Part 12 (1/2)
These were the best friends of Lander's solitude; most of his other visitors were sycophants and flatterers, and though he despised the persons, he did not always dislike the flattery. Swift says truly--
”'Tis an old maxim in the schools, That flattery's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.”
Another resident of whom I saw much at Bath was my mother's cousin, Miss Harriet Dumbleton (her mother was a Leycester)--an old maiden lady, who lived in the most primitive manner, really scarcely allowing herself enough to eat, because, like St. Elizabeth, though she had a very good fortune, she had given everything she had to the poor. She would even sell her furniture, books, and pictures, to give away the money they realised. But she was a most agreeable, witty, lively person, and it was always a great pleasure to go to her.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
”_Lyncombe, Sept. 12._--I have been here four days, but only to-day did Mr. R. _begin_ to attempt any lessons with me. He was very impatient, and I got so puzzled and confused, I could scarcely do anything at all; all my sums and everything else were wrong.
Warriner and Hebden were very kind, and did all they could to help me. I like Warriner very much. To-day I have done much better, and I really do try to do well, dearest Mamma.”
”_Sept. 14._--Yesterday morning, as there was again no work whatever to be done, I went off by myself to Charterhouse Hinton to see the Abbey. I was told it was not shown, but insisted upon going up to the house, where I rang the bell, and was allowed to look at the ruin in the garden. There I found an old gentleman, to whom I told who I was, where I was, and all about myself, and he told me in return that he had been at school with Uncle Jule and knew the Bath aunts, and not only showed me the best place to sketch the Abbey from, but gave me a lesson in perspective. Then he took me into the house and told me all the stories of the pictures there.
”Mr. Landor has been here, and, thinking to do me honour, called upon the R.'s. Whilst Pomero danced about, he told numbers of stories, beginning at once about the Dukes of Brandenburg and Orleans, and in defence of the Danes. 'Hare may say what he likes, but that King of Prussia is a regular old scoundrel.'
”Whenever we are _supposed_ to do any work, Mr. R. sits at the small table in the dining-room while we are at the large one; but no one takes any notice of him, and all talk slang and laugh as if he was out of the room; and if Harris gets bored with his supposed work, he rings for a plate and gla.s.s of water and paints.”
”_Sept. 22._--You need not grudge my long walks and being away from the others, for I should not be with them if at home, as Hebden goes to play on the Abbey organ, and the rest have their own occupations. To-day I went over hill and dale to Wellow, where there is a n.o.ble old church, and a Holy Well of St. Julian, at which a white lady used to appear on St. Julian's Eve, whenever any misfortune was about to happen to the family of Hungerford, the former possessors of the soil. As I was drawing the village, a farmer came riding by, and, after looking at my sketch, went back with me to show me his house, once a manor of the Hungerfords, with a splendid old carved chimney-piece.
”These are very long dreary half-years. At Harrow I used to rejoice that I should never more have to endure those horrible long private-school half-years, yet here they are again. Oh! what would I not give to be back with you, and able to take care of you when you are poorly!”
”_Oct. 9._--Yesterday, as there were no lessons whatever again, I made a great expedition to Farley Castle, but was very miserable all the way in thinking that I had not been better to you all the summer, dearest, dearest Mamma. I used to think, when I knew that I should be at home such a long time, what a comfort I should be to you, and that you would see how good I was grown; but instead of that, how bad I was all the time! Oh! if I had only a little of it over again! Well, it is a long walk, but at last I arrived at Farley, a pretty ruin on a height, with four towers at the angles and a chapel in the centre. I persuaded the woman to lock me in here, and was in ecstasies. The walls are covered with armour of the Hungerfords for centuries, and in a corner are Cromwell's boots and saddle. At the other end is the ancient high altar with a Bible of ages mouldering away beneath a carved crucifix and stained window, and the surrounding walls are emblazoned with Hungerford arms. Old banners wave from the ceiling, old furniture lines the aisle, and in St. Anne's Chantry are two splendid altar-tombs, of Lady Joanna Hungerford and her husband, and Sir Edward and his wife.
”How am I to get any money to pay for having my hair cut, and for some gloves, for mine are quite worn out?”
”_Oct. 20._--No work at all, so I have had a grand expedition to the beautiful old deserted house of the Longs at South Wraxhall, and have been writing ballads and stories about it ever since.”
”_Oct. 26._--No lessons. Mr. R. will not have them. So we have all been together to Farley, and went into the vault where the Hungerfords lie in leaden coffins, melted to fit their bodies and faces, their real features in deep relief. They look most extraordinary, especially two babies, whom, at first sight, you would take for a pair of shoes.... When I am alone with Harris, I like him very much. He writes poetry and draws beautifully, and can read French and Italian for his own amus.e.m.e.nt. I wish I could. Oh, I am so tired of having nothing to do!”
My dear Grandmother, Mrs. Leycester, had been failing all the autumn, and my mother was much with her at her house in New Street. Towards the end of October she seemed better, and my mother returned to Lime, but on the 3rd of November she was suddenly recalled. As so often happens in serious cases, for the only time in her life she missed the train, and when she arrived, after many hours' delay, she found that dear Grannie had died an hour before, wis.h.i.+ng and longing for her to the last. To my intense thankfulness, I was allowed to go to my mother in New Street, once more to behold the beloved aged features in the deep repose of death, and to see the familiar inanimate objects connected with my childhood, and the dear old servants. Grannie was buried in the vaults of St. Martin's Church, Trafalgar Square, her coffin being laid upon that of Uncle Hugh (Judge Leycester). The vaults were a very awful place--coffins piled upon one another up to the ceiling, and often in a very bad state of preservation,[52]--and the funeral was a very ghastly one, all the ladies being enveloped in huge black hooded mantles, which covered them from head to foot like pillars of c.r.a.pe. Grannie is one of the few persons whose memory is always evergreen to me, and for whom I have a most lasting affection. Everything connected with her has an interest. Many pieces of furniture and other memorials of my grandmother's house in New Street and, before that, of Stoke Rectory, have been cherished by us at Hurstmonceaux and Holmhurst, and others it has always been a pleasure to see again when I have visited my Penrhyn cousins at Sheen--objects of still life which long survive those to whom they were once important.
In the winter of 1848-49 I saw at St. Leonards the venerable Queen Marie Am?lie, and am always glad to have seen that n.o.ble and long-suffering lady, the niece of Marie Antoinette.
During the autumn at Lyncombe I was almost constantly ill, and very often ill in the winter at home, which the Marcus Hares all spent at Lime. It was a miserable trial to me that, in her anxiety lest I should miss an hour of a school where I was taught nothing, my mother sent me back a week too early--and I was for that time alone in the prison of my abomination, in unutterable dreariness, with nothing in the world to do.
This term, a most disagreeable vulgar boy called W---- was added to the establishment at Lyncombe, who was my detested companion for the next two years; and from this time in every way life at Lyncombe became indescribably wretched--chiefly from the utter waste of time--and, as I constantly wrote to my mother, I was always wis.h.i.+ng that I were dead. My only consolation, and that a most dismal and solitary one, was in the long excursions which I made; but I look back upon these as times of acute suffering from poverty and _hunger_, as I never had any allowance, and was always sent back to my tutor's with only five s.h.i.+llings in my pocket. Thus, though I walked sometimes twenty-four miles in a day, and was out for eight or ten hours, I never had a penny with which to buy even a bit of bread, and many a time sank down by the wayside from the faintness of sheer starvation, often most gratefully accepting some of their food from the common working people I met. If I went out with my companions, the utmost mortification was added to the actual suffering of hunger, because, when they went into the village inns to have a good well-earned luncheon, I was always left starving outside, as I never had the means of paying for any food. I believe my companions were very sorry for me, but they never allowed their pity to be any expense to them, and then ”E meglio essere odiato che compat.i.to” is an Italian proverb which means a great deal, especially to a boy. After a time, too, the food at Lyncombe itself became extremely stinted and of the very worst quality--a suet dumpling filled with coa.r.s.e odds and ends of meat being our dinner on at least five days out of the seven, which of course was very bad for an extremely delicate rapidly-growing youth--and, if I was ill from want of food, which was frequently the case, I was given nothing but rice.
What indescribably miserable years those were! I still feel, in pa.s.sing Bath by railway, sick at heart from the recollection, and I long in this volume to hurry over a portion of life so filled with wretched recollections, and which had scarcely a redeeming feature, except Mr.
Landor's constant kindness and friends.h.i.+p. It was also a terrible disappointment that my mother never would consent to my going for a few days to see ”Italima” and my brothers, who were then living at Torquay, and who vainly begged for it. My endless letters to my mother (for I wrote several sheets daily) are so crushed and disconsolate that I find little to select.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
”_Easter Sunday, 1849._--Yesterday Mr. Landor asked me to dine with him. First we went out to order the dinner, accompanied by Pomero in high spirits. As we went through the streets, he held forth upon their beauties, especially those of the Circus, to which he declares that nothing in Rome or in the world was ever equal. We stopped first at the fishmonger's, where, after much bargaining, some turbot was procured; then, at the vegetable shop, we bought broccoli, potatoes, and oranges; then some veal to roast; and finally a currant-tart and biscuits. Mr. Landor generally orders his own little dinners, but almost all this was for me, as he will dine himself on a little fish. He has actually got a new hat, he says because all the ladies declared they would never walk with him again unless he had one, and he has a hideous pair of new brown trousers. Pomero was put out of the room for jumping on them, but when he was heard crying outside the door, Mr. Landor declared he could not let his dear child be unhappy, and was obliged to let it in; upon which the creature was so delighted, that it instantly jumped on the top of its master's head, where it sate demurely, looking out of the window.
”Harris has just written an account of my home life which he says he believes to be exact, _i.e._, that I live with two maiden aunts, 'Gidman and Lear'--that they have a dog called 'Paul against the Gentiles,' who runs after them, carrying m.u.f.fins and apples to the poor and dest.i.tute inhabitants of the parish of Chalk-c.u.m-Chilblains--that his kennel is inscribed with texts of Scripture, and when a heretic is near he can smell him five miles off--that his food consists of tracts, and that he drinks a dilution of hymn-books and camphor-ice.”
In my summer holidays of 1849 my mother took me for the second time to Alton. It was very hot weather, and we lived entirely amongst the affectionate primitive cottagers, going afterwards to stay with Lady Gore at Wilcot House--an old haunted house, with a tower where a tailor (I forget how he got there) committed suicide. With Mrs. Pile we drove through the open Wilts.h.i.+re country to her farmhouse home of Tufton, where we spent several days very pleasantly, in a quiet place on the glistening little river Teste, close to Hurstborne Park. On the day of our leaving Tufton we visited Winchester, and as we were going thence to Portsmouth by rail, we had an adventure which might have ended seriously.
The train was already in motion, and my mother and I were alone in the carriage, when three men came running along the platform and attempted to enter it. Only one succeeded, for before the others could follow him, the train had left the platform. In a minute we saw that the man who was alone in the carriage with us was a maniac, and that those left behind were his keepers. He uttered a shrill hoot and glared at us.
Fortunately, as the door banged to, the ta.s.sel of the window was thrown up, and this attracted him, and he yelled with laughter. We sat motionless at the other side of the carriage opposite each other. He seized the ta.s.sel and kept throwing it up and down, hooting and roaring with laughter. Once or twice we fancied he was about to pounce upon us, but then the ta.s.sel attracted him again. After about eight minutes the train stopped. His keepers had succeeded in getting upon the guard's box as the train left the station, and hearing his shouts, stopped the train, and he was removed by force.