I went for two days from Bretton to Lord Houghton at Fryston, which has since been burnt, but which was so filled with books of every kind that the whole house was a library, each bookcase being filled with a different subject—the French Revolution, Demonology and Witchcraft, &c., &c. Lady Houghton was living then, a most gentle, kind woman, a sister of Lord Crewe. From Lord Houghton I received constant kindness and protection from my first entering upon a literary life, and, in spite of his excessive vanity, I was always sincerely attached to him. “Butterfly to the hasty eye, he was firm in his friendships, firmest of all in his fearless championship of the weak, the strugglers, the undeservedly oppressed.” As Johnson says of Garth—“he communicated himself through a very wide extent of acquaintance.” His conversation was always interesting, but I have preserved scarcely any notes of my visit to Fryston, and chiefly remember his mentioning that Sydney Smith had said to him, what I have so often thought, “It is one of the great riddles of life to me why good people should always be so dreadfully stupid.” He also spoke of the many proverbs which discouraged exertion in “doing good,” from the Persian “Do no good, and no harm will come of it,” to the French—
“Pour faire du bien
Ne faites rien.”
Talking of the Baroness Burdett Coutts, Lord Houghton said, “Miss Coutts likes me because I never proposed to her. Almost all the young men of good family did: those who did their duty by their family always did. Mrs. Browne (Miss Coutts’ companion) used to see it coming, and took herself out of the way for ten minutes, but she only went into the next room and left the door open, and then the proposal took place, and immediately it was done Miss Coutts coughed, and Mrs. Browne came in again.”
Journal.
“Dec. 10, 1872.—Went to visit the Ralph Duttons at Timsbury near Romsey. The house is in a flat, and sees nothing but clipped laurel hedges. Mr. Dutton is a sporting politician: Mrs. Dutton a politician too, but on the other side. Both are full of pleasant conversation, and most kind. Regarding English country-houses, however, it is as Carlyle truly says, ‘Life may be as well spent there as elsewhere by the owners of them, who have occupations to attend to. For visitors, when large numbers are brought together, some practice is required if they are to enjoy the elaborate idleness.’
“We drove to visit Mr. Cowper Temple at Broadlands—a pleasant liveable house with beautiful flowers and pictures, the most remarkable of the latter being Guercino’s ‘Hagar and the Angel’—an angel which poises and floats, and Sir J. Reynolds’ ‘Infant Academy’ and ‘Babes in the Wood.’ In Mr. Cowper Temple’s room upstairs is Edward Clifford’s family group of the ‘Maimed and Halt’ being called in to the feast, the figures being those of the Cowper-Temples, Augustus Tollemaches, Lord Roden, Lady Palmerston, and Clifford’s favourite drummer. They are wonderful likenesses, but it is a strange picture, with our Saviour looking in at the window.”
“Dec. 13.—I arrived at Hatfield in the dark. A number of carriages from the house met the guests at the station. As I emerged from it, a little groom touched his hat and said, ‘Please, sir, are you the Lord Chancellor?’ I thought I must have grown in dignity of aspect. The Lord Chancellor was expected, and came later in the evening.
“I found Lord and Lady Salisbury in the library, lined with Burleigh books and MSS. Mr. Richmond the artist was with them. He has the most charming voice, which, quite independently of his conversation, would make him agreeable. He talked of the enormous prices obtained for statues and pictures at the present time, while Michelangelo only got £90 and a block of marble for the great David at Florence, and Titian the same for his Assumption at Venice. He spoke of the amount of chicanery which existed amongst artists even then—how the monks, and the nuns too, would supply them with good ultra-marine for their frescoes, and how they would sell the ultra-marine and use smalt. He described how Gainsborough never could sell anything but portraits: people came to him for those, but would not buy his other pictures, and his house was full of them when he died. Gainsborough gave two pictures to the carrier who brought his other pictures from Clifton to London: the carrier would take no fare, so he painted his waggon and horses and another picture and gave them to him: these two pictures have been sold lately for £18,000.
“Besides the Lord Chancellor Selborne with his two pleasant unaffected daughters, Miss Alderson was here the first day, and Sir Henry and Lady Maine. With the last I rambled in search of adventures in the evening, and we walked in the long gallery, which is splendid, with a gilt ceiling, only it is incongruous to see the old panelled wall brilliantly lighted with gas.
“Lord Salisbury is delightful, so perfectly easy and unaffected: it would be well if little great men would take pattern by him. Lady Salisbury is equally unassuming, sound sense ever dropping from her lips as unconsciously as Lady Margaret Beaumont’s bon-mots.”
“Dec. 14.—Lady Salisbury showed us the house. In the drawing-room, over the chimney-piece, is a huge statue of James I. of bronze. It is not fixed, but supported by its own weight. A ball was once given in that room. In the midst of the dancing some one observed that the bronze statue was slowly nodding its head, and gave the alarm. The stampede was frightful. All the guests fled down the long gallery.
“In the same room is a glorious portrait of Lord Salisbury’s grandmother by Reynolds. It was this Lady Salisbury who was burnt to death in her old age. She came in from riding, and used to make her maid change her habit and dress her for dinner at once, as less fatiguing. Then she rested for two or three hours with lighted candles near her, and read or nodded in her chair. One evening, from the opposite wing of the house, the late Lord Salisbury saw the windows of the rooms near hers blazing with light, and gave the alarm, but before anybody could reach his mother’s rooms they were entirely burnt—so entirely, that it would have been impossible to identify her ashes for burial but for a ruby which the present Lady Salisbury wears in a ring. A little heap of diamonds was found in one place, but that proved nothing, as all her jewels were burned with her, but the ruby her maid identified as having put on her finger when she dressed her, and the ashes of that particular spot were all gathered up and buried in a small urn. Her two favourite dogs were burnt with her, and they are probably buried with her.[32] It was this Lady Salisbury who was inadvertently thrown down by a couple waltzing violently down the long gallery, when Lord Lytton, who was present, irreverently exclaimed:
‘At Hatfield House Conservatives
Become quite harum-scarum,
For Radical could do no more
Than overturn Old Sarum.’[33]
“In ‘Oliver Twist,’ Bill Sykes is described as having seen the fire at Hatfield as he was escaping from London.
“In the dining-room there is a portrait by Wilkie of the Duke of Wellington, painted when he was here after the battle of Waterloo. There is also at Hatfield a beautiful picture of Mary Queen of Scots at fifteen.[34] This, however, is not the authentic portrait. There is another, a replica of that at Hardwicke, taken in a widow’s dress shortly before her execution, which is one of the three portraits certainly painted from life. It was sent by the Queen to the Duke of Norfolk and intercepted by Lord Burleigh. One of the other two portraits belonged to Louis Philippe. As Sir Henry Bulwer was waiting for an audience of the king, another gentleman was in the room with him. The portrait of Queen Mary hung on the wall. The stranger looked at it, walked backwards and forwards to it, and examined it again and again. At last he walked up to Sir Henry Bulwer and said, ‘Can you tell me, sir, whom that portrait represents?’—‘Yes, I can,’ said Sir Henry; ‘but will you tell me why you ask?’—‘Because it is the lowest type of criminal face which is known to us.’ The stranger was Fouché the famous detective.
“In Lady Salisbury’s