“My ‘Memorials’ are out! Ere this all will have it. I know there will be much abuse and many varieties of opinion, but I am conscious of having carried out the book as I believe to be best for others, not for myself, and in this consciousness can bear what is said. ‘Je laisse couler le torrent,’ as Mme. de Sevigné used to say. One thing I dread is, that people should think I am a better person than I am, on reading the book: for I suppose it is always the fact that a man’s book is the best of him, his thought better than his life. But in any case, it is a relief to have it out (as Arthur and Mary Stanley, at the last moment, persuaded Mr. Murray to go to my publishers to try to stop the publication), yet it is also a wrench to part with the occupation and chief thought of two desolate years.”
“Dalton Hall, Oct. 28.—A second edition of the ‘Memorials’ was called for before it had been out three days. I have had many letters about it—charming ones from Mrs. Arnold and the old Baroness de Bunsen. The olive-bearing dove has gone out with healing on his wings, and all the mists are cleared off and the long-standing feuds of the Hare family healed by the book. Still the Stanleys make no sign.
‘Alas! how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too much or a kiss too long,
And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.’[26]
“I certainly do suffer very much when people mean me to do so, to a degree which must be quite satisfactory to them; but then in compensation I always enjoy very much when it is the reverse. It is as I read somewhere—‘He who is the first to be touched by the thorns is soonest awake to the flowers.’
“From the Oswald Penrhyns’ at Huyton I saw in the same day two great houses—the vast and hideous Knowsley, which interested me from its connection with my Mother’s youth, and the glorious old hall of Speke, which has an air of venerable beauty quite unrivalled. Then I went for some days to Lord Brougham’s, a delightful place, full of tapestry and pictures, but though it looks old, really a modern castle, with the ruins of the truly ancient castle on the river-bank hard by.”
In November I went north again to stay for the first time at Bretton near Wakefield, a great house in the Black Country, built by the famous “Madam Beaumont,” who followed the example of her ancestors in making an enormous fortune by her skilful management of her lead-mines. It is recorded that when Mr. Pitt was dining with her, and all her magnificent plate was set out, she exclaimed, with pardonable pride, “That is all the lead-mines,” when he replied, “Oh, really, I thought it was silver,” and would talk on, to her great annoyance, and never allow her a moment to explain. I had made friends with her grandson, Wentworth Beaumont, at Ford, when he was there with his wife Lady Margaret, whom I have always regarded as the most thoroughly pleasant specimen in existence of a really fine lady. Her powers of conversation were boundless, her gift of repartee unequalled, and her memory most extraordinary. She was the daughter of Lady Clanricarde, celebrated for her conversational talents, and whom I remember Lady Carnarvon describing as “the most agreeable woman in England, because she was not only massive, but lively.” Lady Margaret was like a little queen amongst her guests, entertaining with the simplicity of real kindness and thoughtfulness for others, whilst her manner was equally agreeable to all, and she never usurped attention, but rather exerted herself to draw others out and to show the best side of them. She could be alarming as an enemy, but she was a most faithful friend, and would exert herself to take definite trouble for her friends, never deserting them unless they were proved to be really unworthy. She was not exactly pretty, but her animation was more charming than mere beauty. Dress with her was not a mere adjunct, but was made as much a thing of poetic beauty as a landscape or a flower. She was devoted to her husband, but theoretically she disapproved of love in a general way. Still she was only worldly in principle and not in practice, and she was ever a devoted mother to her children, seeking their real happiness rather than their advancement before the world.[27] I have often been at Bretton since my first visit there, and always enjoyed it from the constant animation which the hostess shed around her; the excessive comfort of the house and of the thoroughly well-regulated household; the plenty of time for work and writing, and yet the constant variety afforded by the guests coming and going: while with the children of the house I was very intimate, and with the youngest, Hubert, long on terms of almost elder-brotherly affection. Lady Francis Gordon was generally at Bretton when I have been there, rather an amusing than an agreeable person, but an immense talker. One of her first remarks to me was characteristic—“I am quite past the age of blushing: when I want to do anything of that kind, I what they call flush now.” I have frequently seen Colonel Crealock[28] at Bretton, who drew animals so splendidly. He told me once—
“Old Lady Selby of the Mote at Ightham had been out to some grand party in all her diamonds and jewels. She slept in a room which still remains the same, hung all round with tapestry representing events in the life of Julius Caesar. Through this room was the dressing-room, in which she kept her jewels and valuables. On the night of her return from the party, as she was undressing and taking off her jewels, she looked up at the figure of Julius Caesar in the tapestry, and thought she saw something peculiar in one of his eyes. She looked again, and felt sure the eye moved. She quietly proceeded, however, to take off her jewels and put them away. Having done that, she locked the jewel-case, left it in the dressing-room, and went to bed.
“She had not been in bed long when a man appeared in the room with a candle and a knife. Coming up to the bed, he passed the light again and again close before her eyes. She bore it without flinching in the least, only appeared to become restless and turned over in her sleep. Then he proceeded to the dressing-room and became occupied over the jewels. As soon as she was aware that he was entirely engrossed, she darted out of bed, banged to the door of the dressing-room, locked it on the outside, and rang violently for assistance. When help came, and the door was opened, they found the man strangled from trying to get through the iron bars of the window.
“The portrait of old Lady Selby still remains at the Mote.”[29]
To Miss Leycester.
“Bretton Park, Nov. 21, 1872.—To-day we went—Lady Francis Gordon, Mrs. Lowther, Mr. Doyle, and I—to luncheon at Walton, an extraordinary house in the middle of a lake, which belonged to the Roman Catholic Mr. Waterton, the great ornithologist. It is approached by a long drawbridge and is most curious. A Mr. Hailstone lives there now, a strange man, who spends his large fortune on antiquities, and has a wife who writes on lace, and wonderful collections.[30] Their son has never eaten anything but buttered toast, cheese, and port-wine (has never tasted meat, vegetables, or fruit), but is eight years old and very flourishing.
“Lord and Lady Salisbury are here. The latter can only be described by the word ‘jocund,’ except when she does not wish to make acquaintance or desires to snub people, when she becomes hopelessly impenetrable. There is a party of fourteen, all new to me, but I get on very well. They look upon me as an aboriginal from another hemisphere, and indeed they are that to me; but it is too new a set to feel the least shy in. There is great satisfaction in being only a background figure, and Lady Margaret is quite charming, the house handsome, and the park pretty. We all went to church this morning in a sort of family drawing-room in the grounds, the vulgar herd screened off by red curtains, only the clergyman in his pulpit visible above the screen.”
I made a very interesting excursion with Lady Margaret and some of her guests to Haworth, the wild weird home of the Brontës on the Yorkshire fells, where the steep street with the stones placed edgeways, up which the horses scramble like cats, leads to the wind-stricken churchyard, with its vast pavement of tombstones set close together. On one side of this is the dismal grey stone house where the three unhappy sisters lived, worked, and suffered, with the window at the side through which Patrick Brontë used to climb at night. Not a tree is to be seen in the neighbourhood except the blackened lilac before the Rectory door. Nature is her dreariest self, and offers no ameliorations. The family were buried beneath their pew in the church,[31] so that Charlotte, the last survivor, sat in church over the graves of her brothers and sisters. The people seemed half savage, most of all the Rector, who violently hurled Lady Margaret