RABY CASTLE.

“I have, however, really enjoyed my visit very much indeed, and on taking leave just now I wrote—

‘In the desert of life, so dismal and wide,

A charming oasis is sometimes descried,

Where none are afraid their true feelings to own,

And wit never takes a satirical tone;

Where new roots of affection are planted each hour,

By courtesy, kindness, and magical power;

Where fresh friendships are formed, and destined to last,

In a golden chain fettered and rivetted fast.

Such a garden is Raby:—those who gather its flowers,

In grateful remembrance will think of the hours

Which, enjoyed, do not vanish, but seem to display

In riplets of silver the wake of their way.’

“One evening I told a story, unfortunately; for if I ever afterwards escaped to my room after five o’clock, there came a tap and a servant—‘Their Graces want you to come down again’—always from their insatiable love of stories.”

“Nov. 7, 1873, Bretton.—After three days with the dear cousins at Ravensworth, I am glad to find myself again in this pleasant house, where I have been rapturously welcomed by the children, especially by little Hubert. I have found the Motleys here. He is very agreeable; and the daughters, especially Mrs. Ives, [68] to whom her husband left £6000 a year after one month of married life, are very pleasant. Motley was shut up for a long time in his room the other day, and when he came in announced that he had just finished the preface (which was the winding up) of his new book. All the other ladies began fulsome compliments, but Miss Susie Motley, jumping up and throwing her arms round his neck, exclaimed, ‘Oh, you dear foolish old thing, how could you go and spend so much time over what you may be quite sure nobody will ever read?’ Lady Margaret has just said—

“ ‘Now, Mr. Hare, what do you do with your eyes(i’s)?’

“ ‘Dot them.’

“ ‘Then why don’t I dot mine? Now there is an opportunity for you to make a pretty speech.’

“ ‘I don’t know how.’

“ ‘Why, how stupid you are! Because they are capital eyes (i’s). And now, having provided thus much food for your mind, I will go and look after your body by ordering the dinner.’

“I was very sorry to leave the happy cordial party at Ravensworth of eleven young cousins, most easy to get on with certainly, though I had never seen some of them before. But, directly I arrived, one of them came forward and said, ‘Please remember, Augustus, that my name is only Nellie, and my sisters are Har and Pem and Vicky, and my cousins are,’ &c. At Lamesley Church we had the oddest sermon, with such sentences as—‘Our first father would insist upon eating sour fruit, and has set all his descendants’ teeth on edge ever since.’ ”

To Miss Wright.

“Highclere Castle, Nov. 12, 1873.—This is a beautiful park, with every variety of scenery, hill, valley, woods, with an undergrowth of rhododendron, a poetical lake! and is so immense—thirteen miles round—that one never goes out of it, and rather feels the isolation of the great house in the centre, which, though very handsome, is not equal to the place. Lady Carnarvon is very lovely and winning, and boundlessly interesting to listen to: one understands Mr. Delane saying that he believed that there could be no successor to Lady Palmerston till he saw Lady Carnarvon. She says that she has hitherto been too exclusive; that henceforth she shall wish to fill her house more with people of every shade—‘for Carnarvon’s sake.’ As I watch her, I am perpetually reminded of Longfellow’s lines—

“ ‘Homeward serenely she walked, with God’s benediction upon her;

When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.’

“The guests are Sir Stafford, Lady, and Miss Northcote, Mr. and Mrs. Chandos Leigh, Mr. Herman Merivale, the Charles Russells, and Mr. Forester and his son and daughter-in-law, all pleasant people, yet on the whole not so well-fitting a party as I have usually fallen in with. The little daughter of the house—Winifred—is the most delightful and unspoilt of children.”

Journal.

“Highclere, Nov. 13.—Mr. Herman Merivale told us—

“A captain was crossing to America in his ship, with very few sailors on board. One day one of them came up to him on the deck and said that there was a strange man in his cabin—that he could not see the man’s face, but that he was sitting with his back to the door at the table writing. The captain said it was impossible there could be any one in his cabin, and desired the sailor to go and look again. When he came up, he said the man was gone, but on the table was the paper on which he had written, with the ink still wet, the words—‘Steer due south.’ The captain said that, as he was not pressed for time, he would act on the mysterious warning. He steered due south, and met with a ship which had been long disabled and whose crew were in the last extremity.

“The captain of the disabled ship said that one of his men was a very strange character. He had himself picked him up from a deserted ship, and since then he had fallen into a cataleptic trance, in which, when he recovered, he declared that he had been in another ship, begging its captain to come to their assistance. When the man who had been sent to the cabin saw the cataleptic sailor, he recognised him at once as the man he had seen writing.

“Mr. Merivale said that a case of the same kind had happened to himself.

“He was staying at Harrow, and very late at night was summoned to London. Exactly as the clock struck twelve he passed the headmaster’s door in a fly. Both he and the friend who was with him were at that moment attracted by seeing a hackney-coach at the door—a most unusual sight at that time of night, and a male figure, wrapped in black, descend from it and glide into the house, without, apparently, ringing, or any door being opened. He spoke of it to his friend, and they both agreed that it was equally mysterious and inexplicable. The next day, the circumstance so dwelt on Mr. Merivale’s mind, that he returned to Harrow, and going to the house, asked if the headmaster, Dr. Butler, was at home. ‘No,’ said the servant. Then he asked who had come at twelve o’clock the night before. No one had come, no one had been heard of, no carriage had been seen; but Dr. Butler’s father had died just at that moment in a distant county.

“Sir Charles Russell told us—

“When the 34th Regiment was quartered at Gibraltar, it had the stupidest and dullest set of officers that can possibly be imagined; they not only knew nothing, but they preferred to know nothing; and especially were they averse to learning anything of Spanish, which was certainly very short-sighted of them, as it cut them off from so many social pleasures. But nevertheless they all very much admired a beautiful young Spanish señorita who was living at Gibraltar, and pretended that they were not otherwise than in her good graces, which of course was simply bombast, as none of them knew a word of Spanish and scarcely a word of French, so that not one of them had ever spoken to her.

“One day, while the regiment was at Gibraltar, a young ensign came to join, who had never been abroad before, and who knew even less of any foreign language than his comrades. Nevertheless, in a short time he had taken cue by them, and pretended more than all the others to be in the good graces of the young lady, and was well laughed at accordingly.

“One evening at mess one of the officers mentioned that the señorita was going to Cadiz. ‘No, she is not,’ said the young ensign. ‘Oh, you young jackanapes,’ said his fellow-officers, ‘what can you know about it? You know nothing about her.’—‘Yes,’ he said sharply, ‘I do. She is not going to Cadiz; and what is more, I beg that her name may not be brought forward in this way at mess any more: I am engaged to be married to her.’

“There was a universal roar, and an outcry of ‘You don’t suppose we are going to believe that?’ But the ensign said, ‘I give you my word of honour as an officer and a gentleman that I am engaged to be married to her.’

“Then the Colonel, who was present, said, ‘Well, as he represents it in this way, we are bound to believe him.’ And then, turning to the young ensign, said, ‘Now my dear fellow, as we do accept what you say, I think you need not leave us up in the clouds like this. Will you not tell us how it came about? You cannot wonder that we should be a little surprised, when we know that you do not speak a word of Spanish and only two or three words of French, that you should be engaged to be married to this young lady.’

“ ‘Well,’ said the ensign, ‘since you accept what I say, yes, I do not wonder that you are a little surprised. I do not mind telling you all about it. It is quite true I do not understand a word of Spanish,

and only three or four words of French, but that does not matter. After the ball at the Convent the other day (the house of the Governor of Gibraltar is called ‘the Convent’) we went out upon the balcony, and we watched the moonlight shimmering on the waves of the sea, and I looked up into her eyes, and I said, “Voulez vous?” and she said, “Quoi?”—and I said, “Moi;” and she said, “Oui”—and it was quite enough.’

“In the churchyard here is an epitaph ‘To the memory of J. T. C., a man of great uprightness and integrity, and, as far as is consistent with human imperfection, an honest man.”[69]

“Sonning, Nov. 17, 1873.—It is quite curious how intimately this parish and its Rector (Hugh Pearson) are bound together. The Rectory is less his house than that of all his parishioners, and it is perfectly open to them at all times. The choir is most amusing, the ‘poor dear chicks,’ as the Rector calls them, combing each other’s hair in the vestry before coming into church. A number of young men are constant intimates of the house, especially ‘Ken,’ Kenneth Mackenzie; ‘Spes,’ Hope; and ‘Francis,’ Lord Francis Harvey. There was once a bishopric here, a fact which was disputed by Professor Stubbs at Oxford, who said it was at Ramsbury, upon which the Vicar immediately left his card on him as ‘Bishop of Sonning.’

“Speaking of Arthur Stanley’s absence of mind, H. P. has been describing how one day driving from Monreale to Palermo with their carpet-bags on the seat before them, Arthur suddenly complained of the cold. ‘Well, you had better put something on,’ said H. P. ‘I will,’ said Arthur. H. P. went on with his book, till, after some time, suddenly looking up, he saw Arthur, who was also busily engaged in reading, entirely clothed in white raiment. He had put on his night-shirt over all his other clothes, without thinking what he was doing, and they were just driving into the streets of Palermo!”

“Ascot Wood, Jan. 5, 1874.—I came to London three weeks ago in a thick fog, such as Charles Lamb would have said was meat, drink, and clothing. One day I went with Lady Ashburton to visit Mr. Carlyle. It was most interesting—the quaint simple old-fashioned brick house in Cheyne Row; the faded furniture; the table where he toiled so long and fruitlessly at the deification of Frederick the Great; the workbox and other little occupatory articles of the long dead wife, always left untouched; the living niece, jealous of all visitors, thinking that even Lady Ashburton must have either testamentary or matrimonial intentions; and the great man himself in a long grey garment, half coat, half dressing-gown, which buttoned to the throat and fell in straight folds to the feet or below them, like one of the figures in Noah’s Ark, and with the addition, when he went out with us, of an extraordinary tall broad-brimmed felt hat, which can only be procured at a single village in Bavaria, and which gave him the air of an old magician.

“He talked of Holman Hunt’s picture of the Home at Nazareth, ‘the most unnatural thing that ever was painted, and the most unnatural thing in it the idea that the Virgin should be keeping her “preciosities” in the carpenter’s shop.

“He talked of Landor, of the grandeur and unworldliness of his nature, and of how it was a lasting disgrace to England that the vile calumnies of an insolent slanderer had been suffered to blight him in the eyes of so many, and to send him out an exile from England in his old age.

“He complained much of his health, fretting and fidgeting about himself, and said he could form no worse wish for the devil than that he might be able to give him his stomach to digest with through all eternity.

“We walked out with him in the street, one on each side. I saw the cab-drivers pointing and laughing at the extraordinary figure, and indeed it was no wonder.

“At Mrs. Thornton’s I met Miss Thackeray at dinner, and have seen her since. She is charming, well worthy to be the authoress of her books. She said till the money for ‘Old Kensington’ was spent, she should rest. She spoke of the happiness of bringing up her little niece, of the surroundings of young life which it gave her. She talked much of the ‘Memorials,’ and of the problem how far it was well to be contented with a quiet life as God sent it, and how far one ought to seek for work for Him. When I said something of her books and their giving pleasure; she said, ‘Now let us skip that last sentence and go back to what we were saying before.’

“Colonel and Mrs. Henderson (of the Police Force) were at dinner. He said his father had been executor to old Lord Bridport, who had a box which no one was ever allowed to open, and of the contents of which even Lady Bridport was ignorant. After Lord Bridport’s death, the widow sent for Colonel Henderson to look into things, and then said, ‘I wish you would open that box; one ought to know about it.’ Colonel Henderson did not like doing it, but took the box into the library and sat down before it, with candles by his side. Immediately he heard a movement on the other side of the table, and, looking up, saw old Lord Bridport as clearly as he had ever seen him in his life, scowling down upon him with a furious expression. He went back at once to Lady Bridport and positively refused to open the box, which was then destroyed unopened. He said, ‘I shall never to my dying day forget the face of Lord Bridport as I saw him after he was dead.’

“In Wilton Crescent I saw Mrs. Leycester, who was just come from Cheshire. She said:—

“A brother of Sir Philip Egerton has lately been given a living in Devonshire, and went to take possession of it. He had not been long in his rectory before, coming one day into his study, he found an old lady seated there in an arm-chair by the fire. Knowing no old lady could really be there, and thinking the appearance must be the result of an indigestion, he summoned all his courage and boldly sat down upon the old lady, who disappeared. The next day he met the old lady in the passage, rushed up against her, and she vanished. But he met her a third time, and then, feeling that it could not always be indigestion, he wrote to his sister in Cheshire, begging her to call upon the Misses Athelstan, sisters of the clergyman who had held his living before, and say what he had seen. When they heard it, the Misses Athelstan looked inexpressibly distressed and said, ‘That was our mother: we hoped it was only to us she would appear. When we were there, she appeared constantly, but when we left, we hoped she would be at rest.’

“About ‘ghost-stories’ I always recollect what Dr. Johnson used to say—‘The beginning and end of ghost-stories is this, all argument is against them, all belief is for them.’

“I have had a charming visit here at Ascot to the Lefevres, the only other guest being old Mr. Cole of South Kensington, the incarnation of ‘Father Christmas’ or of ‘Old King Cole.’ He talked of the facility of getting money and the difficulty of keeping it. He said that when he wanted money for a Music School, he asked Sir Titus Salt for a subscription. Sir Titus asked him what he wanted him to give. ‘Whatever you think will look best at the day of judgment,’ said Mr. Cole. Sir Titus signed a cheque for £1000.

“Sir John Lefevre described a place in Essex belonging to a Mr. (now Sir William) and Mrs. Stephenson. When they first went there, the housekeeper said there was one room which it was never the custom to use. For a long time it continued to be unoccupied, but one day, when the house was very full and an unexpected arrival announced, Mrs. S. said she should open and air it, and sent for the key. All the people staying in the house, full of curiosity, went with her when she visited the room for the first time. It was a large panelled room containing a bed like a catafalque, with heavy stuff curtains drawn all round. They drew aside the curtains, and there was the mark of a bloody hand upon the pillow! The room was shut up again from that time forward.”

“Holmhurst, Jan. 22.—George Sheffield is here. He says that the Russian Minister’s wife at Washington called her dog ‘Moreover,’ because of ‘Moreover the dog came and licked his sores.’ ”

“Holmhurst, Jan. 24.—‘No,’ says Lea, ‘everything is not improving. I always say that everything has been going to the bad since the pudding lost its place.’

“ ‘Why, what can you mean?’

“ ‘Oh, in the old days, the good old days, the pudding always used to be before the meat, and then people were not so extravagant at the butcher’s. Why, old Mr. Taylor[70] used to say to me, “You know, marm,” says he, “we used to tak’ a bit of the dough when the bread was rising, and slip in an apple or two without peeling ’em, and bake ’em in the oven, and that was our dinner you know, marm.” ’

Journal (The Green Book).

“Jan. 25, 1874.—Somehow I have felt as if this volume was closed for ever—closed away with the sweet presence which was so long the sunshine of my life. Yet to-day, while I am alone, sitting once more in the sacred chamber where I have watched her through so many days and nights, I feel constrained to write once more.

“How all is changed to me since then: I can hardly feel as if the two lives were related—hardly as if they could belong to the same person.

“Wonderfully, mysteriously, time has healed—no, not healed, but soothed, even this wound. At first I felt this must always be impossible, life was too blank, but imperceptibly, stealthily, other interests asserted their power, and though the old life is always the life to me, yet I feel all is not over.

“I have always talked of my Mother, and it has been a great comfort. At first it almost shocked people that I should do it. Perhaps the very fact of talking and writing about her myself, and her life being now so much talked of by others, has dried up the agony of my own inner desolation by force of habitude. Yet, oh, my darling! there is never a day, seldom an hour, in which I do not think of her; and sometimes when I am alone,

‘When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,

I summon up remembrance of things past,’

I take one of her sketch-books, one of her journals or mine, and with them go back into our old life—thus she looked—thus she spoke—thus she smiled.

“At first I was kept up by the sacred work of the ‘Memorials,’ and the necessity of fighting against the violent family opposition to them. This seemed a duty which rose out of her grave, the one duty for which I was prepared to sacrifice everything else in the world. I was determined to fulfil it at whatever cost to myself. And I have fulfilled it—not so well perhaps as I might have done if Arthur and Mary Stanley had not tried to trample and stamp all the spirit out of it. They condemned the book violently and furiously before they read it, and, after reading it, they never had the courage to rescind opinions expressed so frequently and publicly. Still, the world says that it is well, and it will still keep her lamp burning brightly, so that her earthly work is not over yet, and she can still guide others heavenward through the darkness. Besides, not only in the ‘Memorials,’ but in all else, I have felt the truth of Joseph Mazzini’s advice—‘Get up and work; do not set yourself apart. When the Evil One wanted to tempt Jesus, he led Him into a solitude.’

“I was one winter in Spain with Miss Wright. Then not much more than my first desolate year had passed, and I had still that crushed lacerated feeling of utter misery; but I tried to be as bright as I could for my companion’s sake. Last year I was in Italy, and though very ill, and though I felt poignantly the first return to the old scenes, it was better, and all old friends were most kind.

“The dear cousin of my mother’s life, Charlotte Leycester, has been here each year for some months, and other guests come and go through the summer, so that little Holmhurst still gives pleasure.

“At first I was very, very poor, and it was a struggle to have a home; but latterly my books have brought in enough to keep the house, and a great deal to give away besides, which has been most opportune, as several members of the family have sorely needed helping. I have also a little Hospice, where I receive those whom I hear of as in need of thorough change, mental and physical, for a month, sets of sunshine-seekers succeeding each other. My dear Lea is still left to me, and is my greatest comfort, so associated with all that is gone.

“My books have made me almost well known after a fashion, and people are very kind, for, with what Shakspeare calls ‘the excellent foppery of the world,’ many who used to snub me now almost ‘make up to me,’ and all kinds of so-called ‘great people’ invite me to their houses. Sometimes this is very pleasant, and I always enjoy being liked. I do not think it is likely to set me up; I have too strong a feeling of my own real inferiority to the opinion formed of me. Intellectually, I am so ill grounded that I really know nothing well or accurately; and if I am what is called ‘generous,’ certainly that is no virtue, for it pleases myself as well as others. I think it is still with me as George Sand says of herself, ‘Je n’ai pas de bonheur dans la vie, mais j’ai beaucoup de bonheurs.’

“To-morrow I am going abroad again. It is almost necessary for my books; and though I feel bitterly leaving Lea and the little home, I like my mother’s adopted son to earn a reputation; that is all I care for, except that it is always a pleasure to give pleasure. There is a sentence, too, of Carlyle’s which comes back to me—‘We are sufficiently applauded and approved, and ought now, if possible, to go and do something deserving a little applause.’ ”