Story of My Life Part 12

These were the best friends of Lander's solitude; most of his other visitors were sycophants and flatterers, and though he despised the persons, he did not always dislike the flattery. Swift says truly--

"'Tis an old maxim in the schools, That flattery's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit."

Another resident of whom I saw much at Bath was my mother's cousin, Miss Harriet Dumbleton (her mother was a Leycester)--an old maiden lady, who lived in the most primitive manner, really scarcely allowing herself enough to eat, because, like St. Elizabeth, though she had a very good fortune, she had given everything she had to the poor. She would even sell her furniture, books, and pictures, to give away the money they realised. But she was a most agreeable, witty, lively person, and it was always a great pleasure to go to her.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Lyncombe, Sept. 12._--I have been here four days, but only to-day did Mr. R. _begin_ to attempt any lessons with me. He was very impatient, and I got so puzzled and confused, I could scarcely do anything at all; all my sums and everything else were wrong.

Warriner and Hebden were very kind, and did all they could to help me. I like Warriner very much. To-day I have done much better, and I really do try to do well, dearest Mamma."

"_Sept. 14._--Yesterday morning, as there was again no work whatever to be done, I went off by myself to Charterhouse Hinton to see the Abbey. I was told it was not shown, but insisted upon going up to the house, where I rang the bell, and was allowed to look at the ruin in the garden. There I found an old gentleman, to whom I told who I was, where I was, and all about myself, and he told me in return that he had been at school with Uncle Jule and knew the Bath aunts, and not only showed me the best place to sketch the Abbey from, but gave me a lesson in perspective. Then he took me into the house and told me all the stories of the pictures there.

"Mr. Landor has been here, and, thinking to do me honour, called upon the R.'s. Whilst Pomero danced about, he told numbers of stories, beginning at once about the Dukes of Brandenburg and Orleans, and in defence of the Danes. 'Hare may say what he likes, but that King of Prussia is a regular old scoundrel.'

"Whenever we are _supposed_ to do any work, Mr. R. sits at the small table in the dining-room while we are at the large one; but no one takes any notice of him, and all talk slang and laugh as if he was out of the room; and if Harris gets bored with his supposed work, he rings for a plate and gla.s.s of water and paints."

"_Sept. 22._--You need not grudge my long walks and being away from the others, for I should not be with them if at home, as Hebden goes to play on the Abbey organ, and the rest have their own occupations. To-day I went over hill and dale to Wellow, where there is a n.o.ble old church, and a Holy Well of St. Julian, at which a white lady used to appear on St. Julian's Eve, whenever any misfortune was about to happen to the family of Hungerford, the former possessors of the soil. As I was drawing the village, a farmer came riding by, and, after looking at my sketch, went back with me to show me his house, once a manor of the Hungerfords, with a splendid old carved chimney-piece.

"These are very long dreary half-years. At Harrow I used to rejoice that I should never more have to endure those horrible long private-school half-years, yet here they are again. Oh! what would I not give to be back with you, and able to take care of you when you are poorly!"

"_Oct. 9._--Yesterday, as there were no lessons whatever again, I made a great expedition to Farley Castle, but was very miserable all the way in thinking that I had not been better to you all the summer, dearest, dearest Mamma. I used to think, when I knew that I should be at home such a long time, what a comfort I should be to you, and that you would see how good I was grown; but instead of that, how bad I was all the time! Oh! if I had only a little of it over again! Well, it is a long walk, but at last I arrived at Farley, a pretty ruin on a height, with four towers at the angles and a chapel in the centre. I persuaded the woman to lock me in here, and was in ecstasies. The walls are covered with armour of the Hungerfords for centuries, and in a corner are Cromwell's boots and saddle. At the other end is the ancient high altar with a Bible of ages mouldering away beneath a carved crucifix and stained window, and the surrounding walls are emblazoned with Hungerford arms. Old banners wave from the ceiling, old furniture lines the aisle, and in St. Anne's Chantry are two splendid altar-tombs, of Lady Joanna Hungerford and her husband, and Sir Edward and his wife.

"How am I to get any money to pay for having my hair cut, and for some gloves, for mine are quite worn out?"

"_Oct. 20._--No work at all, so I have had a grand expedition to the beautiful old deserted house of the Longs at South Wraxhall, and have been writing ballads and stories about it ever since."

"_Oct. 26._--No lessons. Mr. R. will not have them. So we have all been together to Farley, and went into the vault where the Hungerfords lie in leaden coffins, melted to fit their bodies and faces, their real features in deep relief. They look most extraordinary, especially two babies, whom, at first sight, you would take for a pair of shoes.... When I am alone with Harris, I like him very much. He writes poetry and draws beautifully, and can read French and Italian for his own amus.e.m.e.nt. I wish I could. Oh, I am so tired of having nothing to do!"

My dear Grandmother, Mrs. Leycester, had been failing all the autumn, and my mother was much with her at her house in New Street. Towards the end of October she seemed better, and my mother returned to Lime, but on the 3rd of November she was suddenly recalled. As so often happens in serious cases, for the only time in her life she missed the train, and when she arrived, after many hours' delay, she found that dear Grannie had died an hour before, wis.h.i.+ng and longing for her to the last. To my intense thankfulness, I was allowed to go to my mother in New Street, once more to behold the beloved aged features in the deep repose of death, and to see the familiar inanimate objects connected with my childhood, and the dear old servants. Grannie was buried in the vaults of St. Martin's Church, Trafalgar Square, her coffin being laid upon that of Uncle Hugh (Judge Leycester). The vaults were a very awful place--coffins piled upon one another up to the ceiling, and often in a very bad state of preservation,[52]--and the funeral was a very ghastly one, all the ladies being enveloped in huge black hooded mantles, which covered them from head to foot like pillars of c.r.a.pe. Grannie is one of the few persons whose memory is always evergreen to me, and for whom I have a most lasting affection. Everything connected with her has an interest. Many pieces of furniture and other memorials of my grandmother's house in New Street and, before that, of Stoke Rectory, have been cherished by us at Hurstmonceaux and Holmhurst, and others it has always been a pleasure to see again when I have visited my Penrhyn cousins at Sheen--objects of still life which long survive those to whom they were once important.

In the winter of 1848-49 I saw at St. Leonards the venerable Queen Marie Am?lie, and am always glad to have seen that n.o.ble and long-suffering lady, the niece of Marie Antoinette.

During the autumn at Lyncombe I was almost constantly ill, and very often ill in the winter at home, which the Marcus Hares all spent at Lime. It was a miserable trial to me that, in her anxiety lest I should miss an hour of a school where I was taught nothing, my mother sent me back a week too early--and I was for that time alone in the prison of my abomination, in unutterable dreariness, with nothing in the world to do.

This term, a most disagreeable vulgar boy called W---- was added to the establishment at Lyncombe, who was my detested companion for the next two years; and from this time in every way life at Lyncombe became indescribably wretched--chiefly from the utter waste of time--and, as I constantly wrote to my mother, I was always wis.h.i.+ng that I were dead. My only consolation, and that a most dismal and solitary one, was in the long excursions which I made; but I look back upon these as times of acute suffering from poverty and _hunger_, as I never had any allowance, and was always sent back to my tutor's with only five s.h.i.+llings in my pocket. Thus, though I walked sometimes twenty-four miles in a day, and was out for eight or ten hours, I never had a penny with which to buy even a bit of bread, and many a time sank down by the wayside from the faintness of sheer starvation, often most gratefully accepting some of their food from the common working people I met. If I went out with my companions, the utmost mortification was added to the actual suffering of hunger, because, when they went into the village inns to have a good well-earned luncheon, I was always left starving outside, as I never had the means of paying for any food. I believe my companions were very sorry for me, but they never allowed their pity to be any expense to them, and then "E meglio essere odiato che compat.i.to" is an Italian proverb which means a great deal, especially to a boy. After a time, too, the food at Lyncombe itself became extremely stinted and of the very worst quality--a suet dumpling filled with coa.r.s.e odds and ends of meat being our dinner on at least five days out of the seven, which of course was very bad for an extremely delicate rapidly-growing youth--and, if I was ill from want of food, which was frequently the case, I was given nothing but rice.

What indescribably miserable years those were! I still feel, in pa.s.sing Bath by railway, sick at heart from the recollection, and I long in this volume to hurry over a portion of life so filled with wretched recollections, and which had scarcely a redeeming feature, except Mr.

Landor's constant kindness and friends.h.i.+p. It was also a terrible disappointment that my mother never would consent to my going for a few days to see "Italima" and my brothers, who were then living at Torquay, and who vainly begged for it. My endless letters to my mother (for I wrote several sheets daily) are so crushed and disconsolate that I find little to select.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Easter Sunday, 1849._--Yesterday Mr. Landor asked me to dine with him. First we went out to order the dinner, accompanied by Pomero in high spirits. As we went through the streets, he held forth upon their beauties, especially those of the Circus, to which he declares that nothing in Rome or in the world was ever equal. We stopped first at the fishmonger's, where, after much bargaining, some turbot was procured; then, at the vegetable shop, we bought broccoli, potatoes, and oranges; then some veal to roast; and finally a currant-tart and biscuits. Mr. Landor generally orders his own little dinners, but almost all this was for me, as he will dine himself on a little fish. He has actually got a new hat, he says because all the ladies declared they would never walk with him again unless he had one, and he has a hideous pair of new brown trousers. Pomero was put out of the room for jumping on them, but when he was heard crying outside the door, Mr. Landor declared he could not let his dear child be unhappy, and was obliged to let it in; upon which the creature was so delighted, that it instantly jumped on the top of its master's head, where it sate demurely, looking out of the window.

"Harris has just written an account of my home life which he says he believes to be exact, _i.e._, that I live with two maiden aunts, 'Gidman and Lear'--that they have a dog called 'Paul against the Gentiles,' who runs after them, carrying m.u.f.fins and apples to the poor and dest.i.tute inhabitants of the parish of Chalk-c.u.m-Chilblains--that his kennel is inscribed with texts of Scripture, and when a heretic is near he can smell him five miles off--that his food consists of tracts, and that he drinks a dilution of hymn-books and camphor-ice."

In my summer holidays of 1849 my mother took me for the second time to Alton. It was very hot weather, and we lived entirely amongst the affectionate primitive cottagers, going afterwards to stay with Lady Gore at Wilcot House--an old haunted house, with a tower where a tailor (I forget how he got there) committed suicide. With Mrs. Pile we drove through the open Wilts.h.i.+re country to her farmhouse home of Tufton, where we spent several days very pleasantly, in a quiet place on the glistening little river Teste, close to Hurstborne Park. On the day of our leaving Tufton we visited Winchester, and as we were going thence to Portsmouth by rail, we had an adventure which might have ended seriously.

The train was already in motion, and my mother and I were alone in the carriage, when three men came running along the platform and attempted to enter it. Only one succeeded, for before the others could follow him, the train had left the platform. In a minute we saw that the man who was alone in the carriage with us was a maniac, and that those left behind were his keepers. He uttered a shrill hoot and glared at us.

Fortunately, as the door banged to, the ta.s.sel of the window was thrown up, and this attracted him, and he yelled with laughter. We sat motionless at the other side of the carriage opposite each other. He seized the ta.s.sel and kept throwing it up and down, hooting and roaring with laughter. Once or twice we fancied he was about to pounce upon us, but then the ta.s.sel attracted him again. After about eight minutes the train stopped. His keepers had succeeded in getting upon the guard's box as the train left the station, and hearing his shouts, stopped the train, and he was removed by force.

We went to stay at Haslar with Sir Edward Parry, the Arctic voyager, whose first wife had been my mother's early friend Bella Stanley. He was now married again, and had three more children, and his wife had two daughters by her first husband, Mr. h.o.a.re. The three families lived together, and in the most wonderful harmony. The eldest son, Edward, afterwards Bishop of Dover, was several years older than I, yet not too old for companions.h.i.+p. But I never could feel the slightest interest in the dockyards or the s.h.i.+ps at Spithead. My only pleasure was a happy _tourette_ round the Isle of Wight--the mother, Lea, and I, in a little carriage. During the latter part of our stay at Haslar, cholera broke out in the hospital, and our departure was like a flight.

While I was at Lyncombe in the autumn, my step-grandmother Mrs. Hare Naylor died, very soon after the marriage of her daughter Georgiana to Mr. Frederick D. Maurice, whose first wife had been her intimate friend.

She was married during what was supposed to be her last illness, but was so pleased with her nuptials that she recovered after the ceremony and lived for nearly half a century afterwards.

My dear old uncle Edward Stanley had always said, while making his summer tour in Scotland, that he should return to Norwich when the first case of cholera appeared. He died at Brahan Castle, and his body was brought back to Norwich just as the cholera appeared there. Tens of thousands of people went to his funeral--for, in the wild Chartist times of his episcopate, he had been a true "chevalier sans peur et sans reproche," and had become beloved by people of every phase of creed and character. My mother met Aunt Kitty in London as she came from Scotland, and went with her to Norwich. It was perfect anguish to me not to see once more the place which I had most delighted in, but that was not permitted. Only two days after leaving her home in the old palace, my aunt heard of the death of her youngest son, Captain Charles Edward Stanley, at Hobart Town in Van Diemen's Land. He left a young widow, who, in her desolation, derived her chief comfort from the thought of joining her husband's eldest brother, Captain Owen Stanley, at Sydney, and returning to England in his s.h.i.+p, the _Rattlesnake_. When she reached the s.h.i.+p, she learned that he had been found dead in his cabin only a few days after receiving the tidings of his father's death. The news of this third loss reached Lime just after Aunt Kitty and Kate Stanley had left it to take possession of their new London home--6 Grosvenor Crescent. I remember my mother's piercing shriek when she opened the letter: it was the only time I ever heard her scream. It was only a few months after this that Kate was married to Dr. Vaughan, her brother's friend and my late head-master.

In 1850 I detested my life at Lyncombe more than ever. Mr. R. was increasingly neglectful in teaching, and the food and everything else was increasingly bad. Temple Harris and my other elder companions went away, and their places were taken by a boy "with flaxen hair and spectacles, like a young curate," but inoffensive, and "an atrociously vulgar little sn.o.b;" while the ill-tempered rathunter, who had been at Lyncombe with the old set, was the only one of them that remained. I was now, however, more anxious than ever to learn something, and I made much progress by myself. Most of the external consolations of this year came from the residence in Bath of my maternal cousin Mrs. Russell Barrington, a rather gay young widow, and an eccentric person, but very kind to me at this time, incessant in her invitations, and really very useful in her constant lectures upon "good manners." She might truly have written to my mother in the words of Mme. de S?vign?--"Je me m?le d'apprendre ? votre fils les man?ges des conversations ordinaires, qu'il est important de savoir; il y a des choses qu'il ne faut pas ignorer. Il seroit ridicule de para?tre ?tonn? de certaines nouvelles de quoi on raisonne; je suis a.s.sez instruite de ces bagatelles."

Up to this time, as ever afterwards, no preparation for social life had ever been thought of as far as I was concerned. I was never encouraged to talk at home; indeed, if I ever spoke, I was instantly suppressed. I knew nothing of any game; I was never taught to ride or swim, and dancing was absolutely prohibited as an invention of the evil one. Other boys must have thought me a terrible a.s.s, but it was really not quite my own fault. Oh! how heartily I agree with Archbishop Whately, who said that "the G.o.d of the Calvinists is the devil with 'G.o.d' written on his forehead."

There was another of my real relations with whom I made acquaintance this year, and with whom I was afterwards very intimate--namely, Henry Liddell, Rector of Easington, and one of the trustees of Bamborough Castle, who was the brother of my great-uncle Lord Ravensworth, and had married Charlotte Lyon of Hetton, daughter of the youngest brother of my great-grandmother Lady Anne Simpson. Mr. Liddell was one of the kindest of men, with all the genial courtesy of a race of country gentlemen now almost extinct, and his wife was a beautiful old lady, with much that was interesting to tell of past times and people. Their eldest son, who was afterwards Dean of Christ Church at Oxford, was at this time head-master of Westminster, and was a clever and cultivated person, though inferior to his parents in natural charm of character. In the summer my maternal grandfather, Sir John Paul, came to stay at a hotel at Bath and I saw him frequently, but never found anything in common with him, though he was an exceedingly clever artist. In my daily letters to my mother, I see that I described his first reception of me with "How do you do, sir"--just like any distant acquaintance. He was at this time married to his third wife, who was a daughter of Bishop Halifax, and presented a very youthful appearance. Her step-children, who never liked her, declared that on the day after her marriage one of her eyebrows fell off into her soup. But to me she was always very kind, and I was fond of her, in spite of her many ancient frivolities. With Lady Paul lived her sister Caroline Halifax, a very pretty pleasant old lady, who adored her, and thought "my sister Bessy" the most beautiful, ill.u.s.trious, and cultivated woman in the world.

It was in April 1850 that a happy missing of his train at Bath produced a visit at Lyncombe from Arthur Stanley, who was horrified at my ignorance, and at the absence, which he discovered, of all pains in teaching me. His representations to my mother at last induced her to promise to remove me, for which I shall be eternally grateful to him in recollection. Nevertheless I was unaccountably left at Lyncombe till Christmas, nine wretched and utterly useless months; for when he knew I was going to leave, after my return in the summer, Mr. R. dropped even the pretence of attempting to teach me, so that I often remained in total neglect, without any work whatever, for several weeks. In their anger at the distant prospect of my escaping them, the R.'s now never spoke to me, and my life was pa.s.sed in _total_ and miserable silence, even at meal-times. If it had not been for the neighbourhood of Bath, I should often have been many weeks together without speaking a single word. My mother in vain remonstrated over my sickeningly doleful letters, and told me to "catch all the sunbeams within reach;" I could only reply there were no sunbeams to catch--that "you would think at meals that you were in the Inquisition from the cold, morose, joyless, motionless faces around the table." Then Aunt Esther would make my mother urge me to accept all these small trials, these "guidings," in a more Christian spirit, which made me furious: I could not express religious sentiments when such sentiments were quite unborn. Besides, I might have answered that "when St. Paul said we were to put off the old man, he did not mean we were to put on the old woman."[53] I also wrote to my mother--

"We are in the last extremities as regards food. I will give you a perfectly correct account of the last few days. Sat.u.r.day, dinner, boiled beef. Sunday, breakfast, ditto cold with bread and b.u.t.ter.

Luncheon, a very small portion of ditto with dry bread and part of the rind of a decayed cheese. Dinner, a little of ditto with a doughy plum-tart. Monday, breakfast, ditto with two very small square pieces of bread. Luncheon, ditto with bread and ... b.u.t.ter!

Dinner, ditto and a rice-pudding. Tuesday, breakfast, ditto; luncheon, a very small fragment of ditto and one potato apiece doled round. Dinner, ditto. Wednesday, breakfast, sc.r.a.ps of ditto; luncheon, fat and parings of ditto. We all have to sit and do our work now by the light of a single bed-candle. Oh! I am more thankful every day that you will at last let me leave this place.

Any change must be for the better, and I should not mind if it was to the centre of the desert, if I could only feel I should learn something, for I am learning _nothing_ here, and never have learnt anything.... Would you very much mind giving me an umbrella, for I have got wet through almost every day: on Sundays it is especially inconvenient. Mr. R. asked me the other day how I liked the thoughts of going away!--but I was very good, and only said 'I should not _mind_ it very much!'"

My only reprieve from the misery of Lyncombe in 1850 was in a three days' visit to my half-uncle Gustavus Hare at Exmouth. I describe to my mother the extraordinary sermon which I heard there from the Dean of Exeter, on the theory that the object of St. Paul's visit to Jerusalem, as described in the Acts of the Apostles, was to attend the deathbed of the "most blessed Virgin." I was greatly delighted with sketching the then ruined sanctuary of St. John in the Wilderness--an old grey tower covered with moss and lichen and a huge yew-tree, in a solitary opening amid woods. Another day we saw Bradley Manor, near Newton, "with its chapel used as a hen-roost and a peac.o.c.k perched upon the altar," and the second Mrs. Hare Naylor's grave at Highweek, "overlooking the beautiful wooded hills and the still blue waters of Teignmouth harbour."

Whilst at my tutor's, I had saved up every penny I could--actually by pennies--to go to Berkeley Castle, and at last, by going without food the whole day (as I had no money for _that_), I accomplished the excursion. To me, it was well worth all the suffering it cost, and I wrote seven sheets to my mother about the great hall with its stained windows, the terraces with peac.o.c.ks sunning themselves on the carved bal.u.s.trades, the dark picture-hung staircase, the tapestried bedrooms, and above all, the unspeakably ghastly chamber of Edward the Second's murder, approached through the leads of the roof by a wooden bridge between the towers--"dim and dark, with a floor of unplaned oak, and the light falling from two stained windows upon a white head of Edward in a niche, and an old bed with a sword lying upon it in the position in which it was found after the murder." Then in the park were "the descendants of the stags which were harnessed to the king's bier, and which, for want of horses, drew him to his grave at Gloucester."

In the dreary solitude of my life at Lyncombe (as how often since!) drawing was a great resource, and much practice gave me facility in sketching. At this time I was very conceited about it, thought my drawings beautiful, and, as an inevitable consequence, fell violently into "the black stage," in which they were--abominable! In the holidays, however, my pride was well taken down by my mother, who herself drew with great taste and delicacy. She would look at my drawing carefully, and then say, "And what does this line mean?"--"Oh, I thought ... it looked well."--"Then, if you do not know exactly what it means, take it out at once." This was the best of all possible lessons.

The chief variety of our summer was spending two days in the little inn at Penshurst--seeing and drawing the fine old house there and Hever Castle, and a day at Winchelsea, where we slept at the primitive little public-house, and sketched from breakfast to sunset.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RYE GATE, WINCHELSEA.]

In the autumn, at Mr. Landor's house, I first met Miss Carolina Courtenay Boyle,[54] Queen Adelaide's ex-maid of honour, with whom, partly through my love of drawing, I made a great friends.h.i.+p. Accustomed as I was to the inferior twaddle which formed the conversation of the Maurice sisters, or the harsh judgments of those who considered everything pleasant to be sinful, Miss Boyle was a revelation to me. I was as one mesmerised by her. Hitherto my acquaintance with women had been chiefly with the kind who thought ample compensation for having treated me with inordinate unkindness and selfishness to be contained in the information that they would not fail to remember me in their prayers. It was a new experience, not only that a beautiful and clever lady should try to make herself agreeable, but that she should think it worth while to make herself agreeable _to me_. No wonder I adored her.

She was then living with her mother Lady Boyle in the same house of Millard's Hill, near Frome, in which my great-aunts Caroline and Marianne Hare had lived before; and, to my great surprise and delight, I was allowed to go by the coach to spend two days with her there. It was on this occasion that I first wore a morning-coat instead of a jacket, and very proud I was of it. Apropos of dress, at this time and for many years afterwards, all young gentlemen wore straps to their trousers, not only when riding, but always: it was considered the _ne plus ultra_ of sn.o.bbism to appear without them. The said trousers also always had stripes at the sides, which, beginning like those of soldiers, grew broader and broader, till they recalled the parti-coloured hose of Pinturicchio: then they disappeared altogether.

The house of Millard's Hill, when the Boyles inhabited it, was quite enchanting, so filled with pictures, carvings, and china; and Miss Boyle herself was a more beautiful picture than any of those upon her walls--still wonderfully striking in appearance, with delicately chiselled features and an unrivalled complexion, while her golden-grey hair, brushed back and cut short like a boy's (owing to a _coup de soleil_ long before), added a marvellous picturesqueness. A greater contrast to the pinched and precise evangelical women whom alone I was usually permitted to visit could at this time scarcely be imagined.

Wonderful were the stories which she had to tell me, and delighted to tell me, of her past life and sufferings, "through which only G.o.d and religion" had helped her, with the moral attached that since the few whom she had idolised were taken away, she must now live for all. She talked much also of her great anxiety about dear old Landor, "that G.o.d would change and _rebuild_ his soul." Lady Boyle, a sweet and beautiful old lady,[55] was now quite paralysed, and her daughter would sit for hours at her feet, soothing her and holding her hands. I remember as especially touching, that when Miss Boyle sang hymns to her mother, she would purposely make a mistake, in order that her sick mother might have "the pleasure of correcting her."

When we went out, Miss Boyle's dress--a large Marie Antoinette hat and feathers and a scarlet cloak--at that time considered most extraordinary--excited great sensation. With her I went to Longleat; to Vallis, of which I have often been reminded in seeing Poussin's pictures; and to Marston, where old Lord Cork was still living, with his daughter-in-law Lady Dungarvan and her children. An immense number of the Boyles--"the ill.u.s.trious family" by whom, our Dr. Johnson said, "almost every art had been encouraged or improved"--were at this time residing at or around Marston, and none of them on terms with one another, though they were all, individually, very kind to me. I now first made acquaintance with Miss Boyle's younger sister Mary, whom I knew better many years after, when I learned to value her wonderful sympathy with all the pathos of life, as much as to admire her quick wit and inimitable acting.[56] Landor used to say of her, "Mary Boyle is more than clever, she is profound;" but it is her quickness that remains by one. Of her lively answers it is difficult to give specimens, but I remember how one day when she neglected something, Lady Marion Alford said to her, "What a baby you are, Mary," and she answered, "Well, I can't help it; _I was born so_."

Another day Sir Frederic Leighton had promised to go to her, and, after keeping her waiting a long time, had disappointed her. She met him at the Academy party that evening, and he made a feint of kneeling down to beg her pardon--"Oh, pray rise up," she exclaimed; "people might think I was forgiving you."

But to return to Millard's Hill. In the evenings Miss Boyle took a guitar and played and sang--strange wild Spanish songs, which seemed perfectly in accordance with her floating hair and inspired mien. King William IV. desired her to play to him, which she dreaded so much, that when she was sent to fetch her guitar, she cut every string and then frizzled them up, and came back into the royal presence saying that her guitar was quite broken and she could not play. To her terror, the King sent for the guitar to see if it was true, but he was deceived. Queen Adelaide's death had made a great change in Miss Boyle's life, but she received the greatest kindness from the Queen's sister, d.u.c.h.ess Ida of Saxe-Weimar. When I was with her, she was looking forward to a homeless life after her mother's death, which could not be far distant, but was trusting in the family motto--"G.o.d's providence is my inheritance."

Soon after my return from Millard's Hill, I went to my grandfather Sir John Paul at the Hill House near Stroud--a much-dreaded visit, as I had never before seen most of the near relations amongst whom I so suddenly found myself.