Story of My Life Part 43

"_Chillingham, Nov. 14._--There is a large party here, including Captain and Mrs. Northcote, a very handsome, distinguished-looking young couple, and my hitherto unknown cousins, Lord and Lady Durham.[224] He has a morose look, which does him great injustice; she is one of Lord Abercorn's charming daughters--excessively pretty, natural, and winning."

"_Nov. 15._--Each evening we have had impromptu charades, in which Lord Durham acts capitally. Yesterday we went to a review of his volunteer corps on Millfield Plain, and afterwards to tea at Copeland Castle, an old Border fortress on the Till, which the Durhams are renting. You would be quite fascinated by Lady Durham--'the little Countess,' as Lady Tankerville calls her. Lord Durham does not look a bit older than I, though he has seven children. They have given me a very cordial invitation to stay with them."

"_Morpeth, Nov. 16._--We dispersed yesterday evening. Lord Tankerville wished me to have stayed, and it was very pleasant at the end of an enchanting visit to have one's host say, 'I am so very sorry you are going; and, though the Greys are very nice people, I quite hate them for taking you away from us.' They sent me in one carriage, and my luggage in another, to meet the coach at Lilburn. I had three-quarters of an hour to wait, and took refuge in a shepherd's hut, where the wife was very busy was.h.i.+ng all her little golden-haired children in tubs, and putting them to sleep in box-beds."

"_Morpeth, Nov. 19._--On Monday I got up in pitch darkness and went off at half-past seven by coach to Rothbury, a lonely little town amid moorland hills with sweeping blue distance. There I got a gig, and went far up Coquetdale to Harbottle, a most interesting country, full of peel towers and wild rocky valleys. Coming back, I stopped at Holystone, where a tall cross and an old statue near a basin of transparent water mark the place where Paulinus baptized three thousand Northumbrians. Then, in the gloaming, I saw the fine old Abbey of Brinkburn, close upon the sh.o.r.e of Coquet, celebrated in many old angling songs.

"To-day I have been with the Greys to Cresswell, the largest modern house in the county, with an old peel tower where an ancestress of the family starved herself to death after seeing her three brothers murder her Danish lover upon the sh.o.r.e."

Several more visits brought me home at the end of November, with an immense stock of new material, which I arranged in the next few months in "Murray's Handbook of Durham and Northumberland"--work for which neither Murray nor any one else gave me much credit, but which cost me great labour, and into which I put my whole heart.

XI

HOME LIFE WITH THE MOTHER

"Golden years Of service and of hope swept over us Most sweetly. Brighter grew our home, more dear Our daily life together. And as time went by, G.o.d daily joined our hearts more perfectly."

--B. M.

"Look at a pious person, man or woman, one in whom the spirit sways the senses; look at them when they are praying or have risen from their knees, and see with how bright a ray of divine beauty their faces are illuminated: you will see the beauty of G.o.d s.h.i.+ne on their faces: you will see the beauty of an angel. All those who in adoring humility partake of the Holy Sacraments are so united to G.o.d that the presence of the divine light is manifest upon their faces."--SAVONAROLA, _Sermons_.

"G.o.d's in his heaven-- All's right with the world."

--BROWNING, _Pippa Pa.s.ses_.

When I returned from the North in the winter of 1862-63, I was shocked to find how much a failure of power, which I had faintly traced in the summer, had increased in my dearest mother. But I cannot describe the unspeakable thankfulness I felt that the work which had taken me so much away from her during her four years of health was ended just when she needed me; that it would never be absolutely necessary for me to leave her again; and I inwardly vowed never again to undertake anything which should separate me from her. Some work which might be done at home would doubtless turn up, and meanwhile I had constant employment in the service and watchings which scarcely ever permitted me to be away from her side.

Meanwhile all the sympathy which I had to spare from the sick-room at home was called forth by the suffering of my sister, who had struggled bravely under the depression of her mother's ceaseless despair and wilful refusal to be comforted, but upon whom that struggle was beginning to tell most severely. My mother allowed me to have her at Holmhurst a great deal this winter, and she was no trouble, but, on the contrary, a constant source of interest to my mother, who, while deprecating the fact of her Roman Catholicism, became full of respect for her simple faith, large-hearted charity, and reality of true religion--so different from that of most perverts from the national faith of England. In her changed fortunes, accustomed to every luxury as she had been, she would only see the silver linings of all her clouds, truly and simply responding to Thackeray's advice--

"Come wealth or want, come good or ill, Let young and old accept their part, And bow before the Awful Will, And bear it with an honest heart."

At Christmas my mother suffered terribly, and was so liable to a sudden numbness which closely threatened paralysis, that by day and night remedies had always to be prepared and at hand. In the last days of January she was moved to London, and immediately felt benefited; but the doctors who then saw my mother agreed with our old friend Dr. Hale at St. Leonards that it was absolutely necessary that she should go abroad.

This gave rise to terrible anxiety. I remember how then, as on many other occasions when I was longing to stay at home, but felt certain the path of duty lay abroad, all my difficulties were enormously added to by different members of the family insisting that my mother ought to stay at home, and that I knew it, but "dragged her abroad for my own pleasure and convenience." This tenfold increased my fatigue when I was already at the last gasp, by compelling me to argue persistently to misinformed persons in favour of my convictions, _against_ my wishes. On February 16 we left home, and went by slow stages to Hy?res, whence we proceeded to Nice.

_To_ MY SISTER.

"_Pension Rivoir, Nice, March 16, 1863._--We stayed at Hy?res ten days, but did not like the place at all, though it has a tropical vegetation, and there are pretty corkwoods behind it. The town is a prolonged village, clouded with dust and reeking with evil odours.... We took a _vetturino_ from Les Arcs to Cannes, but found prices there so enormously raised, that we decided on coming on here. This place also is very full, but we like our tiny apartment, which has the sea on one side, and a beautiful view across orange-groves to the snow mountains on the other. The mother already seems not only better but--quite well! We have found a great many friends here, including Sir Adam Hay and all his family, and Lord and Lady Charles Clinton, the latter charming and most affectionately attentive to the mother."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARROZZA.[225]]

The spring we spent at Nice is one of those I look back upon with the greatest pleasure--my mother recovered so rapidly and entirely, and was so pleased herself with her own recovery. The weather was beautiful, and as I was already in heart looking forward to drawing as the one lucrative employment which would not separate me from my mother, I devoted myself to it most enthusiastically, inwardly determined to struggle to get a power of colour which should distinguish me from the herd of sketchers and washers, and I made real progress in knowledge and delicacy. It was the greatest help to me in this, as it was the greatest pleasure in everything else, to have our dear old friend Lady Grey with her niece Miss Des V?ux settled close by us, and I constantly drew and made excursions with them, dining with them afterwards: my only difficulty being that my mother was then often left alone longer than I liked, with only Lea as a companion. During the close of our stay I had some really adventurous expeditions with Miss Des V?ux, Mrs. Robert Ellice, and Miss Ellice along the bed of the Var and up Mount Chauve and to Aspromonte; with Miss Des V?ux and the Stepneys to Carrozza and Le Broc, proceeding with the carriage as far as it would go, and then on chairs lashed upon a bullock-cart--the scenery most magnificent; and with a larger party to the glorious Peglione.

Addie Hay was often the companion of our excursions, and deeply attached himself to the mother, sitting by us for hours while we drew at Villeneuve or other mountain villages. His sister Ida did the honours at splendid parties which were given by Mr. Peabody the philanthropist, so I was invited to them. Mr. George Peabody--"Uncle George," as Americans used to call him--was one of the dullest men in the world: he had positively no gift except that of making money, and when he was making it, he never parted with a penny until he had made hundreds of thousands, and then he gave vast sums away in charity. When he had thus become quite celebrated, he went back to America, and visited his native place of Danbury, which is now called Peabody. Here some of his relations, who were quite poor people, wis.h.i.+ng to do him honour, borrowed a silver tea service from a neighbour. He partook of their feast, and, when it was over, he looked round and said, "I am agreeably surprised to find that you are in such very good circ.u.mstances as to want nothing that I could do for you,"--and he did nothing for them.

There was, however, at least one very interesting story connected with George Peabody's life. He was going to Berlin for some important financial meeting, in which he was to take a prominent part. On the way his carriage broke down, and he was in despair as to how he was to get on, when a solitary traveller pa.s.sed in a carriage and offered to take him up. Soon they began to converse. "I had a remarkably good dinner to-night," said George Peabody; "guess what it was."--"Well, I guess a good turkey."--"Better than that," said Peabody, slapping his companion on the knee. "Well, a piece of Welsh mutton."--"Better than that," with another slap; "why, I've had a prime haunch of venison from a Scotch forest." Soon they were approaching Berlin, and every one saluted the carriage as it pa.s.sed. "May I ask to whom I am so much indebted for my drive?" said Peabody. "Well, guess," said his companion, as they were pa.s.sing some soldiers who saluted. "Well, I guess you're a captain in the army."--"Better than that," said the stranger, slapping Peabody on the knee. "Well, perhaps you're a general."--"Better than that," with another slap. "Well, sir, I am--the Crown Prince of Prussia."

At Mr. Peabody's parties I always used to see the old King Louis of Bavaria, then a dirty dissipated old man, though Munich will ever bear witness to the great intelligence he showed in early life.

At dinner at Lady Grey's I used to meet Dr. Pantaleone, who was then practising at Nice as a Roman exile. Here are some fragments of his ever-amusing conversation:--

"What is gout, Dr. Pantaleone?"

"Why, the Clerici Canonici do say it is the divil, and the doctors do say it is the nerves, and the statesmen do say it is Lord Palmerston or Lord John Russell, as the case may be!"

"Have you studied the subject much?"

"Ah, yes! oh, it is beautiful to follow the gout. But I have felt it too, for my grandfather he did eat up all his fortune and leave us the gout, and that is what I do call cheating his heirs!"

"I have never had gout, but I have had rheumatism."

"Ah, yes; rheumatism is gout's brother."

"Why is Mr. B. in love with Miss M.?"

"Why, you see it is an ugly picture, but is beautiful _encadr?_.

She has ?1500 a year--that is the _cadre_, and the husband will just step into the frame and throw the old picture into the shade?"

"They seem to be giving up the Bishops in Piedmont."

"Yes, but they must not do it: it is no longer wise. With us all is habit. We have now even been excommunicated for three years, and as we find we do as well or rather better than before, we do not mind a bit."

"I have often been miserable when I have lost a patient, and then I have cursed myself for wasting my time and sympathy when I have seen that the relations did not mind. It is always thus. Thus it was in that dreadful time when the Borghese lost his wife and three children. I was so grieved I could not go near the Prince. Some days afterwards I met him in the garden. 'Oh, M. le Prince,' I said, 'how I have felt for you!'--'Dr. Pantaleone,' he replied, 'if I could have them back again now I would not, for it was the will of G.o.d, and now I know that they are happy.' Then I did curse myself. 'Ah, yes, you are quite right, M. le Prince,' I said, and I did go away, and I never did offer condolences any more."

"Do you know Courmayeur?"

"Yes, that is where our King (Victor Emmanuel) goes when he wants to hunt. And when Azeglio wants the King back, he writes to his ministers, 'The tyrant wants to amuse himself,'--because his enemies do call him the tyrant."

"It is a dreadful thing not to remember. I had a friend once who married an Italian lady. One day they were at a party, and he went out in the course of the evening. Nothing was thought of it at the time; Italians often do go out. At last his wife became excited--agitated. They tried to calm her, but she thought he had pos?d her there and gone away and left her for ever. She flew home, and there he was comfortably seated by his fireside. 'Oh, Tommaso, Tommaso!' she exclaimed. 'Che, che!' he said. 'Oh, why did you leave me?' she cried. 'Oh,' said he, striking his forehead, 'I did forget that I was married!'"[226]