“Mrs. Hamilton Hamilton was the first person Queen Marie Amelie sent for after her accession. She went in the evening, and found the Queen sitting at a table with Madame Adelaïde and one other lady, the wife of the Swedish Minister. A place was given to her between the Queen and Madame Adelaïde. The first words of the Queen seemed ominous—‘Nous avons laissé notre bonheur à Neuilly, Madame Hamilton.’ But Madame Adelaïde instantly took up the conversation, and talked of a bullet which she had found in her mirror, saying that she should never have the mirror mended, but should preserve it as ‘un souvenir historique.’

“Lady Waterford says how much brighter and happier people are for having something young about them,—a young lady, a child, a young dog even. She says, ‘I want to make a picture of Hope painting the future in the brightest colours. It will be such a beautiful subject. A rainbow will pour into the room and all its colours be reflected on her palette.’”

“July 20.—Lady Waterford and the Ellices went to Broadlands, and returned in the evening radiant, and full of the Conference, with which they were delighted. I was very sorry indeed to be too ill to go, these Broadland ‘Conferences’ being quite a type of the times.

“Here at Highcliffe we have sat in the library in the morning, the great Brugmantia bursting into its bloom of scarlet bells in the conservatory beyond, Lady Waterford painting at her table, the rest working beneath the stained window.”

“Heckfield Place, August 13.—This is a beautiful open country with lovely woods and purple heaths studded with groups of fine old firs. The grounds of Heckfield itself are delightful, and the house, of red brick, stands upon a high bastioned terrace filled with brilliant flower-beds and overlooking undulating green lawns and an artificial sheet of water.

“Lord Eversley and his daughter Emma received me with most cordial kindness and a real family welcome, and it was pleasant to see so many interesting pictures of our common ancestors,—on the staircase a full-length of my great-grandmother Mrs. Hare, as a young girl tripping along with her apron full of flowers. There are fine portraits of her father and mother; and her sister, Helena Lefevre, is represented again and again, from youth to age.

“Lord Eversley gave, as a curious instance of the awe in which the great Duke kept his Duchess, that Mrs. Lefevre, going one day to visit her, found her dissolved in tears. When she asked the reason, the Duchess said, sobbing, ‘Look there,’ and from the window Mrs. Lefevre saw workmen cutting down all the ivy which made the whole beauty of the trees before the house; and when Mrs. Lefevre asked the Duchess why she did not remonstrate, she showed her a written paper which the head man had just brought in, having received it from the Duke—‘Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington desires that the ivy may immediately be cut down from every tree on his estate.’ They had begun with those nearest home; the Duke had evidently forgotten to except those, but his order could not be trifled with.

“Heckfield, August 14.—Yesterday Colonel Townley came to dine, celebrated for his ride of eight hundred miles without stopping. It was of great importance that certain despatches from our Government should reach Constantinople before the Austrian messenger could deliver his, and Colonel Townley accomplished it. When within a few hours of Constantinople, an old wound opened from his exertion, and he felt almost dying; but just then he caught sight of the Austrian envoy coming over the brow of a distant hill, and it nerved him, and he rode on and arrived first. It gained him his colonelcy. He is a pleasant, handsome, unaffected man.”

“There is here in Salisbury the usual familiar society of a cathedral close—the Canon in residence and the other inhabitants meeting and going in and out of each others’ houses at all hours. With Canon Douglas Gordon I have been to the Palace, where we found the Bishop in his garden, which is quite lovely, the rich green and brilliant flowers sweeping up into and mingling with the grey arcades and rich chapels of the cathedral; and from all points the tall heaven-soaring spire is sublime, especially in the purple shadows of evening, with birds circling ceaselessly round it.

“August 16.—To Breamore, the fine old Elizabethan house of Sir Edward Hulse, almost gutted by fire some years ago. I was taken up to the housetop to survey several surrounding counties, and sat the rest of the afternoon with the family in the shade of the old red gables. Two very handsome boys, Edward and Westrow, asked for a story.”

“Stanmer Park, August 18.—I came here yesterday to Lord Chichester’s. It is a moderate house in a dullish park, with fine trees and a bright flower-garden. We pray a great deal, and Lord Chichester—who is intensely good—makes little sermons at prayers.... Lord Pelham is very amusing under a quiet manner. ‘I thought I heard your dulcet tones, my love, so I am coming out to you,’ he is just saying, as he steps through the open window to his wife upon the verandah.”

“Mr. Newton was at a spiritual séance. An old man of the party was told that the spirit manifested was his wife, upon which he said:—

“‘Is that you, ’Arriet?’

“‘Yes, it’s me.’

“‘Are you ’appy, ’Arriet?’

“‘Yes, very ‘appy.’

“‘’Appier than you were with me, ’Arriet?’

“‘Yes, much ‘appier.’

“‘Where are you, ‘’Arriet?’

“‘In ‘ell.’

“Mr. Newton says that the cry of the wood-pigeon is ‘Sow peas, do, do.’ There is a bird in Turkey of which the male seems to say a string of words meaning ‘Have you seen my sheep?’ when the female replies, ‘No, I have not seen them.’ They are said to be a shepherd and shepherdess who lost all their sheep and died of a broken heart, when they were turned into birds. But the interesting point is that the story is found in an old Greek novel—‘Longus.’

“The late Prince Torlonia, being at Naples, went into the room where the public appointments were sold by auction. He left his umbrella there, and went back to get it while the sale was going on. The bidders, chiefly Neapolitan nobles, were aghast to see the great Torlonia reappear, and at last, after some consultation, one of them came up to him and said they would give him 60,000 francs if he would leave. Instead of showing the intense astonishment he felt at this most unexpected proposal, Torlonia only shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘È póco,’ and they gave him 100,000.

“The only other guests at Mountfield are a Mr. Baker, a Gloucestershire squire, and his wife. He is an excellent man, and was the first who instituted a Reformatory. This he did first at his own expense, but the Government bought it from him. He speaks with the most dreary voice. Mr. Newton says it is ‘just the sort of utterance he should be grateful for if he was making his last speech upon the scaffold.’”

“When Lord Stanhope was dying, he said touchingly to Lady Mohun, ‘You know what my dearest Emily asked of me in her last words. I have tried to do as she wished, and you, my dear, have been such a good and kind daughter to me, you have almost made me wish to live.’

“I have been spending charming days with Hugh Pearson. He says, ‘What will become of a country in which the upper classes are content to be fed upon Farrar’s ‘Life of Christ’ and the middle classes upon Moody and Sankey?’ He told me of Justice Knight Bruce’s capital lines—

“It is an inexpressible pleasure to know a little of the world, and to be of no character or significancy in it.”—Steele.

But in spite of these little catastrophes attending its publication, I am certain that “Cities of Northern and Central Italy,” which cost me far more pains and labour, and which is more entirely original, than all my earlier books put together, was by far the best of my writings, up to that time.

Before the book was out, I was already devoted to a new work, suggested by the great delight I had long found in London, and by the desire of awakening others to an enjoyment of its little-known treasures. A set of lectures delivered at Sir John Shaw-Lefevre’s house in Seymour Street, and a series of articles in Good Words, laid the foundation for my “Walks in London.” When employed in this work, as in all my others, I felt all those portions of life to be the most interesting which were spent in following out any one single purpose.

Journal.

“Jan. 19.—Yesterday I went to Lady Taunton. She has a beautiful portrait of her daughter by young Richmond—a sort of play upon every possible tone of yellow—a yellow gown, a yellow background, a great cushion worked with yellow sunflowers, yellow hair looped up with pearls, only a great white living lily to throw it all back. It is a most poetical picture.

“In the evening I went to a supper at the house of young F. P. to meet a whole society of young actors, artists, &c. Eden was there, known in the stage world as Herbert, a name he took to save the feelings of his episcopal uncle, Lord Auckland. His is a fine and a charming face, but rather sad.... There were about fourteen men present, very good singing, and then supper, much kindness and cordiality, and not a word which all their mothers and sisters might not have heard. It would not have been so at college or in a mess-room: so much for maligned actors.”

“It poured, so I sat some time with R. on one of the seats. He talked long and openly of all the temptations of his life, and endlessly about himself. I urged that the best way of ennobling his own nature must be through others, that self-introspection would never do, and could only lead to egotism and selfishness, but that in trying to help others he would unconsciously help himself. I find it most difficult to say anything of this kind without making illustrations out of my own life, which I have certainly no right to think exemplary.

“As we were going away, a lady who had stared long and hard at us, and whom I thought to be some waif turned up from my Roman lectures, came up to me. ‘I think, sir, that you were standing close to my sister just now, and she has lost her purse.’—‘I am very sorry your sister has lost her purse; it is very unfortunate.’—‘Yes, but my sister has lost her purse, and you, you were standing by her when she lost it.’—‘I think after what you have said I had better give you my card.’—‘Oh, no, no, no.’—’ Oh, yes, yes, yes: after what you have said I must insist upon giving you my card.’ What an odd experience, to be taken for a pickpocket! R. thought the lady had really picked my pocket, but she had not.”

“Monk’s Orchard, Jan. 23.—This is a fine big house, be-pictured, be-statued, with a terraced garden, a lake, and a great flat park. A Mr. and Mrs. Rodd are here with their son Rennell, a pleasant-looking boy, wonderfully precocious and clever, though, as every one listens to him, he has—not unnaturally—a very good opinion of himself: still one feels at once that he is the sort of boy who will be heard of again some day.

“Our host, Mr. Lewis Loyd, is in some ways one of the most absent men in the world. One day, meeting a friend, he said, ‘Hallo! what a long time it is since I’ve seen you! How’s your father?’—‘Oh, my father’s dead.’—‘God bless me! I’m very sorry,’ &c. The next year he met the same man again, and had forgotten all about it, so began with, ‘Hallo! what a long time since I’ve seen you! How’s your father?’-‘Oh, my father’s dead still!’

“We have been to church at Shirley—one of Scott’s new country churches. In the churchyard is a cross to poor Sir John Anson, and beside it a granite altar-tomb with an inscription saying that it is to Ruskin’s father—‘a perfectly honest merchant,’ and that ‘his son, whom he loved to the uttermost, and taught to speak the truth, says this.’

“I dined on the 26th with Lady E. Adeane. Mr. Percy Doyle was very amusing. Talking of the anxiety of ministers in America to change their posts, he said, ‘If my father had bequeathed to me Hell and Texas, I should have lived in Hell and let Texas.’

“Yesterday I went to luncheon with the Vaughans at the Temple, and met there Miss Rye, who has a home for homeless children at Clapham, and takes them off by batches to America, to establish them there as servants, &c. She produced from her pocket about a hundred cartes-de-visite of the children, wild, unkempt, and wicked-looking, and of the same children after they had been under cultivation. Certainly the change was marvellous, but then she had employed a good photographer for the redeemed children and a very bad one for the little ruffians.”

“Feb. 8.—The opening of Parliament. I went to Lord Overstone’s. At a quarter to two the procession passed beneath—the fine old carriages and gorgeous footmen, one stream of gold and red, pouring through the black crowd and leafless trees. We all counted the carriages differently—eight, twelve, fifteen; and there were only six! All one saw of royalty was the waving of a white cap-string, as the Queen, sitting well back in the carriage, bowed to the people.”

“Feb. 13.—Dined at the Dowager Lady Barrington’s—the great topic being dinner past, present, and prospective. George, Lord Barrington, said that he had dined at the Brazilian Minister’s, and he was sure the cookery was good and also the wine, for he had eaten of every dish and drunk fourteen kinds of wine, and had passed a perfectly good night and been quite well the next morning. He also dined with Mr. Brand the Speaker, and complimented Mrs. Brand upon the dinner. She told her cook. He said, ‘We are three, Lord Granville’s, Mr. Russell Sturgis’s, and myself; there are only three cooks in London.’ When Lord Harrington afterwards saw Mrs. Brand, she told him the cook had asked who had praised him, and ‘when he heard,’ continued Mrs. Brand, ‘he also gave you his little meed of praise.’ ‘Ah, M. Barrington,’ he said, ‘c’est une bonne fourchette.’ He had been at Kinmel, but said he had ‘dismissed Mr. Hughes.’”

“Lord Cardwell was in the habit of using the Church prayers at family prayers. One day his valet came to him and said, ‘I must leave your lordship’s service at once.’—‘Why, what have you to complain of?’—‘Nothing personally, but your lordship will repeat every morning—“We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and have left undone those things which we ought to have done:”—now I freely admit that I have often done things I ought not, but that I have left undone things that I ought to have done, I utterly deny: and I will not stay here to hear it said.’”

“Feb. 19.—A charming walk with Charlie Wood to St. Paul’s, along the Embankment and then a labyrinth of quaint City streets. He called it his half-holiday, and I am sure it was so to me to mount into his pure unworldly atmosphere even for two hours. He is really the only young man I know who at once thinks no evil, believes no evil, and does no evil.”

“Coming to a river, the ‘fare’ asked, ‘What do you call this river?’—‘It’s not a river at all, your honour; it’s only a strame.’—‘Well, but what do you call it?’—‘Oh, we don’t call it at all, your honour; it just comes of itself.’”

“Feb. 24.—Dined at Lord Strathmore’s, and went on with Hedworth and Lizzie Williamson to Lady Bloomfield’s, where sixty-eight cousins assembled to take leave of Lord and Lady Lytton on their departure for India.”

If any one has ever the patience to read this memoir through, they will have been struck by the way in which, for many years before the time I am writing of, the persons with whom I lived were quite different from those amongst whom my childhood was spent. Arthur Stanley had never got over the publication of the “Memorials of a Quiet Life,” though he was always at a loss to say what he objected to in it, and Mary Stanley I never saw at all. From Lady Augusta alone I continued to receive frequent and affectionate messages.

Journal.

“Holmhurst, March 12.—I have been again up to London for dear Augusta Stanley’s funeral on the 9th. It was a beautiful day. All the approaches to Westminster were filled with people in mourning.

“It seemed most strange thus to go to the Deanery again—that the doors closed for six years were opened wide by death, by the death of one who had always remained my friend, and whom no efforts of others could alienate. Red cloth showed that royalty was coming, and I went at once to the library, where an immense crowd of cousins were assembled. As I went down the little staircase with Kate Vaughan, four ladies in deep mourning passed to the dining-room, carrying immense wreaths of lovely white flowers: they were the Queen and three of her daughters. The Queen seemed in a perfect anguish of grief. She remained for a short time alone with the coffin, I believe knelt by it, and was then taken to the gallery overhanging the Abbey.

“The procession of mourners went round the Abbey from the choir by a longer way to the chapel on account of the people. As it passed the corner of the transept, the strange little figure of Mr. Carlyle slipped out. He had been very fond of Augusta, was full of feeling for Arthur, and seemed quite unconscious of who and where he was. He ran along, before the chief mourners, by the side of the coffin, and in the chapel itself he stood at the head of the grave, making the strangest ejaculations at intervals through the service.”

I insert some poor lines which I wrote “In Memoriam.”