No. 1 was a gentleman once in a good position, who had fallen into extreme poverty. I gave up being in London, I gave up going abroad, I always went in an omnibus instead of a cab, always travelled second class instead of first, to have £50 a year to give to No. 1. But when I found that my poor gentleman always took a hansom even to cross Eaton Square, I drew in my purse-strings.

No. 2 seemed very different. Rudely nurtured, he minded no difficulties, and was willing to live hardly. He only cared for work, and his work was science. He threw his whole life into it, and seemed on the eve of great discoveries—in fact, he made them. But he had no one to help him to buy the patents that were necessary, and I spent £800 for this, and altogether many thousand pounds in his behalf. He was to have repaid this sum if he became successful in life, but he made a very large fortune, and “forgot to pay it.” Then, having lost his fortune again, his originality and cleverness took another direction: he suddenly turned Buddhist, cared for nothing but the divine essence, and went off to India to join a brotherhood in which, after years of prayer and fasting, he might hope to obtain the distinction of “a little yellow garment.” He wrote then that his religion itself would prevent his ever again forgetting that he owed me four thousand pounds with interest. Yet, after his return, he repudiated his debt altogether, and denied that he had even the slightest obligation to me. All I had spent was thrown away! No. 2 was an utter collapse.

No. 4 was very engaging and I became very fond of him. He was perpetually at my home, where I always treated him as a younger brother, giving him money when I was away for whatever he wanted. When he wished to give a party to his friends in London, the food, the wine, the flowers, came from Holmhurst. He had to work hard in a public office, so every year I gave him money for the change of a Continental tour, and on one occasion, when he had no other companion, I took him myself, and showed him the whole of a foreign country. This went on for nine years. Then a circumstance occurred which made me feel that he, in his turn, might, not even for one day, but for one hour, be useful to me. Under these circumstances I asked a favour of him. “No,” it was refused at once, “it might not be to his advantage: it might even possibly be rather inconvenient.” No. 4 collapsed.

No. 9, poor fellow, was long a great anxiety to me. He was of good family. He fell often—fell into the most frightful vice and shame. He repented bitterly, and then fell again worse than before. But in one of his best and truest times of repentance, God saw that he was positively unable to cope with temptation, and he died—died most mercifully, full of faith, hope, and gratitude. This was the end of No. 9. Thinking of him has often brought to my mind Rossetti’s lines—

And yet—

Page 405, for “Shackborough” read “Shuckborough.”

“Story of my Life.”—End of Vol. V.

THE STORY OF MY LIFE

VOL. VI

Certainly the longer one lives one feels how, of all shams, the religious sham is the worst—the man who talks “goody” without any heart to sympathise with sorrow or shame, and who thus can never help those who struggle sadly against vice and meanness, whilst tremulously aiming at a nobler life. The same, in a wider sense, is true of almost all sermons one hears—

I have endless compensations for a lonely life in my pretty little home, my sufficient means, my multitudes of friends. Besides, it is as Madame d’Houdetot wrote to Madame Necker, “Vous savez que le seul être malheureux est celui qui ne peut ni aimer, ni agir, ni mourir, et je suis bien loin de cette situation.” I often feel, however, that this book would give a very false idea of my life. I recount my many visits and what I hear there because it is amusing, and I leave unnoticed the months and months when nothing happens, and in which I am probably employed in quiet work at Holmhurst. With every one naturally it must be true that

Journal.

“Jan. 9, 1886.—I am just come back from a very pleasant visit at Battle Abbey, where I met the Powerscourts, Lord and Lady George Campbell (she lovely and like a beautiful Gainsborough), Lord Hardinge and a very nice daughter, Lord Wolmer and Lady Maude, Sir Prescott Hewitt, a young Ryder, and Lady Dorothy Nevill. The latter was most amusing, and well understands the famous principle—‘Glissez, mortels, n’appuyez pas.’ She and the Duchess of Cleveland, who was in very good vein, were quite charming together.”

To Miss Leycester.

“Holmhurst, Feb. 20, 1886.—Do you know that, except for ten days, I have been at home just three months to-day, and nearly all the time quite alone. I cannot say how much I have enjoyed the quietude of study and communing with great and wise people through many books. There is certainly the greatest pleasure in thus acquiring new thoughts, and, in a small way, fresh knowledge: indeed, I always feel that to give myself up to overwork is quite as great a temptation to me as over-idleness to some people.

“Each different literary work I have had has seemed to me, at the time, more interesting and engrossing. The little accidental discoveries are so amusing. Amongst those of this week, who do you think invented a wheel-barrow?—Blaise Pascal.

I went the next day to see Lady Foley, whose house in Grosvenor Square had been on their line of route. It had not only no pane of glass unbroken, but not even fragments of glass left, and stones heaped in the library enough to mend a good piece of road with. Lord Percy’s house, next door, was so ruined that they went away next day.

The call for a fresh edition of my “Walks in Rome” made me suddenly determine to go to Italy at the end of February. At Florence I was the constant guest of the ever-kind Duchess Dowager of Sermoneta, with whom I made delightful excursions in the hills.

To Miss Leycester.

To Miss Leycester.

“Hotel Noël Peter, Paris, June 6.—I am very glad to have accomplished a long-wished-for visit to the historic sites of Clairvaux and the Paraclete, though there is nothing whatever to see in either of them! How I have worked since I have been here! My book is written, but I have to go through every part of it on the spot. I breakfast at seven and work till eleven, then luncheon and work again till four o’clock, when I come in dead-tired, only to go out again to have food at a restaurant, and to bed at eight.”

“June 16.—Two desperately hard days at Versailles and two at the Louvre, looking over and collating. Certainly no place of residence need be cheaper than Paris. Life seems to cost nothing at all, a week here being equivalent to a day in London, or even at Rome. It is an oddly lonely life, as, except for ten minutes, I have seen no one to speak to since May 11: however, there would certainly have been no time for it.”

In July I was in London, and then at Buckhurst, in glorious summer weather, to meet Lord and Lady Lathom.

Journal.

“One of the curates at Llandaff was going to the place where Miss Hayward, sister of the Harrow Master, lived, and Catherine asked him to inquire if she remembered the circumstance. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that is exactly what happened; and that room is never used now.’

“There is much to interest in the palace, which has a charming early English chapel and a grand old kitchen. The cathedral retains the human interest of its old pavement and a few tombs, sadly mutilated or tinkered up: one of a Lady Arundel is very fine. There are curious paintings of Cadwallador and of Henry VIII. giving charters on one of the walls, by a painter of Henry VIII.’s time, who also decorated the ceiling of the very fine old dining-room in the palace. Round the town, much of the old wall remains, making a pleasant walk; but the most curious building is St. Mary’s Hospital, like a church, with a great single nave divided at the sides by chapels, which form the little two-roomed houses of ten old women, presented by the Bishop and custos, who live there rent-free in great comfort, with firing, and twelve shillings a week for their maintenance. At the end is the chapel, only separated from the rest by an old oak screen.

“Highcliffe, August 25.—I arrived here for my usual happy summer week with Tina, Lady Waterford, who has been a curious contrast to the lady of the place, but in herself very pleasant. She described how Cromwell, determined to take ‘the golden vale of Tipperary,’ said he would take it ‘by Hook or by Crook’—the two villages on either side the river—and thence the proverb.

“There has been a bee-show on the lawn here, Mr. Bellairs and young Evan Maberly going amongst the bees, taking them up, and treating them just as they pleased; but it looked horrible when their hats were covered with a crawling mass, and bees were hanging to nose and ears.

“Lychett Heath, Poole, August 30.—My visit at Highcliffe was a very happy one. ‘We have not had a single quarrel, scarcely even a dispute,’ said Lady Waterford when I came away.

“This is the beautiful house of the Eustace Cecils. The modern house is exquisitely placed amongst sandy, heathery hills, with a lovely view, across a rich wooded foreground, of the various reaches and windings of Poole harbour. I have had much pleasant talk with Lord Eustace, and like him immensely. We had a delightful excursion to-day, taking the train to Wool, and then driving in a car to Lulworth Cove, and walking up the fine wild hills, with noble sea-views, behind it. Then we went on to Lulworth Castle, stern and stately, quadrangular with round towers at the corners, standing on a terraced base, with beautiful park and woods around. We saw the pictures, a few good family portraits of the Welds, and Charles X.’s room which he inhabited when in exile.

“We had tea with the Bond family and the Misses Weld of Lulworth at Binden Abbey, a Cistercian ruin, of which little remains beyond foundations near some very curious fish-ponds.”

“August 31.—I should find it difficult to say how perfectly congenial I find Lord Eustace, or how much I could look upon him as a friend. In many ways he is like Charlie (Halifax), but is no ceremony-lover. No, he says he always admires Gallio—‘such an excellent straightforward man,’—and even agrees with him on the special occasion on which we hear of him.”

“Hardwick Hall, Suffolk, Sept. 17.—I have been spending several happy days with the Lowthers at Campsea Ashe, pleasant in every way, with much agreeable conversation. One day, when it turned on the origin of words, Mr. Lowther described how the expression of ‘never set the Thames on fire’ originated in the reproach to an unenthusiastic cook, who would never set her tamise on fire.

“We went to Aldeburgh, sailing in a yacht down an estuary to a point where the sea has eaten up what was once the site of a considerable town, of which only the picturesque ‘Moot Hall’ remains, stranded on the beach. It was a still, hot, glowing day, with a sea like that of the Ancient Mariner.

“Holmhurst, Sept. 26.—From Campsea Ashe I went to visit Gery Cullum, a friend I have long known, but never till lately been intimate with. One of his nieces met me at the station at Bury St. Edmunds, and brought me in a dogcart through that quaint town, past abbey gateways and the church where Mary, sister of Henry VIII., is buried, to the fine old house of Hardwick, which stands beyond a park well wooded with cedars and indigenous box, and which, with its bright flowers and sculptured terraces, well deserves the name of Allegro, as contrasted with Penseroso, the old neighbouring house of Rushbrooke.

“There is a great charm about the interior—not fine, but very large and most thoroughly comfortable—a small low hall with good portraits of James I. and Elizabeth as a child, &c.; a dining-room with family portraits; a library with curious MSS. The gardens are gorgeous in colour, and there are delightful walks beyond, with pines of all descriptions.

“On Sunday we went to service at Hawsteads, where the church has fine old monuments of Drurys and Cullums, and we sat in a high James I. pew to listen to a ranting Irish preacher, who lost himself completely in the mazes of his own nonsense, and finally made us laugh by the emphasis with which he announced, ‘As it is written, my brethren, in the Duke of Bookeronomy,’ &c.

“On Monday we picnicked in the park of Penseroso, the old house of Rushbrooke, standing in a wide moat, into which a former mistress of the place, an unfaithful wife, was thrown by her husband, and upon which she is said to float nightly. Her picture hangs above the magnificent staircase, and the window whence she was thrown is pointed out at the end of a suite of desolate unfurnished rooms. The house belonged to Lord Jermyn, and, whatever his relation to Henrietta Maria may have been, two magnificent cabinets of hers are here, which Lord Bristol, to his despair, inadvertently sold, with the house, to its present possessors. Here also the church has fine tombs.