Part 2 (1/2)
”Ce sont l? les s?jours, les sites, les rivages, Dont mon ?me attendrie ?voque les images, Et dont, pendant les nuits, mes songes les plus beaux Pour enchanter mes yeux composent leurs tableaux.”--LAMARTINE.
Maria Leycester had been married to my uncle Augustus Hare in June 1829.
In their every thought and feeling they were united, and all early a.s.sociations had combined to fit them more entirely for each other's companions.h.i.+p. A descendant of one of the oldest families in Ches.h.i.+re, Miss Leycester's childhood and youth had been spent almost entirely in country rectories, but in such rectories as are rarely to be found, and which prove that the utmost intellectual refinement and an interest in all that is remarkable and beautiful in this world are not incompatible with the highest aspirations after a Christian and a heavenly life. Her father, Oswald Leycester, Rector of Stoke-upon-Terne in Shrops.h.i.+re, was a finished scholar, had travelled much, and was the most agreeable of companions. Her only sister, seven years older than herself, was married when very young to Edward Stanley, Rector of Alderley, and afterwards Bishop of Norwich, well known for the picturesqueness of his imaginative powers, for his researches in Natural History, and for that sympathy with all things bright and pleasant which preserved in him the spirit of youth quite to the close of life. Her most intimate friend, and the voluntary preceptor of her girlhood, had been the gifted Reginald Heber, who, before his acceptance of the Bishopric of Calcutta, had lived as Rector of Hodnet--the poet-rector--within two miles of her home.
One of the happy circle which constantly met at Hodnet Rectory, she had known Augustus Hare (first-cousin of Mrs. Heber, who was a daughter of Dean s.h.i.+pley) since she was eighteen. Later interests and their common sorrow in Heber's death had thrown them closely together, and it would scarcely have been possible for two persons to have proved each other's characters more thoroughly than they had done, before the time of their marriage, which was not till Maria Leycester was in her thirty-first year.
Four years of perfect happiness were permitted them--years spent almost entirely in the quiet of their little rectory in the singularly small parish of Alton Barnes amid the Wilts.h.i.+re downs, where the inhabitants, less than two hundred in number, living close at each other's doors, around two or three small pastures, grew to regard Augustus Hare and his wife with the affection of children for their parents. So close was the tie which united them, that, when the rich family living of Hurstmonceaux fell vacant on the death of our great-uncle Robert, Augustus Hare could not bear to leave his little Alton, and implored my father to persuade his brother Julius to give up his fellows.h.i.+p at Trinity and to take it instead.
”Having lived but little in the country, and his attention having been engrossed by other subjects, Augustus Hare was, from education and habits of life, unacquainted with the character and wants of the poor. The poverty of their minds, their inability to follow a train of reasoning, their prejudices and superst.i.tions, were quite unknown to him. All the usual hindrances to dealing with them, that are commonly ascribed to a college life, were his in full force.
But his want of experience and knowledge touching the minds and habits of the poor were overcome by the love he felt towards all his fellow-creatures, and his sympathy in all their concerns. In earlier days this Christ-like mind had manifested itself towards his friends, towards servants, towards all with whom he was brought in contact. It now taught him to talk to his poor paris.h.i.+oners and enter into their interests with the feeling of a father and a friend.... He had the power of throwing himself out of himself into the interests and feelings of others; nor did he less draw out their sympathies into his own, and make them sharers in his pleasures and his concerns. It was not only the condescension of a superior to those over whom he was placed, it was far more the mutual interchange of feeling of one who loved to forget the difference of station to which each was called, and to bring forward the brotherly union as members of one family in Christ, children of the same Heavenly Father, in which blessed equality all distinctions are done away. Often would he ask their counsel in matters of which he was ignorant, and call upon their sympathy in his thankful rejoicing. His garden, his hayfield, his house, were as it were thrown open to them, as he made them partakers of his enjoyment, or sought for their a.s.sistance in his need.... The one pattern ever before his eyes was his Lord and Master Jesus Christ; the first question he asked himself, 'What would Jesus Christ have me to do? What would He have done in my place?'
”Perfect contentedness with what was appointed for him, and deep thankfulness for all the good things given him, marked his whole being. In deciding what should be done, or where he should go, or how he should act, the question of how far it might suit his own convenience, or be agreeable to his own feelings, was kept entirely in the background till all other claims were satisfied. It was not apparently at the dictate of duty and reason that these thoughts were suppressed and made secondary: it seemed to be the first, the natural feeling in him, to seek first the things of others and to do the will of G.o.d, and to look at his own interest in the matter as having comparatively nothing to do with it. And so great a dread had he of being led to any selfish or interested views, that he would find consolation in having no family to include in the consideration--'Had I had children I might have fancied it an excuse for worldly-mindedness and covetousness.' His children truly were his fellow-men, those who were partakers of the same flesh and blood, redeemed by the same Saviour, heirs of the same heavenly inheritance. For them he was willing to spend and be spent, for them he was _covetous_ of all the good that might be obtained....
He was never weary in well-doing, never thought he had done enough, never feared doing too much. Those small things, which by so many are esteemed as unnecessary, as _not worth while_, these were the very things he took care not to leave undone. It was not rendering a service when it came _in_ his way, when it occurred in the natural course of things that he should do it; it was going _out_ of the way to help others, taking every degree of trouble and incurring personal inconvenience for the sake of doing good, of giving pleasure even in slight things, that distinguished his benevolent activity from the common form of it. The love that dwelt in him was ready to be poured forth on whomsoever needed it, and being a free-will offering, it looked for no return, and felt no obligation conferred.”
I have copied these fragments from the portrait which Augustus Hare's widow drew of his ministerial life,[10] because they afford the best clue to the way in which that life influenced hers, drawing her away from earth and setting her affections in heavenly places. And yet, though in one sense the life of Augustus Hare and his wife at Alton was one of complete seclusion, in another sense there were few who lived more for, or who had more real communion with, the scattered members of their family. Mrs. Stanley and her children, with her brother Mr.
Penrhyn[11] and his wife, were sharers by letter in every trifling incident which affected their sister's life; and with his favourite brother Julius, Augustus Hare never slackened his intellectual intercourse and companions.h.i.+p. But even more than these was Lucy Anne Stanley,[12] the life-long friend of Maria Hare, till, in the summer of 1833, the tie of sisterhood, which had always existed in feeling, became a reality, through her marriage with Marcus Hare, the youngest of the four brothers.
A chill which Augustus Hare caught when he was in Ches.h.i.+re for his brother's marriage, was the first cause of his fatal illness. It was soon after considered necessary that he should spend the winter abroad with his wife, and it was decided that they should accompany Marcus and Lucy Hare to Rome. At Genoa the illness of Augustus became alarming, but he reached Rome, and there he expired on the 14th of February 1834, full of faith and hope, and comforting those who surrounded him to the last.
My father felt his brother's loss deeply. They had little in common on many points, yet the close tie of brotherhood, which had existed between them from early days at Bologna, was such as no difference of opinion could alter, no time or absence weaken. When Augustus was laid to rest at the foot of the pyramid of Caius Cestius, my father's most earnest wish was to comfort his widowed sister-in-law, and in the hope of arousing an interest which might still give some semblance of an earthly tie to one who seemed then upon the very borderland of heaven, he entreated, when I was born in the following month, that she would become my G.o.dmother, promising that she should be permitted to influence my future in any way she pleased, and wis.h.i.+ng that I should be called Augustus after him she had lost.
I was baptized on the 1st of April in the Villa Strozzi, by Mr. Burgess.
The widow of Augustus held me in her arms, and I received the names of ”Augustus John Cuthbert,” the two last from my G.o.dfathers (the old Sir John Paul and Mr. Cuthbert Ellison), who never did anything for me, the first from my G.o.dmother, to whom I owe everything in the world.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Augustus J. C. Hare.
And his nurse Lucia Cecinelli.]
Soon afterwards, my G.o.dmother returned to England, with her faithful maid Mary Lea, accompanied by the Marcus Hares. She had already decided to fix her future home in the parish of Julius, who, more than any other, was a fellow-mourner with her. As regarded me, nothing more than the tie of a G.o.dmother had to that time been thought of; but in the quiet hours of her long return journey to England, while sadly looking forward to the solitary future before her, it occurred to Augustus Hare's widow as just possible that my parents might be induced to give me up to her altogether, to live with her as her own child. In July she wrote her pet.i.tion, and was almost surprised at the glad acceptance it met with. Mrs. Hare's answer was very brief--”My dear Maria, how very kind of you! Yes, certainly, the baby shall be sent as soon as it is weaned; and, if any one else would like one, would you kindly recollect that we have others.”
Yet my adopting mother had stipulated that I was to be altogether hers; that my own relations were henceforward to have no claim over me whatever; that her parents were to be regarded as my grandparents, her brother and sister as my uncle and aunt.
Meantime my father took his family for the hot summer months to one of the lovely villas on the high spurs of volcanic hill, which surround picturesque romantic Siena. They had none of the English society to which they had been accustomed at Lucca Baths and at Castellamare, but the Siennese are celebrated for their hospitality, and my father's talents, famous then throughout Italy, ensured him a cordial welcome amongst the really cultivated circle which met every evening in the old medi?val palaces of the native n.o.bility. Of English, they had the society of Mr. and Mrs. Bulwer, who were introduced by Landor, while constant intercourse with Landor himself was one of the chief pleasures which the family enjoyed during this and many succeeding years. With Francis Hare he laid the plan of many of his writings, and in his judgment and criticism he had the greatest confidence. To this he alludes in his little poem of ”Sermonis Propriora:”--
”Little do they who glibly talk of vrese Know what they talk about, and what is worse, Think they are judges if they dare to pa.s.s Sentence on higher heads.
The mule and a.s.s Know who have made them what they are, and heed Far from the neighing of the generous steed.
Gell, Drummond, Hare, and wise and witty Ward Knew at first sight and sound the genuine bard, But the street hackneys, fed on nosebag bran, a.s.sail the poet, and defame the man.”
After another winter at Rome, the family went to Lausanne, and thence my father, with my beautiful Albanese nurse, Lucia Cecinelli, took me to meet Mrs. Gayford, the English nurse sent out to fetch me by my adopted mother from Mannheim on the Rhine. There the formal exchange took place which gave me a happy and loving home. I saw my father afterwards, but he seldom noticed me. Many years afterwards I knew Mrs. Hare well and had much to do with her; but I have never at any time spoken to her or of her as a ”mother,” and I have never in any way regarded her as such.
She gave me up wholly and entirely. She renounced every claim upon me, either of affection or interest. I was sent over to England with a little green carpet-bag containing two little white night-s.h.i.+rts and a red coral necklace--my whole trousseau and patrimony. At the same time it was indicated that if the Marcus Hares should also wish to adopt a child, my parents had another to dispose of: my second brother William had never at any time any share in their affections.
On reaching England I was sent first to my cousin the Dowager Countess of Strathmore, and from her house was taken (in the coach) by Mrs.
Gayford to my mother--my real only mother from henceforth--at Hurstmonceaux Rectory, which at that time was as much a palace of art, from its fine collection of pictures and books, as a country rectory could be.