Story of My Life Part 59

Then she insisted on marrying the Rev. G. Chetwode, who had had one wife before and had two afterwards--an old beau, who used to comb his hair with a leaden comb to efface the grey. On her death he inherited all she had--diamonds, ?2000 a year, all the fine pictures left her by Mr.

Jones, and all those Landor had collected for her in Italy.

But to return to Dean Shipley. To Mrs. Rowley, who was the mistress of Bodryddan when I was there, the Dean had been the kindest of grandfathers, and she had no recollection of him which was not a.s.sociated with the most unlimited indulgence. The Dean was much interested in the management of his estate, but he insisted that every detail should pa.s.s through his own hands. For instance, while he was absent in London, a number of curious images and carvings in alabaster were discovered under the pavement at Bodryddan: news was immediately sent to him, but he desired that everything should be covered up, and remain till he came home. On his return, he put off the examination from time to time, till, on his death, the place was forgotten, and now no one is able to discover it.

Mrs. Rowley was the beautiful Charlotte, only daughter of Colonel William Shipley, and had led an adventurous life, distinguishing herself by her bravery and heroism during the plague while she was in the East, and on various other occasions. By her marriage with Colonel Rowley, second son of the first Lord Langford, she had three children,--Shipley Conwy, the present owner of Bodryddan; Gwynydd, who has married twice; and Efah, who, after her mother's death, made a happy marriage with Captain Somerset.

In her early married life, Mrs. Rowley had lived much in Berkeley Square with her mother-in-law, old Lady Langford, who was the original of Lady Kew in "The Newcomes," and many pitched battles they had, in which the daughter-in-law generally came off victorious. Lady Langford had been very beautiful, clever, and had had _une vie tr?s orageuse_. She had much excuse, however. She had only once seen her cousin, Lord Langford, when he came to visit her grandmother, and the next day the old lady told her she was to marry him. "Very well, grandmama, but when?"--"I never in my life heard such an impertinent question," said the grandmother; "what business is it of yours _when_ you are to marry him?

You will marry him when I tell you. However, whenever you hear me order six horses to the carriage, you may know that you are going to be married." And so it was.

At the time I was at Bodryddan, the most devoted and affectionate deference was shown by Mrs. Rowley to every word, movement, or wish of her only brother, Colonel Shipley Conwy. He looked still young, but was quite helpless from paralysis. Mrs. Rowley sat by him and fed him like a child. It was one mouthful for her brother, the next for herself. When dinner was over, a servant came in and wrung his arms and legs, as you would pull bell-ropes, to prevent the joints from stiffening (a process repeated several times in the evening), and then carried him out. But with all this, Colonel Shipley Conwy--always patient--was very bright and pleasant, and Mrs. Rowley, who said that she owed everything to my father and his interest in her education, was most cordial in welcoming me. I never saw either of these cousins again. They spent the next two winters at the Cape, and both died a few years afterwards.

A little later, I went to stay at Dalton Hall in Lancashire, to visit Mrs. Hornby, a cousin of my Aunt Penrhyn, and a very sweet and charming old lady, who never failed to be loved by all who came within her influence. She told me many old family stories, amongst others how--

"The late Lord Derby (the 13th Earl) was very fond of natural history even as a boy. One night he dreamt most vividly of a rare nest in the ivy on the wall, and that he was most anxious to get it, but it was impossible. In the morning, the nest was on his dressing-table, and it could only have got there by his opening the window in his sleep and climbing the wall to it in that state.

"Another instance of his sleep-walking relates that he had a pa.s.sion, as a little boy, for sliding down the banisters, but it was strictly forbidden. One night his tutor had been sitting up late reading in the hall, when he saw one of the bedroom doors open, and a little boy come out in his night-shirt and slide down the banisters. This he did two or three times, and when the tutor made some little noise, he ran upstairs and disappeared into his bedroom. The tutor followed, but the little boy was fast asleep in bed."

Apropos of sleep-walking, Mr. Bagot (husband of Mrs. Hornby's daughter Lucy) told me a story he had just seen in the _Times_:--

"A large pat of b.u.t.ter was lately on the breakfast table of a family. When it was divided, a gold watch and chain were found in the midst of it. The maid who was waiting gave a shriek, and first rushed off to her room, then, coming back, declared it was hers.

The family were much surprised, but what she said turned out to be true. She had dreamt that she was going to be robbed of her watch and chain, and that the only way of hiding them would be to wrap them up in a pat of b.u.t.ter, and she had done it in her sleep."

A sister-in-law of Mrs. Hornby--a Mrs. Bayley--was staying at Dalton when I was there. She told me--first hand--a story of which I have heard many distorted versions. I give it in her words:--

"My sister, Mrs. Hamilton (_n?e_ Armstrong), was one night going to bed, when she saw a man's foot project from under the bed. She knelt down then and there by the bedside and prayed for the wicked people who were going about--for the _known_ wicked person especially--that they might be converted. When she concluded, the man came from under the bed and said, 'I have heard your prayer, ma'am, and with all my heart I say Amen to it;' and he did her no harm and went away. She heard from him years afterwards, and he was a changed man from that day."

Apropos of the growth of a story by exaggeration, Mrs. Bayley said:--

"The first person said, 'Poor Mrs. Richards was so ill that what she threw up was almost like a black crow.' The second said, 'Poor Mrs. Richards was so ill: it was the most dreadful thing, she actually threw up a black crow.' The third said, 'Poor Mrs.

Richards has the most dreadful malady: it is almost too terrible to speak of, but she has already thrown up ... three black crows.'"

Mrs. Bayley was a very "religious" person, but she never went to church; she thought it wrong. She called herself an "unattached Christian," and said that people only ought to go to church for praise, but to do their confessions at home. When I left Dalton, she presented me with a little book, which she begged me not to read till I was quite away. It was called "Do you belong to the h.e.l.lfire Club?" It was not an allegorical little book, but really and seriously asked the question, saying that, though not generally known, such a club really existed, where the most frightful mysteries were enacted, and that it was just within the bounds of possibility that I might secretly belong to it, and if so, &c., &c. A similar little book was once thrust into my hand by a lady at the top of St. James's Street.

On the 29th of October 1866 we left England for Cannes, stopping on the way at Villefranche, that we might visit Ars, for the sake of its venerable Cur?.

_To_ MY SISTER.

"_Nov. 1866._--It was a pretty and peculiar drive to Ars: first wooded lanes, then high open country, from whence you descend abruptly upon the village, which, with its picturesque old church, and the handsome wooden one behind it, quite fills the little hollow in the hills. The village itself is almost made up of hotels for the pilgrims, but is picturesque at this season, with ma.s.ses of golden vine falling over all the high walls. We left the carriage at the foot of the church steps, and ascended through a little square crowded with beggars, as in the time of the Cur?.[330] The old church is exceedingly interesting. In the middle of the floor is the grave of the Cur?, once surrounded by a bal.u.s.trade hung with immortelles, which are now in the room where he died. At the sides are all the little chapels he built at the different crises of his life, that of S. Philomene being quite filled with crutches, left by lame persons who have gone away cured. Beyond the old church opens out the handsome but less interesting modern building erected by the Empress and the bishops, with a grand baldacchino on red granite pillars, and on the altar a beautiful bas-relief of the Cur? carried to heaven by angels. In the old church a missionary was giving the pilgrims (who kept flocking in the whole time) a very beautiful and simple exposition on the life of Christ as a loving Saviour, quite carrying on the teaching of the Cur?.

"At half-past twelve a Sister of Charity came to show the Cur?'s room. It is railed off, because the pilgrims would have carried everything away, as they have almost undermined the thick walls in their eagerness to possess themselves of the bits of stone and plaster; but you see the narrow bed, the poor broken floor, his chair, his table, his pewter spoon and earthenware pot,--the picture which was defiled by the Demon,--the door at which 'the Grappin' knocked,--the narrow staircase from which he shouted 'Mangeur de truffes,'--the still poorer room downstairs where the beloved Cur? lay when all his people pa.s.sed by to see him in his last sleep,--the little court shaded by ancient elder-trees in which he gave his incessant charities,--and close by the little house of his servant Catherine. She herself is the sweetest old woman, seeming to live, in her primitive life, upon the gleanings and the teaching of the past. She sate on a low stool at Mother's feet, and talked in the most touching way of her dear Cur?. When Mother said something about the crowds that came to him, she said, 'I have always heard that when the dear Saviour was on earth, He was so sweet and loving, that people liked to be near Him, and I suppose that now when men are sweet and loving, and so a little like the dear Saviour, people like to be near them too.' In a small chapel of the school he founded they showed some blood of the Cur?

in a bottle--'_encore coulant_.' Many other people we saw who talked of him--'Comme il ?tait gai, toujours gai,' &c. The whole place seemed cut out of the world, in an atmosphere of peace and prayer, like a little heaven: no wonder Roman Catholics like to go into 'Retreat' there."

We stayed afterwards at Arles, and made the excursion to S. Remy, one of the most exquisitely beautiful places I have ever seen, where Roman remains, grand in form and of the most splendid orange colouring, rise close to the delicate Alpines.

At Cannes we were most fortunate in finding a house exactly suited to our needs--a primitive bastide, approached by a long pergola of vines, on the way to the Croix des Gardes, quite high up in woods of myrtle and pine upon the mountain-side.[331] It was far out of the town and dreadfully desolate at night, but in the daytime there were exquisite views through the woods of the sea and mountains, and a charming terraced garden of oranges and ca.s.sia--the vegetation quite tropical.

Close to the turn into our pergola was a little shrine of S. Fran?ois, which gave a name to our cottage, and which the peasants, pa.s.sing to their work in the forests, daily presented with fresh flowers.

Delightful walks led beyond us into the hilly pine woods with a soil of glistening mica, and, if one penetrated far enough, one came out upon the grand but well-concealed precipices of rock known as the Rochers de Bilheres. Just below us lived Lord Mount-Edgec.u.mbe, the "Valletort" of my Harrow days, with his sweet invalid wife, and their three little girls, with the little Valletort of this time, were a perpetual pleasure to my mother in her morning walk to the Croix des Gardes. Old Madame B?uf, our landlady, used to come up every morning in her large flapping Proven?al hat to work with her women amongst the ca.s.sia: the sunshine seemed almost ceaseless, and all winter we used to sit with open windows and hear our maid Marguerite carolling her strange patois ballads at her work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: S. REMY.[332]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM MAISON S. FRAN?OIS, CANNES.[333]]

On the other side of Cannes, at the H?tel de Provence, we had a large group of friends, Lady Verulam and her sons; Lord and Lady Suffolk and their two daughters; and the Dowager Lady Morley with her son and daughter. With the latter I became very intimate, and joined them in many long and delightful excursions to remote villages and to the unspeakably grand scenery above the Var. Lady Suffolk too became a dear and much honoured friend.

A still greater pleasure was the neighbourhood, in a small house by the torrent at the foot of our hill, of the dear old Lady Grey of our Nice days, and her niece Miss G. Des V?ux. I generally dined with them once or twice a week, and constantly accompanied them on delightful drawing excursions, taking our luncheon with us. In the spring I went away with them for several days together to the wild mountains of S.

Vallier and S. Cesaire. Lady Grey painted beautifully, though she only began to be an artist when she was quite an old woman. She always went out sketching with thirty-nine articles, which one servant called over at the door, another answering "Here" for each, to secure that nothing should be left behind.

Beneath us, at the H?tel Bellevue, were Lady Jocelyn and her children, with Lord and Lady Vernon and Mr. and Lady Louisa Wells, whom we saw frequently; also three admirable Scotch sisters, Mrs. Douglas, Miss Kennedy, and Mrs. Tootal. Hither also came for two months our dear friend Miss Wright ("Aunt Sophy"), and she was a constant pleasure, dropping in daily at tea-time, and always the most sympathising of human beings both in joy and sorrow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOCCA WOOD, CANNES.]

Altogether, none of our winters was so rich in pleasant society as this one at Cannes, and we had nothing to trouble us till the spring, when Lea was taken very seriously ill from the bite either of scorpion or tarantula, and, while she was at the worst and unable to move, my mother became alarmingly ill too with a fever. I was up with them through every night at this time; and it was an odd life in the little desolate bastide, as it was long impossible to procure help. At length we got a S?ur de Charit?--a pretty creature in a most picturesque nun's dress, but efficient for very little except the manufacture and consumption of convent soup, made with milk, tapioca, and pepper.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAISON S. FRAN?OIS, CANNES.]

Still, for the most part, my mother had not been so well or so perfectly happy for years as in our little hermitage amid the juniper and rosemary. It was just what she most enjoyed, the walks all within her compa.s.s--perfect country, invariably dry and healthy, perpetual warmth in which to sit out, and endless subjects for her sketch-book.

Lea, rejoiced to be rid for some months of her tiresome husband, found plenty of occupation in her kitchen and in attending to the poultry which she bought and reared; while I was engrossed with my drawings, of which I sold enough to pay our rent very satisfactorily, and with my "Lives of the Popes," a work on which I spent an immense amount of time, but which is still unfinished in MS., and likely to remain so. My mother greatly appreciated the church at Cannes, and we liked the clergyman, Mr. Rolfe, and his wife. His sermons were capital. I do not often attend to sermons, but I remember an excellent one on Zacharias praying for vengeance, and Stephen for mercy on his murderers, as respectively ill.u.s.trating the principles of the Old and New Testament--Justice and Mercy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Maria Hare. 1862.]

I dined once or twice, to meet Mr. Panizzi[334] of the British Museum, at the house of a quaint old Mr. Kerr, who died soon afterwards. It was him of whom it used to be said that he had been "trying to make himself disagreeable for sixty years and had not quite succeeded." When he was eighty he told me that there were three things he had never had: he had never had a watch, he had never had a key, and he had never had an account.

I frequently saw the famous old Lord Brougham, who bore no trace then of his "flashes of oratory," of his "thunder and lightning speeches," but was the most disagreeable, selfish, cantankerous, violent old man who ever lived. He used to swear by the hour together at his sister-in-law, Mrs. William Brougham,[335] who lived with him, and bore his ill-treatment with consummate patience. He would curse her in the most horrible language before all her guests, and this not for anything she had done, but merely to vent his spite and ill-humour. Though a proper carriage was always provided for him, he would insist upon driving about Cannes daily in the most disreputable old fly he could procure, with the hope that people would say he was neglected by his family. Yet he preferred the William Broughams to his other relations, and entirely concealing that he had other brothers, procured the reversion of his t.i.tle to his youngest brother, William, much to the annoyance of the Queen when she found it out. Lord Brougham was repulsive in appearance and excessively dirty in his habits. He had always been so. Mr. Kerr remembered seeing him at the Beefsteak Club, when the Prince Regent was President, and there was the utmost license of manners. One day when he came in, the Prince Regent roared out, "How dare you come in here, Brougham, with those dirty hands?"--and he insisted on the waiters bringing soap and water and having his hands washed before all the company. In early life, if anything aggravated him at dinner, he would throw his napkin in the face of his guests, and he did things quite as insulting to the close of his life at Cannes, where he had a peculiar prestige, as having, through his "Villa Louise Eleanore,"[336] first brought the place into fashion, which led to the extension of a humble fishing village into miles upon miles of villas and hotels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAGNES.[337]]

_To_ MISS WRIGHT (after she had gone on to Rome).

"_Maison S. Fran?ois, Cannes, Feb. 2, 1867._--On Tuesday we made an immense excursion of thirteen hours to the 'Seven villages of the Var.' The party consisted of Lord Morley and Lady Katherine, Lord Suffolk and Lady Victoria, Lord Henry Percy, Lord Mount-Edgec.u.mbe, and myself. We left by the 7.40 train and had carriages to meet us at Cagnes. These took us as far as the grand Sinai-like granite peaks of S. Janet, and thence we walked. The whole terrace is most grand for seven miles above the tremendous purple gorge of the Var, overhung here and there by splendid Aleppo pines or old gnarled oaks; and as we reached just the finest point of all, where the huge castle of Carrozza stands out on a great granite crag, the mist curtain drew up and displayed range on range of snow mountains, many of them close by--really a finer scene than any single view I remembered in Switzerland. The whole of our party, hitherto inclined to grumble, were almost petrified by the intensity of the splendour.

"M. Victor Cousin's sudden death at dinner has been a great shock to the Cannes world. It was just at that time that our attention was so sadly occupied by the illness and death of dear old Sir Adam Hay. The Hays gave a picnic at Vallauris, to which I was invited, and Sir Adam caught a cold there, which excited no attention at the time, as he had never been ill in his life before. Four days afterwards Addie Hay took Miss Hawker and me in their carriage to Napoule, where we spent a pleasant day in drawing. When we came back, his father was most alarmingly ill, and absent children had been already telegraphed for. All that week I went constantly to Villa Escarras, and shared with the family their alternations of hope and fear, but at the end of a week dear Sir Adam died, and all the family went away immediately, as he was to be buried at Peebles."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANTIBES.[338]]

During the latter part of our stay at Cannes, the society of Madame Goldschmidt (Jenny Lind) was a great pleasure to my mother, and in her great kindness she came often to sing to her. We went with the Goldschmidts to Antibes one most glorious February day, when Madame G.

was quite glowing with delight in all the beauties around and grat.i.tude to their Giver. "Oh, how good we ought to be--_how_ good with all this before our eyes! it is a country to die in." She spoke much of the sweetness of the Southern character, which she believed to be partly due to the climate and scenery. She talked of an old man, bowed with rheumatism, who worked in her garden. That morning she had asked him, "Comment ?a va t'il? Comment va votre sant??"--"Oh, la volont? de Dieu!"

he had replied--"la volont? de Dieu!" In his pretty Proven?al his very murmur was a thanksgiving for what G.o.d sent. She spoke of the dislike English had to foreigners, but that the only point in which she envied the English was their n.o.ble women. In Sweden she said they might _become_ as n.o.ble, but that hitherto the character of Swedish women had been oppressed by the bondage in which they were kept by the laws--that they had always been kept under guardians, and could have neither will nor property of their own, unless they married, even when they were eighty. She said that she was the first Swedish woman who had gained her liberty, and that she had obtained it by applying direct to the king, who emanc.i.p.ated her because of all she had done for Sweden. Now the law was changed, and women were emanc.i.p.ated when they were five-and-twenty.

Then Madame Goldschmidt talked of the _faithfulness_ of the Southern vegetation. In England she said to the leaves, "Oh, you poor leaves! you are so thin and miserable. However, it does not signify, for you have only to last three or four months; but these beautiful thick foreign leaves, with them it is quite different, for they have got to be beautiful always."

We drove up the road leading to the lighthouse, and then walked up the steep rocky path carrying two baskets of luncheon, which we ate under the shadow of a wall looking down upon the glorious view. Madame Goldschmidt had been very anxious all the way about preserving a cream-tart which she had brought. "Voil? le grand moment," she exclaimed as it was uncovered. When some one spoke of her enthusiasm, she said, "Oh, it is delightful to soar, but one is soon brought back again to the cheese and bread and b.u.t.ter of life." When Lady Suffolk asked how she first knew she had a voice, she said, "Oh, it did fly into me!"

At first sight Madame Goldschmidt might be called "plain," though her smile is most beautiful and quite illuminates her features; but how true of her is an observation I met with in a book by the Abb? Monnin, "Le sourire ne se raconte pas." "She has no face; it is all _countenance_,"

might be said of her, as Miss Edgeworth said of Lady Wellington.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LE PUY.[339]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROYAT.[340]]