“Feb. 14.—Dined at Lord Halifax’s to meet Lord and Lady Cardwell. They are most pleasant, interesting, interested company, and it was altogether one of the happiest dinners I remember. The conversation was chiefly about the changes in spelling and their connection with changes in English history and customs.
“Lord Cardwell was in the habit of using the Church prayers at family prayers. One day his valet came to him and said, ‘I must leave your lordship’s service at once.’—‘Why, what have you to complain of?’—‘Nothing personally, but your lordship will repeat every morning—“We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and have left undone those things which we ought to have done:”—now I freely admit that I have often done things I ought not, but that I have left undone things that I ought to have done, I utterly deny: and I will not stay here to hear it said.’ ”
“Feb. 19.—A charming walk with Charlie Wood to St. Paul’s, along the Embankment and then a labyrinth of quaint City streets. He called it his half-holiday, and I am sure it was so to me to mount into his pure unworldly atmosphere even for two hours. He is really the only young man I know who at once thinks no evil, believes no evil, and does no evil.”
“Sunday, Feb. 20.—Luncheon with Mrs. Harvey of Ickwellbury, meeting Colonel Taylor, the Whip of the House of Commons—a very amusing man. He talked a great deal about Ireland. He said that when he congratulated Whyte-Melville upon the engagement of his daughter to Lord Massereene, he said, ‘Yes, I have every reason to be satisfied: first, my future son-in-law is an Irishman, and then he speaks his native tongue in all its purity.’
“He spoke of landing in former days at Kingstown, how the car-drivers fought for you, and, having obtained you, possessed you, and made all out of you that they could. Passing a mile-post with G. P. O. upon it, the ‘fare’ asked its meaning. ‘Why, your honour,’ said the driver, ‘it’s aizy to see that your honour has never been in ould Ireland before—why, that’s just God preserve O’Connell, your honour, and it’s on ivery mile-post all through the country.’ It was of course ‘General Post Office.’
“Coming to a river, the ‘fare’ asked, ‘What do you call this river?’—‘It’s not a river at all, your honour; it’s only a strame.’—‘Well, but what do you call it?’—‘Oh, we don’t call it at all, your honour; it just comes of itself.’ ”
“Feb. 24.—Dined at Lord Strathmore’s, and went on with Hedworth and Lizzie Williamson to Lady Bloomfield’s, where sixty-eight cousins assembled to take leave of Lord and Lady Lytton on their departure for India.”
If any one has ever the patience to read this memoir through, they will have been struck by the way in which, for many years before the time I am writing of, the persons with whom I lived were quite different from those amongst whom my childhood was spent. Arthur Stanley had never got over the publication of the “Memorials of a Quiet Life,” though he was always at a loss to say what he objected to in it, and Mary Stanley I never saw at all. From Lady Augusta alone I continued to receive frequent and affectionate messages.
In 1874 Lady Augusta represented the Queen at the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh, and she never really recovered the effects of the cold which she then endured in Russia. In the summer of 1875 she was alarmingly ill in Paris, was brought home with difficulty, and from that time there was little hope of her recovery. She expired early in March 1876. I had not seen her for long, but had always a most affectionate recollection of her, and the last letter she was able to dictate was addressed to me.
Journal.
“Holmhurst, March 12.—I have been again up to London for dear Augusta Stanley’s funeral on the 9th. It was a beautiful day. All the approaches to Westminster were filled with people in mourning.
“It seemed most strange thus to go to the Deanery again—that the doors closed for six years were opened wide by death, by the death of one who had always remained my friend, and whom no efforts of others could alienate. Red cloth showed that royalty was coming, and I went at once to the library, where an immense crowd of cousins were assembled. As I went down the little staircase with Kate Vaughan, four ladies in deep mourning passed to the dining-room, carrying immense wreaths of lovely white flowers: they were the Queen and three of her daughters. The Queen seemed in a perfect anguish of grief. She remained for a short time alone with the coffin, I believe knelt by it, and was then taken to the gallery overhanging the Abbey.
“Soon the immense procession set out by the cloisters, and on entering the church, turned so as to pass beneath the Queen and then up the nave from the west end. The church was full of people: I felt as if I only saw the wind lifting the long garlands of white flowers as the coffin moved slowly on, and Arthur’s pathetic face of childlike bewilderment. The music was lovely, but in that vast choir one longed for a village service. It was not so in the second part, when we moved through one long sob from the poor of Westminster who lined the way, to the little chapel behind the tomb of Henry VII., where the service was indescribably simple and touching.
“The procession of mourners went round the Abbey from the choir by a longer way to the chapel on account of the people. As it passed the corner of the transept, the strange little figure of Mr. Carlyle slipped out. He had been very fond of Augusta, was full of feeling for Arthur, and seemed quite unconscious of who and where he was. He ran along, before the chief mourners, by the side of the coffin, and in the chapel itself he stood at the head of the grave, making the strangest ejaculations at intervals through the service.”
Arthur stood at the head of the grave with his hands on the heads of Thomas Bruce’s two children. When the last flowers fell into the grave, a single voice sang gloriously, “Write, saith the Spirit.” Then we moved back again to the nave, and, standing at the end, in a voice of most majestic pathos, quivering, yet audible through all that vast space, Arthur himself gave the blessing. “The Queen was waiting for him upon the threshold as he went into the house, and led him herself into his desolate home.”
I insert some poor lines which I wrote “In Memoriam.”
“Lately together in a common grief
Our Royal mistress with her people wept,
And reverently were fairest garlands laid
Where our beloved one from her sufferings slept.
Seeing the sunshine through a mist of tears
Fall on the bier of her we loved so well,
Each, in the memory sweet of happy years,
Some kindly word or kindlier thought could tell.
And tenderly, with sorrow-trembling voice,
All sought their comfort in a meed of love,
Unworthy echoes from each saddened heart
Seeking their share in the great loss to prove.
For she so lately gathered into rest
Was one who smoothed this stony path of ours,
And beating down the thorns along the way,
Aye left it strewn and sweet with summer flowers.
In the true candour of a noble heart,
She never sought another’s fault to show,
But rather thought there must be in herself
Some secret failure which she did not know.