Story of My Life Part 21

"In the evening we went to the Professor's 'Soiree.' Here I found it much more amusing to listen to his sister's discourse about 'poor dear Buckland--my friends Whewell and Sedgwick--my dear friend Faraday--my very celebrated uncle, and my also celebrated brother,' than to attend to the Professor himself, who was exhibiting photographs of the scenery and geology of the moon."

Amongst the remarkable persons whom I frequently saw in my earlier Oxford life was the venerable Dr. (Martin Joseph) Routh, President of Magdalen, born 1755, who died in 1854, in his hundredth year. He would describe his mother as having known a lady who had met Charles II.

walking round the parks at Oxford with his dogs. He had himself seen Dr. Johnson "scrambling up the steps of University." In him I myself saw a man of the type of Dr. Johnson, and of much the same dress, and even ponderous manner of speaking. I remember Goldwin Smith once asking him how he did, and his replying, "I am suffering, sir, from a catarrhal cold, which, however, sir, I take to be a kind provision of Nature to relieve the peccant humours of the system." His recollections of old Oxford extended naturally over the most immense period. Sir George Dasent has told me that the President once asked him, "Did you ever hear, sir, of Gownsman's Gallows?"--"No, Mr. President."--"What, sir, do you tell me, sir, that you never heard of Gownsman's Gallows? Why, I tell you, sir, that I have seen two undergraduates hanged on Gownsman's Gallows in Holywell--hanged, sir, for highway robbery."

A few years before the President's death, when he was at Ewelme, his living in the country, his butler became insane and had to be sent away.

When he was leaving, he begged to see the President once more, "to ask his blessing," as he said. The President received him in the garden, where the man, stooping as if to kiss his hand, bit it--bit a piece out of it. "How did you feel, Mr. President," said Sir G. Dasent afterwards, "when the man bit your hand?"--"Why, at first, sir," said the President, "I felt considerably alarmed; for I was unaware, sir, what proportion of human virus might have been communicated by the bite; but in the interval of reaching the house, I was convinced that the proportion of virus must have been very small indeed: then I was at rest, but, sir, I had the bite cauterised." It was often observed of Dr.

Routh that he never appeared on any occasion without his canonicals, which he wore constantly. Some ill-disposed undergraduates formed a plan which should force him to break this habit, and going under his window at midnight, they shouted "Fire." The President appeared _immediately_ and in the most terrible state of alarm, but in full canonicals.

It was only forty-eight hours before Dr. Routh died that his powers began to fail. He ordered his servants to prepare rooms for a Mr. and Mrs. Cholmondeley, who had been long since dead, and then they felt sure the end was come. They tried to get him upstairs to bed, but he struggled with the banisters as with an imaginary enemy. He then spoke of pedigrees, and remarked that a Mr. Edwards was descended from two royal families: he just murmured something about the American war, and then he expired. He left his widow very ill provided for, but the college gave her a handsome income.

On reaching home in the summer of 1854, all the anxieties of the previous winter about my mother's health were renewed. She was utterly incapable of either any physical or any mental effort, and my every minute was occupied in an agony of watchfulness over her. I felt then, as so often since, that the only chance of her restoration was from the elasticity of foreign air, and then, as so often since, was my misery and anxiety increased by the cruel taunts of my aunts, who protested that I was only trying to drag her away from home, at a sacrifice to her comfort, from a most selfish desire for my own amus.e.m.e.nt. However, when a short stay at Southborough and Eastbourne seemed rather to increase than cure the malady, the absolute decision of her doctor caused the talked-of journey to be accomplished, and we set out for Switzerland, accompanied by Charlotte Leycester,--my mother, as usual, being quite delighted to go abroad, and saying, "I have no doubt as soon as I reach Boulogne I shall be quite well,"--a result which was very nearly obtained. We lingered first at Fontainebleau, with its pompous but then desolate ch?teau, and gardens brilliant with blue larkspurs and white feverfew--the commonest plants producing an effect I have seldom seen elsewhere. A pet trout, certainly of enormous age, and having its scales covered with a kind of fungus, was alive then, and came up for biscuit: it was said to have belonged to Marie Antoinette. At Chalons we took the steamer down the Sa?ne, and a picture that dwells with me through life is that of the glorious effect, as we entered Lyons, of the sun suddenly bursting through the dark thunderclouds and lighting up every projection of roof and window in the tall houses which lined the quay and the bright figures beneath. I have often been at Lyons since, but have never cared for it as I did then, when we stayed long enough to enjoy S.

Martin d'Ainay, and the picturesque ascent to the Fouvi?res and n.o.ble view from its terrace, and to marvel at the vast collection of votive offerings, memorials of those who prayed to the Virgin in danger and were protected by her, while we wondered where the memorials of those were who invoked her and whose prayers were _not_ answered. My mother went straight from Lyons to Aix-les-Bains by _voiturier_, but I lingered to see the beauties of Vienne, and followed by steamer up the Rhone and Lac de Bourget with my Southgate friend Walter Portman.[97] We found Aix terribly hot, and generally spent the evenings by or on the lake, where one day my mother, Lea, and I were in some danger, being caught in a tremendous _burrasco_. Thence a most wearisome journey _voiturier_ took us from Aix to Geneva, a place for which I conceived the most intense aversion, from its hot baking situation, and the illiberal and presumptuous "religion" of its inhabitants. While there, in a hotel facing the lake, I was called up in the middle of the night to Lea, who was very alarmingly ill, and while attending to and trying to calm her, was roused by shrieks of "Fire" in the street, and saw the opposite house burst into flame. Alarm-bells rang, engines were summoned, crowds arrived, and only a change in the wind saved us from destruction or flight. We moved afterwards to the H?tel des Etrangers, a house in a damp garden near the lake. Here we were seated almost alone at the little _table-d'h?te_ when we heard the most extraordinary hissing and rus.h.i.+ng sound, like a clock being wound up, and a very little lady entered, who seemed to be impelled into the room, followed by her husband. On reaching her chair, several loud clicks resulted in her being lifted into it as by invisible power! It was Mrs. Archer Clive, the then celebrated auth.o.r.ess of "Paul Ferroll," who had no legs, and moved by clock-work.

While at Geneva, I saw many of its peculiar celebrities, especially M.

Gaussen and M. Merle d'Aubign?, the historian of the Reformation, whose real name was only Merle, the sequence having been adopted from his former residence. He had a very striking appearance, his hair being quite grey, but his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows deep black, with a fine forehead and expression. Another person we saw was M. Berthollet, with an enormous head. It was with difficulty that any of these persons could be convinced that our sole object in coming to Geneva was not to see a certain pasteur, of whom we had never even heard. We visited Ferney, which thrives upon the unpleasant memory of Voltaire, who had a villa there, in which we saw the tomb of--his heart! The inn has as its sign a portrait of him in his French wig.

We spent a pleasant afternoon at Colonel Tronchin's lovely villa. He was a most excellent man, and one could not help seeing how n.o.bly and unostentatiously he employed his large fortune for the good of others.

Yet one could not help seeing also how many of his followers put up their religious scruples like an umbrella to ward off whatever was not quite to their liking--how "No, I could not think of it; it would be against my conscience," became at Geneva, as elsewhere, very liable to be said in pure selfishness.

My mother's sufferings from the heat led to our going from Geneva to Chamounix. On the way we slept at St. Martin. As I was drawing there upon the bridge, a little girl came to beg, but beggars were so common that I paid no attention to her entreaties, till her queer expression attracted me, and a boy who came up at the same time described her as an "abandonn?e," for her father was in prison, her sister dead, and her mother had deserted her and gone off to Paris. The child, who had scarcely an apology for being clothed, verified this in a touching and at the same time an elf-like way--grinning and bemoaning her sorrows in the same breath. Charlotte Leycester gave her four sous, with which she was so enchanted that she rushed away, throwing her hands into the air and making every demonstration of delight, and we thought we should see no more of her. However, in going home, we found her under a wall on the other side of the bridge, where she showed us with rapture the bread she had been able to buy with the money which had been given her. An old woman standing by told us about her--how wonderfully little the child lived on, sleeping from door to door, and how extraordinary her spirits still were. It was so odd a case, and there was something so interesting in the child, that we determined to follow her, and see where she really would go to sleep. To our surprise, instead of guiding us through the village, she took her way straight up the woods on the mountain-side, by a path which she a.s.sured us was frequented by wolves. It was very dark, and the place she led us to was most desolate--some ch?lets standing by themselves in the woods, almost at the foot of the mountain; the gla.s.s gone from the windows, which were filled up with straw and bits of wood.

Meantime we had made out from the child that her name was Toinette, daughter of Fran?ois Bernard, and that she once lived in the neighbouring village of Pa.s.sy, where her home had been burnt to the ground, a scene which she described with marvellous gesticulations. She seemed to have conceived the greatest affection for Charlotte. When asked if she knew that it was wrong to lie and steal, she said, "Rather than steal, I would have my head cut off, like the people in the prisons. I pray every day, and my prayer shall be always for you, Madame."

A great dog flew out of the cottage at us, but Toinette drove it away, and called out a woman who was standing in the doorway. The woman said she knew nothing of Toinette, but that she had implored to sleep there about three weeks before, and that she had slept there ever since; and then the child, caressing her and stroking her cheeks, begged to be allowed to do the same again. The woman offered to go with us to another house, where the people knew the child better. On arriving, we heard the inmates at prayers inside, singing a simple litany in responses.

Afterwards they came out to speak to us. They said it was but for a very small matter Fran?ois Bernard was imprisoned, as he had only stolen some bread when he was starving, but that, if he came back, he could do nothing for Toinette, and as her uncles were idiots, there was n.o.body to take care of her: if we wished to do anything for her, we had better speak to the Syndic, who lived higher up the mountain; so thither we proceeded, with Toinette and all her female friends in our train.

It was a strange walk, by starlight through the woods, and a queer companions.h.i.+p of rough kind-hearted people. Toinette, only seven years old, laughed and skipped over the stones, holding Charlotte's gown, and declaring she would never leave her. We had expected to find the magistrate living in a better house than the others, but it was like its neighbours--a little brown ch?let by the side of a torrent. The Syndic was already in bed, but Madame, his wife, speedily got him up, and we held a parley with him on the wooden staircase, all the other people standing below. He said that there were no workhouses, no orphan asylums, and that though it was a bad case, the commune had no funds; school did not open till October, and even if Toinette got work there was no lodging for her at night. However, when Charlotte promised to clothe her, he was so much enchanted with the "grandeur de sa charit?,"

that he said he would consult with the commune about Toinette. Meantime, in the morning Charlotte bought her some clothes, and settled something for her future; but before we left we saw that she must not be too much indulged, as she asked Charlotte, who had given her a frock, shoes, and hat, to give her also some bonbons and a parasol!

We heard of Toinette Bernard for some years afterwards, and Charlotte Leycester sent annual remittances for her; but eventually she absconded, and utterly disappeared like a waif.

On the 1st of August I left my companions at Chamounix to make the circuit of Mont Blanc, but the weather was horrible, and most of the time the mountain-tops were hidden in swirl and mists; the paths were watercourses, and the ch?lets where I slept with my guide, Edouard Carrier, were piercingly cold and miserable--especially that of Motets, where there was nothing to eat but potatoes; no furniture whatever, nothing but some rotten straw to lie upon; no gla.s.s and no shutter to the window, through which an icy blast blew all night from the glacier, though the air of the filthy room was quite dense with fleas. Travelling in these parts is quite different now, but I have a most wretched recollection of the long walks in the cold mist, no sound but the cry of the marmots--yet one always had a wish to go on, not back.

Delightful was the change as we descended upon Courmayeur, with its valleys of chestnut-trees and its n.o.ble view of Mont Blanc, and Aosta with its Roman ruins. In returning, I was overtaken by a tremendous snowstorm at the top of the St. Bernard, and detained the whole of a most tedious day in the company of the kind priests (monks they are not) and their dogs. During this time sixty travellers arrived in turn and took refuge. We all dined together, and saw the hospice and the Morgue, which is a very awful sight: the snow has so perfectly embalmed the bodies, that they retain all their features, though quite black; the hair also remains. In one corner was a woman hugging her baby to her breast as the death silence overtook her. We all went down through the snow in a regular caravan, and I joined my mother at Villeneuve and went with her to Clarens.

Railways make travelling in Switzerland, as elsewhere, so easy now, that it is difficult to realise how long and tedious the journey to Visp was when I next left my mother to go to Zermatt. On my way I visited the old mountain-perched cathedral of Sion, then one of the most entirely beautiful and romantic churches in the world, now utterly destroyed by a "restoration," from which one might have hoped its precipitous situation would have preserved it. I walked in one day from Visp to Zermatt, and thence made all the excursions, and always alone. The Gorner Grat is much the finest view, all the others being only bits of the same. It is a bleak rock, bare of vegetation, far from humanity. Thence you look down, first by a great precipice upon a wilderness of glaciers, and beyond, upon a still greater wilderness of mountains all covered with snow. They tell you one is Monte Rosa, another the Weiss Horn, and so on, but they all look very much alike, except the great awful Matterhorn, tossing back the clouds from its twisted peak. It is a grand view, but I could never care for it. The snow hides the forms of the mountains altogether, and none of them especially strike you except the Matterhorn. There is no beauty, as at Chamounix or Courmayeur: all is awful, bleak desolation. In memory I fully echo the sentiment I find in my journal--"I am very glad to have seen it, but, if I can help it, nothing shall ever induce me to see it again."

It was a long walk from the Riffel Berg to Visp (34 miles), whence I proceeded to the Baths of Leuk, where the immense tanks, in which a crowd of people, men, women, and children, lead an every-day life like ducks, up to their chins in water, were a most ridiculous sight.

Sometimes you might find a sick and solitary old lady sitting alone in the water on a bench in the corner, with her hands and feet stretched out before her; but for the most part the patients were full of activity, laughter, and conversation. They held _in_ the water the sort of society which once characterised the pump-room at Bath: the old people gossipped in groups, the young people flirted across their little tables. Each person possessed a tiny floating table, on which he or she placed handkerchief, gloves, flowers, smelling-bottle, newspaper, or breakfast. In one of the tanks some nuns were devoutly responding to a priest who was reciting the litany; but generally all the people were mingled together during their eight hours of daily simmering--sallow priests, fat young ladies, old men with grey beards, and young officers with jaunty little velvet caps stuck on the back of their heads.

Generally they sate quite still, but sometimes there was a commotion as a whole family migrated to the other side of the bath, pus.h.i.+ng their little tables before them; and sometimes introductions took place, and there was a great bowing and curtseying. The advent of strangers was a matter of great excitement, and you saw whole rows of heads in different head-dresses all uniformly staring at the new-comer: but woe betide him if he came upon the causeways between the tanks with his hat on his head. I had been warned of this, however, by the _conducteur_ of the omnibus. "Oh! qu'ils crient! qu'ils crient! qu'ils crient!"

I left Leuk on the 18th of August to cross the Gemmi Pa.s.s, with a boy carrying my knapsack. It was very early morning. The Gemmi is a gra.s.s mountain with a perpendicular wall of rock overhanging it, up which the narrow path winds like a corkscrew, without railing or parapet--at least it had none then--and an appalling precipice below. On this path it is most unnecessary to take a false step, but a false step must be fatal.

It was an exquisitely clear, beautiful morning, and high up on the mountain-side a large party might be seen descending towards us. I did not see them, but I believe the boy did. We had just reached the top of the gra.s.sy hill and were at the foot of the precipice when there was a prolonged shouting. The whole mountain seemed to have broken out into screams, which were echoed from the hills on every side. I said, "Is it a hunt?"--"Nein, nein," said the boy with great excitement, "es ist ein Pferd--ein Pferd muss ?bergefallen sein." But then, in a moment, came one long, bitter, appalling, agonising shriek, which could be uttered for no fall of a horse--there was a sudden flash--not more--of _something_ between the light and the precipice, and a crash amid the stones and bushes beside us--and "Oh, ein Mensch--ein Mensch!" cried the boy, as he sank fainting on the ground.

Another moment, and a French gentleman rushed wildly past, his face white as a sheet, his expression fixed in voiceless horror. I eagerly asked what had happened (though I knew too well), but he rushed on as before. And directly afterwards came a number of peasants--guides probably. The two first looked bloodless, stricken aghast: it is the only time I ever saw a person's hair stand on end, but then _I did_, though they neither cried nor spoke. Then came one who sobbed, and another who wrung his hands, but who only said as he pa.s.sed, "Ein Mensch--ein Mensch!" One of the peasants threw a cloak over the remains, and two guides cried bitterly over it. Strange to say, the body was that of a "gar?on des bains" serving as a guide: he had jumped over a little stone in his descent, had jumped a little too far, and fallen over. For one awful moment he clung to the only fir-tree in the way--the moment of the screams--then the tree gave way, and all was ended.

I knew that if I did not go on at once the news would arrive at Thun before me and terrify my mother; but it was terrible, with the death-shriek ringing in one's ears, to follow the narrow unprotected path, and to pa.s.s the place where trampled turf and the broken fir-tree bore witness to the last struggle. An old German professor and his wife had left Leuk before us, and had heard nothing of what had happened.

When I told them at the top of the mountain, they knelt on the gra.s.s, and touchingly and solemnly returned thanks for their safety. Then I met Theodora de Bunsen with Sir Fowell and Lady Buxton going down, and was obliged to tell them also. Awfully in sympathy with our sensations is the ghastly scenery at the top of the Gemmi--the black lake, which is frozen all the year round, and the dismal, miserable inn beside it, which is the scene of Werther's horrible tragedy, of which I have so often since told the foundation-story.

My Uncle Penrhyn paid us a visit at Thun, with his daughter Emmie and a cousin, and I afterwards joined them at Lucerne, and was their guest in a most happy excursion to Andermatt. Afterwards I went alone to Engelberg, the village and great Benedictine convent in the green Alps under the Tetlis mountains. Thence I made my way to Stanz, and penetrated into the valleys connected with the strange story of the Swiss pilgrim-saint, Nicholas von der Flue, ending in the great church of Sachselen, which contained his hideous skeleton, with diamond eyes and jewel-hung bones. Thence it was a very long walk over the Brunig (there was then no carriage-road) to Meyringen, and thence, the same day, over the Scheideck to Gr?ndelwald; for my mother was expecting me there, and if I did not appear by the promised day, she might have been anxious; and in those days I was far too poor to have a mule: if I had money enough to pay for some luncheon, my utmost ambition was fulfilled.

In returning to England, we went to Freiburg in Breisgau, and visited the Bunsens at Heidelberg, greatly delighting in their beautifully situated villa of Charlottenberg, and the view of the castle and bridge from their terrace, with its oleanders and pomegranates. Afterwards we saw Meaux and its relics of Bossuet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARCHDEACON HARE'S STUDY, HURSTMONCEAUX RECTORY.]

Uncle Julius, whose health was rapidly declining, received my mother with many tears on our return. I have a vivid recollection of that first evening. My mother read "Bless the Lord, O my soul," at evening prayers, and said she always read that after a journey, with "He healeth all thy diseases"--so true of her. We went to Hastings for Uncle Julius's Charge to the clergy, which produced much enthusiasm amongst them, very different from his lengthy sermons in Hurstmonceaux, under which the whole congregation used quietly to compose themselves to sleep, probably well aware that they would not understand a word, if they tried to attend. The effect was sometimes most ridiculous of the chancel filled with nodding heads, or of heads which had long since done nodding, and were resting on their elbows locked in fastest slumber. I believe Mrs.

Sherwood describes a similar scene in one of her stories. Aunt Esther and the curate would try in vain to keep themselves awake with strong lavender lozenges during Uncle Julius's endless discourses. And then "There's Mrs. Hare asleep on one side of the Archdeacon and the curate on the other," the people would say, and he would go droning on with a sermon preached fifty times before. There were, however, days on which Uncle Julius would emerge from the vestry with clenched hands and his face full of pale enthusiasm, and then I would whisper to my mother: "Look, Uncle Julius is going to do Lady Macbeth!" There were no slumbers then, but rapt attention, as Uncle Julius in his most thrilling (and they were _thrilling_) tones went through the whole of the sleep-walking scene, wrung his hands over the pulpit-cus.h.i.+on, unable to wash out the "accursed spot" of sin. This was generally about once a year. Though Hurstmonceaux did not comprehend them, there are, however, many fragments, especially similes, in Uncle Julius's ordinary parish sermons which will always have an effect, especially that of grief at a death--the heavy plunge when the person goes down, and the circles vividly apparent at first, then gradually widening, till they are lost and disappear altogether. And though they did not understand him, his paris.h.i.+oners loved Uncle Julius, for he always acted up to his own answer to a question as to the value of a living--"Heaven or h.e.l.l, according as the occupier does his duty."

Uncle Julius had published a versified edition of the Psalms. He thought his Psalter would be adopted by the whole Church, and it was never used in a single church except Hurstmonceaux. During the service, he had the oddest way of turning over the pages with his nose. "The sixteenth morning of the month," he gave out one day. "No, 'tain't," called the voice of Martin the clerk from below, "'tis the seventeenth." "Oh, the seventeenth morning of the month."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Julius Charles Hare

From a portrait by G Richmond]

There certainly was a curious absence of ritual in the services at Hurstmonceaux. Yet one felt that Uncle Julius's whole heart was in the way he read the prayers. What was wanting arose from his personal characteristics, the same which made him always hopelessly unpunctual, which caused him to waste his mornings in hopeless dawdling just when there was most to be done, which so often sent him off for his afternoon walk just as the dinner-bell rang.

I was more than usually tried during the weeks spent at home this autumn by the way in which Mrs. Alexander was set up on a pinnacle of wors.h.i.+p by Uncle Julius and Aunt Esther--everything and everybody, especially my mother, being expected to give way to her. My journal, however, has many touching reminiscences of quiet evenings in our home life at this time--when I read aloud to my dearest mother, and she played and sang "Comfort ye," I sitting on the little sofa by her side, the light from the candles falling upon "the Reading Magdalen" over the pianoforte--and of her simple, earnest prayers aloud by the little round table in her own room that "the pleasures given us in this world might not draw us out of the simple way of G.o.d." Especially touching to me is the remembrance of our last evening together this summer, for it was then almost first that she began to allow the part my life bore in hers. "O G.o.d," she prayed, "be with us at our parting: and oh! prepare us to meet when parting will be at an end." As I kissed her afterwards she said, "You are a dear good child to me, darling. I may blame you sometimes, and find fault with your opinions, but you are a dear, good, dutiful child to me."

As I was returning to Oxford I paid a visit to Hugh Pearson at Sonning.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Sonning, Oct. 21, 1854._--The thought that my mother is well now and does not need me enables me to bear having only paper-conversation again for a little while. But how I long to know each hour of the day what my dear mother is doing, and wish that she could see me--very happy here in this peaceful little spot.

"H. P. was dressing when I arrived, but came to my room to welcome me, most warmly, as he always does. There was a party at dinner, but they left early, and I had a long talk afterwards with my host over the fire. There is really no one I like so much. He gave an amusing description of his church-restoration, very gradual, not to shock people's prejudices. At last, when he put up a statuette of the patron saint--St. Andrew--over the entrance, Bishop Wilberforce came in high delight--'No other man in my diocese would have dared to do such a thing.'[98] Bishop Blomfield rather admired his stone pulpit, but said, 'I don't usually like a stone pulpit; I _usually_ prefer a wooden one, something more suited to the preacher inside.'

"After breakfast we went out to pick up apples to feed H. P.'s pet donkey with. What a pretty place Sonning is! The river winding round, with old willows and a weir; the site of the palace of the Bishop of Sarum marked by an old ash-tree; and the church--'all as like naughty Rome as it dares,' says H. P., but very beautiful within.... 'What a rate you do write at, child,' he says as he is working tortoise-pace at his sermon by my side."

My mother was never given to being alarmed about me at any time, but I think she must have had some anxieties this autumn; Oxford was so dreadfully unhealthy--suffering from a perfect "wave of cholera," while typhus fever and small-pox were raging in the lower parts of the town.

But the excitement of Aunt Kitty and Arthur about Mary Stanley, who had taken great part in preparing nurses for the victims of the Crimean War, and who eventually went out to Scutari herself as the unwelcomed a.s.sistant of Miss Nightingale, kept the family heart fixed in the East all through the autumn and winter.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Oxford, Oct. 23, 1854._--There was a special cholera service last night. It is very bad still, and the cases very rapid. Those taken ill at five die at seven, and for fear of infection are buried at seven the next morning."

"_Oct. 24._--Typhus fever has broken out in the lower town in addition to everything else, and there are 1000 cases of small-pox, besides cholera. This morning I met two men at breakfast at Mr.

Jowett's. There was nothing to eat but cold mutton and some heavy bread called 'Balliol bricks,' but Mr. Jowett was in his best humour, and though he would not utter a word himself, he a.s.sisted us into uttering a good many. He is certainly at once the terror and the admiration of those he wishes to be kind to: as for myself, I love him, though I often feel I would go round three streets any day to avoid him."

"_Nov. 1._--The usual Oxford rain is now varied by a yellow fog and stifling closeness, the consequence of which is that cholera has returned in all its force to the lower town, and in the upper almost every one is ill in one way or other. Duckworth and I walked to Headington Common yesterday, and thinking that such a high open place was sure to be free from illness, asked if there had been any cholera there, in a cottage where we often go to buy fossils.

'Yes,' said the young woman of the house, 'father died of it, and baby, and seven other people in this cottage and those joining--all those who seemed the healthiest and strongest. I saw them all seized with it in the morning, and before night they were all gone.'--'What,' I said, 'did you nurse them all?' The young woman turned away, but an old woman who came up and heard me said, 'Yes, she _were_ a good creature. There were no one took but she went to them. She were afeard of nothing. I used to think as G.o.d wouldna'

let the cholera come to her because she werena' afeard, and no more He did.'"

"_Dec. 2._--Mrs. Parker[99] has just been telling me the beautiful story of 'Sister Marion's' labours in the cholera. Her real name was Miss Hughes. Mrs. P. was walking with her one day, when their notice was attracted by Greenford, the landlord of the Maidenhead inn, putting his beautiful little child on his great horse, while the child was laughing and shouting for joy. Next day they heard that the child was ill. Sister Marion went at once and nursed it till it died, and it was buried the same evening. Then came the rush of cholera. When any one was seized, they sent for Sister Marion--she rubbed them, watched them, prayed with them; no cases were too dreadful for her. She often had to put them in their coffins herself. When all were panic-stricken, she remembered everything. Mrs. Parker described one deathbed, where it required two men to hold a woman down in her agonies, and her shrieks and oaths were appalling. Little Miss Hughes came in, and taking both her hands, knelt down quietly by the side of the bed, and, though the doctors and others were standing round, began to pray aloud.

Gradually the face of the woman relaxed, and her oaths ceased, though her groans were still fearful. At last Sister Marion said, 'Now your mind is easier, so you have more strength, and we can try to help your body;' and when she began the rubbings, &c., the woman took it quietly, and though she died that night, it was quite peacefully.