‘To see their Graces
And to kill their grouses.’
“I have, however, really enjoyed my visit very much indeed, and on taking leave just now I wrote—
‘In the desert of life, so dismal and wide,
A charming oasis is sometimes descried,
Where none are afraid their true feelings to own,
And wit never takes a satirical tone;
Where new roots of affection are planted each hour,
By courtesy, kindness, and magical power;
Where fresh friendships are formed, and destined to last,
In a golden chain fettered and rivetted fast.
Such a garden is Raby:—those who gather its flowers,
In grateful remembrance will think of the hours
Which, enjoyed, do not vanish, but seem to display
In riplets of silver the wake of their way.’
“One evening I told a story, unfortunately; for if I ever afterwards escaped to my room after five o’clock, there came a tap and a servant—‘Their Graces want you to come down again’—always from their insatiable love of stories.”
“Nov. 7, 1873, Bretton.—After three days with the dear cousins at Ravensworth, I am glad to find myself again in this pleasant house, where I have been rapturously welcomed by the children, especially by little Hubert. I have found the Motleys here. He is very agreeable; and the daughters, especially Mrs. Ives, [68] to whom her husband left £6000 a year after one month of married life, are very pleasant. Motley was shut up for a long time in his room the other day, and when he came in announced that he had just finished the preface (which was the winding up) of his new book. All the other ladies began fulsome compliments, but Miss Susie Motley, jumping up and throwing her arms round his neck, exclaimed, ‘Oh, you dear foolish old thing, how could you go and spend so much time over what you may be quite sure nobody will ever read?’ Lady Margaret has just said—
“ ‘Now, Mr. Hare, what do you do with your eyes(i’s)?’
“ ‘Dot them.’
“ ‘Then why don’t I dot mine? Now there is an opportunity for you to make a pretty speech.’
“ ‘I don’t know how.’
“ ‘Why, how stupid you are! Because they are capital eyes (i’s). And now, having provided thus much food for your mind, I will go and look after your body by ordering the dinner.’
“I was very sorry to leave the happy cordial party at Ravensworth of eleven young cousins, most easy to get on with certainly, though I had never seen some of them before. But, directly I arrived, one of them came forward and said, ‘Please remember, Augustus, that my name is only Nellie, and my sisters are Har and Pem and Vicky, and my cousins are,’ &c. At Lamesley Church we had the oddest sermon, with such sentences as—‘Our first father would insist upon eating sour fruit, and has set all his descendants’ teeth on edge ever since.’ ”
To Miss Wright.
“Highclere Castle, Nov. 12, 1873.—This is a beautiful park, with every variety of scenery, hill, valley, woods, with an undergrowth of rhododendron, a poetical lake! and is so immense—thirteen miles round—that one never goes out of it, and rather feels the isolation of the great house in the centre, which, though very handsome, is not equal to the place. Lady Carnarvon is very lovely and winning, and boundlessly interesting to listen to: one understands Mr. Delane saying that he believed that there could be no successor to Lady Palmerston till he saw Lady Carnarvon. She says that she has hitherto been too exclusive; that henceforth she shall wish to fill her house more with people of every shade—‘for Carnarvon’s sake.’ As I watch her, I am perpetually reminded of Longfellow’s lines—
“ ‘Homeward serenely she walked, with God’s benediction upon her;
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.’
“The guests are Sir Stafford, Lady, and Miss Northcote, Mr. and Mrs. Chandos Leigh, Mr. Herman Merivale, the Charles Russells, and Mr. Forester and his son and daughter-in-law, all pleasant people, yet on the whole not so well-fitting a party as I have usually fallen in with. The little daughter of the house—Winifred—is the most delightful and unspoilt of children.”
Journal.
“Highclere, Nov. 13.—Mr. Herman Merivale told us—
“A captain was crossing to America in his ship, with very few sailors on board. One day one of them came up to him on the deck and said that there was a strange man in his cabin—that he could not see the man’s face, but that he was sitting with his back to the door at the table writing. The captain said it was impossible there could be any one in his cabin, and desired the sailor to go and look again. When he came up, he said the man was gone, but on the table was the paper on which he had written, with the ink still wet, the words—‘Steer due south.’ The captain said that, as he was not pressed for time, he would act on the mysterious warning. He steered due south, and met with a ship which had been long disabled and whose crew were in the last extremity.
“The captain of the disabled ship said that one of his men was a very strange character. He had himself picked him up from a deserted ship, and since then he had fallen into a cataleptic trance, in which, when he recovered, he declared that he had been in another ship, begging its captain to come to their assistance. When the man who had been sent to the cabin saw the cataleptic sailor, he recognised him at once as the man he had seen writing.
“Mr. Merivale said that a case of the same kind had happened to himself.
“He was staying at Harrow, and very late at night was summoned to London. Exactly as the clock struck twelve he passed the headmaster’s door in a fly. Both he and the friend who was with him were at that moment attracted by seeing a hackney-coach at the door—a most unusual sight at that time of night, and a male figure, wrapped in black, descend from it and glide into the house, without, apparently, ringing, or any door being opened. He spoke of it to his friend, and they both agreed that it was equally mysterious and inexplicable. The next day, the circumstance so dwelt on Mr. Merivale’s mind, that he returned to Harrow, and going to the house, asked if the headmaster, Dr. Butler, was at home. ‘No,’ said the servant. Then he asked who had come at twelve o’clock the night before. No one had come, no one had been heard of, no carriage had been seen; but Dr. Butler’s father had died just at that moment in a distant county.
“Sir Charles Russell told us—
“When the 34th Regiment was quartered at Gibraltar, it had the stupidest and dullest set of officers that can possibly be imagined; they not only knew nothing, but they preferred to know nothing; and especially were they averse to learning anything of Spanish, which was certainly very short-sighted of them, as it cut them off from so many social pleasures. But nevertheless they all very much admired a beautiful young Spanish señorita who was living at Gibraltar, and pretended that they were not otherwise than in her good graces, which of course was simply bombast, as none of them knew a word of Spanish and scarcely a word of French, so that not one of them had ever spoken to her.
“One day, while the regiment was at Gibraltar, a young ensign came to join,