Story of My Life Part 34

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Christ Church, Dec. 6, 1859._-My whole visit here this time has been enjoyable. Arthur is always so very good and kind, so _knowing_ in what will give one pleasure: which I especially feel in his cordiality to all my friends when they come here. Then it is so interesting and delightful being perpetually examined by him in different parts of history, and charming to feel that I can in a small way be useful to him in looking out or copying things for his lectures, &c. Victor Williamson and Charlie Wood come in and out constantly.

"Mr. Richmond the artist is here. I quite long to be Arthur, going to sit to him: he is so perfectly delightful: no wonder his portraits are always smiling."

In the winter of 1859-60 I made a much-appreciated acquaintance with Sir George Grey, author of "Polynesian Mythology."

JOURNAL.

"_Dec. 15, 1859._--At the Haringtons' I met Sir George and Lady Grey. I was very anxious to make acquaintance, but much afraid that I should not have an opportunity of doing so, as I was never introduced. As they were going away, I expressed regret at having missed them before, and he hoped that we should meet another time.

I suppose I looked very really sorry for not seeing more of him, for, after a consultation in the pa.s.sage, he came back, and asked if I would walk part of the way with him. I walked with him all the way to Windmill Hill, where he was staying: he walked home with me: I walked home with him; and he home with me for the third time, when I was truly sorry to take leave, so very interesting was he, and so easy to talk to. We began about Polynesian Mythology--then poetry--then Murray, who, he said, had just paid Dr. Livingstone ?10,000 as _his_ share of the profits on his book--then of Lord Dillon, who, he said, had led them the most jovial rollicking life when he went to Ditchley to look over MSS., so that he had done nothing.

"Then he talked of the Church in the Colonies. He said that High Churchism had penetrated to the Cape to the greatest extent, and that the two or three churches where it was carried out were thronged as fas.h.i.+onable: that one of the views preached was, that religion was a belief in whatever you fancied was for your good, so that if you fancied that, our Lord being one with G.o.d, it would be well for you to have a mediator between yourself and Him, you ought then to believe in that mediator, and to invoke your guardian angel as the mediator most natural. Another tenet was that prayer was only 'a tracter' to draw down the blessings of G.o.d--that, as there were three kinds of prayer, so there were three kinds of tracters--that individual prayer would draw down a blessing on the individual, family prayer on a family, but that public prayer, as proceeding from the mouth of a priest, could draw down a blessing on the whole state. Sir George had heard a sermon on 'It is needful for you that I go away from you,' &c., proving that it _was_ needful, because if not, Christ would have to have remained as an earthly king, have had to negotiate with other kings, meddle in affairs of state, &c.--also because he would have been made 'a lion' of--perhaps have become an object of pilgrimage, &c.

"Sir George said that the Wesleyan Methodists lived a holier, more spiritual life in the Colonies, but then it was because religion was there so easy to them; in London it would not be so; that London, the place in the world most unsuited to Christianity, lived on a great world of gambling-houses, brothels, &c., as if there were no G.o.d; no one seemed to care. He said what a grand thing it would be if, in one of the great public services in St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, the preacher were to shout out as his awful text--'Where art thou, Adam?'--and show how the Lord would look in vain for _His_ in most parts of London--where, _where_ had they hidden themselves?

"Sir George told me an anecdote of a dog in New Zealand--that two officers were walking by the sh.o.r.e, and that one of them said, 'You declare your dog will do everything. I'll bet you he does not fetch that if you tell him,' and he threw his walking-stick into a canoe lying out at some distance in the shallow water, where the natives wade up to their waists to get into them, and where they are secured by strong hempen cords. The dog, when told, instantly swam out, but, as the man who made the bet had foreseen, whenever he tried to scramble into the canoe to get the stick, it almost upset, and at length, after repeated struggles, he was obliged to swim to sh.o.r.e again and lie down to rest. Once rested, however, without a second bidding, he swam out again, and this time gnawed through the cord, pulled the canoe on sh.o.r.e, and then got the stick out, and brought it to his master."[178]

I told Arthur Stanley much of this conversation with Sir George Grey.

Some time after, he was very anxious that I should go to hear Dr.

Vaughan preach in a great public service under the dome of St. Paul's. I went, and was startled by the text--"Where art thou, Adam?"

In January 1860 I paid a delightful visit to Sir John Shaw-Lefevre at Sutton Place, near Guildford, a beautiful old brick house with terra-cotta ornaments, which once belonged to Sir Francis Weston, Anne Boleyn's reputed lover. Besides the large pleasant family of the house, Lord Eversley and his daughter were there, and Sophia, daughter of Henry Lefevre, with Mr. Wickham, whom she soon afterwards married.

JOURNAL.

"_Sutton Place, Jan. 8._--Lord Eversley has been talking of Brams.h.i.+ll, the old home of Prince Henry, where Archbishop Abbott shot a keeper by accident, in consequence of which it became a question whether consecration rites received at his hands were valid. Lord Eversley did not believe that the oak in the park, from which the arrow glanced (with the same effect as in the case of Rufus), was the real tree, because it was _too_ old: oaks beyond a certain age, after the bark has ceased to be smooth, do not allow an arrow to glance and rebound.

"The Buxtons sent me a ticket for Lord Macaulay's funeral, but I would not leave Sutton to go. Sir John went, and described that, as often in the case of funerals and other sad ceremonies, people, by a rebound, became remarkably merry and amusing, and that they had occupied the time of waiting by telling a number of uncommonly good stories. The sight of Lady Holland[179] and her daughters amongst the mourners had reproduced the bon-mot of Mrs. Grote, who, when asked how this Lady Holland was to be distinguished from the original person of the name, said, 'Oh, this is New Holland, and her capital is Sydney.'

"Apropos of Macaulay, Sir John remarked how extraordinary it was in growing age to see a person pa.s.s away whose birth, education, public career, and death were all within your memory.

"He said how unreadable 'Roderick Random' and 'Tom Jones' were now.

A lady had asked to borrow 'Pamela' from his library, saying she well remembered the pleasure of it in her youth; but she returned it the next day, saying she was quite ashamed of having asked for anything so improper.

"Yesterday was Sunday, and I groped my way through the dark pa.s.sages to the evening service in the Catholic chapel, which has always been attached to the house. An old priest, seated on the steps of the altar, preached a kind of catechetical sermon upon Transubstantiation--'My flesh is meat _indeed_'--'and the poor Protestants have this in their Bibles, and yet they throw away the benefit of the _indeed_.' The sight was most picturesque--the dark old-fas.h.i.+oned roof, only seen by the light of the candles on the richly decorated altar, and the poor English peasants grouped upon the benches. It carried one back to the time before the Reformation. In his discourse, the old priest described his childhood, when he sat in the east wing of the house learning his catechism, and when there were only two Catholics in Guildford; and 'what would these two solitary ones say now if they had seen the crowd in St. Joseph's Chapel at Guildford this morning? Yes, what would old Jem Savin say if he could rise up and see us now, poor man?'"

_To_ MY MOTHER (after I had returned to my Handbook explorations).

"_Aldermaston Hall, Berks, Jan. 14, 1860._--I came here from Newbury. The weather was so horrible, and the prospect of a damp lonely Sunday in an inn so uninviting, that I thought over all possible and impossible houses in the neighbourhood, and finally decided upon Aldermaston as the best, and have taken it by storm.

"It was the dampest and dreariest of mornings as I came from the station, but this place looked beautiful in spite of it--a wild picturesque park, and a large house, full of colour inside, like a restored French ch?teau. Mrs. Higford Burr (who seems to live more in Italy than here) wears a sort of Greek dress with a girdle and a broad gold hem.... I was at once, as I rather expected, invited to stay _per l'amore d'Italia_, and my luggage sent for. This afternoon Mrs. Burr, who is a most tremendous walker, has taken me to Upton Court, the home of Arabella Fermor (Pope's Belinda), a charming old house with a ghost, which the farm-people described as 'coming a clinkerin upstairs right upon un loike.'"

"_Christ Church, Feb. 4._--I have had a terribly cold tour to Drayton-Beauchamp, Ashridge, Aylesbury, &c. The pleasantest feature was a warm welcome from Mrs. Barnard, wife of the great yeoman-farmer at Creslow Pastures, the royal feeding-grounds from the time of Elizabeth to Charles II., with a lovely and interesting old house overlooking Christ Low (the Christ's Meadow) and Heaven's Low (Heaven's Meadow). Thence I went to North Marston, where was the shrine of Sir John Shorne, a sainted rector, who preserved his congregation from sin by 'conjuring the devil into his boot.'

Buckinghams.h.i.+re is full of these quaint stories.

"Arthur has just been making great sensation by a splendid sermon at St. Mary's, given in his most animated manner, his energies gradually kindling till his whole being was on fire. It was on, 'Why stand ye here idle all the day long?--the first shall be last and the last first.' 'Why stand ye here idle, listless, in the quadrangle, in your own rooms, doing nothing; so that in the years to come you will never be able to look back and say, "In such a year, in such a term, I learnt this or that--that idea, that book, that thought _then_ first struck me"? Perhaps this may be a voice to the winds, perhaps those to whom it would most apply are even now in their places of resort, standing idle: probably even those who are here would answer to my question, "Because no man hath hired us."'

"Then he described the powers, objects, and advantages of Oxford.

Then the persons who had pa.s.sed away within the year, leaving gaps to be filled up--the seven great masters of the English language,[180] the German poets and philosophers,[181] the French philosopher[182]--'and their praise shall go forth from generation to generation.' Then he dwelt on the different duties of the coming life to be prepared for, and he described the model country-clergyman (Pearson), the model teacher (Jowett), the model country-gentleman. Then came a beautiful and pictorial pa.s.sage about the eleventh hour and the foreboding of the awful twelfth.

The congregation was immense, and listened with breathless interest. When the signatures were being collected for the Jowett appeal, Arthur was hard at work upon them on Sunday when Mr. Jowett came in. Arthur said, 'You need not mind my being at work to-day, for I can a.s.sure you it is quite a Sunday occupation, a work of justice, if not of mercy.'--'Yes,' said Jowett, 'I see how it is: an a.s.s has fallen into a pit, and you think it right to pull him out on the Sabbath-day.'"

Arthur Stanley used to see a great deal of Mr. Jowett during this year--far too much, my mother thought when she was staying with him at Oxford; for Jowett--kind and unselfish as a saint--was only "Christian"

in so far that he believed the central light of Christianity to spring from the life of Christ. He occasionally preached, but his sermons were only ill.u.s.trative of practical duties, or the lessons to be learnt from holy and unselfish lives. It was during this year, too, that the English Church recognised with surprise that it was being shaken to its foundations by the volume of--mostly feeble and dull--"Essays and Reviews." But to turn to a very different religious phase.

JOURNAL.

"_Wantage, Feb. 21, 1860._--I came here yesterday over dreary snow-sprinkled downs. Wantage is a curious little town surrounding a great cruciform church in the midst of a desert. The Vicar (Rev.

W. J. Butler[183]) welcomed me at the door of the gothic vicarage, and almost immediately a clerical procession, consisting of three curates, schoolmaster, organist, and scripture-reader, filed in (as they do every day) to dinner, and were introduced one by one. The tall agreeable Vicar did the honours just as a schoolmaster would to his boys. There was such a look of daily service, chanting, and _discipline_ over the whole party, that I quite felt as if Mrs.

Butler ought also to be a clergyman, and as if the two little girls would have been more appropriately attired in black coats and bands.

"After dinner, in raging snow and biting east wind, we sallied out to survey the numerous religious inst.i.tutions, which have been almost entirely founded by the energy and perseverance of this Vicar in the thirteen years he has been at Wantage. The church is magnificent. There is an old grammar-school in honour of Alfred (who was born here), a National School painted with Scripture frescoes by Pollen, Burgon, &c., a training school under the charge of Mrs. Trevelyan, a cemetery with a beautiful chapel, and St.

Mary's Home for penitents. At seven o'clock all the curates dispersed to various evening services, Mr. Butler went to St.

Mary's Home, and Mrs. Butler and I to the church, where we sat in the dark, and heard a choir chant a service out of what looked like a gorgeous illumination.

"I was aghast to hear breakfast was at half-past seven, but as I could not sleep from the piercing cold, it did not signify. At seven a bell rang, and we all hurried to a little domestic chapel in the house, hung with red and carpeted with red, but containing nothing else except a cross with flowers at one end of the room, before which knelt Mr. Butler. We all flung ourselves down upon the red carpet, and Mr. Butler, with his face to the wall, intoned to us, and Mrs. Butler and the servants intoned to him, and all the little children intoned too, with their faces to the ground.

"Now there is to be full church service again, and then--oh! how glad I shall be to get away."[184]

The society of Mrs. Gaskell the auth.o.r.ess was a great pleasure during this term at Oxford. I made great friends with her, and we kept up a correspondence for some time afterwards. Everybody liked Mrs Gaskell.[185] I remember that one of the points which struck me most about her at first was not only her kindness, but her extreme courtesy and deference to her own daughters. While she was at Oxford, the subject of ghosts was brought forward for a debate at the Union; she wished to have spoken from the gallery, and if she had, would probably have carried the motion in favour of ghosts at once. Here is one of her personal experiences:--

"Mrs. Gaskell was staying with some cousins at Stratford-on-Avon, who took her over to see Compton Whinyates. On their return she stayed to tea at Eddington with her cousins--cousins who were Quakers. Compton Whinyates naturally led to the subject of spirits, and Mrs. Gaskell asked the son of the house whether there were any stories of the kind about their neighbourhood; upon which the father, who was a very stiff, stern old man, reproved them for vain and light talking.

"After tea Mrs. Gaskell and her cousins went out to walk about the place with the younger Quaker, when the subject of the supernatural was renewed, and he said that their attention had lately been called to it in a very singular manner. That a woman who was a native of the place had many years ago gone as a lady's-maid to London, leaving her lover, who was a carter, behind her. While in London, she forgot her carter and married some one else, but after some years her husband died, leaving her a large competence, and she came back to spend the rest of her life in her native village.

There she renewed her acquaintance with the carter, to whom, after a fortnight's renewal of courts.h.i.+p, she was married. After they had been married a few weeks, she said she must go up to London to sell all the property she had there, and come down to settle finally in the country. She wished her husband to go with her, and urgently entreated him to do so; but he, like many countrymen in that part, had a horror of London, fancied it was the seat of all wickedness, and that those who went there never could come back safe: so the woman went alone, but she did not return. Some time after her husband heard that she had been found in the streets of London--dead.

"A few weeks after this the carter husband was observed to have become unaccountably pale, ill, and anxious, and on being asked what was the matter with him, he complained bitterly, and said that it was because his wife would not let him rest at nights. He did not seem to be frightened, but lamented that his case was a very hard one, for that he had to work all day, and, when he wanted rest, his wife came and sat by his bedside, moaning and lamenting and wringing her hands all the night long, so that he could not sleep.

"Mrs. Gaskell naturally expressed a wish to see the man and to hear the story from his own lips. The Quaker said that nothing could be easier, as he lived in a cottage close by; to which she went, together with five other persons. It was like a Ches.h.i.+re cottage, with a window on each side of the door, and a little enclosure, half-court, half-garden, in front. It was six o'clock in broad summer daylight when they arrived. The door was locked and the Quaker went round to try the back entrance, leaving Mrs. Gaskell and her friends in the enclosure in front. They all, while there, distinctly saw a woman, of hard features, dressed in a common lilac print gown, come up to the latticed window close by them on the inside and look out. They then saw her pa.s.s on and appear again at the window on the other side of the door, after which she went away altogether.

"When the Quaker appeared, unsuccessful in opening the back-door, they said, 'But there is some one who could have let you in, for there is a woman in the house.' They tried unsuccessfully, however, to make her hear. Then they went to the adjoining cottage, where the people a.s.sured them that the man was gone out for the day, and that there could not possibly be any one in the house. 'Oh,' said Mrs. Gaskell, 'but we have _seen_ a woman in the house in a lilac print gown.' 'Then,' they answered, 'you have seen the ghost: there is no _woman_ in the house; but that is _she_.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD BEECHES, HURSTMONCEAUX PARK.]

It was when I was at Beckett, just before Easter 1860, that I was first told that we should have to leave our dear home at Hurstmonceaux. Many years before, there had been an alarm, and my mother would then have bought the Lime property, but that the price asked was so greatly above its value, and no other purchasers came forward. So she was satisfied to go on renting Lime and the surrounding fields for a small sum, especially as she had a promise from those who had charge of the sale that no other offer should be accepted without giving her the preference. In the spring of 1860, however, Mr. Arkcoll, a rich old Hurstmonceaux farmer and churchwarden, died, leaving a large fortune to his nephew and a considerable sum of ready money to buy a house near his property. Lime had long been as Naboth's vineyard in the younger Mr.

Arkcoll's eyes, and before we knew that the uncle was dead, we heard that the nephew was the purchaser of Lime, the promise to us having been broken.

My mother immediately offered Mr. Arkcoll a much larger sum than he had paid to save Lime, but not unnaturally he was inexorable.

Thus it was inevitable that at Michaelmas we must leave our dear home, and, though I had suffered much at Hurstmonceaux, and though our position there as a ruined family was often a dismal one, yet we felt that nothing could ever replace what Lime itself was, where every plant was familiar, and every tree had its own little personal reminiscence.

And there was also the great difficulty of finding a new home within our small means, and yet large enough to house our many books and pictures.