Story of My Life Part 37

The pouring morning turned into a beautiful afternoon, and we had a delightful scramble through the ferny glades of the park, and up the steep craggy hills to the moorlands. Here Lady Tankerville went off through the heather to look after her little girl, and I told the three boys the story of Littlecot Hall, till the Shetland pony, 'Piccolomini,' arrived by the longer path. Then we lighted a fire between two rocks, and Lady Tankerville and her children boiled a kettle and cooked omelets over a fire of heather and fern, and beautiful grapes, greengages, jam, and cakes unfitted us for the eight-o'clock dinner. Then we came down like bushrangers, breaking a path through the bracken, a great deal taller than ourselves, and seeing in the distance the herds of wild white bulls. One or two people came to dinner, but it was just the same simple merry meal as usual.

"The Tankervilles sent me here to-day--twelve miles--in their carriage."

"_Bamborough Castle, Sept._ 13.--It is very pleasant, as you will imagine, to be here again, and I have much enjoyed the delightful sands and the splendid green waves which came rolling in all yesterday afternoon. It was a lovely evening, warm enough to enjoy sitting out on the seat amongst the tall bent-gra.s.s, and to watch Holy Island quite distinct in the sunset, with all the little fleet of red-sailed herring-boats coming round from North Sunderland. Old Mrs. Liddell sits as usual in her deep window and looks through the telescope. Amelia wanders about with her black spaniel, and Charlotte rides furiously on the sands when out, and talks incessantly, though pleasantly, when in."

"_Bamborough, Sept. 16._--Yesterday I set off at 8 A.M. in a dogcart for Holy Island, one of the castle cart-horses being harnessed for the purpose, and the castle joiner going with me to find old wood for repairs. It was a wild morning, but gleams of light made the country picturesque, and Waren Bay looked very striking, backed by its angular purple hills, and strewn with pieces of wreck, over which sea-birds were swooping. Only one bit of sand was visible when we reached the ford, but the horse plunged gallantly in. Then we had a very rough crossing of a quarter of an hour in a boat through the great green waves to the island, where we landed on the yellow rocks. Close by, on the green hill, stand the ruins, so well described in 'Marmion,' of St. Cuthbert's Abbey, the old cathedral of Lindisfarne--rather small after descriptions, but beautiful in colour, and its ma.s.sive round pillars, with patterns upon them, almost unique in England. Beyond, was the still blue harbour filled with fis.h.i.+ng-boats, and the sh.o.r.e was lined with men and women packing herrings in barrels of salt. At one corner of the bay rises the castle on a conical hill like a miniature Mont St. Michel, and Bamborough and Dunstanborough are blue in the hazy distance."

"_Sept. 17._--Stephen Denison is here (my cousin by his marriage with Miss Fellowes[196]), and I have been with him to pay a long visit to Grace Darling's[197] old father, an interesting man, with as much information as it is possible for any one to have who has lived since he was one year old on a desolate island rock tending a lighthouse. He lent us his diary to read, which is very curious, and an awful record of wrecks and misery."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON ALLEN WATER, RIDLEY HALL.]

"_Ridley Hall, Sept. 19._--Cousin Susan and her old friend Miss Coulson, with 'the boys' (the dogs), were waiting to welcome me in the avenue, when I got out at the private station here. The house is quite full of people, to whom it is amusing to help to do the honours. Great is the autumnal beauty of the place. I have been with Cousin Susan up the Birky Brae, and down by the Craggy Pa.s.s and the Hawk's Nest--streams of sunlight falling upon the rocks and river, and lighting up the yellow and red leaves which now mingle with the green. The dogs walked with us to church to-day--Tarlie was allowed to enter with the family, and Bloomer with the maids, but Perette, Bianca, Fritz, and the Chowdy-Tow were sent back from the door!

"We have had a remarkable visit from an old Miss Clayton, an eccentric, strangely-attired, old, very old lady, who had travelled all the way from Chesters, on North Tyne, to see Staward Peel, and then had rambled on foot hither down the rocks by the Allen. Both she and her friend had fallen into the river in crossing the stepping-stones above the wood, and arrived, carrying a large reticule basket, and dripping with wet and mud, about five o'clock; yet, as soon as she had been dried and fed, she insisted on setting off again on foot to visit Haltwhistle and Bellister Castle before going home at night!"

"_Streatlam Castle, Sept. 25._--I came with Cousin Susan to this curious place, to which our cousin Mr. Bowes[198] has welcomed us very cordially. The house is in a hollow--an enormous building of the last century, enclosing a medi?val castle. I sleep in the ghost-room, looking most grim and weird from its black oak with red hangings, and containing a tall bed with a red canopy. Here the only existing local Handbook says that 'the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots expired in captivity.' I am afraid the next Handbook will be obliged to confess that she was beheaded at Fotheringay.

"The long galleries are full of family portraits--Hyltons, Blakistons, and Bowes's--one of whom, Miss Bowes of Streatlam, was Mrs. John Knox! More interesting to me is the great picture of Mary Eleanor, the unhappy Countess of Strathmore,[199] walking in the gardens of Pauls-Walden. This house was the scene of her most terrible sufferings."

"_Streatlam Castle, Sept. 27._--This is the oddest house I ever was in! Everything is arranged for you, from the moment you get up till the moment you go to bed, and you are never allowed to deviate from the rules laid down: I even write this in time stolen from the half-hour for dressing. We are called at eight, and at ten march in to breakfast with the same procession as at dinner, only at this meal 'Madame Bowes' does not appear, for she is then reclining in a bath of coal-black acid, which 'refreshes her system,' but leaves her nails _black_. After breakfast we are all set down to employments appointed for the morning. At twelve Madame appears, having painted the under-lids of her jet-black eyes with belladonna. At two the bell rings for luncheon, and we are fetched if not punctual to an instant. At three we are all sent out driving (the coachman having exact orders where to take us) immense drives (twenty-four miles to-day) in an open barouche and pair. At seven we dine in great splendour, and afterwards we sit in the oak drawing-room and talk about our ancestors!

"The town of Barnard Castle is most picturesque, with a ruined castle of the Baliols. d.i.c.kens, in early life, used frequently to come down and stay there with some young artist friends of his. The idea of 'Humphrey's Clock' first sprung from Humphrey, the watchmaker in the town, and the picture in the beginning of the book is of the clock over the door of his shop. While at Barnard Castle, d.i.c.kens heard of the school at Bowes which he afterwards worked up as Dotheboys Hall. Many of these schools, at ?15 and ?20 a year, existed at that time in the neighbourhood, and were princ.i.p.ally used for the sons of London tradesmen, who, provided their sons got a moderate education, cared little or nothing what became of them in the meantime. d.i.c.kens went over to see the school at Bowes, and was carefully shown over it, for they mistook him for a parent coming to survey it, with a view of sending his son there.

Afterwards the school was totally ruined. At one of Mr. Bowes's elections, the Nicholas Nickleby or former usher of the school, who was then in want of a place, wrote to him to say in what poverty he was. He 'had formerly been living with Mr. Shawe at Bowes, and they had been happy and prosperous, when Mr. d.i.c.kens's misguided volume, sweeping like a whirlwind over the schools of the North, caused Mr.

Shawe to become a victim to paralysis, and brought Mrs. Shawe to an untimely grave.'"

_"Morpeth Rectory, Oct. 8._--My present host is Mr. Francis Grey, an old likeness of his nephew, Charlie Wood: his wife, _n?e_ Lady Elizabeth Howard, is as sweet-looking as she is charming.

"Friday morning was pouring, with a thick sea-fog hiding the country. Nevertheless Mr. Grey did not think it too bad for a long expedition, and drove me in his little pony-carriage a dreary twelve miles to Wallington, where we arrived about half-past twelve. Wallington is a huge house of the elder branch of the Trevelyans, represented in the North by Sir Walter, who is at the head of teetotallers and Low Churchmen, while his wife is a great friend of Ruskin, Rossetti, and all the Pre-Raphaelites. It is like a French ch?teau, with tall roofs and chimneys, enclosing a hall, once a court, which Lady Trevelyan and her artists have covered in and painted with beautiful fresco studies of Northumbrian birds, flowers, and insects, while the intervening s.p.a.ces are filled with a series of large pictures of the chief events in Northumbrian history--very curious indeed.

"Lady Trevelyan[200] is a little, bright, black-eyed woman, who was charmed to see us, and more to see my drawings, which Mr. Grey had brought. Any good opinion of me, however, which they led her to entertain was quelched by my want of admiration for some wretched little sc.r.a.ps by Ruskin--very scratchy sketches, after his manner.

After luncheon, which was as peculiar as everything else (Lady Trevelyan and her artists feeding solely on artichokes and cauliflowers), we went to the upper galleries to look at more pictures.

"Yesterday morning we went to the fine old Morpeth Church, which has been 'restored,' one of the stained windows having been put in by a poor old woman in the village. We saw her afterwards in her garden gathering cabbages, and I told her I had seen the window.

'Eh, hinnie,' she said, 'and ain't it bonnie? and I be going to case it i' marble afore I dee, to mak it bonnier.' And then she said, 'And noo come ben, hinnie, my dear, and see me hoose;' and she showed me her cottage.

"The Greys are one of the families who have a sort of language of their own. A bad cold the Greys always call a _Sh.e.l.ley_, because of a famous cold old Lady Sh.e.l.ley had when she came to stay with them.

This was the Lady Sh.e.l.ley who, when her carriage, full of people, upset, and there was a great entanglement of legs, called out to the footman, who came to extricate them, 'John, the black ones are mine--the black ones are mine.'"

"_Warkworth, Oct. 6._--It is very pleasant being here with my kind Clutterbuck cousins,[201] and this old-fas.h.i.+oned house, though small, is most refined and comfortable, with its pervading smell of roseleaves and lavender."

"_The Rock, Alnwick, Oct. 10._--I am now staying with the father of a college friend, Charles Bosanquet, in a pleasant old-fas.h.i.+oned house, an enlarged 'Peel tower.' The family are very united, genial and kind; are friends of the Arnolds, Gaskells, &c., and related to Mr. Erskine of Linlathen. I like Charlie Bosanquet so much in his own home, that I am quite ashamed of not having tried to cultivate him more when at Oxford. Yesterday he drove me to Craster Tower, the old castellated house of the Crasters, a very ancient Northumbrian family, now well represented by the old Squire and his wife, their three tall daughters, and seven stalwart sons, one of whom was at college with me. After luncheon we went over the tower, its vaulted cellars and thickly walled rooms, and then walked to the wild heights of Dunstanborough, with its ruins overhanging the waves, and large white gulls floating up from the 'caverned sh.o.r.e'

of 'Marmion.' Then we went to Embleton to see one of the curious fortified rectories of the North--fortified against the Scots."

"_Ford Castle, Oct. 15._--I enjoyed my visit at Rock increasingly, and we made interesting excursions to Falloden and Howick. At the former we dined with Sir George and Lady Grey. On Sunday the beautiful little Norman chapel at Rock was filled from end to end with the whole population of the village, all responding, all singing, and forty-three (in that tiny place) remaining to the Sacrament. Mrs. Bosanquet says they are truly a G.o.d-fearing people.

They live (as all over Northumbria) bound by the year like serfs, close around the large farms. At Rock the people seem perfectly devoted to the Bosanquets, who are certainly quite devoted to them.

'My Missis herself can't feel it more than I do,' said the gamekeeper when he heard the sailor son was coming home.

"Yesterday morning I set off directly after breakfast with Charles Bosanquet, in the sociable, on a long expedition. It was a really lovely day, and the drive over the wild moorlands, with the pink and blue Cheviot distances, was quite beautiful. At one we reached Hedgeley, where we had been asked to luncheon at the fine old house of the Carrs, looking up a mountain ravine, but a soldier-son first took us up to Crawley Tower, a neighbouring ruined Peel. At three we came on to Roddam, where an uncle and aunt of Charlie Bosanquet's live--a beautiful place, with a terraced garden almost overhanging the moorlands, and a dene stretching up into the Cheviots. I had ordered a gig to meet me and take me to Ford, where I arrived about half-past six, seeming to be driving into a sort of gothic castle of Otranto, as we pa.s.sed under the portcullis in the bright moonlight. I found Lady Waterford sitting with her charming old mother, Lady Stuart de Rothesay.... Her drawings are indescribably lovely, and her singing most beautiful and pathetic.

Several people appeared at dinner, amongst them Lord Waterford (the brother-in-law), who sat at the end of the table, a jovial white-headed young-old man."

"_Ford Castle, Oct. 17._--Being here has been most pleasant, there is so much to do and see both indoors and out. Lady Waterford is perfectly charming.... She is now occupied in putting the whole architecture of the castle back two centuries. Painting is her great employment, and all evening she makes studies for larger drawings, which she works upon in the mornings. She is going to make a 'Marmion gallery' in the castle to ill.u.s.trate the poem.

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

"Yesterday we went to Palinsburn, where Paulinus baptized, and on to Branxton to see Mr. Jones, who is the great authority about the battle of Flodden, which he described to us till all the dull ploughed fields seemed alive with heroes and armies. He is coming to-night to talk about it again, for Flodden seems to be the great topic here, the windows of the castle looking out upon the battle-field. The position of the different armies and the site of Sybil's Well are discussed ten times a day, and Lady Waterford herself is still sufficiently a stranger here to be full of her first interest about it.

"To-day the pony-carriage took me part of the way to the Rowting Lynn, a curious cleft and waterfall in the moorland, with a 'Written Rock,' supposed to have been the work of ancient Britons.

Thence I walked by a wild path along the hills to Nesbitt, where I had heard that there was a chapel of St. Cuthbert, of which I found no vestiges, and on to Doddington, where there is a Border castle.

If you look on the map, you will see that this was doing a great deal, and I was very glad to get back at five to hot tea and a talk with Lady Stuart."

"_Roddam, Oct. 20._--I had not promised to return here, and I was received almost rapturously, so welcome is any stray guest in this desolate place.... Sunday here was a curious contrast to that at Rock, for though there is a population of nine hundred, the Rector waited for us to begin afternoon service, as no one else came!"

"_Roddam, Oct. 22._--Yesterday was terribly dark and cold, but we went a long expedition across the moorland to the Raven's Burn, a wild tumbling rivulet in a chaos of grey rocks, and thence by the farm of 'Blaw Weary'--picturesquely perched upon rocks which were covered with white goats, like a bit of Roman Campagna--to the 'Raven's Rock' in a rugged cleft of the moorland. To-day I have been to Linhope Spout, a waterfall at the end of a gorge, and to-morrow we go to the Three Stone Burn, where there are Druidical remains."

"_Ripley Castle, Yorks.h.i.+re, Oct. 25._--Lady Ingilby (who is sister of Mr. Bosanquet of Rock) kindly pressed my coming here on my way south, and here I am. It is a fine old castle added to, about four miles from Harrogate, with beautiful gardens and a lovely neighbourhood. At the head of the stairs is the portrait of a Nun, who is said to descend from her picture at night and tap at the bedroom doors, when, if any one says, 'Come in'--in she comes.

Eugene Aram was the gardener here, and the Ingilbys have all his letters. Cromwell insisted on taking the castle, but the then Lady Ingilby, a staunch Royalist known as 'Trooper Jane,' would not let him have either food or rest there, and sat opposite him all the night through with two loaded pistols in her girdle."

"_Hickledon Hall, Yorks.h.i.+re, Oct. 27._--Sir Charles Wood's carriage was waiting at Doncaster for me and a very nice young Seymour.[202]

Charlie seems delighted to have me here, and I think Sir Charles quite charming, not a bit as if he had the government of all India upon his shoulders."

Many of the visits which I paid in 1861 laid the foundation of after friends.h.i.+ps, but chiefly that to Ford, whither I went again and again afterwards, and where I have pa.s.sed some of the happiest days of my life. Lord and Lady Tankerville, after a few years, pa.s.sed out of my horizon--I never have quite known how or why. The Liddells, Mrs.

Clutterbuck and her daughters, and the saintly Lady Ingilby, added much to my enjoyment for several years. This was especially happy for me, as I see by my journals of the time how in the following winter I felt more than ever depressed by the constant snubbing I received from different members of my immediate family. Such snubs are trifling in themselves, but, like constant dropping of water in one place, they wear away the spirit at last. All this time my sister was bravely exerting herself in cheering her mother and aunt, as well as in a clever (and eventually successful) scheme for the improvement of their fortunes. Miss Hughan (afterwards Lady John Manners) showed her at this time an unwearied kindness which I can never forget.

_To_ MY SISTER.

"_Holmhurst, Dec. 18, 1861._--I went to-day to see three ladies take the veil in the convent at Hastings. I had to get up in the cold early morning and be in the chapel by half-past eight. At nine the Bishop of Brighton arrived in a gold robe and mitre, and took his place with his back to the altar, leaning against it. Then a side door opened, and a procession came in singing--some nuns, and the three brides of Christ dressed in white watered silk, lace veils, and orange flowers. There were six little bridesmaids also in white veils and wreaths. The brides looked ghastly livid, and one of them would have fallen if a nun had not rushed forward to support her. The Bishop then made them an address, the point of which was that they were not going into a convent for their own benefit or that of the world, but for 'the consolation of Christ'--_that_ was to be their work and duty through life--'the consolation of Christ for the sins of the world.' Then he fixed his eyes upon them like a basilisk and cried, 'Venite.' They tottered, quivered, but scarcely moved; again in a louder voice he called 'Venite;' they trembled and advanced a few steps. Once more 'VENITE,' and they all three fell down prostrate at his feet.

"Then the most solemn music was played, the most agonising wailing dirges were sung, and the nuns coming behind with a great black pall, spread it over the prostrate figures. It was as if they were dead. The bridesmaids strewed flowers, rosemary and laurestinus, as they sang out of their books: the spectators cried and sobbed till they were almost hysterical; but nothing was to be seen but the sunlight streaming in upon a great black pall.

"Then all the saints of the monastic orders were invoked and responded to, and then the nuns closed in, so that no one could see how the three novices were hurried away, only to reappear in their nun's dress. Then they received the Sacrament.

"It is impossible to say how well this little Holmhurst seems suited to the mother. There is still a lingering of autumnal leaves and flowers, and the grey castle rises against a gleaming sea.

Thinking of her, and of our home view as it is now, one cannot help recalling Keble's lines:--

'How quiet shows the woodland scene, Each flower and tree, its duty done, Reposing in decay serene, Like weary men when age is won, Such calm old age as conscience pure And self-commanding heart ensure, Waiting their summons to the sky, Content to live, but not afraid to die.'"