Part 31 (1/2)
Jelf told a great deal that was interesting about the King: how, as Prince George, he would insist upon playing at being his Eton f.a.g, brush his clothes, make his toast, &c.: that he was with the Prince at the time of the fatal accident which caused his blindness, when, in the garden at Kew, having just given half-a-crown to a beggar, he was whisking his purse round and round, when the ring at the end went into his eye. A fortnight's anxiety followed, and then came the great grief of his dear Prince one day saying to him when out shooting, 'Will you give me your arm, sir? I don't see quite so well as I ought to do. I think we had better go home.' Afterwards, instead of murmuring, the Prince only said, 'Those who will not obey must suffer: you told me not to whisk my things about in that way, and I disobeyed: it is right that I should suffer for it.'
”He gave many beautiful pictures of the King's after life: how the dear blind King, who bears no outward mark of his misfortune, always turns to the sun, as if seeking the light: of his marriage with his cousin of Saxe-Altenbourg, a true love-match: that he, the old tutor, was never forgotten, and that on his last birthday, when he least expected it, a royal telegram announced--'The King, the Queen, and the royal children of Hanover wish Dr. Jelf many happy new years.' The King always writes to Dr. and Mrs. Jelf on their wedding-day, which even their own family do not always remember, and on their silver-wedding he sent them a beautiful portrait of himself.
”Arthur, I imagine, rather likes having me here, though no outsiders would imagine so; but he finds me useful after a fas.h.i.+on, and is much annoyed if I allude to ever going into lodgings. He certainly does _exactly_ what he likes when I am there, and is quite as unreserved in his ways as if n.o.body whatever was present.
I am generally down first. He comes in pre-engrossed, and there is seldom any morning salutation. At breakfast I sit (he wills it so) at the end of the table, pour out his excessively weak tea, and put the heavy b.u.t.tered buns which he loves within his easy reach. When we are alone, I eat my own bread and b.u.t.ter in silence; but if undergraduates breakfast with us, it is my duty, if I know anything about it, so to turn the conversation that he may learn what their 'lines' are, and converse accordingly. Certainly the merry nonsense and childlike buoyancy which cause his breakfast parties to be so delightful, make the contrast of his silent irresponsiveness rather trying when we are alone--it is such a complete 'you are not worth talking to.' However, I have learnt to enjoy the first, and to take no notice of the other; indeed, if I can do so quite effectually, it generally ends in his becoming pleasanter. In amiable moments he will sometimes glance at my MSS., and give them a sanction like that of Cardinal Richelieu--'Accepi, legi, probavi.' After breakfast, he often has something for me to do for him, great plans, maps, or drawings for his lectures, on huge sheets of paper, which take a good deal of time, but which he never notices except when the moment comes for using them. All morning he stands at his desk by the study window (where I see him sometimes from the garden, which he expects me to look after), and he writes sheet after sheet, which he sometimes tears up and flings to rejoin the letters of the morning, which cover the carpet in all directions.[162] It would never do for him to marry, a wife would be so annoyed at his hopelessly untidy ways; at his tearing every new book to pieces, for instance, because he is too impatient to cut it open (though I now do a good deal in this way). Meantime, as Goethe says, 'it is the errors of men that make them amiable,' and I believe he is all the better loved for his peculiarities.
Towards the middle of the day, I sometimes have an indication that he has no one to walk with him, and would wish me to go, and he likes me to be in the way then, in case I am wanted, but I am never to expect to be talked to during the walk. If not required, I amuse myself, or go on with my own work, and indeed I seldom see Arthur till the evening, when, if any one dines for whom he thinks it worth while to come out of himself, he is very pleasant, and sometimes very entertaining.”
My mother spent a great part of the spring of 1859 at Clifton, whither I went to visit her, afterwards making a _tourette_ by myself to Salisbury, Southampton, Beaulieu, and Winchester.
”_Salisbury, April 12, 1859._--At 8-1/2 I was out on bleak Salisbury Plain, where, as the driver of my gig observed, 'it is a whole coat colder than in the valley.' What an immense desert it is! The day, so intensely grey, with great black clouds sweeping across the sky, was quite in character with the long lines of desolate country. At last we turned off the road over the turf, and in the distance rose the gigantic temple, with the sun s.h.i.+ning through the apertures in the stones. It was most majestic and impressive, not a creature in sight, except a quant.i.ty of rabbits scampering about, and a distant shepherd.”
The latter part of June 1859 I spent most happily in a pony-carriage tour in Buckinghams.h.i.+re and Berks.h.i.+re with my friend George Sheffield, who had just pa.s.sed his examination at the Foreign Office. It was on this occasion that, as we were driving under a park wall in Buckinghams.h.i.+re, I said to George, ”Inside that park is a very fine old house, and inside the house is a very fine old sundial. We will go to see the house, and we will take away the sundial;” and we _did_, though at that moment I did not even know the name of the people who lived there. The old house was the Vatche, which had belonged to my great-great-grandfather, Bishop Hare, who married its heiress in the reign of George II., and I had heard of the sundial from the churchwarden of Chalfont, with whom I had had some correspondence about my ancestor's tomb. It was made on the marriage of Bishop Hare with Miss Alston and bore his arms. The family of Allen, then living at the Vatche, allowed us to see the house, and my enthusiasm at sight of the sundial, which was lying neglected in a corner, so worked upon the feelings of Mrs. Allen, that she gave it me. It is now in the garden at Holmhurst.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
”_June 16._--I have enjoyed a visit to the Henry Leycesters at White Place, which lies low in the meadows, but has the charm of a little creek full of luxuriant water-plants, down which Henry Leycester punts his guests into the Thames opposite Clifden; and how picturesque are the old yew-trees and winding walks of that beautiful place. Henry Leycester, to look upon, is like one of the magnificent Vand.y.k.es in the Brignole Palace at Genoa. Little Mrs.
Leycester is a timid shrinking creature, who daily becomes terribly afraid of the domestic ghost (a lady carrying her head) as evening comes on. 'Imagine my feelings, Mr. Hare,' she says, 'my awful position as a wife and a mother, when my husband is away, and I am left alone in the long evenings with _her_.'”
”_June 17, Christ Church._--Last week the Dean, with much imprudence, punished two Christ Church men most severely for the same offence, but _one more than the other_. The next night the Deanery garden was broken into, the rose-trees torn up and flower-beds destroyed, the children's swing cut down, and the name of the injured man cut in large letters in the turf. It has created great indignation.
”My chief work, now I am at Oxford, is in the Bodleian, where I have much to look out and refer to, and where everything is made delightful by Mr. c.o.xe, the librarian,[163] who is not only the most accurate and learned person in the world, but also the most sympathetic, lively, and lovable. 'Never mind, dear boy,' he always says, the more trouble I give him. Anything more unlike the cut-and-dried type of Oxford Dons cannot be imagined. He has given me a plant (Linaria purpurea) from the tomb of Cicero.
”I should like to take my Master's degree, but the fees will be about ?20. I could then vote at the election. I should certainly vote against Gladstone, though Arthur says he should vote for him 'with both hands and both feet.' ... I have great satisfaction in being here now, in feeling that I can be useful to Arthur, in preparing drawings for his lectures, &c., also that he really prefers my presence to my absence.”
”_July 4._--I sate up till twelve last night preparing 'the bidding prayer' for Arthur (who was to preach the 'Act Sermon to-day at St.
Mary's)--immensely long, as the _whole_ of the founders and benefactors have to be mentioned. Imagine my horror when, after the service, the Vice-Chancellor came up to Arthur and demanded to know why _he_ had not been prayed for! I had actually omitted his name of all others! Arthur said it was all the fault of 'Silva.n.u.s.' In his sermon on Deborah, Arthur described how the long vacation, 'like the ancient river, the river Kishon,' was about to form a barrier, and might wash away all the past and supply a halting-place from which to begin a new life: that the bondage caused by concealment of faults or debts might now be broken: that now, when undergraduates were literally 'going to their father,'
they might apply the story of the Prodigal Son, and obtain that freedom which is truth.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: HODNET CHURCH.]
In July I paid a first visit to my cousins, the Heber Percys, at Hodnet Hall, in order to meet Countess Valsamachi (Mrs. Heber Percy's mother).[164] The old Hodnet Hall was a long low two-storied house, like an immense cottage, or rather like a beehive, from the abundant family life which overcrowded it. The low dining-room was full of curious pictures of the Vernons, whose heiress married one of the Hebers, but when the pictures had been sent up to London to be cleaned, the cleaner had cut all their legs off. At this time a debt of ?40,000 existed upon the Hodnet estate. Mr. Percy's father, the Bishop of Carlisle, had promised to pay it off when certain fees came in. At last the fees were paid, and the papers were in the house, only awaiting the signature of the Bishop. That day he fell down dead. When it was told to his children, they only said, ”It is the will of G.o.d; we must not complain.”
I had much conversation with Lady Valsamachi. Talking of religion, she spoke of an atheist who once grumbled at the dispensation of a gourd having such a slender stem, while an acorn was supported by an oak.
”When he had done speaking, the acorn fell upon his nose; had it been the gourd, his nose would have been no more!”
We walked to where Stoke had been, so tenderly connected with past days.
All was altered, except the Terne flowing through reedy meadows. It was less painful to me to see it than on my last visit, but cost me many pangs.
I joined my mother at Toft, where our dear cousin Charlotte Leycester was acting as mistress of the house, and gave us a cordial welcome to the old family home. Greatly did my mother enjoy being there, and the sight of familiar things and people. Especially was she welcomed by an old woman named Betty Strongitharm; I remember how this old woman said, ”When I am alone, I think, and think, and think, and the end of all my thinking is that Christ is all in all ... but I do not want to go to heaven alone; I want to take a many others along with me.”
JOURNAL.
”When we left Toft, we went to our cousins at Th.o.r.n.ycroft. At Th.o.r.n.ycroft was a labourer named Rathbone. One winter day, when his wife was in her confinement, she was in great want of something from Macclesfield, which her husband undertook to get for her when he went to his work in the town, but he said that he must take his little girl of ten years old with him, that she might bring it back to her mother. The woman entreated him not to take the child, as the snow was very deep, and she feared that she might not find her way home again. However, the father insisted, and set off, taking his little girl with him. The purchase was made and the child set off to return home with it, but she--never arrived.
”When Rathbone reached home in the evening, and found that his child had not appeared, he was in an agony of terror, and set off at once to search for her. He traced her to Monk's Heath. People had seen her there, and directed her back to Henbury, but she seemed to have lost her way again. Rathbone next traced her to a farmhouse at Peover, where the people had had the barbarity to turn her out at night and direct her back to Henbury. Then all trace of her was lost.