“I was ill all night from having eaten junket at Whiteway. Charlie says this Devonshire dainty is so called from the Neapolitan joncetta—cream on rushes. In Devon they pretend it is a relic of the Roman invasion!
“We have just been to church at Kenton. An immense funeral party (from last week) walked in, two and two, with great importance and occupied three pews. They sat through the whole service, as if too overwhelmed by their late grief to rise, and the women held handkerchiefs to their faces, and rocked, and shook the crape bows upon their bonnets, while waiting for the expected ‘funeral discourse.’ The people here are delightfully primitive. The other day, at a dinner Lord Devon gave, a man of the place rose to propose his health, and comprised all that needed to be said in—‘I don’t know what Lord Devon du, but all I du know is that if more would du as Lord Devon du du, there wouldn’t be so many as would du as they du du.’
“The wife of a neighbouring clergyman was very seriously ill of a strange and mysterious complaint. It was observed that her worst attacks always came on after her husband had administered the Sacrament to her. Mr. O., who was attending her, studied her case very much, and came to the conclusion that, if the peculiar symptoms she exhibited came from unnatural causes, they could only be produced by a single and very rare drug. Forthwith he set himself to find out if there was any place in the neighbourhood where that drug was sold, and at last he did find it. He asked at the place if they had sold any of it. ‘Oh, yes; to the parson at——; he bought some yesterday.’ As Mr. O. was going home he met the clergyman himself. He stopped him and said, ‘I have just found out that yesterday you bought some drugs at M.: now if Mrs. X. is worse to-morrow, I shall know what has caused it.’ That afternoon the clergyman went down to the shore to bathe, and he never returned. He was known to be a splendid swimmer, and he was seen to swim far, far out to sea.
“To-night Lady Agnes talked of her grandmother, who, at sixteen, was sent down to speak to the housekeeper at Audley End. The woman, who was raving mad, shut the door and said, ‘Now you must say your prayers at once, for I have a commission from heaven to kill you.’—‘Oh, you cannot dare to do that,’ said the girl without hesitation, taking up a white napkin which lay upon the table and giving it to her with an air of the utmost conviction, ‘for here is a reprieve.’ And the woman gave in at once.”
“Anthony, Plymouth, Oct. 7.—On Monday I went to Exeter to my Aunt FitzGerald,[124] who was greatly pleased to see me. Her house is charming, full of relics, and, as she says, certainly ‘shows that she is somebody.’ Over the dining-room chimney-piece hangs a magnificent Mignet of the Duchess of Portsmouth. There are interesting pictures of Lord Edward FitzGerald, and beautiful china given by Frederick the Great to the Duchess of York, and by her to Pamela. Most of the drawing-room furniture is from Malmaison.
“Yesterday I came here to Anthony (the Pole-Carews). It is a strange drive from Plymouth, through endless courts, dockyards, &c., and then crossing an arm of the sea by a ferry, which was very rough when I came, and worse at night, when the family crossed to a ball; but, as Mr. Carew says, it is very well to have the sea between him and such a population as that of Plymouth.
“This house is perfectly charming—the old hall and its pictures, the oak staircase, the warm tapestried sitting-room—all, as it were, typical of the broad christian kindness and warm-hearted cordiality of its inmates. It is a house in which no ill is ever spoken, and where scandal sits dumb; where, with the utmost merriment, there is the most sincere religious feeling, and yet an entire freedom from cant and what is called ‘religious talking.’ There is here a mutual spirit of forbearance, and an absence of all egotism and self-seeking, which is more instructive than a thousand sermons; and it almost seems as if it were arranged that what might be the asperities of any one member of the family should be softened and smoothed out by the qualities of another. Mrs. Carew is the picture of a warm-hearted, most loving English mother, who enters into and shares all the interests, all the amusements, of her children; and between the father and his sons there is none of the shadow which so often exists, but the truest confidence and friendship.”[125]
“Oct. 11.—It is only by a long stay that one learns all that the Carews really are—the perfect charm of this most united and beautiful family life. Just now their goodness has been especially drawn out by the parting of Captain Ernest Rice and his wife in this house, he going to India for three years. The Carews especially wished it to be here, that they might soften it to both, and wonderfully have they helped them through—cheering, enlivening, nerving, where it was possible, but never intruding comfort when the natural burst of grief must come.
“It has been very pleasant seeing the different guests come and go. The Dean of St. Paul’s and Mrs. Church have been here. He is an excellent person, but very nervous and twitchy.[126] She has a repose of goodness which sets you at rest with her, and imparts a confidence in her at once.
“Sir John and Lady Duckworth were here for two days. His father was military governor of Portsmouth. One day his mother was crossing the green at Mount Wyse when the sentry stopped her. ‘Do you know who you are speaking to?’ she said. ‘No, I don’t,’ he replied, ‘but I know you are not the governor’s cow, and that is the only thing which has any business here.’
“Lord Eliot[127] was also here. I found great grace in his sight, and was most pressingly invited to Port Eliot. I went on Saturday. He met me at the station, and I was almost walked off my feet for four hours, being shown every picture in the house, every plant in the garden, and every walk in the woods. There is a limit in what ought to be shown, and Lord Eliot has never found it out.
“Still Port Eliot is a beautiful place. The house and the grand old church of St. German’s Priory—chiefly Norman—stand close together, on shaven green lawns, radiant with masses of flowers and backed by luxuriant woods, amid which walks open here and there upon glimpses of rock and terraces near one of the salt fiords which are so common in this country.
“Lord St. Germans,[128] who is paralysed, is a beautiful and venerable old figure, with white hair and beard, wheeling himself about in a chair. Lord Eliot returned with me to Devonport, and introduced me to the frightful sights of that most hideous place.
“Some of the pictures at Port Eliot are beautiful, the most so that of Lady Cornwallis—so simple and stately in its lines. It is engraved, but without the figure of a child, probably not born at that time, but introduced afterwards in the picture.
“On Friday I had a charming drive with Mrs. Carew to ‘the Hut,’ through the narrowest lanes imaginable. An old clergyman near this, Mr. Wood, was driving there, who told things in a most slow and solemn manner. He said, ‘Mrs. Wood was dreadfully frightened as we were driving, and said we should be upset. I said, “ My dear, it is imposs”——“ible,” I could not say, for we were over.’
“Last night (Sunday) the family sang hymns beautifully in the hall. ‘No horrid Gregorians,’ said Miss Julia, ‘for the old monks only sang those by way of penance, so why should we sing them?’ ”
“Stone Hall, Plymouth, Oct. 13.—Another pleasant family home! I came on Monday to the George Edgcumbes. I had known Mrs. Edgcumbe well before at Rome, but had never seen her ‘dear old man,’ her ‘bird,’ &c., as she calls her kind old husband.[129] They do not dislike having married their three daughters at all. It is less embarras in their old age, and they enjoy having a constantly open house full of kindly hospitalities to their neighbours. Young Alwyn Greville has been here twice since I came, and I like him increasingly. It is a charming old house, close to the town, but its tall trees and disordered garden give it a quaint look, which one would be sorry to see rectified. There is a view across the still reaches of the harbour, with masses of timber floating close by and great ships lying far off, nearer the beautiful woods of Mount Edgcumbe. Close by are many delightful walks amongst the rocks, and varied views. We went to ‘the Winter Villa,’ a luxurious sun-palace with a great conservatory, backed by natural rock. The late Lord Mount Edgcumbe lived here for many years, quite helpless from rheumatic gout. It was his mother[130] who was buried