Story of My Life Part 22

"Then the cholera camp was made. There was one house for the malignant cases, another for the convalescents, a third for the children of those taken or for those in whom there was reason to expect the disease to appear. Almost every nurse had to be dismissed for drunkenness; the people were almost alone, and the whole town seemed to depend on Sister Marion. Nine-tenths of those who took the cholera died. Mrs. P. took it herself, and was saved by constantly swallowing ice.

"I have just been to dine with the Master--a large party of undergraduates and very dull, the Master every now and then giving utterance to a solemn little proposition apropos of nothing at all--such as 'A beech-tree is a very remarkable tree, Mr.

Hare'--'It is a very pleasant thing to ride in a fly, Mr.

Bowden'--which no one attempted to contradict."

"_Dec. 11._--Yesterday I went to the service at St. Thomas's, where three-fourths of the congregation were in mourning owing to the cholera. The sermon began with three strange propositions--1. That the reading of the Scriptures is not necessary to salvation. 2.

That the Gospel consists not in the written Word, but in certain facts laid down and elucidated by the Church. 3. That the Scriptures ought not to be used as a means of converting the heathen. I suppose the sermon was directed against the Bible Society."

I insert a few paragraphs from my written winter-journal. They scarcely give an idea of the stagnation of our Hurstmonceaux life.

"_Dec. 14._--A solemn tea-drinking of parish ladies at the Rectory.

My mother very ailing with trembling, and almost deaf."

"_Dec. 15._--A bitter drive to Hailsham through the bleak ugly lanes. Mother very poorly, and unable to show interest in or comprehension of anything. Entirely thrown on my own resources."

"_Dec. 16._--Intense cold and misery at church. Ill with this, and felt the great usual Sunday want of anything to do, as I did not like even to open any book which might offend mother; but at last, finding 'Arnold's Life' would not be taken ill, settled to that.

Mother not able to speak or hear; felt the great solitariness of loneliness _not alone_, and longed to have some friend who would enter into my odd little trials--surely singular at twenty--but I never have one."

"_Dec. 17._--Bitter cold and a great gale. Siberia can scarcely be colder than Hurstmonceaux. Went by mother's wish to collect 'Missionary Pence' from the poor. No words can say how I hate this begging system, especially from the poor, who loathe it, but do not dare to refuse when 'the lady sends for their penny.' Sate a long time with Widow Hunnisett, and wondered how I shall ever endure it when I am in Orders, and have to sit daily in the cottages boring the people and myself."

At the end of December, partly probably in consequence of the cold to which I was constantly exposed, I became very ill with an agonising internal abscess, and though this eventually gave way to application of foxglove leaves (digitalis), just when a severe surgical operation was intended, I was long in entirely recovering. My mother's feeble powers, however, soon urged me to rouse myself, and, as soon as I could bring it about, to remove her to London, as Uncle Julius was failing daily, and I knew even then by experience how easily an invalid can bear a great sorrow which is unseen, while a great sorrow witnessed in all its harrowing incidents and details is often fatal to them.

JOURNAL.

"_Jan. 1, 1855._--With mother to the Rectory this afternoon, wrapped up in the carriage. I went to Uncle Julius in his room. He does seem now most really ill: I have never seen him more so. He bemoaned his never being able to do anything now. Looking at his mother's picture[100] hanging opposite, he said what a treasure it was to him. His face quite lighted up when he saw my mother, but (naturally perhaps) he had not the slightest pleasure in seeing me, and his tone instantly altered as he turned to me from wishing her good-bye."

"_Jan. 2._--Mother and I walked towards the school, but clouds gathering over the downs and level warned us home again. In the afternoon I was too ill to go out in the damp, but the crimson sunset cast beautiful gleams of light into the room, and mother went out to enjoy it in the garden."

"_Jan. 3._--We accomplished a visit to the new school-mistress in the midst of her duties. A bright sunny spring morning, every little leaf looking up in gladness, and just that soft sighing breeze in the garden, with a freshness of newly-watered earth and dewy flowers, which is always a.s.sociated with Lime in my mind. How beautiful--how peaceful--is our little home! Circ.u.mstances often prevent my enjoying it now, but if I left it, with what an intensity of longing love should I look back upon days spent here.

In the afternoon I was very impatient of incessant small contradictions, and in the evening felt as if I had not been quite as loving or devoted to my mother as I might have been for the last few days--not throwing myself sufficiently into every little trivial interest of hers. Yet this I wish to do with all my heart; and as for her wishes, they ought to be not only fulfilled, but antic.i.p.ated by me.... What I was reading in 'North and South'

perhaps made me more sensitive, and caused me to watch my mother more intently this evening, and it struck me for the first time that she suffered when her cheek was so flushed and her eyes shut, and her hand moved nervously upwards. Perhaps it was only some painful thought, but it has often made me turn from my book to watch her anxiously when she was not looking."

"_Jan. 4._--We drove along the Ninfield road, fresh and open, with the wind whistling through the oaktrees on the height, and then went to the Rectory. Mother went to Uncle Julius first, and then wished me to go. It was very difficult to find anything to say, for his illness had made him even more impatient than usual, at any word of mine, whatever it might be about."

When we went to the Stanleys' empty house in Grosvenor Crescent, we left Uncle Julius very feeble and ill at Hurstmonceaux. As soon as we reached London, my mother was attacked by severe bronchitis, and with this came one of her alarming phases of seeing endless processions pa.s.sing before her, and addressing the individuals. Sometimes in the morning she was more worn than in the evening, having been what she called "maintaining conversation" all night long. In the hurry of after years, I have often looked back with surprise upon the stagnant _lull_ of life in these winters, in which I scarcely ever left my mother, and, beyond chafing her limbs, reading to her, preparing remedies for all phases of her strange malady, scarcely _did_ anything; yet always felt _numb_ with fatigue when evening came, from the constant tension of an undivided anxiety. It was very severe weather, and if I was ever able to go out, it was for a rush up Piccadilly and Regent Street, where I always enjoyed even the sight of human movement amongst the shivering bluenosed people after the intensity of my solitude; for of visitors we had none except Lady Frances Higginson and her daughter Adelaide,[101] who came every morning to see my mother. At this time Henry Alford, afterwards Dean of Canterbury, was preaching at Quebec Chapel, and I used to go to hear him on Sundays.

JOURNAL.

"_6 Grosvenor Crescent, Jan. 21._--The mother had fever again in the night, and told Lea in the morning that she had been in the Revelations, and she seemed indeed to have seen all that is there described. She has talked much since of the Holy City and the golden palace as of something she had looked upon. 'What a comfort it is,' she said, 'that my visions do not take me to Hurstmonceaux: I do not know how I could bear that.' It is indeed a comfort. She seems always only to see things most beautiful, and more of heaven than of earth.

"'After you left me last night,' she said, 'I heard on one side of my bed the most beautiful music. Oh, it was most beautiful! most grand!--a sort of military march it seemed--ebbing and rising and then dying softly and gently away. Then, on the other side of my bed, I saw an open cloister, and presently I saw that it was lined with charity-school children. By-and-by Charlotte came out amongst them. Now, I thought, I can see, by watching her, whether this is a picture or whether it is a reality: but, as my eyes followed her, she took out her handkerchief and did everything so exactly as Charlotte really does, that I felt sure it was a reality.'

"This morning, as I have been sitting by my mother, I have listened. As she lay dozing, she spoke in pauses--'I see the sea--It is a very misty morning, a _very_ misty morning--There is a white boat tossing in the distance--It is getting black, it is so very misty--There is something coming--It is a great ship--They have put up a sail--It is very misty--Now I can scarcely see anything--Now it is all black.'"

"_Jan. 23, 1855._--Before I was up, John came and said he thought there was a worse account from Hurstmonceaux. Soon Lea came, and I asked eagerly what it was. 'It is over. He is gone. The Archdeacon is dead!' One had always fancied one expected this, but the reality is a different thing--that he who had always in one way or another influenced daily thoughts and occupations had utterly pa.s.sed out of one's life--would never influence it again.

"My mother was very calm. She had taken it quite quietly and laid down again to rest. When I went down, she cried, and also when Charlotte came, but she was calm beyond our hopes. It was a long painful day, in which it seemed almost sacrilegious to go about the ordinary work of life. Personally, however, I have only the regret for Uncle Julius which one feels for a familiar and honoured figure pa.s.sing out of life. It is only 'a grief without a pang.'"[102]

"_Jan. 29._--We reached home by midday. Mrs. Alexander came in the afternoon, and described his last words as 'Upwards--upwards.' In the evening Arthur Stanley and George Bunsen arrived."

"_Jan. 30._--I went to the Rectory with Arthur at eleven.... In the midst of the library, amongst Uncle Julius's own books and papers, all that was mortal of him was once more present. It lay in a black coffin inscribed--'Julius Charles Hare. Born at Bologna. Died at Hurstmonceaux.' But his spirit?--how I wondered if it was present and saw us as we stood there.

"Through the open door of the drawing-room I saw all the bearers come in, in their white smock-frocks and c.r.a.pe bands, and go out again, carrying him for the last time over his own threshold. On, on they pa.s.sed, into the snowy drive, with the full sunshine falling upon the pall, while the wind caught its white edges and waved them to and fro. Then some one called us, and I followed with Uncle Gustavus Hare immediately behind the coffin, six clergy who had been especially valued by Uncle Julius carrying the pall, and Arthur Stanley, Orby Shipley,[103] the Bishop of St. David's, and a number of other friends following, and then a long procession--clergy, schools, parishioners.

"On, down the shrubbery, with the snow still glittering on the evergreen leaves, to the gate, where many more people fell into the ranks behind. The wind was shrill and piercing, and, fresh from a sick-room, I felt numbed with the cold and fatigue. At Gardner Street all the shutters were shut, and the inmates of every house stood at their doors ready to join the procession. Amongst those waiting in front of the blacksmith's was old Edward Burchett.

Strange to think that he should have known my great-grandfather, and lived in Hurstmonceaux Castle (where he was 'clock-winder') in its palmy days, and that he should be living still to see the last Hare 'of Hurstmonceaux' carried to his grave.

"More crowds of people joined from Windmill Hill and Lime Cross; it was as if by simultaneous movement the whole parish came forward to do honour to one who had certainly been as its father for twenty-two years. As the procession halted to change bearers at the bend of the road, I knew that my mother was looking out and could see it from her window. An immense body of clergy joined us at Hurstmonceaux Place, and many very old and familiar people--old Judith Coleman led by a little girl, old Pinnock on his crutches, and others. At the foot of the church hill three black-veiled figures--Aunt Esther and her sisters--were waiting.

"The effect was beautiful of pa.s.sing through the churchyard with a pure covering of untrodden snow into the church lighted by full sunshine, and looking back and seeing the hill and the winding road filled with people as far as the eye could reach.

"The coffin was laid before the altar; the clergy and people thronged the church. I seemed to hear nothing but the voice of Arthur Stanley repeating the responses at my side.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HURSTMONCEAUX CHURCH.]

"Then we went out to the grave. There, around the foot of the yew-tree, by the cross over the grave of Uncle Marcus, were grouped all the oldest people in the parish. Mr. Simpkinson read, the clergy standing around the open grave responded; and, as with one voice, all repeated the Lord's Prayer, which, broken as it was by sobs, had a peculiar solemnity, the words 'Thy will be done'

bringing their own especial significance to many hearts."

The weeks which succeeded my uncle's funeral were occupied by hard work at the Rectory for his widow, chiefly making a catalogue of the fourteen thousand volumes in the library, which she gave for the most part to Trinity College. Uncle Julius had intended them as a provision for her, to whom he had very little money to bequeath; but she chose thus to dispose of them, and it was useless to contend with her. In the same way she decided upon giving away all the familiar pictures and sculptures, the former to the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge. My mother felt parting as I did with all these beautiful inanimate witnesses of our past lives--the first works of art I had known, the only ones which I then knew intimately. They have not been much valued at Cambridge, where the authorship of most of the pictures has been questioned; but whoever they were by, to us, who lived with them so much, they were always delightful.

JOURNAL.

"_Feb. 14, 1855._--Mother and I were standing on the steps of the Rectory greenhouse when the carriage came to take me away (to return to Oxford). I shall always remember that last moment. The warm air fragrant with the flowers: the orange-trees laden with golden fruit: the long last look at the Roman senator and his wife sitting in their niche: at the Raffaelle, the Luini, the Giorgione--and then the place which had been the occasional interest and the constant misery of my childhood existed for me no longer."

_To_ MY MOTHER (from Oxford).

"_March 13._--Your letter was the first thing to greet the opening of my twenty-first year. Being of age is a great thing, I am told, but really it makes no difference to me. Only I hope that each year will help me to be more of a comfort and companion to you, and then there will be some good in growing old. In the evening my birthday was celebrated here by a 'wine,' at which there was a good deal of squabbling as to who should propose my health--the senior collegian, the senior scholar, or an old Harrovian; but it ended in the whole company doing it together, with great cheering and hurrahing, and then Coleridge proposed that they should give 'He's a jolly good fellow,' with musical honours--and a fine uproar there was. I had a number of charming presents from college friends--books, prints, and old china."

I was so anxious about my next public examination--"Moderations"--that, as my mother seemed then tolerably well, I had begged to be allowed to pa.s.s most of the Easter vacation in Oxford, studying uninterruptedly in the empty college. This examination was always the most alarming of all to me, as I had been so ill-grounded, owing to Mr. R.'s neglect, and grammar was the great requirement. Indeed, at more than double the age I was then, the tension and anxiety I was in often repeated itself to me in sleep, and I woke in an agony thinking that "Moderations" were coming on, and that I was not a bit prepared! One day, in the midst of our work, I went in a canoe down G.o.dstowe river, accompanied by a friend (who had also "stayed up") in another canoe, as far as the ruin, and we dined at the little inn. The spring sun was peculiarly hot, and I remember feeling much oppressed with the smell of the weeds in the river, being very unwell at the inn, and reaching college with difficulty. Next day I was too ill to leave my bed, and when the doctor came he said I had the measles, which soon developed themselves (for the second time) with all violence. I was so ill, and so covered with measles, that the doctor said--the ground being deep in snow--that it was as much as my life was worth to get up or risk any exposure to cold.

Ten minutes afterwards a telegram from Lime was given to me. It came from Mrs. Stanley (evidently already summoned), and bade me come directly--my mother was seriously ill.

My decision was made at once. If I exposed myself to the cold, I should _perhaps_ die; but if I stayed still in the agony of anxiety I was in, I should _certainly_ die. I sent for a friend, who helped me to dress and pack, summoned a fly and gave double fare to catch the next train. It was a dreadful journey. I remember how faint I was, but that I always sate bolt upright and determined not to give in.

I recollected that my mother had once said that if she were very ill, her cousin Charlotte Leycester must not be prevented coming to her. So as I pa.s.sed through London I called for her, and we went on together. It was intensely cold, and my measles were all driven in; they never came out again--there was not time. There was too much to think of; I could not attend to myself, however ill I felt. I could only feel that my precious mother was in danger. John met me at the door of Lime--"You are still in time." Then Aunt Kitty and Lea came down, Lea very much overcome at seeing me--"I can bear anything now you are here."

My mother lay in still, deep stupor. She had not been well during the last days which Aunt Esther spent at the Rectory, feeling too acutely for her. When Aunt Esther left the Rectory finally and moved to Lime with Mrs. Alexander, my mother was ready to welcome them. But it was a last effort. An hour after they arrived she collapsed. From that time she had lain rigid for sixty hours: she seemed only to have an inner consciousness, all outward sense was gone. We knew afterwards that she would have spoken if she could--she would have screamed if she could, but she could not. Still Dr. Hale said, "Whilst that inner consciousness appears to last there is hope."

When I went to her, she lay quite still. Her face was drawn and much altered. There was no speculation in her eyes, which were gla.s.sy and fixed like stone. One cheek alone was flushed and red as vermilion. I went up. She did not notice me. There was no gleam, no significance, no movement, but when they asked if she knew I was come, she articulated "Yes."