Story of My Life Part 54

So Williams threw up everything, though it was considered a disgrace in time of war, and came home, but when he arrived, poor Miss FitzClarence was dead.

"'Then Lady Frederick felt that she could not do enough for him, and she took him to live with her as her son. The relations, however, were all very angry, and the _mauvaises langues_ said that she meant to marry him herself. So then she thought it would not do, and she got him an agency on Lord Fife's property and sent him to live alone. However, after a time, the agency somehow was given up, and he came back, and he always lives now with Lady Frederick.

At Etal they always sit in church gazing into the open grave, which Lady Frederick will never have closed, in which his love is to be buried when she (the mother) dies, and is laid there also, and at Ford he sits by his love's dead head.

"'I think Captain Williams must be no longer young, because he is so very careful about his dress, and that is always a sign of a man's growing old, isn't it?"

"The neighbours at Ford most of them seem to have 'stories' and are a perpetual source of interest. Lady Waterford says:--

"'Grindon is a fine old manor-house near Tillmouth. Mr. Friar lives there. One morning he was a carpenter working down a coal-pit, and in the evening he was the master of Grindon: I believe an uncle left it him.

"'Then there was that Sir F. Blake whose wife was a Persian princess, who afterwards left a fine diamond necklace and two most magnificent Persian vases to the family. I was so sorry when those vases were sold for ?40: they were worth many hundreds.

"'Near Howtell is Thorpington, a farm of the Hunts. Sir J. Hunt was attainted for fighting in the Jacobite cause, and his property was all confiscated. His son was so reduced that he was obliged to become a groom, but he so gained the regard of his master, that, when he died, he left him all his horses. From that time the Hunts have taken to selling horses and their breed has become famous.

They never sell a horse, however, under ?200: if they do not get that sum, they either shoot them or give them away.'"

"_Chillingham Castle, August 27, 1865._--On Thursday afternoon I drove with Lady Waterford and Lady Stuart to Yetholm, twelve miles from Ford. The way wound through wild desolate valleys of the Cheviots, and the village itself is a miserable place. I drew the palace of the gipsy queen--a wretched thatched hovel with a mud floor, but royalty was absent on a tinkering expedition.

"On Friday I went in the pony-carriage to Etal. There I was shown into a room hung with relics of Lord Frederick FitzClarence and miniatures of George IV. and the royal family. Very soon Lady Frederick[285] came in--a figure like a nun, one straight fall of c.r.a.pe, without crinoline, enveloping her thin figure, and her hair all pushed back into a tight round white muslin cap, and coal-scuttle bonnet. She scarcely ever sees any one, so it was an effort to her to receive me, but she was not so odd as I expected.

She talked about the place and then about wasps, and said that if Captain Williams was stung by a wasp, it had such an effect upon him that he swelled up all over and fell down perfectly senseless upon the ground that instant. In the hall was the dinner service of Nelson (painted with figures of Lady Hamilton as Amphytrite), which was given to Lord Frederick by William IV. Captain Williams went with me to the ruined castle of Etal and then along a walk above the Till, which was very beautiful, with weird old willows, high rocks, and lovely reaches of wood and water.

"Yesterday morning I made a sketch of the door of the cottage, with all its flowers, &c., which I gave to Lady Stuart, much to her pleasure. She told me about Lord Waterford's death. On that morning, as always, Lady Waterford read to him a chapter in the Bible whilst he was dressing, and for that day it was the lament for Absalom. It contained the verse in which a pillar is raised up to him for 'he had no son to keep his name in remembrance;' so his widow determined to raise a pillar to his memory, and has done so in the beautiful angel-fountain at Ford.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Elizabeth, Lady Stuart de Rothesay.

From a miniature by Miss Dixon_.]

"In the middle of luncheon Lady Tankerville drove up, came to fetch me, and bringing Lady Bagot[286] and Lady Blanche Egerton[287] to see the castle. So at five I came away with them, and took leave of the cottage and its delightful inmates.... It was a cold dreary day, and gusts of wind and rain blew from the Cheviots during our fourteen miles. Lady Tankerville drove."

"_Chillingham, August 29._--Yesterday we all drove through pouring rain to Hulne Abbey in Alnwick Park, where we were glad of the shelter of the one unruined tower for our luncheon. Afterwards we drove through the park to the castle, which I had not seen since the reign of Algernon the Great and Eleanor the Good. Now we were the guests of Lady Percy, a kind pleasant person, and Lady Louisa.

The rooms are grandly uncomfortable (except the library, which is an attractive room), but the decorations cost ?350,000!"

"_August 30._--Yesterday, as the family here are impervious to damp, we picknicked in the forest. Lady Tankerville made the fire and boiled the kettle; Lady Blanche laid the cloth and cut bread and b.u.t.ter; a young Grey and I made the toast, and the little boys and girls caught fresh trout out of the burn close by. In the evening Lord Tankerville told us this story:--

"'My father had a beautiful villa at Walton, which we have given up now. It was in the old days when we had to ride across Putney Heath to reach it. My father used to think it very odd that when he went into the stables to see his horses in the morning, they were all in a foam and perfectly exhausted, as if they were worn out with hard riding. One day he was coming home across Putney Heath, and he was bringing Lord Derby back with him. When they came near the heath, he had said, "Well, now, we had better have our pistols ready, because highwaymen are often to be met with here." So they loaded their pistols, and it was not a bit too soon, for directly after a highwayman rode up to the carriage-window and demanded their money or their lives. As he spoke he recognised them, and saw also that my father recognised his own groom upon one of his own horses. In the moment's hesitation he drew back, and in that moment my father and Lord Derby fired. Several shots were exchanged on both sides, but at last came a moment's pause, during which Lord Derby cried out of the window to the postillion to ride forward, and he dashed on at full gallop. The highwayman fired into the back of the carriage, and Lord Derby and my father returned his fire by leaning out of the windows. At last the back of the carriage was quite riddled with shot, and the ammunition of those inside was quite exhausted, and then Lord Derby held out a white handkerchief as a flag of truce out of the window, and the highwayman rode up and they delivered up all their valuables to him. Of course my father never saw his groom again, and his horses were in much better condition ever afterwards--at least those which were left, for the highwayman rode away upon the best horse in the stables.'"

"_Howick, Sept. 1, 1865._--Yesterday I was able to stop the express at the private station (for Howick), whither Lord Grey sent for me.

It was a drive of about a mile and a half, chiefly through shrubberies of hollies and rhododendrons, to this large square house with wings. It is most comfortable inside, with a beautiful library opening into a great conservatory. Lady Grey[288] is one of the severest-looking and one of the kindest-meaning persons I have ever seen. Lord Grey is little and lame, but gets about with a stick very actively. He is quite grey, but the very image of Lady Mary Wood. The rest of the party had put off coming for a day from different reasons, but I was not sorry to make acquaintance alone first with my host and hostess, and they were most pleasant, so that it was a very agreeable evening."

"_Sept. 2._--Yesterday morning a great bell on the top of the house summoned all in it to prayers, which were read by Lord Grey in the breakfast-room opening on to very pretty terraces of flowers, with perfect shrubberies of sweet verbena, for the climate here is very mild. After breakfast I went down through the wood to the sea, not a mile distant, and a very fine bit of coast, with rich colour in the rocks and water, and Dunstanborough Castle on its crag as the great feature. The place reminds me a little of Penrh?s. When I returned from driving with Lady Grey to Alnwick, the Belhavens arrived, and before dinner the Bishop of London and Mrs. Tait, and the Durhams."

"_Sept. 4._--My dearest mother will like to know how intensely I have enjoyed being at Howick. The Greys make their house so pleasant and the life here is so easy. Then Lady Belhaven[289] is always celebrated as a talker, and it has been delightful to sit on the outskirts of interesting conversations between my host and Sir George Grey or the Bishop.

"On Sat.u.r.day afternoon I drove with the Durhams and Lady Belhaven to Dunstanborough. The sea was of a deep Mediterranean blue under the great cliffs and overhanging towers of the ruined castle. Lord Durham[290] and I walked back three miles along the cliffs--a high field-walk like the old one at Eastbourne.

"On Sunday the Bishop preached at the little church in the grounds.

It has been rebuilt and decorated with carvings by Lady Grey and her sisters-in-law. In the chancel is the fine tomb of the Prime Minister Lord Grey. I went with Durham afterwards all over the gardens, which are charming, with resplendent borders of old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers; and after afternoon church, we all went down through the dene to the sea, where there is a bathing-house, with a delightful room fitted up with sofas, books, &c., just above the waves. All the French herring-fleet was out, such a pretty sight.

The Bishop read prayers in the evening to the great household of forty-eight persons. He is a very pleasant, amiable Bishop.

"I enjoyed seeing so much of Durham; no one could help very much liking one who is very stiff with people in general, and most exceedingly nice to oneself. But Lady Durham[291] is always charming, so perfectly na?ve, natural, and beautiful. She is devoted to her husband and he to her. Some one spoke of people in general not loving all their children. She said: 'Then that is because they do not love their husbands. Some women think no more of marriage than of dancing a quadrille; but when women love their husbands, they love all their children equally. Every woman must love her first child: the degree in which they love the others depends upon the degree in which they love their husbands.'

"Sitting by her at dinner, I asked if she had ever read 'Les Mis?rables'? 'No. When I was confirmed, the clergyman who was teaching me saw a French novel on the table, and said, "My dear child, you don't read these things, do you?" I said "No," which was quite true, for it belonged to my French governess, and he then said, "Well, I wish you never would. Don't make any actual promise, for fear you should not keep it, but don't do it unless you are obliged;" and I never have.'

"I spoke to her of the inconsistency involved by the confirmation ceremony, by which young ladies renounced the pomps and vanities of the world, being generally the immediate predecessor of their formal entrance upon them.

"'Yes; I never thought of that. But certainly my pomps and vanities were of very short duration. I went to three b.a.l.l.s, two tea-parties, and one dinner, and that was all I ever saw of the world; for then I was married. One year I was in the school-room in subjection to every one, ordered about here and there, and the next I was free and my own mistress and married.'

"'And did not you find it rather formidable?' I said. 'Formidable to be my own mistress! oh no. One thing I found rather formidable certainly. It was when a great deputation came to Lambton to congratulate George upon his marriage, and I had to sit at the end of the table with a great round of beef before me. I wanted them not to think I was young and inexperienced. I wanted to appear thirty at least; so I _would_ carve: and then only think of their saying afterwards in the newspaper paragraphs, "We are glad to learn that the youthful Countess is not only amiable but intelligent." I was glad that they should think I was amiable, but when they said I was intelligent, I was perfectly furious, as if George's wife could possibly have been anything else.

"'I was brought up a Tory, but as long as I can remember I have felt myself a Radical. I cannot bear to think of the division between the cla.s.ses, and there is so much good in a working-man. I love working-men: they are my friends: they are so much better than we are.

"'When my little George of four years old--such a little duck he is!--was with me at Weymouth, I told him he might take off his shoes and stockings and paddle in the water, and he went in up to his chest; and then the little monster said, "Now, mama, if you want to get me again, you may come in and fetch me, for I shan't come out." I was in despair, when a working-man pa.s.sed by and said, "Do you want that little boy, ma'am?" and I said "Yes," and he tucked up his trousers and went in and fetched George out for me; but if the _man's_ little boy had been in the water, I am afraid I should not have offered to fetch him out for him.

"'And when I was going to church at Mr. c.u.mming's in Covent Garden (I daresay you think I'm very wrong for going there, but I can't help that), it began to pour with rain, and a cabman on a stand close by called out, "Don't you want a cab, ma'am?" I said, "Yes, very much, but I've got no money." And the cabman said, "Oh, never mind, jump in; you'll only spoil your clothes in the rain, and I'll take you for nothing." When we got to the church door, I said, "If you will come to my house you shall be paid," but he would not hear of it, and I have liked cabmen ever since. Oh, there is so much good in the working-men; they are so much better than we are.'"

"_Winton Castle, N.B., Sept. 5, 1865._--My sweetest mother will like to think of me here with the dear old Lady Ruthven.[292] I left Howick at mid-day yesterday, with the Bishop and Mrs. Tait and their son Crauford, an Eton school-boy. It had been a very pleasant visit to the last, and I shall hope to repeat it another year, and also to go to the Durhams. We had an agreeable journey along the cliffs. I had become quite intimate with the Taits in the three days I was with them, and liked the Bishop very much better than Mrs. Tait, though I am sure she is a very good and useful woman.[293] At Tranent Lady Ruthven's carriage was waiting for me.

I found her in a sadly nervous state, dreadfully deaf, and constantly talking, the burden of her refrain being--

'Mummitie mum, mummitie mum, Mummitie, mummitie, mummitie mum.'

But in the evening she grew much better, and was like other people, only that she would constantly walk in and out of the dark ante-chambers playing on a concertina, which, as she wore a tiara of pearls and turquoises, had a very odd effect in the half light; and then at eleven o'clock at night she would put on her bonnet and cloak and go off for a walk by herself in the woods. Charming Miss Minnie Fletcher of Saltoun is here. She told me that--

"Sir David Brewster and his daughter went to stay with the Stirlings of Kippenross. In the night Miss Brewster was amazed by being awakened by her father coming into her room and saying, 'My dear, don't be alarmed, but I really cannot stay in my room. It may be very foolish and nervous, but there are such odd noises, such extraordinary groanings and moanings, that I positively cannot bear it any longer, and you must let me stay here. Don't disturb yourself; I shall easily sleep on the sofa.'

"Miss Brewster thought her father very silly, but there he stayed till morning, when he slipped away to his own room to dress, so as not to be found when the servant came to call his daughter. When the maid came she said, 'Pray, ma'am, how long are you going to stay in this house?' Miss Brewster was surprised, and said she did not know. 'Because, ma'am, if you are going to stay, I am sorry to say I must leave you. I like you very much, ma'am, and I shall be sorry to go, but I would do anything rather than again go through all I suffered last night; such awful groanings and moanings and such fearful noises I can never endure again.' Miss Brewster was very much annoyed and laughed at the maid, who nevertheless continued firm in her decision.

"In the afternoon Miss Brewster had a headache, and at length it became so bad that she was obliged to leave the dinner-table and go up to her room. At the head of the stairs she saw a woman--a large woman in a chintz gown, leaning against the banisters. She took her for the housekeeper, and said, 'I am going to my room: will you be so kind as to send my maid to me?' The woman did not answer, but bowed her head three times and then pointed to a door in the pa.s.sage and went downstairs. Miss Brewster went to her room, and after waiting an hour in vain for her maid, she undressed and went to bed. When the maid came up, she asked why she had not come before, and said she had sent the housekeeper for her. 'How very odd,' said the maid, 'because I have been sitting with the housekeeper the whole time.' Miss Brewster then described the person she had seen, upon which the maid gave a shriek and said, 'Oh, then you have seen the ghost.' The maid was in such a state of terror, that when Mrs. Stirling came up to inquire after her headache, Miss Brewster asked her about the woman she had seen, when, to her surprise, Mrs. Stirling looked quite agonised, and said, 'Oh, then there is more misery in store for me. You do not know what that ghost has been to me all through my married life.'

She then made Miss Brewster promise not to tell the persons who slept in the room pointed at, that theirs was the room. It was a Major and Mrs. Wedderburn who slept there. Mrs. Stirling and Miss Brewster then both wrote out accounts of what had happened and signed and sealed them. Before the year was out, they heard that the Wedderburns were both killed in the Indian Mutiny."

"_Winton Castle, Sept. 8._--My visit here has been very pleasant indeed. The Speaker and Lady Charlotte Denison came on Tuesday afternoon with the Belhavens. He is a fine-looking elderly man, with a wonderful fund of agreeable small-talk. Lady Charlotte[294]

is very refined, quite unaffected, and very pretty still: they are both most kind to me. Miss Fletcher has been here all the time to help Lady Ruthven, for whom it is well that she has such a kind, pleasant greatniece only a mile off, to come and help her to amuse all her guests, as she has had fifty-six parties of people _staying_ in the house in the last year. We saw a large party of the great-great nephews and nieces of Lady Ruthven and Lady Belhaven on Wednesday, when we went to spend the afternoon at Lord Elcho's. It is a fine place, Amisfield--a huge red stone house in a large park close to the town of Haddington, where there is a beautiful old cathedral, but in ruins, like all the best Scotch churches. Lady Elcho[295] has the stately refinement of a beautiful Greek statue. Her children are legion, the two eldest boys very handsome and pleasant. We went over the house, with old tapestry, &c., to be seen, and the gardens with fine cedars, and then all Lord Wemyss's twenty-four race horses were brought out in turn to be exercised round the courtyard and admired: after which we had Scotch tea--scones, cakes, apricot-jam, &c.

"I have made rather friends with John Gordon,[296] a younger brother of Lord Aberdeen, who has been staying here. He is a second Charlie Wood in character, though only eighteen, and I have seldom seen any one I liked as well on short acquaintance. His family are all supposed to be dreadfully shy, but he seems to be an exception.

"Yesterday Lady Belhaven and Lady Ruthven went to Edinburgh, and I stayed with Miss Fletcher, and walked with her in the afternoon to Saltoun, where we had tea with Lady Charlotte and saw the curiosities. Lady Charlotte Fletcher[297] said:--

"'The French royal family were often here at Saltoun when they were at Holyrood--Charles X. and the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angoul?me, and the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri and her daughter, the Duc and d.u.c.h.esse de Guise and the Duc de Polignac.... The d.u.c.h.esse d'Angoul?me and the Duc de Polignac used to go down to the bridge in the glen and stay there for hours: they said it reminded them so much of France, the trees and the water. The Duc de Polignac said our picture of the leave-taking of Louis XVI. and his family contained figures more like than any he had seen elsewhere. We turned it to the wall and locked the door when they came, for fear the d.u.c.h.esse d'Angoul?me should see it, but the little Mademoiselle de Berri was playing hide-and-seek through the rooms, and she got in by the outer door, and it was the first thing she observed, and she insisted on seeing it.... She did me a little drawing, and left it behind her.

"'The family were very fond of coming here, because my father, Lord Wemyss, had been kind to them when they were here during the first Revolution. On the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri's birthday, she was asked what she would like to do in honour of it, and she chose a day at Saltoun. It was very inconvenient their all coming with the children at a few hours' notice, such a large party, but she wrote a pretty note, saying what a pleasure it would be to see her old friends again, and another afterwards, saying what a delight it had been, so that we were quite compensated.'

"On Sunday, when it was church-time, Lady Ruthven said, 'We'll just gang awa to the kirk and see what sort of a discoorse the minister makes; and if he behaves himself, well--we'll ask him up to dinner!' She sat in kirk, with her two dogs beside her, in a kind of chair of state just under the pulpit, where she might have been mistaken for the clerk. She is as demonstrative in church as elsewhere, and once when Miss Fletcher came unexpectedly into the gallery after she had been some time without seeing her, she called out, 'Eh, there ye are, Minnie, my darling,' before the whole congregation, and began kissing her hands to her. When a child screamed in kirk, and its mother was taking it out, the minister interrupted his discourse with, 'Na, bide a wee: I'm no that fashed wi' the bairn.'--'Na, na,' said the mother, 'I'll no bide: it's the bairn that's fashed wi' ye.' Talking afterwards of the change of feeling with which church-services were usually regarded now-a-days, Lady Charlotte Fletcher said:--