THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES a -. g iffsm '. ' ' '% .'.\i<~'-' '. - : 1 -'-, '- -:.v I mim me** MY REMINISCENCES VOL. I. KE'J-AN PA.U7, TRENCH MY REMINISCENCES LORD RONALD GOWER, F.S.A. A TRUSTEE OF THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY ' All men are interested in any man if he will speak the facts of his life for them ; his authentic experiences, which correspond, as face to face, to that of all other sons of Adam ' IX TWO VOLUMES -VOL. I. LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., i PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1883 (The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved) \/. I PREFACE. ONCE UPON A TIME an Italian nobleman built himself a funereal monument. On being asked why he did not leave the care of this work to his relatives after his death, he replied that he had little confidence in their taking the trouble or going to the expense of doing so. Agreeing with this Italian, I have compiled these recollections from my old journals diaries which will probably serve to light the kitchen fire when their author has departed. At any rate, I save others the trouble of looking through a large amount of ill-written MSS. ; and I hope that these Reminiscences will not prove entirely without interest to the general reader, on whose indul- gence I throw myself. R. G. BARCELONA: Dec. 2, 1882. 2066759 CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME, ..HATTER PAGE I. STAFFORD HOUSK . . .... I II. CLIVEDEN . . . . . . . . . 13 III. TRENTHAM ........ 29 IV. DUNROBIN ......... 44 v. MY FATHER'S FAMILY 67 vi. MY MOTHER'S FAMILY . . . . . . 97 VII. EARLY RECOLLECTIONS 117 VIII. EARLY YEARS .... ... 137 IX. THE PRINCE OF WALES'S MARRIAGE, AND GENEVA . 156 X. COLCHESTER, AND GARIBALDI'S VISIT . . . 1 68 XI. A VISIT TO POTSDAM LORD CARLISLE'S DEATH . 180 XII. CAMBRIDGE DAYS . . .... 196 XIII. CAMBRIDGE DAYS Continued ITALY IN WAR TIME . 225 XIV. CHISWICK HOUSE . . . 257 viii CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. CHAPTER 1'AGE XV. LAST DAYS AT CAMBRIDGE THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION GARIBALDI AT HOME . . . 272 XVI. FOREIGN TRAVEL THE HOUSE OF COMMONS MY MOTHER'S DEATH ...... 293 XVII. IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD . . . . . 319 XVIII. FRANCE IN WAR TIME ...... 329 XIX. PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND AFTER THE COMMUNE . 381 XX. HUGHENDEN, ETC. . 404 REMINISCENCES. CHAPTER I. STAFFORD HOUSE. I APPEARED on this earthly scene in the month of August, 1845, born literally in an Art Palace for no house in London deserves better such a title than the great brown building that on the south fronts the Mall, on the east St. James's Palace, and on the west the Green Park, and which, in the summer of '45, was facetiously dubbed by the club wits of Pall Mall and St. James's Street the ' lying-in hospital.' For a few days after my birth two of my mother's daughters were confined of their eldest born under the same roof. Rogers, the banker poet, the friend of Byron and Moore, said that although he had seen all the palaces of Europe he preferred Stafford House to any of them. ' I have often said,' he added, ' that it is a fairy palace, and that the Duchess is the good fairy ! ' VOL. I. B 2 MY REMINISCENCES. In one of the rooms hangs a brilliant water-colour drawing by Eugene Lami representing one of the many occasions on which the Queen then in the early happy days of her reign honoured Stafford House by her presence. It was during one of these receptions that Her Majesty, on entering the great hall, paid her hostess a compliment worthy of Louis XIV. : ' I have come from my house to your palace ! ' In Lami's drawing the grand staircase is shown crowded with guests, and the spacious hall a blaze of light. The artist has chosen the moment when the Queen, escorted by her host and hostess, is descending the staircase. Among the throng that rise as the Sovereign approaches, portraits of some of the family are introduced, easily recognisable although the figures are but three or four inches high. That tall form and long face is the late Duke of Devonshire, uncle of my mother, friend of the Regent's, and the discoverer and patron of Paxton ; next to him stands a kilted and plaided figure, the head of the Campbells, who had, when this picture was painted, but recently married the eldest daughter of the house. There, among a bevy of ladies dressed in the fashion of the days of d'Orsay, many likenesses could be pointed out of a society that is now all but passed away. Few indeed of the principal actors in this bright scene are left. In spite of its sombre exterior, Stafford House STAFFORD HOUSE. 3 deserves the epithet both Queen and poet gave it. Palatial indeed are its great hall and its matchless staircase. These again are environed by galleries and saloons containing treasures of art that few public collections could rival. But what has given Stafford House its greatest prestige has been the noble influence in the cause of charity and freedom with which it and my mother's name are associated. What a succession of illustrious guests have been welcomed in this spacious hall ! Poerio and his fellow-sufferers, still weak from their confinement in the prisons of Naples ; Garibaldi the Deliverer, clad in his famous red garb ; Livingstone and Charles Sumner, besides a host of princes and magnates, potentates and plenipotentiaries, have as- cended these storied stairs. On the principal landing of this staircase, fronting the great glass doors, which are supposed to open only for royalty or for the departing bride, how many charitable meetings have been held, how many triumphs of music accom- plished ! Here Malibran, Grisi, Lablache, Rubini, and Tam- burini have sung ; here Ristori and Thellusson re- cited. Nor has this hall echoed only to the strains of Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti, but also to the voices of philanthropists and patriots to Lord Shaftesbury advocating the cause of the white, and Garrison that of the black slave. B 2 4 MY REMINISCENCES. The best description of Stafford House has been written by Lord Beaconsfield. ' Crecy House ' as it is named in ' Lothair ' ' is,' he writes, ' one of the half-dozen stately structures that our capital boasts of.' And of it he gives the following history, which I quote because it is true : ' An heir-apparent to the Throne (the Duke of York) in the earlier days of the present century had resolved to be lodged as became a prince, and had raised, among gardens which he had deviated from one of the royal parks, an edifice not unworthy of Vicenza in its best days, though on a far more extensive style than any pile that city boasts. Before the palace was finished the prince died, and irretrievably in debt. His executors were glad to sell to the trustees of the executors of the house of Tren- tham the incomplete palace, which ought never to have been commenced. The ancestor of the Duke was by no means so strong a man as the Duke him- self, and prudent people rather murmured at the exploit. But it was what is called a lucky family that is to say, a family with a charm that always attracted and absorbed heiresses.' Further on the hall is described, but, instead of Firenzi's admirable copies of some of Paul Veronese's masterpieces, with which its walls are panelled (how well I remem- ber the disappointment I felt on seeing the originals of these well-known copies at Venice huddled in dark galleries and darker churches !), Lord Beaconsfield, STAFFORD HOUSE. 5 in the easy manner which blends in his romances facts and fiction, describes the hall as being adorned with 'paintings by the most celebrated artists of the age commemorating the exploits of the Black Prince ! ' Near, but not in the hall, hangs a painting some- what similar to those the statesman-novelist describes. This is a large cartoon which, to the bitter mortifica- tion of the artist, poor Haydon, had been rejected by the Committee for the Decoration of the Houses of Parliament. My father, ever ready to befriend the unfortunate, bought the rejected cartoon. Nor was this the only occasion in which he assisted the well- meaning, ambitious, but unlucky painter. When great height, beauty of proportion, and magnificence of colour are so happily blended as in the great hall of Stafford House, the chef cCceuvre of the architect Wyatt, the conviction of architecture being one, if not the greatest, of the fine arts asserts itself. What single production of human art can produce a greater sense of delight to both eye and mind than such structures as the Roman Colosseum or the Athenian Parthenon, wrecks and ruins though they are ? In a much humbler form, and on a much smaller scale, the interior of the great hall of the house where I was born has always been to me a source of intense pleasure, ever fresh and unstaled. Viewed when lighted a giorno, full of festivity and flowers, of perfumes and music, or with only the cold 6 MY REMINISCENCES. moonlight streaking one of the tall grey columns or lending a ghostly brightness to a figure in one of the copies of the great Caliari's paintings, this hall has to me something almost sublime in its size and its proportions like some grand poem turned into solid masonry, imperishable and immutable to time, and age, and human changes. What the future destiny of Stafford House will be is not easy to guess. In two score years or so it reverts to the Crown. It will then probably become the home of one of the numerous princes that the future Royal Family will have to house a far more suitable and worthy abode than the one now occupied by the Heir -Apparent. Never was there house equally magnificent and commodious. Every room in it, whatever its size, is as comfortable as it is hand- some. In all of them my mother's hand is apparent. Unlike the palaces of Italy, which, although stately in appearance, resemble rather homes for the dead than dwellings for the living, at Stafford House the rooms, however vast, have a feeling of comfort about them. The great hall itself can, if needed, be converted into a most commodious sitting-room. And so with the other galleries and chambers. In the great square banqueting-room, so called from its having been the scene of large dinners and ball suppers, and in the adjoining gallery the ball-room the wealth of de- coration rivals Versailles itself. In these days, when STAFFORD HOUSE. 7 the palatial style of decoration has given place to feeble imitations of a mode half cinque-cento, half Louis XVI., it is likely that Stafford House is the last of the great houses decorated with all the pomp and magnificence of the days of Louis XIV.'s reign. But in spite of the gilding and splendour of decoration of these rooms, the art treasures that still, for some of late have been dispersed, adorn them are what make Stafford House truly remarkable. The student of history will search in vain for that unique gallery of French portraits, beginning at the sixteenth and end- ing at the nineteenth century, known as the Lenoir Collection. Chantilly is now the home of those treasures that had no rival out of the Louvre ; but enough remain of rare and remarkable paintings to make this gallery well worthy attention. By far the finest are the immense paintings that occupy the greater space of one of the walls in the gallery. Both are works by Murillo, and both painted in the great Sevillian's best, his third and latest manner. They formed part of the series of illustrations that he exe- cuted for the Church of the Hospital of Charity in his native town, representing scenes from sacred history emblematical of or illustrating deeds of charity human and divine. A few of this series are still in their original position on the walls of the old church at Seville. To Murillo's fame this series of ' Caridad ' paintings is as important as the Sistine Chapel to that 8 MY REMINISCENCES. of Buonarotti, the halls and galleries of the Vatican to that of Sanzio, or the glories and triumphs of Henry of Navarre in the Louvre to that of Rubens. Let us observe the one of these two great pictures on the right of the fireplace. In the figure clothed in rags of the youth who kneels with clasped hands at the feet of a venerable, white-bearded old man, and in the attendants, one of whom carries the new dress for the penitent, while another shows a ring he carries in his hand, and in the child who, in the background of the picture, leads the fatted calf, the whole story of that most beautiful of our Lord's parables is portrayed in a manner at once so pathetic and yet so simple that a child will recognise the old familiar story at a glance. Remark that true touch of nature which shows the little dog fawning on the Prodigal as he kneels at his father's feet. In spite of rags and tatters, he re- cognises his old master ' who was dead, but is alive again ; who was lost, but is found ! ' The companion picture to that of the ' Prodigal Son ' represents Abraham at the entrance of his tent welcoming the three angels. It is a far less interest- ing subject, and is also a less admirable painting than the other one. Still this has great merit. Admirable as to drawing and as to composition, it is, as well as its companion picture, in excellent preservation. Both these paintings were looted out of Spain by that arch picture-plunderer, Marshal Soult, who stole them at STAFFORD HOUSE. 9 the same time as the famous ' Assumption ' by the same master, now in the Salon Carre" in the Louvre. For these three works Soult got nearly fifty thousand pounds. It is much to be regretted that, unlike the Assumption painting, neither of these Murillos at Stafford House have ever been engraved. I have often, but unsuccessfully, attempted to obtain photo- graphs of them. Next in importance to the ' Prodigal Son ' and the ' Abraham and the Angels ' in this gallery, are three half-length, life-size portraits placed opposite the Murillos. That of an old man in black, leaning back in his arm-chair, with book in hand, his finger marking the page which he was reading when apparently his attention is called by the spectator, is considered Moroni's masterpiece. This portrait has been known for centuries in the world of art by the title of ' Titian's Schoolmaster,' from a tradition that the great Venetian studied this work and considered it worth even his imitation. The two other portraits are by Vandyck. That solemn, Lytton-Bulwer-like signior, with careworn face and high intellectual fore- head, is the famous art collector, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. His right hand such a hand as Vandyck only could draw negligently plays with the cameo George of the Garter ribbon which until Charles II.'s reign was worn round the neck, as that of the Bath is now. Remark how transparently liquid are the eyes, almost as much so as those in the famous io MY REMINISCENCES. portrait known as the Gervatius by the same artist in the National Gallery. The other Vandyck portrait is of an unknown personage, apparently painted when the artist was in Genoa, and more carefully finished than his English portraits, when the crowd of courtier sitters from Whitehall had obliged the artist to employ pupils to add the draperies and accessories to his portraits. It would make this notice of Stafford House far too long were I to attempt to even give a list of the other paintings that this gallery and the adjacent rooms contain. For here are pastoral scenes by Watteau, Lancret, and Pater ; landscapes by De Koning, Artois, Adrian Van der Velde, Van Goyen, Poussin, and Claude ; saints, martyrs, monks by Zurbaran, Murillo, Velasquez, Guercino, Ribera, Alonzo Cano, Guido, Schiavone, Sassaferrato, Penni, Parmigiano, and Pordenone ; mythological scenes by Titian, Paul Veronese, Albano, and Correggio ; his- torical subjects by Paul de la Roche (his great picture of Lord Strafford on his way to execution is in the gallery), by Benjamin West and poor Haydon ; sea scenes by William Van der Velde and Gudin ; archi- tectural subjects by Pannini and Weenix ; domestic scenes by Le Nain, Teniers, Breckelencamp, Nicolas Maas, Peter de Hooch, and Ostade ; besides a host of portraits by the painters of the Italian, Spanish, Flemish, French, and English Schools the latter STAFFORD HOUSE. 11 inclusive of works from Hogarth, our first great national portrait painter, down to Sir Francis Grant. In the latter category I will single out two groups of portraits, one by Lawrence, the other by Landseer, both being of local interest. The first of these is a life-size, full-length portrait of my mother and her eldest child, Elizabeth, painted more than half a cen- tury ago. It hangs in a room on the ground floor of Stafford House a room with windows that open to the ground on the garden a garden surrounded by other gardens, if the ugly bald parterre of that plot of ground in front of the ugliest palace in Europe, St. James's, deserves to be called by that name. In this portrait, one of Lawrence's happiest, he has depicted my mother seated, her little girl on her knee. My mother's dress is black velvet, cut to the fashion of the days when George IV. was king, with high waist, gigot sleeves, and hair in short ringlets. Both child and mother are beautiful of that pure beauty that few but Lawrence could immortalise on the canvas. Vandyck and Reynolds never, I think, painted a more refined portrait of mother and child than this. It was reckoned marvellously like them at the time 1823. But not even Lawrence could do real justice to that imperial face or give the sweetness and beauty of that sunny smile. The other portrait group is by Landseer, also life- size. It is a group of two children, with a couple of 12 MY REMINISCENCES. dogs and a tame deer. This is among the best-known of Landseer's, and has been made popular through an admirable engraving by Cousins. The dark-eyed girl is my sister Evelyn, who died comparatively young her life shortened by a devotion in nursing which might make a saint or a sister of charity jealous. The boy at her feet, in kilt and sporran, is the present owner of Stafford House. In the background the old keep of Dunrobin is introduced. In such a picture as this, Landseer was not at his best. Like many great artists, when trammelled with a commission he seemed to lose power. He painted better and appears to greater advantage when depicting the face and expres- sion of a dog or a deer than when portraying a ' Lady Godiva ' or a Lady Clara Vere de Vere. Commission is often the grave of talent. CHAPTER II. CLIVEDEN. MY earliest recollections are associated with Cliveden, and with a wedding and a death that took place there. Alexandrina or Aline, as she was called by us was the youngest of our family. Born in February, 1 848, she was little more than two years junior to me. On the day of my eldest brother's marriage with Miss Hay Mackenzie in June, 1849, Aline had, by her infantine loveliness and bright intelligence, charmed all present. In the diary of my uncle, Lord Carlisle, there appear under the date of June 20, 1849, the following memoranda : ' A large family party went to Cliveden for Stafford's marriage. I was struck with the extraordinary grandeur and beauty of the view, which I had not seen since I was at Eton ; a very good enjoyable house, built by Sir George Warrender on the ruins of the ' Proud Alcove ' ; and to-day it was looking its best, with a glorious mid- summer sun, full of smart people and of vases brimming over with white flowers. Almost the greatest object of attraction among bride and brides- 14 MY REMINISCENCES. maids was Harriet's youngest child, Aline, about seventeen months old. I never saw a baby look more beautiful, and she had a look of deep compo- sure, and even reflection, that was something quite remarkable.' The next day he adds : ' We had heard that Harriet's little girl had been unwell in the morn- ing, and Argyll came in after dinner to tell us she was dead. How sad and striking ! ' Sad, too, and striking was another death at Cliveden that happened shortly after my brother's marriage. That ceremony had taken place in the drawing-room of the house, owing to the weak state of health of the bride's father, Mr. Hay Mackenzie; but a few days after the wedding and he, too, died. I was at this time not yet four years old, but well I remember being carried to my little sister's death-bed, and the bitter grief of my mother. She treasured for the rest of her life the faded flowers that her little girl's hands had plucked the day before her death in the summer woods and fields of Cliveden, and these, together with the por- trait by Winterhalter of her little dead girl, remained by her as long as she lived. That wedding and these deaths took place in a building that no longer exists. As regards fire, Cliveden has been exceptionally unlucky. Twice it has been burnt to the ground the first time when it belonged to Lord Orkney, in 1 795 ; the second time, after it had been purchased by my father from Sir George Warrender, in 1849. The CLIVEDEN. 15 second fire took place on a Sunday morning, when, the family being away, and the household at church, or at some less laudable occupation, the house appears to have fallen an easy prey to the flames. At any rate, long before any attempt had been made to check the fire, a library in which room the fire is supposed to have begun rich in fine old editions of the French classics, was completely destroyed, not a book being saved. The smoke of the burning house was dis- tinctly seen from Windsor, and, if I am not misin- formed, the Queen was one of the first to notice it. 1 I do not remember the old building thus destroyed ; all that I recollect of it is seeing the blackened walls pulled down preparatory to the rebuilding of the present house under the direction of Sir Charles Barry in 1850-51. Barry, who had already been employed by my father at Trentham, borrowed, as was his wont, largely from existing models. Anyone who has seen the Villa Albano near Rome, and com- pares it with Cliveden, will see the likeness between them, although, unfortunately, in the case of the latter, stone was not used as in the Roman villa-palace, but brick and stucco. The first records of Cliveden date from the reign of Charles II. To judge by last cen- tury prints of the place, the old building was plain 1 A Mrs. Elaine, near Maidenhead, happened to see both fires, that of 1795 and that of 1849, from, I believe, the same window of the same house. 16 MY REMINISCENCES. unto ugliness. Then as now the main building was flanked by wings, and then as now possessed a con- spicuous feature in the noble terrace fronting the valley of the Thames. I need not quote Pope's hackneyed lines referring to the ' Proud Alcove ' whatever that is or to the ' wanton Shrewsbury.' One of the greatest scamps in English history Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham lived but did not die at Cliveden. After the death of the Duke ' in the worst inn's worst room,' Cliveden became the property of a Lord Orkney, one of Marlborough's Generals. His tenancy of the place is recalled by a graceful stone temple in the grounds, which is still in good condition, raised by Lord Orkney in honour of his commander's crowning victory at Blenheim. Later, Cliveden was let to Frederick Prince of Wales, father of George III., who, whatever his nullity may have been, extensively cultivated music in England. Here, under the leadership of Dr. Arne, either in the old concert-room below the terrace which, with a sounding passage connecting the house and vault, still exists or in a rustic theatre, of which the seats were the mossy turf and the decorations the surrounding trees the verdant stalls and grassy seats of the old parterre are still visible l was performed Arne's opera, ' The Masque of Liberty,' in which Britannia 1 Or in a round of yew-trees now existing at the west end of the terrace walk on the slope of the bank. CLIVEDEN. 17 was for the first time declared to rule the waves. Thomson's and Mallet's ' Mask of Alfred,' with music by the same composer, was also first produced at Cliveden in 1740. In an old guide to Windsor and its neighbourhood, I find the following quaint notice of old Cliveden : ' Cliefdon (this is one of the many obsolete forms of the way the name is spelt. Pope spells it ' Clief den ') Cliefdon House is worth notice, as well on account of its fine situation as of its having been the usual residence during the summer season of that amiable and engaging prince, His Majesty's (George III.) father. It was erected by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in the reign of Charles II., and came by marriage to the late Earl of Orkney, who made con- siderable improvements in the house and gardens, which were also enlarged and improved by the late Prince of Wales ; so that, wherever the eye is turned, the sight is struck with agreeable avenues, parterres, and beautiful lawns, with an extensive view of the Thames, and the fine well-cultivated country on its banks. The house is a stately edifice, the rooms lofty and noble ; in the front of the house is raised a noble terrace, said to be higher even than that of Windsor Castle ; however, it is certain that the prospect from there is no more beautiful and exten- sive. The grand chamber is adorned with tapestry- hangings, representing the battles of the great Duke VOL. i. c i8 MY REMINISCENCES. of Marlborough, finely expressed by order of the late Earl of Orkney, who was himself a commanding officer in those glorious campaigns.' The tapestries of Marlborough's victories doubt- less perished in the first fire ; they were, I imagine, similar to those at Blenheim Palace. An account of that first conflagration is recorded in a letter from Lord Inchiquin Lord Orkney's son written to his cousin, the Duke of Leinster. This letter is dated from Taplow Court (an adjoining estate to Cliveden, which also belonged to Lord Orkney) : 'May 22, 1795. ' I am sorry,' Lord Inchiquin writes, ' to tell you of the melancholy fate of the once princely Clifden. Most completely furnished, it was entirely burnt down, with everything in it, last night between ten and eleven o'clock, while the family were at supper. The fire began in an upper bedchamber, ard was so sudden, rapid, and violent, that nothing was saved. I hope the wings will be, but the fire is not yet out. There were no engines nor other assistance that could be of any use. I was undressed, going to bed, when I first heard of it The loss is great to me, heavily so to poor Lady Orkney. She did not save a ring, a trinket, nor a shift,' Fifty years passed, and the building erected on the same site again went up in flame, as I have already CLIVEDEN. 19 said. In the early part of the century Sir George Warrender lived here. He was a well-known bon vivant. Sydney Smith dubbed him ' Sir Georgious Provender.' Of this epicurean baronet the story goes that one day, when he was doing the honours of Cliveden to a distinguished foreigner, his guest asked him whether the view from the terrace took in all Sir George's estate. ' All that you can see is mine,' re- plied Sir Georgious, waving his hand over a view that embraced half-a-dozen counties ! As a matter of fact, Cliveden can hardly be called an estate. At most it but covers three hundred acres ; but such a view as that from Buckingham's grand old terrace is worth, artistically speaking, a county in itself. How strange that Turner should never have sketched this prospect, and that the artist who overran Europe in search of the beautiful neglected a scene which has no rival in its kind on the banks of the Loire or of the Rhine ! I think that even Turner's pencil would hardly have succeeded in rendering the indescribable softness and beauty of this scene, or could have done justice to the grace of the gentle sloping banks of timber and the silvery stream that, here widely swelling and again almost disappearing, gleams below these wooded hills as it wends its way by eyots and reedy shores till we lose sight of it under Maidenhead Bridge, again to reappear miles away, like some jewelled neck- let, among the pleasant fields. The view from the c 2 20 MY REMINISCENCES. terrace at Richmond can alone, I think, vie with this scene of perfect English beauty. The beauties of Cliveden are not merely confined to this view from the terrace. Lovely as that prospect is, there are walks and views without end, any one of which might well cause the despair of an artist, any one of which would make the fame of a place. Come, for instance, to a seat at the foot of an old oak that stands a few hundred feet to the west of the house. It is known as ' Canning's Oak,' having been a favourite spot with that statesman. Here an opening has been pierced down through the glades, forming a vista which ter- minates in the Thames, some hundred feet below. It is a view that once seen is not soon forgotten. When Garibaldi saw it the scene recalled to him some of the mighty river prospects in South America ; although, compared to the great rivers of the New World, our Thames is a mere streamlet. Since I have seen the Hudson River I understand the com- parison. As I have said, the walks and paths are almost endless at Cliveden. Leaving the upper terraces and gardens, you soon find yourself in a perfect maze of paths that wind in and out among the chalk cliffs among old yews under which ' wanton Shrewsbury' and her lover may have passed, their weird and gnarled roots twisting from out the grey cliff in fantastic shapes, that seem as if the plants were in Laocoon-like throes, twisting and writhing under CLIVEDEN. 21 the coils of mighty snakes above. What studies for an artist are here ! what variety of colour among these purple-dyed roots and branches, so vividly contrasting their blood- like hues against the walls of chalk, the trees and banks half hidden by the wild undergrowth of clematis, or disguised by the softest of emerald-hued mosses ! Following the trail of such a path, you find yourself of a sudden in a spacious green lane, a lovely sylvan corridor on the right, bor- dered by a row of grand stone pines below, the Thames winds and sparkles, and beyond, on the other side of the river, solemn old elms seem to guard the low-lying fields of Cookham. What a playground these Cliveden woods were to us children in the old sunny days ! W r hat joy, when after a laborious crawl on hands and knees, to find in one of the chalk caves the skull of a bird, or the tibia of a weasel ! What zest we showed in the search for and collection of fossils, eggs, butterflies, and other natural history ' curios/ in those happy, careless times ! And when, too tired to look for more rarities, what delight it was to run down to the river's bank, and rest by the side of that clear spring which old Sam Ireland, Hogarth's friend and biographer, has sung. ' Secure from summer's sultry ray ' he begins his lines ' Haste hither, swains, and with you bring Your ladies, debonnaire and gay, To taste of Cliefden's cooling spring.' 22 MY REMINISCENCES. Yes ; many happy days have we passed among these woods and on that river. The very name of Clive- den recalls the hawthorn and the may, the fields in June, the carpets of primroses and violets, the scent of the cowslips and the thyme, the hum of bees, and the music of the feathered choristers of the woods. Pleasant evenings were those when lingering on the river until the moon rose and warned us that it was time to leave boat and barge and climb the yew-tree path, through which the moonlight cast weird lights and shades. And when arrived above to pause a little on the old terrace, and watch star after star brighten in the deep purple vault of the summer night, listening to the far-away sounds from the river, to the cry of the men at the lock, as the belated boats returned to Maidenhead or Cookham, the laugh and the song fading slowly away over the water far below. And when all seemed at length hushed and still, to hear the rich, rare note of the nightingale bursting into music from out the great elms on the lawn beneath the terrace. And all the time the air perfumed from the great white globes of the mag- nolias and grape-like clusters of purple westeria that climb the balustrades around. Although in later years I have passed winter days here, sad within and without, the brightness of those early years, and the colour of the summer skies and the perfume of flowers, are to me ever associated with these woods and gardens. CLIVEDEN. 23 As at Dunrobin and at Trentham so at Cliveden, the traces of my mother's taste are apparent both with- in and without doors. When my parents first came to Cliveden the great garden that covers eight acres, and which is one of the show places of the county, was but a prairie. Its only ornament was a kind of circus of turf at the end of the lawn, where in old Lord Orkney's time horses were exercised an open-air manege, in fact. Can we not fancy seeing the General and his comrades of Ramilies, Malplaquet, and Oude- narde, riding round and round this circle in their three-cornered hats, powdered heads, and huge riding- boots, making their crop-tailed steeds perform all the curvettings and amblings of the haute tcole d Equitation, as we see them in Parrocel's or the Cavalier Duke of Newcastle's book on the art of riding ? The ring is now in early summer a blaze of rhododendrons and azaleas, and no horse but that of the mower's comes near that circle now. I remember our childish grief when the great waste of lawn was changed from a huge field of grass and wild flowers into its present state of trim sward, flanked by stately flower-beds which Le Notre would not have despised, so dazzling were they in their summer hues. No one recalling its former state and its present can fail to admit that an improvement was made here by my mother. Within, Cliveden owes much to her refined taste. 24 MY REMINISCENCES. Since her death, changes which I cannot help deplor- ing have altered the original disposal of the principal rooms facing the garden, or river front. But with the exception of the great drawing-room, the house is much in the same state as when she occupied it and made the place beautiful with her dear presence. Entering the building through the outer hall, in which, facing the front door, stands a life-size bronze copy of the fine statue of Joan of Arc by a princess of the House of Orleans, we pass through a corridor that to the right opens on the principal staircase, to the left on the secluded parts of the house. The floor of this hall and of the corridors are inlaid with fine encaustic tiles, manufactured at Messrs. Minton's Works at Stoke, and given by the head of that establishment, Herbert Minton, to my mother at the time Cliveden was rising, for the second time, from its ashes, as a token of his appreciation of the constant interest she had shown for the welfare of the Staffordshire pot- teries. The little room on the left of the entrance- hall, forming the angle of the building and facing the river, was my mother's sitting-room I object to that vulgar and unamiable term ' boudoir.' One window looks out on a garden that belongs to one of the wings of the house a pretty, sheltered spot, with rustic seats under the spreading branches of cedar trees that may have seen both old and modern Clive- den. This garden is gay with flower-beds, prettily CLIVEDEN. 25 framed by a clump of ilexes a tree too little appre- ciated in our parks and gardens, but which thrives at Cliveden. In another part of the grounds there are groves of ilexes which rival those in the Boboli Gar- dens at Florence. Within, this room deserves more than a passing glance. The coved ceiling, finely painted, represents a trellised border of flowers and leaves, through which and out of oval-shaped open- ings gaze down children's heads. The idea is bor- rowed from the famous ' Putti ' of Correggio in the room of the prioress at Parma. Instead, however, of being merely graceful cupids blowing their horns and playing their frolics, the Cliveden children are por- traits of my mother's grandchildren. That boy with golden-coloured hair is the eldest of the Campbells ; that girl with thoughtful eyes and long silken tresses falling on her little shoulders is now the mother of a quiverful of children. Here are youthful Stuarts and Campbells, Gowers, Grosvenors, and Fitzgeralds, now no longer children, but many with children of their own. On the walls are four admirably-painted panels, by Wolff, of birds and flowers. The most successful, I think, is one of a large turtle-dove resting so softly and comfortably on her nest, embowered in a white hawthorn bush in full bloom. Between the windows are two reduced copies of full-length portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The youth in the Order of the Thistle, all green velvet and white satin, is my 26 MY REMINISCENCES. mother's grandfather, Frederick, sixth Earl of Car- lisle. The gladsome-looking lady in white and gold brocade, and with feathers waving on her head, is her famous granddame, Georgiana, Duchess of Devon- shire. The latter portrait has been of late admirably engraved by Cusins. I shall not attempt to describe other rooms here, nor in my other old homes ; for I should run the danger of seeming to wish to write an inventory, and that I have no intention of doing. Briefly, then, to glance at the adjoining apartments. The room next to the little sitting-room which I have briefly described contains one of R. Buckner's best portraits, that of my sister Constance Westminster, painted when she was seventeen, the engraving of which is well known ; the painted frame of white and red roses is in itself a beautiful idea, admirably car- ried out ; but the portrait is of the ' Book of Beauty ' type, and that is saying enough. This room was my father's study, severely simple, as all his rooms were. It shows a few good pictures in oils and water-colours, some simple but well-filled book-cases, a fine engraving after Winterhalter's portrait of my mother above the fireplace, and a general look of being the sanctum of a scholar and a man of re- finement. The present owner and occupant of this room has shown his good taste by not moving either a picture from the walls or a book from the shelves. Luckily the tastes of the nephew resemble CLIVEDEN. 27 those of the uncle too closely to make any change necessary here. For the uninstructed it may be as well here to add in my account of the fortunes of Cliveden that after my mother's death whose jointure house Cliveden had become after the death of my father the place was sold, and was luckily purchased by the Duke of Westminster, who, by acquiring it, saved Cliveden from the fate of falling into unworthy hands, or being cut up for building villas and hotels, forsooth ! The library is a finely-proportioned room, the walls well stored with English and French works, which rest in cases of carved maple. Above the fireplace is panelled a. good copy of Andrea Sacchi's well-known picture in the Vatican, representing St. Romualdo preaching to his fellow-monks in their retreat in the Apennines. Although Cliveden cannot boast of any original paintings of value, this and the large copy of the central portion of Titian's ' Assumption ' in the dining- room are worthy of notice. On the staircase is a half- length portrait of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, in his Garter robes a poor concern and a large ' Finding of Moses,' of the school of Veronese. Formerly the library opened into a couple of drawing-rooms, the first decorated with a row of mirrors which reflected that matchless view of the Thames and wooded hills facing them ; but the present owner has, I think 28 MY REMINISCENCES. unfortunately, altered this arrangement the two rooms are now thrown into one, and the mirrors are gone. The principal feature in the decoration of the dining-room which ends this suite of rooms is an admirably-painted ceiling, a series of fruit-covered trellises. So true to nature is the painting of this ceiling that the peaches, grapes, figs, and pome- granates seem ready to fall on the floor. Above, the rooms have little to call for special notice. There is one, however, which in later years my mother used for her sitting-room, and in which are some pleasing pictures notably a large painting in distemper, a view of Dunrobin from the gardens. Telbin is the artist. It shows how admirably scene painting is adapted for purposes of decoration. So bright, vivid, and open-aired is this work of our greatest theatrical scene-painter that, as in the case of Stanfield's views of Venice at Trentham, one feels as if one were actually at the place represented that one has but to step across the frame to find oneself in those fair gardens that lie between the white-towered castle and the Northern main. During the time the Queen occupied Cliveden Her Majesty spent many hours in the balcony on the second floor near this room, facing the western horizon, and commanding a grand view of the ' silver Thames.' CHAPTER III. TRENTHAM. ' IT would be difficult to find a fairer scene/ writes Lord Beaconsfield, in ' Lothair,' of our old Stafford- shire home the name of which he but slightly disguises by substituting a B for a T ' It would be difficult to find a fairer scene than Brentham offered, especially in the lustrous effulgence of a glorious English summer. It was an Italian palace of freestone ; vast, ornate, and in scrupulous condition ; its spacious and graceful chambers filled with trea- sures of art, and rising itself from statued and stately terraces. At their foot spread a garden domain of considerable extent, bright with flowers, dim with coverts of rare shrubs, and musical with fountains. Its limit reached a park with timber such as the midland counties alone can produce. The fallow deer trooped among its ferny solitudes and gigantic oaks ; but beyond the waters of the broad and winding lake the scene became more savage, and the eye caught the dark form of the red deer on some jutting mount, shrinking with scorn from communion with his gentler brethren.' 30 MY REMINISCENCES. This description of Trentham, although it sounds exaggerated, is in the main a perfectly truthful account of its exterior aspect. And if allowance is made for the novelist's licence in describing the building as of freestone, it being only of brick and stucco, the de- scription of the house is also in the main accurate. Never has the 'dark form of the red deer,' that I know of, cast a shade on the grass and fern in Trent- ham Park. In Plott's ' History of Staffordshire ' a view of the old house at Trentham is given. This represents a very different building from the present one. The earlier was an Elizabethan structure, built in the seventeenth century by Sir Richard Leveson. This seems, to judge by the print, to have been a delightful place. Quaint and picturesque, with high gables, tall chimneys, bay windows, and a wide terrace in front, encircled by a balustrade formed of an open-work lettered inscription. Some old Jacobean and Eliza- bethan houses are thus adorned at Castle Ashby, for instance, where such an ornament surrounds the roof of the building, and at Hardwicke, where Bess of Hardwicke's initials occupy a similar post of eleva- tion. Nothing of this old pile remains. Early last century some Goth of an ancestor pulled down the old Hall, and in its place built a hideous long flat house of red brick with stone facings, in imitation of one of the ugliest houses in the land, TRENTHAM. 31 old Buckingham House. As the fortune of the family increased so did the size of this building. But it was only when Sir Charles Barry was employed that it ceased to be supremely hideous. It is now, in spite of the long ugly central portion, a really handsome mansion. The entrance porch and adjacent colon- nade, as well as the private wing, with its open terrace of two stories high, are as perfect imitations of pure Italian architecture as Barry ever designed. I know of nothing more graceful and happy in its way than the half circle of a colonnade that forms at once a passage, a fernery, and a vestibule, leading from the body of the house to the park entrance. But it is not even what Barry has done for Trent- ham that has made it one of the great lions of English ' show places.' The late Duke of Devonshire and a better judge could not easily have been found used to say that, in his opinion, the garden front at Trentham was unrivalled, his own glorious Chats- worth not excepted. There is hardly a structure of its importance in the island that has so uneventful a history as Trent- ham. A priory, dating traditionally from the middle of the seventh century, occupied the site of the present church ; a structure combining the uses of a parish church with those of a family chapel, and forming a portion of the modern hall. A Saxon king's daughter 32 MY REMINISCENCES. was a titular saint of this fane. Four hundred years after her time a Norman Earl of Chester granted the church to a prior, who, with his canons, entered therein. The fine massive old pillars, restored stone by stone by my father in 1844, which formerly sup- ported the roof of the nave of the priory, are undoubtedly Norman, and probably were placed here in the twelfth century. In Henry VI.'s reign we find that the prior of Trentham had bloomed into an abbot. In 1531 both priors and abbots disappeared. In 1539 Henry VIII. granted Trentham, with much other church spoil, to his handsome brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. The Levesons acquired the place by descent in the female line from this favoured courtier and his Queen consort. Sir John Leveson (temp. James I.) left at his death two daughters, his co-heiresses. One of these, Frances, wedded Sir Thomas Gower, a Yorkshire cavalier, and brought in her jointure Trentham, besides other property in Staffordshire and Shropshire, both, the latter especially, well stored with coal. It is to this alliance and to others equally pro- ductive of the acquisition of great landed property that two rather insignificant families are indebted for having, to borrow from an account of ' Our Great Governing Families,' ' risen within two hundred and fifty years from simple country baronets into the TRENTHAM. 33 greatest, though not the richest, territorialists in Great Britain.' Trentham Church has seen and passed through many changes not the least striking when some of the Parliamentarian horse were quartered in it during the Civil War. They have left their mark in the old royal coat-of-arms painted on panel that one finds in many an old country church which is pierced in two places by bullet-holes. A few family monuments one of alabaster and a couple of brasses, besides the headless figure of a knight carved in freestone, are the only ancient frag- ments of artistic interest in the church. Matthew Noble's happiest effort in memorial sculpture is, how- ever, worthily placed here, protected by a hand- some screen of carved oak that dates from the seventeenth century. It is the recumbent statue of my mother. When Barry was changing the exterior of plain old Georgian Trentham into the semblance of an Italian palace, he had the incredibly bad taste to suggest that the church, with its fine old Norman pillars, should be converted into a building more suitable to the Italian fashion of the hall. Luckily my parents had better taste than their architect. Trentham is full of contrasts ; the old Norman church attached to the modern Italian-like-looking building is one of them. Nothing can be less suggestive of beauty than that district of North Staffordshire known as the Potteries. There it seems always muddy and VOL. i. D 34 MY REMINISCENCES. miserable, squalid and unclean. Yet within a couple of miles from Stoke lies this wonderful garden of Trentham, gay with hanging woods mirrored in the still lake ; with its terraces and statues, its shrubberies and miles of forcing houses, its great park and forest trees. A boon indeed to the densely packed popu- lation that live in the Potteries such a park as that of Trentham must be, for the park is open to the public. One can easily understand that among the old ancestral trees and green drives a little of the dull cares and struggles of an English artisan's hard- won life may occasionally be forgotten. Another of Trentham's contrasts is, or rather was, that of giving bread, cheese, and beer gratis to the wayfarers at the lodge gates a custom as old, it is said, as the days of the pilgrims to A'Becket's shrine as they passed by Trentham Priory on their way to Canterbury. The picturesque refuge or lodge at which the travel- lers were regaled alone remains, the time-honoured custom having been of late years abandoned. The poor traveller or tramp, as he would now be called eating his crust at the outer gate of Barry's Italian palace was another of the contrasts of Trentham. The house is more remarkable for comfort than for any internal magnificence. The principal rooms are rather low and narrow, but admirably installed and cheerful, facing the south, looking out on that match- less view of garden, wood, and lake. Before my TRENTHAM. 35 mother's time what is now the loveliest garden of its kind in England was but a waste of meadow-land, dotted with cattle and watered by a stream. Perfect taste and the means to carry out what only a rare artistic feeling could create were brought together. The result is a scene that has no rival out of Italy. The walls of the principal apartments are thickly hung with paintings, and some are lined with books. Few of the pictures are of high artistic quality. The best are a cluster of charming family portraits by Romney on the great staircase. In the private wing is a room my mother's sitting-room of which the walls are panelled, from dado to ceiling, with views of Venice by Clarkson Stanfield. So perfect is the painting and so faithful the likeness to the scene represented on these walls that, seated in this room, one can almost imagine that one is floating on the Adriatic in a gondola. The Doge's palace, the Piazzetta of St. Mark, the Bridge of Sighs, the great white-domed Church of the Salute, in all their splen- dour, lie before one, with an Italian sky above. Although more suited for summer than winter, we were but little here in old days in the warm season. It was another of Trentham's contrasts to see the wide terraces and trim Italian gardens, with their statues and marble fountains, their laurels in orange- tree boxes, snow-covered. How cold looked the Venus de' Medici and the Apollo Belvedere in their D 2 36 MY REMINISCENCES. wintry clothing, cloaked with frost and hung with icicles ! Far away by the frozen lake Benvenuto's glorious Perseus, clad only with a belt across his chest and wings on his feet, seemed to shiver, while with upraised arm he bore his ghastly trophy high- lifted in his hand. By the way, this reproduction of Cellini's masterwork is interesting. I believe it to be the only cast in bronze of the size of the original. Many years ago my mother obtained permission of the Grand Duke of Tuscany to have the cast taken, when he and the Austrians ruled in Florence. Much better, methinks, does the reproduction look on the terraced margin of the lake at Trentham than the original, cramped, coffined, and confined as it is by buildings that so completely dwarf the statue in the Loggia del Lanzi. But seldom have I seen Trent- ham in its summer splendour a sight once seen not easily forgotten. That view from the upper terrace on a fine summer's evening surpasses in beauty the dreams, or, at any rate, the productions, of even a Telbin or an O'Connor. Those gardens, which in former summers for of late their glory has departed were one blaze of variegated colour, are crowned by soft swelling woods that seem, Narcissus-like, to wonder at their own loveliness reflected in the limpid lake, and these again framed by hills that girdle round the park. One of these to the right of the house is called King's Wood Bank, and owes that regal title TRENTHAM. 37 perhaps as far back as the days of one of the Mercian Monarchs of Britain, or perchance to Edward the Confessor, who owned these lands. This royal hill is suitably crowned by a coronal of old stone pines. Somewhere near this hill, in the park, a remarkable horse-race between two eccentric jockeys took place about the middle of the last century. One of them was the young Duke of Bridgewater, then only re- markable for slimness. On this occasion he appeared clad in a livery of blue and silver, with a jockey cap to match. Bets were made whether he would not be blown off his horse. Whether this happened or not, or whether he or his opponent who was no other than 'the butcher' Duke of Cumberland won the race I know not. That extremely light-weight jockey in blue and silver lived to grow into an uncommonly stout old gentleman, an aristocratic Daniel Lambert, who took to engineering, in consequence, it is said, of an unsuccessful love suit, and who has been called 'the father of English inland navigation.' His great- nephew, Francis Gower, who inherited his estates and his enormous wealth, has left some account of the ancestor to whom he was so greatly indebted. ' His history,' he writes, ' is engraved in intaglio on the face of the country he helped to civilise and enrich.' Those interested in engineering and such matters will have read in Smiles's ' Life of Brindley ' of the devo- tion the Duke of Bridgewater showed to all schemes 38 MY REMINISCENCES. for inland navigation ; how he gave up London and society, how he fixed his residence among Lancashire coal-fields, and how he preferred the company of the engineers, Brindley and Gilbert, to that of all the beauties and wits of St. James's and of White's. I have lingered perhaps too long over this not entirely uninteresting ancestor, whose ducal oddities were at any rate in his day of some service to his country and his kin. Although he nearly ruined himself at one time by his canal-making mania, he left behind him one of the greatest fortunes of his time, and, what is still more remarkable, a collection of paintings that had no rival in Europe. The manner in which this collection of pictures still known as the Bridgewater Gallery was formed was somewhat peculiar. Dining one day with his nephew, Lord Gower, afterwards first Duke of Sutherland, the Duke saw and admired a picture which the former had picked up a bargain for some io/. at a broker's in the morning. 'You must take me,' he said, 'to that d d fellow to-morrow.' ' Whether,' adds my uncle, Lord Ellesmere, who writes this history of the formation of the gallery he inherited, ' this impetu- osity had any immediate result we are not informed ; but 'plenty of d d fellows were doubtless not wanting to cater for the taste thus suddenly de- veloped.' It was certainly an odd commencement to the TRENTHAM. 39 formation of one of the finest collections of art in the world. But to return to Trentham. Besides the ' hero of Culloden/ other royal guests have sojourned there. That amiable Prince George of Wales honoured Trentham by a visit towards the end of the last century. It appears that in those days the principal guest-chamber looked out on the old churchyard of the priory. Apparently the Prince did not resemble the royal Dane in the latter's love for soliloquising among the tombs. On the contrary, he disliked the view from his windows so much that he ordered the shutters to be shut, the curtains to be drawn, and the candles lighted, although it was a bright summer's day, and by this means he kept out of his sight, at least, the place where his silent neighbours rested. A reminiscence of this royal visit is a very ghostly but majestic ' four-poster ' bed, gorgeous with crim- son velvet curtains. The arms of England and France are emblazoned at the head of the bed in massive silk and bullion, and above wave hearse-like plumes. This rather awe-inspiring article of furni- ture belongs to a room in the old part of the building. The walls of this room are panelled with ancient Flemish tapestry representing scenes from the history of Alexander and Diogenes. Above one of the doors, framed in the wainscoting, is a circular life- size portrait of Henry VIII. one of the many old 40 MY REMINISCENCES. copies after Holbein, but of course called in the house catalogue an original. A contemporary portrait of bluff Hal's brother-in-law, Charles, Duke of Suffolk, hangs above the fireplace, and near it a curious little full-length portrait of Sir Francis Drake. The hearse-like state bed and the grim old king, bloated and seeming to frown down from above the door, conspire to give this room a most uncanny look. At least this is the impression it produced on us chil- dren. Nothing less than this room being a haunted chamber would satisfy us. It was disagreeable to pass by it at night awful to enter it. But whether it was the ghost of King Harry that haunted it, or that of Suffolk, or that of the Prince Regent, I cannot distinctly remember. Perhaps of all the three. Of more recent royal visitors at Trentham the Shah of Persia is the most notable. That mighty monarch has published the diary of his travels, so I will do no more than refer to it, with ,the hope that such visitors and visits may be as rare as possible. More inter- esting and more worthy guests have slept under the roof of Trentham than Shah or Tetrarch. In Mrs. Meteyard's ' Life of Wedgwood ' frequent allusion is made to that great and good man's visits to Trentham, to his friendship with its owners, and to the interest they took in the prosperity of his works at neighbouring Etruria. Another manufacturer of uncommon industry, of the highest character for TRENTHAM. 41 integrity and generosity, of warm and genial heart, and who walked in the footsteps of his great precursor Wedgwood, was Hugh Minton, also a frequent and .ever-welcome guest at Trentham. Minton whose memory is honoured throughout Staffordshire, and whose services to the country and to the science of pottery were only second to those of Wedgwood would always warmly acknowledge how much the friendship and advice of her whose perfect taste and zeal in all that concerned the welfare of the Potteries and the advance of Art in the country were to him and to his work. I have already alluded at some length to the services the last Duke of Bridgewater gave to Brindley and his work. Now-a-days Dukes have taken up engineering and similar pursuits so largely that little attention would be given to a Duke being the companion of an engineer. A century ago it was different, and it was then considered an extraor- dinary fact that the Duke of Bridgewater should take to canal-cutting and to all the technicalities of engi- neering as to the manner born. At any rate, the Duke of Bridgewater seems to have taken up engi- neering with no mere selfish aim, and for this he deserves to be remembered among the worthies of Lancashire. Another distinguished visitor in recent years to Trentham was the American historian, Prescott. In Ticknor's 'Life of Prescott' the his- torian's letter to his wife, written after his visit 42 MY REMINISCENCES. at Trentham, is of interest here. ' From Castle Howard,' where he had met the Queen ' from Castle Howard/ he writes, ' we proceeded to Trentham, in Staffordshire, the Duchess of Sutherland's favourite seat, and a splendid place it is. We met her at Derby, she having set out the day before us. We both arrived too late for the train, so she put post- horses to her barouche, and she and Lady Constance, a blooming English girl (1850), posted it for thirty- six miles, reaching Trentham at ten in the evening an open barouche, and cool enough.' After describing the place, the lake, and the gardens, he concludes : ' It is the temple of taste, and its charming mistress created it all. As I was coming away she asked me to walk with her into the garden, and led me to a spot where several men were at work having a great hole prepared. A large evergreen tree was held up by the gardener, and I was requested to help set it in the place and to throw some shovelfuls of earth on it. In fact, I was to leave an evergreen memorial, "which," said she, "my children shall see hereafter, and know by whom it was planted." So long as the historian lived, those whom he had honoured in this country by his friendship, especially those whom he called of ' the generous race of Howard,' cherished the sincerest admiration for him ; and among the many earthly great that have passed through the halls and -gardens of Trentham no one is more worthy of being remembered than William Prescott. TRENTHAM. 43 Among some old papers I found the following anonymous conundrum, written many years ago, when my mother was Lady Gower and her eldest son's title was Trentham : ' My first thro' England's laughing meads Pursues its silver, winding way ; On my second oft the ploughman feeds Returning from a hard-earn'd day. My whole's the pleasure of your eyes, The pride, the treasure of your heart ; May Time, as rapidly it flies, To you and him fresh joys impart,' 44 MY REMINISCENCES. CHAPTER IV. DUNROBIN. PLACED high above the Moray Firth, and overlooking the wild North Sea, stands a pile which might well have been the original of that lordly castle by the sea sung by Longfellow. Indeed, both for its beauty and its site, Dunrobin is like a poet's dream realised. Though far grander are the historic castles on the Loire, Royal Pau, and Imperial Heidelberg, and richer in legend, lore, and story a hundred castles on the Rhine, yet none of these have, like the home of Macbeth, a ' more pleasant seat ' than the old stronghold of the Thanes and Earls of Sutherland. So far back as the end of the eleventh century, Dunrobin then but a kernel of the present pile was inhabited by the ancestors of the race who still pass the close of summer within its walls. It even claims to be the oldest inhabited building in the British Isles. The older portion of the castle, which has stood many a siege in the wild days of Scottish history, is now almost hidden by the modern building a combination of French and Scottish architecture introduced into Scotland in the days of Queen Mary. Gracefully do DUNROBIN. 45 the turrets and tapering roofs of the lighter French style wed with the more massive and feudal Scotch fortress, keep, and donjon. Aided by the professional skill of Leslie of Aberdeen, my parents deserve the credit of having created this stately castle, in which the advantage of perfect internal comfort and beauty is combined with external comeliness and effect. The graceful turrets, the towers with their extinguisher- shaped roofs, the machicolated parapets, the corbelled ramparts, and the quaintly-shaped windows do not in any way detract from the internal beauty of the building. The gardens are worthy of the castle. Two hundred years ago the old chronicler of the House of Sutherland, Sir Robert Gordon, describes the ' fair orchards, wher ther be pleasant gardens, planted with all kynds of froots, hearbs, and floors, used in this kingdome, and abundance of good saphron, tobacco, and rosemarie.' ' The froot heir,' he adds, ' is excellent, chieflie the pears and cherries.' An old pear-tree that may well have seen two hundred summers is a last relic of this ' pleasant garden,' and still yields a hand- some crop of fruit. I imagine that until the new castle rose above the woods of ash and sycamore that surround the old hill of Count Robert (whence the name of the place), this pleasant garden was but one of the old-fashioned sort, half orchard half flower-garden, that one still finds by many old Scottish homes. 46 MY REMINISCENCES. Here, as at Trentham, the place two-score years ago underwent transformation. Terraces and broad flights of steps arose, avenues and glades were opened, fountains tossed their watery showers forty feet in the air, and a garden worthy of the noble building was formed, conspicuous by its beauty and the variety of its prospects. A garden such as this, where the flowers bloom and the fountains rise and fall within a few feet of the sea waves, is not often seen. Above, the pure white towers of the castle rise against the blue vault ; beneath, the battlemented terraces, the gardens, aglow with a hundred shades of colour, in which the story- tellers of Boccaccio might have wiled away many a summer's afternoon, form indeed a fair scene a truly stately picture. Here the flowers and fountains seem to dance hand in hand under the shadow of the castle towers, and almost to dip their feet in the laughing tide. How soon the memory of those who created this lovely scene is forgotten ! To me nothing is sadder than to find the merit of such taste and skill ignored, and the guests of a succeeding generation not knowing to whom all that they see around is due. It is this that has made returning to Dunrobin of recent years but a sad pleasure. How changed all is all but the place itself! For ever departed the old familiar faces ; hushed for ever the loved voices ; but the flowers and the trees seem always unaltered. The views from out the turrets overlooking the terrace and DUNROBIN. 47 gardens, the sea and the distant hills, are changeless ; and even, I think, blindfolded I should recognise the place by the fragrance of the thyme-flowered terraces and the smell of the sea-wrack beyond. These would recall, as much as sight, the old happy Dunrobin days. Or, again, the chorus of the rooks as they welcome their refuge in the trees by the old castle walls would bring back the past. There is nothing that more restores the old days to one's memory than scents and sounds such as these. But Dunrobin, like Melrose, to be seen aright should be seen under the spell of moonlight. Beautiful as is the view over the Firth of the distant hills of Banff and Aberdeen, and those of the softer and lower range of Inverness and Moray, the scene is still more witching when the silvery light dances over the waves. I have seen Venice and Heidelberg, the Alhambra and the Roman Colosseum under the moon's rays ; but never to me that light of night illumined a fairer scene than the old nest of my Northern race on the far-away Sutherland coast. A word or two of the place itself. Passing beneath the great gate of the principal tower, that rises one hundred and thirty-five feet above the terrace, the outer hall is reached. The walls are empanelled and emblazoned with the coats-of-arms of the house of Sutherland and its alliances. These com- mence in almost legendary times, from the old Thanes 48 MY REMINISCENCES. and Earls down to the present holder of the title of Sutherland. Above the fireplace ramps the Royal Lion of Scotland alongside of the Leopards of England and the Lilies of France, denoting the royal descents from both the royal houses of Bruce and Tudor in the Sutherlands and Gowers. There are vacant spaces for the cognizances of unborn dukes and duchesses. On seeing these spaces John Bright inquired, with good-humoured sarcasm, whether the family really imagined it likely that these vacant spaces would be filled. Who, indeed, can tell whether dukes' and duchesses' coats-of-arms and coronets will exist in the land two or three generations hence ? Perhaps the entrance-hall at Dunrobin is a little over-decorated with heraldry. Throughout the corridors and principal rooms are many portraits of local and family interest. Of the latter the earliest is that of a good-looking, rather melancholy- faced cavalier, with a peaked beard, a turned-down and richly-laced collar, and a face that recalls Charles the First. What befel this knight of the doleful countenance in early life is enough to account for his saddened look. What befel him is as follows told as briefly as I can, but not so effectively, I fear, as in the quaint old style of Robert Gordon, the family chronicler already mentioned, who was the son of the melancholy-looking signior in peaked beard and laced collar. In 1567, John fifteenth Earl of Sutherland and his DUNROBIN. 49 Countess were on a visit to a neighbouring castle belonging to a Lady Isabel Sinclair. This lady's son would, after the death of Earl John and that of his son, Alexander, succeed to the title and estates of Sutherland. Lady Sutherland was at this time enceinte. Now list to a tale that is enough to make the ghosts of the Borgias or the Brinvilliers jealous. The scene is laid at the Castle of Helmsdale, now a blasted ruin, some twelve miles to the north of Dun- robin, and, like it, hard by the sea. Lord Sutherland and his wife are there poisoned with wine prepared by their hostess, Lady Isabel. Their son, Alexander Gordon the family name was at that time not Sutherland had been delayed joining his parents at Helmsdale Castle by the chase. When he arrived at Helmsdale late at night he found his parents already in the death agony, but able to conjure him to escape from that place of doom. In this he succeeded, and lived to sit for his portrait as Alexander sixteenth Earl of Sutherland the one that has been described. But this is not all, for, to make the tragedy complete, the guilty woman's son, for whose sake she had murdered her guests, is given by mistake to drink of the poisoned wine, and dies. Lady Isabel, convicted of her crime, also ends her tragic life on the day fixed for her execution, by her own hands, in the Castle of Edinburgh, where she had been imprisoned. Is not this a tale that might have given a plot to the author VOL. I. E 50 MY REMINISCENCES. of ' The Jew of Malta/ or even for him who wrote ' Macbeth ' ? My poetical ancestor, Lord Carlisle, Byron's guar- dian, attempted to write a tragedy founded on this Helmsdale poisoning case. He even had his tragedy printed. Unluckily the author's Muse was not equal to the subject, and the tale of Lady Isabel's wicked- ness lies hidden in the seldom read family record of the ' History of the Earls of Sutherland.' The Earl, who so narrowly escaped a tragic death, married a very remarkable person, a lady whose portrait, taken in old age, is also at Dunrobin. This was Dame Jane Gordon, a daughter of George seventh Earl of Huntly. Her first husband was Mary of Scots' Bothwell. By her second marriage to Lord Suther- land she became the mother of our historian, Robert Gordon. In his history he pays his mother the fol- lowing tribute : ' She was,' he writes, ' a vertuous and comlie lady, judicious, of excellent memorie, and of great understanding above the capacitie of her sex.' Over Lady Jane Gordon's marriage with, or rather over her divorce from, Bothwell there hangs a cloud. A few years ago Dr. Stuart, of Edinburgh, while examining the old records and charters at Dunrobin, discovered a paper of great historic interest relating to one of the most remarkable events of Mary Stuart's stormy life. This paper, or rather parchment, was none other than the original dispensation granted by DUNROBLN. 51 the Vatican to Lady Jane Gordon to enable her to wed her cousin Bothwell for, as students of Scottish history are aware, the great houses of Hepburn and Gordon were allied. In those days the canon law was very severe against even distant cousins intermarrying, but with a Papal special license a man might, perhaps, did his inclinations so lead him, wed his granddam, for all I know to the contrary. This dispensation bears the date of February 16, 1566, and it was duly signed by the Archbishop of St. Andrews, with and by the authority of the Holy See. In an interesting little book, called ' A Lost Chapter in the History of Mary Queen of Scots Recovered,' the discoverer of this dispensation has reproduced it in facsimile. Very different the story of poor Mary Stuart's life might have been had this dispensation been produced ; for had it seen the light at the time when Mary was about to commit the crowning act of folly in marrying Both- well, that marriage could not have taken place, and the whole after course of her life would have been changed. To return to Lady Jane Gordon. Having obtained her dispensation from the Pope, she gave her hand, but I doubt if her heart went with it, to Bothwell. The marriage took place with much pomp and cere- mony at Edinburgh, ' with justing and tournamentes,' according to the Court chronicler of that day, whose style of announcing the Bothwell wedding would sur- E 2 52 MY REMINISCENCES. prise the scribe of such events in our ' Court Journals ' and 'Morning Posts.' ' Upon the 22nd day of February the earle of Bothwell was married upon the earle of Huntlies sister.' Like a happier Queen whom we all revere, Queen Mary was wont to make wedding gifts of personal attire to those ladies she deigned to honour. Lady Jane received from her Queen the following wedding garments, thus described in the Royal Inven- tory of Holy rood Palace, drawn up obviously by a French groom or maid : ' Plus XII aulnes de toylle dargent plainne pour fairre une robbe a la fille de Madaurne de Hontelles pour le fras quel fut marrie a Monsieur de Bodouel.' Besides all this Mary gave the future ' Madame de Bodouel ' ' une couiffe garnye de rubiz perles et grynatz.' Would that one could find in some secret drawer or old chest this 'couiffe' so bravely garnished with Queen Mary's pearls and rubies. I fear though they are not, however, even in the muniment-room or in any strong box at Dunrobin. Plenty of musty title-deeds and charters are kept there, parchments and papers that would delight the hearts of a whole college of antiquarians, for some go as far back as the tenth century. The earliest bears the date of 940 A.D., when one Magbrogdus (does it not sound like the name of a giant in a fairy tale ?) was Thane of Sutherland, ' who,' the old chronicler informs us, 'was come from Dunrobin, encamped, with his ally Liotus, in the central dales of Caithness.' Com- DUNROBIN. S3 pared with Magbrogdus and his ally Liotus we are treating of quite recent events when we talk of Mary and Bothwell. They, for the Dunrobin Charter-room, are quite recent personages. Not a year married to her cousin, we find that ' Madame de Bodouel ' has been deserted, and that Bothwell has run away with the Queen. Whether Mary was carried away by Bothwell willingly or not is one of those questions over which historians have fought, do fight, and will probably continue to fight until doomsday. In order to marry his Sovereign, Bothwell was obliged to get divorced from Lady Jane, who in the eyes of the Church and of the world was his lawfully- wedded wife, in spite of consanguinity, thanks to the Papal dispensation. And now comes the curious part of the story. In order to obtain his divorce and to marry Mary, Bothwell simply declared his marriage to Lady Jane Gordon null and void on the grounds of their relationship. What is still more singular than this was that the same Court and prelate that had pro- cured and signed the dispensation ratified Bothwell's demand for his divorce to Lady Jane, for all the world as if the dispensation had never existed ! That Lady Bothwell was only too glad to be rid of that aristocratic blackguard her husband on such easy terms is highly probable. Or possibly she had no desire to interfere with the Queen's designs. Whatever the motive, the fact remains that, although she had the power by 54 MY REMINISCENCES. simply producing her dispensation to nullify her divorce as well as to prevent Bothwell marrying Mary, she did not do so. Nothing more was heard of the dispen- sation until it turned up a few years ago in the Charter- room at Dunrobin, where it had lain over three hundred years ; for Lady Jane probably brought it to Dunrobin in 1573, the year in which she wedded Alexander, Earl of Sutherland the Earl who so nearly escaped poisoning, as we have seen, at Helmsdale Castle. Him she survived, marrying for the third time Alexander Ogilvie of Boyne. Her son by Lord Sutherland, Robert Gordon, writes in his history of the family that her third marriage was undertaken ' for the utilitie and profite of her children.' Also he records of his mother that ' she was the first that caused work and labour the colehugh (coalpit) besyd the river of Broray, and wes the instrument of making salt ther. The cole was found befor by Earle John, the father of Earle Alex- ander ; but he being taken away by ane untymlie and hasty death ' (I have alluded to this ' untymlie ' death of poor Earl John) 'had no tyme to interpryse this work.' Three centuries and more since Earl John's sudden demise, much ' work and labour ' has been ex- pended in the ' colehugh besyd the river Broray/ with profit, I hope, to many. Lady Jane was the last Roman Catholic Countess of Sutherland. In her portrait at Dunrobin she rather parades a large rosary which is round her throat, and DUNROBIN. 55 dallies with a little crucifix attached to the holy beads. All honour to the old dame, for she suffered for her faith indeed, had not James I. shielded his old countrywoman and connection from the Puritans she might have been a martyr for it. It is recorded that a priest, one McKie, was tried for his life at Edinburgh on the charge of having ' celebrated Mass in the Lady Sutherlande's house in Sunderland-Dunrobyn.' He was sentenced to be pilloried, and to have his Mass clothes burnt by the hands of the hangman. Besides the portraits of this Lord and Lady Sutherland there are but few of much interest, even as regards the place and family. The bluff-faced, middle-aged man, with a skull-cap over his iron-grey locks falling on his mailed shoulders, was another Lord Sutherland, and a man of some mark in his day. For this is John eighteenth Earl, called, from the grey-blue of his eyes, John Glas, the Blue or Grey-Eyed. He was nephew of our historian, Robert Gordon, and consequently grandson of Lord Alex- ander and Lady Jane Gordon. This John of the Blue Eyes was a doughty Covenanter, one of the first, if not the very foremost, to sign the Solemn League and Covenant that great religious Bill of Rights inscribed by the foremost names in Scotland in the old churchyard of the Greyfriars. Since the days of this Covenanting eighteenth Lord of Suther- land until recently the Sutherlands have always been 56 MY REMINISCENCES. on the popular and Liberal side of politics, and, during the stormy years between the middle of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, took part in the internecine wars of the two countries with the Pro- testant and anti-Stuart party. Another Earl John grandson of the Covenanting Lord commanded a regiment in Flanders, and doubtless, although a Scotch- man, ' swore terribly ' while over there under the colours of Dutch William. His son William took up arms against the Jacobites in the rising of the year 1715. He, too, commanded a regiment serving under the pennon of the white horse of Hanover. His son again, another William, fought on the same side in the ' Forty-five.' Of the latter William there hangs a family portrait at Dunrobin. Let me introduce you to my Lord and my Lady the Countess, with a son and a daughter between them. Lord Sutherland is in the latest fashion, with a long powdered wig, a longer waistcoat, an em- broidered and flowered dress-coat, and lace ruffles. Madame la Comtesse wears her hair unpowdered, but she is very brave, as Pepys would say, in white satin and diamonds. How is it that they are seated under the portico of a Grecian temple, with old Dunrobin Castle in the background and a storm brewing beyond ? They heed it not, but a storm did break for all that when the Jacobite Earl of Cromarty seized and fired the castle. He, however, was taken prisoner there, it DUNROBIN. 57 is said, under Lady Sutherland's chair or bed in an old dark chamber of the castle still named the Cromarty Room in honour of this event. These Sutherlands, to judge by a letter that has escaped the fiery fate of most old letters, were a very affectionate, loving pair. Lady Sutherland, soon after the battle of Culloden, writes as follows from Dun- robin to her husband, whose military duties had called him to Edinburgh : ' I have very little to entertain you or myself here at present, so will conclude after telling you your bairns are in perfect health. I doubt if His Majesty has an officer in his new Levys per- forms the Exercise like your son ; your daughter is a sort of beauty ; both of them pray for Papa morning and evening, as does, with the most sincere petitions, she that is your Bess/ And then her little son, Lord Strathnaver, aged about ten, adds the following post- script to his mother's letter: 'My dear Papa, I wrote you before and hoped for the honour of an answer. Mamma may tell you I can exercise very well, so now I want a commission. I can read the newspapers. I am glad of Admiral Vernon's meeting with the Spaniards (O, papa, our Spanish horse is sick). Papa, if I were big enough you may tell the King I will fight very well. Mamma made a boy break my head at cudgell playing, but though it was sore I did not cry. She has given me a new High- land coat, and Jenny Dotts sewing very fine sarks to 58 MY REMINISCENCES. me. God bless you, Papa. My services to James Andirson. Bettekins gives hers to you. I am your affection son and obedient slave, STRATHNAVER.' Does this letter not read like a page in Thackeray's- ' Esmond ' ? ' Bettekins ' is a fat little girl (in this family group), apparently about four years old, with hardly any clothes on her little body, but with a tame bird in her dimpled little hand. The boy who said he would fight so well for his King when he grew up had an opportunity of doing so. In 1755 he served as captain in the 35th Regiment of Foot. Later he became aide-de-camp to George II., and eventually obtained, in 1763, a colonelcy. His portrait, a full- length, is on the great staircase of Dunrobin, and is worth notice, both as to its costume and from its painter, Allan Ramsay, the son of the author of ' The Gentle Shepherd.' Of the poet father and painter son Churchill writes rather equivocally that both came from Edinburgh : ' Thence came the Ramseys, Name of worthy note, Of whom one paints as well As t'other wrote.' I have never read the elder Ramsay's poem, neither do I recollect any one who has. However, Allan Ramsay's is one of the Scottish household names, so that one affects to know all about him and his poem at any rate, when one is north of the Tweed. The DUNROBIN. 59 painter son's works have a peculiar charm and a re- finement scarce even among the portrait painters of his day. No one could paint the sheen of a silk dress or render the beauty of old lace better than this portrait-painter of ' Auld Reekie.' Ramsay had, too, the faculty of lending an easy and unconscious grace to his sitters' likenesses, which few even of the old masters have surpassed. This full-length portrait of Earl William is of interest, as I have said, owing to the costume in which he is represented. He is in full Highland dress kilt, philabeg, sporran, claymore, pistols, and dirks, all complete, even to the chieftain's feathers stuck in his Glengarry cap. A most pictu- resque mixture of barbarism and civilisation does this Lord Sutherland appear as he places his ornamental shoes on his native heath ! This portrait proves that although the Highland kilt is not so ancient a costume, or, rather, a want of costume as some suppose it to be, it was certainly fully developed in the early part of the reign of George III. This dress, as worn by Earl William in Ramsay's portrait, has been in recent years adopted as the uniform of the Sutherland Rifle Volunteers. It is a happy combination of colours. The scarlet jacket contrasts well with the dark blue, green, and black of the tartan kilt, the colours of the Clan Sutherland. This Lord Sutherland had married, early in life, Elizabeth Maxwell. Horace Walpole saw and admired her at George III.'s coronation, and 60 MY REMINISCENCES. thought her and two other ladies ' very pretty figures.' She bore her lord but one child, a daughter. This child was but a year old when both her parents died, almost on the same day, from fever, at Bath. Lady Sutherland caught the fever which proved so fatal from her husband, whom she nursed with unceasing devotion during twenty-one days and nights, and died completely worn out from fever and fatigue. The bodies were brought to Sutherland by slow stages, and interred in the old Cathedral of Dornoch, among their ancestors. A mural tablet there records that ' they were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and that in death they were not divided.' Their child Elizabeth's right to the title of Countess of Sutherland was disputed by two claimants, but after a long lav/suit the House of Lords decided in 17/1 that the honours and titles of the Earldom of Suther- land descended to the daughter of Lord and Lady Sutherland as lineal descendant of William, Earl of Sutherland, A.D. 1275. 'The Countess's right,' says the peerage-maker Douglas, ' was thus established to the most ancient title existing in Britain. A decision productive of the highest national satisfaction, the illustrious orphan having excited feelings of very lively interest, and public rejoicings took place in different parts of Scotland in consequence.' This young heiress, as I have told in a former chapter, gave her hand to the heir of Trentham, and DUNROBIN. 61 her possessions served to swell the vast estates of the Gowers. I know of no portrait of her in childhood. The earliest, I believe, is that lovely head of hers painted by Romney, now at Trentham (there is a tolerable copy in the dining-room at Dunrobin), for which I imagine she sat about the time of her marriage. Much later in her life Lawrence painted her portrait. One would rather not see that fair young face grown large and plump, and covered by a turban, the mon- strous head-gear which was the fashion for ladies to wear when in middle life when George IV. was king. She snuffed ! and it was considered a great favour to have a pinch of rappee out of Her Grace the Duchess- Countess of Sutherland's box. Sir Walter Scott liked and admired my grand- mother. He would address her by her Gaelic title a terrible and an awe-inspiring one the ' Banza- Mohr-ar-Chat !' It sounds as fearful as the writing on the wall of the Babylonian Palace. Anglicised, it means ' The Great Lady of the Clan Sutherland.' But imagine the effect that such a title and a name must have made when it became the slogan of a horde of excited Highlanders, when out on their war trail 'for to murder and to rafish!' It was this Banza-Mohr, &c., who, during the great war with France at the close of last century, raised at her own expense a regiment of her clansmen the famous 93rd Regiment, or Sutherland Highlanders. Few, I believe, 62 MY REMINISCENCES. of that well-known regiment are now of the Clan Chattan. Appropriately near the portrait of this great lady's father, Earl William, hang the old colours of the Sutherland Fencibles of 1804, and by their side the Russian bullet and shell-torn fragments of the colours of the 93rd, which waved through many a hard-con- tested fight. There is one portrait at Dunrobin which, though not a family one, must not be passed by. If genuine, the portrait which hangs in the library at Dunrobin would be of immense value and historical interest, for it is a lovely semblance of Mary Queen of Scots. Genuine, however, I fear this portrait of Scotland's queen cannot be. It is placed over a cast of the face of her monument in the Abbey of Westminster, above the first of the two fireplaces, as you enter the library a noble room, filled from floor to ceiling with a rare collection of works relating to the history and anti- quities of Scotland. Many pleasant, tranquil hours have I passed here unmolested, for no one in these days cares to enter the library of a country house. There the utmost reading that takes place consists in glancing over the newest novel or the latest newspaper. A very lovely face is that before us. Perhaps it comes nearest to one's ideal of Scotland's hapless queen. Traditionally it is said that this portrait belonged to the queen's half-brother, the Earl of DUNROBIN. 63 Orkney, one of her father's many illegitimate children. But, to judge by the style and fashion of the painting, it can hardly be anterior to the reign of Charles II. In fact, this portrait has more the appearance of having been painted by a Lely or a Kneller than by a Zuc- chero or a Janet. To the few genuine portraits that exist of Mary such, for instance, as that belonging to Lord Morton at Dalmahoy, the queen's miniature by Janet at Windsor Castle, or Sir R. Wallace's (in Mary's white French Queen widow's weeds) at Hert- ford House the one at Dunrobin bears no resem- blance whatever. Perhaps one is too critical and sceptical, after serving as a trustee of our National Portrait Gallery, in regard to historical portraits. * In the same room where hangs the Orkney portrait of Mary there is an undoubtedly genuine and his- torically curious likeness of that terrible old Scotch pedagogue, George Buchanan. What a head for a schoolmaster is his ! One can tell that this dominie loved to wield the birch. The brow is scarred with thought and wrinkled with knowledge. Have you read Buchanan's ' Rerum Scotiarum Historia ?' No ? No more have I. Near by observe a mild-faced man wearing a ruff round his neck. That is Sir Robert Gordon, who has often been referred to as the historian of the family. That sickly youth in armour, with a truncheon in his long-fingered hand, is William III. That gentleman with a comely face hidden in a large 64 MY REMINISCENCES. periwig is Daniel Defoe. We have all read some- thing that he has written. The Rev. I. Joass, of Golspie, to whom I am indebted for various facts in this chapter, informs me, a propos of this portrait of the author of ' Robinson Crusoe,' that he believed Defoe was once the guest of an Earl of Sutherland at the time he was writing his account of a tour through Britain. But enough of portraits, historical and otherwise. Although it is a ' far cry ' from the library at Dunrobin to the old portion of the Castle, we must wend our way there before our tour in Dunrobin comes to an end. On the way to the ' Cromarty Room' in the Old Castle, we pass through many stately rooms and along corridors full of objects of interest, too many by far to enumerate. At length we have reached the old part of the building, as the thickness of the walls now indicates. Along more corridors and up more steps, we finally reach our goal the drawing- room of the Old Castle. He who is not charmed with this old drawing-room, with its cosy window- seats and turret, its views of the sea and the gardens, the woods and purple hills away to the west, must be hard to please. It was here, or near this room, that the Jacobite Lord Cromarty was taken prisoner. Now, strangely enough, his descendant, with the old title revived in her own right, has chosen these and the adjoining rooms for her use. ' How many bedrooms DUNROBIN. 65 are there at Trentham ? ' was a curious question fre- quently asked of one of my relations by a peculiarly eccentric but harmless peer. I have never taken the trouble to ascertain the number of bedrooms at Trent- ham, but it is said that there are over one hundred and thirty at Dunrobin. I do not propose to visit even one of these, for our tour in the Castle is finished, and I will spare you even entering the suite of rooms destined for the use of the Queen rooms once occupied by Her Majesty, but, alas ! many years after the death of her by whose care and taste they had been made worthy of so illustrious a guest. I had nearly forgotten to point out a view, from the windows of the Cromarty Room, of a memorable spot. Beneath the shade of those trees, over which the rooks are circling as the daylight fades in the western horizon, bringing out in dark shadow the noble crest of the Monument Hill, Ben-a-Vraghe, and within a stone's throw of the Castle walls, rises a mound of sinister memory. Here in times past stood the gibbet, and, underneath, the quartering-block. On that ugly instrument swung many an unfortunate wretch in the old days when the Lords of Dunrobin exercised their feudal right of ' pit and gallows.' Not long ago skulls and human bones were dug up there, under a seat which marks the site of the fatal tree. In those days, no doubt, it was a pleasant sight to the occupants of Dunrobin to see that tree well hung with VOL. I. F 66 MY REMINISCENCES. its grisly fruit. Perhaps the guests at the Castle were then taken for their afternoon walk on a Sunday there as they now are to the kennels and deer-larder. In the old family records that I have referred to, and in the old history of the county, the picture drawn of the state of the north of Scotland, from the earliest times down to the beginning of the seventeenth century, is positively frightful. It is one long story of an endless series of public and private murders and massacres. Clan exterminated clan, and, when one of these clans had been successful, its members commenced butcher- ing and murdering each other. A chief who had no gallows-hill then in his pleasaunce whereon to string up and quarter his enemies, relations, and friends, when the fancy took him, pour encourager les autres, would have been considered but a very small per- sonage, almost beneath notice. Now let us walk on the Castle terrace ere the light has quite departed. The moon throws a track of gold and silver over the wide waters beyond the gardens. Above, within some high tower or turret, flickers a light. How still and peaceful all is ! But hark ! The drone of the bagpipes, although yet merci- fully distant, approaches. ' Look, my lord, it comes ! Angels and ministers of grace defend us ! ' CHAPTER V. MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. SOME peerage-makers state that my paternal ancestry were of Norman origin, established at Stittenham or Sittenham, near York, since the Conquest. Their name may then have been spelt Guhyer. Whether this be so, or whether other peerage-writers are right who affirm that the Gowers or Guhyers were of Saxon stock, cannot matter much or be of any kind of interest except for throwing some light on the origin of John Gower, the poet ' moral Gower/ as Shake- speare calls him. According to his contemporary, Caxton, the poet was a Welshman. His effigy at St. Saviour's Church, Southwark, bears other armorial quarterings and crest than those of the Yorkshire Gowers. If faith therefore can be placed in heraldry, this would prove that the poet was not a Gower of Stittenham. Not being able to claim John Gower as an an- cestor, I can however claim as such an artist, who, although now forgotten, held the distinguished post F 2 68 MY REMINISCENCES. of ' Sergeant Painter' to Queen Elizabeth. At Milton House, in Northamptonshire, this worthy's portrait exists, painted by himself. It represents a heavy- featured man with a beard, in a huge ruff, with palette and brush in hand, the emblems of his profes- sion. An inscription informs us that we behold Thomas Gower, not George Gower, as Redgrave in his ' Dictionary of Artists ' miscals him. The legend runs thus : ' Though youthfull wayes did me intyse from armes and vertue,' &c., he had recourse ' to pensils trade ' a trade which he appears to have esteemed as more worthy than pride of ancestry, and he points his moral by introducing at the top of his likeness his coat-of-arms placed in a balance, which is far outweighed by a compass. Agreeing entirely with my artistic ancestor that Art and Science are far nobler objects of pursuit than pride of pedigree, I have copied his device for a book-plate. About the middle of the seventeenth century the Gowers migrated from Yorkshire into Staffordshire ; a Sir William Gower having married a daughter of Grenville, Earl of Bath, a descendant of the heroic Sir Richard Grenville, immortalised by Tennyson. This Sir William became through his relative, Sir Richard Leveson, of Trentham, heir to large estates in Staffordshire and Shropshire the latter rich in coal. These properties were most illegally acquired during the Reformation, having, like those of most of MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. 69 the great territorial families in England, been filched from the Church. Such estates are said not to bring luck to their owners ; but that depends upon the ren- dering of the term ' luck.' The Staffordshire family of Leveson, pronounced Looson, into which the Yorkshire Gowers had married, and which was the first of a succession of highly profitable alliances for the latter family, were probably of French origin ; but, as in the case of the origin of the Gowers, nothing can be affirmed of their early history with certainty. They appear to have been a respectable family of traders, woolstaplers, it is said, and to have filled civic functions in Wolver- hampton during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The only Leveson that rose to any distinction was a Sir Richard, who did good service to Queen and country under Drake, serving in Her Majesty's Fleet against the Spaniards. Sir Richard married a daughter of the Lord High Admiral Howard of Effingham, and became himself an Admiral. There is a tradition that he was the hero of that fine old ballad, ' The Spanish Ladye's Love/ but he shares the poetic honour with others. Sir Richard, to judge by his full-length portrait at Trentham, must have had a very presentable face and figure, such as would have ' Moved the heart of England's Queen, Though Pope and Spaniard could not trouble it' 70 MY REMINISCENCES. In this portrait he appears a broad-browed, hand- some, bearded fellow, dressed in a black doublet and trunk hose. In the distance a naval engagement is in full swing perhaps the defeat of the Invincible Armada, in which Sir Richard took part, I believe, and when the elements fought almost as much for England as they did on a great occasion for Israel. About this time I suppose the additional patrony- mic of Leveson was added to that of Gower. I have always disliked the practice of bearing double-bar- relled names, thinking that one is enough for an individual. When, as in my case, the Christian name is. added to the surname, it seems to me an additional reason for keeping to one family name and discarding the others. Surely to be addressed by five names, besides a title, is an absurdity only fit for a Spanish or Portuguese princeling ; and, be it said without offence, I have often found the people that love a long leash of names are generally easily described by a word of a single syllable. One family and one Christian name is enough for me at all events. The rise of the House of Gower was very rapid. In three generations they grew from barons to earls, from earls to marquises, and from marquises to dukes. I wish I could think that their promotion was owing to deeds performed by land or sea ; but, if the truth must be told, the family have been more dis- MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. 71 tinguished by their luck and by their alliances than in the senate or in the field. For generations they appear to have wedded heiresses or co-heirs of peers ; and in the marriage of my grandfather, the first Duke of Sutherland, to the greatest landed heiress in the three kingdoms, their achievements in that respect may be said to have culminated. This first Duke was, through his maternal uncle, the last Duke of Bridgewater, the inheritor of vast estates and immense wealth in Lancashire, besides his already great possessions in Staffordshire and Shrop- shire all obtained through heiresses. Although Lady Sutherland brought her husband more than two-thirds of the county of Sutherland in her corbeille de mariage, Lord Stafford found his northern possessions a very expensive addition. I must not, however, hurry so rapidly over my heiress-loving forefathers. We left them simple knights bannerets, and it is only fair to mention a few who trod across the intervening stepping-stones of the peerage, until their feet landed on the ducal straw- berry-leaved land beyond. The Yorkshire baronet, who had married the heiress of the Earl of Bath, left a son whom Queen Anne made a baron in 1702 1 in order,' says Burnet, ' to create a majority in the Upper House' at the same time as Finch and Granville. This Lord Gower had a hand in the union of Scotland with England. He married a Manners, 72 MY REMINISCENCES. by whom he had a son, who very nearly gained unenviable celebrity owing to Dr. Johnson, who, dis- liking a turncoat, was very nearly placing the name of Gower as expressing the term ' renegade. ' in his dictionary. The printer however refrained from com- plying with Johnson's wish. * The man,' said the Doctor long afterwards, 'had more wit than I.' The reason for Johnson's coupling the name of Gower with that of renegade was because it was reported that when Prince Charles Edward had reached Derby in 1745, in his descent into the South, Lord Gower had the ' boot and saddle ' sounded at Trentham, and was about to join the Prince, when the news of the retreat of the Scottish Army arrived, upon which he got off his horse and swore devotion to the reigning house and confusion to the Pretender. In justice to my ancestor, I should state that he did his best to help Johnson when the latter was young and in poverty, seeking any employment that he could find. In a letter dated Trentham, August i, 1739, Lord Gower writes as follows to a friend of Dean Swift's, urging strongly Johnson's claims : ' Mr. Samuel Johnson,' he says, 'author of " London : a Satire," and some other poetical pieces, is a native of this county, and much respected by some worthy gentlemen in his neighbourhood ; ' and he inquires whether a diploma may not be sent from the Univer- sity of Dublin to Johnson in order to constitute ' this MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. 73 poor man Master of Arts in their (the Dublin) University.' Luckily, as it turned out for Johnson, Lord Gower's application failed. In 1745 Lord Gower was raised to an earldom. His eldest son, Lord Trentham, had contested West- minster in the Whig interest, and appears to have done well on the hustings, although his rapid promo- tion after he succeeded to the earldom was more owing to relationship with the great Whig houses than to any marked ability of his own ; for his sister Gertrude had married the then all-powerful head of the House of Russell. It is from this Duchess of Bedford that the unlovely Gower Street is named. Soon after his father's, the first Earl's death, he became Lord Privy Seal, and later President of the Council. To his credit be it said that he declined to back up the most mischievous policy ever thrust by the Crown on a Parliament. I allude to the War of American Independence. Sooner than countenance such folly and injustice, Lord Gower threw up his office in 1779, declaring in a letter to the Prime Minister that, grateful as he felt for the royal favour accorded him, he could not think it his duty ' to preserve a system which must end in ruin to His Majesty and the country.' In 1 786 Earl Gower was created by Pitt Marquis of Stafford. He had worn the Order of the Garter since 1771 ; since which time it has always been in 74 MY REMINISCENCES. the family. Lord Stafford deserves praise not only for his right-minded and unselfish conduct during the American War of Independence, but also for having been the patron and friend of Wedgwood and Fulton. To the latter he was probably drawn by the great interest which his brother-in-law, Francis Egertdn, Duke of Bridgewater, took in all men and matters relating to canals and engineering an interest which in the Duke's case amounted almost to monomania, but which eventually proved of great profit to Lord Stafford's son, the whole of the Bridgewater property, including of course the famous canal, coming into his possession after the Duke's (his uncle's) death, as has already been said. Lord Stafford died in 1803, leaving by a couple of marriages a number of daughters, but only two sons the elder, George Granville, afterwards first Duke of Sutherland ; the younger, by his second wife, Gran- ville Gower, afterwards Earl Granville, father of the present Lord Granville. The elder of these was born in 1758, the younger in 1773. The latter entered the Diplomatic Service, in which his rise was as rapid as that of his family had been. He married a daughter of the third Duke of Devonshire, and became even- tually English Ambassador in Paris. He died Earl Granville and Viscount Leveson. My grandfather, the elder brother of Lord Gran- ville, had also been a diplomatist, and had been MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. 75 Ambassador at the French Court. In 1785 he mar- ried Elizabeth, in her own right Countess of Suther- land. Her title had been hotly contested before the House of Lords a few years previously, but success- fully, and the eighteenth Countess of the Earldom of Sutherland brought one of the most ancient of peer- ages to the House of Gower, and with it a county, larger than many a principality, into the hands of a private individual, along with the responsibilities that such a vast possession necessarily entails. The only interesting incident that I can discover regarding my grandfather's youth, for nothing can be imagined less interesting than his career to whom Fortune had been so lavish, is that after leaving Westminster School he was sent to study French at Auxerre, by the advice of Edmund Burke. He is said to have spoken French with fluency, an accom- plishment which he must have found useful when Ambassador at the Court of Louis XVI. When only thirty-three he was pitchforked into the most im- portant diplomatic post in Europe. I cannot find that he had held any diplomatic office before, or even what his qualifications were, besides having learnt French at Auxerre, for filling such an exalted position as Ambassador. Those were, however, the good old days, when jobs were not the exception, but the rule and order of the day. But what a position was it for a dull young man of thirty-three to find himself 76 MY REMINISCENCES. suddenly placed in the highest rank of the Diplomatic Service, and at a time when France was beginning to be menaced by the shadow of the dark cloud of re- volution and anarchy that was then gathering over her ! For that he was dull I think there can be little doubt Dull he looks as a youth, when he sat for his portrait to Romney ; and dull he looks in his old age, when Phillips painted and Chantry sculptured him. I have searched in vain his despatches to find what manner of man my grandfather was, for none of his private letters, if he wrote any, have been pre- served ; but the Record Office throws no light on his character. Neither have I heard that he ever said anything worth remembering ; if he did, it has been forgotten long ago. Perhaps it is hardly fair to expect diplomatic despatches to be amusing, or to throw much light on the character and mind of the writer. One cannot, indeed, expect them to be so gossiping as Pepys' Diary or so amusing as Grammont's Memoirs ; but at such a crisis as the outbreak of the .great French Revolution we might expect that even an Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Pleni- potentiary might, even in his despatches, have occa- sionally written something more interesting than at other and more ordinary times. But no, his des- patches are mere records of official dulness, hopelessly and lamentably dull ; almost as much so as poor Louis XVI.'s entries in his diary, when, for instance, on the MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. 77 day when the Bastille was pulled about its Governor's ears, he wrote : ' Aujourd'hui Rien ! ' Lady Sutherland, however, made up a little for her lord's dulness. She was in every sense of the word a great lady, a woman of spirit and talent. Although few of her letters have been preserved, they bear the mark of having been written by no ordinary character. Her sympathy for, and the little assistance that she was able to render to, the unfortunate Queen of France are historical, and are still remembered with gratitude in the Faubourg St.-Germain. Unluckily the letters she wrote during the period of her hus- band's Embassy are few and short. No diary of that tremendous period by her has been found, although she is reported to have kept one ; perhaps, when escaping from Paris, it was considered prudent to destroy it. I have always regretted not having been able to see her ; but, having been born a dozen years after her death, I can only picture her from the de- scription of those who had the good fortune of know- ing her. A stately yet gracious lady was she. In her own country she was regarded as a kind of chieftain, and, as Maria Theresa was styled the Empress- Queen, so Elizabeth Sutherland was known as the Duchess-Countess, when in later years her husband was raised from the Marquisate of Stafford to the Dukedom of Sutherland. The royal blood of Scot- land flowed in her veins, for one of the Earls of 78 MY REMINISCENCES. Sutherland had wedded a daughter of the Bruce, and consequently it was her right to bear before the King, when crowned Monarch of Scotland, the great sword of State. Byron, a good judge of woman's looks, was introduced to her at Holland House in 1813 in her turban days. ' She is handsome,' he writes of her in his journal, 'and must have been beautiful ; and her manners,' he adds, 'are princessly.' In 1793 she is described as follows in her passport, when, with husband and children, she had to escape from Paris : ' Madame Elizabeth, Comtesse de Sutherland] runs the passport, ' epouse de M. CAmbassadeur d' Angle- terre, dge"e de 27 ans, taille de cinq pieds> cheveux et sourcils chdtain clair, yeux bruns chdtains, nez bien fait, bouche petite, menton rond, front bas, visage un pen long' So serious had things become in that capital that it was considered necessary to chalk up on the doors of the Embassy the words, Ambassade d'Angleterre to protect the place from the mob. It was during their hurried journey to the coast that I believe Lady Sutherland destroyed the journal of her sojourn in Paris. They were arrested and brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal at Abbeville ; but allowed, after some trouble, to proceed on their way to England. Lady Sutherland was something better than a mere lady of old lineage and of vast posses- sions, with titles in her own right and royal blood in her veins. For she possessed remarkable talent, and MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS 79 had she not been born a peeress, and had she not become the wife of the richest patrician in England, she might, perhaps, have left a distinguished name among the women whose talents are known to all in their country and century. Those who have seen her beautiful landscapes will not think this praise extrava- gant. They are worthy of the hand of a professional painter, and are the more remarkable when it is remembered that the particular branch of art in which she excelled scenery in water-colours, which has since her day attained such excellence in this country was seventy years ago practised by but a few artists, and by still fewer amateurs. Of these drawings, or rather paintings, the Duchess-Countess left hundreds of specimens, mostly views of scenes in her native Sutherland, drawn on the spot, and coloured with but two or three tints, blue and grey and sepia. Delight- fully tender and delicate are these landscapes, the effects of cloud and mist being admirably given. In those days an amateur artist had not the facilities of coming before the public that now exist ; and these admirable drawings, real works of art, are known but to very few. Lady Sutherland, however, did publish, or rather had printed, a book of her drawings. This consists of a series of etchings illustrating scenes in the Orkneys and on the north eastern coast of Suther- land ; they include some interiors of ancient churches, in which Wenceslaus Hollar would have delighted. 8o MY REMINISCENCES. This work was pf ivately issued, I think ; but it is occasionally to be met with. Lady Sutherland had a very ardent admiration for Madame de Sevigne", and she made pilgrimages to and sketched and etched places connected with that most charming of letter- writers such as the Hotel de Carnavalet in Paris, and her Castle of ' Les Rochers,' besides other houses and haunts of Marie de Rabutin. That a woman of such talent, and filling so worthily a high place in the society of her day, should know and be known by the most eminent men of her country was a matter of course. Besides Walter Scott she knew and corre- sponded with witty and learned Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Lord Murray, and other of the most eminent of her countrymen. Owing to the false delicacy that de- stroys letters after the death of the writer, few of hers remain. I cannot sufficiently regret this idiotic practice of doing away with what alone after death, as a general rule, is left of a person's mine! and character, on the foolish plea that letters are private and sacred, not intended for others but those to whom they were originally addressed. In these days when corre- spondence has, owing to penny postage and the tele- graph, become all but a lost art, few letters worth keeping are written ; but fifty years ago people wrote as they spoke, those, at least, who had the gift of expressing their thoughts, and the loss of such MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. 81 people's letters is irreparable. Luckily all relations and executors have not acted on such false sentiment as those who destroy letters of the dead, although even Madame de Sevign6's letters were with difficulty saved from that fate, on the silly plea already men- tioned, of letters being private and therefore sacred. So said perhaps the relatives of Shakespeare after the poet's death, and perhaps destroyed his. Who does not now regret Moore having destroyed Byron's journal from similar scruples ? We cannot indeed hope to meet with letters by a Shakespeare or diaries by a Byron, but even commonplace correspondence by the most uninteresting of mortals, if he or she lived in the social world, may throw valuable light on the customs and usages of the time. An artist herself, the Duchess-Countess must have had frequent opportuni- ties of seeing and knowing the best of her day, from Romney and Reynolds down to Opie and Lawrence, all of whom painted her portrait. Among Scotch artists she may have remembered Ramsay as a child ; she certainly knew Wilkie in her old age. To poor Haydon she was a kind friend, as an entry in that gifted but unfortunate artist's diary proves. It was probably owing to his wife's influence and her love of art that Lord Stafford distinguished himself as an enlightened and liberal patron of art. When he succeeded to the property of the Duke of Bridgewater he found himself the owner of the finest VOL. I. G 82 MY REMINISCENCES. private collection of paintings in the world. The nucleus of this gallery known throughout the art- world of Europe as the Bridgewater, or, later on as it was named, the Stafford Gallery had been formed by the purchase of the finest pictures in the cele- brated Orleans collection, sold to Lord Carlisle, to the Duke of Bridgewater, and to my grandfather shortly after the Revolution. Lord Stafford deserves credit for having been one of the first owners of works of art in London to throw open his gallery to the public. In the early part of this century, long before the National Gallery had been formed, the gallery of Lord Stafford's pictures at Cleveland House the old building on the site of which stands the present Bridgewater House was to the English art student, in a limited degree indeed, what that of the Louvre is to the French. When Lord Stafford died, this gallery of paintings was divided ; the portion pur- chased by the Duke of Bridgewater, infinitely the finest and largest part, going to Lord Stafford's second son, with the rest of the Bridgewater property and estates ; and the elder my father only receiving the smaller portion of his father's gallery an unusual thing in this country, where, as a rule, the eldest son gets not only the lion's share but everything. Lord Stafford, or to call him by his last title, which he only lived to bear a few months the Duke of Suther- MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. 83 land, encouraged by liberal purchases modern British art. Jackson, Stothard, Haydon, Bird, Westall, Danby, Opie, Howard, Prout, Phillips, Lawrence, and many more English artists are represented with more or less success on the walls of Stafford House, Trentham, Lillieshall, and Dunrobin. Wilkie, the greatest of Scotch artists, bore testimony, at a public meeting of a Highland Society, shortly after my grandfather's death, to the encouragement given to the arts in Scotland by Lord Stafford. He was the first President of the British Institution, the first purely art institution in this country, one that has been so much copied of late years. The finest Rubens in the National gallery, which Lord Stafford had purchased from the Doria Palace at Genoa for 3,ooo/., was given by him to the nation. So that, I think, as far as regards patronage of art, and an enlightened view of giving the public some of the benefits that accrue from the sight of such works, my grandfather deserves credit. Lord Stafford found that to be landlord of such a vast estate as his wife had brought him was no sinecure. He devoted the later years of his life to improving the condition of the Sutherland people, and of the land they lived upon. At the period of his marriage with the heiress of the Sutherlands, the north of Scotland was all but inaccessible to travellers. It was bad enough to have to travel as far north as Inverness, as we read in G 2 84 MY REMINISCENCES. Johnson's and Boswell's expedition ; had they at- tempted to penetrate the wilds of Sutherland, their friends at the 'Mitre' would have thought that the travellers had left their wits behind the Border. A mail coach certainly ran between Edinburgh and Aberdeen towards the close of the last century, but it did not thrive, and it soon ceased running. In 1 8 1 1 a diligence and pair actually ran for a short time between Aberdeen and Inverness, but this ad- venturous vehicle had but a short existence. The roads between Aberdeen, Elgin, Nairn, and Inverness were in a miserable state, and as for roads beyond Inverness there simply were none. When, in 1833, Lord Stafford, Duke of Sutherland, died, there were 450 miles of capital road in Sutherland, where, pre- vious to 1812, none existed at all; and 134 bridges spanned the rivers of the same county, where pre- viously to 1812 there had been but one. Among those which the Duke erected was one that had been cast in Shrewsbury, and which had a span of 150 feet. By purchasing the western portion of Sutherland, he acquired nearly the entire county, and the people of Sutherland might have exclaimed with Cowper, that the ' bright occasion of dispensing good ' had arrived ! The occasion was not allowed to escape. But no good is done, or attempted seemingly, without giving the malicious and evil-disposed a handle for calumny and lying. And so it happened with regard MY FATHER'S FAMILY THE COWERS. 85 to my grandfather's efforts to improve his northern possessions. I allude to the stories and reports stating that cruel and arbitrary evictions had been practised on the people of Sutherland. These stories and reports, although they have been repeatedly proved false, are even now brought up again by a Press that should be ashamed of repeating such stale inventions. There are those, however, who, like the Scriptural dog, love to return to their vomit. I do not intend to enter into the question of these Sutherland evictions. Far abler pens than mine have done this long ago. But let us see the results of these 'evictions,' and judge by the result whether good or harm was done by them. What has been, in fact, the result of the policy pursued by my grand- father in Sutherland ? An increase of population as well as of rental and wealth. Lord Stafford has been accused of causing these evictions to take place in order to gain by them, but, as a matter of fact, be- tween the years 1811 and 1833 not a sixpence of rent was drawn from the county, but over 6o,ooo/. was employed in improving it. If any harshness was used during the evictions, Lord Stafford cannot fairly be blamed, but the agent employed. However, it was never proved that such had been the case. The lies and calumnies did their dirty work, and for years a kind of stigma attached itself to those, and even to the descendants of those, who had carried out these 86 MY REMINISCENCES. vast improvements in the condition of their people and estates. It appears almost incredible that even so recently as on Mrs. Beecher Stowe's visit to England in 1853, the authoress thought it only due to her hosts, my parents, to insert a long chapter in the account of her travels in contradiction of these stories of the cruel usage which they were supposed to have inflicted on their Scottish tenantry. My grandfather died at Dunrobin in 1833, a few months after receiving the dukedom. His coffin was followed to the grave of the Earls of Sutherland, in the old Cathedral of Dornoch, by almost the whole of the male population of the county. On opening his will the following instructions for his funeral were found : 'With respect to my funeral, I coincide with Tacitus, in his opinion so beautifully expressed in the account of the death of Germanicus I wish it to be without parade or absurd expense.' This is the only opinion or sentiment on any subject that I have been able to meet with recorded by my grandfather. In person he was tall and slight, the most marked feature about him being a nose of such height and proportion that by the side of it the great Duke of Wellington's appears almost a snubby one. Romney painted him as a handsome youth in powder and a cavalier's dress ; Phillips and Opie, as a beaky-nosed old gentle- man in a snuff-coloured coat, with an auburn wig and MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. 87 a Star and a Ribbon. I imagine that the two little likenesses that I have before me are very faithful. One is a little profile in wax, by Matrellini, in which he is represented with his hair rolled and powdered and tied in a knot, in the fashion of 1 790 ; the other a caricature of him by Gilray, drawn in 1808, and entitled ' The Modern Mecsenas.' The aristocratic youth in the Vandyck-like habited portrait by Romney has changed into a gouty old gentleman, in a broad- brimmed tall hat, and with gaiters round his ankles, hobbling into Christie's auction-rooms in King Street, as we see by the label that hangs to the pillar of a house in the background of the print. He is in search, doubtless, of some ' Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff' a habit which has been inherited by one of his grandchildren at least. That fine hooked nose of his, the most hereditary of features, has been handed down by one of his sisters, who married a Duke of Beaufort, into the house of Somerset. Lord and Lady Stafford's family consisted of four children two sons and two daughters. My father, the eldest of these, was born in 1 786 ; Charlotte Gower in 1788 ; followed by another daughter, Eliza- beth, in 1797; and the youngest, Francis Gower, in 1800. The latter, although the younger son, became, in consequence of a family arrangement, to all intents and purposes, an eldest son, receiving on the death of his great-uncle, the Duke of Bridgewater, the whole of 88 MY REMINISCENCES. that peer's immense fortune ' a small competency of about 9O,ooo/. per annum, with Bridgewater House for a pied a terre in town, Oatlands for a box, and we know not how many cool old chateaux for autumnal recrea- tion in the provinces besides.' The above is a quota- tion from one of the sarcastic notices in Maginn's ' Illustrious Literary Characters,' which appeared some half-century ago in ' Eraser's Magazine,' with admir- able outline portraits by Maclise. Maginn adds to his notice of my uncle that Lord Francis Egerton (as he was styled after succeeding to the Bridgewater property, and which name he again changed for that of Ellesmere on being created an Earl in 1846) 'is a rather voluminous writer in fact/ he continues, ' laying Byron and Mahon aside, we look upon him as the most decent lord author of the ofeneration. o His " Faust," notwithstanding all that has been done in prose by Hayward and in verse by Austen, holds its place.' And then follows further commendation of his translation of ' Faust.' This notice of Maginn's was written in 1835, since which time much more has become known of German poetry in general and of Goethe's ' Faust ' in particular than was then the case ; and far better translations than that of Lord Francis Gower have appeared. ' Faust,' indeed, was far beyond my uncle's literary power ; but he succeeded better with Victor Hugo, whose ' Hernani ' he also translated, and had it performed with great social MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. 89 success at Bridgewater House. He visited Goethe at Weimar, and doubtless the letters written by him at this time would be of great interest and of literary value ; for he wrote with charming ease and in a style that is rare in these days. He had talent Probably his letters have shared the fate that pursues old letters and relegates them to the fire or waste- paper basket. Lord Ellesmere published a volume of original and not bad poems. He wrote a poem called ' The Pilgrimage,' and also an ' Ode on the Death of Wellington ' an ode which, had not Tenny- son also written on the same subject, might have ranked among the best of the many that the occasion called forth. He had been honoured for many years by the great Duke's friendship, and had lived for long on terms of as great intimacy as anyone could with grim Duke Arthur. Dying as he did in 1857, it is one of my life-long regrets not to have seen more of my uncle Francis ; but I remember well the peculiar charm and beauty of his expression and the refine- ment of his face a face of intense sadness, as if the vast wealth that he had inherited overshadowed a life that might have been but for that an artistic and careless one careless as regards the responsibilities and the burdens of wealth and great possessions. In the memoirs of two gifted women Mrs. Craven and Fanny Kemble both notice this striking look of melancholy in Lord Ellesmere ; although no one 90 MY REMINISCENCES. could be at times more gay and even playful when with those he liked ; and, although few had more sense of true humour or knew better how to call it out in others than he did, his face remained generally as sad as Dante's, grey and worn and wrinkled before its time. He had married .when young, and most happily. His wife was worthy of him in every respect. While her husband lived, her life was one long devotion to him, and after his death a mere patient waiting until she could rejoin him in another world. Lady Ellesmere was a Greville, a sister of Charles and Henry Greville, without any of the acerbity of the elder, and without any of the frivolity of her younger brother. One of Cousins' most popular prints, after one of Landseer's paintings, represents a hawking party. The husband, a comely man with raven black hair, has just mounted his wife on her palfrey. She holds a child in her arms, a little girl with long ringlets. The mother's profile is perfect, but is spoilt to modern eyes by the ugly dressing of the hair, the fashion of 1830, and by which all Etty's women are spoilt. It is a charming group ; the only blemish is that Landseer should have travestied his sitters by dressing them in fancy dress. He would have done far better to have painted my uncle and his wife in the fashion of the day in which they sat to him, as was Leslie's practice, which has added so much interest to MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. 91 his groups and portraits. Lord Ellesmere was almost worshipped by my eldest sister, Elizabeth Argyll. In a letter of hers I find the following passage about him written a score of years after his death : ' How I did and do love him,' she writes ; ' always a thrill of pleasure when anything recalls him ; for instance, when I see Frank Egerton spoiling his little girl as his father did, I think there never was anything more delightful than he was. It came upon me on his return from the East at Dunrobin, how wonderfully delightful he was ! A long time ago in 1840, I think and from that till he died it was one of the intensest pleasures in life to be with him.' My father's eldest sister, Charlotte, might have become the wife of Byron. On March 22, 1814, the poet entered in his journal the following passage, after having met my aunt at some party : ' The only person who much struck me was Lady S d's eldest daughter, Lady C . They say she is not pretty. I don't know everything is pretty that pleases ; but there is an air of soul about her and her colour changes and there is that shyness of the antelope (which I delight in) in her manner so much, that I observed her more than I did any other woman in the room, and only looked at anything else when I thought she might perceive and feel embarrassed by my scrutiny. Her mother, the Marchioness, talked to me a little ; and I was twenty times on the point of 92 MY REMINISCENCES. asking her to introduce me to sa fille, but I stopped short. This comes of that affray with the Carlisles/ Thus, had it not been for ' that affray with the Carlisles,' who can tell but that the whole course of Byron's subsequent career might have changed, and that there might have been no voluntary exile for the poet, no Guiccioli at Ravenna, and that Missolonghi might not have been the last earthly scene that the dying poet's eyes were doomed to rest on ? She who, for a night at least, had won Byron's heart, wedded a very different mould of clay in Lord Surrey, who became Duke of Norfolk distinguished in so far as that he was a Duke of Norfolk (the thirteenth, I believe), but not in any other way, I cannot imagine a greater contrast than between this thirteenth Duke of Norfolk and George Noel, Lord Byron. A most charming, kind, dignified old lady was my aunt Norfolk, when I knew her. I loved to hear her talk of old days, and of those whom she had known when the century was yet young. She could remember as far back as the days of the Revolution, when a child in Paris with her parents. On one hot summer's day, while out with her governess, they were stopped by a crowd surging round a large carriage full of people without and within. This was no other than the famous ' Berline,' with its royal captives, on its way back from that ill-starred flight to Varennes. MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. 93 Even in her old age my aunt retained much of ' the shy antelope manners ' that had so much captivated Byron in 1814. When she died, in 1870, I lost one of the kindest and best of friends and relations. Her sister Elizabeth married the second Marquis of Westminster. Lawrence painted a lovely profile portrait of her, and Leslie introduced her in a group of her husband's family in his unrivalled manner. She still survives the last of her generation. In a book of her and her husband's travels in Northern Europe, recently published, there is a passage where she describes a visit they paid to Goethe at Weimar, in 1824. My father could recollect, as well as his eldest sister, the days of the French Revolution. He could recall having seen Marie Antoinette, the King, and Mdlle. de Lamballe, and he was the playmate of the unfortunate Dauphin. I believe that the Duchess- Countess, when the conversation turned on those times in France, and on these unfortunate victims of the Revolution, would change the subject. For her it was too painful a topic ever to speak of. She had seen and known the Queen at the close of her reign and the end of her splendour ; she had watched her courageously withstanding the sea of troubles that overwhelmed her and the old French Monarchy ; and she could not bear to talk over those cruel sufferings and the unmatched indignities that were heaped upon 94 MY REMINISCENCES. her grey and discrowned head. She felt for the poor Queen as for one near and dear to her. This feel- ing of sympathy and compassion for the last Queen of France was inherited by my eldest sister, Eliza- beth. I remember, on telling my sister that I had been to see Ristori as Marie Antoinette, the wonder she expressed at my having been able to endure the pre- sentment of such a tragedy. ' To me,' she said, ' it would be like looking on at the representation of the sorrows of someone I loved.' But to return to my father. After the removal of the royal family from Versailles to Paris, my father, only a year younger than the Dauphin, became his companion at the Tuileries. The two children one the son of the French Monarch, destined to fill the saddest page in history, and to prove to what abomin- able and inhuman cruelties party passion can seduce humanity ; the other, the son of the English Minister were often together, and probably some of the poor little Prince's last happy days of his short and tragic life were those passed in company with my father, playing together under the old chestnut trees in the Gardens of the Tuileries. When flying for protection from their mob-besieged palace, the royal family sought a shelter at the Feuillants preparatory to their final incarceration in the prison of the Temple. Lady Sutherland, hearing MY FATHER'S FAMILY. THE COWERS. 95 of the utter destitution to which the French Queen had been reduced, even to the want of a change of linen, sent her some of her own clothes, and at the same time my father's wardrobe supplied some to the Dauphin. A few months later, when anarchy had become triumphant, and the Reign of Terror com- menced, the English ambassador left Paris. I have already told how he and his family were stopped at Abbeville ; and have copied Lady Sutherland's description in her passport. When they arrived in London my father expressed considerable astonishment at the absence of pikes and cannon in the streets ; .he had become so used to seeing them in Paris. My recollection of my father is as he appears in Partridge's admirable portrait at Dunrobin. The artist has rendered very happily the high-bred character of his sitter. The high forehead, clear blue eyes, sharp aquiline nose, and long oval of the face bear the stamp of that type that is best summed up in the single word gentleman. In early life my father had taken part in a political mission from the English court to Prussia during the great war between that country and Napoleon. Of the Queen of Prussia that famous Louisa of Strelitz, who, as Thackeray says, ' shares with Marie Antoinette in the last age the sad pre-eminence of beauty and misfortune ' he saw much, and his admiration and sympathy for her 96 MY REMINISCENCES. beauty, goodness of heart, heroic but ineffectual efforts to save her husband's kingdom from the clutches of Napoleon, lasted as long as life and memory. For a long time it seemed that this romantic attachment to the unhappy Prussian Queen, even when years had elapsed since her death, would debar him from marrying. So strong had been his affection for her, that on hearing of her death he had a long and dangerous illness. He was however destined to find in later years, in his cousin, Harriet Howard, a wife and companion in every way suited to him. Rarely, indeed, and in spite of a great difference of age, has that lottery of life turned out more happily than was the case in my parents' union. Debarred by the infirmity of almost total deafness from taking part in public affairs, and by this mis- fortune shut out from much that gives happiness and interest to life, my father passed the greater portion of his life in comparative retirement from the world and from society. He loved literature, espe- cially German and Italian literature, and appreciated the arts of painting and sculpture with a hereditary feeling for them, derived from his mother. His later years and increasing infirmities were soothed and sus- tained by a boundless affection from my mother to him, who, as she wrote on one of the anniversaries of his birth, ' had made us so happy for so many years of blessed life.' 97 CHAPTER VI. MY MOTHER'S FAMILY. THE CARLISLE HOWARDS, ALTHOUGH the Howards have produced some good soldiers and in their day some great courtiers, the fame of their name is more owing to its having figured in more than one of Shakespeare's dramas, and to one immortal line of Pope's, than to their deeds in the senate or on the field. Among the distinguished war- riors of the name of Howard, however, occurs that of one who fell on Bosworth Field, and of another who died at Flodden. A third perished in a sea fight ; a fourth commanded the fleet that, thanks to Drake and the elements, destroyed the Armada of Spain. But by far the most illustrious of that house was the poet- soldier Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, the friend of Philip Sydney, whose life was no less romantic, and whose death was less glorious indeed, but more tragic than his. The immediate ancestor of my mother's branch of the Howards was great-grandson to Surrey, Lord William Howard, the ' Belted Will ' of Sir Walter Scott's Border poetry. ' Belted Will,' or, as he was VOL. I. H 98 MY REMINISCENCES. also called during his lifetime, ' Bauld Wylie,' was the terror of the freebooters and marauders of the Border. These he loved to harass from out his stronghold, Naworth Castle, in Cumberland, a fine old fortress, which he had obtained by marrying Elizabeth Dacre. 1 She also brought in her jointure the Yorkshire estate of Hinderskelle, whereon Castle Howard now rears its splendid height, to Lord William. Of their descendants, the most worthy of note are first, their great-grandson, created in 1661 Earl of Carlisle ; secondly, Frederick Howard, the fifth Earl ; and thirdly, my mother's elder brother, George William Frederick, seventh Earl of Carlisle, more popularly known by his second title of Morpeth. The first of these Earls of Carlisle began his public life as a Parliamentarian. Cromwell created him Viscount Howard. After the Protector's death he helped Monk to restore Charles II. to the throne, who in consequence made him an Earl. There exists an interesting account of this Lord Car- lisle's embassy to Russia an account which has been erroneously attributed to Andrew Marvell. It gives a detailed history of journeys which would much astonish modern diplomatists. The enormous number of attendants that were then considered necessary to accompany an English envoy to the Courts of Swe- den, Denmark, and Russia, is scarcely credible. The 1 Heiress of the Dacres of the North. MY MOTHER'S FAMILY. THE CARLISLE HOWARDS. 99 expense that must have been incurred would have almost been sufficient to maintain an army. Lord Carlisle was also for some time Governor of Jamaica. 1 He is buried under a superb monument in York Minster, whereon a fulsome inscription asserts that his many qualities and shining virtues ' made him a great blessing to the age and nation wherein he lived.' Could more be said for a whole tribe of statesmen or philanthropists ? His grandson Charles, the third Earl, built that prodigious palace, most incorrectly named a castle, which Macaulay has called ' the finest specimen of a vicious style.' Horace Walpole, however, considered Vanbrugh's great Yorkshire edifice 'sublime.' Castle 1 This first Lord Carlisle is alluded to in the autobiography of Lady Halkett in the days of Charles I. This lady was travelling from London to the North with Lady Howard, the wife of Sir Charles Howard, after wards first Earl of Carlisle, whose brother-in-law was Sir Thomas Gower, of Stittenham, co. York. Lady Halkett (whose autobiography has been published by the Camden Society) alludes to him in the account of her journey North : ' It was on September 10, 1649, that the party com- menced their journey, in which nothing disagreeable occurred until their arrival at Hinderskelle, beyond York, a house belonging to Sir Charles Howard, and which was then occupied by his sisters. Whilst there, both Sir Charles and his lady had a severe fit of sickness ; and after- wards their son, then about three years old, was attacked by the small- pox. His cure was attributed to the treatment of " Sir Thomas Gore, who studied physic more for divertisement than gain." ' ' And there can be but little doubt,' adds the editor of Lady Halkett's Memoirs, ' that this was Sir Thomas Gower, of Stittenham, a brother-in-law of Sir Charles Howard, and lineal ancestor of the Duke of Sutherland,' &c. Thus the Gowers and the Howards have been thrice allied by mar- riage first, in this old Sir Thomas Gower marrying the sister of the first Earl of Carlisle ; secondly, by the fifth Earl marrying Lady Caroline Gower ; and thirdly, by my father marrying his aunt's grandchild. H 2 ioo MY REMINISCENCES. Howard, whatever may be thought of its architectural merits or defects, is a building more suited to house the court of a monarch than to be the country home of a subject. It has been a terrible white elephant to its successive owners. The third Earl's son married twice. His second wife was Isabel Byron, great-aunt of the poet. By her he had an only son, Frederick, who succeeded his father in 1758, when only ten years old. It was thus through his mother that the fifth Earl of Carlisle was kin to Byron, a relationship which he chose to ignore. For this neglect he had to pay a terrible penalty that of being immortalised by the scathing lines in which Byron revenged his cousin's negligence and estrangement lines which will last longer than the domes and halls of Castle Howard. Anyone who remembers the manner in which Lord Carlisle ignored almost the existence of his lonely ward and cousin must feel that, great as was the punishment, it was deserved. Moore, who I think takes a very lenient view of Lord Carlisle's conduct, perhaps from being a friend of his family, and who certainly did not think less of a man because he was a lord, reminds his readers that Lord Carlisle could not have wished to meet that terrible termagant, the poet's mother. Moore's excuse, however, does not exonerate Lord Carlisle for his refusal to introduce Byron when he took his seat in the House of Lords ; MY MOTHER'S FAMILY. THE CARLISLE HOWARDS. 101 this was the crowning act of neglect on the part of the guardian, and roused the young poet's soul to madness, and he changed what he had written as a graceful com- pliment to his relative into a satire that out-Churchilled Churchill. Many years later Byron sought to make reparation for this satire by writing a touching tribute to the memory of Lord Carlisle's soldier-son ' young gallant Howard ' who fell at Waterloo. But it came too late. I have been told that so distasteful to Lord Carlisle was the very name of Byron that no one had the courage to show him those immortal lines in ' Childe Harold.' Had he seen them, perhaps they would have made him forgive, if not forget, the bitter- ness of his kinsman's early attack. But in 1815 Lord Carlisle was old, a martyr to neuralgia and other hereditary ills that aristocratic flesh is especially heir to, and for fear of disturbing the old Earl's equanimity the name of Byron and all his works were carefully tabooed at Castle Howard. While writing of that son of Lord Carlisle's who fell at Waterloo, it will not be out of place to copy the following most kind and sympathetic letter of con- dolence written by that much-abused monarch, George IV., on hearing of young Howard's gallant death. It will show that, however full of faults and vices that prince was, he had a most kind heart and a ready pen. One is tired of the abuse that from Thackeray down to Charles Greville has been meted 102 MY REMINISCENCES. to him, and it is but justice to give publicity to the following letter. This letter is addressed to Lord Stafford, afterwards first Duke of Sutherland, who was brother to Howard's mother, Lady Carlisle, and consequently uncle to Frederick Howard. It is dated from Carlton House, 'at two o'clock of the morning, June 22, 1815.' The Regent had just returned from a ball in Grosvenor Square, where the news of the great victory of the i8th had reached him. He writes as follows : ' My dear Friend, The glorious news which has this moment reached me has, at the same time, been accompanied with the distress-' ing intelligence of the fate of my most excellent and much lov'd Frederick Howard, who fell, most gal- lantly leading a division of my regiment. I have neither words nor courage to convey the sad tidings to our worthy and highly respected friend his poor father ; for him, as well as for the rest of his family, I feel from the very bottom of my heart. I there- fore throw myself upon you, to consider of the best mode of performing this melancholy office. I could not retire to my pillow until I reported to you, my dear Lord, as the only channel that occurr'd to me through which this sad event might be broken to poor Lady Carlisle, without an aggravation, at least, of the sorrow and distress which must attend it. This is not the moment, for me, to say anything of my own feelings, nor of those which I would wish to express to Lord MY MOTHER'S FAMILY. THE CARLISLE HOWARDS. 103 Carlisle upon the present most melancholy occasion. I therefore throw myself entirely upon your indul- gence, and remain, my dear Lord, always sincerely yours, GEORGE P.R.' Unlike most family mottoes, that of the Carlisle Howards was one singularly appropriate to this bearer of it ; ' Volo non Valeo ! ' it runs. Lord Carlisle wished, with all his heart, to be a distinguished poet. He wrote and published, printed, and had bound a number of odes, poems, plays, and even tragedies. Alas ! the will was present, but the power was absent. His plays and his poems are now forgotten as if they had never been written, although that fulsome peerage -monger, Collins, alludes to ' his Lordship being distinguished for his genius and acquirements ; ' and although Dr. Johnson said', respecting him and his poetical effusions, ' that when a man of rank appeared in the character of an author, he deserved to have his merit handsomely allowed/ They are as little read as last week's newspaper. But what will make this Lord Carlisle's name remembered, besides those terrible lines on him in Byron's satiric poem, is the passage concerning him written by Thackeray in his lectures on the ' Four Georges.' Very kindly has the great satirist dealt with his memory, passing gently over his faults and youthful follies, such as his immense losses at play when, in his 'salad days,' with such companions as Charles Fox, 104 MY REMINISCENCES. Sheridan, and others of the wild Prince's set, he passed nights over the green cloth in White's and Brooks's Clubs. He lost at cards the money that ought to have been spent in keeping up the great house in Yorkshire. Thackeray liked him, partly, I think, because, from the letters of Lord Carlisle that the lecturer quoted, he seems to have been a frank, warm-hearted, gentlemanlike youth ; and partly, too, I fancy, because Thackeray knew and loved his grand- son, the seventh Lord Carlisle, of whom he has written that he was 'beloved as widely as he is known ; a man most kind, accomplished, gentle, friendly, and pure ! ' The great novelist cared only to lash fools and humbugs, hypocrites and snobs, the majority of mankind, indeed. None of these, however, was Frederick Howard. He was only a good-hearted but a very weak, very misguided young man, spoilt by his position, and who had fallen into what the world would call very good, but which was for him very bad, company. ' As for my Lord Com- missioner,' writes Thackeray about my poetical grand- father (who had a political mission to America at the outbreak of the War of Independence, in order to settle matters between the old and new countries, in which mission he was as unsuccessful as with his cards and his poems), ' as for my Lord Commis- sioner, we can afford to speak about him ; because, though he was a wild and weak commissioner at MY MOTHER'S FAMILY. THE CARLISLE HOWARDS. 105 one time, though he hurt his estate, though he gambled and lost ten thousand pounds at a sitting " five times more," says the unlucky gentleman, " than I ever lost before " though he swore he never would touch a card again, and yet, strange to say, went back to the table and lost still more ; yet he repented of his errors, sobered down, and became a worthy peer and a good country gentleman, and returned to the good wife and the good children whom he had always loved with the best part of his heart.' One forgives all the youthful follies, not having to defray the large debt he left, in reading such a letter as the one he wrote to his old friend, George Selwyn a letter that seems to me an apology and an excuse for all the wild oats he had so liberally sown in his thoughtless youth. This letter is dated Castle Howard, August 2, 1776, when he was in his eight- and-twentieth year. ' Brought up,' he writes, ' to no profession, I have only to regret that no road of that kind is open to me, that, at the same time as I was retrieving my affairs, I was daily adding to my reputation. I do protest to you that I am so tired of my present manner of passing my time, however I may be kept in counte- nance by the number of those of my own rank and superior fortune, that I never reflect on it without shame. If they, the Ministry, will employ me in any part of the world I will accept the employment, io6 MY REMINISCENCES. let it tear me, as it will, from everything dear to me in this country. My friends and my family have a right to call upon me for the sacrifice, and I will submit to it with the resolution of a man. There are two events in my life for which I shall always be grateful to fortune : one, for having married me to the best woman in the world ; the other, for having linked me in so close a friendship with yourself, in spite of disparity of years ' Selwyn was thirty years Carlisle's senior ' and pursuits. These are consolations to me in my blackest moments ; and I am too sensible of her merits not to entertain the sincerest attachment and regard for her, and the truest sense of your goodness to me.' Thacke- ray quotes a passage of another of his letters to George Selwyn : ' I am very glad/ he writes to his old friend, ' I am very glad you did not come to me the morning I left London ' (on his leaving for America). ' I can only say I never knew, till that moment of parting, what grief was.' ' There is no parting where they are now,' writes Thackeray, in one of the most eloquent passages of his ' Four Georges ' a passage which ends with the graceful tribute of affection that he pays his friend Lord Car- lisle, already quoted, and that friend's sisters, 'some renowned for beauty, and all for spotless lives and pious matronly virtues.' ' The best woman in the world,' as Lord Carlisle MY MOTHER'S FAMILY. THE CARLISLE HOWARDS. 107 called his wife, was a Gower and a beauty. Romney has left us a lovely presentment of her fair and thoughtful face. A still lovelier likeness exists in miniature on the lid of a snuff-box, and is carefully preserved at Castle Howard. A pleasant picture of the old age of this pair is drawn in the memoir of Sydney Smith by his daughter. That witty parson had established himself and family at the living of Foston, near Castle Howard, in 1814. The friend- ship of the Smith and Carlisle families a friendship which lasted through life, and of which Sydney Smith wrote, ' Castle Howard befriended me when I wanted friends ; I shall never forget it till I forget all ' began in this wise. While the new living of Foston was in a rough state, the house unfinished, and the roads unmade, ' in so rude a state,' says the author of the memoir, that ' save for a cart they were hardly passable, suddenly a cry was raised that a coach and four, with outriders, were plunging about in the midst of a ploughed field near the house, and showing symptoms of distress. Ploughmen and ploughwomen were immediately sent off to the rescue, and at last the gold coach, as Lady Carlisle used to call it, which had mistaken the road, was safely guided up to the house, and the kind old Lord and Lady, not a little shaken, and a little cross at so rough a reception, entered the parsonage. The shakes were soon forgotten, and good humour restored ; io8 MY REMINISCENCES. and after some severe sarcasms on the state of the approach to our house on the part of the old Earl, and promises of amendment on the part of my father, Lord Carlisle drove off, and made us promise to come and stay with him at Castle Howard. This was the first and last difficulty the Earl ever found in coming to Foston. From this time a week seldom passed without his driving over to occupy his snug corner by the parsonage fireside, when his conversa- tion was so epigrammatic and full of anecdotes of past times, that it was always a most agreeable half- hour to old and young. He never went away without leaving some little gift in the shape of game, fruit, flowers, or other tokens of friendship ! ' It is rather an odd coincidence that the two wittiest parsons that England produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were connected by ties of friend- ship with Castle Howard ; for the author of ' The Sentimental Journey,' the matchless Prebendary of York Minster, was often a guest there, as well as Sydney Smith. What a matter of chance is fame, and sometimes how accidentally acquired ! Had it not been for the acquaintance of an elderly good-for- nothing man about town, as George Selwyn was, and for having given mortal offence to a vindictive poet and cousin, and for having shown courtesy to a country parson, this fifth Earl of Carlisle, in spite of all his odes and tragedies, and for all his stars and ribands MY MOTHER'S FAMILY. THE CARLISLE HOWARDS. 109 (he was a Knight of the Thistle as well as of the Garter), his titles, his commissionerships and Court appointments, would have been as forgotten as any other obscure transmitter of a foolish face. Both this Lord and Lady Carlisle lived far into our century. He died in 1825, surviving 'the best woman in the world ' only a year. They left behind them a large family of children. The eldest son George, Lord Morpeth, was born in 1773. This sixth Earl of Carlisle had married in 1801 the eldest daughter of William, Duke of Devonshire, by his first wife, the beautiful Georgiana Spencer. Of her I will not write till I tell of the days passed at Chiswick, which is still full of her pleasant memory ; and here will only glance at her daughter, also named Georgiana. My grandmother had not inherited any of her lovely mother's beauty, but she possessed much of her charm and distinction. Who that knew her can forget that winning, kind manner ? Even in her old age the charm and expression of her face had some- thing more rare and attractive than anything mere beauty of features could give. The pure soul seemed to shine in and through her eyes. In Madame d'Arblay's memoirs we are introduced to Georgiana Cavendish when a' child at Bath in 1791. The authoress of 'Evelina' was then on a visit to her beloved Mrs. Delany, in whose house she met Lady Spencer, who spoke to her with rapture of her granddaughter, Lady no MY REMINISCENCES. Georgiana Cavendish. Shortly after Madame d'Arblay met the little lady herself, and thus describes her : ' Lady Georgiana is just eight years old. She has a fine, animated, sweet, and handsome countenance, and the form and figure of a girl ten or twelve years of age.' The meeting of the authoress with little Georgiana Cavendish took place at a school feast provided by Lady Spencer for half-a-dozen poor children in her garden. Her granddaughter expressed a great desire to make their acquaintance, but her mother, the Duchess of Devonshire, feared infection. However, this injunc- tion was overruled by Lady Spencer, and Madame d'Arblay describes the little girl flying down into the garden, all the rest accompanying, and Lady Spencer and the Duchess soon following. It was a beautiful sight, thought the D'Arblay. Indeed it makes a pretty picture the little girl, so eager to give pleasure to other less fortunate children than herself, her lovely mother then in the zenith of her beauty and the grandmother, Lady Spencer, watching her little grand- child with delight as she runs across the garden lawn to make friends with the poor charity children drawn up in a row. For years an invalid, my grandmother loved to gather round her at Castle Howard her children and her children's children, as to the close of her life she lay helpless in her room, where the walls were covered with many a portrait of her mother, the beautiful MY MOTHER'S FAMILY. THE CARLISLE HOWARDS. HI Duchess Georgiana. One of those represents her in her childhood, her slight form gay with pink bows and ribbons, a saucy, bright eyed little woman of some half- dozen summers ; or in another, where she has grown into the lovely woman, conscious of her charms and beauty, as when Reynolds painted her in that splendid full-length picture at her old home of Althorp. In this room my grandmother was wont to hold informal levees, consisting of her children down to the third generation. There the last novel would be read to her I remember her delight in listening to 'Adam Bede' or the last poem by Tennyson, or the newest song by Longfellow that had been set to music would be read or sung to her. Hers, indeed, was a most serene decline a calm evening closing in on a pure and well-spent life. Her younger and only sister, Harriet Cavendish, married the father of the present Lord Granville, my great- uncle on the father's side. Lady Granville had much wit and humour. She fascinated, when Ambassadress to the French Court of Charles X., the society of the Faubourg St. Germain. I have been told that the late Duke of Devonshire, Ladies Carlisle and Gran- ville's brother, said, on looking at the eldest sons of his two sisters, that their mothers had spoilt the looks of the two handsomest families in England. The eldest of my grandmother's sons was George William Frederick Howard, born in 1802. As Lord Morpeth he had made a name for himself before he 112 MY REMINISCENCES. succeeded his father as seventh Earl of Carlisle in 1848. His father's career had not been of interest. To judge by Lawrence's portrait, my maternal grandfather was of that extra-refined type which a life passed in no greater fatigues or excitements than in changing the air of one country house for another, interspersed with occasional journeys in his own carriage on the Con- tinent, varied by the exertion of attending debates in the House of Lords, is calculated to produce on a temperament and a physique not of superior energy or power. My uncle Carlisle was born and bred a Whig ; he filled many appointments in the Liberal Administra- tions of the day those in connection with Ireland with a success and a popularity that are not yet forgotten. But he was something more than a mere politician ; he possessed wide and deep sympathies, and though not a genius had high talents. The poetic fire which had only smouldered in his grandfather's breast burned vigorously within his. Had he not been a statesman and a politician, he might have filled a far higher place in the literature of his country that he so dearly loved. A fluent and eloquent, if rather too florid speaker, he excelled when filling the chair on occasions when philanthropy or the arts were discussed. The last, and perhaps most eloquent, address of his life was delivered at a banquet at Stratford-on-Avon on the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth. In its way his MY MOTHER'S FAMILY. THE CARLISLE HOWARDS. 113 address was perfect. As has been written of him with equal kindliness and truth by one who knew and esteemed him ' Few held/ writes Arthur Helps, ' so tender a place in the gallery of modern British worthies, in the affection of the English speaking world, as the late Earl of Carlisle. Such a character as his could not fail to command respect ; but the feeling which he chiefly inspired was one of affection. When at the close of the great contest for the West Riding of York- shire in 1841, in which he was defeated by Stuart- Wortley, he spoke the words of farewell, the whole court-house men of all parties wept. And in the far west of Ireland there were men, and women too, who wept when the news came that "dear Lord Morpeth " had been beaten.' He had a power beyond anyone I have known of attracting and attaching people. There was about him a bonhomie, a sympathy, and a kindliness both in look and in manner that were quite irresistible, that made you forget his homely face, and that won your heart. He seemed all aglow with kindness and affection, and after seeing him one felt better and happier. We children greatly delighted in his visits a delight perhaps a little mingled with awe, for he had a way of showing his affection for us by pulling at our hair, a trick that at times waxed almost past infantine endurance. I shall not easily forget going with my mother in VOL. I. I H4 MY REMINISCENCES. 1857 to Dublin Castle, where 'Uncle Morpeth'was then Viceroy, or his kindness to me then. Neither shall I easily forget seeing him in St. Patrick's Hall, on the festival of that saint, dance an endless country dance, up the middle and down again. What en- trechats and old-fashioned steps he executed ! steps and entrechats that are now as obsolete as the stately figure of the minuet itself. One of H.B.'s cleverest caricatures represents him dancing a quadrille with the Queen. It is taken at the moment when my uncle is executing that figure in the dance called, I think, cavalier seul, and every time that one looks at it it makes one laugh. I seem yet to see his good white head bobbing above the crowd, his jewelled star and diamond George and Garter glittering in the throng, and again to hear the old country dance music played with a gusto and spirit that only such a dancer and such a Lord-Lieutenant could inspire. Nor can I forget, on the same occasion, an old lady in a green turban decked with a bird-of-paradise, who won my heart by telling me she had not been to St. Patrick's Ball at the Castle since the year of Waterloo, but that she had come that night expressly to see my mother. Alas ! a few years only have passed, but the dark, shadow of the tomb has long fallen over that guileless existence. I shall leave to far abler pens than mine to speak of the closing days of my uncle's life. The following touching account of his last days is from the MY MOTHER'S FAMILY. THE CARLISLE HOWARDS. 115 pen of Harriet Martineau : ' His private life had never been more beautiful and beloved than now. In- stead of the irritability and depression which usually accompany the disease, even where the intellect remains unaffected, there was in him a serenity, and even cheer- fulness, as unmistakable as the clearness of his mind. He was as willing as ever to receive what others said, without manifesting any harassing need to reply. His drives, in the fine autumn days, among the woods at Castle Howard were a keen pleasure to him, as he watched the changing beauty of their foliage. Sad as it was, his decline was so much less grievous and terrible than it must have been in a man of lower moral nature, that it was endurable even to those who loved him best.' During the last decade of his life, when his viceregal duties in Ireland kept him nearly all the year in Dublin, Castle Howard was allowed to fall into neglect. Grass grew on the broad steps and terraces of the building, and even within the place showed signs of decay. It was reserved for his brother, Lord Lanerton, and his wife, to restore the old home to its former state, and even to add largely to its splendour. The chapel, formerly but a small room, through their liberality and taste has become a splendid chamber worthy its office, the most gorgeous and elaborate apartment in the Castle, although not in accordance with Vanbrugh's florid style. Of eleven brothers and sisters that gathered i 2 n6 MY REMINISCENCES. round my uncle, but three survive. 1 My mother was his third sister, four years younger ; and although so unlike in appearance, how alike in character this brother and sister were ! Alike in their power of attaching to them all that came within the charm of their society. Alike in their love of all that is good, and true, and just, and beautiful in this world. Alike in their abhor- rence of tyranny, meanness, and cruelty. Indeed, were there more like unto these two, the world would be a brighter and a better one. 1 My uncle, Charles Howard, for many years member of Parliament for Cumberland, was as constant and true a Liberal as his elder brother, and, like him, had a most kind and benevolent heart. Writing to me of him soon after his lamented death in 1879, Mr. Gladstone says, referring to my mother, ' I hope that if there is any personal memorial to your uncle Charles, who was worthy to be her brother, you will let me hear of it.' Mr. Gladstone knew that he could not pay a higher tribute to my uncle's memory than by saying this. His only son, George Howard, is now heir to the Earldom of Carlisle. II? CHAPTER VII. EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. IT must have been in the summer of 1850 or 1851 that I recollect seeing Arthur, Duke of Wellington. I remember as if it were only yesterday, that bowed form and massive face, his blue frock-coat and white 'duck' trousers. How pleased and proud one felt to have a bow returned by the two uplifted fingers, his well-remembered salute ! The Great Duke's funeral I can also distinctly remember the profound solemnity of the ' lying in state ' of the body, sur- rounded by Waterloo veterans, in the hall at Chelsea Hospital ; London in mourning ; and the huge hearse with its tawdry trappings rolling along the Mall, past Stafford House, from out the Horse Guards, up Con- stitution Hill, through Piccadilly, on to its final goal, St. Paul's. Then the last scene of that great pageant, the most impressive that London ever witnessed, when the coffin containing the hero's ashes sank slowly out of sight beneath the cathedral floor, to the strains of Handel's sublimest funeral march. We had places in ii8 MY REMINISCENCES. the gallery under the dome ; the scene has left a mark on my memory, though then but a child of seven years old, that will endure as long as I can recall aught of earthly sights or sounds. The Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park I also remember well. The splendour and height of the roof; the sensation of being within an enchanted palace ; the old elms, which, thanks to the good taste of my uncle, Lord Carlisle, who was at that time at the head of the Office of Works, were not sacrificed, and suffered so much in consequence of having been shut up so many months in that glass prison, with the crystal fountains and marble statues beneath their old branches, 1 can well remember : also the vast crowds of peoples of all countries and nationalities, so full of variety and character ; the Turkish Court, where imperishable memory of the youthful palate we were given dates to eat : the German department, where our childish fancy was charmed by stuffed frogs and weasels in every attitude of civilised life, particularly with a group where one frog had just succeeded in running a brother frog through his pallid stomach with a miniature rapier, and by other less sanguinary scenes in human life, where weasels and ferrets were courting in the most approved fashion of that year of grace and universal peace, 1851. Grace and peace, forsooth ! That year, when philanthropists hoped that the reign of universal brotherhood, of EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. 119 liberty, equality, and fraternity, had dawned for all the world, only introduced a succession of wars European and Eastern, American and African ; wars and revolu- tions, civil wars and ' scientific frontier ' wars, which V even now, although thirty years have passed since the peace of the world was to be assured by that gathering of nations in the Hyde Park palace of glass, have not ceased. In 1853 my youngest sister, Constance, married her cousin, Lord Grosvenor, now Duke of West- minster. That wedding is the only one out of the four of my sisters' marriages that I can remember, as the other three married either before I was born or when I was yet a mere infant my two eldest sisters, Elizabeth (Argyll) and Evelyn (Blantyre), having been married before I came into the world, and the third, Caroline (Leinster), when I was two years old. But in 1853 I was of the mature age of eight, so that my youngest sister's marriage is one of those ' early recollections ' that I can recall. The wedding took place in the Chapel Royal, St. James's. The breakfast took place in the gallery at Stafford House. A great dispute was waged on the latter occasion between our German tutor, Dr. Gabler, and our French governess, Madame Dem- binska, as to whether my brother Albert and I were to be allowed to feast on some of the bridal cake. The tutor was against, the lady in favour of the cake 120 MY REMINISCENCES. and its consumption, and she, dear kind old soul, won the day for herself and the cake for us. Then came the leave-taking, the crowded staircase, and the great hall full of the wedding guests ; the glass doors below, open only to royalty and departing brides, the tears and the smiles within, and the curious eager crowd without. I have met, even in Australia, some persons who were there in London on that April morning, who have told me that there was a double line of carriages all the way up St. James's Street to see the bride, the ' beautiful Lady Constance,' driven away. All these things happened in my pre-journalistic days, for that remarkable literary work my journal was not com- menced till early in 1854 the year of the outbreak of the Crimean War. Mark Twain, I think, says that all youthful diaries commence by stating the fact that in the morning the writer got up, and ends the day by remarking that when it was finished he went to bed. Mine is no exception to this general rule of the manner in which youthful diarists keep the record of their lives. The routine of the daily round of duties, engagements, and pleasures is only varied by changes of residence. From London we went to Trentham, where most of the winter was passed, returning to town in February or March, and, after again visiting Trentham, going for the autumn to Dunrobin. Like all children, we greatly preferred country to town. The routine of EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. 121 our daily life was somewhat like this, as regards our hours of work. Our German tutor was a most methodical man, as became his country. Regularly during the summer we had an hour's work before our eight o'clock breakfast, and two more after that hour. We lunched at two, went out till four, when ' lessons ' again till tea-time at six and ended by another hour's work if such lessons as those our good-natured tutor gave us could be called by so dignified a term till bed-time at eight. Thus passed away the early years of our pleasant childhood, in those beautiful homes I have tried to describe. At Trentham, Christmas 1854, I find, on turning the pages of that record of my early years, much detail regarding our Christmas gifts, and of the Christmas tree ; now so general in English homes at Yule-tide, but then hardly seen but in a few English houses. Our German tutor claimed to have introduced this pretty custom in this country in our family, the first implanted out of Germany having been erected by him in the hall at Stafford House. Until recently there was always one of these Christmas trees, richly decked, placed in one of the drawing-rooms at Trentham on Christmas Eve ; and the household attended to see the illuminations and receive the gifts that were one by one cut off from the lighted boughs. No one was forgotten, from the most honoured of the guests down to the kitchen-maids and stable-men. Christmas was worthily maintained 122 MY REMINISCENCES. in those days at Trentham. Generally after the tree there came a ball for the servants, given in a long gallery overlooking the stable-yard. All took part in the dances, which, with its country dances and High- land flings and reels, when the Scotch piper was in great demand, were always most successful festivities. Bell-ringers also would come from Stoke or Newcastle and jangle their changes before an admiring and appreciative audience ; and naturally the waits were not silent round a house which knew so well how to keep up Christmas in the good old-fashioned English style. And then what splendid round games we used to play in the evenings ! Who that joined in those of 'Post' and 'Mufti' can ever forget those romps? The first consisted in every player being named after a town or a village ; a large circle was formed, one of the performers was then blindfolded and placed in the centre of the circle. At the call, ' The post goes from London to Glasgow!' ' London ' and ' Glasgow ' would have to change places, thus giving an opportunity for the blindfolded one to catch a victim, who then became the blinded. When a 'general post' was called, and all the towns and villages had to change places, the excitement rose to fever heat. But ' Mufti,' I think, was even a still more exciting game. In this a row of chairs was placed, each chair alternately facing a different way from the last. Upon these sat the players. When the piano began to be played, all rose EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. 123 and commenced moving round the chairs ; when it stopped, all sat down all but one, for at each turn of the players one of the chairs had been removed. As the chairs lessened in quantity, the excitement of the game increased proportionately, and when but two remained it became intense. The chairs were great sufferers in this game, some of the players being of no light build ; often one or more would come crashing down, thus destroying the furniture, but of course adding greatly to the spirit of the game. These were but two of the many games in which we delighted, and which made the winter evenings pass but all too quickly away for us children. On great occasions a theatre was erected in the drawing- room ; the billiard-room made an admirable green-room, and plays and tableaux were given on a real and very fair-sized stage. Our happiness on these occasions was, as may be imagined, very great, and the excitement and mystery attending the rehearsals, when the grown-up played, were prodigious. How indignant were we when our uncle Carlisle insisted on no one being admitted while he rehearsed his part in ' Whitebait at Greenwich.' Into the acting, in which he delighted, as in all our other Christmas frolics, he entered with almost schoolboy zest. No one enjoyed the dances in the long gallery more than he did, where he would without flagging keep up the old-fashioned country dances with more 124 MY REMINISCENCES. enthusiasm and spirit than any of us younkers like Sir Christopher Hatton's 'seal and maces,' his star and garter dancing before him. No one more than he enjoyed the games of ' Post ' and ' Mufti ; ' no one played and acted so well as he did. Whatever the game or frolic, ' Uncle Morpeth ' was the merriest and no wonder that we adored him. A magic-lantern was also a great attraction. The exhibition used to take place in our study up-stairs. The darkened room was filled with juvenile Argylls, Blantyres, Kildares, Grosvenors, Gowers, and others. What a number of fair-haired children used to be gathered in front of the great white sheet on which my brother Albert threw such wondrous dissolving- views and magic pictures ! The first entry in my childish diary of any interest occurs on February 24, 1854, when we were up at 7*30 in the morning, loud shouting and cheering having attracted us to our study- windows at Stafford House. These shouts and cheers were from the departing Guards, cheering the Queen on their departure for Turkey. We could see from our windows, across the Mall, Her Majesty and Prince Albert, who were addressing the troops from the Palace. As the soldiers passed between Stafford House and St. James's Palace, the press of people was so great that the troops could not keep line, and soldiers and civilians formed one confused mass of EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. 125 humanity in that narrow road. It was a stirring sight, this commencement of that long campaign, which was expected to finish in a few short months, but which lasted two long years. The war in the Crimea natu- rally recalls the loss our family shared with so many others in that great struggle. My brother Frederick, born in 1832, had passed his military examination at Woolwich, and had entered the Rifle Brigade a short time before war with Russia was proclaimed. He was a most affectionate, amiable, and popular youth. Al- though engaged to one of the handsomest debutantes of the time, he was eager to take a part in the coming struggle ; but his strength was not equal to his zeal, and he was one of the earliest victims of the cam- paign. He had sailed for the East early in March, and before the end of October news reached us at Dunrobin of his death from fever, on board the Belle- rophon, off Scutari. It was a fearful blow to my mother, and almost broke her heart. Her boy's sword and portrait remained near her as long as she lived, with the likeness of little ' Aline.' Among the letters of sympathising friends that she then received is one from an eminent American, Edward Everett eminent both as a scholar, statesman, and orator from which the following is a quotation : ' I well remember,' he writes, ' the pleasing appearance of the son you have lost, though but a child when I last saw him ; and having myself had the misfortune to lose most lovely 126 MY REMINISCENCES. and promising children, I am able to enter into your feelings and those of the Duke. I do so with all my heart ; and though it is now years since we parted, never probably to meet on earth again, yet I retain too lively and grateful a recollection of your kindness, and of the happy hours passed at Stafford House and Trentham, not to wish you to know that, at this great distance, I have not heard of your bereavement with unconcern.' One of the greatest pleasures of those early years was, when in London, we were allowed to go to a play. My first was at the Princess's ; the play, Byron's ' Sardanapalus.' How pleased one was by the fidelity of the costumes and decorations to the Assyrian remains in the British Museum ; and by the effect produced at the close of the play of the palace on fire, when king, courtiers, and all disappeared from off the flaming stage ! Those were the days when Charles Kean produced that series of Shakespearean revivals that have never been surpassed on our stage. The historical plays were especially splendid in decora- tion and appointment. In March of 1854 we saw ' Richard III. ; ' and later in the same season, ' The Knights of the Round Table,' at the Haymarket. I find the different scenes and the scene-painters' names carefully noted : Morris, O'Connor, and Callcot the last scene, ' London from Hampstead Fields,' in which a duel is fought. That must have been to us a most EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. 127 memorable night, for after the drama we saw Buck- stone's ' Voyage Round the Globe,' a kind of review of what was then being played at the other London houses. In the same year we saw the bombardment of Canton as performed at the Surrey Zoological Gardens at night in July a very grand pyrotechnic perform- ance we thought it ; and after the destruction of the Chinese forts we were regaled by a transparency in which Victory appeared crowning Her Britannic Majesty and her ally Napoleon in a perfect blaze of blue-fire and rockets. These visits to the theatres were our great de- light. The infrequency of such outings added much to the treat they were to us. How, while driving through the crowded streets, we pitied those less happy mortals not bound our way ! How thrilling the excitement and expectancy when at last we found ourselves within the mystic building ! How pleasant we thought all the surroundings, even the smell of the gas ! And then to speculate on what was going on behind the curtain, and the thrill when the fiddles were tuned and the gas shot up from the chandeliers ! All was perfect, although nothing yet fulfilled ; but when at length the curtain rose and the play com- menced, then indeed our joy was complete. How poor and dull are all the pleasures and excitements of after life compared to those evenings at /the play, when one was still innocent of * behind fine scenes' 128 MY REMINISCENCES. on the mimic stage, as of the other on that of the world ! Kean's Shakespearean revivals, as they were called, fascinated us most. What a series of splendid pageants he produced ! Besides ' Richard III.' we saw his 'Merchant of Venice;' 'The Midsummer Night's Dream/ with that marvellous scene at the close where all fairyland seemed to be trooping down the steps of a great temple with countless lamps and lanterns ; ' King Lear,' decked with costumes that we had so often seen in Strutt's ' Regal Antiquities/ one of our favourite books; 'Henry VIII.' with that gorgeous masquerade in Wolsey's Banqueting Hall and the vision of angels that beckoned dying Katharine to heaven ; ' Richard II.' with the triumphant entry into London of Bolingbroke in the midst of the hurly-burly of the crowd and the jangle of the City bells ; the thrilling scene of the deposed king's murder, which made one's blood run cold ; but, above all, that glori- ous play of ' Henry V.' wherein occurs the siege and capture of Harfleur, when the breach is filled with dead and dying soldiers, and the young king, armed cap-a- pie, mounts triumphant amidst the blare of trumpets and booming of cannon. And then the pantomimes ! Of these, I remember one at the Princess's. What the story of the pantomime was I forget ; but never shall I forget an ice scene in the harlequinade, representing one of the London parks in winter. Crowds skate across EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. 129 and slide over the frozen lake. Then clown appears with a board, on which ' Dangerous ' is written in large letters, and places it on the ice. At once appears a man fatter than Jack Falstaff, who skates vigorously but without prudence, for he makes straight for the fatal spot, when, crash ! and total disappearance of our fat friend ; but clown proceeds to fish up a cat ! ' Glissez, mortel, n'appuyez pas ! ' The amount of masters that we sat under when in town, in those early years, was prodigious. There was first a music-master Mr. Masters, a very strict, solemn gentleman, with a long and melancholy face, who did his best during an hour twice or thrice a-week to teach our young ideas something better than the scales. But I stuck at the scales, and never, I think, managed to play the base in time with the treble. I am convinced that, unless a boy has evident strong musical taste in him, to attempt to teach him to play is mere waste of money and time. Then there was our drawing-master, or rather masters, for we had several ; but Mr. Kenworthy was the principal of these. The good worthy man came from Ealing ; like Mr. Mas- ters, he had to climb to the top of Stafford House, where his pupils awaited him. How he laboured with geometrical cubes and squares, globes and quaint- shaped bodies, in order to teach us the art of shading and the mysteries of chiaroscuro, nobody can tell. Mr. Kenworthy was very like Listen in feature. One VOL. i. K 130 MY REMINISCENCES. hot summer's day, when I had left my work to wander on the balcony of our study that overlooks the Mall and the towers of Westminster, thinking that I had been out too long in the sun, and without considering that the window was not open, he thrust his head through the glass. There it remained transfixed, the features manifesting extreme surprise mixed with horror, for a collar of broken and jagged glass sur- rounded his outstretched neck. Luckily he was not even scratched, but there was little more drawing done that morning, though a good deal of laughing. It was Mr. Kenworthy who gave me my first lesson in modelling. I find that in July, 1854, he brought us modelling tools and clay, wherewith we constructed figures from which we afterwards drew in chalk. Then, also, there came to that study a most amiable, painstaking, little grey-headed man, with a bright, bland, and child-like face. This was Mr. Crump but what Mr. Crump taught us I regret to say I have now forgotten. Then, too, in the summer after- noons and in the picture-gallery we had our dancing- lessons, from a French couple Mons. and Madame Petit. Mons. Petit played the violin, teaching us at the same time how to quadrille and how to valse. I can see the worthy little pair standing up as partners to us in the quadrille ' Messieurs, la trenise ' and then the fiddle squealed the old dance music of the old-fashioned quadrille, as we slid through the cavalier seul or the EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. 129 chaine des dames, this dance again varied with a polka or a valse. Above, the great Murillos surveyed this very mundane scene very different from the Church ceremonies on which they had gazed for a century and a half. What a contrast indeed for them, this French dancing-master and wife, with his fiddle and French figures, hopping around, while Madame pirouettes on the polished floor, and two little boys, dressed in kilts, copy his steps ! a contrast indeed to the deep-toned organ, the officiating priests, and the words of the ' Miserere ' ascending, amidst the smoke of the incense, in the old Church of the Charity at Seville. Occasionally a more stately dancing-master was called in, generally on the eve of a ball at Court. This professor of dancing was a Mons. Delplanche, a very great man indeed, who used to act as a kind of master of the ceremonies at the children's balls at Buckingham Palace. Mons. Delplanche had the manners and appearance of at least one, if not several, ambassadors and plenipotentiaries. He did not condescend to accompany his steps to a fiddle not he ! But he made us and generally when he gave a lesson at least half-a-dozen pupils were drawn up in the gallery at Stafford House, go through the figures of the quadrille with all the ceremony and decorum of a menuet de la cour. When the night of K 2 132 MY REMINISCENCES. the ball arrived, and when at the Palace, feeling that the severe eye of the terrible Delplanche was upon us, we almost lost all enjoyment, and nearly trembled to think that we were insufficiently turning out our toes, or that we had hopelessly forgotten the next figure in the quadrille. These Palace balls were rather awful festivities. Her Majesty, an excellent dancer herself, was critical ; and when dancing with a princess and knowing that Delplanche's eagle gaze and the august eyes of royalty were following our gyrations, the honour of the dance was hardly compensated for by the dread of failure. The family piper, Macdonald, a splendid young Highlander, was another of our dancing-masters, and I think we appeared to more advantage in the High- land fling, reel, and sword dance than in the quadrille and polka. These Scottish dances were greatly in vogue at these Palace balls, and dancing them, we felt safe and even careless of what the redoubtable Mons. Delplanche thought of that part of our performance. One of these children's balls was given in July of 1854 by the Duchess of Gloucester, in her house in Piccadilly. It is something to remember the fact of having once been the guest of a daughter of George III. The Queen was at this dance, and was much amused by some of her tiny subjects frisking about, to the delight of Queen Charlotte's daughter. EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. 133 The great ball of that year was a fancy-dress one, given by the French Ambassador, Mons. de Persigny, to the Queen. My sister, Constance Grosvenor, went to this ball in a dress taken from some representation of Blanche de Castille. Whether the costume was strictly histori- cal or not I cannot say, but I remember thinking it very splendid and becoming. There is a well-known engraving of her in this costume, after a drawing by James Swinton, her brow crowned with fleiirs de lys. This likeness, in spite of the crown, is the best that exists of her, Millais' portrait excepted. While still on the theme of masters, I might add to the list the honoured name of Wellington ; for in 1854 we rode in Buckingham Palace Riding House with the Princes. Here the son of the hero of Waterloo, who was at that time Master of the Horse, would often look in on us. His critical eye would often suggest a change in the position of one's hands or seat. Our visits to the Palace in that year were very frequent. If the weather was fine, we used to play in the gardens, where there was a regular gymnasium, or in the beautifully decorated pavilion, the ceilings of which glowed with paintings by Landseer, Maclise, and other British artists, illustrating scenes from the English poets, one of the Prince Consort's happiest art creations. 134 MY REMINISCENCES. If it was too wet for outdoor games, we would amuse ourselves with our youthful royal hosts indoors : but we much preferred our liberty and freedom in our games in the gardens and galleries of Stafford House to those of Buckingham Palace. My brother Albert and I, and the two eldest sons of my sister Elizabeth Argyll, and a few other boys were wont to be asked to the Palace ; and little did any of us then dream, when occasionally the young princesses came in sight in the Palace gardens or within the building, that one of us would become the husband of one of them. In August of that year, 1854, I had my first expe- rience of the Continent, my mother taking my brother and me to Kreuznach, near Bingen. We went by Calais and Brussels. To my great delight, we visited the field of Waterloo, where the shattered walls and buildings of Hougoumont seem to have impressed me most. Of these scenes and the Rhine I soon filled a sketch-book, so that by the time we reached Mayence I had to get a new one. At Aix-la-Chapellethe relics of Charlemagne seem to have proved more interesting than the ' foolish superstitious things,' as I wrote of the sacred relics shown in the Cathedral of saints and martyrs. After staying a few days at Kreuznach, where my brother was left with our German tutor, my mother and I returned to England, and went to Dun- robin for the autumn. That journey north was in those days a very much longer affair than it is now, for EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. 135 we posted from Perth along the picturesque Highland line ; sleeping at the Bridge of Tilt the first, and the following night at Inverness, and reaching Dunrobin on the day following. In those days it took longer to get to Dunrobin from London than it now does from London to Petersburg. Among the guests who were staying that autumn with my parents in Suther- land was Lord Dufferin, whose name is likely to recur in these notes ; for even then Lord Dufferin was an old friend of ours. He had arrived in his yacht, the Foam, in which two years later he was destined to visit Spitzbergen, and to write of that expedition one of the most delightful books of travel that this century has produced. I find in my diary that he had been to the war (with Russia) at Bomarsund, where lay the British fleet. He was on board a frigate that was sent to ascertain if a fort had a gun or not. Then follows an account of the manner in which the Russian gunners in the fort practised at the frigate, in a way that must soon have convinced the fleet that the fort had at least one gun in it. The ship went aground, so the Rus sians my diary continues ' began to pelt at it ; there were five men killed, and six wounded. Nothing hap- pened to Dufferin ; he said, " It is best to walk about deck when it is shot at." ' I quote my account of this incident in Lord Dufferin's varied career, as I do not think any account of this plucky but somewhat fool- hardy adventure has appeared elsewhere. 136 MY REMINISCENCES. Both Lord Dufferin and his mother were often at Dunrobin. She had inherited much of the beauty of her fair grandmother, the lovely Miss Linley of Bath, Sir Joshua's 'St. Cecilia,' and still more of the wit and humour of her celebrated grandfather, Richard Brins- ley Sheridan. Delightfully she told us stories, some of rather a terrifying character, as we found to our cost on leaving her room and retiring to our quarters along the passages and corridors of the old Castle, which, after listening to Lady Dufferin's weird stories, so dramatically told, we half expected and feared to find gorged with ghosts, hobgoblins, and banshees. That visit of Lord Dufferin to Dunrobin in the autumn of 1854, besides his adventures in Russian waters, produced a great subject of interest to us boys in the shape of a young walrus he had caught in Nor- way, and which he believed to be the first ever brought to Scotland. The reported fall of Sebastopol, which we heard had surrendered, at the beginning of Octo- ber, naturally caused us great hopes, soon to be dis- appointed. The end of that autumn closed mournfully for us with the news of my brother Frederick's death in Lord George Paulet's vessel, the Bellerophon, where all that human kindness could do for him was done by Lord George, but in vain. 137 CHAPTER VIII. EARLY YEARS. IN the summer of 1855 my mother took me with her on a visit to Arundel Castle. A large party were there, but I remember being more interested by the Vandycks and family portraits of the Howards than by the guests. The ruined keep, which had then still many of the famous old owls in it, and the church with the fine old monuments, effigies, and brasses of the House of Norfolk, were also full of interest to a mind that revelled in Walter Scott and the romantic side of history. Two generations have passed away since this visit to Arundel, and the old place has seen much change within and without. My uncle-in-law, the thirteenth Duke of Norfolk, was the last of the Protestant dukes. His son reverted to the old faith, and there seems little chance of the present holder of the title of Surrey ever changing to the Reformed Church. I was also taken in that year by my mother to Worsley, which had been inherited by my uncle, Lord Ellesmere, from his great-uncle, the Duke of Bridge- 138 MY REMINISCENCES. water. The house was built by him a large mansion of the half-Tudor, half-Gothic order of architecture so much the fashion half a century ago. Our arrival there was of a novel kind. We were drawn up the canal in a barge by postillions and four. There, too, as at Arundel, a second generation has succeeded to the one that ruled in the year 1855, but in this case without the changes in religion that makes Arundel conspicuous in the contrast between the Arundel of 1880 and the Arundel of a quarter of a century ago. Glossop, then belonging to the Norfolks, now to Lord Howard of Glossop my aunt Norfolk's second son we also visited that year. Glossop I find I con- sidered ' a very French-looking place/ and ' not a castle only a house.' The ' only a house ' shows the effect on the youthful mind of living in such places as Trent- ham and Dunrobin. In October my mother took me over to Paris. A first visit to Paris must, I think, be to everyone a very great event, and leave behind a deep impression. To me it was an epoch. Our party consisted of the Blantyres and the Grosvenors ; we lodged at the Hotel Meurice in the Rue de Rivoli then a very first-class hotel, which, I believe, has, like many other institutions flourishing in that far-away time, lost some of its pres- tige. The view from our windows over the gardens and domes of the Tuileries was superb. I remember making a sketch of the Palace as soon as we arrived. EARLY YEARS. 139 The exterior of the Palais d' Industrie, and even the interior, was disappointing after the glories of the Palace of Crystal in Hyde- park. Our old French governess did the honours of the streets and shops. In those days I wore Highland dress. How I was stared at as we went to see Houdin's conjuring and Giroux's toys ! Small crowds collected outside the shops to see ' 1'Ecossais.' It was enough to make one quite dislike the garb, and I think it would have been better had I not been arrayed in such an outlandish manner when in Paris. I was more delighted with the pictures at the Exhibition and the galleries of the Louvre than with the toys and conjuring. We called on some artists, among others on Rosa Bonheur, whom we found in her studio. That gifted artist wore her hair cut short, and had on a kind of Bloomer costume. When we first saw her I imagined she was a boy ! We visited the Tuileries, the interior of which I thought beautiful, but dull ; and Versailles, with the magnificence of which I was delighted. During one of these expeditions, in some gallery or exhibition, the Empress recognised my mother although she only knew her from her likeness to her portrait by Winterhalter, the lithographs of which were in the print-sellers' windows and im- mediately invited her to dine at St. Cloud, where the Court then was. My mother had known the Emperor slightly, for on a previous visit to Paris, when Pre- sident of the Republic, he had called on her at Meurice's 140 MY REMINISCENCES. Hotel. Although charmed by the beauty and grace of the Empress, my mother had little liking for the Imperial Court of France or its Master. In the following year I went with my mother to Ireland, where she passed a few weeks at Dublin with her brother, Lord Carlisle, then Viceroy. On arriving, my impression of the Castle at Dublin was not up to my expectations of what a castle should be ; of it, as of Glossop, I remarked with evident disappointment that it was only a house ! This was a most pleasant visit to Ireland, and very enjoyable were the expeditions to the Viceregal Lodge in Phcenix Park, and the Castle festivities. We went to the Theatre Royal (fuit] to see ' Prince Charming, or the Blue Bird of Paradise.' The delight of that evening was as great as was that of another when I was allowed to remain up late and see St. Patrick's ball. Before we left Ireland we visited Carton, where the kindest of old gentlemen, the late Duke of Leinster, then lived, and I^ilkea, the home of my sister, Caroline Kildare. That autumn Mrs. Beecher-Stowe came to Dunrobin. On the 1 8th of February of this year, 1857, Lord Ellesmere died, to the great sorrow of us all. In the autumn my father took me round Scotland in his yacht, the Ondine. We embarked at Liverpool and steamed to Dunrobin, a delightful cruise. That year at Dunrobin was memorable to us on account of a tournament that we performed in front of EARLY YEARS. 141 the castle a less gorgeous display, indeed, than the Eglinton one ; but ours was not marred by the weather, which was splendid during our pageant. The wide space to the west of the Castle was the scene of these jousts. The Castle was full of guests, and the county mustered in great force to see the show. A tutor who had lately come to us, Lamprey by name and Irish by nation, was the moving spirit of the affair, and, thanks to his energy, skill, and arrangements, the tourney proved a great and a complete success. It closed with a metie of hobby-horses, a couple of which bound- ing steeds were mounted by Lords Dufferin and Grey de Wilton. These warriors were armed with bladders hung to sticks, with which they belaboured one another most unmercifully. The only drawback to our grand revival of the olden time was caused by our lances, which were made of paper, being bent and made useless by a high wind before we could shiver them on our antagonists' bodies. A German band dis- coursed military and warlike music, and three family pipers ours, and those of the Argylls and Staffords kept up a truly martial and local din. I find it recorded in my diary that ' Dufferin said that it was the prettiest thing he had ever seen ; ' and he was, I believe, at the Eglinton tournament, so that there can be no doubt that the Dunrobin was the finest of these. At the beginning of the following year, 1858, my 142 MY REMINISCENCES. brother Albert, two years my senior, went to the Edinburgh Academy, and with our German tutor took a house in Meredith Row, in that city. That was our first separation, and I felt with keen melancholy that our early happy days which we had passed together were at an end. That was indeed a bitter sorrow, and although so many infinitely greater have come upon me, I do not think any equalled the intense sadness to me of this first separation, with the knowledge that the happy careless times were over. As one gets older it is easier to bear such trials as these ; but when very young they seem to enter into one's very soul ; and yet people say that children's sorrows are as nothing compared to those of later years. With this I for one entirely disagree. When we get older we know that our sorrows cannot endure long, but when young one feels as if the sorrow would last for ever, and one looks forward to life with a kind of despair. I was occasionally taken to the opera that season in London, when Grisi and Mario sang. My favourite opera was ' Martha,' ' the new opera,' as it was then. In July the death of my eldest brother's son Gower a most delightful and promising boy of nine, put an end to any more gaieties for that year. He died sud- denly at Lillieshall, a place in Shropshire that my parents had given to the Staffords when they married in 1849. My father, who idolised his grandson, felt his death deeply. At the end of that year Lauriston EARLY YEARS. 143 Castle, near Cramond, N.B., was leased by my father, and here my brother Albert and the two eldest Argylls, Lome and A. Campbell, lived while attending the classes at the Edinburgh Academy, and here I also passed some of the next summer months. Lauriston is a pleasant old castle, with a fine old-fashioned garden round it. It had belonged early last century to the famous financier Law, and in the early part of this to the bon-vivant, Lord Rutherford. Here he would entertain Lord Murray and other convivial Scottish Law lords and judges. Thus the summer of 1859 was pleasantly passed. An old and large bowling-green served for our small matches at cricket, and we made pleasant excursions about the somewhat tame neighbourhood of Edinburgh. But these pleasant days were to end with that summer, and our party was broken up, Lome and his brother going to Eton, where I was soon to follow them. But in order to rub up my learning a little before joining them I attended lectures at the Edinburgh Academy. My parents, both of whom had taken a fancy to Lauriston, would often come and stay there, sometimes a few days or longer. My mother delighted in Dr. Guthrie and in his preaching. That fine old specimen of an old Covenanting minister would frequently drive over from Edinburgh, and often meet another great friend of my mother's at Lauriston. Sir James Simpson ' Simmy,' as we boys called him was an 144 MY REMINISCENCES. universal favourite with young and old. In October Lord Brougham was staying at a villa within Edin- burgh, called Wariston, and my mother took me one day to see him. His memory was then failing, but he appeared full of great bodily vigour, and I can recall the energy of his voice and manner as he paced up and down his room gesticulating violently. He was then over eighty, but had still many years of life in him. In the following year I joined my Scotch nephews at Eton. Few men acknowledge that they disliked the public school they were at, however much they may have done so. Fewer do so if they were at Eton. As a place no school in the world can compete with it ; this all will acknowledge ; for at what other is there such a river as the Thames, where such play- ing-fields as those by its side shaded by immemorial trees, where such proud memories of former scholars as the names carved on the walls of its old schoolroom can show ? But because a place is beautiful and boasts historic memories, it does not follow that the time one has passed there must be looked back to either with pleasure or regret. For several reasons I look back to my Eton days as the least happy of my boyhood. In the first place, I was not properly at Eton at all, for, with my nephews, I was what is called in Eton parlance ' up town ' ; which means that we were not in one of the tutors' or dames' houses, but in a house some way out of Eton. Our house was a EARLY YEARS. 145 small one opposite the 'Christopher' Inn, about half- way between the school and the bridge that divides Eton from Windsor. Here we were under the charge of the Irish tutor whose active share in the Dunrobin tournament I have alluded to. This was an unsatis- factory arrangement in many ways : we were at Eton, but not of Eton, and the other lads felt, with some justice, it must be said, that we were treated as if the usual manner of living at Eton i.e., in one of the masters' houses was not good enough for us ; and among boys, as among men, anything that appears to be exclusive is not popular. As I have said, my nephews had preceded me to Eton, and I felt, on beginning my life there, that they had an advantage in this which, rightly or wrongly, allowed them to place me rather under obligations to themselves It is not in human nature to feel thus placed with complacency. Although my brother and myself had acquired a smatter- ing of knowledge of various too various kinds, we were ill-grounded even in the rudiments of grammar, I especially so, and ignorant of even the little Latin that most boys much younger than I was when at Eton have acquired. In fact, I do not believe I ever did a Latin verse all the time I was an Eton boy ; and in those days little else was taught or learnt there, in the lower parts of the school at all events. Consequently I took a very bad place in my entrance examination, and was not a little disquieted to find that, although VOL. i. L 146 MY REMINISCENCES. in some ways much better read than many of the boys in my division, none made a worse figure at the ordi- nary lessons required for school work. It was my ill fortune also to find myself among boys who would not have done credit to a grammar-school, but who, I felt, had the advantage of me in superior knowledge of how to construe Greek and Latin, and how to write that abominable doggrel they called ' Latin verses.' It was a daily and almost an hourly mortification to find that, as far as regarded the school-work, I was behind my fellow classmen. What would have made amends for these drawbacks might have been the hours passed between school-work ; but even there I found my short-sightedness a great impediment to joining in the games of the others. Not a little of my want of sympathy with Eton and Eton ways, was the longing to be again as formerly in my mother's society ; for I had been so used to it that absence from her was in itself an infliction. I believe the education a boy now receives at Eton is far more general than it was when I was there. Then, what one might have known before, such as modern languages, history, etc., were forgotten at Eton, where a boy, if he were only tolerably well-grounded in Latin and Greek grammar, could easily get through the work expected of him, and not think of the next day's Latin verses or Greek exercises with a tenth part of the anxiety that I did. These are a few of the reasons that made what are, EARLY YEARS. 147 I believe, often said to be the happiest days of a boy's life those passed at Eton not pleasant ones to me ; and, after a short stay, little over a year, I left the place without any feeling of regret. Some of my happiest days there were those when my mother was in attendance on the Queen, or on a visit to Windsor Castle, and would send for me to go and see her. She was then still Mistress of the Robes. In the winter of that year the Empress of the French paid the Queen a visit at Windsor. I had a glimpse of the Empress as she passed through a corridor in the Castle, and was greatly struck by her beauty. She had shortly before lost her sister, the Duchesse d'Albe, and was in deep mourning for her. An odd idea had taken her fancy namely, to build on the site of her sister's house in Paris, which after the duchess's death she had razed to the ground, a similar building in every respect to Stafford House, and she had visited that house and sent architects over to take its dimen- sions. But the plan fell through ; perhaps it was con- sidered too considerable a scheme for realisation. Another visit that I paid that year was to Frog- more, when my nephews and I were honoured by an invitation to a ball by the Duchess of Kent. It ended by a country dance, in which the Queen joined. We had thought it prudent on receiving this invitation to call in the services of a dancing- master, fearing our quadrille figures were rather vague. An aged French L 2 148 MY REMINISCENCES. dancing-master whom we requisitioned appeared, hale and hearty, accompanying his steps, as Monsieur Petit did, to his violin. But active as this old professor of the dance was, he had when a child in Paris, in 1793, seen Marie Antoinette on the way to the scaffold, and described the unfortunate queen, with her gray hair cut short, her hands tied, seated in the cart, still retaining her calm demeanour as the mob shouted and mouthed around her. Early in the next year, 1861, my father was attacked by paralysis at Trentham. It was in January, one of the coldest that had been known for many a year, and we thought that he had caught a chill when watching the skaters on the lake. The evening before the attack, however, he seemed in his usual health, and had much enjoyed watching some acting in the drawing-room, where, seated behind a row of grand- children, he shared their delight at seeing Lord Car- lisle performing the part of Benjamin Buzzard to per- fection, in the farce of ' Whitebait at Greenwich.' Trentham was full for that Christmastide a large family party, some forty in all and never had we had a merrier time than at the close of the year 1860. But on the morning after the theatricals all was changed, and the house, lately so full of sound and gaiety, was silent and hushed. He who was the kindest of parents was about to leave us. He lingered on till February, ceaselessly watched and affectionately EARLY YEARS. 149 tended by those he loved. His death, which occurred at the end of February, changed the current of our life. With him our happy home life passed away ; but within another half-dozen years a still heavier blow came upon us. Of my father the ' Scotsman ' had said with truth that ' no man could give so good an account of so great a stewardship.' That summer saw me again abroad with my mother. She had, owing to the commencement of a cataract in one of her eyes, placed herself under the care of a French oculist, and in order to be near him had taken a house in Paris first in the Avenue Gabrielle, in the Champs-Elysees ; and later on, the heat of the August of that year being almost unbearable in that part of Paris, we moved to a higher and more airy quarter in the Avenue de St. Cloud, close to the Bois de Boulogne. The pleasantest days were when we visited the Louvre together ; for although my mother's health was then failing, she continued to keep the same interest and love of art and of everything that was beautiful in nature and human handicraft. We were back again for the winter in London. My mother had passed the day of the fatal I3th of December at Windsor Castle, but returned the same evening to town, which she much regretted afterwards, as on the following day the Prince Consort expired. She was, however, able to be with the bereaved Queen the next morning. Hearing that she would stay on at the ISO MY REMINISCENCES. Castle, I went there and passed some of the afternoon with her, hearing details of the closing scenes of the Prince's illness. My mother occupied the same rooms as those in which she had often been in the happy days of the Queen's life. A few months had only passed and her mistress and herself were both bereaved. I shall never forget the desolation that one felt had fallen on Windsor on that dreary, dark day of December. It was a darkness that indeed might be felt. Both my mother and her brother, Lord Carlisle, attended the Prince's funeral. At Cliveden we could hear the minute- guns being fired during the short dark December day from Windsor that morning. It will not be out of place here to copy a letter of the Queen's to my mother, who had presented a Bible subscribed for by the widows of England to Her Majesty. The letter is dated from Windsor Castle, December 19, 1862 : ' MY DEAREST DUCHESS, I am deeply touched by the gift of a Bible " from many widows," and by the very kind and affectionate address which accompanied it, and which you read to me. Pray express to all these kind sister widows the deep and heartfelt grati- tude of their widowed Queen, who can never feel grateful enough for the universal sympathy she has received, and continues to receive, from her loyal and devoted subjects. But what she values far more is their appreciation of her adored and perfect husband, EARLY YEARS. 151 to whom she and the country owe everything. To her the only sort of consolation she experiences is in the constant sense of his unseen presence and the blessed thought of that Eternal Union hereafter, which will make the bitter anguish of the present appear as naught. That our Heavenly Father may impart to " many widows " those sources of consolation and sup- port, is their broken-hearted Queen's earnest prayer. The Bible itself is very handsome, as well as the reading-desk, and both with the address and signatures will ever be kept by the Queen and her children as a mark of the living, tender sympathy of her subjects. ' Believe me ever, dearest Duchess, ' Yours most affectionately, 4 VICTORIA.' At the end of this year I visited Oxford for the first time, and lodged in St. John's College with a former Fellow. My rooms were those traditionally said to have been occupied by Charles I. A fire had been discovered in the College library the night before we arrived by some undergraduates who, luckily for the buildings, sat up late. Fortunately little damage had been done. The weather was intensely cold, and I should not advise others to have their first impres- sions of this grand old town of palaces and halls in frost and snow. The rest of the winter and early parts of the following year, 1862, we passed at i$2 MY REMINISCENCES. Cliveden, which since my father's death had become my mother's jointure house ; and where, as formerly at Trentham, her children, and her children's children, would all assemble together at Christmas and for the New Year. Some pleasant guests came in the early part of this year among others the Bishop of Oxford (Wilberforce), the most delightful of divines, and the wittiest since Sydney Smith ; Sir Joseph Paxton ; old Lord Breadalbane, a fine specimen of a courtier-like Scotsman of the old school ; and two of my father's oldest and most attached friends, the late Lord Clan- william, as handsome at seventy as when Lawrence painted him forty years before, and full of the charm of high spirits that not even old age could quench ; and Count Pahlen, who had known the best of English society, since he first came to London two years before Waterloo was fought. Marochetti, the sculptor, came also to Cliveden in that year ; and in May, Tennyson paid my mother a visit, reading in the evenings aloud his ' Idylls of the King ' and his then unpublished poem, ' Enoch Arden.' In June of this year I accompanied my mother to Vichy, whither she had been sent by her doctors. Among the English colony we met there were the Morleys, and Mr. Sturt and his daughter (Mrs. St. George Foley). We made several expeditions in the neighbourhood of Vichy, visiting the picturesque old town of Cusset, beloved of Louis XI., and the EARLY YEARS. 153 neglected Chateau d'Effiat, which had belonged to the father of Cinq Mars, and which bore his name. We drove up to the finely-situated Castle of Bourbon- Bussy and to Randan, half palace half villa, situated among pleasant woods, the rooms full of portraits and souvenirs of Louis Philippe and his family, it having been one of the favourite homes of the son of Egalite. Even distant Clermont-Ferrand was visited, from which one of the Crusades the first, I believe had been preached by Peter the Hermit ; nor did we neglect seeing the few objects of interest at Vichy itself, such as the house in which Madame de Sevigne" lived when taking the waters here, and from which at least one of her matchless letters is dated. After the ' cure ' was finished, we made an expedition into Switzerland, my mother's brother, Charles Howard, coming with us. This was a very pleasant tour, beginning by Geneva, on to Ouchy, Vevay, Fribourg, Berne and Interlaken, Lucerne, where Altdorf and the Rigi were not omitted. At the latter my brother Albert and I were lucky enough to see one of the grandest sights in nature a thunderstorm that broke over the Alps soon after we had got to the top. The lightning-conductor of the hotel was struck, ' the thunder not roaring, but bellow- ing, breaking, and crashing overhead.' We had the satisfaction of being told by a waiter, that although he had passed twenty summers at that hotel, the Rigi Culm, he had never seen anything to approach that 154 MY REMINISCENCES. storm ! In August I entered into residence in the family of a Swiss clergyman, M. Eymar, at a delight- ful village near Geneva, on the Swiss side of the lake, about seven miles from Geneva. The place is named Colovrex, and commands one of the loveliest views imaginable of the blue lake and of the distant Mont Blanc. M. Eymar was a good type of an aged Cal- vinistic clergyman, too kind and large-hearted to be bigoted, but full of pride and zest for his religion and of the traditions of the Church of Geneva. With his good-natured wife and daughters and sons-in-law, the little family circle that used to meet in the evening in the dining-room of Colovrex was a pleasanter one than is often the case in families where pupils are boarded ; and none of the latter, I hope, who had the good fortune of being any time under the excellent old gentleman's roof, can look back to the days passed there and the evenings made short and agreeable by Madame Gonin's company and her music without regretting that those days are now over and that family dispersed. My first experience of la chasse on the Continent was not a happy one. With two or three of the other English boys at M. Eymar's, armed with guns, we had sallied forth intent on slaughter ; but we had forgotten to provide ourselves with the necessary permis de chasse in the French territory, which was close by Colovrex. The consequence of this was that, having invaded that country, we were EARLY YEARS. 155 arrested by a gendarme, and taken to a cafe at Ferney classic ground where we were kept in durance vile for some time, but let off very easily, being fined one hundred francs apiece and having our guns seized. Thus ended my first day's sport in Switzerland ; as for the game, all we saw of it were a brace of larks. In October M. Eymar took some of his pupils, myself among others, to Chamouni. We had a de- lightful expedition and glorious walks amongst some of the finest scenery in Europe. Had I a son I should certainly send him to Switzerland, even if he learnt nothing there, for the beauty of its scenery and the delight of living near the Alps and among its highly- educated and generous people would be in itself a liberal education. Youth in Switzerland may be, under favourable circumstances, a foretaste of heaven. 156 MY REMINISCENCES. CHAPTER IX. 1863 : THE PRINCE OF WALES's MARRIAGE, AND GENEVA. WE were in London early this year, when the town ' had gone mad ' over the arrival of the bride of the Prince of Wales. On the 7th of March the Princess Alexandra passed through London on her way to Windsor ; and probably, since the day in Paris when Marie Antoinette was acclaimed by the French popu- lace in the gardens of the Tuileries, no princess ever had so enthusiastic a reception, or so quickly won the hearts of thousands by the mere charm of her presence. St. James's-street was already densely thronged by nine o'clock in the morning, all about Pall Mall was bright with red cloth, banners, and bunting, and gar- landed with flowers. All the shops were transformed into places with benches and seats, which were filled by eleven o'clock. Of the clubs, the Wellington was the most lavishly decorated, the upper part of the building being quite hidden by flags and streamers. At two in the afternoon this part of London was hardly passable, and it was not easy to force one's THE PRINCE OF WALES'S MARRIAGE, AND GENEVA. 157 way even so far as to Devonshire House in Picca- dilly, where, passing through the garden-gate, across the house and court, a small party from Stafford House got places on a large scaffolded balcony that rose in several tiers, covered with seats, above the hideous dead wall that makes the exterior of one of the few private buildings in London that can be called palatial look like a penitentiary or a work- house. Several hundreds of lookers-on were already on this place of vantage, and from it the view to the right of Piccadilly was a singular sight. An innu- merable throng stretching on both sides of the street out of sight ; every window and corner full of humanity, up to the chimneys in the streets and the trees in the Green Park. This vast concourse was, as is generally the case with a London crowd, singu- larly good-tempered. Here for hours they had waited patiently on one of those cold, wretched days that March is so liberal with in our capital, the east wind cutting like a knife ; a dull, dark sky overhead, but luckily no rain. Now and then the inevitable stray dog would cause a roar that spread along from the White Horse Cellar down the long street, along towards Apsley House ; or some stray individual would be singled out by an officious policeman, and loudly cheered as he was marched across the open space kept clear by the Horse Guards placed at long intervals. One dog would scamper as fast as its legs 158 MY REMINISCENCES. could carry it till out of sight, but return, like Gilpin, at full gallop, to the delight of the patient thousands who seemed only too glad of any pretext to cheer dog or man. ' At last, and it was time, for it was past four, a carriage appeared coming from out St. James's Street first one, then a second, and a third ; but it was hardly possible to believe that these shabby, poorly-appointed vehicles formed the van of the royal procession for which all London had made holiday. As carriage followed carriage one hoped they would improve in appearance, but one after another passed along, badly horsed and badly equipped, and, what is worse, full of the most uninteresting-looking folk. These turned out to be the Westminster Corporation, who might well have been spared ; they were cer- tainly not ornamental, and not in keeping with a pageant. But now trot by a handful of Life Guards escorting an open carriage and four the postilions in dark blue jackets and within, the Princess Alexandra with her affianced husband. There is a general rising, the mob cheer lustily, and hats and handkerchiefs are waved as, at a slow trot, they pass by. The Prin- cess's lovely face has won all hearts, as she gracefully acknowledges the cheering and shouting of the popu- lace. Opposite Cambridge House the royal party make a short halt a most considerate act and kind attention shown by them to the veteran Palmerston. ' Some of us Lord Carlisle among the rest, who THE PRINCE OF WALES'S MARRIAGE, AND GENEVA. 159 had come over from Ireland the day before to take part in this royal bridal now rushed across the squares and streets between Devonshire House and Hyde Park to Mr. Marjoribanks' house in Park-lane not that ornate and high-roofed building that now /stands on the site of the house we then invaded for here we knew we could get a good view of the procession as it passed through Hyde Park from the Apsley House entrance across to the Marble Arch on its way to Paddington Station. Difficulties had here to be surmounted, as all the household had left the lower part of the building for the roof ; the sound of the cheering in the Park told us that the procession was already passing through it, which added not a little to our impatience. At length, after vigorous knocking and shouting, we got the door opened, and hurried upstairs, and after losing our way in passa'ges and entering half-a-dozen wrong rooms, we at last found our way to the roof, from which the view of the crowds filling the Park and roaring their welcome to the Princess as she drove slowly along between the sea of heads was well worth the trouble we had taken. We watched the procession till it disappeared behind the Marble Arch, and then the vast crowd slowly dis- persed and poured its immensity out at every gate and road into the streets again.' Three days after the marriage took place at Windsor. Our party drove over there from Cliveden. 160 MY REMINISCENCES. My mother, although now no longer Mistress of the Robes, attended Her Majesty. It was to be the last time that her health enabled her to attend the Queen on any public occasion ; the last duty of a long series of such honourable services paid to the Queen almost constantly since her coronation a quarter of a century before, when, as we see her in Leslie's admirable painting of that ceremony, she is standing immediately behind Her Majesty ; to that by John Phillip of that day's wedding at Windsor, where she can be distinguished in the Royal gallery at St. George's Chapel, from which the Queen looks down on the ceremonial below. My mother went with her brother Carlisle and her brother-in-law, the Duke of Devonshire, Knights of the Garter, and both consequently in uniform. We lesser folk saw the ceremony from the raised seats that were ranged on either side of the nave in the chapel. A more truly gorgeous spectacle or more attractive to an English eye and ear than such a wedding as this cannot be imagined, for it combines all that is most flattering to one's national pride, and embodies all that is spectacular with the traditions of heraldic pomp and blazon. The banners of the Knights of St. George and their achievements, the pompous titles and epithets of these peers, all styled princes, and all, below this fretted roof at any rate, the compeers of emperors and kings. Then the THE PRINCE OF WALES'S MARRIAGE, AND GENEVA. 161 gathering together within this noble fane of the most illustrious men and some of the fairest women in the land ; the glitter and sheen of uniforms and stars, of silks and satins, jewels such as not any other country can produce ; the clash of the kettle-drums and the half-sacred, half-military music that peals forth from the organ-loft on such an occasion, contribute to make an impression even on those not easily moved by sights and sounds, or easily stirred out of their wonted stolidity. ' The nave looked exceedingly well. The blocks of red-clothed seats, rising on either side to more than half the height of the windows, were soon filled. In front of every pillar stood a beefeater. There were separate processions that passed through the nave to the inner part of the chapel. First, the guests of the Queen the Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Mary, and the Queen's daughters the Princesses Royal, Alice, Helena, Louise, and Beatrice with the two Princes Arthur and Leopold ; secondly, the bridegroom's procession ; and thirdly, that of the bride, with eight bridesmaids. The bride looked lovely ; she did not raise her eyes once going in, and but little when coming out of the chapel when on her husband's arm. I was glad to be able to have a good long look at Thackeray, who was nearly opposite us. The finest part of the ceremonial as regarded the persons present was the magnificent appearance and presence of Princess Mary as she seemed to sail up VOL. i. M 1 62 MY REMINISCENCES. the nave of this gorgeous chapel. She looked the very embodiment of earthly magnificence.' Returning early in the summer to Colovrex my Swiss pastor's place, near Geneva I was joined there by Lome and his brother Archibald Campbell in June. We made a walking tour among the Alps the following month, beginning by Lucerne, where, the evening of our arrival, after bathing in the lake, we dawdled about the old wooden bridges, watching the moon rising over the lake. We crossed over the Brunig Pass, during a hailstorm, to Meyringen, and on to the Rosenlaui, a most beautiful place, where we passed the night. The following day we crossed the Sheideck to Grindelwald. The account of our route to Interlaken (copied from my diary) may recall to others, as it does to the writer, happy days passed in that gloriously beautiful country, so I will make no further apology for quoting the rude record of those pleasant times. ' July 6. Left the Wengern at 9 A.M., giving Lome and myself time to make a sketch of the Alps from the hotel, which (the Alps, not the sketch) looked quite glorious ; every peak, crevasse, and patch of snow as clear as crystal. From a little mound near the hotel we had a splendid view into the Valley of Grindelwald, and could see and hear the avalanches falling, their sound magnificent, more like distant THE PRINCE QF WALES'S MARRIAGE, AND GENEVA. 163 thunder than anything else ; they look like thin streams of water, but in a heavy fall the effect is beautiful, bounding up in a sort of cloudy vapour, which, if we were nearer to them, would prove to be huge masses of rock, ice, and snow. I consider this view from the Wengern almost, if not quite, as glorious as that from the Valley of Chamounix. Descending we passed by masses of roses des Alpes, and we entered the valley of the " many rivulets '' (Lauterbrunnen), the Staubach appearing like a thin skein of silk, and the Jungfrau towering above. After a hot and rather laborious descent we reached the inn at Lauter- brunnen, where I had been twice last year, and there, leaving our guide and horses, we took a char-a-bancs and drove along by the Leitschen to dear old Inter- laken, looking very gay, many people walking and sitting about under that beautiful avenue of walnut trees.' After visiting the Giesbach, we returned to Geneva by Thun and Berne. On our return to the pasteur's at Colovrex we got up a representation of the burlesque of ' Aladdin : or, the Wonderful Scamp.' Lome was our scene painter, and his view of the street scene in Pekin might have made, considering the difficulties he had to contend with (a sheet and a few colours in dis- temper being all that could be got), an O'Connor jealous. The dresses were only second in excellence to the scenery, and the acting was as excellent as is M 2 164 MY REMINISCENCES. always the case in such performances. It afforded unlimited satisfaction to the actors, but out of our audience only one person understood English, so that perhaps if we had played a pantomime it would have pleased equally well, and spared us the trouble of learning Burnand's prose and songs by heart. At the end of September the kind old pasteur went with some of his pupils to Venice. Lome had, before this expedition took place, returned to England, but his brother and I were of the party. Our route was by Chambery, St. Maurice, across the Mont Cenis in a diligence, which is by far a more pic- turesque manner of entering Italy than this coming generation will ever know. On to Turin and Milan, where I saw the Duomo in a bright moonlight a glorious sight. At length we reached our destination, incomparable Venice, 'during a lovely sunset, the whole sky a bright carmine.' Venice by moonlight that night of our arrival was one of those sights that are pictured indelibly on one's mind, never to be obliterated. Writing of this expedition, my mother had said that she thought seeing Venice for the first time was ' one of the great emotions of life,' and I think few will disagree with that sentiment. Titian's ' Peter Martyr ' was still existing, one of the most precious gems in the jewelled crown of the city of the Adriatic ; within a few years after we had seen it in undimmed splendour it was, through the negligence THE PRINCE OF WALES'S MARRIAGE, AND GENEVA. 165 of the never-to-be-forgiven priests of that church, destroyed by fire. One of the pleasantest recollec- tions of this time at Venice was hearing ' High Mass' in St. Mark's Church. We found a place in one of the upper galleries near the high altar, where a band of about thirty musicians were playing ; apparently on every variety of instrument bassoons, trombones, and violins. Above, glittered the gorgeous mosaics ; beneath, the solemn but highly picturesque and scenic ceremonies of the Roman ritual moved, and all around the grand old Gregorian strains pealed, making together a perfect feast for the senses of sight and sound. Venice was still under the heel of the Austrian, and it was a drawback to the otherwise perfect en- joyment of staying there to be reminded of the fact by the guns in the Square of St. Mark's under the old arches of its cathedral church. We returned to Geneva by the Lago Maggiore, and across the Sim- plon. My mother's health had begun at the end of that year to give us much anxiety. In fact, the terrible illness which, after cruel sufferings most patiently and bravely borne, took her from us five years afterwards, commenced at the end of 1863. On returning from Switzerland to England in Novem- ber, I found her changed in looks, but her mind as clear and her heart as affectionate as ever. The Queen, who never failed in sickness or in health to 166 MY REMINISCENCES. show her warm friendship, called at Stafford House, soon after I returned, on my mother. Of sympathy and tenderness to the suffering no one has more than our gracious sovereign this all the world knows ; but only the privileged few who have been eye-witnesses to it can understand how deep and abundant these qualities are in her. About this time I called on Baron Marochetti, the then very popular Italian sculptor. ' His studio is at 37, Onslow-square, and to it comes Sir Edwin Landseer daily to work on his colossal lion for Tra- falgar-square. I saw it in plaster magnificent, but very unfinished, except the head. Sir Edwin was very good-natured, lighting the gas in order that I might see it well/ Returning to Geneva, I saw something of Swiss society that winter. General Peel and his good- natured wife, Lady Alice, often asked me to go and visit them at the Hotel Beaurivage, near Lausanne, where they were passing the winter. Thence I used to go to balls and parties in the neighbourhood. One of the former was given at the picturesque old chateau of VufBens ; its towers can be seen from the railway as it skirts the shores of Lake Leman, near Vevay. The Due d'Aumale's eldest son, the Prince de Conde, was at this ball, and at many of the other dances that I was at that winter in Switzerland. He was an amiable youth, very sickly and delicate to look at, THE PRINCE OF WALES'S MARRIAGE, AND GENEVA. 167 with pale sandy hair and complexion. He died a few years afterwards when on a tour to the Antipodes. Shortly before Christmas I left Colovrex and its good old pasteur with more regret than is generally felt by a boy when leaving a tutor's roof; but Mons. Eymar was a very different stamp of man from the ordinary tutor-clergyman ; he did not teach me much French certainly, but that was doubtless my fault ; but he taught me to respect and regard, more than I had ever felt inclined to do before I knew the good old man, the high, pure, upright- minded Calvinistic shepherd of his flock, and to feel the deep signification of the term ' pasteur.' He was a man who, I am convinced, had God in all his thoughts and actions ; but he was not one of those tactless persons who think it necessary to introduce the most sacred and awful of names into every discussion and detail of every-day life, and who make both themselves and their tenets a nuisance and a weariness from which we pray to be delivered. That Christmas of 1863 was saddened by the news of Thackeray's death. I had seen him the last time in November in Trafalgar- square, looking strong and full of life. I remember walking back after him to see him again. It has been one of the regrets of my life not to have known Thackeray. ' Esmond ' had been my favourite novel, and I loved the creator of Colonel Newcome, although I had never spoken to him. 168 MY REMINISCENCES. CHAPTER X. 1864: COLCHESTER, AND GARIBALDl's VISIT. EARLY in the year I went to read with another clergy- man for Cambridge, for I was now in my nineteenth year, and Cambridge had been selected as the place where I was to have what I believe to be called ' finishing my education,' as if one finished learning after a few terms at one of the Universities ! Eton had not been a success, therefore there was more reason to hope that Cambridge would prove to be one. It was to the Rev. L. Owen's at Colchester, in Essex, that I went to prepare for college. A greater contrast than Colchester was to Colovrex could hardly have been found. Instead of living in a pretty villa with one of the most glorious views of the world before it, I found one of those square, flat-roofed, yellow-brick houses that for ugliness have no rival in architecture, if such a building can be called archi- tectural. The building suited the place, however, perfectly. In front was a space of grass, with here and there a weedy flower-bed, a hedge of evergreens that led to the high road the Lexden road with a red-bricked grammar-school in front. Behind the COLCHESTER, AND GARIBALDI'S VISIT. 169 house a field opened on other fields, and beyond the ugliest, flattest scenery in England. This indeed was a poor change from Lake Leman and Mont Blanc, the terrace lined with bright lauriers-roses in gay green boxes, and the fine outline of the Jura hills for a background. But in spite of these unpicturesque surroundings, I found my lines had fallen in pleasant places, for a kinder or better type of the English parson ' coach ' than Mr. Owen could not have been found throughout the whole of England. There were not many pupils, but the eldest son of Lord Elcho Francis Charteris was already there when I came, and his brother Alfred joined us there later. Both these promising youths died young, both in their twenty-seventh year, the youngest on his way back from the Ashantee War. I never met a brighter, handsomer, more attractive fellow than poor Alfred Charteris, one of the many victims of our miserable Colonial wars, which are generally as futile and use- less as they are expensive and lavish in the waste of lives worthy of a better cause than the destruction of savages or the attainment of a scientific frontier. That Easter an interesting trio of guests were staying with my mother at Cliveden, where I passed a few days with her. These were Mr. Gladstone, and his friends Panizzi not yet Sir Anthony and Sir John Acton, now Lord Acton. ' The conversation was very entertaining ; Sir John Acton is a most i;o MY REMINISCENCES. uncommonly well-read man, and gifted with an as- tonishing memory. This evening he talked for upwards of an hour and a half without a break about Napoleon's Russian campaign and of Waterloo as if he had seen them. He described the field of Waterloo minutely, although he has never been there. It appears that he is not merely so astonishingly well informed on military matters, but also on every other literature, law, art, and biography. He has a good forehead, and a well- cut nose. Panizzi very entertaining ; he recalls both Thackeray and Dr. Johnson's portraits.' As Mr, Gladstone's name has been mentioned, I may here state that he had long before this time become one of my mother's best and greatest friends. Her admiration for him was boundless ; and the last years of her life were certainly made happier by this friendship. His visits were always to her an intense pleasure, and even when suffering too much to receive others she would always make an effort to appear sufficiently well to receive him. I find in a letter from her, written to me in the previous year, after meeting Mr. Gladstone, when on a visit to her sister Lady Taunton, at Quantock, in Somersetshire, the follow- ing : ' The Gladstones were there ; he was quite delightful, pouring out such floods of agreeable know- ledge all day long, and singing beautifully in the evening. Nobody makes me feel more the happiness of knowledge and the wish for it ; one must not forget COLCHESTER, AND GARIBALDI'S VISIT. 171 that he has the happiness of the Peace which passeth all understanding.' Some day I hope his correspon- dence with my mother may be published. He wrote constantly and fully to her. If the Londoners had gone mad over the arrival of the Princess Alexandra in March, 1863, they went still madder over that of Garibaldi in April, 1864. The General was to be the guest of my brother at Stafford House, to the great delight of my mother, who had always felt the warmest admiration for the deliverer of Naples, the heroic but misguided victim of Aspromonte, who had not then developed the intensely anti-Monarchic and Republican form of thinking, speaking, and writing that has somewhat shorn his old age of the glory of his middle life and of his heroic struggles in the cause of liberty. My mother was then living at Chiswick (lent her by her brother-in-law, the Duke of Devonshire), in that famed villa, with its lovely garden and superb cedars, under which the wit, beauty, rank, and talent of a century and a half of English men and women have passed. April 1 1 was the day of Garibaldi's reception in London. The spontaneous enthusiasm of hundreds of thousands made it perhaps the most remarkable ever accorded to a foreigner in this country. Up to seven in the evening the entrance side of Stafford House was packed with a dense crowd which extended into 172 MY REMINISCENCES. the Green Park ; so full was the Park that Lome and I struggled in vain to get through it to Cambridge House in Piccadilly. Pall Mall was impassable ; some of our party had gone to see the sight from Dover House, Whitehall, and returned having seen the General pass, and the mob clinging to the carriage. This, by the way, they did to a destructive extent, for shortly before the carriage drove beneath the portico of Stafford House, the dickey of the vehicle gave way, precipitating with it into the crowd the two foot- men, its occupants. It was eight before the General arrived, and then almost too dark to distinguish Garibaldi as he drove up, literally carriage, horses, and all carried along by the crowd. Never was there greater cheering and more tremendous enthusiasm ; the carriage rocked and swayed like a boat in a sea of human beings, and for several moments it seemed as if the shouting multitude would not allow their idol to be taken from them. A rush was made by the roar- ing, struggling throng as, at length, half carried into the building, Garibaldi, in his grey overcoat lined with red, passed through, and then the mob roared louder, and a rush was made to follow. Here ensued a scene that seemed at one moment as if it might take an ugly turn. For the police, and servants, and those within the house had a sharp struggle with the great outer wave of humanity that struggled to force itself into the building. Luckily the great mahogany doors COLCHESTER, AND GARIBALDI'S VISIT. 173 and stringent order and discipline within overcame mob and enthusiasm without, and at length the scene and the doors both closed. Garibaldi at last found repose within the great hall of Stafford House ; but from without, long after the hero of the people was out of their sight, the shouting of the crowds could be heard. Passing through the great glass doors into the inner hall, the General was severally introduced to the family of his host. Need- less to say what he looked like then, ere ill health and rheumatism had bowed that strong form and thinned that lion-like head. He was very lame from the Aspromonte wound ; he wore a sort of large pork-pie hat and a grey overcoat lined with red cloth, his famous, but not his only, as ill-natured people said of the articles of apparel, red flannel shirt, with a loose black tie round his neck. His rooms were on the ground floor, looking out on Clarence House. The next day it was my mother's turn to receive Garibaldi as her guest. She had asked a large number of friends to meet him at Chiswick ; amongst whom were the Shaftesburys, Clarendons, Gladstones, Russells, Lady Palmerston, Panizzi, Maro- chetti, Landseer, and many of the family, a host in themselves. Garibaldi, on being presented to Gladstone, said, as he grasped his hand, ' Precurseur.' My mother got the General before he left Chiswick to plant a ' Deodara ' 174 MY REMINISCENCES. on the left side of the broad walk near the cedars. The General handled the spade as to the manner born. He was in great talk and high spirits ; everyone was struck with his charm and simplicity. That evening a great dinner was given in his honour at Stafford House, followed by a large party ; the rooms were filled with a crowd as eager to see the General as had been the crowd in the streets. This was the last oc- casion on which my mother appeared at an evening party, and she divided with Garibaldi the homage and interest of the guests at Stafford House that night. Garibaldi remained ten days at Stafford House. He rose at five, and soon after six his rooms were already thronged by his friends. He held here a kind of informal levte every morning, signing numberless papers and receiving as many, listening to endless questions and suggestions, and having invitations of every sort and kind thrust upon him, during which he would walk up and down, and even out of the room, and, considering the way the poor man was tormented, it was not to be wondered at. One morning he was surrounded by artists who attempted to get a por- trait, but he was too active for them ; although they pursued him as he marched about with their pencils and sketch-books, he would not be induced to sit. An exception, however, was made in favour of a COLCHESTER, AND GARIBALDI'S VISIT. 175 very great artist Watts who, thanks to my mother, did succeed in painting the General's portrait. Mr. Watts had been found very early one morning by my mother full of disappointment at Garibaldi, who, after promising an early sitting, had to leave the house with- out giving him one. But my mother got a promise from the General that he would not fail to sit the following morning. So anxious was she that Watts should not be again disappointed that she went to the dining-room at seven the following morning, expect- ing to find him. The General was already there, besides a trio of artists hard at work ; but not seeing Watts, she said, 'Mais je ne vois pas man artiste /' to which the General replied, 'Mais, Madame, il me semble quit y en a trois id' Watts soon after ap- peared, making a quartette. Garibaldi received a perfect ovation when he visited the Crystal Palace, where Arditi conducted the concert, at which some of the finest voices of the Italian Opera intoned the hymn that Arditi had composed in honour of the occasion. The effect of the thousands of voices for everyone joined in the stirring chorus and of the words of it, ' O Garibaldi, nostro salvator. Te seguiremo, al campo deW onor, Risorga Italia ! ' &c., was tremendous. I was sitting next Sir Joseph Paxton, who sobbed like a child as 20,000 voices echoed the hymn that sounded like a great trumpet-blast through the building that owed its existence to his genius. 176 MY REMINISCENCES. Mario and Santley, Graziani and Giuglini, were among the singers of that day. But all these ovations were more than Garibaldi's health could stand, and partly on account of that and partly because it was considered impolitic that he should visit the great manufacturing cities in the North of England, his visit was considerably shortened from its original proportions. On the night of April 17 there was much consultation and deliberation at Stafford House. A kind of cabinet council, consisting among others of my brother, General Peard, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Seely, Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. Stansfeld, and Colonel Chambers, decided that it would be advis- able to give up the tour in the provinces, both on account of the state of the General's health and also of the endless jealousies and the ill- blood that would be roused if he visited a town in Lancashire and omitted visiting some other in another county ; and that, all things considered, the sooner he returned to his home in Caprera the better. Before he left us altogether he made my mother another visit, on this occasion coming to Cliveden. Never had he seemed more simple and likeable than during this quiet time, when he was no longer pursued by deputations and shoals of admirers and friends. One morning he was taken over the Home Farm at Windsor, and in the evening he was rowed on the Thames. The quiet and beauty of the spot called out the poetic vein that COLCHESTER, AND GARIBALDI'S VISIT. 177 was strong in that glorious old buccaneer, and as he wandered amidst the beautiful glades and drives in Cliveden he repeated many an ode of Foscolo's and of Filicaza's. He occupied the ground floor rooms of the left wing of the house, which open on a garden, all sunshine and flowers. He visited Eton College, on his way to Slough Station. ' We left for Eton soon after eight a.m., Garibaldi with my mother and the Staffords in an open carriage and four. Great enthusiasm among the Eton boys, who cheered most heartily as the General was driven into the school-yard. It was a beautiful sight that fine old quadrangle that the "antique towers" of the chapel and hall looked down on ; Gari- baldi standing up bareheaded in the carriage ; the boys crowding round him like a swarm of bees, all trying to shake his hand. The place in great beauty. Many of the masters in the crowd " Goody " very conspicuous. There was not time enough for Gari- baldi to leave the carriage, and after staying in the school-yard about ten minutes he was driven on to Slough ; some of the fellows running a good part of the way after him. At Slough Station we took leave of the General ; all except my eldest brother, who went on with him to Portsmouth, and intended escort- ing him on his yacht to Caprera. It was quite an unhappiness to lose him, and this feeling was shared by many there, for many were quite affected at this VOL. i. x 178 MY REMINISCENCES. leave-taking. Garibaldi himself seemed with diffi- culty to control a like manifestation. With his usual courtesy, just as he was getting into the saloon car- riage, having in the crowd and bustle forgotten to wish Lady Shaftesbury farewell, he walked back through the crowd to where she stood to shake her hand once again.' After all the feting and commotion that he had gone through since his arrival in London he must have been glad to return to his quiet life and simple little island home. My mother knew how he loved Caprera, and had while he was at Stafford House placed a view of that place in his room. The next time I saw Garibaldi he was lying wounded and ill, sick in heart and body, in a little dark room in an inn in the Tyrol. Returning again to my studies at Colchester, after all the stir and excitement of this memorable visit, I found the monotony of my life at my Essex tutor's rather dull. ' Hlas> pour les beaux arts ! Oh, that I could go to Rome or Florence, and study in some studio for a year or so ! Learn Italian and other delightful things, and let grammar, mathematics, com- position gang to the dogs ! ' I wrote on returning to Colchester. But it was no use lamenting, and the summer was passed at Colchester in the humdrum sort of existence that I so disliked ; the monotony of the time being only occasionally enlivened by a flying visit to my mother at Chiswick, or to see an exhibition COLCHESTER, AND GARIBALDI'S VISIT. 179 in London. One of these expeditions was to the Academy, then still in Trafalgar Square. Delightful evenings were those when, often with the Gladstones, we used to sit out under the colonnade at night listening to the nightingales and watching the moon behind the old cedars casting weird shadows from their wide-spreading branches over the smooth lawn beneath. N 2 i8o MY REMINISCENCES. CHAPTER XL A VISIT TO POTSDAM LORD CARLISLE'S DEATH. IN the early summer of 1864 my sister Evelyn Blantyre's second daughter married Sir David Baird. Ellen Stuart was the first of my numerous nieces who gave the example, which has been followed steadily ever since by a large number of my nephews and nieces, I trust with entire satisfaction to their wives and husbands. At the end of July my mother went to consult the renowned Prussian oculist, Graff, and to do so had to go to Berlin. I accompanied her. We went through Hanover and Brunswick. We spent some time in wandering about the quaint old gardens of Herrenhausen at the former place, our heads full of poor Dorothea of Zell and the first two Georges, for I had been reading over again to my mother Thack- eray's lectures on those monarchs ; and in the latter I was much interested by the ducal vault in the Dom Church, where poor Caroline of England is buried, her coffin covered over with crimson velvet, on it a crown ; here is also that of the Duke of A VISIT TO POTSDAM. 181 Brunswick who was killed at Quatre Bras. It is covered with laurels and flags. Others of former dukes and their wives, on which engravings of their occupants are placed ; ladies in powder, and beperi- wigged gentlemen. Our then Ambassador at Berlin Sir Andrew Buchanan who was away on leave of absence, had placed the Embassy at my mother's disposal. It was then in the Leipsige Strasse, a smaller and far less commodious building than the present one. During our stay in Berlin we called on a very re- markable old lady, whose memory went back as far as the days of the great Frederick. This was the Countess Pauline Neale, who was over eighty, and who had been one of Queen Louise's ladies of honour. She spoke much of my father, who was an old friend of hers in the early years of the century, of his kindness to them during their times of distress, when Napoleon was trampling on Prussia, and crush- ing her Queen's heart by his tyranny. Would that this old countess could have lived to see the triumph of her countrymen and of the son of her beloved mistress over the enemy of their country. We reached Berlin at the dead season of the year, when all those who could leave the hot, unsavoury capital through which the Spree makes its turgid way have departed. Among others, the most noted of the artists were not then in their Berlin studios. 182 MY REMINISCENCES. Kaulbach was at Munich, Overbeck in Rome, and Benderman at Dusseldorf. However, we found the sculptor of the famous Amazon (that created so much admiration when exhibited in our Crystal Palace in 1851), Kiss, still in Berlin. ' He is a plain, uncon- ceited creature, with a good, solid head, on which grows a rather bottle-shaped nose. He has a col- lection of casts of famous men, taken after death, hanging up in his atelier ; among others those of Nicholas of Russia, of Beethoven, Goethe and Schiller, Queen Louise, Frederick II. (fearfully shrunken), the late King of Prussia (brother of the present monarch), Dante, Petrarch, and others. Although the Amazon is Kiss's finest work, he has also in the Palace-yard at Berlin a fine equestrian group of St. George slaying the dragon. Another noted artist whose studio we visited was Cornelius. He is over seventy-five, but has lately married a lady of five-and-twenty. He came to us from his garden, very feeble and old, and showed us what he called his last work, a large life-size drawing of Christ and St. Thomas. A fine but not very striking drawing ; ' the Apostle's head very good.' By far the most interesting of our visits while at Berlin was one to Potsdam, to which place the Crown Princess invited my mother. 'We left Berlin at 11.45, reaching Potsdam at 12.45. The Crown Prince was waiting on the A VISIT TO POTSDAM. 183 platform of the station, and a little further back stood the Princess, who embraced my mother. They drove off in a little open carriage ; I followed in another with a General Schweinitz, he in uniform, grey, bronzed, and good-looking. We drove on through the grounds of Sans Souci, which are very pretty, with a quantity of timber, and a little further on we reached our destination, the new Palace, also built by Frederick the Great. It is a huge red-brick and stucco building, with a great dark cupola on it. Our rooms are near the entrance of the Palace, my mother's walls covered with yellow silk, on which Chinese figures are embroidered, with an immensely high state bed with plumes at the top of it. It was in this great bed that the Crown Prince was born. My room has painted walls, and halfway up these walls are gilded brackets with porcelain statuettes in them of Hercules and Omphale ; this group is mul- tiplied all round the room, so that there are about two dozen Hercules and Omphales there. 1 We dined at two p.m., and we had to dress in our evening things for this repast. It took place upstairs in a corner room, with the walls of blue silk, fringed with gold lace. I sat on one side of the Crown Princess, my mother on the other, next to the Prince. The Princess very smart, in a magenta- coloured gown, with pearls and lace. The Crown Prince in his plain uniform, with only a star or two, 1 84 MY REMINISCENCES. which he always wears. " It is a custom," he said, "and looks so very officered." We were ten all told ; two officers, in uniform, of course, three ladies Countess Briihl, a jolly, fat creature ; Countess Hohenthiil (Valerie), whom I had seen at Stafford House when she came with the Princess to see my mother in the winter ; she is like a Greuze. The third lady's name I forget. ' After dinnei we went to the Crown Princess's sitting-room ; the furniture there is covered with Gobelin tapestry a gift of the Empress Eugenie's. Here are some of the Princess's own paintings, lately finished, representing Prussian soldiers. One of these was of a warrior holding a flag, inscribed " s lebe der Konig" The second a soldier looking upward. He has been wounded, and he wears a bandage across his brow ; a sunset sky for background. This is inscribed '' Nun danket alle Gott? The third is another soldier looking down on a newly-made grave. Of these three I thought the second by far the best. There was another painting, also by the Princess, here, representing the Entombment. ' The Crown Prince's room is full of family por- traits Frederick the First, among other ancestors. In it stands a large screen covered with military photographs. Colonel Schweinitz took me over the lower floor of the Palace, where there is a hall that resembles a huge grotto, a marble hall, and the room A VISIT TO POTSDAM. 185 that the Great Frederick occupied, his library full of French works. Here stands his writing-table, and here is to be seen a portrait of Voltaire drawn by Frederick himself. We drove out in the evening- first to the Orangerie Palace, in which is a room full of copies of Raffaelle's Madonnas, built by the late King ; and then to the water's edge, where the River Hagel makes quite a respectable lake, and on this lake we went in a steamer, in which we cruised about. ' It began to rain, and in torrents. As we re- turned, a beautiful yellow sunset sky gilt the fir woods on the shores of the lake. Driving back to the New Palace, we could judge of the popularity of our hosts, for everyone that we passed stopped to bow to them, and those who were in carriages stood up in them to salute as the Prince and Princess passed by. The Prince returns their salute a la Wellington. ' Tea was served at ten in the evening in one of the rooms on the ground floor of the Palace. They call it the Apollo room, I believe. For this repast one was not expected to don one's evening apparel a second time. It was a curious meal, beginning with tea and cake, followed by meat, veal, and jellies, and two plates of sour cream. ' Breakfast was taken upstairs, in a room of which the walls are lined with pale blue silk, framed in 186 MY REMINISCENCES. silver. We were alone with the Prince and Princess and their children. Princess Charlotte and Prince Henry came in late he a chubby infant of two. The Crown Prince looked well in a high white waistcoat, black round cravat, and military coat ; the Princess in her favourite pink-coloured dress. At two they took us in their carriage, with postillions and outriders. It was a beautiful day. We drove again through the grounds of Sans Souci, past the historic Windmill, and across a bridge to Babelsberg, one of the King's villas, and his favourite. Here the Crown Prince and Princess lived the first years after their marriage, and it was here that the Argylls visited them some years ago. Babelsberg is a pretty Gothic chateau. The Prince took me up to a tower, from which there is an extensive view of Potsdam and of the surrounding wooded plain. He also showed me the rooms. In the King's room and in some of the bedrooms are many English engravings, such as views of the camp at Chobham, Swinton's portrait of the Duchess of Wellington (he asked me to get him the companion print to this of Constance Grosvenor), &c. We then went to Gliniken a villa belonging to Princess Charles, who was outside the house on the steps as we drove up to it. She still bears traces of the beauty for which she was once famous. My mother remembered her at Berlin in 1828, when she was in her prime. Gliniken is filled A VISIT TO POTSDAM. 187 with fragments of antique marbles, &c. In the Princess's room are copies after Raffaelle, in fine old Italian frames. Here is also a book full of photo- graphs of Prussian officers, one of the Crown Prince amongst others, taken during the campaign in Hoi- stein. He had a beard when this portrait was taken. Returning to Potsdam, the Crown Princess showed us her private garden, and here she plucked a clove, which she gave me with her own little hand.' This Potsdam flower has retained its shape and colour in the leaves of my diary. ' We returned to Berlin from Potsdam with an officer whose brother had taken Alsen in the late war with Denmark.' How that little war has been over- shadowed by the far greater ones that Prussia has passed through triumphantly since that month of August, 1864! Leaving Berlin soon after this visit to two of the kindest and most amiable of Royalties, we went by Cassel, Frankfort, Heidelberg, and Basle, where we were delighted with the splendid Holbein drawings in its gallery, to Geneva, revisiting the good old Pasteur Eymar at Colovrex. ' We passed a pleasant evening with him and his family, sitting after dinner on the terrace bright with its lauriers-roses in their green wooden tubs, with the glorious panorama of Lake Leman and Mont Blanc before us, which as the shadows thickened became of a deeper pink against i88 MY REMINISCENCES. the darkening purple sky above.' Then on by Lyons, which we found en fte, it being August 15 the Emperor's day to Vichy. There my mother re- mained some weeks, and there I left her with my brother Albert, having to return to read at Colchester. I was joined at that unlively and unlovely place by Lome in October, he having come there also to pre- pare for matriculating at Cambridge. We had some pleasant games at cricket and rides on jobbed horses in that most uninteresting of counties during the long September evenings, after our day's work was over. In the middle of October I went with Lome to Cam- bridge, where he went into residence at Trinity College. There I remained until he had finished his entrance examination, but did not feel sufficiently prepared to do the same myself at that time, and I returned to Colchester at the beginning of the follow- ing year ; but I had, as it were, broken the ice a little of College life before I actually came up to Cambridge as a student, as I find by the following notice of a dinner in the College Hall to which I went with Lome soon after his arrival at Trinity : ' We went to Wood's rooms, and also called on Matheson ' (one of the tutors), ' who has a beautiful room looking out on the avenue of limes at the back of the College, in the third quadrangle. He asked us to dine in the Hall, and we went there with him at 9.30. We sat at the High Table, but had not a good view of LORD CARLISLE'S DEATH. 189 the Hall, as the " Fellow Commoners " ' (Lome was one of these elevated creatures who then, for the foolish custom has been abolished, were clothed in a blue gown a kind of loose smock-frock with pendent sleeves adorned with silver lace) 'sit with their backs to the Hall. It is a grand old building, with a fine carved roof, and the best bay-windows I ever saw. They keep up here the custom of drinking healths, at least the Dons pledge the Fellow Commoners. I sat between Lome and Duncombe, another of these Fellow Commoners. Thomas Fitzwilliam, Melgund and his brother, and Edmond Fitzwilliam, second son of Lord Lansdowne, the image of Menotti Garibaldi, were also among the Fellow Commoners that after- noon at the High Table at Trinity.' Returning from Cambridge to . Colchester, which I found doubly dull without Lome, I was most in- terested by hearing of a visit the last my mother made to her beloved Dunrobin. She had not been there since my father's death, and the pain and pleasure of revisiting the place they had made so beautiful, and which they had so loved, must indeed have been half bitter, half sweet to her. At a review of the Volunteers, part of whom were named after her, she addressed them in the following heartfelt words when they came to pay their homage to her before the Castle which her taste and care had rendered the most beautiful in the country : ' I wish,' she said, igo MY REMINISCENCES. ' to say a few words to you, but I fear I shall not be able to say what I would wish. I cannot speak to you without emotion, for since I have been here my health has altered, and I am bereaved. You know the interest my husband took in this great and loyal movement ; you know the interest he felt for you, for your fathers and kindred. I know how he loved the country, how much of his time he gave to it, and how his pleasure in life was in doing good to others. It has been a trial to me to return alone without the dear companion of my life ; but it is a blessing to be here, and a gladness to see you all again. Neither failing sight nor altered health will make dear Dun- robin less vivid, nor change the love I bear to Sutherland ! ' Of this incident my mother wrote thus to me : ' I had to do a very moving thing yesterday morning : to receive the regiment that is called mine, and to thank them. They looked beau- tiful in the Castle Court on a sunny morning, and I cannot tell you what the warmth of the people has been to me.' The news that my uncle Carlisle had died after a long illness reached me at Colchester on Decem- ber 6. ' Ought one,' I wrote, on hearing that this dear, kind relation had at last been freed from a hopeless and lingering illness, ' ought one to grieve too much at this deliverance, for his pure and gentle spirit released from the body of this death ? What LORD CARLISLE'S DEATH. 191 a brother my mother has lost in him ! and we, what a friend and relation ! This causes a blank that can never be filled.' Bidding a lasting farewell to Colchester, I left London for York on the morning of a cold Sunday in December, in order to attend the funeral of my uncle at Castle Howard. * I had not been here for more than six years. The funeral took place on December 13. The first thing one saw in going from the hall to the dining-room was the coffin, covered with a velvet pall, on which rested the coronet, black plumes placed around. We followed the body along those beautiful grass terraces he had loved so well. The rain fell in torrents as we wended our melancholy way to that superb mausoleum where he sleeps.' The following passage from one of the many letters of condolence that our loss occasioned is from a letter from Dean Stanley to my sister Eliza- beth Argyll, and is so full of real sympathy and of affection for my uncle that I give it here. ' He must have been,' writes the Dean, of Lord Carlisle, ' he must have been to his family like the " Christmas hearth." Slightly as I knew him, it is delightful to think of such a long continuous recollection of nothing but genial, loving kindness. Years ago how many years must it be ? I remember the delight with which I read aloud to my sister his speech after the defeat in the Yorkshire election, and I thought that IQ2 MY REMINISCENCES. a gleam of light what a green spot it was ! amidst all the malignity and scurrility of the general elec- tioneering reports. And how like everything that I knew of him was to that ! The Prince of Wales has written to me about him with true feeling. What an excellent pattern of the best kind of popularity for him to remember ! ' Mr. Motley, the American his- torian, wrote to my brother-in-law, Argyll, as follows, on the same subject : ' That I always thoroughly appreciated the privilege and good fortune of being admitted to his (Lord Carlisle's) intimacy you cannot doubt, and none could have known him without honouring and loving him. The " well beloved " an appellation sometimes bestowed upon worthless monarchs by their sycophants will be the title which all who ever came within the sphere of Lord Carlisle's familiar presence will spontaneously and most affec- tionately associate with his name. There will be no lack of competent eulogists to celebrate as they de- serve his distinguished public services, his eloquence, his high intellectual power, his scholarship, his liberal and statesmanlike comprehension of the world's affairs, and it would be out of place for me to allude to him in his public capacity at all, save perhaps to dwell for a moment with pleasure on the fact that, from first to last, his heart was in with the right in the vast struggle still going on between the spirit of freedom and of slavery in my own country. He, at least, was LORD CARLISLE'S DEATH. 193 never scared by the possible greatness of America, when purged of her great crime and re-established in her natural and historical integrity of domain. He, at least, was incapable of swerving from that hostility to African slavery which he had professed from his youth up. But I should not allude to the subject at all were I not so well aware that his sentiments were shared by yourself and by most of his nearest relations. It is even more consoling to dwell upon his gentle and genial qualities of heart upon that chivalry of soul flowing from even a higher fountain than that of the blood of all the Howards, to which it added a fresh nobility. In truth, I am afraid to speak as I really feel about him for fear of being betrayed into extravagance of language. His pre- sence was a perpetual benediction, for nature had given him that love and deep benevolence which reveals itself without effort or intention in a personal manner not to be imitated by those less fortunately endowed. How well I remember the genial smile with which he once said to me, half jestingly, but, as I had reason to know afterwards, with real sincerity, " Let us swear an eternal friendship ; " and certainly, whenever I was in England, he was never weary in his deeds of friendship and of hospitality to me and mine. And certainly I have always responded to his most gratifying proposal ; and, as I have already said, it seems to me as if I had lost one of the best friends VOL. i. o 194 MY REMINISCENCES. I ever had. There are many to mourn him and dwell upon the remembrance of his virtues, but I believe that out of the immediate circle of those nearest and dearest to him no one laments his death more sincerely than I do. He had many friends and admirers in America, as you well know. Of all Americans Sumner held the first place in his affec- tions, and he will bitterly grieve for his loss ; while there are many others in our country who will feel it most keenly.' I will also quote yet another letter about Lord Carlisle, written by Harriet Martineau to my mother, who had written to Miss Martineau to express the pleasure that the monograph on her beloved brother had given her, and which I have quoted from in a former chapter. In her letter Miss Martineau men- tions the following act of kindness which he showed her : ' I write to tell you,' she says, ' of an act of his so characteristic that it is probable he himself never mentioned it. Exactly twenty years ago (this very month, December, 1864) Lord Carlisle came re- peatedly with the Liddels from Ravensworth to in- vestigate some of the phenomena of mesmerism, by which I had recovered from a "hopeless" illness. By the folly of my medical man the whole affair was needlessly made public, and I was subjected to much insult and annoyance. After his visits were over, Lord Carlisle wrote me a letter to be used in any LORD CARLISLE'S DEATH. 195 way I should think proper bearing testimony on his part to the reality of the phenomena which he had witnessed. I never did put that letter to public or any other use, because the only effect would have been bringing impertinence and perhaps insult upon him. But the generosity and consideration of the thought and the act made a profound impression on me and my relatives.' After reading those testimonies from people so different as Dean Stanley, Motley, and Harriet Martineau, bearing their witness to the goodness and kindness of my uncle, I do not think anyone could find Thackeray's words about him too full of praise when he writes of him as of one ' beloved as widely as he is known ; a man most kind, accomplished, gentle, friendly, and pure ! ' 196 MY REMINISCENCES. CHAPTER XII. CAMBRIDGE DAYS. THAT Christmas and the New Year of 1865 I passed at Trentham. Full of recollections of our genial and kind uncle who had so lately died, that house and place were so associated with him that it saddened the time for all of us. It was a mild winter, and we had more hunting than skating. Among other guests then staying with my brother at Trentham that winter were two of my father's oldest friends, Count Pahlen and Ralph Sneyd, whose splendid house at Keale, near Trentham, had recently been completed. One evening we looked over French prints relating to the Great Revolution. ' It was interesting to hear Pahlen and Sneyd discuss the characters of actors in that great drama, some of whom they might have seen. They expressed much dislike for Madame Roland. Mr. Sneyd had been a great courtier when he was a boy at Eton. His parents lived at Windsor when his father was attached to the Court. George III. had given him a Latin Grammar, and he was quite an ardent admirer of that monarch.' Often, when in town that winter, I finished the CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 197 evening at Evans's, the once famous supper-rooms in Covent Garden. There is nothing now in London that can compare with the Evans's of those days. It was a mixture of a supper-room, a club, and a music- hall, and had not then degenerated into the casino sort of place it decayed into. Those were the palmy days of the never-to-be-forgotten ' Paddy ' Green, who then ruled the roast in those semi-subterranean halls, and received and welcomed one as if it were in his own house. Dear genial old Paddy Green ! How cordial his welcome ! how affectionate his greeting as he shook all-comers by the hand, and ' dear-boy'd ' them one and all ! No one had such a store of theatrical lore and gossip as he : who can forget those pleasant evenings enlightened by his rubicund face, or the white wig which so well set it off; and, above all, his much-used and oft-proffered snuff-box ? The well- known airs seem to be played and sung again the stirring ballad of ' The Men of Harlech,' ' The Chough and Crow,' ' Who will o'er the Downs so free?' or Balfe's 'With Music so Enchanting,' seem again to echo through the crowded rooms as we recall Paddy Green's wig, snuff-box, ' dear boys,' and all the stir and the clatter of the waiting and the waiters ; the aroma of the smoking potations and the perfume of the ' welsh rabbit ' arise as one thinks of those pleasant noisy nights. The place was full of portraits of theatrical men and women of the past. The actors i 9 8 MY REMINISCENCES and actresses portrayed on those walls seemed again to strut on the world's stage anew, and to return from the oblivion that so soon settles over the player's memory when once the Great Scene-shifter has made his final call which none can disobey. But to name these would be to give a list of all the celebrated, and many of the uncelebrated, players on the English stage from the days of Garrick down to those of Macready. I will only refer to one, a mere sketch in oils of a female head. This hung close by a fireplace, and although so dirty and begrimed by London soot and tobacco smoke that one could hardly do more than trace on the darkened canvas a lovely face, it always took my fancy and arrested my eye ; and it needed not Paddy Green to assure me that it was by Romney to know that, among all the rubbishy theatrical portraits in those rooms, this little unfinished sketch was a genuine and rare work. It is now in my house at Windsor. The features are those of Mrs. Siddons. Since reading Fanny Kemble's Memoirs I have my doubts, how- ever, whether it is by Romney, for she mentions a portrait of her sister Mrs. Siddons's niece painted by Lawrence, which was in these supper-rooms to her knowledge. Whether it be by Romney or by Law- rence, it is at any rate a charming and spirited portrait, and vividly recalls the many happy evenings passed in classic Covent Garden, and the kindly old Irish- man who, now gone to his rest, then received half CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 199 the men about London in the old cider-cellars under the Piazza. Although my mother's health was declining-, she was still able from time to time to see her friends at Cliveden or at Chiswick. I find under the date of January 17 that, although very unwell, her delight in listening to Mr. Gladstone's wonderful flow of talk overcame her physical suffering. ' Gladstone and his third son Henry are here (Cliveden). Gladstone looks older, but is full of talk. Speaking about Lord Derby's translation of Homer, he said he thought it " too rapid "- that upon an average he had translated thirty lines per diem ; this while engaged on his Parlia- mentary duties. He approves of Tennyson being made a baronet ; but he does not think the honour sufficiently great. He expressed a poor opinion of the industry of the titled young generation in Parlia- ment, and thinks they do not attend sufficiently or apply enough to their duties. He spoke with great affection of Chalmers ; thinks his intellect was superior to Guthrie's, and that some of his sermons were " gorgeous." He approves much of the system of fagging.' These are but very scanty notes, hardly worth printing, if one did not feel that even the crumbs of this mighty thinker and talker's conversa- tion were worth recording. At the end of January I took up my abode at Trinity College, Cambridge, occupying at first Lome's 200 MY REMINISCENCES. rooms in the Old Court, pending the time that I could get some for myself. His rooms were big enough for both, and it was a pleasure to look forward to sharing them with him, for he had not yet come back to Cam- bridge, and my first days there were extremely dull and dreary. The weather was miserably cold and cheerless ; the early chapel was a martyrdom every morning, the ' coaching ' during the day a nuisance ; and, worst thing of all, loomed out the near-at-hand and awful examination. The ordeal was, however, successfully passed, and after a few days I got a couple of cheerful rooms for myself, on the Lecture-room staircase, close to those Lome occupied, with a good look-out over the grand old Quadrangle, The number was fifty-five ; Lord J. Hervey had lodged there some time before, but the latest occupant was a Fellow Mr. Brandreth. There was no attempt at aesthetic display or high art in those days in the Universities, but mine were comfortable rooms, with the bedroom opening into the sitting-room, divided by folding doors, which eventually were draped by blue curtains. The fur- niture was oak in the sitting-room, in the bedroom birch. Prints and photographs, mostly of family and home, were hung on the walls ; and over the fireplace were a pair of red deer's antlers, the first that I had killed at Dunrobin. My only unnecessary luxury was my valet, Luke, who lodged in a little room above CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 201 mine. Customs change so rapidly at the Universities, as everywhere else, that perhaps this description of my room may seem curious to a generation of students whose rooms in and out of College are full of Burne- Jones' photographs and Morris' designs. Like Lome, I had been entered as a Fellow Com- moner. The only difference between Fellow Com- moners and others was that the former had the privilege of retaining the hideous chimney-pot hat and of not wearing the College cap ; of wearing a long, loose kind of dressing-gown of blue serge, trimmed with silver lace, instead of a plain black one ; and of dining in Hall at the upper table with the dons. What these things could profit a young fellow at the University I cannot think, and I rejoice to know that these ' Gentlemen Commoners ' no longer exist at Trinity. But although we could not be the better for being ' Fellow Commoners,' wearing a blue and silver dressing-gown and dining at the upper table, the dons and tutors profited by it. There was a regular cere- mony to be undergone, termed being 'gowned,' when for the first time one was attired in the blue and silver robe that would have become a Jack-in-the-Green. It was as follows : ' After dinner was at an end in the College Hall, one of the tutors read something aloud to the other tutors, while the undergraduate " Fellow Commoner " put on the gown a simple but most un- necessary form I thought it.' (N.B. The gown cost 202 MY REMINISCENCES. eleven guineas ! So much the better for the tailor.) Poor blue and silver gowns, you have all long since passed into that Kmbo where all the gorgeous dresses end, from those of a Field-Marshal to the pantomimic clown, and from the King's coronation robe to the harlequin's blue and silver spangles ! At church ser- vice in the College chapel on Saturdays and holidays we appeared wearing a surplice. The effect of the white-robed congregation of undergraduates scatter- ing out of the chapel gates, and threading their way in the winter evenings among the old colleges and halls I thought, until I got more used to it, extremely picturesque. Early in February I had to call on that terrible potentate, our Master, Dr. Whewell, of whom most undergraduates at Trinity stood in great awe, at least when before the doctor's face. But behind his back they called him familiarly ' Billy Whistle ! ' I found the interview not so fearful an ordeal as I had been led to expect. One evening in that month I met at Mr. W. G. Clark's rooms two distinguished men Charles Kings- ley and the present Master of Trinity, Dr. Thompson, at that time Regius Professor of Greek ' rather a dry don. He was here with Thackeray the year after Tennyson came. Thackeray's rooms were on the left- hand side of the great gate. Dr. Thompson said Thackeray was very social and popular here ; that he CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 203 drew much better when he was young than he did latterly; and that he was always very fond of the literature of Queen Anne's time. I also had a long talk with Kingsley. He stammers very much in con- versation, yet not at all in preaching. He spoke quite affectionately about Uncle Morpeth, and called him "the purest and kindest soul," and also with deep admiration of my mother. He had unbounded ad- miration for Garibaldi, and scorn of Napoleon (III.). Thought the latter half a Greek, half a Dutchman. Very Kingsleyish about the old French noblesse being Franks, a fair-haired race, extirpated at the Great Revolution by the people, who were Gauls. This, he thought, is the reason why so few fair-haired people are seen in France. He told me his lectures were extemporaneous, and that he never made a note for them.' At the close of February Lome and I were in- vited to a dinner at the Lodge the Master's. ' A dreadfully slow affair, very stiff. Lady Affleck did not appear (poor woman, she was then in a dying state). The sitting-room is a beautiful one, with fine old portraits. We dined at seven, and did not get away till ten. The next day I was in the agonies of my examination for matriculation. My Euclid viva voce examination was deplorable.' However, my ex- aminers were merciful accept my thanks even at this far-off date, Messrs. Blore and Hudson and I had 204 MY REMINISCENCES. the satisfaction of writing home to say that I had 'passed/ Election to the A. D. C. soon followed the famous Academical Dramatic Club. In its rooms, or rather room, for the Club, although it had a theatre, had but one sitting-room, I certainly passed more en- joyable hours than in any other Club since, although I have belonged to such as White's and the Garrick, the Travellers' and the St. James's. The Athenaeum was another Cambridge Club to which I belonged a less merry and enjoyable one than the A. D. C., and by way of being the White's of the University. Among my friends then at Cambridge, with whom I associated with much pleasure, were, besides Lome and Jocelyn (the late Earl of Roden, whom I had known even before those days), my cousin Ellesmere, F. Wood, Horace Seymour, Hyde, Poulett, Huntly, Gerald Bridgeman, Meysey-Thompson, Walter Dun- combe, Cyril Flower, and others. All these were Trinity men, but I knew and liked others who did not belong to that College. Frequently I went to town to see my mother, who was now mostly at Chiswick. It was a long drive from Shoreditch Station across London to Chiswick ; and, to while away the length of the drive, I would frequently request the cabman to leave his lofty seat and enter his cab, while I held the reins and swung along the streets to the far west. This was a pro- ceeding that the stricter rules and regulations of the CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 205 police of to-day could not tolerate, so I do not recom- mend any University man to follow my example, but merely allude to it to show how more severe legislation has become, at least that applied to hansom cabs and their drivers. At Chiswick one had a capital place of vantage for seeing the University race on the river. Immediately below Chiswick House is a spot on the river known as Corney Reach. Here dwelt formerly the famous Lord Macartney, the Ambassador to China, who has left so interesting an account of his mission. His house has long ago disappeared, but the terrace still remains overlooking the river, and it was from here that one had a good view of the boat-race. As a rule that race is decided almost opposite Corney, for here the ' tug of war' between the rival crews generally commences and ends. Woe to the boat that here is distanced even by half a length ! That year I rode down from London to Chiswick to see the race with A. Campbell. ' It was a grand sight ; some fifteen or twenty steamers rushing on after the boats, crowded with people ; this was alone worth coming all the way to see.' More royal visits occurred about this time, the Queen calling to see my mother, who was laid up with illness at Stafford House. ' Stafford received Her Majesty at the entrance, the glass doors being, of course, thrown open. The Queen's mourning as deep as ever. She sat with my mother in her sitting-room 206 MY REMINISCENCES. upstairs, and stayed about an hour. Princesses Helena and Louise came with her.' ' I was, a few days later, at the Duke of Man- chester's place Kimbolton Castle. Rather a nice old house within, with a fine sitting-room, with full-length family portraits, amongst others a horrid German one of the duchess in red velvet. The outside of the house perfectly hideous ; grounds poor, no attempt at a garden, only a large round duck-pond in front, but some fine timber about. Among the people in the house were Lady Westmorland, the Probyns, Hart- ington, and H. Chaplin. Rather a good painting of Noll Cromwell in the dining-room, like a De la Roche, but not by him. The duchess in great beauty, in a white gown bespattered with diamonds. I think that loud ringing laugh of hers the prettiest music possible. Lady W- - also very gorgeous her hair in velvet bands wonderful ! ' Then enter the Volunteers. It was a ball in their honour that was given at Kimbolton that night, and with their appearance I was not greatly impressed. The Gladstones came at the end of April to Chis- wick. ' Gladstone working very hard at his Budget ; he got up soon after four in the morning to go on with it ! ' On a Sunday, April 23, came the mighty news from the New World that General Lee had on the roth surrendered to Grant. After the evacuation of Richmond all further resistance on Lee's side was CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 207 hopeless. At this time Leech's sketches and pictures were being sold at Christie's ; very sketchy, but of course clever. ' Met Marochetti, Sir R. Murchison, Mr. Wornum, and others at Christie's, where the sale was taking place of those drawings. The sale lasted three days, and realised over six thousand pounds. The sketches sold well, from five to twelve guineas a-piece.' l The twenty-sixth of that month was a day full of sensational news. In the 'Times' of that day ap- peared the confession of Constance Kent, the heroine of the Road murder. Also the news of the assassina- tion of a Secretary of the Russian Legation ; and in the afternoon, while riding back to Chiswick from Stafford House, I heard the still more terrible tidings of President Lincoln's murder on the i5th, and of the attempts to assassinate Seward and his son on the same day. Indeed, for a day of sensational news that was a great one. At the end of April I was back again at Trinity, with the dull prospect for the next six weeks of having to work vigorously, as there was a horrid examination during the last week, called ' the May.' On the 7th 1 Apropos of this sale of Leech's drawings, a sale which lasted three days, I find that some slight water-colour sketches were going on the 27th at ico/. a-piece. The picture of two girls walking by the sea-shore at Biarritz was bought, I hear, by the Prince of Wales ; and that Mr. Gladstone gave 587. for the one of Tom Noddy reciting on the beach while a group of young ladies, unseen by him, look on in ineffable amusement. 2 o8 MY REMINISCENCES. I heard that my niece, Ellen Baird, had been confined of a boy, the first of a long series of great-nephews and great-nieces that seem to intend continuing until the crack of doom. ' Good,' I thought, ' but curious news. For how odd to think of Evy Blantyre a grandmother, my mother a great-grand, and myself a great-uncle.' During this Term my eldest sister, Elizabeth Argyll, paid Lome a visit at Cambridge, where she introduced me to Professor Sedgwick, an old friend of hers and her husband. His rooms were in the Old Court of Trinity, between the chapel and the Master's Lodge. The professor was a charming old creature, and delightful in conversation ; perhaps a little too fond of talking of his health. He was very proud of a smart dressing-gown he wore, and alluded to it con- stantly in the midst of geological and other talk ! During my residence at the University I saw a good deal of this delightful old professor, and used to like to sit with the good old man and listen to his talk of former days. He was a living page of history. I got him upon old times by asking him on which staircase Byron lived when here. ' In Neville's Court, the second staircase to the right, on the first floor, the room facing you as you get on the landing,' he answered. Then he talked on about Byron's appear- ance and character. ' We used,' he said, ' you know, in 1805 to wear tights and knee-breeches, generally CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 209 black, but sometimes coloured. Some of us still wore hair in powder, many with it flowing down the back. Byron was peculiar for wearing loose trousers down to the shoe, in order to conceal the deformed leg. He was unpopular, taciturn in manner, and only had three or four friends. His head was very handsome, the features classical in their regularity. No one thought then what fame he would acquire.' Then the old professor, to show how the poet walked and limped, shuffled about the room. He gave a curious account of Commemoration day on December 16, 1812. He was then a Fellow, and on that day, not feeling well, had not been drinking his port-wine so freely in the Combination Room as it was in those days the custom of the Fellows to do. A man, he said, who did not their drink pretty hard was considered a milksop. Leaving the other Fellows over their wine, he went to the gate, where the porter gave him a newspaper, on opening which he found the official announcement by Napoleon of the destruction of his grand army. With this news he returned to the Combination Room, and there read the tidings, to the intense joy and excitement of all present. Old and young, he said, wept like /hildren. My first acquaintance with the theatrical amuse- ments in our Club at Cambridge the A. D. C. began during this term. On May 15 we produced three pieces * Diamond cut Diamond,' ' The Jacobite,' VOL. i. p 210 MY REMINISCENCES. and ' Bombastes Furioso.' A large party had come down from town, including Lady Spencer and Mary Boyle the 'Meerie' of Charles Dickens, and one of the brightest, wittiest, and most delightful of her sex, whose only fault is that she cannot remain so young as in those pleasant May days we passed together at Cambridge. A bazaar had attracted these ladies from London, and they made our ' houses ' during our theatricals very brilliant. This visit lasted three days, and was wound up by a ball, given at the ' Lion ' Hotel, of the most successful description. At the same hotel took place one of the club dinners of a society of undergraduates named the ' True Blue,' probably of Liberal origin. Liberal at any rate were its members in their potations, and lavish in their hospitality. ' There were about forty to dinner, but only four members present Horace Seymour, Hyde, Flower, and L. Rothschild. There were but six in all, the two others Aberdeen and Queensberry were away. The True Blues wear a sort of Court-dress, but less hideous than the real thing.' The dreaded May examination now drew very near, and I had been dining out in London and at Cambridge more than was conducive to preparation for it ; but early in June I was seized with a sudden fit of studiousness, and sat up the whole of one night, with the conventional wet towel round my temples and cold tea to keep me awake, over my Euclid. CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 211 Whether it was owing to this burst of labour or not, I at any rate succeeded in passing the May trial. Ascot week was passed at Cliveden, and later I went to stay with my mother at Chiswick, who, being then better in health, was able to give some afternoon parties there in the month of June, precursors of those similar garden-parties that took place there later, when Chiswick had been lent to the Prince and Princess of Wales by the Duke of Devonshire. A sad event took place at this time. 'June 22. Sad news ! Alice Pitt, or rather Alice Arbuthnot, is dead killed by lightning. She had lately married, and was on her wedding tour. A beautiful and most perfect creature. I saw her last here, Chiswick, early in the year. She was rather shy, but charming. It seems strange to think of a ball going on at the Rivers's, her parents, into the morning of the very day on which she was killed.' What added to the tragedy of this day was the death of both Mrs. Arbuthnot's parents almost simultaneously not many months afterwards. My mother threw open the beautiful grounds of Chiswick to others besides the great Society of London in that summer. One evening that month no fewer than one hundred and forty women belonging to the Bible Women's Association had tea in the gardens, and before leaving my mother gave each a P 2 212 MY REMINISCENCES. rose. ' At the close their head, Mrs. Talbot, said a few words on their behalf, to which my mother replied in words that seemed to touch many among them. On leaving, all shook hands with her ; she looked quite radiant at giving these poor women pleasure. Old Lady Wharncliffe heard one of them say that she (not Lady W., but my mother) had the "face of an angel." Mrs. Gladstone and her daughters appeared towards the end of this entertainment ; they had just heard the news of poor Alice Arbuthnot's death from Granville, Mrs. Arbuthnot's uncle, at a breakfast given to the Duke of Baden. She said Mr. Gladstone turned quite sick when he heard it. He had the greatest admiration for her beauty and for her good- ness. The Gladstones were staying at Chiswick, and also the Bishop of Oxford (Wilberforce). A very warm discussion between the Bishop and Gladstone to-day, June 25, about the Roman Catholic Oaths Bill, which comes on to-morrow in the House of Lords. Gladstone very fiery, in contrast to the Bishop, who kept his temper perfectly. The latter read prayers in the Dome Room in the evening very finely.' Frivolities followed. ' A luncheon at Stafford House to the Prince of Wales and the Brabants. The Abercorns were there with three unmarried daughters ; the youngest, Maude, Lady Lansdowne, perfectly lovely, only fourteen, and not coming out for CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 213 three years. She is that sort of creature that one cannot help being hopelessly in love with ! ' Then came a ball at the Palmerstons' house, in Piccadilly, where ' Lord Palmerston remained up till 3.30 a.m., which was quite unnecessary, as the Prince of Wales had left some time before. He asked me if I was tired, and his voice sounded strong and young. Lady Pam and he are certainly a most wonderful young couple.' But the veteran was nearer his grave in Westmin- ster Abbey that summer's morning than anyone would imagine, seeing him looking so hale and hearing his voice so strong and young. There had been some idea of my brother Albert coming forward to represent a division of Shropshire that summer, and Lord Palmerston had written the following letter to my mother on the subject : '99, Piccadilly, June i, 1865. ' MY DEAR DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND, We are anxious that Lord Albert Gower should stand for one of the divisions of Shropshire at the approaching General Election, and I spoke to the Duke of Suther- land about it ; but he said that the decision depends upon you, and that I must apply to you on the sub- ject. It would be of great importance to the Govern- ment to get a good candidate for one of the divisions of Shropshire, and there would not be a better re- presentative of Territorial Interest than one of your 214 MY REMINISCENCES. \ sons. The Duke objected that his brother is young, but I told him that six months in the House of Commons would go further to form a young man than two ordinary years rolled over his head ; and as to his being only a cornet of cavalry, Lord Chatham was first known in the House of Commons as "that terrible Cornet of Horse." I hope you will give your decision in our favour. ' Yours sincerely, ' PALMERSTON.' My brother's candidature was, however, postponed, and when he might have become Member of Parlia- ment for Sutherland three years later, he in the most unselfish and most generous manner gave up his claim to the post, and urged me to fill it. This was but one of the many kind and unselfish actions of his life. No one was more willing to assist and be of use to others. , One evening in July Panizzi brought his friend M. Merimee, the author of ' La Chronique de Charles IX.,' ' Columba/ &c., to dinner at Stafford House. The Gladstones also dined there. ' Apropos of the elections, Gladstone said to Panizzi, " The British Museum is to you what Oxford is to me, only that you can leave the Museum of your own free will, and I am driven from Oxford." The next day Gladstone came to lunch at Stafford House. " He said Canning CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 215 had said that a dinner in order to be pleasant should consist of not less than the Graces, and of not more than the Muses. Surely this occurs in some classical author, either Horace or mentioned in Cicero's ' De Amicitia.' " ' At the end of the month of July I went with my mother again to Vichy. Lome came with us. On our way we visited in Paris a wondrous little gem of a house in the Champs Elysees. then yet unfinished, 'built by a Madame Hirsch, formerly a Georgian slave, one mass of marble and bronze, the staircase entirely composed of Algerian alabaster.' At Vichy my mother had taken the chalet next to that built for the Emperor, and which the King of the Belgians had last occupied. A really charming house was this Chalet Clermont Tonnerre, fresh and clean and prettily furnished, with two sitting-rooms, a large dining-room, and pleasant, airy bedrooms. ' Lome's and mine open on a balcony from which there is an extensive view of the new gardens, and of the River Allier.' Patti was singing that summer at the Casino, and Meissonnier was taking the waters. We met the painter with his son. ' Meissonnier is short and brown, and has a look of Francis I.' Lome and I had some pleasant rides and expeditions about Vichy. One day ' we rode to Malavaux, where are ruins of a castle of Knights Templars ; on another we visited Chaledon a most curious decayed old place, half 216 MY REMINISCENCES. village, half town, with a dilapidated castle, in which are remains of a fresco on one of the walls. The chapel is now turned into a billiard-room. In the village are some houses of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, half wood/ This was the last time we were to be at Vichy. Our last drive together was a favourite of my mother's by the banks of the Allier, in the Route de Nismes. We had made almost a friendship with some of the people whom we had daily seen during our walks in the pretty park of Vichy under the chestnut-trees ; among others, with M. Bernardin, who conducted the orchestra there, and with fat old M. Gusse, the master of the ceremonies in the rooms of the Casino ; and the little old lady in black who looked after the news- papers in the reading-room, and whom my mother used to protect and console when snubbed by old Gusse. These and other familiar faces there we were not to see again. That last visit to Vichy was shortened owing to the illness of my mother's maid, Penson, who had been in her service forty years. We returned to London at the end of August. On our way through Paris, walking in the Palais Royal, a lady passed us and said to her companion : ' Voila une mere et un fits qui se ressemblent comme deux gouttes d'eau.' I was at Dunrobin the following month, when I heard from my sister, Evelyn Blantyre, of our dear CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 217 old friend Penson's death. ' You will/ she wrote, ' be deeply grieved for this sad loss to us all. There never lived a more devoted, unselfish being, and I cannot bear to think of mamma without her dear loving care.' My sister had hurried back from Ireland to London on getting a worse account of Penson's state ; but only to see her in her coffin. She and her daughters and her sister, Caroline Kildare, followed the body to the grave in the quiet Staffordshire churchyard near Trentham. The place is marked by a tomb erected by their loving care. ' I hope,' wrote my mother to me, ' to go with you some day to dear Penson's grave.' It is rare to find such long devotion in service, such love in return, in these days, between the employed and the employers. Of Penson my mother wrote, ' We have lost the truest, kindest, and best of friends, good and faithful Penson.' It is worth recording, I think, how much loved dear old Penson was in our family, as by such traits and such tributes of affection people are better known than by the ostentation of charity that appeals to the public eye, but that leaves the heart as cold as that quality is proverbially said to be. Five years had passed since I had last seen Dunrobin. My father had been taken from us since then. It brought back the old times to look out at the sea in the moonlight. How one feels what we have lost here ! This was certainly my father's best- 218 MY. REMINISCENCES. loved place ; it is full of him, not merely his rooms, but even the passages. For instance, that corridor outside their rooms, where I remember him walking up and down that long dreary afternoon when he was waiting till my mother came in to break to her the dreadful news of Frederick's death. ' You will,' wrote my mother at this time, * have thought of your dearest father on first seeing the hills, and then the place, the little medlar-tree and the old pear-tree in the gardens at Dunrobin.' A German princelet was staying that autumn with my brother. ' One evening he came in radiant, having killed a stag, an announcement that was received with applause ; but this was changed when his Highness added that he had also wounded four other stags.' I got some stalking that autumn and was rather successful, and less destructive than the German prince. Returning south, on my way to Cambridge, I paid a visit to the Argylls at Inverary, where my mother was then staying. By the middle of October Lome and I were again in our rooms in the Old Court of Trinity. On the i8th of that month news reached us that Lord Palmerston had died ; and on the 26th ' Lome and I went in the afternoon at dusk to West- minster Abbey.' We tried first to get in by the gate at Poet's Corner, but found this locked. We then fell in with an old porter, who took us round the Abbey, in by the cloisters, and we wandered un- CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 219 molested up the north aisle, when we saw a small group of men standing over an open grave, Lord Palmerston's, next to Lord Chatham's rilonumpnt, and just in front of one to three of Rodney's captains. Two or three men were at work inside the grave with lighted candles. They were fixing encaustic tiles on the sides of the grave, which seemed about eight feet deep. The effect of this light from out of the grave was very striking. On the south transept a huge scaffolding was being put up, workmen with lights moving about it. We strayed all over the splendid old place, and looked into most of the chapels. The effect of the vast building, all in darkness save for the flickering light about the grave and the scaffolding, had a most weird and solemn effect, not easily forgotten. The next day Lome and I watched the funeral of Lord Palmerston from the roof of Dover House, White- hall, where we met Lady Clifden and her sister, Lady Spencer. ' The funeral was merely a display of carriages, some of which were of a very shabby description. There was nothing whatever impressive about it, the people for the most part not even taking off their hats as the hearse passed by. But one can hardly expect an English crowd to show any outward sign of sentiment. It seemed odd not to hear so much as one bell tolling. Certainly the impressive sight was the grave-making in the Abbey the evening 220 MY REMINISCENCES. before, and not the funeral procession as it drove by in the dull light of a London October day.' On November 4, when we were back again at Cambridge, some of us were guilty of the following escapade. ' Half-a-dozen choice spirits had been invited to a friend's rooms outside the College gates ; but, having dined with a tutor in College, and remained in his rooms till after ten at which hour the gates are closed and locked we managed our exit in the follow- ing manner. To the right of the lecture-room stair- case, near which were my rooms, is a court, beyond it a high wall, then an out-house, and another wall sur- rounding a small garden belonging to a house (Smith's) which faces on its other side Trinity Street. We managed, with little difficulty, to scale these walls. The rest was easy, only that several maids and old women at first attempted to prevent our entry into their house, very naturally taking us for house- breakers, but after a short parley they let us in ; we passed through the kitchen, up some stairs, and at last got into the street. We then scampered off to our friend's (Rebow's) rooms, returning to College before midnight. The porter for on our return we passed in by the ordinary way at the lodge naturally gave a start of surprise at seeing us come in, not having let us out. The affair got wind, and our tutor gave me a long harangue on the enormity of getting out of College in the way we had, CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 221 and threatened to report us to the Head. However, we eventually got off without even a gating, the leniency not a little owing to one of our party having a cork leg, which, if known, would have proved too plainly that College ' walls do not a prison make.' Iron bars were, however, placed above the walls, encaging the court through which we had gained the street ; so that no such escalade was after that possible, at any rate out of that part of Trinity College. At the end of November the A. D. C. performed the burlesque of ' Kenil worth/ Queen Elizabeth was admirably personated by Swainson, now, I believe, a Roman Catholic monk, then one of the brightest and gayest of our set. ' The burlesque was followed by the farce of " Going to the Derby," in which Lome and I appeared as supers, in what was then called " drag." We all dressed in one room, and the effect was curious, as people were seen rushing about in every state of dress and undress, F 's delight being in capering about the green-room with nothing on but a pair of stays and trousers. The drama of " Not a Bad Judge " was also one of the plays this Term. On the 2 Qth we had the fullest night that had ever been known an audience of over 140 ; usually it is not over 1 20.' More for the sake of seeing the house than expecting much amusement in a strange house, I accepted an invitation to a ball at Hatfield House. Got there Hatfield about nine p.m., and had to walk 222 MY REMINISCENCES. through the mud from the station to the house with another unlucky fellow. The effect of the grand old house lighted from the outside was fine, and all that I saw of the interior came up to our expectation of one of the finest old halls in England. The house is entered by a long gallery, half hall, half corridor. Along one side of this hang suits of armour, standing like sentinels. Passing through this corridor you enter a handsome room, in which is a splendid fireplace. At the foot of the great staircase a yeomanry band was playing. Ascending the stairs, which are of oak, with huge carved lions on each landing, we entered a splendid drawing-room, a blaze of light. At the entrance Lady Salisbury received her guests, and behind her stood my Lord short, with white hair and eyebrows, a la Henri VIII. with his star and blue ribbon. At first one felt rather lost in the stream of country folk, but I found out Lady Cowley soon, Lord Shrewsbury and his daughters, and Regy Talbot. The d'Aumales and the Prince de Conde were also there. Both the duke and the prince were very polite; in fact, Conde, whom I had not seen since those days when I used to visit him from Geneva at Lausanne, talked incessantly. H.R.H. the Duchess was a blaze of diamonds, covered with old lace and pink satin. Ivo Vesey, Newry, F. Johnston, H. Wellesley, and a few others were about all that I knew there. The dancing began soon after ten in the CAMBRIDGE DAYS. 223 Long Gallery, which has a gorgeous gilt ceiling. The effect, looking down the room, was beautiful ; and from a recess one could see down into the old dining hall on a lower story a grand old apartment, deco- rated with banners, and only dimly lighted by Chinese lamps. Now and then Lord Salisbury would touch the wainscotted wall, press a spring, and disappear through a door until then invisible. The room in which we had supper is full of splendid full-length portraits ; one of Charles I ., and a curious one of Mary Stuart. Also here are portraits of Richard III. and Henry VIII. The hall itself was rather spoiled by the crowds of county people, and the floor was not inviting for valsing. The ball lasted till two, after which I went to the smoking-room with Lords Shrews- bury and Loughborough. I had one hour to wait at the station for the mail train, and did not get back to Stafford House till five in the morning. In the middle of December I left Cambridge for Erskine my brother-in-law Blantyre's place, near Glasgow where my mother had come with my sister Evelyn from Inverary, in a very weak and suffering condition. In a room on the ground floor at Erskine is a replica by Winterhalter of his portrait of my mother. Coming one day into this room, she said, turning to the picture, ' How different then and now ! ' By slow stages she came to London to be near her doctors and Prescott Hewett. She was unable to pass 224 MY REMINISCENCES. that Christmas at Cliveden, and we remained at Stafford House ; a saddened Yuletide, owing to the anxious state of our beloved mother's health. ' As the years roll on, the departure of each feels sadder and sadder. The old links gradually disappear, and one cannot but feel a sort of dread in entering on a New Year, when one reflects what may happen during it, and what things it may bring with it.' I write on the close of that year words that almost presage the sorrow that was soon to come. 225 CHAPTER XIII. CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED ITALY IN WAR TIME. EARLY in January I paid Watts a visit at Little Holland House (now built over by red brick Queen Anne houses). ' He has in the French Gallery, in Pall Mall, four good works. One of these a portrait of Gladstone, and another a portrait of a lady in a Venetian costume, and one of a lovely head and bust of a girl, with an arm thrown over her head, and holding a peacock's feather. I was curious to know who this young lady is, but could only get out of Watts that she was a model, but that having married she no longer sits. He was at work on a large study in sepia, for a fresco for St. Paul's, the subject the prophet Ezekiel. He also showed me some studies for flesh colours the art of painting which he thinks has been lost since the days of the Old Masters.' At the close of that month I went to a shooting- party at my brother's place in Shropshire, Lillieshall, and on to a hunting-party at Trentham, when the Prince and Princess of Wales were among his guests. There was a 'park meet' on January 27. The Princess looked very lovely on her horse, King VOL. i. Q 226 MY REMINISCENCES. Arthur, and rode like a bird. Except hurdles, how- ever, which had been put up in the Green Drive, there was little jumping. But the Princess took the hurdles beautifully ; she has simply no sense of nervousness. Returning from the hunting after dark, riding through the woods where these hurdles were, she leapt them again, although both the Prince and Stafford had avoided them. In the next term at Cambridge I found my old friend Professor Sedgwick delighted to hear of the Princess being such a plucky horsewoman, saying that ' her courage and nerve came from the grand old Norse breed, that blood that made such grand pirates.' ' It would be difficult to say what a charm the Princess has, both in looks and manner ; she is so entirely free from affectation, and so easy to get on with.' Early in March died ' our grand old Master,' as Professor Lightfoot so justly termed him in a sermon he delivered shortly after Dr. Whewell's death. His death was caused by a fall from his horse, which caused concussion of the brain. ' A great gloom has been cast over the place by this loss,' I wrote the day we heard of the Master's death. Coming out of Hall at 5.30, when his death had been announced, I saw all the shutters of the Lodge closed, and the blinds throughout the College drawn down halfway. In a letter to my mother I write on this subject : ' Whewell died this afternoon (March 6) soon after CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 227 four. He had been in an unconscious state for some days. It has come upon people here very suddenly, and it is difficult to realise that the fine, strong, upright old man, who looked and who was so full of health and strength not more than a week ago, should now be dead ! ' I saw him on the night of the 9th, as he lay in his coffin at the foot of his bed, the face uncovered, very fine and composed and peaceful, although quite waxen in colour. There had been a post mortem, and oddly enough the brain was found to weigh below the average, forty-nine ounces. Dr. Humphreys said that had Whewell not met with his fatal accident, he would, from signs in the brain, have had a fit or a stroke in less than five months.' At the funeral ' we assembled in the Hall at 10.30 a.m. ; probably over 400 undergraduates were there, not including the Fellows and friends. We left the Hall at eleven, three deep, a long line of mourners that looked like some great snake creeping out of the Hall, over the court, and into the chapel doors. The coffin was brought up to the chapel entrance on a kind of half barrow, half car. We filed up in the same order through the ante-chapel, past the yawning vault, with the trestles and the ropes ready by the side to lower the body. The catafalque was placed in the centre of the choir facing the altar. The service was choral and very fine, ending with that most glorious of marches, that in Saul. Professor Lightfoot' (since Q2 228 MY REMINISCENCES. raised to the Episcopate) ' preached the funeral sermon on the following 1 Sunday in the chapel, "a fine oraison funebre" He alluded with touching eloquence to our late Master's pride for Trinity, and recalled his saying that he thought the sky never looked so blue as when framed in by the walls and turrets of the Old Court of his having when on his deathbed asked that the window-blinds of his windows should be drawn up, to see once more the Old Court he loved so well.' It is something to remember such a Master as Whewell, and to recall that it was under his reign that I was an undergraduate at Trinity. ' I got a place under the Speaker's Gallery on the night of April 12, to hear the debate on Grosvenor's amendment to the Liberal Reform Bill. The whole house was as full as it could be. About five o'clock Gladstone began his speech, which lasted an hour and a half. His voice was as rich, clear, and beautiful as ever. Very temperate was the tone of his speech till he spoke about Lowe, whom he freely bespattered. Lowe made a good and a very indignant defence of his policy. About seven Grosvenor rose, and through- out his speech, which lasted three-quarters of an hour, he was frequently and loudly cheered by the Opposi- tion. He spoke extremely well, with great coolness and clearness. He brought in Bright's remark of " the dirty conspiracy " with effect. Afterwards Bright came CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 229 and told him that he never intended to include him (Grosvenor) in that category. When Grosvenor said that Gladstone had evaded the question in his speech, Gladstone turned round and gave him a tremendous look.' On returning to Cambridge that month a new Master was installed at Trinity Dr. Thompson. ' The ceremony (of installation), if it can be called one, took place soon after noon. Some of us waited in the Old Court, near the great gate, to see the new Master arrive. Professor Lightfoot, with old Martin, followed by the other dons, received the Master at the gate as he entered. I believe the Master and the porter have some conversation before the former is admitted. The new Master knocks on the yet un- opened gate, and the porter asks, " Who knocks ? " On the response of " The Master of Trinity," the doors are thrown open, and in walks Dr. Thompson. We were not near enough to hear this short but satis- factory conversation. The Master is then escorted to the chapel to be sworn in and installed, after which a " Te Deum" is sung, and then the porter takes pos- session of the Lodge. He was much cheered on his way from the chapel. He is a tall, good-looking, middle-aged man, with straight iron-grey hair, large dark eyes, a straight nose, and altogether looks like a gentleman. He has a look of quiet humour, of rather a satirical turn, which is, however, not unpleasant.' 230 MY REMINISCENCES. ' I went,' I wrote to my mother about this time, ' to Professor Sedgwick's last night. Dr. Thompson (the new Master) was very pleasant. He asked much after Lome, and seemed to have liked much what he had seen of him here. Did I tell you that he is very like Sydney Herbert ? Poor old Sedgwick is getting very shaky ; he is apt to introduce one to the same person at intervals during the evening, which is rather a bore.' In the middle of May I paid Lord and Lady Wensleydale a short visit at Ampthill. ' The Baron had just finished a game of billiards, and was sup- porting himself on his cue, looking picturesque in a skull-cap. Lady Wensleydale took me out in the grounds. Some of the views are pretty, and there are some magnificent old trees. The house is not well placed nor comfortable, the ground-floor rooms being used as passages. The Baron and I had some games of billiards, which he seemed to like, although often missing his ball. Little Mary Lowther's gover- ness, Mdlle. Corinne, reminded me of ancient times, and made me feel as old as the Wensleydales. After dinner, and after looking over some admirable drawings by George Howard and Mrs. W. Lowther, we played at vingt-et-un till 11.30. The Baron's memory very remarkable ; he quoted during dinner long passages out of Boswell's " Life of Johnson." To hear him talk with such clearness of recollection of CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 231 Brougham's early married days, and of Sydney Smith and Lady Holland, was very entertaining.' At the end of that May term the A. D. C. gave 1 The Overland Route,' in which I had the humble part of the widow, Mrs. Rabbits, to perform, and the farce, ' My Dress Boots.' Among the old members of our theatrical club, who assisted us on that occasion, were Finch, C. Hall, and A. Bankes ; and last, but certainly not least, the great Burnand, the creator of our society and club, was present during one of the performances, and I solemnly recorded that ' he said that all the parts were well acted ! ' That summer, at the Queen's request, my mother had placed Cliveden at Her Majesty's disposal : there the Queen remained about a fortnight. On June 13, after being up all night at a ball at Marl- borough House until half-past three the next morning, it is not a matter of surprise that I failed to be in time for the 8.30 train at King's Cross Station, by which I was to start that morning with a clergyman tutor for a fortnight's tour in Normandy. Later in the day we crossed over from Newhaven to Dieppe, arriving at Rouen the same evening. My impressions of this and the other towns and places we saw in our expedition are hardly of sufficient interest for detail. Suffice it to say that we went on the next day to Havre, from which place we visited the ruins of Tancarville, ' most picturesque, situated on a woody 232 MY REMINISCENCES. cliff overlooking the Seine, which makes a great curve beneath the castle walls. Sketched the castle, which is very dilapidated, as is also a last-century house built, perhaps, and certainly inhabited by John Law of Lauriston, the famous South Sea Bubble schemer. A solitary marble chimney-piece is the sign of former splendours. The building, with its creaking shutters and broken marble floors, looks the very embodiment of a haunted house.' From Havre we crossed over to Honfleur, and then went on by rail to Falaise. ' The old castle looks worthy of having been the cradle of our Norman kings/ From Falaise we went to Caen, and thence to Bayeux. There, as a matter of course, we inspected the famous tapestry, and also a dead bishop, whose body was lying in state in a chapel adjoining the Cathedral ' rather unpleasant ; the cheeks were " rouged ! " On June 2 1 we went by diligence to Granville ; and on to Avranches, from whence we posted to Mont St. Michel. Writing that night to my mother from St. Michel, I say of it, ' This place is by far the most interesting and striking we have yet seen. Nothing can be more picturesque than the Mount itself. The sunset this evening and the moon on the sea to-night looked quite Dunrobinish. We are in a clean little inn placed against one of the portcullis gates. * The drive from Avranches is charming. We CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 233 passed one field all ablaze with poppies, which made me long for you ; but I feel this longing always when- ever anything very lovely is to be seen. ' There is a gem of a cloister here, with such a view of the sea from it ! Our driver from Avranches amused us by his detestation of the priests ; " Us sont une canaille" etc.' Lane, as he invariably does, said, Next morning we walked across the sands some five miles to Pondorson, and from there by rail to Dol and to Angers, a pleasant place with a capital hotel (d'Anjou). We visited Tours, Amboise, and Chenon- ceaux. Of the latter I write in my diary, ' This chateau was the one my mother has always longed to see, and we were nearly returning by Tours from Vichy last year in order to see it, but poor Penson's illness prevented it.' ' It is a perfect little gem of a castle, in parts like Dunrobin, and built of the same coloured stone. Passing through the entrance-hall, which is hung round with armour, and which has a handsome stone carved ceiling, one enters a fine old gallery built across the river full of old chairs and furniture, covered with F's and double D's (the cog- nisances of Francis I. and Diana of Poitiers), and hung with portraits of personages of the Courts of Francis I., Henri II., Henri III., and Louis XIV. The view from the windows on either side of this gallery is delightful, the River Cher running below, between 234 MY REMINISCENCES. beautiful banks and among islands. One of the rooms is like that in my mother's turret at Dunrobin, but fitted up with books, with a beautifully carved walnut-wood ceiling ; also a winding stone staircase, with double balustrade in carved stone ; and a little chapel with good stained glass and a beautifully carved confessional of the time of Francis I. Che- nonceau, besides its architectural beauty and historic interest, is remarkable as being one of the few castles that escaped sack and plunder during the great Revo- lution, thanks to the respect in which Madame Dupin, its owner in 1793, was held by the people around.' Our next visits were to stately Blois, and grandiose Chambord. ' The sculptures in the interior and the great double staircase, up which a carriage can be driven, are most striking ; but the interior was much spoilt by Louis XIV., who cut up the place with floors. Here Moliere's " Bourgeois Gentilhomme" was acted before him and his Court.' The next day we reached Paris, after a very pleasant trip, which I would strongly recommend to any lover of art. To visit Mont St. Michel is alone worth the expedition. In Paris Mr. Lane and I parted ; he returning to his clerical duties, while I, full of enthusiasm for the Italian war against Austria, which had recently begun, had made up my mind to see what I could of it. I only announced my intention the afternoon of the CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 235 day I left Paris (June 28), writing home on that day, having some misgiving that the powers that be would see fit to stop my contemplated journey. ' The following day I crossed Mont Cenis in the diligence ; as I could not get an outside place, I had to put up with an inside one. A little Frenchman and a huge Southern American, with a head like A. Dumas pere, were my fellow passengers. Passing through Turin I reached Milan on the 3oth. Driving through the town I met quantities of Garibaldian Volunteers, some in red shirts, but the majority just as they had come from the South of Italy. Many were mere boys, and few looked over five-and- twenty. A great number of Italian tricoloured banners were waving from the windows, and one even on the top of the Cathedral. The whole town was in a ferment of excitement, supplements to the war tele- grams being incessantly shouted in the crowded streets. The fruit shops were full of portraits of Garibaldi, Victor Emanuel, and his sons the latter grotesquely like the King; and they seem to have inherited his courage as well as his features, for both fought well at Custozza, and Prince Amadeo is still on sick-leave from a wound he received there. ' Great uncertainty prevails about the place where Garibaldi is. He is generally supposed to be still at Desenzano, at the end of the Lake of Garda. He is said to have 40,000 Volunteers with him, and to be 236 MY REMINISCENCES. gradually coming up the shores of the lake into the Tyrol. The King's army is near Volta. Of course nobody can tell whether it is likely that they will make another attack. The Austrians appear to be quite prepared to receive them. I called on the English Consul, Mr. Colnaghi, in order to find out whether one could get into the line of the King's army. He thinks it possible, and said that as long as one does not come across La Marmora one is civilly treated.' I left Milan at dawn on July 2. The train stopped at a small station a little way beyond Brescia, Monte St. Marco, and here, as the rails had been taken up, we had to leave the train. With a good deal of difficulty, not speaking a word of Italian, I got a peasant to produce a little broken-down chaise, to which he fastened a pony, and in this vehicle we started off in the direction of Lonato. We had not jogged on for more than ten minutes when we were stopped by a stampede of peasants, some on foot, others in carts and on horseback, who shouted as they passed us, ' / Tedeschi ! ' at the top of their voices. It was impossible to induce my driver to proceed. He, too, was convinced that the Austrians were close upon us, and, to my infinite disgust, we had to return to the place which we had so recently left. A diligence there being no fresh reports of the enemy was at length induced to start for Lonato ; CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 237. but there a fresh delay ensued an officer of the Garibaldian army would not let me proceed until he had seen my passport. Reaching at length Lonato, I drove on to a village about eight miles distant from Salo, where I had another long wait until the diligence for Brescia started ; and in this, after twelve hours' travelling from Milan, I at length reached my destina- tion, Salo, where were Garibaldi's head-quarters. Salo is delightfully placed on the shores of the Lake of Garda. To its right stretches out a long promontory, beyond which, as one descends the hills above the town, a thin white line is visible, this being Peschiera. Salo had been shelled by the Austrian gunboats a few hours before I arrived there, and we could see these vessels looking like dark spots on the deep blue of the lake. The whole country was literally alive with Garibaldians. The effect of their red shirts and blue-grey trousers was picturesque, and nothing could be imagined prettier than the narrow ill-paved streets of Salo teeming on all sides with these Volunteers. Beyond lay the lovely lake, framed in by a background of soft-swelling hills ; its waters dotted all over with numberless boats filled with the Garibaldians, looking like poppies on an azure field. I was unsuccessful in seeing Garibaldi that night. His head-quarters were in a large house, approached by a very dirty lane. The lower court was full of soldiers. Here I was stopped, and one of the men 238 MY REMINISCENCES. went in to inquire if I could be admitted. Passing up some steps I was led into a large room, in the midst of which stood a table covered with papers, at which a secretary was writing. This room was also filled with soldiers. At the other end of it a door opened on to a balcony on which general officers stood. The General, I was informed, was then too much occupied to be seen that evening. Very much so he must have been, as this was the evening before his unfortunate attack on the Austrians at Monte Caffraro, near Rocco d'Anfo. So I had nothing for it but to stroll about the dirty picturesque place till it was time to turn into my inn. As the night fell the scene, so impressive in daylight, became a thousand times more so. It reminded me much of some panorama, or rather of one of those military pyro- technic spectacles at Cremorne or Vauxhall in old days. The effect of the lake illuminated by countless lights from hundreds of boats of every size and craft, and by the distant gunboats of the enemy ; the cease- less hum of the soldiers and peasants disembarking ; the patriotic shouts and songs ; Garibaldi's Hymn intoned by hundreds of voices ; the quaint old town and its narrow streets ; and above all this confusion and noise the still purple vault of the glorious summer-night sky of Italy, made up a picture that I certainly can no more forget than I can hope to describe it. CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 239 I was up and about early next morning, July 3. Hearing from one of the officers that I was likely to see the General if I called at nine, I was at his head- quarters by that hour, but he had already left four hours before. It was on this day that the affair near Rocco d'Anfo took place ; and, although I spoke to many people who were likely to know what was going on, none had an idea that anything like so decided an attack would take place. Few even had any idea in which direction the General had gone. It was not till the afternoon of that day when I met Ricciotti Garibaldi who was one of the guides that I heard where Garibaldi probably was, for even Ricciotti did not know positively. Another ac- quaintance I met was Colonel Chambers, who had been with Garibaldi at Cliveden. We were the only two Englishmen in the place. As I had business in Milan, and expected to find letters there, I left Salo that evening, and went by diligence to Brescia, where I got a bed at the Hotel de Firenze. Here, as elsewhere, the place swarmed with Garibaldians, and the arcades and streets and even the churches were full of the red shirts, adding much to the picturesque effect of the fine old town. By nine the next morn- ing I was again at Milan, buying things which I thought I should require when following Garibaldi. However, the next day brought bad news. Garibaldi had been wounded in the fight on the 3rd ; news 240 MY REMINISCENCES. which made me bitterly regret having left Salo. From that place I heard from Chambers, but he could give me little more information than that, to judge by the people's looks there, the wound was a serious one. Later that day came the news of an armistice, and of the proposal of the Emperor of Austria to cede Venetia to Napoleon. The streets were alive with people discussing the news. Great crowds formed, especially about the Place de la Scala. Popular feeling was strongly opposed to the cession, and the dislike to the French Emperor was very marked. The day was made hideous by the cries of the newspaper vendors. I returned the same evening to Brescia, and next day July 5 was off at six a.m. in the diligence back to Salo. That place seemed as full as ever of Garibaldians, although since I had left it two regi- ments had departed for the front. I had expected to find a horse at Salo, procured by Colonel Chambers ; but on inquiry I heard, much to my disgust, that the gallant colonel had ridden off on it himself to Rocco d'Anfo ! Here was a pretty business. There was no means of getting into that place but by the dili- gence, which only left late in the day, and I had to kick my heels in the dirty streets of Salo all that long summer's day. The day was, however, not quite a barren one, for, chancing to light on a French guide- book of the place and its environs, I was tempted, CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 241 by an account of the neighbouring Palazzo Mar- tinengo, to go and inspect that scene of departed splendour. Of this ' Palazzo ' Lady M. W. Montagu writes ecstatically to her friend, Lady Bute ; and although the place is now a ruin, and therefore it is difficult to judge what it was like in Lady Mary's day, the house being now turned into a barrack by the Garibaldians, and in a most tumble down con- dition, the situation of the Palace is eminently beauti- ful, surrounded by orange-tree orchards, with the hills behind, and the lovely lake in front. Three huge ugly marble statues, which Lady Mary makes men- tion of as crowning the terraced gardens, now lie in pieces at the edge of the lake ; and in the ruined fountains in front of the Palace (where Lady Mary enjoyed feeding the fish ' L'eau est si claire' she writes, ' quon y voit les nombreux poissons qui t'/ia- bitent, et cest un grand plaisir poiir moi de jeter du pain a ceux qui paraissent a la surface et qui mangent avec une grande voracite"} Garibaldians were fishing to their heart's content. It took six hours by dili- gence to get from Salo to Rocco d'Anfo, but the drive is superbly beautiful, and the further one pene- trates the wilds the more picturesque becomes the road. Within a few miles of Rocco d'Anfo the scenery is as fine as anything I know in Switzer- land. Rocco d'Anfo is a mere mountain village in a gorge of the Italian Tyrol, on the shores of the Lago VOL. i. R 242 MY REMINISCENCES. d'Idro. We passed many who had been wounded in the fight of the 3rd. One poor fellow lay in an ambulance, with hardly anything on him, evidently suffering greatly he was shot in the legs. Reaching Rocco' d'Anfo after dark, it was not very pleasant to find that such a thing as an inn or a room to let was quite unknown there ; and that food was not to be got. However, a Garibaldian officer was humane enough to show one of my fellow-passengers an old Italian from Salo and myself a house where we found shelter for the night, and did not fare so badly as I had at first expected to do. We shared supper with some of the red-shirts who were quartered in this house, which consisted of a sort of black macaroni and some cheese. The only light in the room was from a candle stuck in the top of an old bottle. For a bed there was some straw and an old blanket in the garret over our dining-room. I was lucky in my bedfellow, viz., the old gentleman from Salo, for he snored not. The soldiers were very civil and obliging, as I have invariably found them capital good fellows ; they evidently like the English. A bear-fight took place at Rocco d'Anfo that night. One of our Garibaldian friends, of a jocose frame of mind, insisted that I was a ' donna ' in disguise my face was then guileless of any hair and it was not until I had wielded with some effect a broom which I luckily found in the garret that I convinced him of his mistake. CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 243 By dawn the following morning I called at Garibaldi's quarters, which were in a small house built on the road at the base of a fine cliff the Rocco, from which the wild little place takes its name. It was not seven o'clock yet, but knowing the General's early habits, I knew I could not be too early. Entering a kind of open-air guard-room, from which a fine view is had over the lake beneath, I got one of the soldiers to ask if I could see the General. In half a minute he returned and asked me to follow him. The moment I had looked forward to so much for so long a time had at length arrived, and as it sometimes happens when some much-wished -for event has at length come to hand, a feeling of almost wishing it delayed came upon me. Following my soldier, I passed from the outer sunshine into the darkness of a wretched little room, lighted by a solitary window, the shutters of which were half closed. The room was so small that there was hardly space enough to walk round the little trestle-bed placed in the centre of it a bed of the shabbiest description on which lay the wounded General in his red shirt, a counterpane thrown over his legs. I thought he never looked so noble as he did lying there wounded in this wretched dark little room, with but a ray of light from the solitary window falling on that grandest of heads. He held a large roll of paper in his hand, which as I entered he handed to the sentry who had shown me in. He then told me R 2 244 MY REMINISCENCES. to sit by his side. The window being at my back, I could study his face closely. It was indeed well worth a study, for the effect of such a head as his in this Rembrandt-like light and shadow was superb. What struck me especially was the look of excessive sadness his face wore, a look of intense chagrin and keenest disappointment. This is easily accounted for, for he had just received a serious check in his first engage- ment with the enemy. He had been wounded, and the news of the expected armistice and cession of Italian territory through the mediation of Napoleon had but lately reached him. Asking him in French of his wound, he said, ' Ok, ce nest rien ; ' only he added that he minded it much, as it prevented him from taking the field. Evidently not wishing to dwell on himself or to speak of the war (he had said he hoped that the armistice would not take place), he asked about the changes in our Ministry ; whether ' Mons. Derby ' was not the Premier in Lord Russell's place. During the short time I was with the General not more than five minutes people were continually coming in with orders and despatches. A secretary, too, kept writing away busily in the corner of the room, which not a little bothered one. When I rose to leave he again shook my hand, and thanked me for having come from England to see him. That he did not recall me or remember having seen me in England I cannot be surprised at ; and I felt that it was not CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 245 a moment, amidst so much care and anxiety on his shoulders, to recall old days in England. So far as the Garibaldians were concerned, there seemed an end of the war ; for even were the General to recover from his wound soon, the chances were that before he could get out of that awkward little room under the Castle Rock the war would have come to a close that peace, or at any rate an armistice, would have been concluded ; at any rate this was the general impression. Without the excitement of actual warfare, there was nothing to induce me to remain on at Rocco d'Anfo alone among strangers, without even a bed to sleep in, and with some prospect of being starved into the bargain. I do not think, under the circumstances, my readers will be surprised to hear that on getting an offer from an officer to drive me back to Salo I was glad to accept it ; and after a last meal at Rocco d'Anfo, consisting of a dish called ' a brodo] and which may be described as dirty bread in tepid water, we drove away. As we passed along the road among the mountains a thunder-storm broke over them, the loud claps of the thunder echoing grandly among the mountains. The road was covered with Garibaldians. Among a thousand picturesque scenes was that of a cart full of wine-casks and drawn by oxen, upon which some dozen of the red-shirts were standing and sitting in the most unstudied but most graceful attitudes. Salo seemed fuller than ever of these soldiers. The churches 246 MY REMINISCENCES. in which they bivouacked were full of admirable studies, and I tried to make a few sketches before leaving at night by diligence for Brescia. That night's drive was one to be remembered. All along the road vedettes were stationed, and the watch- cry of ' Italia' never ceased along the road. Hundreds of Garibaldians passed us on their way to the front, and long caravans of carts for fodder, ammunition, and provisions, drawn by oxen, covered the road. The watch-fires on either side the road made a scene such as G. P. R. James would have loved to dwell on. We drove through the night, reaching Brescia at dawn on the morning of July 7. Its streets were deserted, as the Garibaldians had moved on the next day by rail to Treviglio and on to Cremona. Here I had the good luck to fall in with an Italian officer of the King's army (A. Piccioli). He spoke excellent English, which was, after my miserable attempts to get on with Italian, a real comfort. The same evening I was back again at Milan, and here the news of the defeat of the Austrians at Konigsgratz reached me, and that pro- bably the King of Prussia would accept an armistice, which Italy would also have to do. This created great discontent there. At Cremona Piccioli said ' that not only he, but many other officers, would sooner break their swords than accept such a disgrace as the occupation of Venetia by France.' In fact, from what I have seen and heard, the cession of Venetia to CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 247 France would almost produce a revolution in this part of Italy. It was now my intention to see what I could of the King's army, and accordingly I left Milan on the evening of July 9 for Cremona. It was a lovely evening, and there was a glorious red sunset, the cypresses and the high campanile towers of Cremona standing out with great effect against a glowing sky. The following morning I hired an open carriage, and by nine o'clock was on my way to Delia Marmora's head-quarters. These were at the old Castle of Torre Malamberti, some eighteen miles south of Cremona. I was unmolested by sentries, perhaps from having a couple of not ill-looking nags to my carriage, and drove right in, just as if I had been one of Delia Marmora's staff, to the courtyard of the old building, which has a half Italian, half Moorish look, and is flanked with huge square towers and by two large wings connected with the central building. Several cavalry officers were lounging about the steps leading up to the prin- cipal entrance. I asked one of these for the quarters of the Duca di San Arpino, a Neapolitan gentleman, now Duca di San Trodoro. I was shown into one of the wings of the building, into a room on the ground- floor, where some officers were at breakfast. One of these, a tall, thin, good-featured man in a dark blue and silver uniform, was the person I was in quest of. The duke was civility and courtesy itself. He took 248 MY REMINISCENCES. me over the stables and pointed out his horses with justifiable pride. His room the best in the place, he said was but a sorry one, and the place was in a most decayed state. He was very keen to have a brush with the Austrians. Custozza has been a terrible dis- appointment to the Italians. They were unprepared for an attack ; they had been on the march several days before, and had had barely any food. The duke came up too late to take part in the battle. The army, from the princes downwards, fought magnificently. Most of the King's army had moved on to Cialdini's corps cTarmde the previous day, and by next day the old decayed Torre Malamberti would resume its ordinary quiet, as the cavalry were to leave. I managed to get myself arrested before leaving. While waiting for the carriage, I whiled the time away by sketching some of the oxen that were about the inn-yard. A gendarme requested me to show him my pass. This I had left in the carriage, and I might have been kept in durance vile at Torre Malamberti had not an officer who had seen me at the head-quarters obtained my release. The same night I was back again at Milan. The day after was devoted to Art, and I visited the gallery of the Brera, etc. In the evening I found the Duchess of San Arpino and her mother, Mrs. Lock, waiting at the station for news from the army. Here ended what I saw of the war in Italy. Although I had not done what I had hoped, I had CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 249 seen enough to make me not regret having made what had been a pleasant and interesting expedition one which has left a picture in my memory that I shall retain as long as I live. I returned to England by Genoa. Genoa altogether is, I think, a horrid place the streets narrow, many of them perpendicular, and the population disagreeable. However, in justice to Genoa, which the Italians have dubbed the Superb, I must add that I did not visit the beautiful surroundings of the 'City of Palaces'; but I felt amply repaid for the drawbacks of the per- pendicular streets and unpleasant population when standing before the superb Vandycks in the Brignole Sale and the Doria Palaces. Alexandre Dumas pere was in the same train by which I went from Lyons to Paris. I had a good look at this odd figure at the station in Paris. His curly hair was getting grey. Next to Dickens I believe Dumas has given more innocent amusement than any author of our time, so that even a passing glimpse and recollection of such an individuality is worth recalling. Paris was stewing in all its summer heat, but the theatres were, in spite of the heat, crowded. Three pieces drew all the town ; the most famous was ' La Belle Helene,' in which Hortense Schneider was then at her zenith. The wondrous fterie of ' Cendrillon ' was the other ; and the third was the clever lampoon on the bourgeois class of the Second Empire, ' La 250 MY REMINISCENCES. Famille Benoiton.' After having regaled myself by seeing all these plays I left for England, arriving at Chiswick on July 18. My mother gave a beautiful f$te there, two days after my return, at which many of the royalties were present. ' It began at five, and it was three the next morning before all had left. The gardens were lit up by coloured lamps and lights of various hues, which brought out the fine old cedars to great advantage.' The close of that month saw the riots in Hyde Park. I dearly loved what is called 'a row' who does not, at twenty at any rate ? Meeting with a congenial spirit in Francis Knollys, we saw what we could of the riot on July 23 in Hyde Park. What the origin of the row or riot was I hardly re- member something to do with Reform, I think. ' On reaching the Marble Arch we found the place sur- rounded by a yelling mob of several hundreds, who were pulling down the iron rails on either side of the Arch. In a short time they had got about three hundred yards of this railing down, and then the mob poured into the Park like a dirty torrent. Stafford and Lord Ruthven joined us. There was some sharpish fighting going on, and two men were said to have been killed by the police. Sir Richard Mayne kept riding about, and was much groaned at and hooted by the mob. About half-past six some of the Foot Guards ridiculously small number appeared on the scene, CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 251 followed shortly after by seven troops of Horse Guards, who, as they trotted down the Park, scattering the mob on either side, were cheered loudly. Albert, who was then in the 2nd Life Guards, stopped in front of our little party, his horse's hind legs in unpleasant proximity to us. The most amusing part of the affair was when the mounted police charged the crowd. This they did rather indiscriminately, and our party had to fly before them along with tag, rag, and bob-tail. The mob was of the very lowest sort, demonstrative but cowardly. " Gladstone and Reform !" " Gladstone for ever !" and such cries, were roared ad libitum' Early in August I went to Inverary to assist at Lome's coming of age. I had entered my twenty-first year on the 2nd of that month, but younger sons, as is well known, do not come of age they only become one-and-twenty ; but of course the eldest son of a duke's ' coming of age ' is quite a different thing, and must be attended with much ceremony, great expense as a rule, and general rejoicings, as if he had gained a victory or distinguished himself greatly by being pre- sumably the son of his father and the inheritor of his wealth, estates, and ailments. Everything at my Scotch nephew's ' coming of age ' was eminently propitious, with the exception of the weather. The west coast of Scotland is not remark- able for its dryness ; that of Argyllshire is not proverbial for long periods of drought ; and at Lome's ' coming of 252 MY REMINISCENCES. age ' the rain never ceased falling during the week the coming of age lasted. Coming of ages are much of a muchness. The difference between them in the two countries is that in Scotland more agility in the form of athletic sports is shown, and more whisky and less beer consumed than in England. In spite of the incessant rain, Highland games were maintained on every day of the week with great vigour. At night we danced in a long wooden pavilion that had been erected near the Castle reels and ' houlachans ' until four in the morning. One evening we retired early, leaving more space and liberty for the house- hold and their friends to enjoy themselves in. We were right in thinking that these could get on with- out our company. That we were not much missed was evident by the howls and dance shouts no reel is complete without them that made the night and early morn of the next day hideous. Nobody, how- ever, we were informed at breakfast that morning, had been ' fou ! ' At the end of that week's rejoicings some Glasgow volunteers who were about to return were seen to enter the steamer that was to take them home on Loch Fyne in the following order. Their first line en- tirely ignored the plank that had been placed between the vessel and the pier, and walked boldly and bodily into the waters of the Loch ; the rest of the company did likewise. When recovered they must have been CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 253 not only internally but outwardly damp ! But this is doubtless an invention of the Saxon. In the following month I passed some weeks at Dunrobin, and visited a shooting-lodge in the heart of the deer forest. I have never understood why what is nearly invariably a treeless plain, or consists of mountains, moor, and fell, should be termed a ' forest ' ; but that is one of our customs in Scotland. A deer- desert would be a much truer rendering of such wastes. This lodge is named Ben Armin. A more desolate place cannot be imagined. A mountain stream, named the Blackwater, rushes by it, and in front rises the long, weird range of hill and rock called the Black. The evening of the day I first saw it, the gloaming had nearly turned into night, and the moon lighted a solitude that would have done well for Macbeth's interview with the weird sisters. ' A solitary star glimmered on the edge of the Black Rock, while we heard the dark waters rushing below. The lodge itself is a mere cottage, with the walls and ceilings of deal. On my way from Dunrobin across the hills to Ben Armin I had shot a fine stag with a head of ten points. There is no greater pleasure in life than, after a long day's stalking, tired and wet to the skin, to find on coming in from the outer darkness a bright warm peat fire burning, and to have placed before one a dish of grouse soup, with which we (Leo Ellis and I) opened our dinner that evening at Ben Armin.' 254 MY REMINISCENCES. The Prince and Princess of Wales came that autumn for the first time to Sutherland. ' The arrival was one of the prettiest sights imaginable. The night was a glorious one, a full moon flooding the castle and the sea with its pure beams of light, making a fine contrast with the bonfire, or rather beacon, that glowed from the top of Ben a Phraggie. A short time before they arrived hundreds of blue lights and torches were lighted. The whole effect was magical. The next day the Prince unveiled a statue of my father by Noble. Volunteer reviews and Highland games followed. In the latter Lord Spencer distinguished himself, winning a race with Henry Wellesley on his back.' Leaving Dunrobin at the beginning of October by sea, our party met with what might have been rather an awkward accident. The party consisted of Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, Sir Edwin Landseer, Mr. Noble, the sculptor, F. Grant (son of Sir Francis Grant), Colonel Keppel, and myself. We embarked on my brother's yacht, bound for Burghead, from whence the line of railway could be got at quicker than by going first to Inverness, the railway not being then open farther north than Bonar Bridge. ' We left early. It had been very rough so much so that Prince Edward and I were the only two of the passengers who ventured upon breakfast on board, and which proved but a short meal. About ten o'clock a sudden shock and a grating noise made us hurry up on deck, where CAMBRIDGE DAYS CONTINUED. 255 it was at once evident that we had struck on a rock. Luckily Burghead was in sight ; we could see the hill above the town looming through the sea-haze. All the party were soon on deck. We had a few anxious moments, but the tide rising lifted us off the rock, and we heard that no harm had been done. The rapidity with which some fishing smacks came out from Burg- head to our assistance did credit to the natives ; but we could have done without them, as the cutter was in readiness to take us bag and baggage ashore. When we landed, all Burghead seemed to have turned out of doors to see who were the nearly shipwrecked crew. Poor Sir Edwin, who had been in more than one bad accident, was much alarmed at the time ; but I never saw anyone relish an accident more than did H.S.H. of Saxe- Weimar.' After passing a few days at Cliveden and Chiswick with my mother I returned to Cambridge, where two new Fellows, both of whom I liked extremely, had come up for residence. Both now are dead. The one was Gerald Bridgeman ; the other Alfred Charteris. My chief companion had, however, left Cambridge, Lome having decided to give up returning to ' Alma Mater,' and to go to Germany to attend a course of lectures at Berlin. But he turned up again for a day that term, as I find in my notes, and ' we passed a long last pleasant day together at Trinity, finishing it in my room, Lome, Jocelyn, and I sitting up talking before 256 MY REMINISCENCES. the fire till two o'clock in the morning.' The next day we had to bid farewell, he leaving shortly for Germany. ' Very sorry was I to lose him ; there is certainly no- body to compare to him.' During that term I drove over several times to see another friend who is also gone Eliot Yorke, then the handsomest and gayest of youths at his parent's home, Wimpole. ' The house in the ugly style of George I.'s reign. There are some good pictures there, especially a grand portrait of Ben Jonson, and one of the Lord Warwick of Cromwell's time.' Eheu fugaces ! the kind old lord is in the family vault at Wimpole ; his bright handsome boy, of whom he was so proud, is dead ; and even the pictures at Wimpole, the portraits of rare Ben Jonson and others, have been sold and scattered. 257 CHAPTER XIV. CHISWICK HOUSE. CHISWICK, as all Londoners know, is the name of a parish situated on the left bank of the Thames, five miles west of Hyde Park Corner. It contains, in its old churchyard, as all antiquarians and lovers of English art know, the ' honour'd dust ' of our greatest national painter, William Hogarth, and also the villa known as Chiswick House. Lord Hervey's witticism about this house is well known. After seeing it when much smaller than it is at present, he said, ' The house is too small to inhabit, and too large to hang to one's watch.' My Lord Hervey, not content with this criticism of Lord Burlington's villa, imitated Martial's lines beginning 4 Quam bene non habitas,' as follows : ' Possess'd of one great hall for state, Without one room to sleep or eat ; How well you build let flattery tell, And all mankind how ill you dwell.' But Chiswick House has long ago grown out of the original villa, a copy made by Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, of a Palladian building at Vicenza. VOL. i. s 258 MY REMINISCENCES. Two commodious wings, as ugly as they were useful, were added to the classic villa at the close of last century. Although I have been brought up in houses famed for comfort, I know none more comfortable and habitable than Chiswick. This place had always been a favourite with my mother. Here and at Castle Howard the happiest hours of her childhood were passed. In those days London had no flowers in its parks, and few were ever seen even within its wealthiest houses. But my mother had always a passion for flowers, and without them she felt like a bird without sunshine. I well remember her telling me of her delight when she was a child at seeing some crocuses in a London window. In some notes of her earliest recollections she writes of ' my passionate love of wild flowers, and the longing I felt to be amongst them when I saw primroses.' Here at Chiswick, away from then flowerless London, my mother and her sisters were in a very paradise of flowers. She has written, too, of her love of this place of ' the happy days at Chiswick, which no crossness of our governess could spoil the country in the spring the smell of the jessamines after the rain the cedars with their cones sitting so grandly upon them the bird's nests, which we never took the wild strawberries, which have disappeared the lilacs breaking with their load the vision of the duke walking amongst the trees with my mother, he CHISWICK HOUSE. 259 bending towards her, for this dear uncle was deaf. Well, too, I recollect his coming to the foot of the old stairs at the old house at Chiswick, and telling us of Napoleon's escape from Elba, and our excite- ment.' I can understand my mother's affection for Chis- wick, for there is an indescribable charm in Lord Burlington's house that no other place possesses. It has good claims to be reckoned one of the historic buildings of the country it is indeed classic ground. Pope often came across the water from his villa at Twickenham to visit Lord Burlington ; so late as 1813 an old ferryman in the neighbourhood remem- bered the poet. When a lad he had helped his father to row Pope across the Thames from Twickenham to Chiswick ; on landing he was met by Lord Burling- ton's servants, who brought down a chair on wheels, in which the inspired cripple was drawn up from the river's edge to the Palladian Villa. This old Charon of the Thames was once questioned whether he had ever rowed Pope to any other place. ' Yes, often/ he answered, ' across to Mrs. Blount's ; she was his favourite Madam.' ' Was she a beauty ? ' ' She was comely,' quoth Charon ; ' but, dear ! they all made such a fuss with Mr. Pope and his writing ; it was a company of them that did it, and not he alone.' The above anecdote of Pope and his ferryman is given in an account of Chiswick written by Elizabeth Forster, S 2 2<5o MY REMINISCENCES. who, after the death of her friend, ' the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire,' married her widower. Another poet besides Alexander Pope was often a welcome guest at Chiswick. This was Gay, who sang of the place and its gardens, and of how ' In Chiswick's bowers Pope unloads the boughs within his reach, The purple vine, blue plum, and blushing peach.' ' Season ' Thomson, too, sings of this spot as being one of those ' Sylvan scenes, where art alone pretends To dress her mistress, and disclose her charms.' Horace Walpole, too, loved to wander among the Vandycks and curios of which the rooms are full rooms rather too heavy, but splendid in decoration, little altered since Pope and Gay, Walpole and Thomson passed through them. About them there seems still to linger an old-world perfume ; they are full of memories of that too refined age of powder and patches. In the silence of those chambers through which so many of the most famous wits, courtiers, statesmen, and poets of the last century have wandered, one might fancy in the hush of the rooms of state that one heard the whisper of Sir Plume as he gently taps his amber snuff-box lid, or the rustle of Belinda's robe. Much of poor Georgiana Devonshire's chequered life was passed here. In spite of all her popularity, CHISWICK HOUSE. 261 and for all her hosts of admirers, she was not a happy woman. She was gifted with an intensely strong power of giving and getting affection ; but she was tied to a husband without heart or soul, a mere lump of aristocratic clay, who only lived for his rubber of whist at his club, and the devilled fowl he consumed after it. A man so utterly phlegmatic, that on being roused in his sleep by the news that the house he was in (Chatsworth) was on fire, he merely turned himself in bed, and said he hoped they would put it out. A man so utterly unworthy of the generous, high- minded, glorious woman that fortune and the fact of his having been born a duke had given him to wife, that his gallantries were notorious, and he had not even the ordinary decency of the commonest of libertines that of keeping his mistresses out of his wife's home. It is hardly to be wondered at that, perhaps in order to try and forget all this, his wife took to gambling in order to forget in the excitement of play her injuries and indignities. The result was that in a few years the duchess became terribly embarrassed ; she lost immensely, and feared to ac- knowledge her losses to the duke. It is said that she was reduced to such a pitch that even when living in Devonshire House she had to make a dash across the hall to her carriage, for fear of being seized under her own doorway by the bailiffs. Beneath this strain of mind her health declined, her beauty faded, then 262 MY REMINISCENCES. completely forsook her, and she died comparatively young, but worn out with what seemed to the eye of the world a very splendid and brilliant, but which was doubtless in reality a very miserable, existence. Had she been the wife of a better and humbler individual than it was her fate to wed, she might have attained rank as a poet. Her talents in the poetic line have been borne witness to by Coleridge himself ; all know his lines addressed to her, of which the refrain is so happy ' Oh, lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure, Whence learnt you that heroic measure ? ' The following couplets, addressed to Lady Eliza- beth Forster (her successor as Duchess of Devon- shire), have never, I think, been published : ' Untutor'd in the pencil's art, My tints I gather from my heart, Where truth and love together trace The various beauties of thy face. Thy form, acknowledged fair and fine, Thy brow, where sense and sweetness join, Thy smile, the antidote to pain, Thy voice, that never spoke in vain ; As diamonds on the crystal trace In lines no efforts can efface. To please for ever is thy lot, Once seen, once loved, and ne'er forgot' Another eminent literary character of the last century whom Chiswick House has seen was Jean Jacques Rousseau. The author of the ' Confessions ' CHISWICK HOUSE. 263 lived at Chiswick, then a village far from London town. Oddly enough the cicerone of this writer who was to contribute to bring on the ruin of Church and State in his own country was a Bishop, my Lord of Peterborough. It is said that when Rousseau stood before the portrait of Charles I. (now no longer at Chiswick, but at Chatsworth) he paused, and murmured half aloud, ' // a fair du malheur ! ' Whether the most favoured of Chiswick worthies, William Hogarth, ever was inside Chiswick House or not I have not been able to ascertain. One would like to think that ' the great painter of mankind,' as Garrick calls him, and whose ' honour'd dust ' lies within a few yards of the gates of Chiswick House, had been an honoured guest in these walls. But certainly Garrick and his delightful wife were often here, for the Burlingtons and the Garricks were fast friends. It has even been whis- pered that Mrs. Garrick was a relation, perhaps a daughter, of Lord Burlington. Among portraits in ' pastelles ' of Corks and Boyles and Cavendishes on a staircase in this house are two excellent likenesses of David Garrick and his wife he in a sky-blue coat, with his sparkling keen brown eyes looking out full at the spectator ; she all in soft lace, with the prettiest cap imaginable over her comely face and powdered hair. Among these portraits is one which, for the inscription it bears, deserves notice. ' Lady Dorothy Boyle,' it reads, ' once the comfort, the joy, the pride 264 MY REMINISCENCES. of her parents, the admiration of all who saw her. The delight of all who knew her. Born May 19, 1724. Married (alas !) October 10, 1741, and delivered from extreme misery May 2, 1742. This was taken from a picture drawn seven weeks after her death (from memory) by her most afflicted mother, Dorothy Burlington.' Poor Dorothy Boyle ! her mar- riage to Lord Euston was apparently as unhappy as it was short. It was through the sister of this un- happy lady that Chiswick House, as well as Burling- ton House, now the home of the Royal Academy and of the London University, besides great properties in Ireland, came into the possession of the Caven- dishes ; Lady Charlotte Boyle (Lady Huston's sister) having married Lord Hartington, and by him be- coming the mother of the fifth Duke of Devonshire and of Lords Richard and George Cavendish, and of a daughter who became Duchess of Portland. I can remember this old Lady Hartington's grand- son, the sixth and late Duke of Devonshire, a ' grand seigneur ' if there ever was one. He was a duke among dukes magnificent in his hospitality, living like an emperor, the friend of Nicholas of Russia, and the intimate companion of George IV. Perhaps he had too much regard for the splendour of this life ; too much affection for the ' lust of the eye, and the pride of life.' But he was almost adored by his kin, was universally popular, and liked by all who came CHISWICK HOUSE. 265 near him. Even as I remember him, a mere wreck of his former self deaf, old, and unable to move out of his Bath-chair I can recall the charm of his manner, and the kindliness of his look, and a peculiar heartiness of greeting which we seek in vain among his class in these unmannerly days. The duke be- longed to that now extinct type of humanity of which the old royal dukes of the House of Guelph were not the most refined specimens, and among whom he must have felt himself more than an equal. He had all their bonhomie and heartiness of manner, but he was therewith refined and polished ; a man who loved art and music ; these he was enabled by his vast wealth to help, although he never made use of his influence and position to play the merely vulgar part of art patron, or to invest his money on works of art he could not appreciate or understand. He was not only the patron of Landseer and Paxton and Dickens, but their friend and helper. My mother and her uncle had much in common in their tastes and feelings. Never, I believe, had two people more pleasure in opening their gardens and galleries to those who could appreciate such things. One would wish there were more nobles now-a-days like William George, sixth Duke of Devonshire. More than a century and a half has passed since Horace Walpole thus wrote of the gardens of Chis- wick House: 'They are,' he said, 'in the Italian 266 MY REMINISCENCES. taste, but divested of conceits, and far preferable to every style that reigned till our late improvements.' They have suffered little change since Walpole's day. In and about them is quite a museum of antique busts and marbles, of sculptured lions and weird quadrupeds by Scheemakers, and among them are the damaged remnants of antique marbles, fragments of the once famed Arundel House collection, the best of which are now at Oxford. Immediately on the right of the garden side of the house is a splendid bit of masonry a rusticated gateway, designed by Inigo Jones, which formerly stood at Beaufort House, Chelsea, where it had been placed in 1625 by Lord Treasurer Middlesex. Within the house at Chiswick died two of England's greatest statesmen Charles James Fox in 1806, and George Canning twenty one years after. In Lord Russell's life of the former is told how fondly the dying statesman gazed from his room on a moun- tain ash that grew near the window. 'Every morning he returned to look at it His last look on that mountain ash was his last look on Nature.' The room a mere recess out of a saloon named the Italian where Fox is said to have expired, is little altered since that September of 1806. It is adorned in that massively rich form of decoration which was the fashion of the Italian palaces of the seventeenth century. The room in which the great bed is now placed opens on a portico, which leads by a double CHISWICK HOUSE. 267 flight of stone steps to the entrance yard. It is depressing, dark, and gloomy. I imagine Fox died in the larger of these two rooms. In Lord Balling's ' Historical Characters ' Canning is reported to have died in the same apartment, but this is an error. Canning died in a far brighter and more airy room in an upper story of the left wing. Venerable and large as the great cedars on the lawn look, these trees are comparatively modern, not quite a century and a half old. In spite of their height and their breadth, in spite of their great sweeping branches that so proudly seem to kiss the turf beneath, they were only transplanted here from Sutton Court in the reign of George II., and in old views of Chiswick Gardens, as they appeared in that Monarch's reign, these trees are quite small and insignificant. There are glades with velvet-like turf, trim old-fashioned "walks, hedged in by closely-clipped laurel and box hedgerows. In any of these one would hardly be surprised to en- counter little Alexander Pope hobbling along in velvet with lace ruffles, surrounded by an admiring bevy of ladies in ' sacques ' and Watteau-like costumes ; or to find David Garrick and his lively wife enjoying a dish of tea with Lord and Lady Burlington in that classic- looking temple, half hidden by trees, on the banks of that little lake ; or to meet beneath the shade of the great bowling-alley, surrounded by old stone pines, Georgiana Devonshire, attended by George Prince 268 MY REMINISCENCES. of Wales, and followed by stout Charles Fox and jovial, red-faced Sheridan. Who, placed in this plea- sant wilderness, could imagine that Hyde Park Gate is but five miles off, or that nothing but chimney-tops and houses lie between all this greenery within half a mile of these pleasant glades ? There are many art treasures within doors. In the drawing-room (a bright and most liveable room, with great windows overlooking the gardens on one side, on the other the approach. Here the cedar-trees seem anxious to come in at the window, so near do some of the branches come) are Albanos and Claudes, and the walls are lined with priceless miniatures behind glass screens. Here too, hangs a Holy Family, by Domenichino, which has a tale attached to it. The Blessed Mother in this painting is of that red-nosed type which Domenichino bestowed on his Sibyls and his Muses, his Madonnas and his Cupids. It might be put up for auction at Christie's, and be knocked down for twenty or even twenty-five guineas ; but Pope's Lord Burlington was so enamoured of this Mother and Child when he saw it in a nunnery in Rome that, in order to obtain it, he exchanged for it a complete set of marble columns. The Reverend Sisters had, I imagine, the best of the bargain. In one of the bed-rooms hangs an unfinished head by Sir Joshua Reynolds of Duchess Georgiana. It was given to the late duke by Reynolds's niece, Lady Thomond, CHISWICK HOUSE. 269 and is one of the very few portraits that give one any idea of what the charm and vivacity of that face must have been. The mouth, that most difficult feature to portray, is painted as only a great master could paint it, and looks ready to break into a smile. It was a lovely mouth ; I forget who it was said it looked like a beautiful flower. In some notes about Chiswick House, addressed to his sister Lady Carlisle, the late Duke of Devon- shire writes on the subject of the room that witnessed the death of Fox : ' In the room corresponding to that where Dorothy Savile lived and died is a curious picture of Pope over one of the doors ; the other two circular heads are called Lady Ranelagh and Lady Thanet. In this room, for here the bed used to stand, died Charles Fox, in the spring of 1806. You (Lady Carlisle) told me once that he had talked a great deal about our mother here a few days before his death, and had pointed out the pictures and books as evidences of her taste, and you wrote to somebody, I forget who now : " The friend she loved, the statesman she admired, Mourn'd o'er her loss, and as he mourned expired, And even seemed by love and pity moved To choose in death the spot that she had loved." 'In later years,' the duke adds, 'when another statesman sought retirement and repose here, I was asked if the omen did not alarm me. Too soon another 270 MY REMINISCENCES. room above stairs witnessed his last moments. I feel glad not to have seen him during his residence here. My recollections of him, which are those of deep attachment and boundless admiration, are not saddened by the image of his decay.' And I must also quote a charming page devoted to the duke's early recol- lections of society here and of his beautiful mother, Georgiana Duchess' of Devonshire : ' Your recol- lections of this, the drawing, room must be equal to mine, and mine reproduce a motley throng, of which the earliest figures are shoals of French dmigrds sur- rounding Monsieur (Charles X.), all of whom I hated with an ardour that arose from my persuasion that they were our national enemies Latour du Pin's, Polastron's, etc., etc., who kissed me with their rouged faces, and I believed firmly that one and all were called Madame de Pompadour. In those days our mother found here a distraction from the cares and anxieties that beset her. Her loss of health and of beauty did not make her less the most remarkable and admired person of the time she lived in ; but her money distresses, which she unfortunately never found courage to avow, embittered her existence, and at Chiswick alone she escaped from the pressure of their annoyances. Chiswick, her poor, her minerals, her books, and devotion to you, these form my prominent remembrance of her.' And this reference to the death of his old nurse while some amateur theatricals were CHISWICK HOUSE. 271 going on at Chiswick shows the kind, affectionate nature of the man who wrote it : ' Chequered with sorrow were these theatricals, like all life. On the day of the play I followed to the grave Mary Brown, the faithful old nurse, who lived here till she was past eighty, in what is called the Old House, in her own room, looking into the flower garden, permitted to stay by immense indulgence before my time, and during it, for my own satisfaction, and tenderly at- tached was I to her. On the stage myself as Prologue, I remember feeling vexatious at seeing her fellow- servants amongst the audience, as if the example was not that of the mountebank before them.' 272 MY REMINISCENCES. CHAPTER XV. LAST DAYS AT CAMBRIDGE THE CHOICE OF A PROFESSION GARIBALDI AT HOME. MY last term at Cambridge had arrived. On Feb- ruary i I was back again in my old rooms in the great court of Trinity alas, for the last time ! It was now necessary that something should be deter- mined as to my future career, and some profession had to be selected. This choice of a profession is not an easy matter when, as a rule, the Church, the Army, the Bar, or the Diplomatic Service are almost the only four professions open to a young fellow with ' a handle to his name.' It was not then the fashion for younger sons of peers to become City clerks, or for younger sons of dukes to be stockbrokers or bankers. The Church did not attract me. Perhaps had I been born a century earlier and in the pale of the Church of Rome I might have aspired to become a cardinal with artistic tastes, with a palace in Rome full of art treasures ; but even the possibility of being raised to the Bench of Bishops in the House of Lords never filled my mind with anything approaching enthusiasm. Besides, a Bishop is expected to be LAST DAYS AT CAMBRIDGE. - 273 the husband of one wife, and even then the idea of matrimony was far from my mind. The Army I often thought I could have liked ; but it was against my mother's wish that a third son of hers should enter it. She had lost one in it, and that was enough, and too much. For the Bar I had no more inclina- tion than for the Church. Thus there remained but one profession open to me namely, the Diplomatic Service. For some time previously to the time of which I am writing I expected that my fate would be diplomacy, beginning by the Foreign Office. However, a visit to an old friend of my father's changed all my views and settled my immediate future. This visit took place in February, and was paid to Sir David Dundas, then Member of Parlia- ment for the County of Sutherland. 'February 23. To the Temple, where I found Sir David, en robe de chambre, in a charming library- like room at the end of King's Bench Walk, looking on the river. He told me he contemplated resigning his seat in the House of Commons, and that his wish was that I should succeed him. This he confided to me, he added, " sub rosa " ; for the present at least it was to be a secret between us.' As far as I was concerned, I was most willing to meet Sir David's wishes, feeling at the same time that there were many others infinitely more competent to fill the VOL. i. T 274 MY REMINISCENCES. place, both from age and experience. It was not definitely settled till two months had passed after calling at the Temple that I was to write M.P. at the end of my name. However, that visit put an end to all trouble about the choice of a profession. Sir David Dundas was of a type of Scottish gentle- man that is becoming very uncommon. Of a fine presence and with a somewhat pompous manner, he was a delightful companion, and for at least two days he is said never to have paid a longer visit in the country his fund of anecdote was inexhaustible. His features recalled the portraits of Lord Chan- cellor Thurlow, the wisest-looking man of his gene- ration. He had the same o'er-beetling eyebrows, that gave a look of severity as well as of profound wisdom to his countenance. He dressed in the fashion of 1 830, wearing a very high collar and gills which mounted up to his cheek-bones. He had known all the most illustrious of the society of Edin- burgh, when ' Auld Reekie ' deserved the epithet of the Modern Athens, when Sir Walter was yet writing his marvellous fictions and Jeffrey his pun- gent reviews. He had all but succeeded in obtaining the highest post among the lawyers of his day, and for a short time filled the office of Judge- Advocate and Solicitor- General under the Liberal Administra- tion. But Sir David loved his books better than law or politics, and in later years he almost buried himself LAST DAYS AT CAMBRIDGE. 275 among them, either in his pleasant retreat near Stirling or his cosy rooms in the Temple. Before coming to the House of Commons I will return once more in my story to dear old Trinity. I disliked Eton, but Trinity I adored. What pleasant friends I met there ! what warm and fervent com- panions ! It is also something to remember having been at Trinity College when Whewell was Master, and to have known and been on friendly terms with such men as Professor Sedgwick and Canon Kings- ley. I did little work', nor did I try to take a degree. As I was not going into the Church or the Army, a degree would have been of no service. Had I a son, I should think thrice before sending him to an English public school, and he certainly should not go to Eton or Harrow ; but I should feel, did he not go to either one of the great English Universities, that he had missed the happiest days of his youth. Nothing in after-life, however successful or happy that after-life may be, can come up to the happiness of being at Oxford or Cambridge. There for the first time a man finds himself his own master, able to choose amongst his fellow-collegians those whose characters and tastes agree with his own. School friendships are but myths, lightly made and lightly lost ; but at college are made some of the friendships, even attachments, which endure for life. Although the greatest friendship I ever felt for another dated long after my college days T 2 276 MY REMINISCENCES. were gone, it was there that commenced first the deep, life-lasting friendships of early manhood, often stronger and more enduring than the vicious or vir- tuous alliances generally formed in later life. A few days after having bid Cambridge farewell I paid the Wensleydales another visit at Ampthill. They had a party to celebrate their golden wedding- day. ' There was a dance in the Long Room, several neighbours present Mrs. Wilson- Patten and a very pretty Miss Harvey amongst others besides a house party, consisting of my uncle Charles Howard, his son George, my sister E. Argyll and her eldest daughter Edith, Lady Egerton of Tatton, and some of the Ridleys/ In May it was definitely settled that I should take my seat as Member for Sutherland. My brother Albert, whose seniority made it fitting that he should succeed Sir D. Dundas, gave way in his usual generous and unselfish way ; and in the middle of that month 1 paid my future electors a visit. My canvassing, if such an expression can be applied in this case, was of the pleasantest and easiest description, and consisted in calling at the houses of my brother's neighbours and tenants, all of whom I knew more or less well, and by whom I was received with the kindness and warmth of manner which the Scotch show to those with whom they have any ties of blood or of local interest and connection. I could never have endured the usual mode of canvassing, LAST DAYS AT CAMBRIDGE. 277 when so often the candidate for the votes of a con- stituency has never seen his hoped-for electors before he seeks their suffrages, and has to humbug himself and them into the belief that he has always evinced the deepest interest in their welfare, to admire and caress squalling infants, and to wriggle himself as far as possible into the goodwill of strangers. In Sutherland one had but to call on those remem- bered from infancy. My first visit was to a charming old lady Mrs. Housten of eighty-five, who could remember the father of the Duchess-Countess, Earl William. It would be but of local interest to give the names of people on whom I called, and the places I visited in my first election tour. If cordiality could spoil one, one would run much risk of being spoiled among such warm-hearted partisans as those Sutherland electors. Although the electors are few, the distances are great. On one of these days I began my visits at ten in the morning, and only got back to Dunrobin at ten that night. Not only had the electors of the east coast to be called on, but also those on the west and the north. This had to be done posting, and took between ten days and a fort- night ; so that, as regards time, my electioneering tour was by no means a sinecure. At length arrived the day of the election. The hustings were placed in the capital of the county, Dornoch a town of little more than one wide street, with a population under 278 MY REMINISCENCES. 700 souls ; but then there is a large church, generally named a cathedral, which was a fine building once, but has been grievously mauled by my grandfather, whose bones lie within. In front of this church the hustings stood, and here I delivered myself of an oration. Then came the ceremony in the Court-house of being girt with a sword, and of signing a writ as duly elected Member of Parliament for the County of Sutherland. On the 3Oth I took my seat in the House of Commons. My uncle, Charles Howard, and my cousin, F. L. Gower, introduced me into that august Chamber. I could not have been between two stouter Liberals. By the way, I have forgotten to say that my politics, like those of my house, are and have been Liberal not in the Radical, but in the Whig sense of that comprehensive term. Now that aristo- Liberals vote often with Conservatives, it is worth remembering that in the year 1862 and half-a- dozen succeeding years this was rare. In my journal I write : ' June 30. The last two weeks have not been interesting in the House, the technicalities of the Reform Bill being entered into at great length. I have voted in about half-a-dozen divisions ; only in one with the Government about " Corrupt Votes." I cannot say I have attended very regularly, the debates having been most unin- teresting, and I have had a great many engagements.' LAST DAYS AT CAMBRIDGE. 279 The engagements which prevented more regular attendance in Parliament were dinners, balls, and parties pleasures without which, as Sir G. Lewis said, the world would be pleasant enough. But at one and-twenty every ball is a delight, every dinner a feast, at least when I was that age, and when the gilded youth were not so terribly blasts as they are now. Balls at the Palace and elsewhere, dinners and parties at the houses of Lady Waldegrave, Lady Herbert of Lea, Lady Derby, Lady Moles worth, amongst others. There was a gay party at Cliveden that year for Ascot. Royal persons and others drove over daily to the races. Parties and festivities took place at the Crystal Palace, and long afternoons were passed at Lord's watching the Eton and Harrow boys or the Universities at their cricket contests. That year the French actors, Ravel and Deschamps, played in Lon- don, another of the thousand-and-one dissipations of the day. Holland House, too, threw wide its grand old gates, and ' breakfasts,' as we foolishly call those sub-rural, out-of-door parties, which commence at four and end at seven, often took place ; and what was still pleasanter than meeting all the world of London in those historic gardens were the small dinners in that marvel of a dining-room upstairs, among Sir Joshua and Watts portraits, with half-a- dozen of the pleasantest diners out in town round the 280 MY REMINISCENCES. table, and the most delightful of hostesses at the head of it, and then the cigarette smoked beneath the old elms, and the charm of that long gallery of a library oh ! rare Holland House ! Besides balls at Montagu House and other of the few great houses that seem to be aware that the possession of a great fortune and a great house in London ought to entail more hospitality than they generally disburse, Stafford House in those days now and then lit its great hall and staircase, its galleries and banqueting-hall, in a way that recalled its past glories. That season my brother entertained the Viceroy of Egypt, then the guest of Lord Dudley; and later on the Sultan Abdul Aziz. The review of the fleet held by the Queen in that Monarch's honour was the finest sight of the season. The Ripon had been told off to take on board the Members of Par- liament to see the naval fete\ and if the weather had been more propitious doubtless both the Sultan and the Members of the Houses of Parliament would have enjoyed it. This review was soon followed by a ball given at the India Office to the Sultan, and, I believe, paid for by the people of India. It was probably the finest ball ever given in London ; but the awfully sudden death of the wife of the Turkish Ambassador threw a gloom over it. Thus passed the London season. Early in September, in company with my friend LAST DAYS AT CAMBRIDGE. 281 Jocelyn, I visited the International Exhibition of Paris. It was the apogee of the Second Empire of the Empire that smelt half of gunpowder and half of patchouli. Maximilian's tragic death at Queretaro was not yet known at the Tuileries, and that Palace saw in its rooms that summer a succession of kings and emperors. Napoleon III. was then host to all the sovereigns of the Continent ; and yet within three short years all was in the dust. After visiting Sutherland that autumn I paid the first of a succession of pleasant visits to Lady Cowper. The friendship between us begun in that year con- tinued until her death in 1880. Wrest, in Bedford- shire, was her home ; here she . received her friends during the summer and autumn months. The house and gardens have a very French air about them. The gardens are splendid, and the green walks and ' charmilles ' worthy of being compared to Versailles or Belle CEuil. 'We breakfast/ I wrote, 'a party of twenty, at round tables in our hostess's bright morn- ing-room, gay with flowers, china, pictures, and miniatures, crammed full of every kind of art-treasure. This room looks out on the lovely terrace garden and opens into a conservatory ablaze with all the colours of the rainbow, and beyond can be seen the stately double avenue of gigantic elms that form the approach to this fairy-like place.' The beautiful Lady de Grey on the mother's side was Irish, and Lady Cowper had 282 MY REMINISCENCES. a rich vein of mother wit through this descent. An incessant talker, she never for a second became weari- some, and although seeing people and things from a sarcastic point, she never said an ill-natured or unkind word. Her fun was of that best and rarest kind which is perfectly unforced ; and she enjoyed a laugh against herself as much as if it had concerned another. o During all her long years of widowhood she always wore a plain black gown and widow's cap, and al- though so homely in outward appearance, one could not even did one not know that she was a lineal de- scendant of the Greys, Dukes of Kent, and that some of the best blood of England flowed in her veins be with her for any time without discovering in this plain modestly-attired lady that she was thoroughly grande dame. I also visited Chatsworth that autumn for the first time. ' The party, as usual, is nearly entirely composed from the families of Cavendish, Egerton, and Lascelles. The only people here who are not cousins are the Baths, the Spencers, Lord Barrington, and Napier Sturt, the most amusing and impudent of men. My room is charming, looking out on the entrance court, on the same floor, and within a few yards of the Sketch Gallery, which, of all the beautiful things in the place, mostly interests me, and where I have passed nearly the whole of the last days of my visit.' I visited the newly-restored church of Edensor, where my great-uncle, the late LAST DAYS AT CAMBRIDGE. 283 duke, rests in the open churchyard under a plain stone slab without a single letter engraven on it. Standing before that nameless stone, the old adage comes to one's mind with significance after life's fitful fever all that the world could give in wealth, rank, earthly pos- sessions, end with six feet of narrow earth. I have before now alluded to the charm of this Duke of Devonshire. That he would have written delightfully is proved by two privately printed accounts he wrote of Chatsworth and Hardwicke. I will quote two passages out of the former in which he alludes to old times passages which make one regret that he did not write more. They are worthy of Horace Walpole. Of the billiard-room at Chatsworth, he says : ' When I think about this room so many recollections crowd upon me that I know not how to begin. Here Charles Fox, Hare, Lord John Townshend, Fish Crawford, and many other celebrities conversed, and there was a constant war with Hare, who did not spare the ladies of the party. Him I remember well, tall, the thinnest man I ever saw, his face like a surprised cockatoo and as white. Sheridan said that on horseback Hare was like the shadow of Marcus Aurelius. I knew and loved Lord John Townshend, but illness, almost incessant, must have greatly changed him. The others scarcely can I recollect, only the heated features of Sheridan, and the ghostly ones of the Fish ! ' About the gardens and some of their 284 MY REMINISCENCES. denizens in the old days, the duke writes of a very consequential old gardener in a cocked hat and striped stockings and gold shoe-buckles, wearing powder and a long pigtail ' I am sure of the pigtail. It was im- possible not to be amused by his favourite story about the King of Denmark, the son-in-law, I suppose, of George II., who made a tour in England, and appears to have been a Roi sans gene. " The King of Denmark, as Mr. Travis related, came to see Chatsworth in the absence of the family, but many of the neighbouring gentry and others were assembled on the lawn, in the hope of contemplating Majesty at the windows. In this they were soon more than gratified, for having come out on the steps, to Mr. Travis's amazement, the Majesty of Denmark walked down them, and did But as to telling you what he did that is quite impossible." ' Beyond seeing Her Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket completely burnt on December 6, and being sworn as special constable on the 2oth of that month, nothing of further interest happened to me in the year 1867. The special constables were called upon owing to the Fenian scare that winter, and certainly the sight of the blown-down wall at Clerken- well Prison was enough to give even London some feeling of alarm. ' It was a pitiable sight to see the poor people's furniture and homely goods and chattels exposed to-day in the houses whose fronts had been GARIBALDI AT HOME. 285 destroyed by the dastardly attempt to blow up the prison.' ' Death has, 1 I write, ' visited the young of our family cruelly this last year. First poor Constance's little child Blanche, aged two, died suddenly at Chis- wick, and was soon after followed by an infant brother. Then the Kildares lost their eldest daughter, Geral- dine, the most attached of daughters and the most per- fect of sisters, last November at Carton from scarlet fever. It has been a very changeful year for me. When it commenced I was still at Cambridge, but before the summer came I was in the House of Commons. Short as my time there has been, it has made me feel more conscious of many defects, and gives me greater admiration for the qualities of others. I echo Lord Palmerston's remark that six months passed in the House give more experience than two years passed out of it.' I had not yet done with Garibaldi. I wished to see him at his island home at Caprera, and early in January I left London for Marseilles on my way thither. ' From Nice I went by diligence to Genoa. I think the night and day which I spent on this malle paste on the Corniche the most unpleasant I have ever passed when travelling. At first I got a place on the banquette. This was comparatively com- fortable, for by my side sat a pleasant old Italian who spoke French. In the morning I had to relinquish 286 MY REMINISCENCES. my seat on the banquette and go inside the car- riage a change as from purgatory to a worse place. The malle poste was literally an old box mounted on huge wheels, in which two persons would have been uncomfortable ; but I found four insiders, and before our journey was over there were six. These included a French lady, rather well-looking, and with her a most repulsive-looking Britisher. A fat Frenchman and two very dirty Italians formed the rest of the party. To add to this discomfort, I had to sit "bodkin." It poured without ceasing. At Savona, which we reached in the evening, we got at length a breath of fresh air. After a miserable journey, during the latter part of which the entire machine seemed to threaten to fall into pieces, we arrived five hours late at Genoa. The following night I embarked on board the steamer La Sardaigna. We steamed for La Maddalena, leaving Genoa under a clear sky, the sea calm. Our first stoppage was at Leghorn, which we reached the following morning, January 13. There were but three other passengers on board Captain Siziar's vessel one of these a Calabrian tobacco-planter, also bound for Caprera. We made Bastia at six that evening. The moon rose clear and bright, lighting up the rugged coast of Corsica as we ran along it. Early next morning we anchored off La Maddalena. The view of the town and its harbour, its irregular houses and fishing-boats drawn up on the beach, is very GARIBALDI AT HOME. 287 picturesque. In front of La Maddalena lies the little isle of Caprera, with a bold outline of rock, and down below, close by the sea, a small stripe of white is visible. This is the home of Garibaldi. To the right stretches out seawards a long line of rocky isles, bounded by the grand blue range of the Sar- dinian mountains. On landing I found the General's sons, Menotti and Ricciotti. They had come to La Maddalena the evening before for a ball. My scanty luggage was soon placed in a boat, and, with Gari- baldi's sons, I was soon on the strand of Caprera. The General's house is about a quarter of a mile from the sea ; a rough, stony road leads up to it. The house has two storeys ; its architecture is of a very irregular description. You enter the house through a court, half farmyard, half poultry-yard a basse-cour in fact. The General was out, and Ricciotti led me to where he guessed he would be among his orange- trees, of which he is justly proud. We found him in consultation with his gardener. Since I had last seen him in July he has much aged, his hair nearly grey. He walks on crutches, and seems to have only the use of one leg, so crippled is he by rheuma- tism. He wore the camicia rossa, and over it a cloak thrown over his shoulders in Stuart tartan. A smartly embroidered smoking-cap was placed jauntily on one side of his fine old lion-like head ; round his waist was a belt, with a knife, light-box, etc., attached, 288 MY REMINISCENCES. " souvenir magnifique? he told me, " de Lady Shaftes- bury" He greeted me not only kindly but affection- ately, and recalled my visit to him at Rocco d'Anfo. After showing me his orange-trees, which are, as well as all the trees in the island, his own planting, we visited some flour mills which he is now building near his house. He limped slowly along, his left leg quite useless. His flour mills are a great interest to him, and he thinks he has discovered a new system by which he will be able to add increased force to their motive-power. He has already built three of these mills, and one is in construction that is to bear double iron sails. He spoke of his intention of joining the insurrection in Candia if the Greeks were willing to fight, but that in his present state of health a campaign in a mountainous country would be out of the ques- tion for him. He showed me all over the house, his own room, large and comfortable, but all the furniture of the simplest and most farmhouse-like kind. The room he destined for me is at the end of the build- ing, opening out of the sitting-room a room hardly ever used, as is the case in farmhouses of the kind. My window commands a splendid view of the hills of Sardinia. A stone balcony in front of this window is a most enjoyable place in which to sit and enjoy this panorama of mountain, sky, and sea. The General deputed his body-servant, Maurizio, to attend on me, and said I was to consider myself while under GARIBALDI AT HOME. 289 his roof as at home. Maurizio soon announced that the pranzo was ready in the dining-room. A large oblong table was well spread with meats, principally sausages, and many bottles of white and red wine. A few plain wooden chairs, a sofa, and a piano make up the furniture of the room. I sat between the General and Ricciotti. Garibaldi's daughter, Signora Canzio, and her husband were also there. She is pretty, with light-brown hair and fine dark eyes, a retrousst nose, and rather a wide mouth. Habitually silent, she now and then brightened up and became ani- mated. Her husband wore what may be called his father-in-law's uniform, the red shirt. Garibaldi, how- ever, had discarded his for the nonce, and was in plain clothes. The Canzios have a family of four children three boys and a girl, Anita, named after her maternal grandmother, who was a heroine if ever there was one. The General insisted upon helping me to everything himself, and was never satisfied unless both my glasses were full, one with red, the other with white wine, both Caprera vintages, which would not be appreciated at the Travellers' or White's Clubs. The meal, which consisted of a mixture of fruit, fish, and meat, was plentiful, but it abounded in garlic. We were eleven at table, and Maurizio had to do all the waiting single-handed. The dessert con sisted of raisins, dried figs, and a slice of a hard cake made of almonds. The General talked much on the VOL. i. u 290 MY REMINISCENCES. subject of farming. Unless I was alone with him, he never alluded to politics. After dinner I strolled about the island with Ricciotti. He led me to a pretty valley surrounded by rocks. The cena was at five, and alike in all respects to thepranso. Tea, that tasted like quatre fleurs, followed. Garibaldi was in great talk, and recited some French poetry, includ- ing an ode on " Imagination " by Delille. The plot consists of a person lost in the catacombs. Signora Canzio played and sang a good deal out of her father's favourite opera, "II Barbiere." Rossini is his favourite composer. Soon after eight the General retired to rest, but the music was kept up for more than an hour after he had left us. ' The view from my balcony of the sea and hills bathed in moonlight was marvellously beautiful. ' Next morning at nine I found Garibaldi among his orange-trees. There are no tubs at Caprera, but the General showed me the way to a little bay near which his English yacht is moored. Menotti was fishing close by, accompanied by a man in the red shirt of the place, the reflection of which in the blue waters recalled the Garibaldians on the Lake of Garda. The island is curiously like some parts of the west coast of Sutherland, and were it not for the deep azure of the sea, and the rich colouring of the lichen- covered rocks, I could, while bathing in this creek, have fancied myself back at dear old Lochinver. I GARIBALDI AT HOME. 291 strolled later over the island. While scrambling over the rocks I lost some sketches, dropping them on our way to the highest point in the island, from whence one has almost a bird's-eye view of the surrounding island of La Maddalena and the Straits of Bonifazio, looking like rocky lands on papier-macht raised maps. While seated on the summit wild goats gambolled beneath us. Many of these are piebald, black and white. Two stork-like birds flew over us in wide circles ; these birds came from Africa, and are called here, after their cry, " yaks." A vulture was also near us, seated motionless on a rock. That night it blew a hurricane. Next day I went to La Maddalena with Garibaldi's sons. The storm still raged, and in order to get across the Maddalena to catch the steamer for Genoa I shortened my stay at Caprera, and wished the General farewell early in the morning. I found him writing in his bedroom, a most voluminous correspondence which Ricciotti took over to La Mad- dalena, no less than twenty-seven letters, which he put on board the packet. One of these letters, the Gene- ral told me, was for my mother. He gave me several of his photographs, writing his name beneath each, and a bundle of cigars. He wished me to prolong my visit, to stop as long as I could, and- said, " C'est un bonheur de vous avoi.r id" But I had to go. " At any rate," he said, " do not let this be your only visit to us." He fondly thought Caprera might be good for U 2 292 MY REMINISCENCES. my mother's health, little knowing how impossible such a journey would be for her. As I was leaving the house he came out of his room and again bade me " God-speed." While waiting for the steamer that was to take me from Porta Torres to Genoa, Ricciotti introduced me to an old English sea-captain, Roberts, a resident at La Maddalena. Captain Roberts is apparently between eighty and ninety years of age ; he fought at Trafalgar, and was a friend of Byron and Shelley the former he accompanied to Greece. He made us dine with him ; and after dinner mixed us a capital punch with some whiskey that he had from the Ondine, my brother's yacht, obtained the year before. ' A heavy snowstorm came over the island in the afternoon, to the evident amazement of the natives, who, picking up the snow, handed it round as some- thing rare and strange. I went on board the steamer that evening, and we left Maddalena at midnight.' 293 CHAPTER XVI. l868 : FOREIGN TRAVEL THE HOUSE OF COMMONS MY MOTHER'S DEATH. JANUARY saw me back again in Paris. It was a hard winter, and all the gay world was skating in the Bois de Boulogne Madame de Metternich, plain with the exception of fine roguish eyes, and always beautifully dressed ; Madame de Gallifet, with whose looks I was disappointed ; and many smart young American ladies, who skated better than all the Parisians put together. Thanks to the kindness of some French friends the Boyers I saw a ball at the Tuileries, without the trouble of a presentation to their Imperial Majesties. I merely wished to see one of those balls at the Tuileries as one would go to see a bal masqud or a fite on the ice in the frozen Bois de Boulogne. Now that the Tuileries has perished as completely as the Second Empire, or the Palace of the Caesars in Rome, anything relating to it is of interest. ' As a sight the ball was interesting, unlike any other court ball that I have seen. Perhaps the most striking sight was the double file of Cent Gardes, in their gorgeous 294 MY REMINISCENCES. pale blue and silver uniforms, lining the state entrance and staircase, and standing sentry at the doors. After passing the Salon de Diane, and struggling through a crowd principally composed of officers, I got a good place in front of the dais on which the Emperor and Empress were seated. The Empress was all in white, and looked strikingly handsome ; the Emperor did not appear to advantage in his white silk tights and stockings, and he seemed tired and bored. During and between the dances he walked across the open space formed in front of the dais, and conversed with some of the officers and diplomats. He was a long time in conversation with a fat general, who I was told was Lebceuf. The supper was admirably managed ; piles of truffes en serviette abounded, and here there was less of a crowd than at Buckingham Palace. Walking through these brilliantly lit rooms, glittering with uni- forms and gala dresses, made one think of the changes they had witnessed, of the different courts and courtiers that had passed through them, of the Grand Monarque here in his youth, of " Louis the Martyr " and his queen, prisoners here in the early days of the Revolution ; of Robespierre and his sanguinary councils, of the First Empire, of the Restored Monarchy, of Charles X. and the Bourgeois King, of the mob twice gutting this palace so full of reminiscences. To-night the great preponderance of American women was remarkable; there would have been but few ladies present but for FOREIGN TRAVEL. 295 our American cousins, who delight in appearing at this gay court. They are eagerly welcomed by their Imperial Majesties, faute de mieux I am told that little of good society, except officials and their wives, come to these balls.' Looking back on that night, it seems to me like a dream to recall that mixed crowd, the glare and the glitter within those historic rooms, the Empress looking like another Reine Blanche, all in white from head to foot, the Emperor already dragging his feet with diffi- culty, and with the look of fate and disaster on his worn, expressionless face ; Lebceuf and the shoal of generals with the prestige and medals of Crimean and Italian victories on them, the military band playing the gayest of Offenbach's quadrilles and Strauss's valses ; the older generals, some of whom could recall Moscow and Waterloo, intently engaged at whist in that long gallery set apart for the card-players ; the extravagant and splendid supper ; the servants in their green and gold liveries ; the handsome giants lining the stairs and doorways all, ' like the baseless fabric of a vision,' vanished and dispersed ; the dancers dead and scattered ; the palace (in front of which all that night burned huge fires in the Place du Carrousel, around which the footmen of the guests were warm- ing themselves) now a scorched shell, the very walls eaten away by the fierce petroleum-fed flames of the Commune. From Paris I went to Mentone, where the 296 MY REMINISCENCES. Grosvenors were then staying ; and at the end of the month we made a little tour together in Italy. We posted along the Corniche Road. I am not going to attempt to describe the Corniche ; it is too well known to require any further description, and I should fail utterly if I attempted to describe it. Suffice it, then, to say that among all the crowd of picturesque towns and villages San Maurizio pleased us the most. The first night we slept at Oneglia, in a bad and unfragrant inn. The second at Savona, at nearly as bad an inn as that of Oneglia. The third evening we reached Genoa. ' From Genoa we went on to Spezzia, the drive very mountainous and picturesque. From Spezzia we went on by rail to Pisa. The Campo Santo is the most remarkable thing at Pisa, so full of sacred quiet and perfect peace ; it is a spot in which one would wish to rest for ever to moulder into dust in that hallowed soil.' The day after we reached Rome. Our hotel there was the ' Europa,' in the Piazza d' Espagna. Owing to circumstances, our stay in the Eternal City was limited to a day one day to see a place that it takes a lifetime to visit ! ' Having but one day to see anything of Rome, I was out early, and before eight had visited St. Peter's. How can any one be disappointed with that glorious temple ? Not I, for one ; and although FOREIGN TRAVEL. 297 expecting much, what I beheld far surpassed those expectations.' Of what we did and what we saw during that day I will only give a list, merely noting what most struck me. ' We began by the Pantheon ; a screen hid Raffaelle's tomb. We then scampered through the Vati- can, the Sistine Chapel, which in itself is a prodigious art gallery, a monument to Michael Angelo's genius. Raffaelle's " Transfiguration " I thought magnificent in colour as well as in composition, and the drawing un- approachable, especially that of the foreshortening, and the head and foot of the foremost figure on the right. We had a beautiful afternoon for seeing the Coliseum vaster than I expected. From the top the view of the city and of the Campagna, bathed in a rich sunset, was glorious. As we were leaving the Coliseum an escort of soldiers galloped past, followed by a couple of coaches. In the first was the Pope ; in the second a cardinal, Antonelli, I think, to judge by his sallow, Jesuit-like face. Pio Nono looked on us be- nignly, and as he passed blessed us with uplifted fingers. We also visited St. John of Lateran ; and the next morning, before leaving for Naples, I paid my respects to Michael Angelo's " Moses," and also visited the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. 'At Naples we hoped to see an eruption of Vesuvius, which had been announced by the newspapers, an annual falsehood got up to attract the unwary to that 298 MY REMINISCENCES. extremely unsavoury, unhealthy, and overrated town. Like all tourists, we duly rode up the mount ; but the eruption was only of a slight scorbutic kind, and not deserving the grandly sounding name the papers had bestowed on it. Pompeii, too, we duly visited.' My parliamentary duties called me back to London, and at Naples I parted with the Grosvenors, returning home to Marseilles by sea, thence to England through France. ' I left Naples on a calm evening ; Vesuvius wore round its summit a great pillar of smoke, which was tinted of a rosy hue by the setting sun. Capri lay in the sea all in a purple haze, and the bright, gay town made up a picture beyond the dreams of painters.' London, the London of club-land, was all in a tumult of political excitement when I returned there. A great change had taken place in the world of politics. The last week of February had been poli- tically a very eventful one. ' I came up to town from Chiswick on the 25th, and met Gladstone in Regent Street about two that afternoon. He told me that Lord Derby had resigned the premiership, and that at that moment Disraeli was forming his new Government. Every one you met or passed was either talking of the new premier, or else of the Speke mystery.' Lome had been elected member for Argyleshire on March 3, and took his seat on the 5th. Charles Howard, his great-uncle, and I were his introducers on that solemn occasion. ' After the swearing-in had THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 299 been gone through, the Speaker told him that just before he (Lome) entered the House a member, who had been making a speech about tramways, had quoted a passage from Lome's book relating to his travels in America, and that the opinion quoted from that book had turned the scale against the bill which was then under discussion. This little episode seemed to me of good augury for his parliamentary career. The clan Campbell had mustered in large numbers to see Lome take his seat. MacCullum More appeared in the peers' gallery, and my sister and Edith Camp- bell were aloft in the ladies' cage. I feel certain that here begins a useful and distinguished career for Mac- Cullum Beg. His danger is that he may be tempted to begin to speak too soon. Much abler and more experienced M.P.'s than myself have advised him to wait, and not to attempt to address the House for some time.' The advice of the elder and more ex- perienced members of Parliament was followed. ' Not only the Houses of Lords and Commons but even the lobbies and Westminster Hall itself were crowded that afternoon, it being the day of Disraeli's first appearance in the House since his elevation to the premiership. As to the warmth of his reception there have been various opinions, but it seemed to me all but enthusiastic. When he entered the House of Commons John Stuart Mill was on his legs ; but he had to interrupt his speech for several minutes on 300 MY REMINISCENCES. account of the ringing cheers that Disraeli's appearance evoked. The hero of the hour looked as impassible as ever, and, with the exception of the low bow he made the Speaker as he reached his seat, he appeared as he always does.' What a difference Lome's being in the House made to me I cannot say. It only wanted such a companionship to take away the feeling of loneliness that I formerly felt among so many older people than myself ; and our walks and drives from and to the House were charming. Then follows in my record of daily events a dinner with the Speaker (Denison). ' I sat next the Speaker, who was agreeable, full of talk, and in great spirits. The dinner very long, and I was only too glad to be able to get away shortly after we left the dining-room. Philips's picture (of the House of Commons) looked very well, placed in the Speaker's drawing-room opposite the portrait by the same artist of the Princess of Wales in her bridal dress ; and although this picture has faults, it has great merits. Some of the likenesses, notably those of Lord Palmerston and Sir G. C. Lewis, are admirable por- traits.' ' The Irish debate lasted till March 16, and it gave rise to four very remarkable speeches : Lowe's on the 1 2th, which was of course clever and racy ; Bright's on the 1 3th a magnificent oration, people said one of his very finest ; Gladstone on the i6th ; and Disraeli on THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 301 the same night a clever but a laboured speech. Of the four, Bright' s bore the palm. The House was crammed from floor to ladies' gallery, but the stillness was death-like ; and when he ceased there was a uni- versal cheer. Such a voice, such language, and such eloquence ! The night of the 1 3th was also full of interest in the House of Lords. Argyll attacked Dizzy's policy in a fiery speech ; the Lord Chancellor (Cairns) stigmatised this speech as partaking of " per- sonal rating " a remark which caused the Government to roar again with delight.' About this time I paid an interesting visit, with Lome, to the American Minister (Adams), who was shortly going to give up his Excellencyship, and to re- turn to America. ' Adams is a short, bald, gentlemanlike man, with a pleasing manner, and with but little twang. The conversation was principally confined to the sub- ject of the President's impeachment. Adams said the Tenure of Office Bill diminished the power of the Pre- sident more than anything else could do.' We called afterwards on old Lord Hardwicke. ' I had not seen him since Cambridge days at Wimpole. He is very antipathetic to Dizzy, and spoke with great admiration of Bright. This, for such a Tory of the old school as " Old Blowhard," is certainly a sign of the times.' To return to the House of Commons. ' The Irish Church debate began on Monday, 302 MY REMINISCENCES. March 30, and was by far the most brilliant that I had yet heard, or that I am likely to hear, in the House of Commons. The first night was the most interesting. Lord Stanley opened the ball with a speech not worthy of his great reputation. He seemed conscious of the disadvantage of having to defend his amendment. The following night was different, when Gathorne Hardy made a very telling "no surrender " speech. The Conservatives cheered him to the echo : at any rate, his was a straightforward and a manly policy, and the Government were delighted to have at length discovered that great rarity, a Tory of the Old Rock. Goschen then took up his parable, and we all went to dinner ; Lome and I, as usual, dining together at the St. James's Club ' (then in Grafton Street) ' " my club," as I used to call it as the two others I belonged to, Pratt's and Egerton's, were but night clubs. When we returned to the House, Bright was up, delivering one of his dignified and temperate speeches. At mid- night the debate was adjourned by Roebuck. Next day, April i, I met the once peerless Lady Waterford still wonderfully handsome her profile one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. She was pleasant and unaffected at a dinner at Lord FoleyV Next day the debate on the Irish Church was re- sumed. Both Lowe and Bernal Osborne made clever speeches. ' The latter has perhaps too much of the buffoon to impress, but no one can deny his cleverness.' THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 303 ' On the following day (April 3) the debate ended. I had been to Beaufort House, seeing again some of the old familiar Cambridge friends' faces at the Uni- versity Sports being held there ; but, in order to secure a place in the House on such an important day, had to hurry away early, for it was necessary to be in the House of Commons by half-past three. Even then it was difficult to secure a seat. ' A merry party dined with me at the St. James's Club, consisting of Jocelyn and two other old Cam- bridge friends, Gerald Bridgeman and Alfred Charteris.' (All these three now dead !) ' Lome dined with us, and with him I returned to the House in time to hear the beginning of Dizzy's " heated imagination " speech. He commenced it at 10.30, and at one o'clock in the morning the long, rambling, and discursive oration finished, not without frequent signs of impatience throughout the House, cries of " 'Vide, Vide ! " at times almost interrupting the speaker. ' Then uprose Gladstone, and, in a speech remark- able for its clearness and its point, brought the debate to an end. The House was then cleared of strangers, amongst whom were the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge. Two divisions followed one upon the other closely. Both would have given us a majority of sixty, had it not been for the mistake made by two of our party, owing to which mistake in the second division we had only a majority of fifty-eight. The 304 MY REMINISCENCES. cheering both within and in Westminster Hall was prodigious. As Lome and I left the House we saw the cheering crowd before us, closely following Glad- stone up Parliament Street : he was on foot, accom- panied by two of his younger sons. Thus came the beginning of the end of that most unjust Establishment, the English Church in Ireland.' In a letter written to my mother the day after his triumph Mr. Gladstone says : ' This is a day of ex- citement almost of exultation. We have made a step, nay, a stride, and this stride is on the pathway of justice, and of peace, and of national honour and renown.' That last summer passed at Chiswick was a boun- tiful and a rare one ; a summer crowned with all her flowers, the air rich with the perfume of the lilacs and laburnums that clothed the stately villa of Lord Bur- lington. ' Everything here is bright, and fresh, and lovely ; the only take-off to being perfectly happy is the state of my dearest mother's health now, alas ! laid up ; but so patient, and even cheerful, in the midst of cruel sufferings ; so delighted with the beauty of the fresh spring foliage, which she can watch shooting forth from the trees from out her bedroom windows.' That summer I paid a visit to Lord Cowper's place in Hertfordshire Panshanger. ' The house is built in a bad, modern, Strawberry- Hill Gothic ; but the interior is comfort itself. The picture-gallery contains THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 305 some splendid works two RafTaelles, many fine por- traits by Andrea del Sarto, and a masterly life-size equestrian picture, by Rembrandt, of Turenne. ' We are a large party Lord Shrewsbury and his daughters, Lady Brownlow and Lady G. Talbot, Hyde, Jocelyn, Julian Fane, the Dangans, and others. The grass walks by the clear streams that meander through the park are delightful ; the woods carpeted with hya- cinths, " like heaven upspringing through the earth." Panshanger is just the place one would like to show a foreigner in summer ; it makes one proud of old England.' I was back again in the House of Commons on the night of May I. 'At 10.30, Walpole was winding up a heavy speech. Elcho followed him in one of his most egotistical speeches. His unpopularity in the House was very apparent ; the noise that our side kept up throughout his speech almost silenced him. But with great pluck and apparent good humour he continued, and finished what he had to say. Then ensued a dead silence. AH eyes were fixed on Dizzy, who, however, sat motionless, looking as plastic as ever. Gladstone then rose. His speech was long and loudly cheered, particularly towards its close, and especially when he said that he would not take the word of command from the House of Lords. The cheering rose, and fell, and rose again. Lome and I were sitting together, and contributed no little to the VOL. i. x 306 MY REMINISCENCES. general applause. The division that immediately followed gave us a majority of sixty-four. Dizzy then announced that this division had altered the footing of the Government with the present House of Commons, and he adjourned the debate till the following day, May 4.' On May 2 Chiswick was full of guests the Speaker and Lady C. Denison, the Gladstones, Argylls, and many others. ' The Speaker seemed rather discon- certed about the state of political affairs, and Glad- stone would only discuss the Academy Exhibition, and would not talk of politics. Everything, as to even the immediate future, was conjecture ; but the Speaker credited a report to the effect that the Queen had stipulated with Dizzy that he should, in view of the recent defeat of the Government, tender his resignation, and that Her Majesty would refuse it. Panizzi came in the afternoon ; since his recent illness he had let grow a shaggy, stubbly grey beard. Poor old man, he seemed half paralysed, but lamented more the uncouthness of his beard than his illness.' The Irish Church Bill still formed the war-horse on which Government and Opposition fought during the nights of that lovely month of May. Although pretty regular in my attendance, I find I missed, by dining with the Argylls at distant Camden Hill to meet the Dufferins, an exciting scene on the night of the /th 'a tremendous row, in which Dizzy, Bright, THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 307 and Gladstone attacked each other violently. John Hay, who was present, said he had never heard any- thing like it in the House before. Dizzy, they said, quite lost his temper, and shook his fist at Bright. Another such a night, and an immediate dissolution is inevitable.' Then followed the news of the fall of Magdala, ' un- doubtedly the finest feat of arms we have performed since the quenching of the Indian mutiny.' Thursday, May 28, was the day on which I made with some success, I believe my first (and last) speech in the House of Commons. ' The Scotch Reform Bill had been brought forward ; part of this new Scotch Reform Bill affected my seat. There were a number of notices in the Parliamentary papers relating to the represen- tation of Sutherland ; some suggesting that it should be amalgamated with the neighbouring counties of Ross and Cromarty, or with Caithness. Sir David Dundas had taken up the case of Sutherland as warmly as if he still sat for that county in Parliament. I conferred with him on this subject, and also with Mr. Gladstone. The latter advised me to speak only if the representa- tion of Sutherland were attacked, and most kindly promised to stand by me in its defence. I was early in the House that afternoon, and secured a place on the third row of benches in a line with Gladstone. Mr. Laing, member for the Northern Boroughs, opened the discussion by attacking in the most acrimonious manner the representation of Sutherland. He said X 2 308 MY REMINISCENCES. that it was not only a job, " but that it stank in the nostrils of the people of Scotland ; " and made, in short, a most vindictive attack against it. About nine that night the eleventh clause " that the county of Suther- land shall be added to the adjoining counties of Ross and Cromarty, for the purpose of returning jointly one member to serve in future Parliaments," was proposed. This amendment was amended by striking out the words " Ross and Cromarty," and inserting the word " Caithness." I then rose ; but I will spare my reader the speech ; if he wants to see it he can doubt- less discover it in " Hansard," or in the papers of May 29, 1869. ' My peroration ( ! ) consisted of a couple of lines out of " Macbeth," that I had laid my hand on that morning; you have but to open your Shakespeare, like Virgil, to find something appropriate for the occasion, be it what it may. These lines are to the effect that it should never be said that one was willing " to throw away the dearest thing he owned, as if it were a careless trifle." My relief when I sat down after delivering this specimen of oratory is not to be expressed, and the con- viction that I had done my best was pleasant. People were most kind and cordial, and came round me full of pretty speeches and compliments. It would be im- possible to express what I felt while speaking, my own voice sounded so strange then, and I felt a kind of reckless sensation on seeing Dizzy spying at me through THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 309 his eye-glass. I believe I addressed the House prin- cipally as " Gentlemen," instead of " Sir," or " Mr. Dodson " (the deputy Speaker then in the chair), as I should by rights have done. But both sides of the House encouraged and cheered me. A member of the Government, Sir W. Maxwell, was good enough to say that I had made a spirited and graceful defence of my country. Both Gladstone and Dizzy voted against grouping Sutherland with another county or counties in the division that ensued. Just as this division was being taken I espied Lowe walking into the lobby in order to vote against us ; but I promptly collared him, and he was one of the noble majority of ninety-two who maintained the present representation of Suther- land. " lo triumphed In spite of a not entirely unnatural elation at the success of my maiden speech, I was fully aware that, un- less Government had not intended to spare Sutherland, the result of that night's division would have been a very different one. However, it was pleasant to read in the ' Times,' of the next day, that one had made ' a spirited and effective speech.' It flattered one's foolish vanity to see recorded in a leading article in that journal, that ' this spirited speech had turned the scale of the division.' By far the greatest pleasure my success gave me was the pleasure it was to my dearest mother to hear me praised. She received many letters on the subject, and I too got several. Here is a short and 310 MY REMINISCENCES. pleasant note from Sir David Dundas. ' My dear Ronald Gower,' he writes from the Temple on May 29, ' you have done gloriously, and saved your country. God bless you. Yours heartily, D. D.' A few evenings after this debate on the Scotch Reform Bill, at a ball at Maryborough House, Disraeli came up to me, and after saying something compli- mentary about my ' speech,' as he was good enough to call it, on Sutherland, introduced me to his wife. I naturally expressed my gratitude to him for the line he had taken regarding Sutherland ; to which he replied, ' Yes, I helped you, but you never help me.' I have, I feel, dwelt far too long on this episode of my short parliamentary career; but doubtless had Single-speech Hamilton written his recollections, he would have con- secrated at least as much space to that unique event in his life ; and we are on an equal footing as regards the number of our orations. In June I paid Lady Waldegrave a visit at Straw- berry Hill, which, thanks to her perseverance and good taste, had, in spite of the sale and dispersal of Horace Walpole's curios, gimcracks, and expensive toys, recovered much of its former contents ; and she had greatly improved and enlarged the building. Some of the rooms the library, for instance had resumed the appearance they bore when ' Horry' had his printing- press there, and when that rich virtuoso and model of English correspondents dabbled here with his books and THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 311 his miniatures, his china, and relics of defunct kings and cardinals. The party, in that sugar-candy cake- like house of wits, was a small one and not interesting. It consisted chiefly of a few neighbours of Strawberry assembled there for a dance given by the Due d' Aumale at neighbouring Orleans House. ' The pleasantest of the guests were Lady Molesworth and Lord Torring- ton. The dance at Orleans House was dull, and no wonder, as there were more French Royalists present than any one else, and French royalty is not a very lively description of company. But I enjoyed seeing the Duke's fine collection of paintings, chiefly of the modern French school. He has some fine Greuzes. There I made the acquaintance of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, a most agreeable old gentleman, still ex- tremely handsome. He told me he was a great sufferer from gout, but enjoys his present life of quiet and repose. Like so many others, he at first took me for Lome.' A night or two after this dance at Orleans House I met two pleasant old dames at dinner at Lord For- tescue's Lady Galloway and the Dowager Lady Clinton : the latter could remember the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire. ' It was quite touching to hear how all those who have known my mother, how- ever slightly, speak of her. The more I see of people in society, the more am I struck by the love and admi- ration in which she is so justly held.' 312 MY REMINISCENCES. Then followed the ordeal of a public dinner for the Newspaper Press Fund. ' Lord Houghton presided, flanked by the Duke of Cambridge and Prince Chris- tian. The two things worth recalling of this dinner were seeing for the first time Gustave Dore, a short, thick-set young man, with a striking but handsome face ; and having to propose the healths of the artistes who had warbled and carolled to us during that wearisome repast. Later I went to a party at the Gladstones. He told me that he had been severely attacked by Scotch Radicals for his defence of what Paddy Green would call " my poor and distracted country." ' That summer Longfellow was in England. I met him at a garden party at the Argylls'. It was a bitter disappointment to my mother that she was then too ill to see the poet, for whom she entertained the very loftiest admiration. Thus, with the House of Commons, with dinners, and dances, and parties, that summer wore away, and at the end of June I recorded, ' Now ends another month of this racketing and useless life ! ' But ' racketing and useless ' as I felt my life to be, I was in a kind of groove, from out of which I could not easily rise ; and the following month of July commenced with another of the large and endless dinners, which I disliked the more I saw of them. ' It is the same thing over and over again,' I write in my diary, ' with so little real enjoyment to make up for so much THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 313 loss of time and boresomeness. If only I could have been more in the society in which Lome and I break- fasted one morning this month, my life would be much more enjoyable and interesting. This was a breakfast at F. Leighton's, where was present another and a far greater brother artist, Watts. We passed two pleasant hours in Leighton's newly-finished house, close by Little Holland House. He has built himself a fine studio ; his house is full of art treasures. His own sketches in Greece and Italy are not the least interesting contents of that house. What an existence that man has ! with such a house in London for the summer, and pass- ing the winter in Italy and the South ! ' But perhaps, had I been then more behind the scenes, I might have discovered that even a fashionable painter's life is not all rose colour, and that skeletons as well as lay figures haunt the handsomest of studios and Queen Anne houses. More garden parties followed, Holland House throwing open its splendid old rooms and gardens to society. There, one afternoon in July, I again met Longfellow, and pitied the great man, for Lord H. was doing the honours of Charles Fox's old home. Holland House was to me one of the most, if not the most attractive of London houses to visit, and its kind mistress has been one of the truest and most constant friends of my life. That summer I paid Strawberry Hill another visit. 314 MY REMINISCENCES. A large party were there, but with the exception the very great exception of Mr. Gladstone, it was an uninteresting one. The season was brought to a close by a ball at Spencer House, when some of us remained till St. James's Street and Pall Mall were made glorious by sunshine. On this final dissipation my London season of 1868 dropped its curtain. London society had only migrated from town to country. ' Here are some pleasant people,' I write in July from Wrest, ' the Dufferins, Carnarvons, Halifaxes, Henry Greville, Lady Abercorn and her daughters, and, among others, a very remarkable French lady, Mrs. Craven, the authoress of some most excellent but rather goody-goody books such, for instance, as " Le Recit d'une Sceur," which I have in vain tried to read. She had a handsome, Dante-like face. Lady Cowper is in her wonted flow of talk and spirits ; she told me of her early friendship for my mother ; they were of the same age. She remembers her a slim young girl. On one occasion my mother insisted on play- ing at being a governess and a naughty child, Lady Cowper having to perform the role of the latter.' Before leaving London for Scotland I paid Watts a visit at Little Holland House. ' He was hard at work, so hard that he began painting at five in the morning. He showed me some good portraits of Lady Bath and the Ladies Talbot. His bust of Clytie he insisted on wetting with a sponge, which he thinks improves the MY MOTHER'S DEATH. 315 appearance of the marble. Millais and Prinsep (a rising young artist) were playing at billiards in that charming little suburban, old-fashioned villa.' In September I was at Dunrobin, visiting my con- stituents, having very unwillingly left my mother at Chiswick in a most suffering condition. At Dunrobin the news reached me of my sister Evelyn Blantyre's sad loss, that of her youngest child. She was named Blanche, ' a name that had already been an unlucky one in my mother's family, for her sister Blanche, Lady Burlington, had died in the prime of life. My mother, too, had lost a daughter named after her sister Blanche ; and two grandchildren, both Blanches.' That year at Dunrobin I first met my dear friend W. H. Russell, the founder of the profession of war correspondents, the prince of good fellows and good companions ; the wittiest, kindest, merriest, most un- selfish of men. ' Napier Sturt and he were as good as a play both full of anecdote ; and their arguments together were as amusing as they were endless.' I also paid the Grosvenors a visit at their shooting quarters on the west coast of the county. ' Nothing can be imagined more charming than Loch More, the house, and the whole place. I had seen it in passing from Scourie to Lairg last year, but it was then uninhabited. They have now made it comfort itself ; and even the offices, such as the stables, keepers' houses, larders, &c., are perfection. The drawing and 316 MY REMINISCENCES. dining rooms are remarkably pretty. In the latter the walls are panelled with most effective chalk draw- ings by Wolff, representing Scottish game and fish. The dining-room is made cheerful with the walls panelled by polished deal, as in old Cheshire houses ; and, with its bright Turkey carpets and gay chintzes and flowers all about, is as pretty a room as one can wish for.' Returning early in October to Chiswick, I found my mother much worse than when 1 left her. From that time she daily lost strength, and gradually sunk under the cruel and protracted sufferings which she bore with unquenchable courage and resignation. On October 8 we left Chiswick for Stafford House. My mother's state of health made it necessary for her to be nearer her London doctors, and therefore we bade adieu to Chiswick for ever. My poor mother had to be carried from her room and placed in an invalid carriage, in which she was driven to London. That was a most unhappy day, but infinitely worse were in store, for now no change could avail. Her condition daily, hourly, got worse. The Argylls and my eldest brother were telegraphed for from Scotland. On No- vember 26 we lost the best and kindest of mothers. Her last thoughts were not of herself, but of others. A few hours before the end she said, ' I wish my maids and nurses to be remembered.' Her last words, spoken to me as I held her hand and supported my MY MOTHER'S DEATH. 317 darling's head, were ' I think I shall sleep now ; I am so tired.' If ever a face in death conveyed the idea of the departed spirit's perfect peace, it was hers. There was on that beloved face a look of indescribable serenity and calm unearthly joy and gladness. A few days before our bereavement Mr. Gladstone wrote thus about my mother to a near relative : ' I know enough to conceive with what feelings those who stand much nearer to her must contemplate what is coming, for I feel that even to me the removal of that noble and tender spirit from the world will leave a blank place in life, not to be filled up. What all should now specially pray and study in her behalf is that she may not be over-distracted by pain. " Suffer us not at our last hour for any pains of death to fall from Thee." May this chastening hand then be lightened upon her, and may the beauty of her life find an end in peace ! ' In a letter written to me by Mrs. Norton, a few days after our irreparable loss, I find the following words about my beloved Mother, that then did and still do touch me deeply. ' If,' she writes, ' to have loved and admired your dear mother more than any one I ever met out of my own home circle, more than any one I ever knew except my sister Helen [Lady Duf- ferin], could give me a place in her children's remem- brances, I can lay claim to such a recollection, even at 318 MY REMINISCENCES. this mournful and sacred time. However often one may have seen, however well one may have known, a dear and familiar friend, I think there is always one occasion in which the face and form become, as it were, more visible to memory, as if the picture were taken then. I see for ever, in thinking of her, the sweet pic- ture of her pitying face, smilingly looking down on my boy, who was trying to thank her for all her good- ness to me ; and as she stood drawing off a ring from her finger, which she gave to him, the very ideal of grace and beauty, of loving-kindness of soul. I think of you all. I think especially of the dear Duchess of Argyll ; I knew her best. I know what this blank in life must be, though surely no children of any mother that ever lived and died amongst them could feel more blessed assurance that home on earth was exchanged for home " eternal in the heavens." ' But it was, as Mrs. Norton said, the ' blank ' that my mother's death caused that was so fearful, so over- whelming. I will not dwell further on this. There are things that cannot be written, feelings that no words can express. After her death, existence seemed to me a blank, and life lost for ever what makes life most precious and worth having. 319 CHAPTER XVII. 1869: IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD. DURING the next few months, and indeed until the middle of the year 1870, I kept no diary. A few scattered notes and memoranda are all I have to build up a notice of that time. I had not the heart to keep a continuous diary as formerly, and I can only now wonder how I lived through those weary months and the winter after that desolation that had fallen on me. A kind of restless spirit seemed to compel me to go from one country place to another during the next twelve months. I visited in succession Dun- robin, where indeed I was obliged to go in the month of November, 1868, to be re-elected, return- ing by Inverary ; from there Lome came south with me. We interrupted our journey at Nowarth, that fine old Border fortress that had belonged to my mother's ancestors since the days of ' Belted Will.' Nothing to me could exceed in interest this grand old Border castle ; all is genuinely old there, and association and history march together. ' In the castle 320 MY REMINISCENCES. court still flourishes the aged jessamine tree sung by my uncle Morpeth. The great hall boasts of a huge fireplace flanked by heraldic supporters. " Belted Will's " rooms are in the same state as when he lived and died within them, three hundred years ago. Nowarth is Haddon revivified.' The newly elected House of Commons met on December 10 ; but I ceased to feel any interest in it or in politics. All that I cared now for was to see the progress my friend the sculptor, Mathew Noble, was making with a beautiful recumbent monument of my mother, destined for the church at Trentham ; and I never missed a day in visiting his studio in Mount Street. On the 23rd of that month my niece, Edith Campbell, married Lord Percy. I congratu- lated her on having the rare good fortune of finding a burial-place in Westminster Abbey ! At the end of the year I left England, with Jocelyn, for Italy. We crossed the Mont Cenis on the Fell Railway, and I had the curiosity to make the ascent and descent on the engine. From Venice we went to Vienna, and from Vienna to Buda-Pesth. Passing through Munich I saw Kaul- bach, who was then drawing on a large scale the last scene of ' Romeo and Juliet ;' then on to Augs- burg, Nuremburg, and Stuttgardt, and so back to England early in the month of February 1869. But it was no longer the ' home ' of former days. IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD. 321 That year was additionally saddened by the death at Nice, in the autumn, of my sister Evelyn Blantyre; her health had broken down under the incessant labour and anxiety of nursing my mother during the last year of her life ; and her heart seemed to have been broken by the death of her little child Blanche, at Chiswick, in the autumn of the previous year. It was some consolation to be with my poor nieces at that sad time. After leaving Nice I went on to Rome, where all the Roman clerical world was collected to attend the CEcumenical Council. There I had the good fortune to meet Mr. Lecky, and to be ciceroned over Rome by no less an authority than the author of the ' History of Rationalism ; ' but the Council then holding its sittings in St. Peter's was the most interesting of any that Rome then contained. ' Imagine all the figures in all the pictures of churches, countries, cities, vil- lages, by all the Italian and Dutch artists, walking out of their frames just as they are, and you have the crowd in which I found myself wandering at the opening ceremony of the Council, like a mote in a sunbeam. I lived that day in company with Rafifaelle, Titian, Paul Veronese, and Teniers, for I never saw more beautiful dresses, never more quaint, never more savage and uncouth.' l No pen can do justice to or exaggerate the 1 From an article in the ' Times.' VOL. I. Y 322 MY REMINISCENCES. wonderful picturesqueness of St. Peter's on that Wednesday afternoon. Perhaps the most remarkable of a hundred deeply striking scenes was the proces- sion of bishops in their white mitres walking up the great aisle of the vast cathedral on the morn- ing of December 20. It looked like some great serpent winding its way among the innumerable throng within that gorgeous basilica ; and who then present can ever forget the impression that the sing- ing of the ' Te Deum ' by thousands of voices made beneath the great golden dome of the church ? Any one with a spark of feeling or of sentiment in his nature must have been thrilled to the quick by that sound of universal worship swelling around him, beneath the frieze round which the solemn words are inscribed, ' Tu es Petrus, et super hanc Petram sedificabo ecclesiam meam ; et tibi dabo claves regni ccelorum.' I made some pleasant acquaintances then in Rome, clerical and military, and among the latter I found in the Papal Zouaves some pleasant fellows. Of the Roman clericals I knew best Monsig- nors Howard, Capel, and Stonor. The delightful Irish Bishop Moriarty I had made friends with on board the steamer coming from Genoa to Civita Vecchia. Besides these I was introduced to the Bishops of Clifton and Northampton, and at Bute's I several times met Cardinal Manning ; and with IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD. 323 George Fox paid the head of the Jesuits, Father French, a visit. Lome intended to join me in Rome, but had to give up his journey to Italy owing to the sudden illness of his mother. The accounts of her state were so anxious that I shortened my stay in the Eternal City, and returned to England in the latter part of December, going north to Inverary, to find my sister out of danger. During that year I visited a good many country houses, principally at my kind friend Lady Cowper's, but also paying short visits to Panshanger and High- clere, the Carnarvons' beautiful place in Berkshire. Latimer, the home of the Cheshams, and Brockett, then belonging to Lady Palmerston, also saw me that summer; and from Wilton, where Lady Herbert of Lea then kept house, and where I met the Gladstones in that stately old home of the Herberts, we made excursions to the great sights in the neighbourhood Salisbury Cathedral and Stonehenge, Longleat, War- dour, and Longford, the latter rich with superb works by Holbein and Titian. In June I made a pleasant cruise in Pembroke's yacht, the Gem, from Cowes to Dartmouth. A few years later this pretty yacht came to most signal mis- hap among the South Sea Isles ; but it was owing to that disaster that we have one of the most delightful of recent books of travel, the Earl and the Doctor's ' South Sea Bubbles,' so that one selfishly cannot Y 2 324 MY REMINISCENCES. regret that the yacht went down. The ' Doctor ' was an old acquaintance of ours, for many years ago Dr. Kingsley accompanied my father in his yacht to Dunrobin. That autumn, on making my annual tour round Sutherland, I pushed on to the Orkneys ; and, return- ing to England, passed the anniversary of my mother's death at Trentham, where for several successive years I had the comfort of spending that saddest of anniver- saries alone. Writing in my diary at this time I find the following : ' Since this season last year time has passed but sadly with me. I have lost what really made life worth living ; there was always the knowledge that she would enter into whatever one did or felt, whether in sorrow or in joy. Her sympathy was always near, always ready ; even in the most trivial matters, such, I remember, as a woodcut in the " Illustrated London News " of the Castle of Pau that delighted her a few days only before her death. A wild flower any- thing, in short, that was " lovely and of good report " would give and be welcomed with pleasure and that never-to-be-forgotten smile.' On October 29 Lord Derby was buried at Knowsley. I never met him but once, on the night when a great reception was held at Stafford House in honour of Garibaldi. I remember after dinner Lome and I were standing together in the gallery, IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD. 325 when Argyll came up to us with Lord Derby, and presented Lome to him. Lord Derby expressed much surprise at seeing so big a boy. He appeared to regard Argyll as being much too juvenile to have a son already in his teens. It recalled to me his remark during a speech after he had been rather violently attacked by Argyll. ' Why/ said Lord Derby, ' don't you hit a man of your own size ? ' I had been fortunate that year in hearing Lord Derby's last speech in the House of Lords. It was on one of those great nights during the debate on the disestablishment of the Irish Church. ' Being deter- mined to hear Lord Derby to the best advantage, I smuggled myself on to the steps of the throne (as a rule only allowed to be the vantage-ground for Cabinet Ministers or the eldest sons of peers), and there I remained throughout that evening braving a host of officials who, having discovered that I was not a peer's eldest son, tried their best to dislodge me, and make me take a lower place, but in vain. Although Lord Derby's voice was weak that night, and although it was evidently a painful effort for him to speak, his speech gave me a great idea of what a splendid orator he must have been in his younger days when he was the Rupert of Debate ! Very impressive and solemn were both voice and manner as he quoted the curse of "Meg Merrilies;" and still more impressive and solemn his concluding sentence, when, at the close of 326 MY REMINISCENCES. his speech, he said, " My Lords, I am an old man/ and expressed his conviction that he was then for the last time addressing his peers.' ' Years ago, when I was reading for Cambridge at Colchester with Mr. Owen (a staunch Conservative, and a great admirer of Lord Derby), at the time Lord Derby's translation of Homer appeared, Mr. Owen wrote, and asked him for a copy of that work. A few days later the book appeared, accompanied by a kind note from the author. If the latter had known Mr. Owen, I should not have been surprised at this mark of attention on his part, but Mr. Owen had never spoken to Lord Derby in his life, which made the kind action all the more gracious.' Apropos of Mr. Owen, I have always thought him one of the best and kindest of men, a model parson almost a nineteenth- century Vicar of Wakefield. At Dunrobin, in September, I heard of the death of Lady Palmerston. ' Owing to an accident which laid up Jocelyn for so many weeks this year in Lady Palmerston's house in Park Lane, I had had the good fortune to see much of this remarkable old lady,' I write on hearing of her death. ' Her great kindness of manner, and the charm of it, have left a deep im- pression on me. She had a peculiar way of shaking hands, always giving her left hand. It was very pretty to watch her with her grandson Jocelyn of whom she was doatingly fond. One morning I found IN ENGLAND AND ABROAD. 327 her seated by his side on the very lowest of stools. She was in great force this summer, and Jocelyn told me she would often come between eleven and twelve at night to the room he occupied, bringing with her the " Times " or some other newspaper, and would read to him long speeches, without spectacles and with only a candle or two near her, though she was in her eightieth year. Lady Palmerston was very keen about the Irish Church Bill, and very greatly op- posed to the abolition of that Church. One morning we had a long talk about it, she standing all the time and talking with all the fire and energy of a young woman of twenty. Her laugh was of the cheeriest, much like that of her daughter, Lady Shaftesbury, but more musical and softer. Lady Palmerston was certainly one of the handsomest old ladies ever seen, and that in spite of a very evident wig. Her eyes were of a bright blue. After dinner she would indulge in a nap, often speaking aloud when but half awake. During one of these half-conscious siestas she said to Jocelyn, "Me dear, you are cutting me leather case!" She always pronounced gold " gould," and china " cheeney," and of course lilac " laloc." ' It was quite a picture to see her with her lovely little great-granddaughter, Mabel Gore, Lady Sudley's eldest child ; a little girl of three years old, with great round brown eyes. The funeral takes place to-day (September 1 2) in Westminster Abbey. When I was 328 MY REMINISCENCES. at Brockett last May, Lady Palmerston was not there, only the Jocelyns and the Sudleys. In the drawing-room hangs a very pleasing portrait of Lady Palmerston in her youth, by Lawrence ; her hair dressed out in great auburn curls, and her pretty mouth a lovely laughing one. But the portrait that gives more the impression of the great charm she always had is at Panshanger, painted, I think, by Jackson. As Lord Shaftesbury said to me this year in London, " When my mother-in-law dies there will not be a grande dame left ; she is the last of the race." ' Not a dozen years have passed, but since then nearly all those who surrounded the last of the grandes dames that autumn at Brockett have followed her to the grave. Her children, and even grand- children, have gone to that ' bourne from which no traveller returns ' ; and even the house in Park Lane, where I saw Lady Palmerston so often, has ceased to exist. If a theme is wanted to show the instability of all earthly things, surely it is shown here. 329 CHAPTER XVIII. iS/O: FRANCE IN WAR TIME. FRANCE threw down the glove on June 15, 1870, and declared war with Prussia. ' On the igth I left London with W. H. Russell. We crossed from Dover to Ostend, and reached Berlin at noon on the 2ist. At Cologne the Queen of Prussia joined our train, and as she entered it she was enthusiastically cheered. At Potsdam, where the Crown Prince was waiting for her, another warm demonstration was made by the crowd of soldiers and civilians. We lost no time in calling on Lord A. Loftus at the Embassy; Russell had letters for him, and was anxious to find out whether he would be able to follow one of the German corps cTarmde as correspondent to the " Times." He had at first intended going to the war with the French army, but the Emperor politely but firmly declined his doing so. Another would-be correspondent of the French host Louis Wingfield turned up while we were at Berlin. He had even started for Strasbourg in company with the artists Yvon and Meissonier, when he was obliged to return. He had arrived baggageless at Berlin, and with little prospect of seeing much of the coming war. 330 MY REMINISCENCES. ' The following day we went to Potsdam (by ' we ' I always mean Russell and myself). We were most graciously received by the Crown Princess at the New Palace, where I had passed a pleasant couple of days with my mother six years before. The Princess received us in the garden, and alluded touchingly to my mother's visit here in 1864. " I never," she said, " go into the room she occupied here without thinking of her." The Princess expressed almost terror at the idea of the war, and was deeply affected at the sufferings it must bring with it. She feared the brutality of Bazaine and his soldiers, should they invade Germany. Her manner is as kind and as full of charm as ever. ' While we were talking two fine lads ran up to the Princess, dressed in knickerbockers. These were her eldest sons. ' When we returned to Berlin we found " Kit " Pemberton. He had come out as a correspondent. Another acquaintance of Russell's, The O'Gorman Mahon, haunted us during these few feverish days of our stay at Berlin. What a character for Thackeray ! Since I was last in Berlin death has been busy with its celebrities. Cornelius, the painter, is gone ; so also is the sculptor, Kiss author of the " Amazon " in front of the Museum, and of the "St. George" in one of the courts of the King's palace. ' We now looked about us for that indispensable FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 331 article in all campaigns, namely, a horse. Thanks to Mr. O'Connor one of the English attaches we found where to procure two. Russell purchased a bay gelding for 75/. ; in time of peace 2O/. would have been too much for him. I also had to give an extravagant sum for another. Russell has been to see Bismarck, and has returned enchanted with him.' The following day (June 24) we were again at Potsdam, having received invitations to attend a royal christening in the palace of the Crown Prince. ' The special train that took us down was filled with people all en grande tenue. At the Potsdam station carriages were in waiting, in which the guests were conveyed to the New Palace. It was interesting to watch some of the throng waiting in the Apollo Hall. There stood Bismarck in his uniform of major of dragoons a very conspicuous and gigantic figure. There, too, old Field-marshal Wrangel, now in his eighty-ninth year, attracted much attention. He wore a white uniform covered with decorations. At the battle of Leipzig that battle of the kings he had carried the colours of his regiment. ' The christening of the daughter of the Crown Princess took place in an adjoining room to the Apollo Hall, lighted with candles. The ceremony was a long one, and the infant cried lustily. During the christening the Crown Prince stood a little behind the King, the Queen close by the baby. The room was 332 MY REMINISCENCES. crowded, and the heat intense. A luncheon followed, served in a long and over-decorated (in the rococo French taste of the Great Frederic) gallery. There Lord A. Loftus presented me to Bismarck. The man of blood and iron was affability itself, and conversed with me for a few moments in very fluent English. The King, to whom I had also the honour of being presented, spoke in French both their Majesties held a kind of court in a low hall like a large grotto, called the Hall of the Shells, from the walls and ceiling being decorated with shells and rockery. The King told me how well he remembered my father, and of his friendship with his family. The Queen, too, was eminently gracious, and spoke with tears in her eyes and voice of my mother, and of her last interview with her at Chiswick, which her Majesty at first called Kew. I was struck by the profound obeisances that the German courtiers made ; but the English military attache, Colonel Walker, far exceeded in his genuflexions any of the Prussian soldiers and courtiers ; indeed, " he ducked as low as any barefoot friar." ' The next day news arrived of the first skirmish between the belligerent armies, and of the capture of seven French officers. For two or three days it was uncertain whether I should be allowed by the Minister of War to accompany Russell with the army. A Sutherland man, Mr. Mackay, attached to the establishment of the Crown Princess, was instant FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 333 with suggestion and advice as to the best method of getting this permission ; but a letter from Baron Kevdel dashed my hopes by saying that the Foreign Office could not permit me a place at the King's head-quarters. But having telegraphed to the Crown Princess, I at length obtained an order to follow one of the corps d'armte, thanks to the Princess's most kind intervention with the King. On the 2Qth the King inspected in front of his palace a regiment of his guards, and presented them with new colours, and on the night of the day after he left the capital to join the army. An immense and enthusiastic crowd assembled to see the grand old monarch leave Berlin ; Moltke, Bismarck, and Von Roon were also greatly cheered. The Queen received Russell and myself on the 3Oth. ' God bless you ! ' she said, as after a short but cordial interview we took leave of her Majesty. At length my permit from the War Office arrived, and, on August i, Russell, Pemberton, and myself left Berlin in the military train, crowded with soldiers and horses. A heavy storm of thunder and lightning broke over the town as we steamed out of it. On the following day we arrived at Cologne, and reached Bingen on the morning of the 3rd. There we heard of the engagement at Saarbriick. Thence we pushed on to Mayence, where the King's head-quarters were. I attended a very impressive service at the cathedral that evening, where a solemn prayer was read for the 334 MY REMINISCENCES. souls of those who were to fall in the war. Pemberton left us the next morning to join the staff of Frederic Charles, and we saw him no more. At Mayence oc- curred a ludicrous mistake, owing to Russell's love of heraldry, for the German soldiers seeing the goat of all the Russells, with the motto ' Che sard sard ' inscribed beneath, were extremely wroth when they found that in the waggon were only two English grooms and some baggage. The goat or ' bock,' it ought to be explained, is commonly used in Germany as the sign over a beer tavern. Here our troubles commenced. We were refused permission to go on to Speyer in a military train, and consequently we had to post the sixty miles that lay between us and that town. We hired an open car- riage, in which we had barely room to sit. The grooms and our horses we sent on before us. That evening at six we reached Worms, after a drive of half a dozen hours, and put up at the hotel ot the ' Alter Kaiser.' The Cathedral of Worms re- called to me that of Kirk wall in the Orkneys. Next morning, August 5, we left Worms early. I rode as far as Mutten, some three hours out of Worms. The heat was great, and none of us were in good condition to fight against it. All day we passed by long trains of ambulances, foreshadowing the near approach of the miseries of war. Passing through the village of Oggenheim, where a fair was being FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 335 held in the market-place, we noticed the traces of the last great war between France and Germany on the old gates of the town, pitted and torn with shot. At Miitterstadt we heard that a great battle had taken place yesterday at Wissenbourg, and that the French had been thoroughly beaten. As we now knew the Crown Prince had left Speyer, we settled to push on direct to Neustadt, where we arrived that after- noon at two. There we had to make a halt, and bait our tired horses and ourselves. We had already had a long and a fatiguing day, but the worst part of it was still to come. Great excitement prevailed at Neustadt, for there was no doubt that the French had met with a disaster, and already the French wounded and - prisoners were coming into that town, which teemed with soldiers. Wherever we arrived our first question always was, ' Where is the Crown Prince ? ' but we never succeeded in getting a satisfactory answer. About five that afternoon we jolted out of the streets of Neustadt. Probably few travellers in recent years have had as two disagreeable hours as we now had to pass. To- wards dusk we reached the fortress-like town of Landau ; here no Crown Prince was to be found. To obtain information as to his whereabouts we went to the railway station, crowded with wounded French prisoners. We found that owing to the blocked state of the line we could not get on to Wissenbourg by 336 MY REMINISCENCES. train ; there was, therefore, nothing to be done but to drive on, for at Landau there was not an inch of room. Our horses and baggage were we knew not how far in our rear, but our object was by hook or crook to get up to the head-quarters of the Crown Prince wherever they might be. We met with extreme civility from the Prussian officers whom we troubled with our questions ; a General Von Gotsch was par- ticularly obliging. We had barely time to drive out of Landau before the gates closed, which would have compelled us to remain till the following morning in that fortress. As the darkness gathered a great storm of thunder and lightning burst over the country, with heavy rain. The scene was a weird one as we drove along under this downpour, passing thousands of Hessians, Bavarians, and Badeners, marching along through the storm, the endless columns of these troops suddenly appearing as distinct in the night as by day- light, illuminated for a few seconds by the brilliant lightning which played all around. Our miserable little carriage was soon soaked through, and we had little protection within. About midnight we crossed the frontier. With the greatest difficulty we got into Wissen- bourg, for the gates were closed, and it was only by the almost superhuman efforts of our courrier Harpes that we succeeded. FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 337 The storm had never ceased for an instant ; at one moment we seemed on the brink of the town fosse, and would probably have driven down it had not one of the vivid flashes of lightning revealed the danger to our driver. Things did not look much brighter for us within Wissenbourg than they had appeared without. The only inn in the place was choked full of soldiers, and in the little courtyard of the Hotel de 1'Ange, we were compelled to pass the remainder of the night in our dismal little carriage, wet through, and covered with mud. We had scarcely become half unconscious of mun- dane affairs, and of our most discomfortable state, when we were summoned by a corporal and his guard to explain what we wanted in Wissenbourg, and to show our papers. Again we attempted to court repose, when Harpes, in a state of great excitement, declared that he had been arrested, and that our carriage and ourselves were also placed under a guard. The poor man was marched off and kept in the courtyard till morning, under the eye and rifle of a Bavarian. In my companion's account of this campaign (' The Last Great War') he says that we were taken by these Bavarian soldiers for French spies, and that I was even supposed to be a Frenchwoman in male attire. But in this instance I think the author made a mis- take ; whatever we were supposed to be spies, or Frenchwomen, or what we were prisoners that night VOL. i. z 338 MY REMINISCENCES. in Wissenbourg, and only at dawn of the following day, August 6, were we released and allowed to proceed on our journey. Wretchedly uncomfortable as that night had been, we should have not minded passing such another could we only have seen our grooms and horses ; but, alas ! they were miles in our rear, and the prospect of seeing anything of a campaign without a horse to mount was not a likely one. Soon after leaving Wissenbourg traces of the battle were apparent. As we jogged along through the miry roads to Soultz-les-Forets all the impedimenta of soldiers' uniforms lined our way. The road was almost impassable, owing to the long trains of artillery, ammunition, baggage, and provision waggons, that covered it for miles. Here and there parties of men belonging to the Geneva Convention were burying the dead, killed in the action two days before. Suddenly the experienced ear of my companion detected the dull, heavy sound of cannon for all the world like beaten carpets from the west. We now knew that our goal was not distant. The dull boom of the distant firing lessened, then ceased, and again recommenced with redoubled energy. At a pic- turesque village named Reidselz were further traces of the battle of the 4th ; shot and shell marks in the walls of one of the streets, where a desperate stand had been made by the French, eloquent of the FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 339 fierce fight that had been so lately waged. At length Soultz-les-Forets was reached, and to our great relief we heard from Count Seckendorff, who was the first person we ran against in the village, that the Crown Prince's head-quarters were here. In a little house over a baker's shop the great Colonel Walker had his quarters, and here we managed to get a small room, but no bed in it. Russell slept on the most uncomfortable of sofas that ever was made, and I on straw. We heard that General Douay, who commanded the French at Wissenbourg, was killed by the first shell fired, that his men were quite unprepared for an attack, and were completely routed, losing all their baggage, twenty officers killed, and eight hundred prisoners captured. The Germans, too, lost heavily forty officers killed ; they fought splen- didly, and reserved their fire till within two hundred yards of the French, when they poured it in with tremendous effect ; the French, on the contrary, shot high. The sound of cannon again commenced, and as the day waxed increased in intensity, till the windows of the little house we were in rattled again. The sharper sound of musketry, too, was heard at intervals. It was then that our miserable, helpless state, from having no horses, was most keenly felt, especially when Walker, who had four horses in his stable, mounted and rode off. It never seemed to occur Z 2 340 MY REMINISCENCES. to him that it would have been only civil to offer Russell a mount ; but the colonel was not a man to step aside unnecessarily to do a kind action. Our driver was deaf to our entreaties to put the horses to the carriage we had come in ; in fact, they were dead beat, and could not have taken us a mile in their then condition. My poor companion was too ill to walk, and returned to our lodging in a most unhappy frame of mind and body. After trying to get information at head-quarters, where I found the Prince and staff had already been away all the morn- ing, I walked out some miles towards the field of battle several stragglers passed me. That a great engagement was going on was evident, and some of these men had been under fire, but they gave me little hope of getting to the scene of the fight on foot. I walked on notwithstanding ; but the sound of firing gradually became less distinct, and, discouraged, I returned to our quarters to find Russell in all the agony of composition, having to write his letter to the ' Times,' which probably for the first time in a long career gave his readers disappointment. However, it was not his fault that he had missed seeing the battle of Woerth. The village was in a state all this time of great excitement, the poor people in a state of terror, and evidently of hope that the day was going against their invaders. At length, and when too late, our grooms and FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 341 horses appeared, and soon after Colonel Walker, who, to judge from his account, had had no little hand in the success of the Germans and the defeat of Mac- mahon. At ten that night the Crown Prince returned to Soultz. The victory had been a very complete one thirty-six French generals prisoners, three eagles captured, and six mitrailleuses. The battle commenced about four on the 5th, paused at six, and recommenced again at eleven the following morning, and ended at five. The French are sup- posed to have fallen back on Reichshoffen. ' All night long the prisoners kept coming in to Soultz, and at the station, from which I have just returned, are twelve waggons full of them. We are going on to Nancy, leaving Hagenau on the left and Metz on the right. The lower part of the house we are in is full of French wounded, one poor fellow with both legs off. It looks like a shambles where these poor fellows are, and this sight alone is enough to make one loathe war. Already four thousand prisoners have been brought in here, and there are thousands still to come. While writing these notes files of Sisters of Mercy are passing through the street, walking two and two. With them are many of the Krankentrager! The day after the battle of Woerth was a Sunday, and a day of peace after the noise and confusion of the two preceding ones, when the din of battle was almost incessant. We had the honour of having 342 MY REMINISCENCES. luncheon with the Crown Prince, whose head-quarters were in a pretty little modern chateau, a little way out of the village of Soultz. About thirty officers were present, among them General Blumenthal, who occupies here the same position as Moltke does in the King's army a most benevolent-looking oldish gen- tleman, whom out of his uniform one would take for a doctor or a clergyman, certainly not one of the most distinguished officers in the Prussian service. Here, too, was Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern (whose candidature for the Spanish throne had been made the excuse for this war by the French Emperor), and many other high-mightinesses who had followed the Crown Prince in this campaign. The dining-room we had luncheon in opens on a garden with an avenue of elms, under which were encamped a detach- ment of the Guards. Our repast was a hurried one, for the table had to be relaid for the French officers prisoners, of course. We rode later to see a large encampment a little to the west of the village, entirely formed of the cap- tured Zouaves, Turcos, and others. The poor fellows seemed to bear their captivity very lightly, and were chatting like monkeys over their fires, where they were cooking their scanty dinners on the damp ground. Russell guessed that they numbered about four thousand. The clarions sounded betimes the following morn- FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 343 ing. Soultz-les-Forets was all agog to see the departure of the victorious invaders as, by their thousands, they tramped through the little town west- wards. In front of the Crown Prince's quarters we had a long wait on our horses, and at length in pouring rain we rode away with the Prince's large staff of some hundred and fifty officers and princes. It was a relief to leave our little quarters in which so many poor fellows were suffering tortures, and we felt that some of the poor wounded must have envied their companions when death relieved them from such horrible anguish as they were enduring on the ground- floor of that baker's house. Some nine miles out of Soultz we rode by the extreme left of the field of battle, that of Woerth or Reichshoffen, as the French call it ; and past the village of Gunstedt. Here, and in an adjoining village, were some two thousand of the wounded French. On either side, in the fields and among the vines, lay many a dead Zouave and Turco, rigid, and still maintaining in death the position which they had held when struck, some with uplifted arms which had grasped the rifle. Here and there, newly turned up earth marked the last resting-place of hundreds of soldiers ; dead horses, too, lay about, already hide- ously swollen ; one hill-side was covered with the bodies of these poor brutes. It was down that hill- side and among those vineyards that the French 344 MY REMINISCENCES. cuirassiers made their splendid but ineffectual charges in the teeth of the Prussian shot and shell, and where they were literally annihilated. Hundreds of helmets and cuirasses lay heaped in piles on either side of the road, and before the cottages at Gunstedt large pools of blood covered the road. It was such a sight as my companion said he had never looked on before, and he has seen more of blood and carnage than most men. For miles the signs of fierce fight and hurried panic flight were visible. We remarked that hardly any of these quantities of cuirasses bore marks of bullets ; they must have been torn off so as not to impede the flight of their owners. We reached Merzwiller at noon, and had no little difficulty there in finding quarters ; but, thanks to Count Eulenberg, we found at last a shelter in a cottage nearly opposite a house occupied by the Crown Prince. A kind, civil old Alsacian couple lived in our cottage, named Egerter. These honest old souls, with their son and daughter, received us as if we had been old friends. At seven the next morning we bade our hosts farewell, and rode on again after the Crown Prince. Our march lay through a picturesque and smiling champaign and among those prettily tree-dotted hills one could hardly realise that we formed part of a vast host of invaders. About one o'clock we reached Ober- morden. Here our quarters were vile in a cottage FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 345 owned by a dirty old peasant, Michel Reichert ; the room we shared was foul with dirt and smelt intoler- ably. On old Michel the dirt of generations seemed to have accumulated. A pile of moderately clean straw formed our couch. It was some time before we could persuade old Michel that his company was unneces- sary ; he would stand over us while we ate a scanty and unpalatable meal. The wine tasted like highly-corked cider full of rancid cheese. The smell of that room was like unto the Egyptian darkness dense, palpable, a\nd could have been cut with a knife. The climax was reached when the unsavoury Michel declared it to be his intention to remain all night in that den. Luckily, here Harpes again came to our assistance. He was equal to the occasion, and kindly but firmly turned the dreadful old man out. After that we breathed more freely. Meeting the Crown Prince that after- noon, he told me, with his wonted courtesy and kindness, how sorry he felt, in consequence of the largeness of his already too numerous staff, how diffi- cult it was to keep even one additional person on it ; and that he had been obliged to refuse many applica- tions from even some of the German princes anxious, like myself, to see the campaign. I told the Crown Prince how much I regretted being in anybody's way, but that as I had come so far I trusted to be allowed to remain on his Royal Highness's staff, at least till an action had taken place ; and to this the 346 MY REMINISCENCES. Prince at once gave his consent. That afternoon we saw the flames and heard the firing of an attack made by the Prussians on the tall fortress of Lichtenberg. In the evening, while dining with the Crown Prince, the news of the fall of this fort was announced. Another fortress has also been taken, that of Petit- Pierre. We dined that afternoon in the open, at the back of the cure's house, in a half-field, half-garden. Our next day's ride, after leaving Obermorden, lay through some of the loveliest scenery of Eastern France. We were now in the midst of the valleys and woods of the Vosges. At noon we halted at the lately taken fort of Petit- Pierre. The French had left it very pre- cipitately on the previous day. It stands, commanding a fine view, at the top of a hill clothed with woods, principally of beech. This is the Erckmann-Chatrian's country. Phalsbourg the scene of the earliest and best of those romances of the great Napoleonic wars, ' the Conscript ' was at this moment undergoing all the horrors of a siege. That night our quarters were at Lohr. Here on the following day a halt was made (August n). We ignored the cause. We rode to Peterbach for news. There we were told that Phals- bourg is making a stubborn defence, and is now being cannonaded. The garrison consists of only one thousand men ; fifteen hundred Prussians are left to observe it. August 1 2 was a bright, cheerful day. We again FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 347 rode to Peterbach, where are the head-quarters ; and hearing the sound of a cannonade, we pushed on in the direction of Phalsbourg, but we were unable to get there that day. Next morning we rode out of Lohr betimes. Our way lay through a well-wooded country. After passing a village called Lixheim, we struck across country, and came on one of those endless ' senders ' the everlasting out- stretched dusty road, fringed with the long lines of poplars. Here the clouds of dust that the escorts raised in front and around were so dense that we were entirely buried in them. After a long and weary ride we reached our quarters at Saarbourg. We slept that night in a little inn near the station. Next day, being determined to see what we could of the bombardment of the heroic little town of Phalsbourg, we rode out before eight, passing through Lixheim. As we approached Phalsbourg the sound of the cannonade increased as in the 'Conscript,' ' le canon tonnait toujours? We were repeatedly obliged to stop and show our passes to various German officers and soldiers. Luckily Russell had provided himself with a special pass for this expedition, which enabled us to approach the German guns ; and after a ride of three hours we got a capital view of the scene of operations from the crest of a hill. Phalsbourg lay below, the shells bursting over the town, and returning the fire of the Prussian and Bavarian 348 MY REMINISCENCES. batteries placed on our front and to our left. The town was on fire in several places. It was a curiously entrancing sight, and a difficult one to leave ; but we had a long ride that afternoon before us, and after watching heroic little Phalsbourg for about an hour, we turned our horses' heads in the direction of Blamont, which place we reached at six in the evening. We had ridden some thirty- six miles, and our poor steeds seemed almost knocked up when we arrived. 'At Mons. Keller s house, in Luneville, August 15. We are here in the most luxurious of quarters, in great contrast to some which we have been in lately ; instead of being crowded in a small, ill-smelling room, with perhaps a bed in a cupboard, or a sofa, and a shake- down of straw, as at Soultz or at Obermorden, we have here separate rooms. Russell's looks out on a beautiful garden, and on a bosquet of fine old horse- chestnuts, which remind one of the gardens of the Tuileries. The house we are in might, in fact, be in the Faubourg St. -Germain, so stately are its saloons and its decorations a la Louis XVI. But Mons. Keller's house has already been turned into something like a barrack, having been full of German officers yesterday, and will probably be as full of them again to-night. For the first time since our arrival at Soultz we drove instead of riding here from Blamont yester- day most of the way in a small machine which we had hired there. This we had to do in order to give FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 349 our horses a rest after our thirty-six miles ride of the previous day. 'As we were leaving Blamont, a short, swarthy young Englishman wearing glasses came up to us. He turned out to be Lord Adair, who, after coming out all this way, is refused leave to proceed with the Crown Prince.' (He, however, saw a good deal later on of the war, and described what he saw with great success.) ' It seems an odd proceeding, arriving here and walking into a strange gentleman's house, and asking, as if it were a matter of daily occurrence, first where the stables are, and then for our rooms ! But I think the proprietor prefers us to the German officers that he has had to see so much of lately.' As far as one can observe, the Prussians seem treating the people with great humanity and kindness. Of course there must be black sheep in this as in any other army, and often those who least deserve it get the credit of the deeds of these ne'er-do-weels. As we passed through several villages between Blamont and Luneville the bells of the churches were ringing merry peals, it being the Emperor's fete day ' une triste fete? as our coachman remarked, for Napoleon and the French people. France, Mons. Keller says, cannot recover the effects of this war for ten years to come ; ruin is all around already. At the first approach of the Prussians, nearly all those at Luneville who held official positions fled ; 350 MY REMINISCENCES. even the head of the hospital department disap- peared. Mons. Keller is now obliged, with the help of some of the townspeople, to fill their places. He said the conduct of the Prussian ' intendant ' of the army of the Crown Prince was quite brutal ; he threatened the mayor with death if in three hours a very large sum I forget the figure was not forthcom- ing. A deputation waited later on the Crown Prince, who greatly lessened the sum demanded. Le Boeuf, Mons. Keller considers the most to blame of the French officers, having convinced the French that they were quite prepared for this war. The Emperor he con- siders quite done for ; he is reported to have said that he would only return to Paris as a conqueror. If he were to go back there now, he would, thinks Mons. Keller, be 'mis en pieces' He thinks the Prussians are determined to seize Alsace and Lorraine. The French papers appear to expect the Prussians soon before Paris, as that city is actively engaged in pre- parations for its defence. A levte en masse has been proclaimed, which is to increase the Garde Mobile to three millions of men of between twenty and thirty years of age, and three millions more between the ages of thirty and forty. The French papers attribute their armies' defeats to the overwhelming forces of the Germans. General de Failly is severely blamed for not having come up to the relief of Macmahon at Woerth ; and Mons. Keller told us that some of De FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 351 Failly's sub-officers who had passed through Luneville a few days ago are indignant with him for not having been up in time to help Macmahon, and compare his conduct to that of Grouchy at Waterloo. We passed the following days quietly enough at our pleasant quarters. ' Our host is in a fearful state of indignation at the perquisitions of the Prussians ; " Oest une armde de voleurs" he cried. Mons. Keller had during that day to send two of his best horses and a smart open carriage to the Germans, which he never expects to see again hinc illcz lacrymce. ' We left Luneville early on the morning of the 1 7th, after having tried to express to Mons. Keller how much we felt indebted to him for his kindness and the hospitality he had shown us. But I fear there will be but little chance of repaying him. A more thoroughly gentlemanlike enriched manufacturer I never met, he is a great contrast to many of our English nouveaux riches, entirely devoid of any kind of self-complacency or snobbishness. We drove again that day, in order to save our still jaded steeds. Passing out of Luneville near the fine double-towered cathedral, by the gate of St. Christophe des Ports, we drove along for miles on a monotonous and sandy high road, by thousands of Bavarians and Wurtemberg troops, plodding along in the dust under the glare and heat of an August sun. At noon we reached the old capital of Lorraine ; there our quarters were in a 352 MY REMINISCENCES. cul-de-sac yclept L? Impasse des coles> in a dirty, narrow kind of court ; but the interior of the little house we lodged in was clean and tidy, kept by a nice old dame, Madame HouiJlot : she keeps house with an antique relic of womanhood, her mother, an old crone over ninety. This ancient dame is a fine specimen of an old paysanne,. as she proudly calls herself.' We had time and leisure to see most of the sights of Nancy. ' Few towns not capitals are better worth seeing than this fair city, full of historical memories and artistic remains. The tapestries which adorned the pavilion of Charles the Bold, and which were taken at the battle of Nancy by the men of Lorraine, would alone repay the visit of the antiquarian or the artist ; these are preserved in a noble building, now the museum, and formerly the ducal palace.' (This splendid pile was almost entirely destroyed by a con- flagration in 1871.) ' The air is full of rumours of battle and of victory ; the great battle before Metz has resulted in another defeat of the already greatly beaten French, who have lost thousands of prisoners and numerous eagles. Prussia is triumphant along all the line of contest One wonders, indeed, what has become of the military genius of this people. Auberon .Herbert and Sir Charles Dilke turned up at Nancy in the train of some Bavarian Johanniters (a kind of male Sisters of Mercy). Another member of Parliament, Mr. Winter FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 353 botham, is with them, so we are now quite a little band of M.P.'s here.' After two days at Nancy we left it before seven in the morning of August 20. ' We had a long ride a double day's march, as the Germans call it by an unpronounceably long name. Before we reached our quarters that night at Vaucouleurs we were some forty miles nearer Paris. Our horses were again the worse for the fatigue. As in hunting, so in following an army, a second horse is almost a necessity. The country we rode through is beautiful, the Moselle here flowing between prettily wooded banks. We crossed that river over a wooden bridge opposite the village of Pietre-le-Chene ; here the look of the Moselle reminded me a little of the Thames at Cliveden. A little beyond this bridge we came in sight of the town of Toul, crowned by two grand cathedral towers, not unlike those of Notre Dame in Paris. We gave Toul a wide berth, it being still in the hands of the French, but the Bavarian and Prussian batteries are prepar- ing to open fire on it. The garrison had been repulsed in a sortie from the town two days ago with heavy loss, which was the cause of our delay at Nancy.' It was an interesting day's march, for we were now in the very heart of the enemy's country, with Toul on our right, Bazaine perhaps at that moment fighting his way from Metz on our left, and Macmahon somewhere in our front. ' We reached VOL. I. A A 354 MY REMINISCENCES. Vaucouleurs, Joan of Arc's birthplace, at two that afternoon. By no means an interesting or attractive townlet is the birthplace of the immortal maid, but it boasts a pretentious little Hotel de Ville, opening on a " Grande Rue," where we have our quarters at a Mons. Francois', a grocer's. Over the door is chalked " Fiir Englander." It is rather a quaint old building, with a "corkscrew" staircase, and to judge by the figure of St. Francis carved in stone, holding a skull in his hand, was in olden times a religious house of some kind.' Here we passed two days. ' Our hosts, Mons. and Madame Fran9ois, did the best they could to make us tolerably comfortable. One evening these good people insisted on getting us some beef for supper, although they themselves had had no meat that day. " Nous ne pouvons pas, il y a quelque chose la " (pointing to their hearts) " qui nous empeche de mange? :" Poor Mons. Francois is in great alarm of being forced to march against Paris with the Prussians. We have done our best to reassure him.' A still more serious thing that befell us there than having little to eat was the fact that dysentery, or some- thing very like it, had followed us, and some of us were already suffering from that most distressing of maladies. Russell had recovered, but my English groom whom I had taken from Berlin got very ill here ; and it became a serious question whether he could come on any further. No one who has not FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 355 suffered from this curse of armies can imagine the misery it entails. I shall never forget the magnificent way in which Russell first divided and then sub- divided his last minute homoeopathic anti-dysentery pill. Sir Philip Sydney's generosity to the wounded soldier at Liitzen surely pales before Russell's quar- tered pilule at Vaucouleurs. My time, alas ! with this kindest and most generous of friends and companions was nearly over, for the tidings reached us that Macmahon had retreated from Chalons, and that consequently there was no likeli- hood of a battle for some time weeks perhaps. I felt that after what the Crown Prince had said to me I could not encroach more on his kindness. It was accordingly agreed between Russell and myself, that on the first opportunity I should leave. Our last ride together was a very wet one. We left Vau- couleurs at six in the morning of August 23, and rode through drenching rain to Ligny, which we reached at noon. The scenery of the first part of that day's ride was dull and uninteresting, and not improved by being seen through such rain as fell that day : but on approaching Ligny it became more varied ; undulating hills framed in the landscape ; on our right on a hill could still be seen the traces of a Roman encampment. Near here took place the great military movements of the Prussian armies after the A A 2 356 MY REMINISCENCES. campaign of 1814-15 ; and here Wellington used to come to take part in these field days, held by the then King of Prussia so, at least, we were informed by a venerable old cure (Larcher), in whose house in the Rue des Valeries we found quarters. He could remember that occupation by the grandfather of the Crown Prince as well as if it had happened a year ago ; and he told us that the famous Russian General Diebitsch had occupied at that time the room in which Russell lodged in his house. After our quarters at Vaucouleurs, this good old cure's house, which is kept in order by an old maid, seems a perfect oasis of comfort and cleanliness. We had a long chat with the cure\ who told us of his seeing the Russians and Prussians marching through Ligny in 1812 and 1814; and of witnessing the Grande Armte, in all its pride and immensity, on its way to Russia in the former year, of the miserable remains as the relics of that vast host returned back again from the most disastrous of expeditions. The first news of Waterloo that reached Ligny came five days after the battle was fought ; the man who bore the tidings was almost torn in pieces by the people here ; but five days later, the Prussians were in occupation of the place. There is not much of interest to see here, beyond an old church built by the English in the early part of the fifteenth century, and a fine old machicolated tower, all that FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 357 remains of the old castle of the Dukes of Luxem bourg. Ligny, August 24, Two P.M. Ever since eight o'clock this morning one continuous stream of troops has been passing under Russell's windows, apparently the main part of the Bavarian army, artillery, cavalry, and infantry. Among them in an open carriage drove by Bismarck, with his everlasting cigar in his mouth, and a look of calm confidence and satisfaction on his rugged face. The Crown Prince, who is quartered a few houses up the street, in the house which his grandfather occupied under almost similar circum- stances some half a century ago, has been inspecting some of these Bavarians. They are on their way to Bar le Due. Already about thirty thousand have passed through this place to-day. ' Next day the report of Macmahon having retired on Paris was con- firmed, and reluctantly I determined to leave Russell, and see what I could of the other side of the great drama on which the eyes of the whole world were now gazing intently. We heard from Count Seckendorff that a king's messenger would leave in the evening (of August 25) Bar le Due en route to Berlin, and I settled to accompany him as far as the frontier. I was obliged to go to Bar le Due to arrange this matter with the messenger, whom I found there, and who very civilly promised me, as well as my groom, a place in his carriage. At Bar le Due 358 MY REMINISCENCES. I saw the King on the balcony of a house in the principal street of the town. How easy it would have been for a Frenchman, ready to sacrifice his life, to have fired a shot that afternoon and changed the history of the war, of Germany, and of the world ! ' Two English correspondents I found there ; one Mr. Holt White, who has come out for the ' Pall Mall Gazette/ and who has seen all the engagements before Metz : his horse's leg was broken by a shot or shell in one. Reports at Bar le Due to the effect that N apoleon is at St. Cloud, and Thiers Dictator in Paris ! Left Bar le Due at ten that night. We were packed in a small open half- carriage, half-cart, which just contained our three selves the king's messenger, the groom, and myself. We reached Commercy in the early dawn of the 26th. There we had some trouble in rousing up the mayor, and in getting him (poor worried official) to order another conveyance to get us on to Pont-a-Mousson. While this was being seen to, we turned into a room in the mairie on the ground- floor, which we found full of soldiers asleep littered over the floor. Some of these turned out at five, which gave us room for an hour's sleep on the straw they had occupied. At six we were off again, this time in a little open cart, in which there was barely room for us, and the groom had to sit bodkin. At Beaumont we halted, and broke our fast with a bit of FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 359 bread and a cup of coffee ; and this, with some bread that we got later at Pont-a-Mousson, was all the food we had that day. Pont-a-Mousson was reached at eleven that morning. Here we got an open cart lined with straw. Driving out of Pont-a-Mousson a fine church is passed on the left hand, with noble towers, crested with a kind of open-work stone coronal. The cart was a wretched specimen of an open box on wheels, and we were unmercifully jolted along the road. To increase our discomfort a deluge of rain came on, and this soaked through everything. A couple of miles out of Remilly we came upon a long line of carts full of wounded French, escorted by Prussian Dragoons, and a few yards beyond a cart filled with a ghastly freight a load -of corpses. A cure walked a few paces in front, chanting the office for the repose of the dead. The stench was horrible and sickening. We found Remilly crowded with more wounded French. During the two hours we had to wait there cartloads of disabled and dying soldiers kept coming in to the town in one continuous and horrible train. A large shed had been roughly thrown up near the railway station, and here those for whom there was no room within the station and other buildings were placed, and their wounds dressed by the Sisters of Mercy and Johanniters (Red Cross Corps), who here were luckily in great numbers ; but many as there 360 MY REMINISCENCES. were, there were barely enough for the work they had before them. Among the latter was a young woman, dressed like a man ; she took a most active part in the ghastly but merciful work. Here we saw the horrors of war of that most ugly, miserable curse that humanity has inflicted upon itself in all its ghastli- ness. In the same compartment of the train as I was in a train mostly composed of carriages fitted up as ambulances, most admirably arranged, and in which the wounded were slung in hammocks, even kitchens being attached were two French officers, both badly wounded. We had a long and weary journey to Saarbruck, which was only reached by this hospital train at four next morning, August 27. It had taken us all night to go the forty miles between that place and Remilly ; for at every station the train stopped half an hour at least, and at every station were more wounded to be attended to ; in every one the waiting- rooms and the platforms were covered with these poor fellows, and lined with long wooden tables, on which coffee, bread, and hot wine were being supplied to the wounded. I shall never forget some of these. The stations were overcrowded with them ; hundreds had to be attended to in front of the railway carriages on the platform. Anything more awful than some of their wounds it would be impossible to imagine. I after- wards heard that all these French soldiers had been engaged in the battle of Gravelotte (or Gortz) on the FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 361 1 8th, an engagement which is supposed to have been the bloodiest of the whole war. At Saarbruck, the Feldziiger, and Chandler, my groom, left me on their way to Berlin, while I pushed on towards Belgium. In my carriage was a very loquacious little German, not unlike Albert Smith. He was fresh from the field of Gravelotte, and described the loss of life there on both sides as something enormous. In one grave alone he had seen fifty-two Prussian officers. The mitrailleuses had been terribly effective, mowing down the Germans like chaff. Treves was reached that afternoon. Between Treves and Luxembourg there is a break in the line, so I had to post from Treves. Before starting I had time to visit the cathedral, and the grand old Roman ' Black Gate ' the finest relic of the dominion of the Romans out of Italy, with the exception, perhaps, of the Pont de Garde. The quaint old inn, ' Das Rothe Haus,' with its picturesque old-world look within and without, made me grudge leaving Treves so soon ; but I had to catch a train for Luxembourg. Driving along the banks of the Moselle I reached Wasserbillick, and arrived at Luxembourg that evening at eight. The next day (August 28) I reached Spa, where I called en route for Paris to see an old friend. ' Belgium was in a state of high excitement, with the war raging at its very frontier. At Liege, where I 362 MY REMINISCENCES. was obliged to wait half a dozen hours, all the services of the trains being out of gear, a regiment of small soldiers clattered into the station, on their way to Namur. All these little men, in shabby uniforms, were full of martial enthusiasm, and talked very big of what they would do should the neutrality of their country be infringed. The frontier at Beaumont was reached about six the next morning. Here our bag- gage and passports were carefully looked at. The French stations were full of Gardes Mobiles ; most of these mere lads, wearing round hats adorned with a tricolour ribbon. The station at Creil was fortified ; earthworks and palisades had been raised all around. Near St. Denis all the trees were cut down, and from there as far as the capital the lines were blocked with endless trains of provisions and am- munition waggons. On the forts men in the uniform of the Garde Mobile were posted as sentries. A few yards further on a long train with waggons, crowded by the Amide d'Afrique, passed ours ; and as we drew up in the Card du Nord the whole of the vast station swarmed with infantry on the point of departure ; all bound for Stenay, where Macmahon's head-quarters were supposed to be. September 2. Except for the stir and bustle of troops about the stations, I have not yet seen much here in Paris that would enable a person unaware that war was raging so near to discover from the FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 363 general look of this city that such tremendous scenes are now being enacted within a few days' march of the capital. One is struck by the general determination of the Parisians that, coute que coiite, they will not allow their city to fall into the hands of the Germans. Of the few persons mostly of the bourgeois and shop- keeper class that I have had any talk with, they one and all seem confident that Macmahon will yet defeat the Crown Prince and avenge Woerth. This cannot, however, be the belief of the authorities, or else why all the preparations that are being so rapidly pushed forward for a defence of the capital and for a state of siege ? The shops are full, as I remember they were too in 1866, with maps of the seat of war, the con- tending armies marked by differently coloured headed pins. To judge by these pins, the French seem already to be surrounded by the German hosts. In the evening I drove to the Bois de Boulogne. As one approached it, great clouds of dust hung over it dense, palpable. Passing with some difficulty countless numbers of vehicles of all sorts, shapes, and sizes, that were streaming in from the surrounding country, bearing the terrified peasantry, their goods and chattels, we come upon the new fortifications be- tween the Avenue de I'lmperatrice and the inner 'en- ceinte' long earthen mounds fortified with palisades and formidable-looking chevaux de frise. In places 364 MY REMINISCENCES. these newly thrown up earthworks are about twenty feet high, guns are being rapidly mounted on them, of heavy calibre ; these loomed ominously through the thick clouds of dust in which one was environed. On the left hand appeared a strange sight. Behind the iron gates of the Bois, now closed, one dimly distin- guished endless herds of cattle, hundreds and hundreds of sheep and oxen, moving about in the dust like figures in a mist, among the stumps of trees. It is impossible to distinguish where the carriage road, leading to the lake, used formerly to be, nor is a blade of grass visible. The lowing and bleating of the animals was prodigious ; there was something weird and fantastic about this scene. Never can there have been a greater contrast between what the Bois de Boulogne now is and when I saw it last April, full of horses and carriages, and all the luxury and os- tentation of the Second Empire. The houses in the vicinity of the Porte Maillot are being pulled down on all sides ; a sad sight to see some of the poor women with their little ones who have been thus suddenly turned out of their homes, sitting all about, the picture of desolation. The Parisians come out here to see these sights as to a show. The Boule- vards were crowded this evening ; with difficulty could one make one's way through the crowd. Round the newspaper kiosks the mob was densest, and the women who sell the papers are evidently making a roaring trade. FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 365 The evening paper ' Le Soir ' was in greatest demand, and in one place a regular fight was going on over this paper ; and two unfortunate old women who were selling it were nearly torn to pieces by the impatient crowd. These beldames did not improve their situation by alternately ejecting each other from their news- paper temple with loud imprecations. It is intensely interesting to be present in this great city during one of the most momentous and extraordinary crises that it has ever seen. Not even in 1793 or in 1814 has Paris been in greater jeopardy than in this hour. I doubt if ever the population of Paris has been so entirely of one mind before ; namely, to fight the enemy to the last extremity. What the effect on these people will be when they get a taste of the treatment now being undergone by their countrymen at Strasbourg and at Phalsbourg, remains to be seen ? This part of the capital (the Rue de la Paix, and the neigh- bouring Boulevard des Capucines, and des Italiens) has been too much thrown under the influence of luxury and wealth to withstand the effect of shot and shell. I met a procession this morning (September 2) in the Rue Royale, which I took at first for a funeral, but it turned out to be a number of people collecting alms for the wounded. In front walked a man holding a bag placed at the end of a long pole, which 366 MY REMINISCENCES. he thrust at all whom he met. I was driving at the time, and my coachman tendered his offering. Up the Boulevard des Italiens passed a regiment the 58th of the line, fine-looking fellows on their way, probably, to one of the forts ; they were not so fully equipped as another regiment I saw in the Rue de Rivoli yesterday, every man having a long loaf of bread strapped behind his back. These soldiers were bound, they said, for Sedan. ' September 3. To-day, G. Sheffield, Lord Lyons's secretary, told me great, stupendous news, which, although it is still unknown to Paris, will before another day is over paralyse this city. The Emperor is a prisoner ; Bazaine is about to capitulate ; and Macmahon's army is completely routed. Already some of these astounding tidings have leaked out, although in the Chambers the worst of this intelli- gence was concealed. Paris seems to-night to have at last taken in what a catastrophe has occurred to France. The Boulevards were crowded by a most agitated crowd ; a huge procession was parading near the Madelaine, shouting " A la Chambre, a la Chambre'" Whether these people expected to find the Chamber sitting at close upon midnight did not appear ; but the cry of ' A la Chambre ' -did as well as any other. This morning a great meeting of the National Guard was held in the Place Vendome ; the Guards FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 367 formed two deep lines the whole of one side of that square. Coming down the Champs-Elysees, I met a long train of mitrailleuses. What the destination of these guns was I could not ascertain. The gardens of the Luxembourg, like the Bois de Boulogne, are crowded with sheep and oxen. In the Place de la Concorde a large crowd was gathered beneath one of those ugly statues, representing the chief towns of France in the guise of fat women. Round the base of that named Strasbourg huge wreaths of artificial flowers were being placed ; the feet of Madame Stras- bourg, which rest on a gun, were also covered with these trophies. The defiant attitude of the statue thus honoured is not inappropriate to the occasion, and of the gallant defence that town is now making against the invaders of France. At the Theatre Frangais to-night, the Marseillaise was sung by Mdlle. Agar who held aloft in her right hand a huge tricolour flag. The audience listened intently, and vociferously applauded every verse. At the commencement of the last 'Amour sacre" de la patrie Mdlle. Agar plumped down on her knees and folded the flag around her. Ciies of ' Debout /' were raised, and the whole audience sprang to its feet, cheering at the same time, as if by this exhibition they were helping in driving back the Prussians across the Rhine ! Poor people, there is already a look of great despondency on all their faces. What will it be to- 368 MY REMINISCENCES. morrow or the day after when the news of what has happened breaks upon them ? No words of indignation can be too strong for the manner in which these people have been hocussed and cheated by the Government into believing that all was going on well up to the very eve of this dreadful smash. A well-informed person said to me to-day, when I asked him if there had been any official news received lately, ' Nous n 'aurons point de nouvelles officielles jusqua ce que le dernier Prussien soit tue", ou hors de la France' And this is what eight out of every ten people believe in Paris. Sunday, September 4. Paris awoke this fine morning to find itself on the brink of an abyss. It has proved worthy of itself by the conduct of its people to-day. I have just come in (six P.M.), and since two o'clock this afternoon have been in the thickest of the crowds, first at the Corps Legislatif, where I went at two, having a letter from Lord Lyons for the President (Schneider), in order to be able to hear the debate. This letter never reached its desti- nation. Half of the Place de la Concorde was blocked by a dense crowd, all making for the bridge leading to the Chamber. With no little difficulty I pushed my way up to the front of that building, where I found another mob surging on its broad steps, facing the incoming crowd that were pouring over the bridge from the Place de la Concorde. The heat, FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 369 the noise, the enthusiasm, were all intense. The Dragoons, who had been placed by Trochu to guard the bridge, had early disappeared, and as I approached the Corps Legislatif, the guard that stood before it sud- denly at some concerted signal reversed their rifles, placing the stock upwards, thus showing their sym- pathy with the people. Then from a hundred thousand throats rose one great shout a very paean of triumph and the marrow-stirring Marseillaise rolled and surged and rang all around. The air seemed to tremble under that tremendous diapason of mingled victory and revenge. The people were triumphant, all resistance on the part of the military, those stocks once turned, was over. Suddenly in front of the building, standing on one of the upper steps close beside me for I had made my way with a will up started a short, fiery, black-bearded, stout man, with long hair thrown back from his forehead, gesticulating wildly, for the roar of the mob was like that of a great flood. At first one could not hear a word of his impassioned talk ; but soon, even above that tumult, rang out loud and clear as the sound of a bell the voice of one who seemed a man equal to the occasion. ' C'est Gam- betta ! ' said some one to me. Those who then saw and heard him are not likely to forget Le"on Gam- betta. A little later, I heard him speak again. This second time was when, after more squeezing and VOL. i. B B 370 MY REMINISCENCES. almost fighting one's way into the Chamber itself, out of which M. Schneider and the Deputies of the Right had levanted, Gambetta addressed the house from the floor. Within the Chamber the enthusiasm and shouting of ' Vive la Rdpublique!' was as great as without. The interior of the Chamber presented a most extraordinary spectacle. The outer mob filling this gilded and splendidly adorned hall reminded one of the accounts of similar scenes that had occurred in many of the great crises of the Great Revolution. National Guards were sitting and sprawling in the most nonchalant manner on the benches where a few moments before the elected of the French nation had reposed. Next to me in the gallery was a man in a blouse, in a state of great excitement. ' Voila', he cried, ' la Troisieme Rdpublique, faut qiielle dure ; ' and, alluding to the newly born Republic, ' C'est la Troisieme^ fondde sans une goutte de sang versd! My neighbour in the blouse seemed to forget how much blood had lately been shed in the east of France to have enabled Paris to make this fresh revolution and to inaugurate a new Republic. To-day at noon the tricolour still floated half-mast high from the central dome of the Tuileries ; but at three it had disappeared. So, too, has the Empress, but whither ? ' Long after these events I had a feeling of regret, almost of remorse, that one had not, after hearing of FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 371 Sedan, and that the Emperor was a prisoner, gone at once to the Tuileries to warn the Empress of her danger, and to entreat her to escape out of Paris before the news of the disaster had reached the people. Only lately have I been told that the Empress knew of Sedan on the morning of September 3, and that nothing could have then induced her to leave the Tuileries, for she had faith in the promise that Trochu had made her, that he would be responsible for her safety what- ever happened. It was not until the Empress saw the mob pouring into the gardens of the Tuileries on their way to the palace, that she gave up all for lost, and fled. The Empress has herself told me the details of that flight, to which I shall allude later on. ' After leaving the Corps L^gislatif, I went to the Tuileries. The Place du Carrousel was densely thronged, as was also the space between it and the palace, until to-day always kept clear of people except those belonging to the palace. There was no privacy or privilege about the Tuileries to-day. With the mob I passed across the garden into the palace, through the principal gateway, the crowd intoning the Marseillaise as they pushed their way into the home of so many of their former sovereigns.' It seemed as if 1792 had come back. Here, behind, around, and in front of me, in the palace of the Kings of France, where but a few moments before the Empress Regent had still believed that she was in safety, pikes and B B 2 372 MY REMINISCENCES. swords were carried by the rabble. Here and there the hideous red cap of liberty itself appeared in red baize, the symbol of death that had crowned so much bloodshed, so many cold-blooded murders. June 20, 1792, had surely returned, and poor help- less Louis XVI. would be found above drinking the health of the nation, with one of those red caps of liberty on his harmless powdered head ; and beyond, Marie Antoinette, pale but courageous, would calmly stand for long hours facing all the ragamuffinism of Paris, protected from them by only the council-table in the embrasure of one of the palace windows. Had the Empress been found there and then, her life would have been not worth a moment's pur- chase. The mob among whom I formed a unit was good-tempered, with the good temper of a spoilt child that is allowed to break and destroy what it pleases ; for they had it all their own way, and this revolution was indeed what some one called it, une revolution faite avec de feait, de rose] but had any- thing checked it, or had it found one of the causes, or supposed causes of the war, in their power, their good temper would have changed in a moment to wild- beast-like savageness, and the horrors of the massacres of September in 1 793 would probably have been re- peated, as they were during the Commune. ' On the walls, in large letters, the words " Mort aiix voleurs /" were chalked, as was the case when the Tuileries FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 373 were sacked in 1848. The side staircases of the palace were guarded by National Guards, and I believe the mob did nothing more than pass through the entrance hall and corridors of the Tuileries, and that no damage was done to the palace. ' I followed the crowd to the Hotel de Ville, down the Rue de Rivoli. In front of the Hotel de Ville all Paris seemed to have collected. The mob was gigantic ; every inch was covered by humanity ; every balcony, every window, and even roofs of the houses from which the Place de Greve could be seen were alive with people. Over the great clock, above the bas-relief of Henry IV. on horseback, the tricolour waved, crowned with the red cap of Liberty and Revolution. An open carriage slowly made its way through this living mass, and stopped in front of the principal entrance of the hotel. The mob danced and shouted round this carriage and its contents like maniacs, for seated in it were Trochu and Glaiz- Bizoin. The mob then forced its way into the huge building, and in a moment from every window heads and bodies appeared, and a shower of papers fell from out those open windows. They twisted and danced in the air above our heads like a myriad of white butterflies. These were municipal papers that had been found in the different apartments, and which the people, like the child it is, threw out like confetti in a Roman carnival. Then someone from 374 MY REMINISCENCES. one of the central windows proclaimed that the Republic, one and indivisible, is an accomplished fact, which produced yet greater shouting and enthusiasm in the crowd. Proclamations of the new Republic were then scattered down, and eagerly scrambled for. It was nearly six ; I had been among the mob for four hours, and getting into a cab, I hurried back to the hotel to send a letter of the events of the day to England. Driving by the barracks in the Rue de Rivoli, I found the soldiers quartered there, and who had been locked in, climbing out through the windows ; this caused another ovation on the part of the jubilant mob.' That night I dined at the Embassy. ' Lord Lyons was as agreeable as he always is. He thinks the Parisians have, in their exultation at having over- thrown the Empire, forgotten all about the Prussians ; and that, apparently, as far as matters have gone yet, they seem to think no government by far the best of governments. The Empress, Lord Lyons said, had left for Chimay, at three this afternoon. The American and Belgian ministers came to the Embassy later in the evening. Late at night the boulevards were again densely thronged the people very orderly. Thus closed a very memorable day for Paris and for France. ' September 5. This has been a day of comparative calm a lull after the storm of yesterday. All the FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 375 Imperial insignia over the shop fronts have disap- peared, and in this quarter (I was stopping at the Hotel Mirabeau, in the Rue de la Paix) there is hardly a shop that has not a large blank space above the door, where a few hours ago the Imperial eagle or the cyphers of Napoleon and Eugenie appeared. Even the N.'s and E.'s which ran below the frieze of the front of the New Opera House are being taken down. Inside the theatres, too, all traces of the Empire have been removed, and tricolour flags cover the place where the Imperial bees and eagles formerly hung and swung. The people appear to wish to efface all external traces of the late Government, to which only three months ago they gave such an immense majority of votes in the Plebiscite. On every side great placards headed with the words " Rfyublique franfaise " stare one in the face, signed by the newly- appointed Government. Here, for instance, is one : " Le Corps Ldgislatif est dissous Le Se"nat est aboli" Then follow the names of the new Government, headed by that of General Trochu (president) ; E. Arago (mayor of Paris) ; Cremieux, Jules Favre, Ferry, Gambetta, Gamier- Pages, Glais-Bizoin, Pelletan, Picard, Rochefort, and Jules Simon. All these eleven, with the exception of Trochu, are deputies of Paris. ' A large crowd composed of workmen, and headed by four or five men bearing tricolour flags, and fol- lowed by a rabble of women, came marching down the 376 MY REMINISCENCES. Rue de la Paix in tolerable good order this morning'. Their object was apparently to clear away from the shop fronts any of the obnoxious emblems that remained relating to the Empire. Attracted by the eagles of Austria and Russia opposite Worth's shop, in the Rue de la Paix, they halted, but when they found that these were not the loathed Imperial bird of France they left the others unmolested. Sheffield told me that the mob were beginning to pull down the royal arms of our Embassy, but some one having expostulated with them, and explained that these were the arms of England, both lion and unicorn were left in peace. The mob on leaving shouted "Vive r Angleterre ! " Sheffield told me also that there was a report that the Belgians were inclined to adopt the French suggestion and proclaim a Republic ; that the Belgians have fraternised most cordially with the French Republicans, and that the feeling in that country is most hostile to England. So much for conventions ! ' In the streets the newspaper boys were shouting " Dernier es nouvelles ; Macmahon nest pas tut?" Nor was the day following of much interest. ' There is a prospect it appears of terms of peace, or leading to peace by an armistice, being arrived at. Jules Favre is said to have started for the King of Prussia's head-quarters. One may hope then that wiser counsels will prevail, and that what has been FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 377 the talk of Paris during the last eight-and-forty hours namely, a war of extermination may be yet avoided. The Prussians are rapidly approaching and may be before Paris in a week's time. I looked in at the Bourse where a great deal of noise and shouting, but little actual business, was going on. Rentes have fallen two francs to-day. On all sides one hears but one opinion regarding the Emperor; a very bitter judgment is meted out to the man they now call Fhomme de Sedan. My bootmaker waxed eloquent in his wrath about Napoleon, " Tiens" he said, " voild I'homme a qui nous avons donne" cinquante millions par an, et qui nous a perdus. La France ne voulait pas la guerre, elle dtait assez grande, asses riche ; mais vous verrez ces Allemands ne Jiniront pas id! Us ont dit qu'ils voulaient faire la giterre settlement a ce Na~ pole"on; eh bien! Us Vont -pourqiioifaut-ilqu'ils viennent id nous ruiner, nous piller f Mais cela nefinirapas avec nous apres, Us voiis feront la guerre et ptiis Us prendront F Autriche et I'ltalie ! " And so on and da capo. ' Many of the soldiers have returned to Paris from the seat of war. I saw several Zouaves surrounded by eager listeners, to whom they recounted the way they had been led to the slaughter, cursing the Em- peror and the bad generalship which had ruined them. The advanced guard of the Prussians is said to be already at Fontainebleau. I again dined at the 378 MY REMINISCENCES. . Embassy only four attaches were at dinner besides Lord Lyons. My cousin Frank Lascelles was one. General Vinoy with forty thousand men (?) is now quartered in the Avenue de la Grande-Armee. The Prince Imperial is reported to have arrived at Dover. The Danish Minister (Moltke), who, owing to his name, has had some trouble here, came into the Embassy later.' The following day, September 7th, it poured incessantly. ' This must retard the advance of the Germans, who are expected at Meaux and at St. Denis to-morrow. My waiter, who has always a fine cock-and-bull story to bring in with my matutinal cup of coffee, swore that he had distinctly heard the sound of the German guns early this morning ! ' News has come of poor Kit Pemberton's death killed during a battle shot by the side of the Crown Prince of Saxony. Russell and I parted from him at Mayence, little thinking that we should never meet him again. On \hefafade of the New Opera is, or rather was, till this morning, an inscription in large bronze gilt letters, as follows : " Opera Imperial de la Mustgue" The " Imp." has vanished, and " Nat." is substituted. Most of the shops are closed or closing ; few of the jewellers, or shops where " objets de luxe" are sold, are now open in the boulevard, or in the adjacent streets this evening. Barbedienne's splendid shop is, however, still full of gorgeous bronzes and FRANCE IN WAR TIME. 379 enamels what destruction a shell bursting there would make ! The boulevards are always densely full of promenaders, but the people are silent, and converse in whispers. A great dread has fallen on them, and a terrible fear has overwhelmed them. The only sounds one heard came from about the newspaper kiosks. There is hardly a carriage to be met in the streets. It is only too palpable that the time is near when this once gay city will have to make ready in grim earnest for God knows what trials and sufferings. ' Thursday, September 8. Another peaceful day, bright and sunny, with beautiful great masses of white clouds, like angels' couches, spread against a deep blue sky. I paid a visit to my sister Constance's old gover- ness, Madame Dembinska. The old lady breathed fire and slaughter against the Emperor and his Govern- ment ; she does not seem at all alarmed at the prospect of a Prussian bombardment, or occupation of Paris. In the evening a great number of Francs-tireurs appeared on the boulevards ; they had come from Picardy ; they marched at double quick time on their way to garrison one of the forts ; they seemed full of zeal. Garibaldi, with twenty thousand Italians, is expected here next week. The Orleans Princes have been sent back to whence they came, after having been refused permission to fight for their native land. ' Next day rumours of an armistice arrived, an 380 MY REMINISCENCES. armistice to last for ten days, and which will be, in all probability, followed by peace. I shall start off for Dimrobin if this is the case. To-night no theatre was open in Paris, an event which I believe did not occur in the worst days of the Terror ; another sign of the times is that " Galignani's Mes- senger " appeared to-day only half its ordinary size.' As operations now seemed to be rather at a stand- still, and as I had been asked to return as soon as I could to my duties in Sutherland, I left Paris for London, en route for Dunrobin, on September 10, little dreaming how soon the siege of Paris was to commence a siege which, for many reasons, it is among the useless regrets of my life to have missed. 38 1 CHAPTER XIX. 1871 : PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND AFTER THE COMMUNE. I PAID Lord and Lady Russell a short visit at their pleasant lodge in Richmond Park early in February. ' There I met the author of " Philip Van Artevelde," Henry Taylor ; and Dr. Hooker, of Kew Gardens. Lord Russell was in feeble health, and only appeared in the afternoon, when he received his guests in his dressing-room upstairs, dressed in an Inverness cape, and wearing on his head a small skull cap. Although infirm and very deaf, he seemed apparently as mentally alive as ever. He talked much of the diary of my uncle Carlisle, which had recently been printed for private circulation by my aunt Caroline Lascelles.' I saw something too that spring in London of ' Poodle ' Byng, another very ancient relic of a former generation, but of a different stamp to Lord Russell. His memory reached back as far as the halcyon days of Devonshire House, when my great-grandmother reigned there over the Whigs. ' Her Grace's parties,' he said, ' were terribly dull. One sat playing cards 382 MY REMINISCENCES. at little round tables, and spoke always in a whisper.' Poodle Byng remembered the fine plane-trees in Berkeley Square being planted ; he had been one of the great friends of George IV. in his Regency days, and was a contemporary of Beau Brum- mel ; a Volunteer before Waterloo, and again in 1860. Early that year (1871) I served on the committee for the relief of the French peasants, at the Mansion House. We had the disposal of ten thousand pounds to look after. Some of this money went to the relief of the peasants, and some to that of the poor of Paris who had been starving during the last two months of the Prussian siege. Partly out of curiosity and partly to see how this succour was administered in Paris, I went to that capital at the end of March. ' I had the steamer, in crossing the Channel, nearly all to myself. An Englishman, on his way to Normandy, said he did not see the advantage of being shot as a German spy in Paris, which he seemed to believe would be my fate. The old railway guard at Calais Robert gave me a dismal account of his existence during the last four months ; nothing to do, no travellers, no trains, no anything utter stagnation " and no tips," I felt inclined to add. Abbeville and Amiens are occupied by the Germans, no buffet at either, no refreshments to be found ; the Landwehr and Pickelhauben reign supreme all along the line.' Leaving London at seven PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND COMMUNE. 383 one morning ; it was seven on the following when I arrived in Paris. A day to be remembered was that of March i, 1871. At St. Denis the first signs of the bombard- ment appeared. At the terminus not a cab nor a horse was to be seen. I had to shoulder our luggage and walk along with it through the silent and deserted streets. On reaching the Hotel Chatham I found that Billy Russell, who had been there a short time ago, had left for the Prussian head- quarters at Versailles. At eight that morning I was in the Place de la Concorde, and from thence, looking up the Champs- Elysees, saw the advanced guard of the Germans entering Paris. This consisted of a Hussar regiment, which came cantering down the drive, followed closely by regiments of infantry, steadily streaming down those Elysian fields, with flags flying and bands playing. At two in the afternoon the grand entry of the Germans took place, when thirty thousand troops marched down, filling up the whole width of the carriage-drive. A brilliant sun shone all day on this third occupation of Paris by the enemy within this century. Meeting F. Wombwell during the course of the morning, we kept together for the rest of the day. We walked up to the Porte Maillot, near where lives an old English dog-fancier, a friend of my com- panion's, in a house overlooking the Avenue de rimperatrice, along which the Germans were 384 MY REMINISCENCES. marching. Bob Blunt for that is the old dog-mer- chant's name used language that would have caused a navvy to stare, and his wrath against both the French and the Germans was intense, for during the siege most of his dogs had been requisitioned for food ; and not content with devouring his canine favourites, the ' brutes ' had, he informed us, thrown their skins into his garden. From Bob's windows we saw some unfortunate fellows almost lynched by the Parisian mob a cowardly lot of the lowest black- guards, mostly boys, who were only too glad to raise a cry of ' Pespion] and to surround some unlucky man in the crowd whose appearance had anything Teutonic about it. It was a mob eager and ready for an oppor- tunity of showing their feelings to any foreigner who had the ill-luck to rouse their suspicions. Whitehurst (correspondent in Paris of the ' Daily Telegraph ') I also fell in with during that day. We watched the squadrons of each army corps one after another filing by the Arch of Triumph to the strains of the ' Wacht am Rhein ' and other patriotic German airs. But the rest of Paris was like a city of the dead. All blinds were drawn, and most of the shutters closed, and as the night came, the shops, cafes, and theatres all shut ; in fact it seemed a city mourning, not only a calamity, but an everlasting disgrace. Next morning I went out early with Wombwell. In the Place de la Concorde, and in neighbouring PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND COMMUNE. 385 Champs-Elysees, the Germans were encamped under a brilliant sun and clear blue sky. The bands of the Prussian and Bavarian army corps were playing at the base of the statues of the French towns, round the eyes of each of which crape had been bound, so that the marble presentments of the French cities should not behold the desecration of their capital ! The Tuileries gardens were also thronged by the invaders. Some of the French civilians, of course appeared to fraternise with the Germans ; but it was not a safe amusement, as yesterday had shown, when more than one person had been half-murdered through the brutal mob suspecting them of being on friendly terms with the enemy. I visited, in the Rue de la Bienfaisance (an appropriate name for that street), the place where the English succours were being distributed to the sufferers of the siege. The poor women there were touchingly grateful when they discovered that we were English and that we had helped the fund. The street was full of these poor women and children, awaiting patiently their turn to receive the provisions at the gate. Here biscuits, compressed meat, milk, and cheese were dis- tributed. An old English lady asked for some 'bons ' i.e. tickets for these provisions which luckily I was able to give her, and she left with her arms full of victuals. I drove to Versailles with Mr. Kingston, war cor- respondent of the ' Daily Telegraph.' Passing Suresnes, VOL. i. c c 386 MY REMINISCENCES. we made a halt at St. Cloud. Both town and palace were a picture of utter ruin and complete desolation, the only building left intact being the new church. As we were visiting the ruins of the palace, the King of Prussia drove up in an open landau. The deserted Chateau of Versailles guarded by the Prussians had a weird look that night, and what mockery appeared the inscription ' to all the glories of France ' on the portals of that palace ! The next morning was a brilliant one, the old gardens of the palace looking splendid in the bright summery haze, but all deserted ; the only sounds that broke the stillness were the notes of distant bugles calling together the various regiments who were to enter the capital. My host kindly gave me a mount on one of his horses a sorry nag, with a back sharp as the blade of a knife ; but I was only too glad to have a horse under me again, and jogging down the avenues of the old royal city, I returned Pariswards. Crossing the Seine near Suresnes over a pontoon bridge, I reached Longchamps just as a review of thirty thousand cavalry had commenced. Longchamps, accustomed as it is to splendid spectacles, had never seen the like of this the victorious King, surrounded by his staff, reviewing the picked men of his legions, while Paris lay at his mercy and was already full of his soldiers. I had not much time to stay at Longchamps, for I was impatient to see how matters stood in Paris ; and pushing on as PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND COMMUNE. 387 rapidly as the capacities of my Rosinante would permit, I rode through the Bois de Boulogne, filled with German soldiery, and arrived at the Porte Maillot. This gate was closed, but I managed to enter Paris by the Porte des Ternes. Here what might have been a disagreeable incident occurred. A mob of roughs surrounded Rosinante and her rider, declaring I was a Prussian, a spy, and so forth. Two ill-looking fellows seized me by the legs, and had not someone in the crowd declared that I was but a harmless Englishman, the affair might have been a serious one. I was heartily glad to get out of the rabble, and to pursue my course down the Champs-Elysees, through the Place de la Concorde, to the Hotel Chatham, where I alighted, and where I found Billy Russell, surrounded by lesser stars in the shape of war correspondents. We drove to see the destruction caused by the bombardment about the Point du Jour. Not a house near it which was not more or less riddled by the Prussian shot and shell. Only partially, for the first time since the siege commenced, was Paris again lighted that night with gas ; but the boulevards were still left out in the dark. Some Prussian officers were nearly lynched that night by the street rabble in the Place Vendome. Next day we visited the Corps Legislatif, con- verted into an hospital ; thirty wounded lay in what was formerly the ball-room. A bearded priest c c 2 388 MY REMINISCENCES. Monseigneur Bauer, formerly the Empress's confessor looking like Garibaldi disguised in clerical garb, took us over the different wards. With another correspondent, Mr. Marshall, we visited the Mont de Piete to arrange that the workmen's tools deposited there during the war should be restored to the owners, and we went also to another office to settle the best mode of distributing 20,000 francs' worth of coal for the relief of the sufferers. It would take too long to do more than allude to the many interesting things one saw during those days in Paris. Besides Russell, I found a delightful companion in another literary celebrity Laurence Oliphant with whom I called on Mr. Blount, the gallant English banker who had re- mained throughout the siege aiding his fellow country- men ; we also visited General Vinoy in his head- quarters at the Louvre, where we met a young French officer, the son of Sir Richard Wallace. Another day I rode out with a young French companion, M. Troy, and a few more to Fort Issy, through Vaugirard, full of traces of the siege. Fort Issy is ' knocked into a cocked hat,' so Russell told us, for we were not admitted to see the interior of the fort ; but the outside bears witness to the storm of shot and shell that rained for months upon it. Thence we went on to Chatillon, where the heavy fighting at the close of last September took place. Two of my companions had been all through the fighting there, and PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND COMMUNE. 389 gave a graphic account of it as we rode over the place. The batteries that had been thrown up by the Prussians had directed a tremendous fire on Forts Issy and Vanves, and from hence, too, Paris was shelled. We returned to Paris by Meudon and Clamart (Prince Napoleon's chateau at the former place had been treated like St. Cloud, and its fine gardens and terraces cut up into batteries) then back through Sevres and the Bois to our different quarters. The following day I returned to London to be present at my niece Evelyn Stuart's wedding with Ailsa. ' At Amiens station John O'Connor, the artist, whom I had known since Cambridge days, and who was in my train, introduced me to Sir Randal Roberts, a good-looking man, attired in the uniform of the London Irish Volunteers. He was in command of the station, and served during the war with the Germans, also with the " Daily Telegraph " as corre- spondent, and had been thrice wounded when on General Von Goeben's staff. Our train took all day to reach Calais, and we only arrived in London next morning at seven.' Two weeks later another marriage took place in our family that of Lome to the Princess Louise. 1 March 2 1 : a family party met at Cliveden the pre- vious day, and on the marriage morning drove over to Windsor. Percy and I were the two " supporters," to use the expression of etiquette at these royal cere- 390 MY REMINISCENCES. monies. The day was brilliant, and never had the glorious old chapel of St. George's looked to greater advantage. ' At noon Lome and his " supporters " all three in Volunteer Artillery uniforms were driven from the Castle to the Chapel, and, entering it, we at first waited some moments in the Bray Chapel, turned for the occasion into a waiting-room. There we waited while the different royal processions were being formed and marshalled to the altar steps. At length Castlerosse appeared, and we three marched up the crowded chapel and took our position on the right of the altar on the haut-pas. ' The stalls of the Knights of the Garter and the seats below them were filled with Ministers, their wives, and other high dignitaries ; and the whole place was a blaze of uniforms, jewels, gala dresses, and magnificence. From the organ-loft the royal musicians performed stir- ring marches as the different processions wound their way up the chapel. Then followed another long delay, this time rather a trying one, until at length the bride, accompanied by the Queen, the Prince of Wales and her uncle the Grand Duke of Saxe-Coburg, appeared at the grand entrance, and slowly walked up towards the altar. ' Lome went through the ordeal with admirable self-possession. The bride very pale, but handsome. The whole scene was superb, full of pomp, music, PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND COMMUNE. 391 pageantry, and sunshine. On returning to the Castle, the old Marshal Duke of Saldanha, covered with decorations, was in the same carriage with Percy and myself. ' At four the newly-wedded pair left the Castle for Claremont under a shower of rice, satin shoes, and a new broom that John Brown, in Highland fashion, threw after their carriage as it left the quadrangle for the station.' During that spring I visited the Duke and Duchess I of Northumberland at Albury, in Surrey. It is not a fine house one of Pugin's early and incomplete restorations of domestic Gothic but it is surrounded by a lovely country. Nowhere in England are there more picturesque lanes and hedgerows, and the park 1 is full of grand old oaks, with gently sloping hills topped by splendid Scotch firs. The most striking feature at Albury is a beautiful broad smooth terrace of well-mown grass, with a clear spring of water in the centre of it, and a clump of fir trees above. This terrace was laid out by John Evelyn. Broadlands, in Hampshire, was another place I visited that summer. After Lord Palmerston's death it became the property of Mr. Cowper-Temple, now Lord Mount-Temple. ' The park is well timbered ; the house built after the classic style that prevailed at the close of the last century in this country ; but it is saved from external ugliness by a superb portico 392 MY REMINISCENCES. of immense pillars facing the garden front. The chief beauty of this place is the river, which flows in front of the house and skirts the lawn. Near it is a beautiful walk lined by monster elms, which are reflected in the river. The house contains many fine paintings, including Sir Joshua's " Infant Aca- demy." Here, for the first time, I met Ruskin. He says he believes in an Utopia, in which engines and all machinery will cease to be. He declared that he would have seen with indifference the destruction of the galleries of the Louvre, as the works of art they contain had been destroyed by restoration ! ' ' We attended service in the fine old Norman Church of Romsey, where Lord Palmerston wished to be buried.' On returning from Epsom races, the news of Paris being in flames, and the destruction of the Tuileries and the Louvre, first reached me. ' At breakfast with the Gladstones in Carl ton House Terrace the next morning, these terrible events in Paris were discussed. They have naturally caused the greatest indignation and horror. Gladstone spoke of the destruction of the Tuileries as of the loss of an old friend. Indeed it was the most French of any great building in Paris the most characteristic the most associated with the history of the French capital since the days of the Valois ; it is sad to think that the great dome of the central pavilion, on PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND COMMUNE. 393 which so many different standards have been hoisted, under which so many dynasties have been sheltered, should for ever have disappeared. 'The next evening dining at the Disraeli's in Park Lane the comforting tidings were announced that the Archbishop of Paris' life had been spared, and that the Louvre had not been destroyed as well as the Tuileries.' On May 29 I left London with W. H. Russell for Paris. ' We found Lord Ranelagh and T. G. Bowles at Charing Cross bound on the same errand as ourselves, and reached St. Denis at ten next morn- ing. There we were told that we could not enter Paris, owing to the line being blocked, and that we would be obliged to drive from St. Denis. We hired an open ckar-d-6anc, and drove first to Versailles, in order to get passes to enable us to pass the gates. We crossed the Seine at Chatou in a boat. ' From Versailles having obtained our permits we drove to the Point du Jour. There we had to leave our carriage and pursue our way on foot, no car- riage being allowed into Paris that day. Russell had to shoulder a huge portmanteau ; the rest were less encumbered ; but certainly stranger-looking beings than we four tramping into Paris that night could hardly have been met. Our way led through the most shattered and bombarded side of the town. The destruction of houses on either side of the road 394 MY REMINISCENCES. was something awful. It seemed like entering a city of the dead, for hardly any living creature was visible ; not a horse or a carriage did we meet with till we came to the end of the Champs- Ely sees. At the Hotel Chatham we found Laurence Oliphant, with whom we passed most of our time while in Paris. ' It was next day, when lunching at VeTour's, that Russell and Lord Ranelagh had an animated discus- sion, the latter declaring that the Volunteers he commanded could have taken Paris sooner than the Versailles troops had done ; and the former not being at all convinced of the likelihood of this performance. At one time this discussion waxed so animated that it seemed probable that the luncheon would have been followed by " wigs on the green ;" but luckily no blood flowed from the representatives of the Irish houses of Russell and of Jones, 'We visited many of the still smouldering ruins. In the Rue Royale and the Rue de Rivoli firemen were still pouring great quantities of water on them. The Tuileries, Hotel de Ville, Finances, and many more stately buildings are completely gutted. From the Conciergerie to the Legion d'Honneur, all along the quays, the principal buildings are mere wrecks, the Cour des Comptes a superb and stately ruin. The destruction in the Rue du Bac is terrific ; the Hotel de Ville too is an imposing ruin, still burning ; the Louvre, Sainte-Chapelle, and Notre-Dame escaped as PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND COMMUNE. 395 if by miracle. The Sainte-Chapelle was surrounded by flames, but it has come out scatheless. The Column of Liberty, on the Place de la Bastille, has been riddled with shot and shell. In the Rue de la Roquette we passed over a barricade, round which still lay half- a-dozen bodies of Communards. That, too, is a street of ruins, and there the stand made by the retreating Communists had been of a desperate character. A poor wretch, half dead, was brought out of one of the cellars in this street, but whether a Communist or not would have been hard to tell. The Place du Chateau d'Eau and the Barracks of the Prince Eugene are almost honeycombed by shot. We also visited the Porte Maillot, where more destruction appeared. I called on Dr. Alan Herbert at his rooms in the Rue Chaveau-Lagarde. He had been kept in his room for two whole days while the fighting was raging round a barricade below his windows. Around the Tour St.-Jacques, during the days the street fighting lasted, a quantity of the Communists had been buried. These are now being disinterred and carted away to one of the outer cemeteries. It was a grim sight. 'We left Paris that night, June i, driving out by the Porte de la Chapelle, where in the glacis of the inner fortifications many of the dead had been thrown, and here and all about that gate the stench of putrifying corpses was horrible. Sir Charles Dilke 396 MY REMINISCENCES. travelled with us. He had been in Paris at the close of the struggle of the dying Commune, and some ill-natured Conservatives pretended that he had also taken part on the side of the insurgents. If this was the case, he at any rate did not inform us of it.' The rest of the summer I passed generally in town, going on Sundays to Cliveden, varied by occasional visits to my dear old friend Lady Cowper at Wrest. The House of Commons had become an excuse for leading an idle but pleasant life. Luxurious days passed in morning or evening rides in the Park on a blue-coloured roan cob named ' Merrylegs,' as sportive as a kitten ; evenings and nights at dinners, balls, and parties ; afternoons at Holland House, where, to use the famous Lord Chesterfield's expression, I was 4 domesticated,' and where one invariably received the warmest greeting from the kind mistress of that his- toric mansion, whenever one's fancy took one either to the midday breakfasts or the late dinner in those delightful old-world rooms, in which one could imagine that the perfume of the beauties and be- powdered beaux of last century still clings. These were days passed pleasantly amongst a society that only cared for the amusement and distraction of the hour, and which as long as it was amused and not bored was delightful ; a society too large to be a coterie, but not small or select enough to be termed a set. PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND COMMUNE. 397 I had taken a studio flat with my artist friend, J. O'Connor, in the old house in Leicester Square where Sir Joshua lived and in which he died. It stands on the west side of the square ; it is now a well-known auctioneer's mart ; a ' plaque ' let into the wall facing the square records that here the greatest of English portrait-painters spent the end of his successful career. Here on Friday nights during that season of 1871, in the room on the first floor which had been the great painter's drawing- room, my friend and I used to assemble troops of young and middle-aged artists of various success and of varied talent. Now and then we indulged in a supper, followed by songs and improvisations. Among the few distinguished literary or professional men who honoured these symposia were George Augustus Sala and Sir Henry Thompson. Soon the novelty (which is the source of all pleasures) of these Bohemian gatherings passed away, and with the novelty the suppers and the guests, and later on the studio itself. I found that as a painter I was a decided failure, and did not care to continue an occupation which I had hoped at one time would be something more than a mere pastime. During the month of August I worked hard at Woolwich at the Artillery drill depot, and obtained at the end of the course of training a certificate of having passed through the School of Instruction. I had the honour 398 MY REMINISCENCES. of being examined by Colonel Wolseley in thirty- two-poimder gun drill. The most interesting part of this drill work was the time passed at Shoebury- ness, where we had practice on the sands with the thirty-two pounders, fired with twenty-four rounds at targets placed 1,300 feet out at sea. Riding over the sands with the markers was capital sport, and caused a regret that I was merely a Volunteer and not a real gunner. At the close of the month I went to Inverary to be present at the ' Home-coming' of Princess Louise. It rained all the time, as it always does at Inverary, in torrents. Here I met Mr. Forbes, correspondent of the ' Daily News,' and his friend, Mr. Campbell Clarke, then on the staff of the ' Telegraph,' at a re- gatta which we saw from Argyll's yacht, the Columbia. ' The Princess seems already quite at home, and very cordial to all. Besides countless Campbells, there are only staying in the Castle the Granvilles, Dudley Ryder, the Guthries, Lome's old German tutor Dr. Schmitz and Roden. Highland games go on all day long in spite of the deluge, and Highland jigs, flings, and dances are the order of the night. Thus passed the time.' Returning south at the close of these damp fes- tivities, I passed a few days alone at Trentham, where Noble's monumental tomb of my mother was being placed in the church. ' Visited a few days after the PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND COMMUNE. 399 Bagots at Blithfield, near Rugely, in Staffordshire. There is something very attractive and homelike about the place, although it is by no means a perfect house. The grounds are a happy mixture of half- garden, half-orchard, blending so well in an old- fashioned place like this, taking away the formality of the one and the unkempt look of the other. Here the apple-trees and beds of roses come close to the house. An old mulberry-tree, half of it lately blown away, is a source of pride and grief to my hostess, who is devoted to her trees and her garden.' From Blithfield I visited Lichfield Cathedral ' small, but very beautiful. The modern tombs are somewhat too gaudy ; but the new ironwork near the steps of the altar is very fine. Bagot's Park, which, oddly enough, is some miles from Blithfield, is one of the finest old parks in the country. Here under immemorial oaks herds of venerable goats of a peculiar breed, unique, it is said disport their grey beards. They are the badge of the old family of Bagot. These heraldic animals are mostly piebald, black, and white.' From Blithfield I also visited the fine old Elizabethan home of the Talbots, Ingestre Hall 'a somewhat melancholy-looking place, with a handsome sculptural portico ; ' and also the more striking old home of the Pagets, Beaudesert ' a truly splendid old pile, grandly placed, overlooking a sea of park and wild woodland domain. The Abdys, to 400 MY REMINISCENCES. whom it is now leased, were away, and I looked into some of the principal rooms. The finest is a long gallery on the first floor. Here hangs a fine half- length life-size Holbein of the first Lord Paget. We rode back to Blithfield over Cannock Chase a blaze of golden gorse and purple heather.' I was fated to see Beaudesert again under terribly sad circumstances. Then followed the annual autumn visit to Suther- land. In the Highland sports at Dunrobin my Nor- folk-born squire, Robert Tuffs, bore off the running prizes against his Scotch competitors, and won easily the high leap and the hurdle races. These sports and the Volunteer reviews and balls are an annual institu- tion, as was then to me the long drive round the west coast and the north of the county, to visit my far-apart constituents, driving from Lairg along the shores of the longest and ugliest of the Scottish lakes to Loch More, where the Grosvenors had formed a little village of pretty cottages and buildings under the shadow of Ben Stack, on to Scourie, washed by the wild Atlantic waves, with the picturesque sea-girt rock of Handa, famed for its birds, on again northwards to Durness, hard by Ultima Thule. ' Near here rises the fierce Cape Wrath, not so grand as I had expected, but it is striking from its look of wildness and desola- tion. Then along the northern ridge of Scotland to Tongue, once the home and the birthplace of the head of the clan of Mackay of the Lords of Reay PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND COMMUNE. 401 still containing an old house and a delicious old garden full of fruit trees and old-fashioned flowers. Then back to the eastern coast by Altnaharra, where half a century ago my uncle, Lord Ellesmere, had a shooting lodge.' I was again at Trentham for the anniversary of my mother's death October 27. ' The monument is now completed, and in its final place in the church. Worked and executed with loving care and skill, it is marvellously faithful to the original.' I have some dozen letters from Mr. Gladstone, written early that year, relating to the Latin inscrip- tion, and its translation in English, on the sides of the pedestal of this monument. In one of these letters Mr. Gladstone writes that he had submitted the translation of this inscription to ' the very pure, critical eye of Lord Lyttleton.' 'It is,' he writes, 'a delight to me to be employed in anything connected with her memory, and this delight I have enjoyed ; but, on the other hand, I should be seriously pained if I could think for a moment that you had accepted from me as if under covenant something which your free judgment did not approve.' Arthur Helps, writing to me also respecting a short biographical notice he had written of my mother, at the end of this year, says : ' I wish with all my heart the sketch of character was more worthy of the person described. Your mother was really a great personage ; VOL. I. D D 402 MY REMINISCENCES. and in the case of this greatness happening to be- long to a woman, not being a queen, it is difficult to represent it to the world. I honour and love the Duchess's memory. I never can forget, too, how kind and gracious she was to me when I was an obscure young man.' In November I visited Mentmore, the gorgeous abode of Baron Meyer de Rothschild. ' The building is by Barry, copied from Wollaton ; the entrance hall superb. Entering it, as we did, on the close of a winter's day, the effect of this great hall brilliantly lighted was enchanting. Its form reminds me of Bridge water House ; but the walls, instead of being of scagliola and plaster, here are hung thickly round with superb old Flemish tapestries. A great door of glass faces the corridor through which the hall is entered ; it is one sheet of glass, twenty feet high by ten wide. No wonder Admiral Rous walked bang up against it. In this hall are three of these crystal doors. One of these has growing beneath it a great group of ferns and tropical flowers. On the right as you enter the hall rises an immense old Flemish black and white marble fire- place, which was once in Rubens' house at Antwerp. The boldness of the sculptured sides of this great chimney-piece, on which rams' heads are modelled, size of nature, in white marble, is superb, and the effect of the happy mixture of the black and white marble is in- describable. Above this mass of marble ten feet high, PARIS AFTER THE SIEGE AND COMMUNE. 403 and on its summit, huge majolica vases stand ; in the middle a figure in silver, size of life, of a Spanish dwarf, most spirited in treatment, and adding greatly to the effect of the whole. Above this, again, hangs a huge Venetian mirror in a richly-carved metal frame. The carpets in this hall are of tapestry, and bear the crown, the monogram, and the fleur-de-lys of Louis XIV. The tables are covered with slabs of verd antique and other rare marbles, with supports of Venetian wood carvings. Huge gilt chairs with purple velvet cushions (once in the palace of the Doges at Venice) surround all this wealth of marble and magnificence, while scattered on every side are clocks, marbles, bronzes, busts, rare dishes, precious toys, and trinkets, to which even Disraeli's pen, who is one of the guests, could barely do justice. From the ceiling are suspended three immense golden lamps which once graced the prow of the famous galley of Venice, the State barge of the Doges the prodigious Bucentaur. The rest of the house is worthy of this splendid hall. Paintings by the French masters of the last century abound, and the school of Watteau, Pater, and Greuze is evidently the favourite with the owner. One room is full of Bouchers and of Watteaus. Another little room is all furnished in amber.' D D 2 404 MY REMINISCENCES. CHAPTER XX. 1872 I HUGHENDEN, ETC. THE illness of the Prince of Wales, which at one time during the early days of December seemed des- tined to terminate fatally, only served to prove how deep is the personal attachment towards the Queen in this country and to those nearest her. There has never been in England a more universal testimony of personal loyalty and affection for the Throne than was exhibited on the day of the thanksgiving service at St. Paul's Cathedral, when the .Londoners turned out ' in their millions ' to make a great holiday and rejoice together that the heir to these realms had been spared, and, as it were, snatched from out the very jaws of the grave, through the intercession and prayers of the people at the Throne of Heavenly Mercy. I find, in a letter, dated the I2th of February, from my sister Constance Westminster, the following passage relating to the Prince soon after he left Sand- ringham. The letter is from Cliveden, and written after driving over to Windsor. ' I cannot say,' she writes, ' what an emotion it was seeing the Prince and Princess. They were both too nice. He is much HUGHENDEN, ETC. 405 thinner, and head-shaven, but very unaltered in face, and so grateful so touched at Lucia (Lady Bagot) and I being there to see them arrive. We had tea with them. She looks thin and worn, but so affec- tionate tears in her eyes, talking of him ; and his manner to her so gentle. They had a lovely day for their journey, but the time of arrival, and the gate through which they were to enter the Castle, were kept very quiet. The Eton boys gave him a good cheer ; the old porter at the gate at the Castle could hardly speak. When I remarked to him that the Prince looked wonderfully well after he had passed, he answered, " Yes, indeed, my lady, doesn't he look beautiful ? " ' The thanksgiving celebration on the 2 7th of February will be remembered as one of the great gala days of London. ' I went to the Cathedral in the steamer set apart for the use of the Members of the House of Commons. The sight within St. Paul's, as well as without, was most impressive, and one that can never be forgotten by those who saw it.' Two days after there was a scare throughout London. The report came that the Queen's life had been attempted. It turned out that a demented lad named O'Connor had somehow or other got up to the Queen's carriage as it returned to Buckingham Palace, and that the mad fellow had presented a pistol at Her Majesty. ' The news set the Houses of Parliament in a 406 MY REMINISCENCES. flutter. From the House of Commons, when I heard the report, I went to the Police Station in King Street, where I saw a harmless-looking boy of sixteen. The pistol, an old flint one, was unloaded and without hammer or flint to it.' I must not pass over an evening in January of this year, when, after dining with Mr. Disraeli and Lady Beaconsfield and the Shrewsbury children, we went to the pantomime at Drury Lane. Anything, however trivial, relating to Lord Beaconsfield must always be of interest, so I will give his form of invitation : ' Lady Beaconsfield begs me,' he writes, ' to be her secretary, as the business on which she writes is a grave matter. Lord and Lady Shrewsbury, with their more than pretty children, dine with us to-morrow at an early hour, and then we are going to the pantomime at Drury Lane. Lady Beaconsfield proposes that, if disengaged, you should dine with us at quarter before six, and then you will see what she says must be superior to anything we shall witness at the theatre : Lady Theresa Talbot, not yet out, but whose ddbut will require the immortal pen that commemorated the appearance of the Gunnings. Let me hope we shall have the pleasure of seeing you. An early dinner will be a novelty. Yours sincerely, DISRAELI.' Mr. Disraeli greatly enjoyed the delight of the young Talbots in the theatre. He had not been, he told me, to a pantomime for thirty years. HUGHENDEN, ETC. 407 That March my brother Albert married Grace, daughter of Sir Thomas and Lady Abdy. There was every reason to hope that this marriage would be a happy union ; but death soon destroyed what was a most happy home. During the following spring I made some pleasant expeditions of a sketching kind with O'Connor. Once we went to Canterbury, putting up at the old-fashioned Fountain Inn. On another occasion we rambled about the endless corridors and rooms of Knole, and amidst the beech groves in that rare old park. On another we saw Rochester and visited Cobham Park and its fine old pictures, old trees, and historic brasses in the neighbouring church. Among the places we visited, none pleased me more than Davington Priory, near Faversham ; and Igtham Moat, near Sevenoaks 'just the place one would like to spend an idle summer's month at, lulled by the music of the falling waters in the old moat, and the humming of the bees.' There is nothing lovelier in England than Knole Park in the month of May, provided it is not a May of east winds, but of the old-fashioned kind sung by poets and dreamt of by artists the foliage of the old trees of every shade of green, the thorns in all their glory of white and purple. I preferred taking mine -ease at mine inn, during these expeditions to Sevenoaks, to staying at the stately house within the park, where Lord and Lady Buckhurst (now Delawarr) showed me 4 o8 MY REMINISCENCES. much hospitality ; and not to myself only, but would throw open their stately old house to any artist who applied for the privilege of working in those arras- hung rooms. For days I scoured the surrounding county, visiting Chevening, with its portraits of Stan- hopes, the finest works of the Scotch painter Ramsay ; riding through the glades of Knole, heavy with the perfume of May ; and dining sometimes with the Buck- hursts in the great gallery, where James I. sits at one end as gorgeous in garb as an Assyrian king. We did not omit to visit Penshurst and Hever. The former was being rather over-restored, the latter terribly neglected ; but both are full of historic in- terest. While making these expeditions I determined to drive through the length of England, and see as much as possible of old places and of the country generally. That Ascot week, or rather a small portion of it, I passed at Mr. Delane's pretty place near the Heath. ' Billy Russell ' was another guest, and in great talk. That, I think, was my last visit to Ascot races, which I had never cared about, and which I had almost got to loathe. Betting has not been one of rny many weaknesses and vices, at any rate. The only incident worth recording at the end of that London season was the marriage of Mary Fox, adopted daughter of Lord Holland, to Prince A. Lichtenstein. It took place at the end of June in the Pro-Cathedral at Kensington, HUGHENDEN, ETC. 409 before a parterre of royalties. ' It was a very long ceremony. The wedding-breakfast at Holland House was sadly marred by rain ; but the departure of the wedded couple from Holland House at five was a really beautiful sight. I rode after them part of the way.' Poor Mary Fox ! with her many faults, she had many redeeming points of character, much cleverness, amounting almost to talent ; her pretty book on Holland House will recall her name to many who have never had the privilege of visiting that most interesting of suburban palaces. A day after this wedding I was back again at Knole, and ' found Lady Buckhurst sitting out under the old trees on the lawn near the bowling-green, a very pretty picture and well framed. The Russells and their daughter, the Duchess of Buccleuch and hers, the Mahons, Bradfords, and Cecil Boothby are the party. My room is a charming one near the chapel dedicated to Saint Thomas-a-Becket its walls all covered with tapestry. This room is in the oldest part of the house, and dates from the time of Arch- bishop Bourchier in the fifteenth century. Dinner was rather formal, but, being in the great cartoon gallery, picturesque and effective. We adjourned to the ball- room after, where a few burning logs in the great fireplace made the stately old room look quite cheerful and gay. Next day, Sunday, there was service in the chapel ; our hostess played the organ.' 410 MY REMINISCENCES. That summer a monster garden-party, a veritable fete champe'tre, to which eight hundred were invited, was given at Cliveden ; but unluckily it was an ex- ceptionally wet day, and the fete was as much spoilt by the downpour as was the famous Eglinton tour- nament. At the close of July my nephew Stafford attained his majority. A large party, including the Prince of Wales, came down to Trentham, to celebrate the event. Balls, dinners of a hundred guests, illumi- nations, and a great display of bunting took place. The weather was for once all that could be wished for the occasion ; the park swarmed with merry- makers ; the tents and marquees were full of delighted tenantry ; and in the private wing a garden flanked by colonnades and covered passages had been tented in. This made a superb ball-room, with a fountain playing in the centre. Here we dined, and here later we danced till it was day (to the strains of the Rifle Brigade band, led by that admired conductor, so like the portraits of Punch, Mr. Milles). On my way back to town I paid the Shrewsburys a short visit at Alton Towers. The beautiful gardens were in all their glory of summer colour and fragrance, but the Towers themselves looked as if the place had been placed as a background for a modern tournament. Then followed my drive from London to York, which has a long chapter all to itself, one which will hardly commend itself to the general HUGHENDEN, ETC. 411 reader ; so I will continue these notes at Dunrobin, whither I hurried, in order to be there before the arrival of the Queen. That event took place on September 6. Her Majesty was accompanied by Princess Beatrice and Prince Leopold. The Queen remained at Dunrobin six days, driving and riding about, and enjoying the beauty of the place and of the country. I could not help expressing to her Majesty how much I regretted that her first visit should have been made when she to whom Dunrobin owed so much of its beauty had been taken from this world. My mother had furnished and arranged the suite of rooms destined for Her Majesty's occupation, and it seemed strangely sad that these had not been occupied by the Sovereign till after the death of her devoted friend and subject. While at Dunrobin the Queen laid the foundation-stone of a memorial to my mother's memory, near the Castle. There, where now rises a monument in the form of a Queen Eleanor's cross, within the open shrine is a bust in bronze of her to whom the memorial is dedicated ; in a few touching and tender words the Queen expressed her pleasure at being able to display this mark of attachment to her beloved friend's memory. During the time of the Queen's residence at Dunrobin, Stanley, the African explorer, was among my brother's guests. 412 MY REMINISCENCES. On my return south I paid two visits : the first to my old friend Sir David Dundas at his place, Ochtertyre, near Stirling. We visited Keir, Sir William Stirling-Maxwell's ' a house full of books and artistic treasures.' Here Mrs. Norton, in the absence of Sir William, did the honours. From Ochtertyre I went to Louisa Lady Waterford's, at her fine old border castle of Ford, near Corn- hill. It stands overlooking the plain of the field of Flodden fight. Here I made the acquaintance and friendship of Augustus Hare, artist, conver- sationalist, and author ; also that of another gifted person, the Hon. Mrs. Boyle, whose pretty illus- trations to children's books, signed E. V. B., are so justly popular among the old folk as well as the young. ' Next to the Castle itself the most interest- ing thing at Ford is the children's school, built and decorated by Lady Waterford, with very remarkable paintings by her own hands. These fresco-like paintings are in water-colours, and entirely cover the walls of a large school-room ; they represent scenes from the Bible, interspersed with graceful groups and medallions of fruit and flowers symbolical of the figures they surround, full of beauty and endowed with a richness of colour that recalls the school, of Venetian painting in the bright days of Giorgione and old Palma. I know of no such triumphant success as this Ford school decoration, with its HUGHENDEN, ETC. 413 glowing presentment of subjects relating to childhood and youth in the Old and New Testaments.' From Ford I went to Castle Howard, and thence to Ossington in Notts, belonging to the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Evelyn Denison, Lord Ossington. ' Here I found a small party, one of whom, Lord Redesdale, is a host in himself, full of clever and amusing talk and recollections. Ossington is a hideous liver-coloured house, without the faintest attempt at architectural beauty ; but it lies near some of the finest sylvan scenery in England, that of Sherwood Forest. We visited Birkland, a wilderness of stupendous old oaks trees that were large when Robin Hood hunted beneath their shade ; and from Birkland we drove to Thoresby, where we saw, but could not admire, the new building then being finished for Lord Manvers.' By far the most interesting visit of that year was one I paid at its close to Hughenden. ' Lady Beaconsfield had often, when I met her in London, promised to ask me to Hughenden, and did so last winter, when I was prevented going. In November of this year I got a very kind letter from Mr. Disraeli, again asking me to pay them a visit there for three or four days. William Harcourt (" Historicus ") told me that he was also invited. Accordingly we agreed to go down to Hughenden together, which we did on the evening of Saturday, November 23. 4H MY REMINISCENCES. We found a brougham waiting for us at High Wy- combe Station, and after a drive of about a mile, passing through the town of Wycombe, we reached the lodge of Hughenden. Here are a pretty pair of French wrought-iron gates, of which Lady Beacons- field is not a little proud. The road, after passing this lodge, up to the house for about half a mile is very steep, the house being placed on the top of quite a respectably-sized hill. Passing through a small Gothic entrance-hall and corridor, in which is a bust of Mr. Disraeli when apparently about twenty, we were shown into the library, where our host welcomed us. He was dressed in a double-breasted tailless jacket, that made him look quite boyish. He seemed anxious to hear any news or gossip from town, of which we had little or none, the last scandal of a certain run- away couple not being new to him. " To think," he said, " to think of her running away with an elderly rout who was one of the most notorious dandies even when I was a boy!" Lady Di Beauclerk's intended marriage also interested him ; and Harcourt having mentioned Edmond Fitzmaurice's intention of publish- ing papers relating to his great grandfather, the first Marquis of Lansdowne, Disraeli said, " Lord Shel- burne was a man who never spoke out, which does not answer in a public man." At seven he accom- panied us to our rooms. Harcourt's and my room are at the top of the house, bright and cheerful, as all HUGHENDEN, ETC. 415 rooms seemed to be at Hughenden. Next morning I found that my window commanded a delightful view of the garden and the beechwoods, with Wycombe forming a pleasant background to the picture. ' On coming down to the library before dinner I found Mr. Disraeli and Lady Beaconsfield, the poor old lady sadly altered in looks since London death written on her face but, as usual, gorgeously dressed. The only other guests in the house besides W. H. and myself were Lord and Lady John Manners. Lord John I had a House of Commons acquaintance with. He has that curious Manners' walk which all the family have a trick of lifting up his legs at the knee as if there were a crease in the carpet or some other impe- diment in the way of their progress. At dinner I sat next to Lady Beaconsfield. Mr. Disraeli was evi- dently very anxious about her, and although occasion- ally flashing out into conversation, with all his curious play of arms and shrugging of the shoulders, he was evidently much depressed at her state. His attention to her was quite touching, and " Mary Ann," as he some- times called her, was constantly appealed to. We did not sit long over our wine after the ladies had left. Mr. Disraeli was proud of his wine, which is above the average. The conversation turned upon my Uncle Morpeth (Lord Carlisle), from some refer- ence having been made respecting the fund now being raised for the late member for Cork's (Maguire's) 416 MY REMINISCENCES. widow. Mr. Disraeli made use of some rather strong expressions about Mr. Maguire, and said that he (Mr. Disraeli) had stood up for " Morpeth " when he had been attacked in the House by Maguire, when the Member for Cork stated that Ireland was ruled by a dancing Lord Lieutenant and a dancing Under- secretary. Mr. Disraeli went on to say how fond he had been of my uncle, and how greatly he had appre- ciated his character and geniality. ' The drawing-room is a terribly gaudy apartment, very lofty, and the walls all green paper, dotted with fleur-de-lys and adorned with large panelled brown carved wood or composition frames, which are the only relief to this green wilderness of wall. On asking my host why he had not paintings within these frames, especially in the one above the fireplace, " I had intended," he answered, " her picture (Lady Beaconsfield's) to be put there ; but she has never sat for her portrait except to Ross for a miniature ; but some day I shall have that copied life-size, and placed in that frame." The fireplace in this room is a hand- some last-century one of marble, with a frieze painted on it, which, as Mr. Disraeli remarked, is uncommon. In the library, which is by far the best room in the building, he told us that the books with which its walls are lined are only the third of his father's library, as on his father's death he had sold the bulk of his collection, only retaining this portion now at Hughenden. With HUGHENDEN, ETC. 417 great satisfaction he showed us some Aldine classics that he treasures in a cabinet inlaid with plaques of Saxon porcelain. ' Mr. Disraeli told us that he had given revolvers to all his servants at Hughenden, as there had been frequent robberies in the neighbourhood. However, as Lady Beaconsfield has left her diamonds in London, the thieves, he said, would find little to carry away besides a gold presentation inkstand and some very highly-emblazoned addresses presented by Conserva- tive delegates from Manchester. ' Owing to an early service in church next (Sunday) morning, we breakfasted at half-past nine. Asking Mr. Disraeli last night at what hour this meal took place, he said that when he and his wife were alone they had no breakfast. I believe he has a very light refection about nine, and a dejeuner a la fourchette at twelve. ' It was a lovely, bright morning, and I strolled out before breakfast to have a look at the place from the garden front. The sky was as blue as in Italy, the valley in which the town of Wycombe lies was all bathed in a pale blue mist, and Hughenden Manor, outwardly a pile of nondescript brick architecture, looked quite brilliant against the deep blue of the sky. I met Lord John in the garden, and we were soon joined by Harcourt and Mr. Disraeli. The latter wore a brigand-shaped hat. We strolled on to a very pretty VOL. i. E E 4 i8 MY REMINISCENCES. green terrace walk, flanked on the right by a fine avenue of beeches, while on the left the ground sinks, to rise again in a hill on the opposite side of the valley ; a bright, clear stream flows between these heights. This walk Mr. Disraeli has christened "My Lady's." The sun was quite hot, and we were all loath to return to the' house, but the sound of a gong reached our ears, so we unwillingly retraced our steps. Lady Beaconsfield did not appear at breakfast, which was a meal of a most substantial description, hot and cold meats abounding. Shortly before half-past ten we started on foot for church. Mr. Disraeli appeared in his well-known long brown Spencer overcoat. The church lies on the slope of a hill, not more than a quarter of a mile from the manor. It is a picturesque structure. Near it are some old gabled almshouses, built by a late proprietor of Hughenden. Mr. Disraeli, as we passed through the churchyard, looked quite the lord of the manor, returning the bows and good- morrows of his parishioners as they trooped towards the church door, and patting the children on the head. We reached the church before the clergyman, and this gave Mr. Disraeli time to point out to his guests some fine old funereal monuments of recumbent knights the De Montforts he said they were, with evident pleasure at the sound of that great name. One of these bears on his shield a strange device a lion rampant, with a child in its mouth. Near these monuments, and close HUGHENDEN, ETC. 419 by the east window, is the vault which Mr. Disraeli has built for his wife and for himself. The Hughenden pews are by the east window, and face the entrance door of the church, and are in full sight of the long chancel, which was well filled with parishioners. The clergyman, whose name I have forgotten, but who had been appointed by Mr. Disraeli, has a powerful voice and High Church tendencies, which are rather against his patron's taste, who told me when we left the church that, although he had begged him not to intone, still he would insist on doing so with even greater energy than before, and especially upon celebrating a harvest home, when Mr. Disraeli said his rector would assemble half-a-dozen clergymen of fellow feelings, and then the intonation became something quite extraordinary, "almost overwhelming!" The manner in which Mr. Disraeli related this was intensely droll ; he half-acted the manner of all these High Church clergy, and the triumph of his own parson at getting together so many intoners. ' On our way home Mr. Disraeli took us to see the Parsonage, delightfully situated on a sunny grassy slope, with a lovely view of the valley beneath, through which the little stream of which Mr. Disraeli is so justly fond meanders among sedges and dock leaves. Then back to the Manor, walking under glades of beech trees. Lady Beaconsfield joined us at luncheon, after which we started for a walk through what Mr. 420 MY REMINISCENCES. Disraeli calls the " German Forest." We were all on foot, except " My Lady," who led the way in a pony chair. We had a most picturesque walk through the endless groves of beeches and fir trees. The latter Lady Beaconsneld called her pinetum. This pinetum, our host told us, reminded him much of parts of Bohemia he had visited. In trying to get out of this wood we lost our way, and had some rather heavy walking across muddy fields. On regaining our path and crossing more fields we reached a farm in which Mr. Disraeli takes great pride. " I feel the satisfac- tion," he said, "of an English landlord coming out very strong on a Sunday afternoon, in showing his guests his territorial possessions, his pigs and poultry, his farm improvements and machines, his stock and his steading." '.It was nearly dark before we got back to the house. The dinner that evening was more lively than it had been on the previous night. Mr. Disraeli was in better spirits, and talked more. His recollections of Cobbett formed part of his conversation. On one occasion, he told us, Cobbett insisted upon taking Sir Robert Peel's seat on the Treasury Bench. Sir Robert did all he could to show the intruder that he objected to this proceeding ; but all was in vain do what he would, Cobbett would not budge an inch. At last Sir Robert requested Cobbett to move, politely but firmly. " I'll be d d if I do! " was all the answer that he got ; HUGHENDEN, ETC. 421 and Peel, continued Disraeli, had perforce to take a lower seat elsewhere. ' Lady Beaconsfield talked ceaselessly about her pets her horses and her peacocks. Of the latter the gardens are full. A few days ago one of these birds disappeared, and an unfortunate small boy has been appointed to look after the others. This wretched little urchin this peacock-herd is to be seen all day long in front of the house, seated on a portable wooden seat. Whenever he sees anyone he grins from ear to ear. Lady Beaconsfield had him sent for into the drawing-room this morning, and gave him a bit of cake, which the little fellow at once devoured with great relish and infinite gusto, much to the amusement of Mr. Disraeli and the others. In the evening Mr. Disraeli spoke to me very despondingly about his wife's state of health. '' She suffers," he groaned, " so dreadfully at times. We have been married thirty- three years, and she has never given me a dull moment." It was quite touching to see his distress. His face, generally so emotionless, was filled with a look of suffering and woe that nothing but the sorrow of her he so truly loves could cause on that impassive countenance. ' Harcourt and I had a cigar that night in a luxu- rious room upstairs, in which hangs a clever portrait of our host by Maclise, taken in the year 1828. Of this I made a copy nothing but a rough sketch 422 MY REMINISCENCES. which, however, Mr. Disraeli seemed to appreciate when he saw it the next morning. Breakfast on Monday was not till after ten. Lady Beaconsfield had passed a bad night, and only came down after eleven. He, however, seemed much the most dis- tressed of the two, for she was wonderfully brisk and lively, and had her breakfast brought into the library, where we were sitting. 'We visitors all left soon after twelve. It was a miserably wet day, and this seemed to add to the melancholy feeling one had that we should probably never again see poor old Lady Beaconsfield, who, with many oddities as to dress and manners, is certainly a most devoted wife and companion. Both our host and hostess came to the front door to see us drive away to the station.' END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. Sft>ttiiV>o0tte &* Cfl., Printers, A'ew-street Square, I.n UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. : : V ;vx;;.:>,,\-v