Story of My Life Part 1

Story of My Life.

by Augustus J. C. Hare.

VOLUME 1

PREFACE

In the autumn of 1878, the desire to comfort and amuse one of my kindest friends during hours of wearing pain and sickness induced me to begin writing down some of the reminiscences of my life. As almost all those who shared my earlier interests and affections had pa.s.sed away, I fancied at first that it would be impossible to rescue anything like a connected story from "the great s.h.i.+pwreck of Time." But solitude helps remembrance; and as I went on opening old letters and journals with the view of retracing my past life, it seemed to unfold itself to memory, and I found a wonderful interest in following once more the old track, with its almost forgotten pleasures and sorrows, though often reminded of the story of the old man who, when he heard for the first time the well-known adage, "h.e.l.l is paved with good intentions," added promptly, "Yes, and roofed with lost opportunities."

Many will think mine has been a sad life. But, as A. H. Mackonochie said, "No doubt our walk through this little world is through much fog and darkness and many alarms, but it is wonderful, when one looks back, to see how little the evils of life have been allowed to leave real marks upon our course, or upon our present state."

And besides this, Time is always apt to paint the long-ago in fresh colours, making what was nothing less than anguish at the time quite light and trivial in the retrospect; sweeping over and effacing the greater number of griefs, joys, and friends.h.i.+ps; though ever and anon picking out some unexpected point as a fixed and lasting landmark. "Le Temps, vieillard divin, honore et blanchit tout."

Many, doubtless, who read these pages, may themselves recollect, or may remember having heard others give, a very different impression of the persons described. But, as the old Italian proverb says, "Every bird sings its own note," and I only give my own opinion. Pope reminds us that--

"'Tis with our judgments as our watches--none Go just alike--yet each believes his own."

And after all, "De mortuis omnia" is perhaps a wholesomer motto than "Nil nisi bonum," and if people believed it would be acted upon, their lives would often be different. While one is just, however, one ought to remember that nothing can be more touching or pathetic than the helplessness of the dead. "Speak of me as I am," says Oth.e.l.lo, "nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice."

Since I have latterly seen more of what is usually called "the world"--the little world which considers the great world its satellite--and of the different people who compose it, the later years I have described will probably be the most interesting to such as care to read what I have written. I have myself, I think, gradually learnt what an "immense folio life is, requiring the utmost attention to be read and understood as it ought to be."[1] But to me, my earlier years will always seem far the most important, the years throughout which my dearest mother had a share in every thought and was the object of every act. To many, my up-bringing will probably appear very odd, and I often feel myself how unsuited it was to my character, and how little that character or my own tastes and possible powers were consulted in considerations of my future. Still, when from middle life one overlooks one's youth as one would a plain divided into different fields from a hill-top, when "la v?rit? s'est fait jour," one can discern the faulty lines and trace the mistakes which led to them, but one cannot even then see the difficulties and perplexities which caused inevitable errors of judgment in those who could not see the end when they were thinking about the beginning. Therefore, though there is much in the earlier part of my life which I should wish to rearrange if I could plan it over again, I am sure that the little which may be good in me is due to the loving influence which watched over my childhood, whilst my faults are only my own. In the latter years of her life, my dear adopted mother and I became constantly more closely united. The long period of sickness and suffering, which others may have fancied to be trying, only endeared her to me a thousandfold, and since the sweet eyes closed and the gentle voice was hushed for ever in November 1870, each solitary year has only seemed like another page in an unfinished appendix.

I once heard a lady say that "biographies are either lives or stuffed animals," and there is always a danger of their being only the latter.

But, as Carlyle tells us, "a true delineation of the smallest man and the scene of his pilgrimage through life is capable of interesting the greatest man, and human portraits, faithfully drawn, are of all pictures the welcomest on human walls." It is certainly in proportion as a biography is human or individual that it can have any lasting interest.

Also, "Those relations are commonly of the most value in which the writer tells his own story."[2]

I have allowed this story to tell itself when it was possible by means of contemporary letters and journals, convinced that they at least express the feeling of the moment to which they narrate, and that they cannot possibly be bia.s.sed by the after-thoughts under the influence of which most autobiographies are written, and in which "la m?moire se plie aux fantasies de l'amour propre."

My story is a very long one, and though only, as Sir C. Bowen would have called it, "a ponderous biography of n.o.body," is told in great--most people will say in far too much--detail. But to me it seems as if it were in the petty details, not in the great results, that the real interest of every existence lies. I think, also, though it may be considered a strange thing to say, that the true picture of a whole life--at least an English life--has never yet been painted, and certainly all the truth of such a picture must come from its delicate touches. Then, though most readers of this story will only read parts of it, they are sure to be different parts.

The book doubtless contains a great deal of _esprit des autres_, for I have a helpless memory for sentences read or heard long ago, and put away somewhere in my senses, but not of when or where they were read or heard.

Many of the persons described were very important to those of their own time who might have had a _serrement de c?ur_ in reading about them.

Therefore, if their contemporaries had been living, much must have remained unwritten; but, as Sydney Smith said, "We are all dead now."

Still, in looking over my MS., I have always carefully cut out everything which could hurt the feelings of living persons: and I believe very little remains which can even ruffle their sensibilities.

I

ANTECEDENTS

"Time doth consecrate; And what is grey with age becomes religion."--SCHILLER.

"I hope I may be able to tell the truth always, and to see it aright, according to the eyes which G.o.d Almighty gives me."--THACKERAY.

In 1727, the year of George the First's death, Miss Grace Naylor of Hurstmonceaux, though she was beloved, charming, and beautiful, died very mysteriously in her twenty-first year, in the immense and weird old castle of which she had been the heiress. She was affirmed to have been starved by her former governess, who lived alone with her, but the fact was never proved. Her property pa.s.sed to her first cousin Francis Hare (son of her aunt Bethaia), who forthwith a.s.sumed the name of Naylor.

The new owner of Hurstmonceaux was the only child of the first marriage of that Francis Hare, who, through the influence first of the Duke of Marlborough (by whose side, then a chaplain, he had ridden on the battle-fields of Blenheim and Ramilies), and afterwards of his family connections the Pelhams and Walpoles, rose to become one of the richest and most popular pluralists of his age. Yet he had to be contented at last with the bishoprics of St. Asaph and Chichester, with each of which he held the Deanery of St. Paul's, the Archbishopric of Canterbury having twice just escaped him.

The Bishop's eldest son Francis was "un facheux d?tail de notre famille," as the grandfather of Madame de Maintenon said of his son. He died after a life of the wildest dissipation, without leaving any children by his wife Carlotta Alston, who was his stepmother's sister.

So the property of Hurstmonceaux went to his half-brother Robert, son of the Bishop's second marriage with Mary-Margaret Alston, heiress of the Vatche in Buckinghams.h.i.+re, and of several other places besides. Sir Robert Walpole had been the G.o.dfather of Robert Hare-Naylor, and presented him with a valuable sinecure office as a christening present, and he further made the Bishop urge the Church as the profession in which father and G.o.dfather could best aid the boy's advancement.

Accordingly Robert took orders, obtained a living, and was made a Canon of Winchester. While he was still very young, his father had further secured his fortunes by marrying him to the heiress who lived nearest to his mother's property of the Vatche, and, by the beautiful Sarah Selman (daughter of the owner of Chalfont St. Peter's, and sister of Mrs.

Lefevre), he had two sons--Francis and Robert, and an only daughter Anna Maria, afterwards Mrs. Bulkeley. In the zenith of her youth and loveliness, however, Sarah Hare died very suddenly from eating ices when overheated at a ball, and soon afterwards Robert married a second wife--the rich Henrietta Henckel, who pulled down Hurstmonceaux Castle.

She did this because she was jealous of the sons of her predecessor, and wished to build a large new house, which she persuaded her husband to settle upon her own children, who were numerous, though only two daughters lived to any great age. But she was justly punished, for when Robert Hare died, it was discovered that the great house which Wyatt had built for Mrs. Hare, and which is now known as Hurstmonceaux Place, was erected upon entailed land, so that the house stripped of furniture, and the property shorn of its most valuable farms, pa.s.sed to Francis Hare-Naylor, son of Miss Selman. Mrs. Henckel Hare lived on to a great age, and when "the burden of her years came on her" she repented of her avarice and injustice, and coming back to Hurstmonceaux in childish senility, would wander round and round the castle ruins in the early morning and late evening, wringing her hands and saying--"Who could have done such a wicked thing: oh! who could have done such a wicked thing, as to pull down this beautiful old place?" Then her daughters, Caroline and Marianne, walking beside her, would say--"Oh dear mamma, it was you who did it, it was you yourself who did it, you know"--and she would despairingly resume--"Oh no, that is impossible: it could not have been me. I could not have done such a wicked thing: it could not have been me that did it." My cousin Marcus Hare had at Abbots Kerswell a picture of Mrs. Henckel Hare, which was always surrounded with c.r.a.pe bows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HURSTMONCEAUX CASTLE.]

The second Francis Hare-Naylor and his brother Robert had a most unhappy home in their boyhood. Their stepmother ruled their weak-minded father with a rod of iron. She ostentatiously burnt the portrait of their beautiful mother. Every year she sold a farm from his paternal inheritance and spent the money in extravagance. In 1784 she parted with the ancient property of Hos Tendis, at Sculthorpe in Norfolk, though its sale was a deathblow to the Bishop's aged widow, Mary-Margaret Alston. Yet, while acc.u.mulating riches for herself, she prevented her husband from allowing his unfortunate elder sons more than ?100 a year apiece. With this income, Robert, the younger of the two, was sent to Oriel College at Oxford, and when he unavoidably incurred debts there, the money for their repayment was stopped even from his humble pittance.

Goaded to fury by his stepmother, the eldest son, Francis, became reckless and recklessly extravagant. He raised money at an enormous rate of interest upon his prospects from the Hurstmonceaux estates, and he would have been utterly ruined, morally as well as outwardly, if he had not fallen in with Georgiana, d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re, who was captivated by his good looks, charmed by his boldness and wit, and who made him the hero of a living romance. By the d.u.c.h.ess he was introduced to her cousin, another even more beautiful Georgiana, daughter of Jonathan s.h.i.+pley, Bishop of St. Asaph, and his wife Anna Maria Mordaunt, niece of the famous Earl of Peterborough; and though Bishop s.h.i.+pley did everything he could to separate them, meetings were perpetually connived at by the d.u.c.h.ess, till eventually the pair eloped in 1785. The families on both sides renounced them with fury. The Canon of Winchester never saw his son again, and I believe that Bishop s.h.i.+pley never saw his daughter. Our grandparents went to Carlsruhe, and then to Italy, where in those days it was quite possible to live upon the ?200 a year which was allowed them by the d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re, and where their four sons--Francis, Augustus, Julius, and Marcus--were born.

The story of Mrs. Hare-Naylor's struggling life in Italy is told in "Memorials of a Quiet Life," and how, when the Canon of Winchester died, and she hurried home with her husband to take possession of Hurstmonceaux Place, she brought only her little Augustus with her, placing him under the care of her eldest sister Anna Maria, widow of the celebrated Sir William Jones, whom he ever afterwards regarded as a second mother.

The choice of guardians which Mrs. Hare-Naylor made for the children whom she left at Bologna would be deemed a very strange one by many: but gifted, beautiful, and accomplished, our grandmother was never accustomed either to seek or to take advice: she always acted upon her own impulses, guided by her own observation. An aged Spanish Jesuit was living in Bologna, who, when his order was suppressed in Spain, had come to reside in Italy upon his little pension, and, being skilled in languages, particularly in Greek, had taken great pains to revive the love of it in Bologna. Amongst his pupils were two brothers named Tambroni, one of whom, discouraged by the difficulties he met with, complained to his sister Clotilda, who, by way of a.s.sisting him, volunteered to learn the same lessons. The old Jesuit was delighted with the girl, and spared no pains to make her a proficient. Female professors were not unknown in Bologna, and in process of time Clotilda Tambroni succeeded to the chair of the Professor of Greek, once occupied by the famous Laura Ba.s.si, whom she was rendered worthy to succeed by her beauty as well as by her acquirements. The compositions of Clotilda Tambroni both in Greek and Italian were published, and universally admired; her poems surprised every one by their fire and genius, and her public orations were considered unrivalled in her age. Adored by all, her reputation was always unblemished. When the French became masters of Bologna, the University was suppressed, and to avoid insult and danger, Clotilda Tambroni retired into private life and lived in great seclusion. Some time after, she received an appointment in Spain, but, just as she arrived there, accompanied by her monk-preceptor Dom Emmanuele Aponte, the French had overturned everything. The pair returned to Bologna, where Aponte would have been in the greatest distress, if his grateful pupil had not insisted upon receiving him into her own house, and not only maintained him, but devoted herself as a daughter to his wants. After the Austrians had re-established the University on the old system, Clotilda Tambroni was invited to resume her chair, but as her health and spirits were then quite broken, she declined accepting it, upon which the Government very handsomely settled a small pension upon her, sufficient to ensure her the comforts of life.

With Clotilda Tambroni and her aged friend, our grandmother Mrs.

Hare-Naylor, who wrote and spoke Greek as perfectly as her native language, and who taught her children to converse in it at the family repasts, naturally found more congenial companions.h.i.+p than with any other members of the Bolognese society; and, when she was recalled with her husband to England, she had no hesitation in intrusting three of her sons to their care. Julius and Marcus were then only very beautiful and engaging little children, but Francis, my father, was already eleven years old, and a boy of extraordinary acquirements, in whom an almost unnatural amount of learning had been implanted and fostered by his gifted mother. The strange life which he then led at Bologna with the old monk and the beautiful sibyl (for such she is represented in her portrait) who attended him, only served to ripen the seed which had been sown already, and the great Mezzofanti, who was charmed at seeing a repet.i.tion of his own marvellous powers in one so young, voluntarily took him as a pupil and devoted much of his time to him. To the year which Francis Hare pa.s.sed with Clotilda Tambroni at Bologna, in her humble rooms with their tiled floors and scanty furniture, he always felt that he owed that intense love of learning for learning's sake which was the leading characteristic of his after life, and he always looked back upon the Tambroni as the person to whom, next to his mother, he was most deeply indebted. When he rejoined his parents at Hurstmonceaux, he continued, under his new tutor, Dr. Lehmann, to make such amazing progress as astonished all who knew him and was an intense delight to his mother.

Hurstmonceaux Place was then, and is still, a large but ugly house. It forms a ma.s.sy square, with projecting circular bows at the corners, the appearance of which (due to Wyatt) produces a frightful effect outside, but is exceedingly comfortable within. The staircase, the floors, and the handsome doors, were brought from the castle. The west side of the house, decorated with some Ionic columns, is part of an older manor-house, which existed before the castle was dismantled. In this part of the building is a small old panelled hall, hung round with stags' horns from the ancient deer-park. The house is surrounded by s.p.a.cious pleasure-grounds. Facing the east front were, till a few years ago, three very fine trees, a cedar, a tulip-tree, and a huge silver fir. In my childhood it often used to be a question which of these trees should be removed, as they were crowding and spoiling each other, and it ended in their all being left, as no one could decide which was the least valuable of the three. The wind has since that time carried away the cedar. The tulip-tree was planted by our great-aunt Marianne, daughter of Mrs. Henckel Hare, and I remember that my uncle Julius used to say that its gay flowers were typical of her and her dress.

For several years our grandparents carried on a most laborious contest of dignity with poverty on their ruined estate of Hurstmonceaux, where their only daughter Anna Maria Clementina was born in 1799. Finding no congenial a.s.sociates in the neighbourhood, Mrs. Hare-Naylor consoled herself by keeping up an animated correspondence with all the learned men of Europe, while her husband wrote dull plays and duller histories, which have all been published, but which few people read then and n.o.body reads now. The long-confirmed habits of Italian life, with its peculiar hours and utter disregard of appearances, were continued in Suss.e.x; and it is still remembered at Hurstmonceaux how our grandmother rode on an a.s.s to drink at the mineral springs which abound in the park, how she always wore white, and how a beautiful white doe always accompanied her in her walks, and even to church, standing, during the service, at her pew door.

Upon the return of Lehmann to Germany in 1802, Francis Hare was sent to the tutors.h.i.+p of Dr. Brown, an eminent professor in Marischal College at Aberdeen, where he remained for two years, working with the utmost enthusiasm. He seems to have shrunk at this time from any friends.h.i.+ps with boys of his own age, except with Harry Temple (afterwards celebrated as Lord Palmerston), who had been his earliest acquaintance in England, and with whom he long continued to be intimate. Meanwhile his mother formed the design of leaving to her children a perfect series of large finished water-colour drawings, representing all the different parts of Hurstmonceaux Castle, interior as well as exterior, before its destruction. She never relaxed her labour and care till the whole were finished, but the minute application, for so long a period, seriously affected her health and produced disease of the optic nerve, which ended in total blindness. She removed to Weimar, where the friends.h.i.+p of the Grand d.u.c.h.ess and the society of Goethe, Schiller, and the other learned men who formed the brilliantly intellectual circle of the little court did all that was possible to mitigate her affliction. But her health continued to fail, and her favourite son Francis was summoned to her side, arriving in time to accompany her to Lausanne, where she expired, full of faith, hope, and resignation, on Easter Sunday, 1806.

After his wife's death, Mr. Hare-Naylor could never bear to return to Hurstmonceaux, and sold the remnant of his ancestral estate for ?60,000, to the great sorrow of his children. They were almost more distressed, however, by his second marriage to a Mrs. Mealey, a left-handed connection of the s.h.i.+pley family--the Mrs. Hare-Naylor of my own childhood, who was less and less liked by her stepsons as years went on. She became the mother of three children, Georgiana, Gustavus, and Reginald--my half aunt and uncles. In 1815, Mr. Hare-Naylor died at Tours, and was buried at Hurstmonceaux.

The breaking up of their home, the loss of their beloved mother, and still more their father's second marriage, made the four Hare brothers turn henceforward for all that they sought of sympathy or affection to their s.h.i.+pley relations. The house of their mother's eldest sister, Lady Jones, was henceforward the only home they knew. Little Anna Hare was adopted by Lady Jones, and lived entirely with her till her early death in 1813: Augustus was educated at her expense and pa.s.sed his holidays at her house of Worting, her care and anxiety for his welfare proving that she considered him scarcely less her child than Anna; and Francis and Julius looked up to her in everything, and consulted her on all points, finding in her "a second mother, a monitress wise and loving, both in encouragement and reproof."[3] While Augustus was pursuing his education at Winchester and New College, and Marcus was acting as mids.h.i.+pman and lieutenant in various s.h.i.+ps on foreign service; and while Julius (who already, during his residence with his mother at Weimar, had imbibed that pa.s.sion for Germany and German literature which characterised his after life) was carrying off prizes at Tunbridge, the Charter House, and Trinity College, Cambridge; Francis, after his mother's death, was singularly left to his own devices. Mr. Hare-Naylor was too apathetic, and his stepmother did not dare to interfere with him: Lady Jones was bewildered by him. After leaving Aberdeen he studied vigorously, even furiously, with a Mr. Mich.e.l.l at Buckland. From time to time he went abroad, travelling where he pleased and seeing whom he pleased. At the Universities of Leipsic and G?ttingen the report which Lehmann gave of his extraordinary abilities procured him an enthusiastic reception, and he soon formed intimacies with the most distinguished professors of both seats of learning. At the little court of Weimar he was adored. Yet the vagaries of his character led him with equal ardour to seek the friends.h.i.+p and share the follies of Count Calotkin, of whom he wrote as "the Lord Chesterfield of the time, who had had more princesses in love with him and perhaps more children on the throne than there are weeks in the year." At twenty, he had not only all the knowledge, but more than all the experiences, of most men of forty. Such training was not a good preparation for his late entrance at an English University. The pupil of Mezzofanti and Lehmann also went to Christ Church at Oxford knowing far too much. He was so far ahead of his companions, and felt such a profound contempt for the learning of Oxford compared with that to which he had been accustomed at the Italian and German universities, that he neglected the Oxford course of study altogether, and did little except hunt whilst he was at college. In spite of this, he was so naturally talented, that he could not help adding, in spite of himself, to his vast store of information. Jackson, Dean of Christ Church in his time, used to say that "Francis Hare was the only rolling stone he knew that ever gathered any moss." That which he did gather was always made the most of for his favourite brother Julius, for whose instruction he was never weary of writing essays, and in whose progress he took the greatest interest and delight. But through all the changes of life the tie between each of the four brothers continued undiminished--"the most brotherly of brothers," their common friend Landor always used to call them.

After leaving Oxford, my father lived princ.i.p.ally at his rooms in the Albany. Old Dr. Wellesley[4] used often to tell me stories of these pleasant chambers (the end house in the court), and of the parties which used to meet in them, including all that was most refined and intellectual in the young life of London. For, in his conversational powers, Francis Hare had the reputation of being perfectly unrivalled, and it was thus, not in writing, that his vast amount of information on all possible subjects became known to his contemporaries. In 1811, Lady Jones writes of him "at Stowe" as "keeping all the talk to himself, which does not please the old Marquis much."

Francis Hare sold his father's fine library at Christie's soon after his death, yet almost immediately began to form a new collection of books, which soon surrounded all the walls of his Albany chambers. But his half-sister Mrs. Maurice remembered going to visit him at the Albany, and her surprise at not seeing his books. "Oh, Francis, what have you done with your library?" she exclaimed. "Look under the sofa and you will see it," he replied. She looked, and saw a pile of Sir William Jones's works: he had again sold all the rest. And through life it was always the same. He never could resist collecting valuable books, and then either sold them, or had them packed up, left them behind, and forgot all about them. Three of his collections of books have been sold within my remembrance, one at Newbury in July 1858; one at Florence in the spring of 1859; and one at Sotheby & Wilkinson's rooms in the following November.

Careful as to his personal appearance, Francis Hare was always dressed in the height of the fas.h.i.+on. It is remembered how he would retire and change his dress three times in the course of a single ball! In everything he followed the foibles of the day. "Francis leads a rambling life of pleasure and idleness," wrote his cousin Anna Maria Dashwood; "he _must_ have read, but who can tell at what time?--for wherever there is dissipation, there is Francis in its wake and its most ardent pursuer. Yet, in spite of this, let _any_ subject be named in society, and Francis will know more of it than nineteen out of twenty."

In 1816-17, Francis Hare kept horses and resided much at Melton Mowbray, losing an immense amount of money there. After this time he lived almost entirely upon the Continent. Lord Desart, Lord Bristol and Count d'Orsay were his constant companions and friends, so that it is not to be wondered at that attractions of a less reputable kind enchained him to Florence and Rome. He had, however, a really good friend in John Nicholas Fazakerley, with whom his intimacy was never broken, and in 1814, whilst watching his dying father at Tours, he began a friends.h.i.+p with Walter Savage Landor, with whom he ever afterwards kept up an affectionate correspondence. Other friends of whom he saw much in the next few years were Lady Oxford (then separated from her husband, and living entirely abroad) and her four daughters. In the romantic interference of Lady Oxford in behalf of Caroline Murat, queen of Naples, and in the extraordinary adventures of her daughters, my father took the deepest interest, and he was always ready to help or advise them. On one occasion, when they arrived suddenly in Florence, he gave a ball in their honour, the brilliancy of which I have heard described by the older Florentine residents of my own time. Twice every week, even in his bachelor days, he was accustomed to give large dinner-parties, and he then first acquired that character for hospitality for which he was afterwards famous at Rome and Pisa. Spa was one of the places which attracted him most at this period of his life, and he frequently pa.s.sed part of the summer there. It was on one of these occasions (1816) that he proceeded to Holland and visited Amsterdam. "I am delighted and disgusted with this mercantile capital," he wrote to his brother Augustus. "Magnificent establishments and penurious economy--ostentatious generosity and n.i.g.g.ardly suspicion--const.i.tute the centrifugal and centripetal focus of Holland's mechanism. The rage for roots still continues. The gardener at the Hortus Medicus showed me an Amaryllis (alas! it does not flower till October), for which King Lewis paid one thousand guelders (a guelder is about 2 francs and 2 sous).

Here, in the sanctuary of Calvinism, organs are everywhere introduced--though the more orthodox, or puerile, discipline of Scotland has rejected their intrusion. But, in return, the sternness of republican demeanour refuses the outward token of submission--even to Almighty power: a Dutchman always remains in church with his hat unmoved from his head."