Читать книгу The Story of My Life, volumes 4-6 - Augustus J. C. Hare - Страница 7

“We are very thankful for the tea which Miss Wright’s maid makes for us in a saucepan.”

To Miss Leycester.

“Tarragona, Jan. 19.—We delighted in Barcelona, and wondered it did not bring people to this coast instead of to the south of France. … We get on famously with the Spaniards. I talk as much as I can, and if I cannot, smile and look pleased, and everybody seems devoted to us, and we are made much of and helped wherever we go. It is quite different from Italy: and we are learning such good manners from the incessant bowing and complimenting which is required.”

“Cordova, Feb. 6.—We broke the dreadful journey from Valencia to Alicante by sleeping at Xativa, a lovely city of palms and rushing fountains with a mountain background, but the inn so disgusting we could not stay. Alicante, on the other hand, had no attraction except its excellent hotel, with dry sheets, bearable smells, no garlic, and butter. The whole district is burnt, tawny, and desolate beyond words—houses, walls, and castle alike dust-colour, but the climate is delicious, and a long palm avenue fringes the sea, with scarlet geraniums in flower. With Elche we were perfectly enraptured—the forests of palms quite glorious, many sixty feet high and laden with golden dates; the whole place so Moorish, and the people with perfectly Oriental hospitality and manners. We spent four days there, and were out drawing from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon; such subjects—but I lamented not being able to draw the wonderful figures—copper-coloured with long black hair; the men in blue velvet, with mantas of crimson and gold and large black sombreros.

“It was twenty-three hours’ journey here, and no possible stopping-place or buffet. But as for Miss Wright, she never seems the worse for anything, and is always equally kind and amiable. She is, however, very piano in spirits, so that I should be thankful for a little pleasant society for her, as it must have been fearfully dull having no one but me for so long.

“We were disappointed with Murcia, though its figures reach a climax of grotesque magnificence, every plough-boy in the colours of Solomon’s temple. But though we had expected to find Cordova only very interesting, it is also most beautiful—the immense court before the mosque filled with fountains and old orange-trees laden with fruit, and the mosque itself, with its forest of pillars, as solemn as it is picturesque.”

To Mary Lea Gidman.

“Seville, Feb. 10.—The dirt and discomfort of the railway journey to Cordova was quite indescribable, but the mosque is glorious. It is so large that you would certainly lose your way in it, as it has more than a thousand pillars, and twenty-nine different aisles of immense length, all just like one another. We made a large drawing in the court with its grove of oranges, cypresses, and palms, and you would have been quite aghast at the horrible beggars who crowded round us—people with two fingers and people with none; people with no legs and people with no noses, or people with their eyes and mouths quite in the wrong place.

“The present King (Amadeo) is much disliked and not likely to reign long. Here at Seville, in the Carnival, they made a little image of him, which bowed and nodded its head, as kings do, when it was carried through the street, and all the great people went out to meet it and bring it into the town in mockery; and yesterday it was strangled like a common criminal on a scaffold in the public square; and to-day tens of thousands of people are come into the town to attend its funeral.

“The Duchesse de Montpensier, who lives here, does a great deal of good, but she is very superstitious, and, when her daughter was ill, she walked barefoot through all the streets of Seville: the child died notwithstanding. She and all the great ladies of Seville wear low dresses and flowers in their hair when they are out walking on the promenade, but at large evening parties they wear high dresses, which is rather contrary to English fashions. Miss Wright’s bonnet made her so stared at and followed about, that now she, and her maid also, have been obliged to get mantillas to wear on their heads instead, which does much better, and prevents their attracting any attention. No ladies ever think of wearing anything but black, and gentlemen are expected to wear it too if they pay a visit.

“I often feel as if I must be in another state of existence from my old life of so many years of wandering with the sweet Mother and you, but that life is always present to me as the reality—this as a dream. There is one walk here which the dear Mother would have enjoyed and which always recalls her—a broad sunny terrace by the river-side edged with marble, which ends after a time in a wild path, where pileworts are coming into bloom under the willows. I always wonder how much she knows of us now; but if she can be invisibly present, I am sure it is mostly with me, and then with you, and in her own room at Holmhurst, whence the holy prayers and thoughts of so many years of faith and love ascended.”

To Miss Leycester.

“Seville, Feb. 13.—Ever since we entered Andalusia it has poured in torrents, but even in fine weather I think we must have been disappointed with Seville. With such a grand cathedral interior and such beautiful pictures, it seems hard to complain, but there never was anything less picturesque than the narrow streets of whitewashed houses, uglier than the exterior of the cathedral, or duller than the surrounding country. Being Carnival, the streets are full of masks, many of them not very civil to the clergy—the Pope being led along by a devil with a long tail, &c. Every one speaks of the Italian King (Amadeo) as thoroughly despised and disliked, and his reign (in spite of the tirades in his favour in English newspapers) must now be limited to weeks; then it must be either a Republic, Montpensier, or Alfonso. Here, where they live, the Montpensiers are very popular, and they do an immense deal of good amongst the poor, the institutions, and in encouraging art. Their palace of San Telmo is beautiful, with a great palm-garden. When we first came, we actually engaged lodgings in the Alcazar, the great palace of the Moorish kings, but, partly from the mosquitoes and partly from the ghosts, soon gave them up again.”

“Algeciras, Feb. 25.—Though we constantly asked one another what people admired so much in Seville, its sights took us just a fortnight. Our pleasantest afternoon was spent in a drive to the Roman ruins in Italica, and we took Miss Butcher with us, who devotes her life to teaching the children in the Protestant school, for which she gets well denounced from the same cathedral pulpit whence the autos-da-fé were proclaimed, in which 34,611 people were burnt alive in Seville alone!

“What a dull place Cadiz is. Nothing to make a feature but the general distant effect of the dazzling white lines of houses rising above a sapphire sea. We had a twelve hours’ voyage to Gibraltar. I was very miserable at first, but revived in time to sketch Trafalgar and to make two views in Africa as we coasted along. At last Gibraltar rose out of the sea like an island, and very fine it is, far more so than I expected, though we have not seen the precipice side of the rock yet. As we turned into the bay of Algeciras, numbers of little boats put out to take us on shore, and we are so enchanted with this place that we shall remain a few days in the primitive hotel. Our sitting-room opens by large glass doors on a balcony. Close below is the pretty beach with its groups of brilliant figures—Moors in white burnooses, sailors, peasants in sombreros and fajas. Across the blue bay, calm as glass, with white sails flitting over it, rises the grand mass of the Rock, with the town of Gibraltar at its foot. All around are endless little walks along the shore and cliffs, through labyrinths of palmito and prickly pear, or into the wild green moorlands which rise immediately behind, and beyond which is a purple chain of mountains. It is the only place I have yet seen in Spain which I think the dear Mother would have cared to stay long at, and I can almost fancy I see her walking up the little paths which she would have so delighted in, or sitting on her camp-stool amongst the rocks.”

GIBRALTAR FROM ALGECIRAS

“Gibraltar, March 2.—It was strange, when we crossed from Algeciras, to come suddenly in among an English-talking, pipe-smoking, beer-drinking community in this swarming place, where 5000 soldiers are quartered in addition to the crowded English and Spanish population. The main street of the town might be a slice cut out of the ugliest part of Dover, if it were not for the numbers of Moors stalking about in turbans, yellow slippers, and blue or white burnooses. Between the town and Europa Point, at the African end of the promontory, is the beautiful Alameda, walks winding through a mass of geraniums, coronillas, ixias, and aloes, all in gorgeous flower: for already the heat is most intense, and the sun is so grilling that before May the flowers are all withered up.

“I am afraid we shall not be allowed to go to Ronda. Mr. Layard has sent word from Madrid to the Governor to prevent any one going, as the famous brigand chief Don Diego is there with his crew. We had hoped to get up a sufficiently large armed party, but so many stories have come, that Aunt Sophy and her maid, Mrs. Jarvis, are getting into an agony about losing their noses and ears.

“The Governor, Sir Fenwick Williams, has been excessively civil to us, but our principal acquaintance here is quite romantic. The first day when we went down to the table-d’hôte, there were only two others present, a Scotch commercial traveller, and, below him, a rather well-looking Spaniard, evidently a gentleman, but with an odd short figure and squeaky voice. He bowed very civilly as we came in, and we returned it. In the middle of dinner a band of Scotch bagpipers came playing under the window, and I was seized with a desire to jump up and look at them. Involuntarily I looked across the table to see what the others were going to do, when the unknown gave a strange bow and wave of permission! With that wave came back to my mind a picture in the Duchesse de Montpensier’s bedroom at Seville: it was her brother-in-law, Don Francisco d’Assise, ex-King of Spain! Since then we have breakfasted and dined with him every day, and seen him constantly besides. This afternoon I sat out with him in the gardens, and we have had endless talk—the result of which is that I certainly do not believe a word of the stories against him, and think that, though not clever and rather eccentric, he is by no means an idiot, but a very kind-hearted, well-intentioned person. He is kept here waiting for a steamer to take him to Marseilles, as he cannot land at any of the Spanish ports. He calls himself the Comte de Balsaño, and is quite alone here, and evidently quite separated from Queen Isabella. He never mentions her or Spain, but talks quite openly of his youth in Portugal and his visits to France, England, Ireland, &c.

“I have remained with him while Miss Wright is gone to Tangiers with her real nephew, Major Howard Irby. This beginning of March always brings with it many sad recollections, the date—always nearing March 4—of all our greatest anxieties, at Pau, Piazza di Spagna, Via Babuino, Via Gregoriana. It is almost as incredible to me now as a year and a half ago to feel that it is all over—the agony of suspense so often endured, and that life is now a dead calm without either sunshine or storm to look forward to.

“The King says that of all the things which astonish him in England, that which astonishes him most is that the Anglo-Catholics (so called), who are free to do as they please, are seeking to have confession—‘the bane of the Roman Catholic religion, which has brought misery and disunion into so many Spanish homes.’ One felt sure he was thinking of Father Claret and the Queen, but he never mentioned them.”

“March 6.—The poor King left yesterday for Southampton—a most affectionate leave-taking. He says he will come to Holmhurst: how odd if he does!”

“Malaga, March 17.—Our pleasantest acquaintances at Gibraltar were the Augustus Phillimores, with whom we spent our last day—in such a lovely garden on the side of the Rock, filled with gigantic daturas, daphnes, oranges, and gorgeous creeping Bougainvillias. Admiral Phillimore’s boat took us on board the Lisbon, where we got through the voyage very well, huddled up under cloaks on deck through the long night. There is nothing to see at Malaga—a dismal, dusty, ugly place.”

“Hôtel Siete Suelos, Granada, March 19.—We had a dreadful journey here—rail to Las Salinas and then the most extraordinary diligence journey, in a carriage drawn by eight mules, at midnight, over no road, but rocks, marshes, and along the edge of precipices—quite frightful. Why we were not overturned I cannot imagine. I could get no place except at the top, and held on with the greatest difficulty in the fearful lunges. We reached Granada about 3½ A.M., seeing nothing that night, but wearily conscious of the long ascent to the Siete Suelos.

“How lovely was the morning awakening! our rooms looking down long arcades of high arching elms, with fountains foaming in the openings of the woods, birds singing, and violets scenting the whole air. It is indeed alike the paradise of nature and art. Through the first day I never entered the Alhambra, but sat restfully satisfied with the absorbing loveliness of the surrounding gorges, and sketched the venerable Gate of Justice, glowing in gorgeous golden light. This morning we went early to the Moorish palace. It is beyond all imagination of beauty. As you cross the threshold you pass out of fact into fairyland. I sat six hours drawing the Court of Blessing without moving, and then we climbed the heights of S. Nicolas and overlooked the whole palace, with the grand snow peaks of Sierra Nevada rising behind.”

“Granada, April 1—Easter Sunday.—To-day especially I do not feel as if I was at Granada, but in the churchyard at Hurstmonceaux. I am sure Mrs. Medhurst and other loving hands will have decorated our most dear spot with flowers. Aunt Sophy is most kind, only too kind and indulgent always, but the thought of the one for and through whom alone I could really enjoy anything is never absent from me. I feel as if I lived in a life which was not mine—beautiful often, but only a beautiful moonlight: the sunlight has faded.”

TOLEDO.

“Toledo, April 11.—We had twelve hours’ diligence from Granada, saw Jaen Cathedral on the way, and joined the railroad at the little station of Mengibar. Next morning found us at Aranjuez, a sort of Spanish Hampton Court, rather quaint and pleasant, four-fifths of the place being taken up by the palace and its belongings, so much beloved by Isabella (II.), but since deserted. We went to bed for four hours, and spent the rest of the day in surveying half-furnished palaces, unkempt gardens, and dried-up fountains, yet pleasant from the winding Tagus, lilacs and Judas-trees in full bloom, and birds singing. It was a nice primitive little inn, and the landlord sat on the wooden gallery in the evening and played the guitar, and all his men and maids sang round him in patriarchal family fashion.

“On the whole, I feel a little disappointed at present with this curious, desolate old city: the cathedral and everything else looks so small after one’s expectations, and the guide-books exaggerate so tremendously all over Spain.

“My last day at Granada was saddened by your mention of what is really a great loss to me—dear old Mr. Liddell’s death,[13] so kind to me ever since I was a little boy, and endeared by the many associations of most happy visits at Bamborough and Easington. I had also sad news from Holmhurst in the death of dear sweet Romo, the Mother’s own little dog, which no other can ever be.”

“Madrid, April 20.—We like Madrid better than we expected. It is a poor miniature of Paris, the Prado like the Champs Elysées, the Museo answering to the Louvre, though all on the smallest possible scale. It has been everything to us having our kind friends Don Juan and Doña Emilia de Riaño here, and we have seen a great deal of them. They have a beautiful house, full of books and pictures, and every day she has come to take us out, and has gone with us everywhere, taking us to visit all the interesting literary and artistic people, showing us all the political characters on the Prado, escorting us to galleries, &c., and in herself a mine of information of the most beautiful and delightful kind—a sort of younger Lady Waterford. She gives a dreadful picture of the immorality of society in Madrid under the Italian King, the want of law, the hopelessness of redress; that everything is gained by influence in high places, nothing by right. A revolution is expected any day, and then the King must go. The aristocratic Madrilenians all speak of him as ‘the little Italian wretch,’ though they pity his pretty amiable Queen. All seem to want to get rid of him, and, whatever is said by English newspapers, we have never seen any one in Spain who was not hankering after the Bourbons and the handsome young Prince of Asturias, who is sure to be king soon.

“The pleasantest of all the people Madame de Riaño has taken us to visit are the splendid artist Don Juan de Madraza and his most lovely wife.[14]

“The Layards have been very civil. At a party there we met no end of Spanish grandees. The Queen’s lady-in-waiting (she has only two who will consent to take office), Marqueza d’Almena, was quite lovely in white satin and pearls—like an old picture.”

“Segovia, April 28.—I was quite ill at Madrid with severe sore throat and cough, and this in spite of the care I was always taking of myself, having been so afraid of falling ill. But it is the most treacherous climate, and, from burning heat, changes to fierce ice-laden winds from the Guadarama and torrents of cold rain. I was shut up five days, but cheered by visits from Madame de Riaño, young Arthur Seymour an attaché, and the last day, to my great delight, the well-known Holmhurst faces of Mr. and Mrs. Scrivens (Hastings banker), brimming with Sussex news. Mr. Layard was evidently very anxious to get us and all other travelling English safe out of Spain, but we preferred the alternative, suggested by the Riaños, of coming to this ‘muy pacifico’ place, and waiting till the storm was a little blown over. Madrid was certainly in a most uncomfortable state, the Italian King feeling the days of his rule quite numbered, houses being entered night and day, and arrests going on everywhere. I do not know what English papers tell, but the Spanish accounts are alarming of the whole of the north as overrun by Carlists, and that they have taken Vittoria and stopped the tunnel on the main line.

“It was a dreadful journey here. The road was cut through the snow, but there was fifteen feet of it on either side the way on the top of the Guadarama. However, our ten mules dragged us safely along. Segovia is gloriously picturesque, and the hotel a very tolerable—pothouse.”

“Salamanca, May 5.—One day at the Segovia table-d’hôte we had the most unusual sight of a pleasing young Englishman, who rambled about and drew with us all afternoon, and then turned out to be—the Duchess of Cleveland’s younger son, Everard Primrose.[15]

“May-day we spent at La Granja, one of the many royal palaces, and one which would quite enchant you. It is a quaint old French château in lovely woods full of fountains and waterfalls, quite close under the snow mountains; and the high peaks, one glittering mass of snow, rise through the trees before the windows. The inhabitants were longing there to have the Bourbons back, and only spoke of the present King as ‘the inoffensive Italian.’ Even Cristina and Isabella will be cordially welcomed if they return with the young Alfonso.

SEGOVIA

“On May 2nd we left Segovia and went for one night to the Escurial—such a gigantic place, no beauty, but very curious, and the relics of the truly religious though cruelly bigoted Philip II. very interesting. Then we were a day at Avila, at an English inn kept by Mr. John Smith and his daughter—kindly, hearty people. Avila is a paradise for artists, and has remains in plenty of Ferdinand and Isabella, in whose intimate companionship one seems to live during one’s whole tour in Spain. It was a most fatiguing night-journey of ten hours to Salamanca, a place I have especially wished to see—not beautiful, but very curious, and we have introductions to all the great people of the place.

“I shall be very glad now to get home again. It is such an immense separation from every one one has ever seen or heard of, and such a long time to be so excessively uncomfortable as one must be at even the best places in Spain. Five-o’clock tea, which we occasionally cook in a saucepan—without milk of course—is a prime luxury, and is to be indulged in to-day as it is Sunday.”

“Biarritz, May 12.—We are thankful to be safe here, having seen Zamora, Valladolid, and Burgos since we left Salamanca. The stations were in an excited state, the platforms crowded with people waiting for news or giving it, but we met with no difficulties. I cannot say with what a thrill of pleasure I crossed the Bidassoa and left the great discomforts of Spain behind. What a luxury this morning to see once more tea! butter!! cow’s milk!!!”

“Paris, May 20.—Most lovely does France look after Spain—the flowers, the grass, the rich luxuriant green, of which there is more to be seen from the ugliest French station than in the whole of the Spanish peninsula after you leave the Pyrenees. I have spent the greater part of three days at the Embassy, where George Sheffield is most affectionate and kind—no brother could be more so. We have been about everywhere together, and it is certainly most charming to be with a friend who is always the same, and associated with nineteen years of one’s intimate past.”

“Dover Station, May 23.—On Monday George drove me in one of the open carriages of the Embassy through the Bois de Boulogne to S. Cloud, and I thought the woods rather improved by the war injuries than otherwise, the bits cut down sprouting up so quickly in bright green acacia, and forming a pleasant contrast with the darker groves beyond. We strolled round the ruined château, and George showed the room whither he went to meet the council, and offer British interference just before war was declared, in vain, and now it is a heap of ruins—blackened walls, broken caryatides.[16] What a lovely view it is of Paris from the terrace: I had never seen it before. Pretty young French ladies were begging at all the park gates for the dishoused poor of the place, as they do at the Exhibition for the payment of the Prussian debt. George was as delightful as only he can be when he likes, and we were perfectly happy together. At 7 P.M. I went again to the Embassy. All the lower rooms were lighted and full of flowers, the corridors all pink geraniums with a mist of white spirea over them. The Duchesse de la Tremouille was there, as hideous as people of historic name usually are. Little fat Lord Lyons was most amiable, but his figure is like a pumpkin with an apple on the top. It is difficult to believe he is as clever as he is supposed to be. He is sometimes amusing, however. Of his diplomatic relations with the Pope he says, ‘It is so difficult to deal diplomatically with the Holy Spirit.’ He boasts that he arrived at the Embassy with all he wanted contained in a single portmanteau, and that if he were called upon to leave it for ever to-day, the same would suffice. He has collected and acquired—nothing! He evidently adores George, and I don’t wonder!”

FOUNTAIN OF S. CLOUD. [17]

To Miss Wright.

“Holmhurst, May 24, 1872.—You will like to know I am safe here. I found fat John Gidman waiting at the Hastings station, and drove up through the flowery lanes to receive dear Lea’s welcome—most tearfully joyous. The little home looks very lovely, and I cannot be thankful enough—though its sunshine is always mixed with shadow—to have a home in which everything is a precious memorial of my sacred past, where every shrub in the garden has been touched by my mother’s hand, every little walk trodden by her footsteps, and where I can bring up mental pictures of her in every room. In all that remains I can trace the sweet wisdom which for years laid up so much to comfort me, which sought to buy this place when she did, in order to give sufficient association to make it precious to me; above all, which urged her to the supreme effort of returning here in order to leave it for me with the last sacred recollections of her life. In the work of gathering up the fragments from that dear life I am again already engrossed, and Spain and its interests are passing into the far away; yet I look back upon them with much gratitude, and especially upon your long unvaried kindness and your patience with my many faults.”

“May 26.—To-night it blows a hurricane, and the wind moans sadly. A howling wind, I think, is the most melancholy natural accompaniment which can come to a solitary life. After this, I must give you—to meditate on—a beautiful passage I have been reading in Mrs. Somerville—‘At a very small height above the surface of the earth the noise of the tempest ceases, and the thunder is heard no more in those boundless regions where the heavenly bodies accomplish their periods in eternal and sublime silence.’ ”

It is partly the relief I experienced after Spain and the animation of ever-changing society which make me look back upon the summer of 1872 as one of the happiest I have spent at Holmhurst. A constant succession of guests filled our little chambers, every one was pleased, and the weather was glorious. I was away also for several short but very pleasant glimpses of London, and began to feel how little the virulence of some of my family signified when there was still so much friendship and affection left to me.

To Miss Wright.

“Holmhurst, June 21, 1872.—I am feeling ungrateful for never having written since my happy fortnight with you came to a close, a time which I enjoyed more than I ever expected to enjoy anything again, and which made me feel there might still be something worth living on for, so much kindness and affection did I receive from so many. It is pleasant too to think of your comfortable home, which rises before me in a gallery of happy pictures, and I know it all so well now, from the parrot in Mrs. Jarvis’s room to the red geraniums in your window. I have had Mrs. and Miss Kuper here, and now I am alone, no voice but that of the guinea-fowls shrieking ‘Come back’ in the garden. I miss all my London friends very much, but suppose one would not enjoy it if it went on always, and certainly solitude is the time for work: I did eleven hours of it yesterday. As regards my books, I feel more and more with Arnold that a man is only fit to teach as long as he is himself learning daily.”

“Holmhurst, June 25.—‘Poor Aunt Sophy’ would not have thought she had done nothing to cheer me, could she have seen the interest with which I read her letter and returned to it over and over again. Such a letter is quite delightful, and here has the effect of one reaching Robinson Crusoe in Juan Fernandez, so complete is the silence and solitude when no one is staying here.

‘The flowers my guests, the birds my pensioners,

Books my companions, and but few beside.’[18]

“How I delight in knowing all that the delightful human beings are about, of whom I think now as living in another hemisphere. I should like to see more of people—perhaps another year I may not be so busy: that is, I long for the cream which I enjoyed with you, but I should not care for the milk and water of a country neighbourhood. If one has too much people-seeing, however, even of the London best, one feels that it is ‘a withering world,’[19] and that if—

‘The world is too much with us, late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.’[20]

“I have been made very ill-tempered all day because Murray, during my absence in Spain, has published a second edition of my Oxfordshire Handbook, greatly altered, without consulting me, and it seems to me utterly spoilt and vulgarised. He is obliged by his contract to give me £40, but I would a great deal rather have seen the book uninjured and received nothing.”

To Miss Leycester (after a long visit from her at Holmhurst).

“Holmhurst, August 18, 1872.—There seems quite a chaos of things already to be said to the dear cousin who has so long shared our quiet life, and who has so much care for the simple interests of this little home. Much have I missed her—in her chair, with her crotchet; sitting on the terrace; and especially in the early morning walk yesterday, when the garden was in its richest beauty, all the crimson and blue flowers twinkling through a veil of dewdrops, and when ‘the gentleness of Heaven was on the sea,’ as Wordsworth would say. I am grieved to think of you in London, instead of in your country home.

“Our visit to Hurstmonceaux was thoroughly enjoyed by Mr. and Mrs. Pile.[21] For myself, I shall always feel such short visits produce such extreme tension of conflicting feelings that they are scarcely a pleasure. Most lovely was the drive for miles through Ashburnham beech and pine woods and by its old timber-yard. At Lime Cross we saw Mrs. Isted at her familiar window, and the dear woman sat there all the afternoon to have another glimpse on our return. We drove to the foot of the hill and walked up to the church. Our sacred spot looked most peaceful, its double hedge of fuchsia in full flower, and the turf as smooth as velvet. We had luncheon in the church porch, and then went to the castle, and back through the park uplands, high with fern, to Hurstmonceaux Place. How often, at Hurstmonceaux especially, I now feel the force of Wordsworth’s lines:

‘Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’ ”

To Miss Wright.

“Holmhurst, Sept. 6, 1872.—If my many guests of the last weeks have liked their visits, I have most entirely enjoyed having them and the pleasant influx of new life and new ideas. Dear old Mrs. Robert Hare is now very happy here, and most grateful for the very small kindness I am able to show. I have pressed her to make a long visit, as it is a real delight to give so much pleasure, though humbling to think that, when one can do it so easily, one does not do it oftener. She is quite stone-deaf, so we sit opposite one another and correspond on a slate.[22] On Tuesday I fetched Marcus Hare from Battle. He also is intensely happy here; but his aunts, the Miss Stanleys, have written to refuse to see him again or allow him to visit them, because he has been to see the author of the ‘Memorials.’ I took him to Hurstmonceaux yesterday, and lovely was the first flush of autumn on our dear woods, while the castle looked most grand in the solemn stillness of its misty hollow. Next week I shall have George Sheffield here.”

FROM THE LIBRARY WINDOW, FORD. [24]

In September I paid a pleasant visit to my cousin Edward Liddell, whom I found married to his sweet wife (Christina Fraser Tytler) and living in the Rectory in Wimpole Park in Cambridgeshire, close to the great house of our cousin Lord Hardwicke, which is very ugly, though it contains many fine pictures.[23] In the beginning of October I was at Ford with Lady Waterford, meeting the Ellices, Lady Marion Alford, and Lady Herbert of Lea, who had much to tell of La Palma, the estatica of Brindisi, who had the stigmata, and could tell wonderful truths to people about their past and future. Lady Herbert had been to America, Trinidad, Africa—in fact, everywhere, and in each country had, or thought she had, the most astounding adventures—living with bandits in a cave, overturned on a precipice, &c. She had travelled in Spain and was brimful of its delights. She had armed herself with a Papal permit to enter all monasteries and convents. She had annexed the Bishop of Salamanca and driven in his coach to Alva, the scene of S. Teresa’s later life. The nuns refused to let her come in, and the abbess declared it was unheard of; but when Lady Herbert produced the bishop and the Papal brief, she got in, and the nuns were so captivated that they not only showed her S. Teresa’s dead body, but dressed her up in all S. Teresa’s clothes, and set her in S. Teresa’s arm-chair, and gave her her supper out of S. Teresa’s porringer and platter. “Can you see Lady Jane Ellice’s face,” I read in a letter from Ford to Miss Leycester, “as Lady Herbert ‘goes on’ about the Blessed Paul of the Cross, the holy shift of S. Teresa, and the saintly privileges of a hermit’s life?” The first evening she was at Ford Lady Herbert said:—

“Did you never hear the story of ‘La Jolie Jambe’? Well, then, I will tell it you. Robert, my brother-in-law, told me. He knew the old lady it was all about in Paris, and had very often gone to sit with her.

“It was an old lady who lived at ‘le pavillon dans le jardin.’ The great house in the Faubourg was given up to the son, you know, and she lived in the pavillon. It was a very small house, only five or six rooms, and was magnificently furnished, for the old lady was very rich indeed, and had a great many jewels and other valuable things. She lived quite alone in the pavillon with her maid, but it was considered quite safe in that high-terraced garden, raised above everything else, and which could only be approached through the house.

“However, one morning the old lady was found murdered, and all her jewels and valuables were gone. Of course suspicion fell upon the maid, for who else could it be? She was taken up and tried. The evidence was insufficient to convict her, and she was released, but every one believed her guilty. Of course she could get no other place, and she was so shunned and pointed at as a murderess that her life was a burden to her.

“One day, eleven years after, the maid was walking down a street when she met a man, who, as she passed, looked suddenly at her and exclaimed, ‘Oh, la jolie jambe!’ She immediately rushed up to a sergeant-de-ville and exclaimed, ‘Arrêtez-moi cet homme.’ The man was confused and hesitated, but she continued in an agony, ‘Arrêtez-le, je vous dis: je l’accuse, je l’accuse du meurtre de ma maîtresse.’ Meanwhile the man had made off, but he was pursued and taken.

“The maid said at the trial, that, on the night of the murder, the windows of the pavilion had been open down to the ground; that they were so when she was going to bed; that as she was getting into bed she sat for a minute on its edge to admire her legs, looked at them, patted one of them complacently, and exclaimed, ‘Oh, la jolie jambe!’

“The man then confessed that while he had been hidden in the bushes of the garden waiting to commit his crime, he had seen the maid and heard her, and that, when he met her in the street, the scene and the words rushed back upon his mind so suddenly, that, as if under an irresistible impulse, his lips framed the words ‘Oh, la jolie jambe.’ The man was executed.”

Lady Herbert also told us that—

“Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, had a sheep-dog to which he was quite devoted, and which used to go out and collect his sheep. One day in winter a thick snow came on, and Hogg was in the greatest anxiety about his flocks. He called his dog and explained all the matter to him, telling him how he was going all round one side of the moors himself to drive in his sheep, and that he was to go the other way and collect. The dog understood perfectly. Late in the evening the Shepherd returned perfectly exhausted, bringing in his flock through the deep snow, but the dog had not come back. Hour after hour passed and the dog did not return. The Shepherd, who was devoted to his dog, was very anxious about it, when at last he heard a whining and scratching at the door, and going out, found the dog bringing all his sheep safe, and in its mouth a little puppy, which it laid at its master’s feet, and instantly darted off through the snow to seek another and bring it in. The poor thing had puppied in the snow, but would not on that account neglect one iota of its duty. It brought in its second puppy, laid it in its master’s lap, looked up wistfully in his face as if beseeching him to take care of it, and—died.”

Lady Marion Alford is a real grande dame. Some one, Miss Mary Boyle, I think, wrote a little book called the “Court of Queen Marion,” descriptive of her and her intimate circle. At Ford she talked much of the pleasure of Azeglio’s Ricordi, how he was the first Italian writer who had got out of the ‘conciosiachè style,’ and she was delightful with her reminiscences of Italy:—

“Once when I was spending the summer in Italy I wanted models, and I was told by an old general, a friend of mine, that I had better advertise, send up to the priests in the mountains, and tell them to send down all the prettiest children in their villages to be looked at: the lady wanted models; those she chose she should pay, the others should each have sixpence and a cake. I was told I had better prepare for a good many—perhaps a hundred might come. When the day came, I never shall forget our old servant’s face when he rushed in—‘Miladi, Miladi, the lane is full of them.’ There were seven hundred. It was very difficult to choose. We made them pass in at one door of the villa and out at the other. Those we selected we sent into the garden, and from these we chose again. Some were perfect monsters, for every mother thought her own child perfection. Those we selected to come first were a lovely family of three children with their mother. They were to come on a Wednesday. The day came, and they never appeared: the next, and still they did not come. Then we asked our old general about it, and he said, ‘The fact is, I have kicked my carpenter downstairs this morning because he said you were sending for the children to suck their blood, and they all think so.’ They none of them ever came.

“Our old maid Teresa was of a very romantic turn of mind. We used, when I was a child, to live in the Palazzo Sciarra, where the ‘Maddalena della Radice’ is. She used to stand opposite to the picture and exclaim in gulpy tones, ‘Sono bestia io, e non capisco niente, ma questo me pare—pittoresco.’ My little sister, when our father was away, stood one day at the top of the stairs and said, ‘Io son padrona di casa, e no son padrona di casa: voi siete la servitu, e non siete la servitu.’ Teresa exclaimed, ‘Questa diavola, com’ é carina.’ We used to hear Teresa talking to our other maid, and they boasted of the number of times they had been beaten by their husbands. One day—it was during the French occupation, when the bread was doled out—Teresa took her tambourine with her when she went to get it, for they all loved flirting with the soldiers; and when her husband asked her what it was for, she said it was to bring back the bread in. But when she got inside the circle of soldiers, they had a merry saltarello. The husband was kept back outside the circle, and stood there furious. At first she laughed at him, but then when he went away and came back again, she got really frightened. And when she came out of the circle he flogged her with a whip all the way back to the Trastevere, and she ran before him screaming.

“How curious it is that ‘Est locanda’ is still to be seen in Roman windows of houses to be let—the one little relic of Latin: and how odd the word for lodgings being the same in all languages—Quartier, Quartos, Quartiere, Quarter, &c.”

Lady Marion also said:—

“As we were leaving Gibraltar, three of the shells from the practising fell quite close to our yacht. ‘Are you not very much frightened?’ said a French gentleman on board. ‘Not in the least,’ I said. ‘How could I be? our men are such perfect marksmen;’ but of course I was dreadfully.”

This story is wonderfully characteristic of the speaker: the Empress Catherine might have given such an answer. About ghosts Lady Marion was very amusing:—

“When I went to Belvoir with Lady Caroline Cust, they danced in the evening. I went upstairs early, for I was tired. As I was going to my room, Lady Jersey—it was wrong of her, I think—said, ‘Oh, I see you are put into the ghost-room.’ I said, ‘I am quite happy; there are no real ghosts here, I think.’—‘Well,’ said Lady Jersey, ‘I can only say Miss Drummond slept there last night, and she received letters of importance this morning and left before breakfast.’ Well, I went into my room, and lit the candles and made up the fire, but very soon I gave a great jump, for I heard the most dreadful noise close at my elbow—Oh-o-oo-oo!’ I thought of course that it was a practical joke, and began to examine every corner of the room, thinking some one must be hidden there; then I rang my bell. When my maid came in I said, ‘Now don’t be frightened, but there is some one hidden in this room somewhere, and you must help me to find him.’ Very soon the noise came again. Then Lady Caroline came, and she heard it: then her maid came. The noise occurred about every five minutes. We examined everything and stood in each corner of the room. The noise then seemed close to each of us. At last Lady Caroline said, ‘I can stand this no longer, and I must go,’ and she and her maid went away and shut themselves into the next room. Then I said to my maid, ‘If you are frightened you had better go,’ but she protested that she would rather stay where she was; after what she had heard, anything would be better than facing the long lonely passages alone. However, just at that moment ‘Oh-o-oo-oo!’ went off again close to her ear, and with one spring she darted out of the room and ran off as hard as ever she could. I went courageously to bed and determined to brave it out. But the thing went to bed too, and went off at intervals on the pillow close to my face. And at last it grated on my nerves to such a degree that I could bear it no longer, and I dragged a mattress into Lady Caroline’s room and slept there till dawn. The next morning I also received letters of importance and left before breakfast.

“Before I left, I sent for the housekeeper, and said, ‘You really should not put people into that room,’ and told her what had happened. She was much distressed, and told me that there really was no other room in the house then, but confessed it had often happened so before. Some time after I went over to Belvoir with some friends who wanted to see the castle, and the housekeeper then told me that the same thing had happened again in that room, which was now permanently shut up.”

Other guests at Ford were Mrs. Richard Boyle (known as E. V. B.), and her daughter—very quaint and original, and the mother a capital artist. We went to the Rowting Lynn, a beautiful spot surrounded with rocks overhung by old oak-trees. “Did you enjoy your walk?” said Lady Waterford to Mrs. Boyle as we came in. “Yes, excessively. You never told me you had a waterfall. You offered me a coal-pit, but the waterfall you forgot to mention.”

Lady Waterford was herself more delightful than ever. As Marocetti said of her, “C’est un grand homme, mais une femme charmante.” Here are some scraps from her conversation:—

“That is a sketch of L. H. She did not know I was drawing her. She looks sixteen, but is quite middle-aged. Mama used to say she was like preserved green peas. Preserved green peas are not quite so good as real green peas, but they do very nearly as well.’

“I always take a little book with me in the train and draw the things as I pass them. That is some railings against a sunset sky when it was almost dark: I thought it was like a bit of Tintoret.

“How trying it is to be kept waiting for people. Don’t you know the Italian proverb?—