“One evening at mess one of the officers mentioned that the señorita was going to Cadiz. ‘No, she is not,’ said the young ensign. ‘Oh, you young jackanapes,’ said his fellow-officers, ‘what can you know about it? You know nothing about her.’—‘Yes,’ he said sharply, ‘I do. She is not going to Cadiz; and what is more, I beg that her name may not be brought forward in this way at mess any more: I am engaged to be married to her.’
“There was a universal roar, and an outcry of ‘You don’t suppose we are going to believe that?’ But the ensign said, ‘I give you my word of honour as an officer and a gentleman that I am engaged to be married to her.’
“Then the Colonel, who was present, said, ‘Well, as he represents it in this way, we are bound to believe him.’ And then, turning to the young ensign, said, ‘Now my dear fellow, as we do accept what you say, I think you need not leave us up in the clouds like this. Will you not tell us how it came about? You cannot wonder that we should be a little surprised, when we know that you do not speak a word of Spanish and only two or three words of French, that you should be engaged to be married to this young lady.’
“ ‘Well,’ said the ensign, ‘since you accept what I say, yes, I do not wonder that you are a little surprised. I do not mind telling you all about it. It is quite true I do not understand a word of Spanish,
and only three or four words of French, but that does not matter. After the ball at the Convent the other day (the house of the Governor of Gibraltar is called ‘the Convent’) we went out upon the balcony, and we watched the moonlight shimmering on the waves of the sea, and I looked up into her eyes, and I said, “Voulez vous?” and she said, “Quoi?”—and I said, “Moi;” and she said, “Oui”—and it was quite enough.’
“In the churchyard here is an epitaph ‘To the memory of J. T. C., a man of great uprightness and integrity, and, as far as is consistent with human imperfection, an honest man.”[69]
“Sonning, Nov. 17, 1873.—It is quite curious how intimately this parish and its Rector (Hugh Pearson) are bound together. The Rectory is less his house than that of all his parishioners, and it is perfectly open to them at all times. The choir is most amusing, the ‘poor dear chicks,’ as the Rector calls them, combing each other’s hair in the vestry before coming into church. A number of young men are constant intimates of the house, especially ‘Ken,’ Kenneth Mackenzie; ‘Spes,’ Hope; and ‘Francis,’ Lord Francis Harvey. There was once a bishopric here, a fact which was disputed by Professor Stubbs at Oxford, who said it was at Ramsbury, upon which the Vicar immediately left his card on him as ‘Bishop of Sonning.’
“Speaking of Arthur Stanley’s absence of mind, H. P. has been describing how one day driving from Monreale to Palermo with their carpet-bags on the seat before them, Arthur suddenly complained of the cold. ‘Well, you had better put something on,’ said H. P. ‘I will,’ said Arthur. H. P. went on with his book, till, after some time, suddenly looking up, he saw Arthur, who was also busily engaged in reading, entirely clothed in white raiment. He had put on his night-shirt over all his other clothes, without thinking what he was doing, and they were just driving into the streets of Palermo!”
“Ascot Wood, Jan. 5, 1874.—I came to London three weeks ago in a thick fog, such as Charles Lamb would have said was meat, drink, and clothing. One day I went with Lady Ashburton to visit Mr. Carlyle. It was most interesting—the quaint simple old-fashioned brick house in Cheyne Row; the faded furniture; the table where he toiled so long and fruitlessly at the deification of Frederick the Great; the workbox and other little occupatory articles of the long dead wife, always left untouched; the living niece, jealous of all visitors, thinking that even Lady Ashburton must have either testamentary or matrimonial intentions; and the great man himself in a long grey garment, half coat, half dressing-gown, which buttoned to the throat and fell in straight folds to the feet or below them, like one of the figures in Noah’s Ark, and with the addition, when he went out with us, of an extraordinary tall broad-brimmed felt hat, which can only be procured at a single village in Bavaria, and which gave him the air of an old magician.
“He talked of Holman Hunt’s picture of the Home at Nazareth, ‘the most unnatural thing that ever was painted, and the most unnatural thing in it the idea that the Virgin should be keeping her “preciosities” in the carpenter’s shop.
“He talked of Landor, of the grandeur and unworldliness of his nature, and of how it was a lasting disgrace to England that the vile calumnies of an insolent slanderer had been suffered to blight him in the eyes of so many, and to send him out an exile from England in his old age.
“He complained much of his health, fretting and fidgeting about himself, and said he could form no worse wish for the devil than that he might be able to give him his stomach to digest with through all eternity.
“We walked out with him in the street, one on each side. I saw the cab-drivers pointing and laughing at the extraordinary figure, and indeed it was no wonder.
“At Mrs. Thornton’s I met Miss Thackeray at dinner, and have seen her since. She is charming, well worthy to be the authoress of her books. She said till the money for ‘Old Kensington’ was spent, she should rest. She spoke of the happiness of bringing up her little niece, of the surroundings of young life which it gave her. She talked much of the ‘Memorials,’ and of the problem how far it was well to be contented with a quiet life as God sent it, and how far one ought to seek for work for Him. When I said something of her books and their giving pleasure; she said, ‘Now let us skip that last sentence and go back to what we were saying before.’
“Colonel and Mrs. Henderson (of the Police Force) were at dinner. He said his father had been executor to old Lord Bridport, who had a box which no one was ever allowed to open, and of the contents of which even Lady Bridport was ignorant. After Lord Bridport’s death, the widow sent for Colonel Henderson to look into things, and then said, ‘I wish you would open that box; one ought to know about it.’ Colonel Henderson did not like doing it, but took the box into the library and sat down before it, with candles by his side. Immediately he heard a movement on the other side of the table, and, looking up, saw old Lord Bridport as clearly as he had ever seen him in his life, scowling down upon him with a furious expression. He went back at once to Lady Bridport and positively refused to open the box, which was then destroyed unopened. He said, ‘I shall never to my dying day forget the face of Lord Bridport as I saw him after he was dead.’
“In Wilton Crescent I saw Mrs. Leycester, who was just come from Cheshire. She said:—
“A brother of Sir Philip Egerton has lately been given a living in Devonshire, and went to take possession of it. He had not been long in his rectory before, coming one day into his study, he found an old lady seated there in an arm-chair by the fire. Knowing no old lady could really be there, and thinking the appearance must be the result of an indigestion, he summoned all his courage and boldly sat down upon the old lady, who disappeared. The next day he met the old lady in the passage, rushed up against her, and she vanished. But he met her a third time, and then, feeling that it could not always be indigestion, he wrote to his sister in Cheshire, begging her to call upon the Misses Athelstan, sisters of the clergyman who had held his living before, and say what he had seen. When they heard it, the Misses Athelstan looked inexpressibly distressed and said, ‘That was our mother: we hoped it was only to us she would appear. When we were there, she appeared constantly, but when we left, we hoped she would be at rest.’
“About ‘ghost-stories’ I always recollect what Dr. Johnson used to say—‘The beginning and end of ghost-stories is this, all argument is against them, all belief is for them.’
“I have had a charming visit here at Ascot to the Lefevres, the only other guest being old Mr. Cole of South Kensington, the incarnation of ‘Father Christmas’ or of ‘Old King Cole.’ He talked of the facility of getting money and the difficulty of keeping it. He said that when he wanted money for a Music School, he asked Sir Titus Salt for a subscription. Sir Titus asked him what he wanted him to give. ‘Whatever you