Part 26 (1/2)
I was enchanted with Mrs. Grote, whom De Tocqueville p.r.o.nounced ”the cleverest woman of his acquaintance,” though her exterior--with a short waist, brown mantle of stamped velvet, and huge bonnet, full of fullblown red roses--was certainly not captivating. Sydney Smith always called her ”Grota,” and said she was the origin of the word grotesque.
Mrs. Grote was celebrated for having never felt shy. She had a pa.s.sion for discordant colours, and had her petticoats always arranged to display her feet and ankles, of which she was excessively proud. At her own home of Burnham she would drive out with a man's hat and a coachman's cloak of many capes. She had an invalid friend in that neighbourhood, who had been very seriously ill, and was still intensely weak. When Mrs. Grote proposed coming to take her for a drive, she was pleased, but was horrified when she saw Mrs. Grote arrive in a very high dogcart, herself driving it. With great pain and labour she climbed up beside Mrs. Grote, and they set off. For some time she was too exhausted to speak, then she said something almost in a whisper. ”Good G.o.d! don't speak so loud,” said Mrs. Grote, ”or you'll frighten the horse: if he runs away, G.o.d only knows when he'll stop.”
On the occasion of this visit at Oxford, Mrs. Grote sat with one leg over the other, both high in the air, and talked for two hours, turning with equal facility to Saffi on Italian Literature, Max M?ller on Epic Poetry, and Arthur on Ecclesiastical History, and then plunged into a discourse on the best manure for turnips and the best way of forcing Cotswold mutton, with an interlude first upon the ”harmony of shadow”
in watercolour drawing, and then upon rat-hunts at Jemmy Shawe's--a low public-house in Westminster. Upon all these subjects she was equally vigorous, and gave all her decisions with the manner and tone of one laying down the laws of Athens. She admired Arthur excessively, but was a capital friend for him, because she was not afraid of laughing--as all his own family were--at his morbid pa.s.sion for impossible a.n.a.logies. In his second lecture Arthur made a capital allusion to Mr. Grote, while his eyes were fixed upon the spouse of the historian, and when she heard it, she thumped with both fists upon her knees, and exclaimed loudly, ”Good G.o.d! how good!” I did not often meet Mrs. Grote in after life, but when I did, was always on very cordial terms with her. She was, to the last, one of the most original women in England, shrewd, generous, and excessively vain. I remember hearing that when she published her Life of her husband, Mr. Murray was obliged to insist upon her suppressing one sentence, indescribably comic to those who were familiar with her uncouth aspect. It was--”When George Grote and I were young, we were equally distinguished by the beauty of our persons and the vivacity of our conversation!” Her own true vocation she always declared was that of an opera-dancer.
Arthur Stanley made his home with me during this visit to Oxford, but one day I dined with him at Oriel, where we had ”Herodotus pudding”--a dish peculiar to that college.
JOURNAL.
”_Lime, Easter Sunday, April 12, 1857._--I have been spending a happy fortnight at home. The burst of spring has been beautiful--such a golden carpet of primroses on the bank, interspersed with tufts of still more golden daffodils, hazels putting forth their fresh green, and birds singing. My sweet mother is more than usually patient under the trial of failure of sight--glad to be read to for hours, but contented to be left alone, only saying sometimes--'Now, darling, come and talk to me a little.' On going to church this morning, we found that poor Margaret Coleman, the carpenter's wife, had, as always on this day, covered Uncle Julius's grave with flowers. He is wonderfully missed by the people, though they seldom saw him except in church; for, as Mrs. Jasper Harmer said to me the other day, 'We didn't often see him, but then we knew he was always _studying_ us--now wasn't he?'”
A subject of intense interest after my return to Oxford was hearing Thackeray deliver his lectures on the Georges. That which spoke of the blindness of George III., with his glorious intonation, was indescribably pathetic. It was a great delight to have George Sheffield back and to resume our excursions, one of which was to see the May Cross of Charlton-on-Ottmoor, on which I published a very feeble story in a magazine; and another to Abingdon, where we had luncheon with the Head-master of the Grammar School, who, as soon as it was over, apologised for leaving us because he had got ”to wallop so many boys.”
All our visits to Abingdon ended in visits to the extraordinary old brothers Smith, cobblers, who always sat cross-legged on a counter, and always lived upon raw meat. We had heard of their possession of an extraordinary old house which no one had entered, and we used to try to persuade them to take us there; but when we asked one he said, ”I would, but my brother Tom is so eccentric, it would be as much as my life is worth--I really couldn't;” and when we asked the other he said, ”I would, but you've no idea what an extraordinary man my brother John is; he would never consent.” However, one day we captured both the old men together and over-persuaded them (no one ever could resist George), and we went to the old house, a dismal tumble-down building, with shuttered windows, outside the town. Inside it was a place of past ages--old chairs and cupboards of the sixteenth century, old tapestries, and old china, but all deep, deep in dust and dirt, which was never cleaned away. It was like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty after the hundred years' sleep. I have several pieces of china out of that old house now--”Gris de Flandres ware.”
In June I made a little tour, partly of visits, and from Mrs. Vaughan's house at Leicester had an enchanting expedition to Bradgate, the ruined home of Lady Jane Grey, in a glen full of oaks and beeches of immense age.
In my final (History and Law) Schools I had pa.s.sed with great ease, and had for some time been residing at Oxford as a Bachelor, having taken my degree. But as one friend after another departed, the interest of Oxford had faded. I left it on the 13th of June 1857, and without regret.
VIII
FOREIGN LIFE
”Under the arch of Life, where love and death, Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe, I drew it in as simply as my breath.”--ROSSETTI.
”A good mental condition includes just as much culture as is necessary to the development of the faculties, but not any burden of erudition heavy enough to diminish (as erudition so often does) the prompt.i.tude or elasticity of the mind.”--HAMERTON, _French and English_.
”Who thinks the story is all told at twenty? Let them live on and try.”--_Hitherto._
In June 1857 we left Lime for a long residence abroad. My mother's doctors had declared that being thoroughly imbued with heat in a warm climate was the only way in which her health could be permanently benefited. It was a journey so long prepared for by historical studies, that I imagine few people have gone to Italy with a more thorough knowledge of what they would find there than we possessed.
We took our two old servants, Lea and John (Gidman), abroad with us, and Charlotte Leycester accompanied us to Lucerne, where the family was established for the hot summer months at the Pension Faller, which stands at the end of a long green terrace behind the cathedral cloisters, with a glorious view of Mont Pilate and all the range of mountains on the other side of the lake. George Sheffield came out to Lucerne to accompany me thence to Austria; but as he was very young at the time, and his college examinations were not over, we had to gain his parents' consent to this project by consenting to his having a tutor, and chose for this purpose our common acquaintance Robinson Duckworth, afterwards tutor to Prince Leopold. The arrangement did not answer, though it must be confessed that we treated Duckworth very ill, and were always playing him tricks. One night at Linz, for instance, we were greatly annoyed by finding he would have to sleep in our room, which was a very large one. He went out to listen to the band in the evening, and we spent the time of his absence in drawing the third bed into the middle of the room, and arranging it like a kind of catafalque, with lighted candles at the four corners. We then went to bed ourselves and pretended to be deep in slumber. When Duckworth came in, though two people could just manage to move the heavy bed to its pedestal, it was quite impossible for him alone to move it back again, and he was obliged to go to bed upon it--and most absurd he looked in the morning. I do not think he ever quite forgave us for this trick.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
”_Constance, July 24._--The Falls of Schaffhausen, with the das.h.i.+ng and roaring emerald water, were quite glorious. We came here from thence by steamer--the entrance to Constance very lovely, and the distant Alps lighted with the most delicate pink hues of sunset.
The inn is close to the lake-pier and to the old Council-house. We have walked to the field at Bruhl where Huss was burnt, and since then Duckworth has been serenading the nuns of a Franciscan convent under their windows with airs out of 'Don Giovanni.'”
”_July 26._--We were called at four, and my companions went out fis.h.i.+ng, and returned dragging an immense pike which they had caught. Meanwhile I had seen the Minster and drawn the Kauf-haus, and was ready to leave with them at nine. We had a delicious journey across the still lake, Sheffield and I sitting quite down in the bow of the boat, where we had nothing before us but the soft blue lake and distant snows, and where we cut through air and water at the same time.”
”_July 29._--Yesterday we embarked at Donauw?rth on the Danube steamer--crowded, filthy, and ceaselessly vibrating--the river the colour of pea-soup, with sandbanks on which we stuck every five minutes. There was no relief to the hideous monotony of the nine hours' voyage, the blackened swamps only changing into barren sandhills, on which a few ragged hops were vainly struggling for existence. But to-day in grand old Ratisbon has made up for yesterday's sufferings. Sheffield and I had great fun in making an expedition to the palace of the Prince of Thurm and Taxis. Numbers of people were out, and we discovered it was to greet the two young princes, who were to return that day from their travels: so we represented them, bowed to the right and left all through the street, and finally being set down at the palace, escaped into the garden and out the other way: what became of the real princes we have not heard. After all our audacity and impertinence in pus.h.i.+ng through the Prince's courtyard and intruding upon his garden, we were rather touched by coming upon a placard inscribed--'The possessor of this garden, who has nothing nearer his heart than the promotion of universal pleasure, bids you--_welcome!_'”
”_August 1._--In early morning we were on board the Danube steamer.
Immediately after, three very common-looking men came on board by a boat, and descended at once to the cabin. Soon a neighbour whispered that one of them was the Archduke Albrecht, Governor of Hungary,--and behold, in a few minutes the three strangers emerged, dressed in gorgeous uniforms and glittering with orders.... All along the sh.o.r.e were crowds of bowing and curtseying people. At the hotel at Linz the Archd.u.c.h.ess and her two daughters were waiting for the Archduke on the balcony of the inn; and their presence brought a splendid band under the window in the evening. This morning the whole family came on board, amid guns firing and crowds of people, to whom we thought the Archd.u.c.h.ess would have bowed her head off. The presence of royalties gave us a better steamer, and before reaching Vienna the scenery of the Danube improved, especially at the rocks and castle of D?rnstein, where Richard C?ur-de-Lion was imprisoned.”
”_August 4._--Vienna would be delightful if it were not for the heat, but the gra.s.s is all burnt brown, and the trees almost black.