Story of My Life Part 70

I was most thankful when we left England for Italy on the 12th of October, and seemed to breathe freely when we were once more in our old travelling life, sleeping in the primitive inns at Joigny and Nuits, and making excursions to Citeaux and Annecy. Carlyle says, "My father had one virtue which I should try to imitate: _he never spoke of what was disagreeable and past_," and my Mother was the same; she turned her back at once upon the last months, which she put away for ever like a sealed volume. We spent several weeks at Florence in the Via della Scala, whence, the Mother being well, I went constantly to draw in the gallery of sketches by Old Masters at the Uffizi. But, in the middle of November, I felt already so ill, that I began to dread a possibility of dying where my Mother would not have any one to look after her, and on the 16th we hurried to Rome, where I had just time to look out lodgings for my Mother, and establish her and Lea in the Piazza Mignanelli, when I succ.u.mbed to a violent nervous fever. Most terrible are the sufferings which I recollect at this time, the agonising pains by day, and the nights of delirium, which were truly full of Coleridge's "pains of sleep," in which I was frequently haunted by the sardonic smile of the horrible Mrs. Dunlop, and otherwise by dreams which were, as Carlyle would say, "a constant plunging and careering through chaos and cosmos."

In the second week of December I rallied slightly, and could sit with Mother in the sun on the terrace of Villa Negroni. By the 14th I was able to walk a little, and went, supported on each side, to the quiet sunny path by the Tiber which then existed opposite Claude's villa. Just in front of us a carter was walking by the side of his cart, heavily laden with stones. Suddenly the wheel of the cart went too near the steeply sloping bank of the Tiber and tipped over; the horse tried in vain to recover itself, but the weight of the stones was so great that it was dragged down, and slowly, slowly, screaming as only animals do scream, disappeared with the cart under the swollen yellow waters; while the driver stood helplessly upon the bank shrieking and wringing his hands.

Weak as I was, this terrible scene naturally brought back all my fever, which now turned to typhoid, and I soon became delirious. By the following Sunday my life was despaired of. But in the small hotel where we had stayed at Florence, we had met an American, Dr. Winslow, with his wife and daughters, to whom my Mother had shown kindness, and who had been struck with our entire union and devotion to each other. Dr.

Winslow arrived in Rome when I was at the worst, and the first news he heard was that I was dying. He at once gave up his Roman sight-seeing and everything else, and devoted himself to me, coming many times a day and nursing me with such wonderful care, that I eventually recovered, though it was February before I was at all myself again. It was an unspeakable blessing that my Mother continued well during my long illness, and was so kindly looked after by Mrs. Woodward and Miss Wright that I had no anxiety about her; though in the spring, when we had moved to the Via Babuino, she had one of her strange illnesses, ending in a tranquil unbroken sleep which lasted two days and nights. It was about this time that she was called to bear a loss which in earlier years would have been utterly crushing, that of her sister-friend Lucy, who expired peacefully in her quiet home at Abbots-Kerswell, with only her faithful maid watching over her. In her hermit-life, my Aunt Lucy had become farther removed from us each year, but two years before my Mother had found great happiness in visiting her, and her beautiful letters were a constant enjoyment. Still it is a merciful dispensation that to those who are themselves on the border-land of heaven, bereavements fall less bitterly, separations seem so short; and, to my Mother, the loss of the dearest friend of her early life was only a quiet grief: she had "only gone from one room into the next." My Aunt Lucy Hare had never liked me, but I had none of the bitter feeling towards her which I had towards my Aunt Esther: she truly loved my Mother, and I could admire, though I could not enter into, the various graces of her character, which were none the less real because they were those of a Carmelite nun in Protestant form.

To Roman antiquaries this spring was rendered important from the discovery of the site of the Porta Capena,--the site of which was long a vexed question,--by Mr. J. H. Parker, the Oxford publisher, who devoted much of his fortune to arch?ological pursuits. Pius IX. granted him permission to excavate without in the least believing anything would come of it. But when he came to inspect the discoveries he exclaimed, "Why, the heretic's right," and complained bitterly that his own arch?ologists, whom he paid highly, should have failed to find what had been discovered by a foreigner. Mr. Parker carefully marked all the pieces then found of the Servian Wall, and numbered them in red; but the _guardia_, seeing the red marks, thought they meant something revolutionary, and destroyed them. When he found them gone, Parker was furious. "Is it," he said, "due to the absurdities of an effete religion, or is it perhaps the insolence of some rival arch?ologist?"

(meaning Rosa).

As we returned through France in the spring of 1869, we diverged to Autun and Nevers, the last of the pleasant expeditions the dear Mother and I made together in summer weather. The greater part of our summer was spent quietly at home, and was chiefly marked for me by the marriage of my dear friend Charlie Wood to Lady Agnes Courtenay.

_To_ MISS WRIGHT.

"_Holmhurst, July 10, 1869._--Your description made me see a pleasant mental picture of the cousinhood a.s.sembled at your party.

For myself, I cannot but feel that all _social_ pleasures will henceforward become more and more difficult for me, as the Mother, though not ill, becomes daily more dependent upon me for all her little interests and amus.e.m.e.nts, so that I scarcely ever leave her even for an hour. It is an odd hermit-like life in the small circuit of our little Holmhurst, with one or two guests constantly changing in its chambers, but no other intercourse with the outside world. At last summer has burst upon us, and looks all the brighter for the long waiting, and our oak-studded pastures are filled with gay groups of haymakers, gathering in the immense crop. The garden is lovely, and my own home-sunflower is expanding in the warmth and stronger and better than she has been for months past."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTE D'ARROUX, AUTUN.[390]]

"_Holmhurst, August 1._--I cannot be away from home at all this summer, partly because I cannot leave Mother, who (though very anxious to promote my going away) is really becoming more dependent upon my constant care and companionship; and partly because I cannot afford the inevitable small expenses of going anywhere, our finances having been completely prostrated by the Roman Catholic robberies last year. Indeed, I have never been poorer than this year, as I have had _nothing_, and when I put two threepenny bits into the Communion plate to-day, felt exceedingly like the widow with the two mites, for it was literally all that I possessed!

However, this is not so very dreadful after all, and I daresay another year matters will come round."

In September, however, when Charlotte Leycester came to take care of my Mother, I did go to the North.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Ridley Hall, Sept. 1, 1869._--Though I have got into a great sc.r.a.pe with Cousin Susan by calling blackberry jelly, 'jam,' and though I was _terribly_ scolded the other day for saying 'thanks,'--'such new-fangled vulgarity,'--this visit at Ridley has been very pleasant. First, there never was more perfect ideal weather, so fresh and bright, so bracing, and the colouring of the woods and moorlands, and the glorious tumbling amber-coloured rivers so beautiful. Then I feel much stronger and better than I have done for two years past, and Cousin Susan, who thought me most ghastly when I arrived, is quite satisfied with the results of her grouse, pheasants, and sherry. On Wednesday Lady Blackett came to spend the day, and, after she was gone, Cousin Susan and I made a long exploring expedition far beyond the Allen Water, up into the depths of Staward valley--most romantic little paths through woods and miniature rocky gorges to a ruined bridge and 'Plankey Mill,'

and then up a steep wood path to the moor of Briarside. Cousin Susan had never been so far since she lived here, and we were walking, or rather climbing, for three hours, attended by the white dogs. These have chairs with cushions on each side the fireplace in her new sitting-room. One is in bad health, has medical attendance from Hexham at half-a-guinea a visit, and uninitiated visitors must be rather amazed when they see 'my poor little sick girl' whom Cousin Susan is constantly talking of.... On Sundays there is only service here in the morning: the clergyman giving as his curious reason for not having it in the afternoon, that 'perhaps it might annoy the Dissenters.' ... This evening it has thundered. Cousin Susan, as usual on such occasions, hid herself with her maid under the staircase (the safest place in case of thunderbolts), and held a handkerchief over her eyes till it was over; but her nerves have been quite upset ever since, and we are not to have the carriage to-morrow for fear the storm should return."

_"Ford Castle, Sept. 8._--It was almost dark as I drove up the beautiful new road over the high bridge to the renovated castle, which is now all grand and in keeping. I found the beautiful mistress of the house in her new library, which is a most delightful room, with carved chimney-piece and bookcases, and vases of ferns and flowers in all the corners and in the deep embrasures of the windows. She is full of the frescoes in her school. 'I want to paint "Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign." I think he must be a little boy on a step with other children round him--a very little boy, and he must have some little regal robes on, and I think I must put a little crown upon his head.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORD CASTLE, THE LIBRARY.[391]]

"_Sept. 10._--Every day of a visit at Ford always seems to contain more of charm and instruction than hundreds of visits elsewhere.

The great interest this time has been Lady Canning's drawings--many hundreds of them, and all so beautiful that you long to look at each for hours. All yesterday evening Lady Waterford read aloud to us--old family letters, from old Lady Hardwicke and from Lady Anne Barnard. 'My great-aunt, Lady Anne Barnard,' she says, 'wrote a book very like your Family Memoirs, only hers was too imaginative.

She called all her characters by imaginary names, and made them all quite too charming: still her book is most interesting. She was very intimate with Mrs. Fitzherbert, and describes all her first meetings with George IV. and the marriage, and then she went with her on her famous expedition to Paris. She got possession of all the real letters of the family and put them into her book, but she embellished them. She got hold of a letter Uncle Caledon wrote to my aunt when he proposed to her, but when Uncle Caledon read the book and found a most beautiful letter, he said, "My dear, I never wrote all this."--"No, my dear," she answered, "I know you did not, but then I thought your real letter was not warm enough." Lady Anne Barnard wrote "Auld Robin Gray," and she used to describe how some one translated it into French, and how, when she went to Paris, she saw every one looking at her, she could not imagine why, till she heard some one say, "Voil? l'auteur du fameux roman de Robin Gray.'"[392]

"_Sept. 10._--We have all been to luncheon at Carham, sixteen miles off, and the latter part of the drive very pretty--close to the wide reaches of the Tweed, with seagulls flitting over it, and Cuyp-like groups of cattle on the sh.o.r.e, waiting for the ferryboats to take them across to Coldstream Fair. Carham is one of the well-known haunted houses: the 'Carham light' is celebrated and is constantly seen. We asked old Mrs. Compton of eighty-three, who lives there now, about the supernatural sights of Carham. 'Och,'

she said, 'and have ye niver heard the story of the phantom carriage? We have just heard it this very morning: when we were waiting for you, we heard it drive up. We are quite used to it now.

A carriage drives quickly up to the door with great rattling and noise, and when it stops, the horses seem to paw and tear up the gravel. Strange servants are terribly frightened by it. One day when I was at luncheon I heard a carriage drive up quickly to the door: there was no doubt of it. I told the servant who was in waiting to go out and see who it was. When he came back I asked who had come. He was pale as ashes. "Oh," he said, "it's only just the phantom coach."

"'And then there is the Carham light. That is just beautiful! It is a large globe of fire in the shape of a full moon: I have seen it hundreds of times. It moves about in the woods, and sometimes settles in one place. The first time I saw it I was driving from Kelso and I saw a great ball of fire. I said to the driver, "What is that?"--"Oh, it's just the Carham Light," he said. When d.i.c.k[393] came in, he said he did not believe it--he had never seen it; but that night it came--bright as ever. All the gentlemen went out into the woods to examine it; but it moved before them. They all saw it, and they were quite convinced: it has never been explained.'

"We had tea with the charming old lady. 'I've just had these cakes made, Lady Waterford,' she said, 'because they were once very weel likit by some very dear to you; so I thought you would like them.'

"Lady Waterford sends you a riddle:--

'Mon premier est un tyran, mon second une horreur, Mon tout est le diable lui-m?me.

Mais si mon premier est bon, mon second ne fait rien, Et mon tout est le bonheur supr?me.'"[394]

"_Foxhow, Ambleside, Sept. 12, 1869._--How lovely the drive into Foxhow from Windermere; but, after the grand ideas of my childhood, how small everything seems, even the lake and the mountains! We drove in at the well-remembered gate by Rotha Cottage, and along those lovely Swiss pasture-meadows. It was like a dream of the past as one turned into the garden, all so exactly the same and so well remembered, not only from our last brief visit, but from that of twenty-six years ago. Dear Mrs. Arnold is little altered, and is so tenderly affectionate and charming, that it is delightful to be with her. She likes to ask all about you and Holmhurst, and says that her power of producing mind-pictures and dwelling upon them often brings you before her, so that she sees you as before, only older, in your home life. It is quite beautiful to see the intense devotion of her children to their mother and her happiness in them, in Fan especially. All the absent ones write to her at least three times a week.

"We have just been in a covered car to Rydal Church: how beautiful the situation! How well I remembered being sick as a child from the puggy smell of its hideous interior. It was just as puggy to-day, but I was not sick. There was a most extraordinary preacher, who declared that the Woman on the seven mountains was Rome on her seven hills--'allowed to be so by all authorities, Jewish, and even Romanist,'--that the dragon was only the serpent in its worshipped form, and that both were identical with the Beast and represented the pagan religion; that the Woman flying into the wilderness before the Beast was Early Christianity flying from pagan persecution, and that when she came back, to St. John's astonishment she was seated _on_ the Beast, _i.e._, she had adopted all the pagan attributes, the cross, the mother and child--well-known objects of worship at Babylon, and Purgatory--a tenet of pagan Rome!"

"_Foxhow, Sept. 14._--My Mother will have thought of this pouring weather as most unpropitious for the Lake Country, but in reality it has not signified very much, as each day it has cleared for a few hours, and the lights and shadows have been splendid. On Sunday afternoon Edward (Arnold) and I went up Loughrigg. All the little torrents were swollen by the storms, and the colours of the dying fern and the great purple shadows on Helm Crag and Bow Fell were most beautiful. It is a most picturesque bit of mountain, and it all strikes me, as I remember it did in 1859, as more really beautiful than anything in Switzerland, though so contracted.

"Yesterday afternoon we walked to Grasmere, and I stayed looking at the interesting group of Wordsworth tombs, whilst Edward paid a visit. Afterwards the lake looked so tempting, that Edward rowed me down it, sending the boat back by a boy. We landed at the outlet of the Rotha on the other side, and had a beautiful walk home by a high terrace under Loughrigg. If one remained in this country, one could not help becoming fond of Wordsworth, his descriptions are so exact. Edward has repeated many of his poems on the sites to which they apply, and they are quite beautifully pictorial. Mrs. Arnold is very happy in the general revival of interest in his poetry....

Nothing can be more enjoyable and united than the family life here, the children and grandchildren coming and going, and so many interesting visitors. Truly dear Mrs. Arnold's is an ideal old age, so hedged in by the great love and devotion of her descendants."[395]

"_Dalton Hall, Lancashire, Sept. 17._--I always enjoy being here with the Hornbys. Yesterday we drove in the morning to Yealand, a pretty village so called from the Quakers who colonised it. In the afternoon we went to Levens. It is a lovely country, just upon the outskirts of the Lake District, with the same rich green meadows, clear streams, and lanes fringed with fern and holly. We pa.s.sed through Milnthorpe, and how well I remembered your shutting me up and making me learn a Psalm in the inn there, instead of letting me go out to draw! The country is very primitive still. An old clergyman who officiated till lately in the neighbouring church of Burton Moss had only three sermons, one of which was laid in turn on the pulpit desk by his housekeeper every Sunday morning. When he had finished, he used to chuck it down to her out of the pulpit.

One of these sermons was on 'Contentment,' and contained--apropos of discontent--the story of the Italian n.o.bleman whose tombstone bore the words, 'I was well, I wished to be better, and now I am here.'"

It was a great pleasure this autumn to see again in London the New Zealand Sir George Grey. I remember his saying how he wished some one would write a poem on Pharaoh pursuing the Israelites to the Red Sea, from the point of view that in pursuing them he was pursuing Christianity; that if the Israelites had perished, and not Pharaoh, there would have been no Redemption.

JOURNAL (The Green Book).

"_Holmhurst, Oct. 13, 1869._--After the storms of last year, this summer has been peaceful and quiet. My sweet Mother, though often ailing, has been very gently and quietly happy. She seems older, but age has with her only its softening effects--casting a brighter halo around her sweet life, and rendering more lovable still every precious word and action.... We are more than ever to each other now in everything."

We left home in 1869 on the 14th of October, intending to cross the Channel at once, but on arriving at Folkestone, found such a raging sea, that we retreated to Canterbury to wait for better weather. This enabled us to pay a charming visit to Archdeacon and Mrs. Harrison, who had been very familiar to us many years before, when the Stanleys lived at Canterbury. It was the last visit my Mother ever paid, and she greatly enjoyed it, as it seemed almost like a going back into her Hurstmonceaux life, a revival of the ecclesiastical interests which had filled her former existence. Whenever any subject was alluded to, Archdeacon Harrison, like Uncle Julius, went to his bookcase, and brought down some volume to ill.u.s.trate it. Thus I remember his reading to us in the powerful sermons of Bishop Horsley. One of the most remarkable was upon the Syro-Ph?nician woman. Another is on the French Nuns, in defence of their inst.i.tution in England, saying, with little foresight, how unlikely they were to increase in number, and how very superior they were to those women "who strip themselves naked to go out into the world, who daub their cheeks with paint, and plaster their necks with litharge."

Apropos of the proverb about Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands, Archdeacon Harrison described how it was in allusion to two things totally disconnected. Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands are very far apart, and of course have no connection whatever: yet perverse persons used to say that Tenterden Steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands, as money which ought to have been used to prevent the acc.u.mulation of Goodwin Sands was diverted to the building of Tenterden Steeple. The place where you may hear most about it is "Latimer's Sermons." Latimer is inveighing against the persons who denounced the study of the Bible as the cause of the misfortunes of the time, and says that they had as much connection as Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands, and so forth.

_To_ MISS WRIGHT.

"_Munich, Nov. 1, 1869._--We made it four days' journey from Paris to Strasbourg. First we went to Bar-le-duc. I had longed to see it, from a novel I read once, and it is well worth while--the old town rising above the new like the old town of Edinburgh--tall grey houses pierced with eight or ten rows of windows, a river with a most picturesque bridge, and in the church 'Le Squelette de Bar,' a wonderful work of Richier, the famous sculptor of S. Mihiel, commemorating the Princes of Bar (Henri I., II., III., &c.), sovereigns of whom I wonder if you ever heard before: I never did.

"We slept next at Toul, where there is a fine huge dull cathedral, a beautiful creche by Ignace Robert, and a lovely convent cloister of flamboyant arches. Living at Toul is wonderfully cheap; our rooms for three were only four francs, and dinner for three four francs.[396] We wonder people do not emigrate to Lorraine instead of to Australia; it would be far cheaper, and infinitely more amusing. If it had been warmer, we should have gone to Domremy and S. Mihiel, but we feared the cold. We were a day at Nancy: how stately it is! At Strasbourg we found that the storks had left, and we thought it the least interesting place on the road, yet most people stay only there.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BAR-LE-DUC.[397]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRIDGE OF BAR-LE-DUC.[398]]

"We had three days at Carlsruhe, and found dear Madame de Bunsen most bright and well and charming, with much to tell that was worth hearing, and the fullest sympathy and interest in others.

Generally one feels that conversation weakens the mind; with the Bunsens it never fails to strengthen it. Madame de Bunsen talked much of the difficulties which had crowded round her when she herself was to begin the Memoir of her husband. Bunsen had said to her, 'You must tell the story of our common life; you are able to do it, only do not be afraid.' Thus to her the work was a sacred legacy. First, as material, her son George brought her Bunsen's letters to his sister Christiana, which she had given to him, and which he had fortunately never given to his father for fear he should destroy them. Then she had written to Reck, the early G?ttingen friend and confidant of all Bunsen's early life, and had been refused all help without any explanation! Then Stockmar, Brandeis, &c., sent all their letters; thus the work grew. But there were no journals, she had made no notes, there was only her recollection to fall back upon. Madame de Bunsen regretted bitterly the destruction of Uncle Julius's letters by his widow, especially those written in his early life to his brother Augustus, which would have been 'the history of the awakening of a new phase of opinions.' I made quant.i.ties of notes from the intensely interesting reminiscences Madame de Bunsen poured forth of her own life.[399]

"We were one day at Stuttgart, which I had never seen, and was delighted with--so handsome, really a beautiful little capital, and we reached Munich in time to have one day for the International Exhibition of Paintings, which was well worth seeing--finer, I thought, than ours. The German artists have surely far more originality than the artists of other nations. Three pictures especially remain in my mind--'The Chase after Luck,' a wild horseman with Death riding behind him in pursuit of Luck, a beautiful figure scattering gold and pearls whilst floating on a bladder, full speed across a bridge which ends in a rotten plank over a fathomless abyss: 'The Cholera in Rome,' the Angel of Death leading the Cholera--a hideous old woman--down the street under the Capitol by moonlight, and showing her the door she is to knock at: 'L'Enfant qui dort ? l'ombre du lit maternel, et les Anges qui savent d'avance le sort des humains, et baissent avec larmes ses pet.i.tes mains.' It is interesting to see how familiar the German common people are with their artists: the great names of Kaulbach, Henneberg, &c., are in every mouth; how few of our common people would know anything of Landseer or Millais!"

"_Vicenza, Nov. 14._--The descent into Italy by the Brenner was enchanting--the exchange of the snow and bitter cold of Germany for vineyards and fruit-gardens, still glorious in their orange and scarlet autumnal tints. We were greatly delighted with Botzen, where the delicately wrought cathedral spire against the faint pink mountains tipped with snow is a lovely subject.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MANTUA.][400]

"At Verona we spent several days, thinking it more captivating than ever. Mother was able to enjoy the Giusti gardens, and I went one day to Mantua. It is wonderful. The station is two miles off, and the drive into the town across an immense bridge over the lake is most striking[401]--the towers all reflected in the still waters, and the fishing-boats sailing in close under the houses. Then, in the town, the intense desolation of one part--courts and corridors and squares all gra.s.s-grown and utterly tenantless--is a striking contrast to the other part, teeming with life and bustle. The Palazzo del T? is marvellous--only one story high, gigantic rooms covered with grand frescoes opening on sunny lawns with picturesque decaying avenues. I wandered over the vast ducal palace with three American ladies, who 'guessed' that 'when Mantua was in its prime, it must have been rather an elegant city.'"