“A schoolmaster near Cobham, named King, for some reason best known to himself, has abolished the game of football—a most unpopular move. The boys were furious, and one day, when the master entered the schoolroom, he found ‘King is a donkey’ chalked up in large letters on a board. For an instant he was perplexed; but it would never do to take no notice. He left the inscription, but added the single word—‘driver.’ The boys quite saw the joke, and the master’s prestige was restored.”

“Ampthill Park, August 29, 1876.—I came here on Monday, stopping some hours in London on the way, and finding out ancient treasures in the purlieus of Soho and St. Giles’s, which, black and filthy as they are, are still full of reminiscences.

“At St. Pancras Station I saw a very ancient lady in a yellow wig step into a railway carriage by herself, and her footman guard the door till the train started, and I felt sure it was the Dowager Duchess of Cleveland. At Ampthill Station the Lowther carriage was waiting for both of us, and we drove off together. She talked the whole way, but the carriage rumbled so that I could hardly hear a word she said, except that when I remarked ‘What a fine tree!’ as we entered the park, she answered rather sharply ‘That was a fine tree.’ She spoke too of the Lowther boys—‘They are having their vacancies. I like that word vacancies,’ she said.

enlarge-image
CHURCHYARD OF ST. ANNE, SOHO.
CHURCHYARD OF ST. ANNE, SOHO. [213]

“It is a fine wild park, with most unexpected ups and downs and a great deal of grand old timber, on a ridge rising high above the blue Bedfordshire plain, in the midst of which a spire rising out of a little drift of smoke indicates the town of Bedford. On one of the highest points of the ridge a cross raised on steps marks the site of the royal residence where Katherine of Arragon lived for most of her semi-widowhood, and where Anne Boleyn shot stags in a green velvet train. The later house, approached on the garden side by a narrow downhill avenue half a mile long, is in the old French style, with posts and chains, broad steps widening at the top, and a perron.... The Duchess, at eighty-four, talked most pleasantly and interestingly all evening. Lady Wensleydale, in her high cap and large chair, with her sweet face and expression, sat by like an old picture. There is a picture of her thus, by Pointer, surrounded by great white azaleas, but it does not do her justice.

“On the vast flagged terrace in front of the windows we found Lady Cowper[214] sitting in an old-fashioned black silk dress and tight white bonnet. She has a most sweet face, and was very kind and charming in her manner. I walked with her for a long time on the terrace, looking down on the brilliant gardens, and beyond them upon equally brilliant groups of people, for it was the annual meeting of the great Bedfordshire tennis club, for which she always gives a breakfast. She told the whole story of the place, and took me to see all the finest points of view and the great collection of fine orange-trees brought from Versailles. She greatly lamented the prudishness of her great-aunt (Lady De Grey), through whom her grandmother had derived the place, who thought most of the old French statues—which, according to the custom of that day, were made of lead—to be insufficiently dressed, and so sold them for the value of the metal, at the same time that she sold an incomparable collection of old plate, for the same reason, for its weight in silver. She showed one of the statues, backed by a yew hedge some centuries old. ‘That poor lady, you see, was saved when all the others were sent away, because she had got a few clothes on.’ Lord De Grey had replaced some of the statues, and Lady Cowper herself had added a most beautiful fountain from Carrara, with a very flat basin.

“Lady Cowper talked much of my mother and the ‘Memorials’ and of ‘my sister Lady Jocelyn.’ She spoke of the extreme quietude of her own life. ‘A day like this (pointing out the crowd below) shows me that what this place wants is—people, and I never have any. I think I must hire some puppets to walk about and represent them.’ There are a number of inscriptions in the grounds to different past-members of the family and their friends. Lady Cowper said that Lady Palmerston, who was very matter-of-fact, thought that of course they were buried there, and said, ‘How I do pity Anne, living alone at Wrest, surrounded by all those graves of her family.’ Graves, however, there are, but of deceased dogs, a regular burial-ground, with headstones like those in a churchyard, surrounded by a wall of clipped yew.

“August 30.—Yesterday I drew with Miss Lowther at the ruins of Houghton Hall, the old home of the Russells, where Philip Sidney wrote verses under the trees. It is a very stately though not a large house, and beautiful in colour, from the mixture of red brick and yellow-lichened stone. A great avenue, now utterly ruined, leads away from it direct to Bedford, which lies six miles away in the elm-lined plain. It was deserted because Lord Tavistock, returning from hunting, was thrown from his horse and killed on the spot in the presence of his wife, who was waiting for him on the doorstep: the family could never bear to live there again.[215]

“After luncheon, I walked with the old Duchess in the avenue. She described being couched. ‘Did you take chloroform?’—‘Oh, certainly not: no such thing: I should not have thought of it. Don’t you know that couching is a very dangerous operation? the very slightest movement might be fatal to it. I did not know what might happen under chloroform, but I knew that I should never flinch if I had my senses, and I never did: and in three weeks, though I was still bandaged up, I was out walking.’

“‘What was worse than becoming blind in my case,’ said the Duchess, ‘was breaking my knee-pan, for then, you know, one bone goes up and the other goes down, and you never really have the use of your knee again.’

“‘And yet here you are walking, Duchess.’

“‘Yes, certainly I am. Prescott Hewitt said I never should walk again, and I said “Yes, I should,”—and he answered, “Ah! well, with you perhaps it is different; you belong to a family that have got a will;” and I walk, but I walk by the sheer force of will.’

“The Duchess said she remembered old Lady Penrhyn and her pugs, and their being dressed like children, and keeping a footman, and having a key of Grosvenor Square.

“In the evening I drove with Mr. Lowther to Haynes, till lately written Hawnes, the fine old place of Lord John Thynne (Sub-Dean of Westminster), which he inherited from his uncle, Lord Carteret. We met the old man riding in his park, and so much taken up with a sick cow that he almost ignored us. But when we had walked round by the charming old-fashioned gardens, we found him waiting for us on the garden doorstep, all courtesy and kindness. Several sons and daughters-in-law dropped in to tea in a kind of passage-room, but Lord John took me to see all the curiosities of the house himself, and warmed up over them greatly. There is a most noble staircase and a very fine collection of family portraits. In the drawing-room is that of Lady Ann Carteret in a white satin dress, which she always wore, and is always remembered still as ‘The White Lady.’ Her husband was Jack Spencer, of whom there is also a fine picture. His grandmother, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, one day said to him suddenly, ‘Jack, you must marry, and I will give you a list of the ladies you may propose to.’—‘Very well, grannie,’ he said, and he proposed to the first on the list. When he came back with his wife from their wedding tour they went to pay their respects to the old lady. ‘Well, now,’ she said, ‘I am the root and you are only the branches, and therefore you must always pay me a great deal of deference.’—‘That is all very well,’ said Jack impertinently, ‘but I think the branches would flourish a great deal better if the root was under ground.’

“There is a great collection of small treasures at Haynes—snuff-boxes of royal persons, of Lord Chesterfield, &c., and one with a portrait of a lady ancestress,—‘not a good woman, she had nothing but her beauty,’—which takes off and puts on a mask. But the great relic of all is, in its own old shagreen case, the famous Essex ring—a gem beautifully set. With it is a most interesting letter from Weigall, the famous jeweller, explaining a great number of reasons why it must be the ring. There is also the pedigree of the ring, which came through the hands of a great number of females—heiresses.

“At dinner the Duchess vehemently inveighed against the deterioration of the times. ‘Was there ever anything so ridiculous and uncalled-for as a school-feast?’—‘But it is such a pleasure to the children.’—‘Pleasure to them! In my days people were not always thinking how children were to be amused. Children were able to amuse themselves in my day. It is not only with the lower classes: all classes are the same—the same utterly demoralising system of indulgence everywhere. Why are not the children kept at home to learn to wash and sew and do their duty?’—‘But the school-feast is only one day in the year.’—‘One day in the year! Fiddlesticks! don’t tell me. I tell you it’s utterly demoralising. Why, if the feast is only one day, it unhinges them for ten days before and ten days after.

“‘Formerly, too, people knew how to live like gentlemen and ladies. When they built houses, they built houses fit to live in, not things in which the walls were too thin to allow of the windows having any shutters.... Why, now people do not even know how to keep a great house. Look at ——, do you think she knows it, with her alternate weeks for receiving visitors. That is not what ought to be; that is not hospitality. A great house ought to be open always. The master and mistress never ought to feel it a burthen, and if it was properly managed, they never would. There should always be a foundation of guests in the house, a few relations or intimate friends, who would be quite at home there, and who would be civil and go out to walk or drive, or do whatever might be necessary to amuse the others. There ought to be no gêne of any kind, and there ought to be plenty of equipages—that should be quite indispensable.’

“‘Rogers met Lord Dudley at one of the foreign watering-places, and began in his vain way, “What a terrible thing it is how one’s fame pursues one, and that one can never get away from one’s own identity! Now I sat by a lady the other night, and she began, ‘I feel sure you must be Mr. Rogers.’”—“And were you?” said Lord Dudley, looking up into his face quite innocently. It was the greatest snub the poet ever had.

“At Ampthill she told me how she was going to London to meet Admiral Inglefield, who was going to help her to ‘pick a child out of the gutter.’ ‘That child,’ she said, ‘will some day be Earl Powlett. Lord Powlett took a wager that he would run away with the lady-love of one of his brother-officers, and he did run away with her; but she made it a condition that he should marry her before a Registrar, which he believed was illegal, but it was not, and they were really married. Her only child, a boy, was brought up in the gutter. His name is Hinton, and he is presentable,[216] which his wife is not, for she is a figurante at the opera; but she gets more than the other danseuses, because she has the courage to stand unsupported upon a tight-rope, which the others have not. Powlett offered his son £400 if he would go away from England and never come back again, but he refused, so then he would only give him £100. He lives by acting at small theatres, but sometimes he does not live, but starves. He had four children, but one is dead. It is the eldest I mean to take away and place with a clergyman and his wife, that he may learn something of being a gentleman. I shall undertake him for three years, then I shall see what he is likely to be fit for. If I live so long, I can settle it; if not, I must leave the means for it. Facts are stranger than fiction.’

“At the stations, the Duchess was perfectly furious at the bonnets she saw. ‘If any respectable persons had gone to sleep twenty years ago and woke up now, they would think it was Bedlam let loose.’ She said how Count Streletski, who had travelled everywhere, said there was no country in which people were satisfied with nature: if tall, they wished to make themselves short; if short, tall: if they were light, they wished to be dark, and vice versâ. She talked of the peculiarities of vanity in different people—how the first Lady Westmoreland made the coiffeur wait and touch her up when she was in the carriage.

“A singular subject of interest has been Mr. Freeman’s virulent letters against and about me. He seems insane on the subject of creating imaginary injuries.[217] Certainly it is a little annoying to be called a thief in the public papers, though it may be useful for one’s morals. However, ‘Experience is the best teacher, only the school fees are heavy.’”

“Conington Castle, Sept. 29.—I came here yesterday to old Mr. Heathcote’s. It is a low-lying place in the Fens, close to what was once Whitlesea Mere, but is now drained, only patches of reeds and marshy ground remaining here and there. The house is near the site of an old castle, but its only claim to be called a castle itself arises from its having been partly built out of the ruins of Fotheringhay, from which a row of arches remain. To ordinary eyes the country is frightful, but Mr. Heathcote, as an artist, sees much beauty—which really does exist—in the long unbroken lines where the mere once was, and the faint blue shadows in the soft distances. And he has preserved very interesting memorials of all that the district has been, within his memory, in an immense series of sketches of the mere in summer, and in winter, when covered with people skating; and of the mere life—its fisheries, wild birds, and its curious draining mills, now all of the past.

“Sept. 30.—We have been to Hinchinbroke. Lord and Lady Sandwich were alone. She was the Lady Blanche Egerton[218] of my long ago Chillingham days. Lord Sandwich took me all over the pictures. The best is that of Lady Castlemaine, afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, very young and lovely, with all her hair down. There is also a fine full-length of Charles II., and a curious picture of Charles II. of Spain by Herrera. By Gainsborough there is a beautiful portrait of Miss Martha Ray. Mr. Hackman, who saw her with Lord Sandwich, fell in love with her, and took orders in order to be able to marry her. Afterwards, when he saw her in Covent Garden receiving the attentions of somebody else, he shot her in a fit of jealousy, and suffered for it at Tyburn. In the ‘Ship Room’ is an interesting picture by Vanderwelt of the naval action in which the first Lord Sandwich died. His ship was fired by a fireship and blown up, and he was drowned. Ten days afterwards his body was recovered, and the garter and medal found upon it are preserved in a glass case near the picture.

“Sarsden House, Chipping Norton, Oct. 4.—I came here on Monday. At Paddington Station I met Lady Darnley and Lady Kathleen Bligh, and a procession of carriages in waiting showed that a large party was expected by the same train. It came dropping in round the five-o’clock tea-table—Lord and Lady Denbigh; Lord and Lady Aberdare and a daughter; Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Symonds; two young Plunketts; George, Lady Constance, and Madeleine Shaw-Lefevre; Lord Morton.... I like Lord Denbigh very much, and feel sure that no Roman Catholic plotter would induce him to do what he did not believe to be right, or say what he did not believe to be true.

“‘Dr. Playfair, physician at Florence, went to the garden of a villa to see some friends of his. Sitting on a seat in the garden, he saw two ladies he knew; between them was a third lady dressed in grey, of very peculiar appearance. Walking round the seat, Dr. Playfair found it very difficult to see her features. In a farther part of the garden he met another man he knew. He stayed behind the seat and asked his friend to walk round and see if he could make out who the odd-looking lady was. When he came back he said, “Of course I could not make her out, because when I came in front of her, her face was turned towards you.” Dr. Playfair then walked up to the ladies, and as he did so, the central figure disappeared. The others expressed surprise that Dr. Playfair, having seen them, had not joined them sooner. He asked who the lady was who had been sitting between them. They assured him that there had never been any such person.

“Oct. 4.—While Madeleine has been drawing my portrait, Mrs. Stewart has talked delightfully, contradicting the theory of De Tocqueville that ‘the charming art of conversation—to touch and set in motion a thousand thoughts without dwelling tiresomely on any one—is amongst the lost arts, and can only be sought for in History Hut.’[219] She described her visit to Ober Ammergau. Her anxiety to go was intense, but all the means seemed to fail. The Princess Mary of Hanover and the Grand Duchess Elizabeth (to whom she had intended to annex herself) walked. But, to be in waiting upon them, went Baron Klenck, her Hanoverian son-in-law, and he came back greatly impressed, and said to his wife when he came in, ‘If thy mother still wishes to go, in God’s name let her set forth;’ and she went. She described the life at the village—the simplicity, the cheapness; then, in the play, the awful agony of the twenty minutes of the Crucifixion, the sublimity of the Ascension. ‘I have seen hundreds of “ascensions” on the stage and elsewhere, but I have never seen anything like that simple re-presentation.’

“At luncheon Mrs. Stewart described a sitting with Mrs. Guppy the spiritualist. Count Bathyany, her daughter, and others were present. They were asked what sort of manifestation they would have. They declared they would be satisfied with nothing less than a ghost. There was a round hole in the table with a lid upon it. Presently the lid began to quiver, gradually it was thrown on one side, and a hand came up violently agitating itself. ‘Mrs. Guppy said, “Dear spirit” (we are always very affectionate you know), “would you like the glass?” and a great tall fern-glass was put over the place: otherwise, I should have touched that hand. Then, inside the glass (but we could not touch it, you know) came up something wrapped in muslin: Mrs. Guppy said it was a head. Afterwards we were asked to go down to supper: there was quite a handsome collation. A young American who was with us was so disgusted with what he had seen that he would touch nothing—would take neither bread nor salt in that house. I was weak: I did not quite like to refuse, and I ate a few strawberries. Of course, as far as the moral protest went, I might as well have eaten a whole plateful. Bathyany made a very good supper. He took a rose away with him for his Countess, for at the end of our séance quantities of flowers appeared, we knew not whence, quite fresh, dewy, beautiful flowers: they appeared on the table close to Count Bathyany.

“We have been a long drive to a charming old house, Chastleton, belonging to Miss Whitmore Jones, who lives there alone, ‘le dernier rejeton de sa famille.’ It is in a hollow with fine old trees around it, manor-house, church, arched gateway, and dovecot on arches grouped close together, all of a delicate pink-yellow-grey. Inside is a banqueting hall with very fine old panelling and curious furniture, and upstairs a long gallery and nobly panelled drawing-room.”

“All that time in Herrenhausen they were alone: only Mrs. Stewart and her daughter went out occasionally to bring in the news; the others never went out. At last the confinement became most irksome to the Princesses. They entreated Mrs. Stewart to persuade mama to let them go out. Mrs. Stewart urged it to the Queen, who said, ‘But the Princesses have all that they need here; they ought to be satisfied.’—‘Pardon me, your Majesty,’ said Mrs. Stewart; ‘the Princesses have not all they need; it is necessary for young people to have some change.’ ‘So,’ said Mrs. Stewart, ‘at last the Queen saw that it was well, and she consented. She said, “We will not take one of our own carriages, that would attract too much attention, but we will take Harty’s—that is, my daughter’s—carriage, and we will drive in that;” for the Queen had given Harty a little low carriage and a pony. So they set off—the Queen, Princess Marie, and only the coachman besides. And when they had gone some way up the hills, the pony fretted under the new traces and broke them, and, before they knew where they were, it was away over the hedges and fields, and they were left in the lane with the broken carriage. Two Prussian officers rode up—for the Prussians were already in Hanover—and seeing two ladies, beautiful ladies too (for the Queen is still very handsome), in that forlorn state, they dismounted, and, like gentlemen as they were, they came up hat in hand, and offered their assistance. The Queen said, “Oh, thank you; you see what has happened to us: our coachman has gone after the pony, which has run away, and no doubt he will soon come back, so we will just wait his return.” But the coachman did not come back, and the gentlemen were so polite, they would not go away, so at last the Queen and Princess had to set out to return home; and the officers walked with them, never having an idea who they were, and never left them till they reached the gates of Herrenhausen. So the Queen came in and said, “You see what has happened, my dear; you see what a dreadful thing has befallen us: we will none of us ever try going out again,” and we never did.

“‘We used to go and walk at night in those great gardens of Herrenhausen, in which the Electress Sophia died. The Queen talked then, God bless her, of all her sorrows. We often did not come in till the morning, for the Queen could not sleep. But, even in our great sorrow and misery, Nature would assert herself, and when we came in, we ate up everything there was. Generally I had something in my room, and the Queen had generally something in hers, though that was only bread and strawberries, and it was not enough for us, for we were so very hungry.

“‘The Queen was always longing to go away to her own house at Marienberg, and at last she went. She never came back; for, as soon as she was gone, the Prussians, who had left her alone whilst she was there, stepped in and took possession of everything.

“In the morning Mrs. Stewart sat for her portrait to Madeleine, in her picturesque square head-dress. She was pleased at being asked to sit. ‘Il faut vieillir pour être heureuse,’ she said. She talked much whilst she was sitting—much of Lady H.’s insolent and often unfeeling sayings. She spoke of a doctor who had the same inclination, and said to her, ‘Ça ne me repugne pas de dire les vérités cruelles.’ Talking of self-respect, she quoted the maxim of Madame George Sand—

“In the afternoon we drove to Daylesford—Warren Hastings’ so beloved home. It is a very pretty place, picturesque modern cottages amid tufted trees, and a very beautiful small modern church on a green. This church was built by Mr. Grisewood, and supplants a so-called Saxon church, restored after a thousand years of use by Warren Hastings. The inscription commemorating his restoration still remains, and ends with the text—‘For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday.’ The tomb of Warren Hastings, a yellow urn on a pedestal, stands in the churchyard just under the east window. He left the place to his wife’s son by her first husband, Count Imhoff. Lady Ducie remembers Countess Imhoff coming to visit her mother, always with a great deal of state, and always dressed in white satin and swansdown, like one of Romney’s pictures. Mr. Grisewood succeeded the Imhoffs, and, when his son became a Roman Catholic, sold the place to Mr. Bias. We drove to the house, which stands well—a comfortable yellow stone house in pretty grounds, with a clear running stream. Its reminiscences and the power of calling them up made Mrs. Stewart speak with great admiration of those who ‘could find the least bit of bone and create a mastodon.’

“In returning, Mrs. Stewart told the story of Miss Geneviève Ward, the actress. In early life she was travelling with her mother, when they fell in with a handsome young Russian, Count Constant Guerra. He proposed to her, and as the mother urged it, thinking it a good match, she married him then and there in her mother’s presence, without witnesses, he solemnly promising to make her his wife publicly as soon as he could. When he could, he refused to fulfil his promise; but the mother was an energetic woman, and she appealed to the Czar, who forced Guerra to keep his word. He said he would do what the Czar bade him, but that his wife should suffer for it all her life. To his amazement, when the day for the marriage arrived, the bride appeared with her mother, led to the altar in a long crape veil as to a funeral. Her brothers stood by her with loaded pistols, and at the door of the church was a carriage into which she stepped as soon as the ceremony was over, and he never saw her again. She is Madame Constant Guerra, and has acted as ‘Guerrabella.’

“‘Sir John Acton (whose son was Lady Granville’s first husband) was a great friend of Lord Nelson, who was at that time occupied in a vain and hopeless search for the French fleet.[220] One day Sir John was in his wife’s dressing-room while she was preparing for dinner. As her French maid was dressing her, a letter was put into her hand, at which she gave such a start that she ran a pin she was holding into Lady Acton. This caused Lady Acton to inquire what ailed her. She said the letter was from her brother, a French sailor, from whom she had not heard for a long time, and about whom she had been anxious. Sir John Acton, with great presence of mind, offered to read her the letter while she went on doing her mistress’s hair. As soon as he had read it he went off to Lord Nelson. The letter gave all the information so long sought in vain, and the battle of the Nile was the result of the prick of a pin.’”

“Prestbury, Oct. 6.—It poured so hard this morning that I put off leaving Sarsden till late. Mrs. Stewart again talked much of the Hanoverian Court, of the Guelph love of doubtful stories; how she saved up any story she heard for the blind King. One day she was telling him a story ‘about Margaret Bremer’s father’ as they were driving. Suddenly the horses started, and the carriage was evidently going to be upset. ‘Why don’t you go on?’ said the King. ‘Because, sir, we are just going to upset.’—‘That is the coachman’s affair,’ said the King; ‘do you go on with your story.’

“In returning, we turned aside to Sudeley Castle, the old Seymour house, where Katherine Parr is buried. It is a picturesque and grand old house, partially restored, partly now a green courtyard surrounded by ruined walls and arches. The Queen’s (modern) tomb has a touching sleeping figure[221] guarded by two angels. As we were coming out of the chapel, Mrs. Dent[222] pursued us—a picturesque figure in a Marie Antoinette hat—and brought us in to tea. The Dents made their fortunes as glovers, and, in their present magnificence, a parcel of their gloves, as from the shop, is always left in a conspicuous place in the hall, to ‘keep them humble.’”

“Tettenhall Wood, Oct. 12.—Whilst with the Corbets at Cheltenham, I visited Thirlstone, a curious house which belonged to Lord Northbrook. It was afterwards bought by Sir J. Philipps, the bibliomaniac, and contains the most enormous and extraordinary collection of books and pictures imaginable; a few gems, but imbedded in masses of rubbish, which the present possessor, Mrs. Fenwick, daughter of the collector, is forbidden to sell or destroy.

“Donington Rectory, Oct. 13.—This is a pleasant place in itself, and any place would be pleasant within view of the beloved Wrekin.[223] On arriving, I went on at once to Boscobel, and saw the oak which grew from an acorn of the tree that sheltered Charles II., and in the ancient half-timbered house, the hiding-place under the floor at the top of the turret-stairs, where the Prince is said to have crouched for forty-eight hours, with his trap-door concealed by cheeses. Well smothered he must have been, if Staffordshire cheeses smelt then as they do now. There is a good portrait of Charles, which he presented to the house after the Restoration. I went on with Henry de Bunsen to White Ladies, now a low ruin of red walls in a meadow, but entered still by a fine Norman archway. Inside is a quiet burial-ground for Roman Catholics, amongst whose lichen-tinted headstones is that of ‘Mistress Joan, who was called friend by Charles II.’—being one of those who assisted in his escape. Beyond, in Hubble Lane, is the ruin of the Pendrill house. The Pendrills[224] were seven brothers, common labourers, but went up to London and had a pension after the Restoration.

“We went on to Tong—a glorious church, quite a church of the dead, so full of noble tombs of Stanleys and Vernons. Near it, in low-lying lands with water, is Tong Castle, the old house of the Durants. The last Mr. Durant brought in another lady to live with his wife, which she resented, and she left him. There was a long divorce suit, which they both attended every day in coaches and six. Owing to some legal quibble, he gained his suit, though the facts against him were well known, and he was so delighted at the triumph over his wife that he erected a monument in honour of his victory on the hill above the castle. The sons all took part with their mother, and when Mr. Durant was lying in his last illness, they set barrels of gunpowder surreptitiously under the monument, and had a match and train ready. They bribed a groom at the house to ride post-haste with the news as soon as the breath was out of their father’s body; and the news of his death first became known to the county by the monument being blown into shivers. The Durants sold Tong to Lord Bradford.”

“One day I went with Henry Strutt,[225] whom I like much, to Wakefield, to draw the old chapel on the bridge. What an awful place Wakefield is—always an inky sky and an inky landscape, and the river literally so inky that the Mayor went out in a boat, dipped his pen, and wrote a letter with it to the Commissioners of Nuisances.”

“Raby Castle, Nov. 1.—I came here on Monday, meeting the delicately humorous Mr. Dicky Doyle at Darlington, yet with much fear that there were few other guests; but I was relieved to find ‘Eleanor the Good,’ Duchess of Northumberland, seated at the five-o’clock tea-table, and have had much pleasant talk with her. She spoke of her absorbing attachment to Alnwick and the pain it was to leave it; that the things which make the greatest blanks in life are not the greatest griefs, but the losses which most affect daily life and habits.... Frederick Stanley and Lady Constance[226] came in the evening, he very pleasant, and she almost more full of laughs than any one I ever saw. Other guests are Colonel and Mrs. Duncombe, young Gage, who will be Lord Gage,[227] and just before dinner a good-looking youth came in, who turned out to be Peddie Bennet.[228]

“Yesterday Lord and Lady Pollington came, and old Lord Strathnairn, looking thinner and more of an old dandy than ever.”

“Nov. 3.—Yesterday, while I was walking with the Pollingtons through the beech-woods deep in rustling leaves, the castle bell announced the advent of guests, and returning, we found the Warwicks and Brooke arrived.”

“Whitburn Hall, Nov. 7.—There is a great pleasure not only in the affection, but in the demonstration of affection which one receives here. Dear old Lady Williamson, in her beautiful tender old age, wins all hearts by the patience with which she bears her blindness, and the sweetness with which she sometimes imagines she sees; and Lady Barrington’s lovely and lovable old face brings sunshine to all around it.... In the younger generation, all is hospitality and kindness.”

“Brancepeth Castle, Nov. 8.—Yesterday I went with Augusta Harrington to visit Edward[229] and Tunie Liddell in their new home at Jarrow. It is startling to see how the spirit that animated the early martyrs has induced them to exchange competence for penury, and to give up the elms and flowers and pleasant sunny rooms of the Rectory at Wimpole. Now they are amidst a teeming population of blackened, foul-mouthed, drunken roughs, living in miserable rows of dismal houses, in a country where every vestige of vegetation is killed by noxious chemical vapours, on the edge of a slimy marsh, with a distance of inky sky, and furnaces vomiting forth volumes of blackest smoke. All nature seems parched and writhing under the pollution. Their days are perfectly full of work, and they have scarcely ever an evening to themselves.... They said our visit did them good, and I shall go again.

“Edward had been perplexed by an old woman, one of his parishioners, always declaring herself to be at least ten years younger than he felt certain she must be, yet he did not think she was of the kind who would tell a lie. At last he found that she dated her age from her baptism. ‘The clergy were not so quick upon us then,’ she said, ‘as they are now; so my father he just waited till we were all born to have us baptized, and then had us all done together: there were eleven of us.’

“I reached this great castle in pitch darkness. It is a magnificent place—a huge courtyard and enormous fabric girdled in by tremendous towers of Henry III. The staircase is modern, but most of the rooms have still the vaulted ceilings of Henry III.’s time, though the arms of the Nevilles, with which they were once painted, are gone now. The beer and wine cellars, with some cells called dungeons, are very curious. The butler pointed out with pride the black cobwebs which hung in festoons and cover much of the wine, a great deal of which was in the huge bottles called ‘cocks’ and ‘hens.’ The white cobwebs he had less opinion of: they are less healthy.

“Pleasant Lady Haddington[230] and her daughter are here. Lady Boyne[231] is a most pretty and winning hostess, and her children are thoroughly well brought up, and take a pleasant easy part in everything. In the evenings the whole party dance ‘Durham reels’ in the great hall.

“It was disappointing to have snow to-day, but there is much to interest in the house and in the old church of St. Brandon close by, where some grand figures of the Nevilles sleep before the altar. The very curious pews and reading-desk of the time of Bishop Cosin were destroyed in a mutilation of the church under the garb of ‘restoration’ sixteen years ago.

“There are several curious pictures by Hogarth here, in which the Lord Boyne of that day is introduced; but the most remarkable is one of Sir Francis Dashwood as a monk of Medmenham worshipping a naked woman and all the good things of life.”

“Kirklands, Nov. 14.—On Friday I was again at Jarrow, and was warmly welcomed by the Edward Liddells. Next morning I went with Edward to the wonderful old church of the seventh century, where Bede’s chair still stands under the Saxon arches. All around vegetation is blasted; dead trees rear their naked boughs into the black sky, and grimy rushes vainly endeavour to grow in the poisonous marshes. The very horror of ugliness gives a weird and ghastly interest to the place. Edward finds endless work, and enjoys the struggle he lives in. As Montalembert says, ‘Ce n’est pas la victoire qui fait le bonheur des nobles cœurs—c’est le combat.’ His is literally a Christian warfare. If he has spare time, he employs it in looking about the streets for drunken men. As he sees them come reeling along, he offers to help them, and walks home with them clinging to his arm. On the way he draws them out, and having thus found out where they live, returns next day, armed with the silly things they have let fall, to make them ashamed with. While I was making a little sketch of the church, a wedding party came in, the bridegroom being tipsy. Edward accused him of it, and he confessed at once, saying that he had been in such a fright at the ceremony, he had been obliged to take some spirits to keep his courage up. Edward said he wondered he could care for that sort of courage, that was only Dutch courage, real English courage was the only right sort; and as he supposed he wished to make his wife happy, that was the sort of courage he must look for; but being drunk on the day he married was a bad omen for her happiness. And yet, in the midst of his little scolding, Edward was so charming to them all that the whole wedding party were captivated, and an acquaintance, if not a friendship, was founded. It all showed a power of work in the real way to win souls. And—