What I Remember Part 2

Sir George had, or affected to have, considerable respect for all the little local superst.i.tions and beliefs which are so prevalent in that "north countree." And the kindness with which he welcomed us as neighbours, when we built a house and came to live there, was shown despite a strong feeling which he had, or affected to have, with regard to an incident which fatally marked our _debut_ in that country.

We bought a field in a very beautiful situation overlooking the ruins of Brougham Castle and the confluence of the Eden with the Lowther, and proceeded to build a house on the higher part of it. But there was a considerable drop from the lower limit of our ground to the road which skirted the property, and furnished the only access to it. There was some difficulty, therefore, in contriving a tolerable entrance from the road for wheel traffic, and it was found necessary to cause a tiny little spring that rose in the bank by the roadside to change its course in some small degree. The affair seemed to us a matter of infinitesimal importance, but Sir George was dismayed. We had moved, he said, a holy well, and the consequence would surely be that we should never succeed in establis.h.i.+ng ourselves in that spot.

And surely enough we never did so succeed; for, after having built a very nice little house, and lived in it one winter and half a summer, we--for I cannot say that it was my mother more than I, or I more than my mother--made up our minds that "the sun yoked his horses too far from Penrith town," and that we had had enough of it. Sir George, of course, when he heard our determination, while he expressed all possible regret at losing us as neighbours, said that he knew perfectly well that it must be so, from the time that we so recklessly meddled with the holy well.

He was the most hospitable man in the world, and could never let many days pa.s.s without asking us to dine with him. But his hospitality was of quite the old world school. One day, but that was after our journey to Italy and when he had become intimate with us, being in a hurry to get back into the drawing-room to rejoin a pretty girl next whom I had sat at dinner, I tried to escape from the dining-room. "Come back!"

he roared, before I could get to the door, "we won't have any of your d--d forineering habits here! Come back and stick to your wine, or by the Lord I'll have the door locked."

He was, unlike most men of his sort, not very fond of riding, but was a great walker. He used to take the men he could get to walk with him a tramp over the hill, till they were fain to cry "Hold! enough!" But _there_ I was his match.

Most of my readers have probably heard of the "Luck of Edenhall," for besides Longfellow's[1] well-known poem, the legend relating to it has often been told in print. I refer to it here merely to mention a curious trait of character in Sir George Musgrave in connection with it. The "Luck of Edenhall" is an ancient decorated gla.s.s goblet, which has belonged to the Musgraves time out of mind, and which bears on it the legend:--

"When this cup shall break or fall, Farewell the luck of Edenhall."

[Footnote 1: Subsequently to the publication of his poem Musgrave asked Longfellow to dine at Edenhall, and "picked a crow" with him on the conclusion of the poem, which represents the "Luck" to have been broken, which Sir George considered a flight of imagination quite transcending all permissible poetical licence.]

After what I have written of Sir George and the holy well, which we so unfortunately moved from its proper site, it will be readily imagined that he attached no small importance to the safe keeping of the "Luck;" and truly he did so. But instead of simply locking it up, where he might feel sure it could neither break nor fall, he would show it to all visitors, and not content with that, would insist on their taking it into their hands to examine and handle it. He maintained that otherwise there was no fair submission to the test of luck, which was intended by the inscription. It would have been mere cowardly prevarication to lock it away under circ.u.mstances which took the matter out of the dominion of "luck" altogether. I wonder that under such circ.u.mstances it has not fallen, for the nervous trepidation of the folks who were made to handle it may be imagined!

I made another friend at Penrith in the person of a man as strongly contrasted with Sir George Musgrave as two north-country Englishmen could well be. This was a Dr. Nicholson, who has died within the last few months, to my great regret, for I had promised myself the great pleasure of taking him by the hand yet once again before starting on the journey on which we may, or may not meet. He was my senior by a few years, but not by many. Nicholson was a man of very extensive reading and of profound Biblical learning. It may be deemed surprising by others, as it was, and is, to me, that such a man should have been an earnest and thoroughly convinced Swedenborgian--but such was the case. And I can conscientiously give this testimony to the excellence of that creed--that it produced in the person of its learned north-country disciple at least one truly good and amiable man. Dr.

Nicholson was emphatically such in all the relations of life. He was the good and loving husband of a very charming wife, the unremittingly careful and affectionate father of a large family, a delightful host at his own table, an excellent and instructive companion over a cigar (hardly correctly alluded to in the singular number!) and a most _jucundus comes_ in a tramp over the hills.

Amusing to me still is the contrast between those c.u.mberland walks with Sir George and my ramblings over the same or nearly the same ground with the meditative Swedenborgian doctor;--the first always pus.h.i.+ng ahead as if shouldering along a victorious path through life, knowing the history of every foot of ground he pa.s.sed over, interested in every detail of it, and with an air of continually saying "Ha!

ha!" among the breezy trumpets of those hills, like the scriptural war-horse; the second with his gaze very imperfectly turned outward, but very fruitfully turned inward, frequently pausing with argumentative finger laid on his companion's breast, and smile half satirical half kindly as the flow of discourse revealed theological _lacunae_ in my acquirements, which, I fear, irreparably and most unfairly injured the Regius professor of divinity in the mind of the German graduate. For Nicholson was a theological "doctor" by virtue of a degree from I forget what German university, and had a low estimate, perhaps more justified at that day than it would be now, of the extent and calibre of Oxford theological learning. He was himself a disciple, and an enthusiastic admirer of Ewald, a very learned Hebraist, and an unflagging student.

I was more capable of appreciating at its due value the extent and accuracy of his knowledge upon another subject--a leg of mutton! It _may_ be a mere coincidence, but certainly the most learned Hebraist it was ever my lot to know was also the best and most satisfactory carver of a leg of mutton.

n.o.body knows anything about mutton in these days, for the very sufficient reason that there is no mutton worth knowing anything about.

Scientific breeding has improved it off the face of the earth. The immature meat is killed at two years old, and only we few survivors of a former generation know how little like it is to the mutton of former days. The Monmouths.h.i.+re farmers told me the other day that they could not keep Welsh sheep of pure breed, because nothing under an eight-foot park paling would confine them. Just as if they did not jump in the days when I jumped too! Believe me, my young friends, that George the Third knew what he was talking about (as upon certain other occasions) when he said that very little venison was equal to a haunch of four-year-old mutton. And the gravy!--chocolate-coloured, not pink, my innocent young friends. Ichabod! Ichabod!

My uncle, too, Mr. Partington--who married my father's sister, and lived many years chairman of quarter sessions at Offham, among the South Downs, near Lewes--there was a man who understood mutton! A little silver saucepan was placed by his side when the leg of mutton, or sometimes two, about as big as fine fowls, were placed in one dish before him. Then, after the mutton had been cut, the abundantly flowing gravy was transferred to the saucepan, a couple of gla.s.ses of tawny old port, and a _quantum suff._ of currant jelly and cayenne were added, the whole was warmed in the dining-room, and then--we ate mutton, as I shall never eat it again in this world!

Well! _revenir a nos moutons_ we never, never shall! So we must, alas!

do the reverse in returning to my Penrith reminiscences.

I remember specially an excellent old fellow and very friendly neighbour, Colonel Macleod, a bachelor, who having fallen in love with a very beautiful spot, in the valley of the Lowther, built an ugly brick house, three stories high, because, as he said, he was so greedy of the view, forgetful apparently that he was providing it mainly for his maid servants. Then there was the old maiden lady, with a name that might have been found in north-country annals at almost any date during the last seven hundred years, who mildly and maternally corrected my sister at table for speaking of _vol-au-vent_, telling her that the correct expression was _voulez-vous!_ My sister always adopted the old lady's correction in future, at least when addressing her.

Then there were two pretty girls, Margaret and Charlotte Story, the nieces of old De Whelpdale, the lord of the manor. I think he and Mrs.

De Whelpdale never left their room, for I do not remember to have ever seen either of them; nor do I remember that I at all resented their absence from the drawing-room when I used to call at the manor house.

One of the girls was understood to be engaged to be married to a far distant lieutenant, of whom Penrith knew nothing, which circ.u.mstance gave rise to sundry ingenious conceits in the acrostic line, based on allusions to "his story" and "mystery!" I wonder whether Charlotte is alive! If she is, and should see this page, she will remember! It was for her sake that I deserted, or tried to desert, Sir George's port, as related above.

We left Penrith on that occasion without having formed any decided intention of establis.h.i.+ng ourselves there, and returned to London towards the end of August, 1839. During the next two months I was hard at work completing the MS. of my volumes on Brittany. And in November of the same year, after that long fast from all journeying, my mother and I left London for a second visit to Paris. But we did not on this occasion travel together.

I left London some days earlier than she did, and travelled by Ostend, Cologne, and Mannheim, my princ.i.p.al object being to visit my old friend, Mrs. Fauche, who was living at the latter place. I pa.s.sed three or four very pleasant days there, including, as I find by my diary, sundry agreeable jaunts to Heidelberg, Carlsruhe, &c. My mother and I had arranged to meet at Paris on the 4th of December, and at that date I punctually turned up there.

I think that I saw Paris and the Parisians much more satisfactorily on this occasion than during my first visit; and I suspect that some of the recollections recorded in these pages as connected with my first visit to Paris, belong really to this second stay there, especially I think that this must have been the case with regard to my acquaintance with Chateaubriand, though I certainly was introduced to him at the earlier period, for I find the record of much talk with him about Brittany, which was a specially welcome subject to him.

It was during this second visit that I became acquainted with Henry Bulwer, afterwards Lord Dalling, and at that time first secretary of the British legation. My visits were generally, perhaps always, paid to him when he was in bed, where he was lying confined by, if I remember rightly, a broken leg, I used to find his bed covered with papers and blue-books, and the like. And I was told that the whole, or at all events the more important part of the business of the emba.s.sy was done by him as he lay there on the bed, which must have been for many a long hour a bed of suffering.

Despite certain affectations--which were so palpably affectations, and scarcely pretended to be aught else, that there was little or nothing annoying or offensive in them--he was a very agreeable man, and was unquestionably a very brilliant one. He came to dine with me, I remember, many years afterwards at my house in Florence, when he insisted (the dining-room being on the first floor) on being carried up stairs, as we thought at the time very unnecessarily. But for aught I know such suspicion may have wronged him. At all events his disability, whatever it may have been, did not prevent him from making himself very agreeable.

One of our guests upon that same occasion (I must drag the mention of the fact in head and shoulders here, or else I shall forget it), was that extraordinary man, Baron Ward, who was, or perhaps I ought to say at that time had been, prime minister and general administrator to the Duke of Lucca. Ward had been originally brought from Yorks.h.i.+re to be an a.s.sistant in the ducal stables. There, doubtless because he knew more about the business than anybody else concerned with it, he soon became chief. In that capacity he made himself so acceptable to the Duke, that he was taken from the stables to be his highness's personal attendant. His excellence in that position soon enlarged his duties to those of controller of the whole ducal household. And thence, by degrees that were more imperceptible in the case of such a government than they could have been in a larger and more regularly administered state, Ward became the recognised, and nearly all-powerful head, manager, and ruler of the little Duchy of Lucca. And I believe the strange promotion was much for the advantage of the Duke and of the Duke's subjects. Ward, I take it, never robbed him or any one else.

And this eccentric specialty, the Duke, though he was no Solomon, had the wit to discover. In his cups the ex-groom, ex-valet, was not reticent about his sovereign master, and his talk was not altogether of an edifying nature. One sally sticks in my memory. "Ah, yes! He was a grand favourite with the women. But _I_ have had the grooming of him; and it was a wuss job than ever grooming his hosses was!"

Ward got very drunk that night, I remember, and we deemed it fortunate that our diplomatist guest had departed before the outward signs of his condition became manifest.

Henry Bulwer, by mere circ.u.mstance of synchronism, has suggested the remembrance of Ward, Ward has called up the Duke of Lucca, and he brings with him a host of Baths of Lucca reminiscences respecting his Serene Highness and others. But all these _must_ be left to find their places, if anywhere, when I come to them later on, or we shall never get back to Paris.

It was on this our second visit to _Lutetia Parisiorum_ that my mother and I made acquaintance with a very specially charming family of the name of D'Henin. The family circle consisted of General le Vicomte D'Henin, his English wife, and their daughter. The general was a delightful old man, more like an English general officer than any other Frenchman I ever met. Madame D'Henin was like an Englishwoman not unaccustomed to courts and wholly unspoiled by them. Mademoiselle D'Henin, very pretty, united the qualities of a denizen of the inmost circles of the fas.h.i.+onable world with those of a really serious student, to a degree I have never seen equalled. They were great friends of the Bishop of London, and Mademoiselle D'Henin used to correspond with him. She was earnestly religious, and I remember her telling me of a _demele_ she had had with her confessor. She had told him in confession that she was in the habit of reading the English Bible. He strongly objected, and at last told her that he could not give her absolution unless she promised to discontinue the practice.

She told him that rather than do so, she would take what would be to her the painful step of declaring herself a Protestant, whereupon he undertook to obtain a special permission for her to read the English Bible. Whether he did really take any such measures I don't know, and I fancy she never knew; but the upshot was that she continued to read the heretical book, and nothing more was ever said of refusing her absolution.

I have a large bundle of letters from this highly accomplished young lady to my mother. Many pa.s.sages of them would be interesting and valuable to an historian of the reign of Louis Philippe. She writes at great length, and her standpoint is the very centre of the monarchical side of the French political world of that day. But as I am _not_ writing a history of the reign of Louis Philippe, I must content myself with extracting two or three suggestive notices.

In a letter dated from Paris, 19th July, 1840, she writes:--"You shew much hospitality towards your royal guests. But I a.s.sure you it will not in this instance be taken as an homage to superior merit--words which I have heard frequently applied here to John Bull's frenzy about Soult, and to the hospitality of the English towards the Duc de N[emours], When I told him how much I should like to be in his place (_i.e._, about to go to England), he protested that he would change places with no one, '_quand il s'agissait d'aller dans un aussi delicieux pays, que cette belle Angleterre, que vous avez si bonne raison d'aimer et d'admirer._'"

On the 29th of August in the same year she writes at great length of the indignation and fury produced in Paris by the announcement of the Quadruple Alliance. She is immensely impressed by the fact that "people gathered in the streets and discussed the question in the open air." "Ireland, Poland, and Italy are to rise to the cry of Liberty."

But she goes on to say, "Small causes produce great effects. Much of this warlike disposition has arisen from the fact of Thiers having bought a magnificent horse to ride beside the King at the late review." She proceeds to ridicule the minister in a tone very naturally suggested by the personal appearance of the little great man under such circ.u.mstances, which no doubt furnished Paris with much fun. But she goes on to suggest that the personal vanity which made the prospect of such a public appearance alluring to him was reinforced by "certain other secondary but still important considerations of a different nature, looking to the results which might follow from the exhibition of a war policy. This desirable end being attained beyond even the most sanguine hopes, the martial fever seems on the decline."

Now all this gossip may be accepted as evidencing the tone prevailing in the very inmost circles of the citizen king's friends and surroundings, and as such is curious.

Writing on the 8th of October in the same year, after speaking at great length of Madame Laffarge, and of the extraordinary interest her trial excited, dividing all Paris into Laffargists and anti-Laffargists, and almost superseding war as a general topic of conversation, she pa.s.ses to the then burning subject of the fortification of Paris, and writes as follows--curiously enough, considering the date of her letter:--

"Louis Philippe, whose favourite hobby it has ever been, from the idea that it makes him master of Paris, lays the first stone to-day. Some people consider it the first stone of the mausoleum of his dynasty.

I sincerely hope not; for everything that can be called lady or gentleman runs a good chance of forming part of the funeral pile. The political madness which has taken possession of the public mind is fearful. Foreign or civil war! Such is the alternative. Thiers, who governs the ma.s.ses, flatters them by promises of war and conquest. The _Ma.r.s.ellaise_, so lately a sign of rebellion, is sung openly in the theatres; the soldiers under arms sing it in chorus. The Guarde Nationale urges the King to declare war. He has resisted it with all his power, but has now, they say, given way, and has given Thiers _carte blanche_. He is in fact entirely under his control. The Chambers are not consulted. Thiers is our absolute sovereign. We call ourselves a free people. We have beheaded one monarch, exiled three generations of kings merely to have a dictator, '_mal ne, mal fait, et mal eleve_.' There has been a rumour of a change of ministry, but no one believes it. The overthrow of Thiers would be the signal for a revolution, and the fortifications are not yet completed to master it.

May not all these armaments be the precursors of some _coup d'etat_? A general gloom is over all around us. All the faces are long; all the conversations are sad!"

This may be accepted as a thoroughly accurate and trustworthy representation of the then state of feeling and opinion among the friends of Louis Philippe's Government, whether _Parceque Bourbon_ or _Quoique Bourbon_, and as such is valuable. It is curious too, to find a staunch friend of the existing government, who may be said to have been even intimate with the younger members of the royal family, speaking of the Prime Minister with the detestation which these letters again and again express for Thiers.

In a letter of the 19th November, 1840, the writer describes at great length the recent opening of the Chamber by the King. She enlarges on the intensity of the anxiety felt for the tenor of the King's speech, which was supposed to be the announcement of war or peace; and describes the deep emotion, with which Louis Philippe, declaring his hope that peace might yet be preserved, called upon the nation to a.s.sist him in the effort to maintain it; and expresses the scorn and loathing with which she overheard one republican deputy say to another as the King spoke, "_Voyez donc ce Robert Macaire, comme il fait semblant d'avoir du coeur_!"

A letter of the 14th March, 1842, is written in better spirits and a lighter tone. Speaking of the prevalent hostile feeling towards England the writer wishes that her countrymen would remember Lamartine's observation that "_ce patriotisme coute peu! Il suffit d'ignorer, d'injurier et de hair_." She tells her correspondent that "if Lord Cowley has much to do to establish the exact line between Lord Aberdeen's _observations_ and _objections_, Lady Cowley has no less difficulty in keeping a nice balance between dignity and popularity," as "the Emba.s.sy is besieged by all sets and all parties; the tag and rag, because pus.h.i.+ng is a part of their nature; the _juste milieu_ [how the very phrase recalls a whole forgotten world!] because they consider the English Emba.s.sy as their property; the n.o.ble Faubourg because they are tired of sulking, and would not object to treating Lady Cowley as they treated Colonel Thorn,[1] viz., establis.h.i.+ng their quarters at the 'Cowley Arms,' as they did at the 'Thorn's Head,' and inviting their friends on the recognised principle, '_C'est moi qui invite, et Monsieur qui paie_'"

[Footnote 1: Colonel Thorn was an American of fabulous wealth, who was for a season or two very notorious in Paris. He was the hero of the often-told story of the two drives to Longchamps the same day; first with one gorgeous equipment of _liveries_, and a second time with other and more resplendently clothed retainers.]

Then follows an account of a fancy _bal monstre_ at the Tuileries, which might have turned out, says the writer, to deserve that t.i.tle in another sense. It was believed that a plot had been formed for the a.s.sa.s.sination of the King, at the moment, when, according to his invariable custom, he took his stand at the door of the supper-room to receive the ladies there. Four thousand five hundred tickets had been issued and a certain number of these, still blank, had disappeared.

That was certain. And it was also certain that the King did not go to the door of the supper-room as usual. But the writer remarks that the tickets may have been stolen by, or for, people who could not obtain them legitimately. But the instantly conceived suspicion of a plot is ill.u.s.trative of the conditions of feeling and opinions in Paris at the time.

"For my part," continues Mademoiselle D'Henin, "I never enjoyed a ball so much; perhaps because I did not expect to be amused; perhaps because all the royal family, the Jockey Club, and the fastidious Frenchwomen congratulated me upon my toilet, and voted it one of the handsomest there. They _said_ the most becoming (but that was _de l'eau benite de Cour_); perhaps it was because the Dukes of Orleans, Nemours, and Aumale, who never dance, and did so very little that evening, all three honoured me with a quadrille. You see I expose to you all the very linings of my heart I dissect it and exhibit all the vanity it contains. But you will excuse me when I tell you of a compliment that might have turned a wiser head than mine. The fame of my huntress's costume (Mademoiselle D'Henin was in those days the very _beau-ideal_ of a Diana!) was such that it reached the ears of the wife of our butcher, who sent to beg that I would lend it to her to copy, as she was going to a fancy ball!"

A letter of the 8th of August, 1842, written from Fulham Palace, contains some interesting notices of the grief and desolation caused by the sad death of the Duke of Orleans.

"Was there ever a more afflicting calamity!" she writes. "When last I wrote his name in a letter to you, it was to describe him as the admired of all beholders, the hero of the _fete_, the pride and honour of France, and now what remains of him is in his grave! The affliction of his family baffles all description. I receive the most touching accounts from Paris. Some ladies about the Court write to me that nothing can equal their grief. As long as the coffin remained in the chapel at Neuilly, the members of the family were incessantly kneeling by the side of it, praying and weeping. The King so far mastered his feelings, that whenever he had official duties to perform, he was sufficiently composed to perform _son metier de Roi_. But when the painful task was done he would rush to the chapel, and weep over the dead body of his son, till the whole palace rang with his cries and lamentations. When the body was removed from Neuilly to Notre Dame, the scene at Neuilly was truly heartrending. My father has seen the King and the Princes several times since the catastrophe, and he says it has done the work of years on their personal appearance, The Due de Nemours has neither eaten nor slept since his brother died, and looks as if walking out of his grave. Mamma wrote him a few lines of condolence, which he answered by a most affecting note. Papa was summoned to attend the King to the House, as _Grand Officier_, and says he never witnessed such a scene. Even the opposition shed their crocodile tears. Placed immediately near the King on the steps of the throne, he saw the struggle between kingly decorum and fatherly affliction. Nature had the victory. Three times the King attempted to speak, three times he was obliged to stop, and at last burst into a flood of tears. The contagion gained all around him. And it was only interrupted by sobs that he could proceed. And it is in the face of this despair, when the body of the prince is scarcely cold, that that horrid Thiers and his a.s.sociates begin afresh their infernal manoeuvres!"

A letter of the 3rd April, 1842, contains among a quant.i.ty of the gossip of the day an odd story, which, the writer says, "is putting Rome in a ferment, and the clergy in raptures." I think I remember that it made a considerable stir in ecclesiastic circles at the time.

A certain M. Ratisbonne, a Jew, it seems entered a church in Rome (the writer does not say so, but if I remember rightly, it was the "Gesu"), with a friend, a M. de Bussieres, who had some business to transact in the sacristy. The Jew, who professed complete infidelity, meantime was looking at the pictures. But M. de Bussieres, when his business was done, found him prostrate on the pavement in front of a picture of the Madonna. The Jew on coming to himself declared that the Virgin had stepped from her frame, and addressed him, with the result, as he said, that having fallen to the ground an infidel, he rose a convinced Christian! Mademoiselle D'Henin writes in a tone which indicates small belief in the miracle, but seems to accept as certain the further facts, that the convert gave all he possessed to the Church and became a monk.

I have recently--even while transcribing these extracts from her letters--heard of the death, within the last few years, of the writer of them. She died in England, I am told, and unmarried. Her sympathies and affections were always strongly turned to her mother's country, as indeed may be in some degree inferred from even those pa.s.sages of her letters which have been given. And I can well conceive that the events which, each more disastrous than its predecessor, followed in France shortly after the date of the last of them, may have rendered, especially after the death of her parents, a life in France distasteful to her. But I, and, I think, my mother also, had entirely lost sight of her for very many years. Had I imagined that she was living in England, I should undoubtedly have endeavoured to see her.

I have known many women, denizens of _le grand monde_, who have adorned it with equally brilliant talents, equally captivating beauty, equally sparkling wit and vivacity of intelligence. And I have known many, denizens of the studious and the book world, gifted with larger powers of intellect, and more richly dowered with the results of thought and study But I do not think that I ever met with one who possessed in so large a degree the choice product resulting from conversance with both these worlds. She was in truth a very brilliant creature.