Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott Part 15

I rely upon you to pray much for me. It may yet be that other sacrifices will be required, and I may need more strength; but what I chiefly fear is that I may not profit as I ought by that wonderful union of trial and consolation which G.o.d has of late vouchsafed me.

Yours very affectionately,

JAMES R. HOPE-SCOTT.

The Very Rev. Dr. Newman.

On his wife's death Mr. Hope-Scott had written the following letter to Mr.

Gladstone:--

_J. R. Hope-Scott, Esq., Q.G. to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P._

Abbotsford: Nov. 3, 1858.

My dear Gladstone,--I was uneasy at not having written to you, and hoped you would write--which you have done, and I thank you much for it. An occasion like this pa.s.sed by is a loss to friendship, but it was not, nor is, easy for me to write to you. You will remember that the root of our friendship, which I trust [was] the deepest, was fed by a common interest in religion, and I cannot write to you of her whom it has pleased G.o.d to take from me without reference to that Church whose doctrines and promises she had embraced with a faith which made them the objects of sense to her; whose teaching now moulded her mind and heart; whose spiritual blessings surrounded and still surround her, and which has shed upon her death a sweetness which makes me linger upon it more dearly than upon any part of our united and happy life.

These things I could not pa.s.s over without ignoring the foundation of our friendship; but still I feel that to mention them has something intrusive, something which it may be painful for you to read, as though it required an answer which you had rather not give. So I will say only one thing more, and it is this: If ever, in the strife of politics and religious controversy, you are tempted to think or speak hardly of that Church--if she should appear to you arrogant, or exclusive, or formal, for my dear Charlotte's sake and mine check that thought, if only for an instant, and remember with what exceeding care and love she tends her children....

And now good-bye, my dear Gladstone. Forgive me every word which you had rather I had not said. May G.o.d long preserve to you and your wife that happiness which you now have in each other! and when it pleases Him that either of you should have to mourn the other, may He be as merciful to you as He has been to me!

Yours affectionately,

JAMES E. HOPE-SCOTT.

And now Mr. Hope-Scott was left alone in Abbotsford, with his only surviving child, a very fragile and delicate flower too, such as to make a father tremble while he kissed it. We have already seen [Footnote: See pp.

44-46, and 55, 56, ch. ii, in vol. i.] that he could resort sometimes to poetry as that comfort for the over-burdened mind, in which Keble's theory would place even the princ.i.p.al source of the poetical spirit. [Footnote: Keble, _Praelectiones Academicae_, Oxon. 1844. Prael. i. t. i. p. 10.

] As every reader will sympathise with such expressions of feeling, I do not hesitate to transcribe some touching verses which he wrote at this season of sorrow, and which, with a few others, he had privately printed, and given in his lifetime to two or three of his very closest friends.

These others will be found in the appendix. [Footnote: Appendix IV.]

_Sancta Mater, istud agas, Crucifixi fige plagas, Cordi meo valide._

CHRISTMAS, 1858.

My babes, why were you born, Since in life's early morn Death overtook you, and, before I could half love you, you were mine no more?

Walter, my own bright boy, Hailed as the hope and joy Of those who told thy grandsire's fame, And looking, loved thee, even for thy name;

And thou, my Margaret dear, Come as if sent to cheer A widowed heart, ye both have fled, And, life scarce tasted, lie among the dead!

Then, oh! why were you born?

Was it to make forlorn A father who had happier been If your sweet infant smiles he ne'er had seen?

Was it for this you came?

Dare I for you to blame The G.o.d who gave and took again, As though my joy was sent but to increase my pain?

Oh no! of Christmas bells The cheerful music tells Why you were born, and why you died, And for my doubting doth me gently chide.

The infant Christ, who lay On Mary's breast to-day, Was He not born for you to die, And you to bear your Saviour company?

Then stay not by the grave, My heart, but up, and crave Leave to rejoice, and hear the song Of infant Jesus and His happy throng.

That wondrous throng, on earth So feeble from its birth, Which little thought, and little knew, Now hath both G.o.d and man within its view!

Yes, you were born to die; Then shall I grudging sigh Because to you are sooner given The crown, the palm, the angel joy of heaven?

Rather, O Lord, bestow On me the grace to bow, Childlike, to Thee, and since above Thou keep'st my treasures, there to keep my love.

It is scarcely necessary to say that one of the friends to whom Mr. Hope- Scott sent these verses on his family losses of 1858 was Dr. Newman. The note in which his friend acknowledged the precious gift witnesses to the intimacy of their friendship in as striking a manner as any I have been enabled to make use of:--

_The Very Rev. Dr. Newman to J. R. Hope-Scott, Esq., Q.G._

The Oratory, Birmingham: October 1, 1860.

My dear Hope-Scott,--I value extremely the present you have made me; first of all for its own sake, as deepening, by the view which it gives me of yourself, the affection and the reverence which I feel towards you.

And next I feel your kindness in thus letting me see your intimate thoughts; and I rejoice to know that, in spite of our being so divided one from another, as I certainly do not forget you, so you are not unmindful of me.

The march of time is very solemn now--the year seems strewn with losses; and to hear from you is like hearing the voice of a friend on a field of battle.

I am surprised to find you in London now. For myself, I have not quitted this place, or seen London, since last May year, when I was there for a few hours, and called on Badeley.

If he is in town, say to him everything kind from me when you see him.

Ever yours affectionately,

JOHN H. NEWMAN,

Of the Oratory.

James B. Hope-Scott, Esq.

CHAPTER XXIV.

1859-1870.

Mr. Hope-Scott's Return to his Profession--Second Marriage--Lady Victoria Howard--Mr. Hope-Scott at Hyeres--Portraits of Mr. Hope-Scott-- Miscellaneous Recollections--Mr. Hope-Scott in the Highlands--Ways of Building--Story of Second-sight at Lochshiel.

The last of the poems in the little collection which is elsewhere given, evidently belongs to a time when Mr. Hope-Scott had regained his tranquillity, and was about to resume, like a wise and brave man, the ordinary duties of his profession. After his great affliction he had interrupted them for a whole year, first staying for some time at Arundel Castle, and then residing at Tours with his brother-in-law and sister, Lord and Lady Henry Kerr. To those readers who expect that every life which approaches in any way an exalted and ideal type must necessarily conform to the rules of romance, it may appear strange that Mr. Hope-Scott did not remain a widower for any great length of time. But in truth the same motives which led him to return to the Bar, notwithstanding the overwhelming calamity he had sustained, might also have led him again to enter the married state; or rather, if under other circ.u.mstances he would have thought it right to do so, would not have interposed any insuperable obstacle against it now.

Mr. Hope-Scott, soon after his conversion, had become acquainted with Henry Granville, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, afterwards Duke of Norfolk. They had first met, I believe, at Tunbridge Wells, where, on October 2, 1852, was born Mr. Hope-Scott's daughter Mary Monica (now the Hon. Mrs. Maxwell- Scott), at whose baptism Lady Arundel and Surrey acted as proxy for the Dowager Lady Lothian. The acquaintance had very soon developed into an intimate and confidential friendship, which by this time had become still closer, from the fear which was beginning to be felt that the Duke's life, so precious to his family and to the Catholic world in general, was fast drawing to its early termination. To the Duke, therefore, and to his family, it was but natural for Mr. Hope-Scott to turn for comfort in his extreme need. In such times sympathy soon deepens into affection, and thus it was that an attachment sprang up between Mr. Hope-Scott and the Duke's eldest daughter, Lady Victoria Fitzalan Howard. This was towards the end of 1860. The Duke was then in his last illness, and on November 12 in that year the betrothed pair knelt at his bedside to receive his blessing. He died on November 25.

Although a notice of great interest might be drawn up from materials before me of Lady Victoria herself, and of the sweetness of character and holiness of life which so much endeared her to all with whom she was connected; yet the time of her departure is still so recent, that I shall better consult the feelings and the wishes of surviving friends by merely placing before my readers one pa.s.sage from a letter relating to her. The writer was a nun intimately acquainted with her, and describes with great truth and simplicity the graces which especially adorned her: 'She was a person to be observed and studied; and I do not think... I ever saw her without studying her, and consequently without my admiration for her increasing. She was so unworldly, so forgetful of self, and, what always struck me most, so humble, and striving to screen herself from praise; and humility and self- forgetfulness like what she practised, these are the virtues of saints, and not of ordinary people.'

The marriage of Mr. Hope-Scott and Lady Victoria Howard was solemnised at Arundel on January 7, 1861, and this too, it is needless to add, proved a very happy union, though on the side of affliction, in the loss of two infants, and in Lady Victoria's early death, it strangely resembled the first marriage. Of twin daughters born June 6, 1862, Catherine and Minna- Margaret, the first lived for but a few hours. [Footnote: Two more daughters, Josephine Mary (born May 1864) and Theresa Anne (born September 14, 1865), were born before (again, as it were, but for an instant) a son was granted; this was Philip James (born April 8, 1868), but who lived only till the next day. He was placed beside his sister Catherine in the castle vault at Arundel. Mr. Hope-Scott's last and only surviving son is James Fitzalan Hope, born December 18, 1870.] There are, however, many days of sunshine still to record. Abbotsford and Dorlin, as before, were the chief retreats in which Mr. Hope-Scott found repose from the toil and hara.s.s of his professional life. At Arundel Castle and Norfolk House he and his family were, of course, frequent guests. From 1859 it was thought necessary that the surviving child of his first marriage should spend every winter in a warm climate. Hyeres, in the south of France, was selected for this purpose, which led to Mr. Hope-Scott's purchasing a property there, the Villa Madona, on a beautiful spot near the Boulevard d'Orient. Here he spent several winters with his family, in the years 1863-70. He added to the property very gradually, bit by bit; first a vineyard, and then an oliveyard, as opportunities offered, and indulged over it the same pa.s.sion for improvement which he had displayed at Abbotsford and Dorlin. He took the most practical interest in all the culture that makes up a Provencal farm, the wine, the oil, the almonds, the figs, not forgetting the fowls and the rabbits. He laid out the ground and made a road, set a plantation of pines, and adorned the bank of his boulevard with aloes and yuccas and eucalyptus--in short, astonished his French neighbours by his perfection of taste and regardlessness of expense. He did not, however, build more than a bailiff's cottage in the first instance, but rented the Villa Favart in the neighbourhood, and amused himself with his estate, intending it for his daughter's residence in future years. At his death, however, the French law requiring the estate to be shared, it was found necessary to sell it. He greatly enjoyed the repose of Hyeres, the strolls on the boulevard, and the occasional excursions that charming watering-place affords--Pierrefeu, for example, and all the beautiful belt of coast region extending between Hyeres and the Presqu'ile. He was also able to enter more into society at Hyeres than latterly his health and business had permitted in London. One of his oldest and most valued friends, the late Serjeant Bellasis, had taken the Villa Sainte Cecile in his neighbourhood, and there was a circle of the best French families in and around Hyeres, whose names must not be omitted when we speak of Mr. Hope-Scott's and Lady Victoria's annual sojourn in the little capital of the Hesperides. Among these was the late Due de Luynes, so well known for his researches into the hydrography of the Dead Sea, Count Poniatowski, Madame Duquesne, M. de Butiny, Maire of Hyeres, M. and Madame de Walmer, and others. Cardinal Newman has noticed, what appears also in the correspondence, to how surprising a degree Mr.