Part 34 (1/2)
_To_ MY MOTHER.
”_Christ Church, Dec. 6, 1859._-My whole visit here this time has been enjoyable. Arthur is always so very good and kind, so _knowing_ in what will give one pleasure: which I especially feel in his cordiality to all my friends when they come here. Then it is so interesting and delightful being perpetually examined by him in different parts of history, and charming to feel that I can in a small way be useful to him in looking out or copying things for his lectures, &c. Victor Williamson and Charlie Wood come in and out constantly.
”Mr. Richmond the artist is here. I quite long to be Arthur, going to sit to him: he is so perfectly delightful: no wonder his portraits are always smiling.”
In the winter of 1859-60 I made a much-appreciated acquaintance with Sir George Grey, author of ”Polynesian Mythology.”
JOURNAL.
”_Dec. 15, 1859._--At the Haringtons' I met Sir George and Lady Grey. I was very anxious to make acquaintance, but much afraid that I should not have an opportunity of doing so, as I was never introduced. As they were going away, I expressed regret at having missed them before, and he hoped that we should meet another time.
I suppose I looked very really sorry for not seeing more of him, for, after a consultation in the pa.s.sage, he came back, and asked if I would walk part of the way with him. I walked with him all the way to Windmill Hill, where he was staying: he walked home with me: I walked home with him; and he home with me for the third time, when I was truly sorry to take leave, so very interesting was he, and so easy to talk to. We began about Polynesian Mythology--then poetry--then Murray, who, he said, had just paid Dr. Livingstone ?10,000 as _his_ share of the profits on his book--then of Lord Dillon, who, he said, had led them the most jovial rollicking life when he went to Ditchley to look over MSS., so that he had done nothing.
”Then he talked of the Church in the Colonies. He said that High Churchism had penetrated to the Cape to the greatest extent, and that the two or three churches where it was carried out were thronged as fas.h.i.+onable: that one of the views preached was, that religion was a belief in whatever you fancied was for your good, so that if you fancied that, our Lord being one with G.o.d, it would be well for you to have a mediator between yourself and Him, you ought then to believe in that mediator, and to invoke your guardian angel as the mediator most natural. Another tenet was that prayer was only 'a tracter' to draw down the blessings of G.o.d--that, as there were three kinds of prayer, so there were three kinds of tracters--that individual prayer would draw down a blessing on the individual, family prayer on a family, but that public prayer, as proceeding from the mouth of a priest, could draw down a blessing on the whole state. Sir George had heard a sermon on 'It is needful for you that I go away from you,' &c., proving that it _was_ needful, because if not, Christ would have to have remained as an earthly king, have had to negotiate with other kings, meddle in affairs of state, &c.--also because he would have been made 'a lion' of--perhaps have become an object of pilgrimage, &c.
”Sir George said that the Wesleyan Methodists lived a holier, more spiritual life in the Colonies, but then it was because religion was there so easy to them; in London it would not be so; that London, the place in the world most unsuited to Christianity, lived on a great world of gambling-houses, brothels, &c., as if there were no G.o.d; no one seemed to care. He said what a grand thing it would be if, in one of the great public services in St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, the preacher were to shout out as his awful text--'Where art thou, Adam?'--and show how the Lord would look in vain for _His_ in most parts of London--where, _where_ had they hidden themselves?
”Sir George told me an anecdote of a dog in New Zealand--that two officers were walking by the sh.o.r.e, and that one of them said, 'You declare your dog will do everything. I'll bet you he does not fetch that if you tell him,' and he threw his walking-stick into a canoe lying out at some distance in the shallow water, where the natives wade up to their waists to get into them, and where they are secured by strong hempen cords. The dog, when told, instantly swam out, but, as the man who made the bet had foreseen, whenever he tried to scramble into the canoe to get the stick, it almost upset, and at length, after repeated struggles, he was obliged to swim to sh.o.r.e again and lie down to rest. Once rested, however, without a second bidding, he swam out again, and this time gnawed through the cord, pulled the canoe on sh.o.r.e, and then got the stick out, and brought it to his master.”[178]
I told Arthur Stanley much of this conversation with Sir George Grey.
Some time after, he was very anxious that I should go to hear Dr.
Vaughan preach in a great public service under the dome of St. Paul's. I went, and was startled by the text--”Where art thou, Adam?”
In January 1860 I paid a delightful visit to Sir John Shaw-Lefevre at Sutton Place, near Guildford, a beautiful old brick house with terra-cotta ornaments, which once belonged to Sir Francis Weston, Anne Boleyn's reputed lover. Besides the large pleasant family of the house, Lord Eversley and his daughter were there, and Sophia, daughter of Henry Lefevre, with Mr. Wickham, whom she soon afterwards married.
JOURNAL.
”_Sutton Place, Jan. 8._--Lord Eversley has been talking of Brams.h.i.+ll, the old home of Prince Henry, where Archbishop Abbott shot a keeper by accident, in consequence of which it became a question whether consecration rites received at his hands were valid. Lord Eversley did not believe that the oak in the park, from which the arrow glanced (with the same effect as in the case of Rufus), was the real tree, because it was _too_ old: oaks beyond a certain age, after the bark has ceased to be smooth, do not allow an arrow to glance and rebound.
”The Buxtons sent me a ticket for Lord Macaulay's funeral, but I would not leave Sutton to go. Sir John went, and described that, as often in the case of funerals and other sad ceremonies, people, by a rebound, became remarkably merry and amusing, and that they had occupied the time of waiting by telling a number of uncommonly good stories. The sight of Lady Holland[179] and her daughters amongst the mourners had reproduced the bon-mot of Mrs. Grote, who, when asked how this Lady Holland was to be distinguished from the original person of the name, said, 'Oh, this is New Holland, and her capital is Sydney.'
”Apropos of Macaulay, Sir John remarked how extraordinary it was in growing age to see a person pa.s.s away whose birth, education, public career, and death were all within your memory.
”He said how unreadable 'Roderick Random' and 'Tom Jones' were now.
A lady had asked to borrow 'Pamela' from his library, saying she well remembered the pleasure of it in her youth; but she returned it the next day, saying she was quite ashamed of having asked for anything so improper.
”Yesterday was Sunday, and I groped my way through the dark pa.s.sages to the evening service in the Catholic chapel, which has always been attached to the house. An old priest, seated on the steps of the altar, preached a kind of catechetical sermon upon Transubstantiation--'My flesh is meat _indeed_'--'and the poor Protestants have this in their Bibles, and yet they throw away the benefit of the _indeed_.' The sight was most picturesque--the dark old-fas.h.i.+oned roof, only seen by the light of the candles on the richly decorated altar, and the poor English peasants grouped upon the benches. It carried one back to the time before the Reformation. In his discourse, the old priest described his childhood, when he sat in the east wing of the house learning his catechism, and when there were only two Catholics in Guildford; and 'what would these two solitary ones say now if they had seen the crowd in St. Joseph's Chapel at Guildford this morning? Yes, what would old Jem Savin say if he could rise up and see us now, poor man?'”
_To_ MY MOTHER (after I had returned to my Handbook explorations).
”_Aldermaston Hall, Berks, Jan. 14, 1860._--I came here from Newbury. The weather was so horrible, and the prospect of a damp lonely Sunday in an inn so uninviting, that I thought over all possible and impossible houses in the neighbourhood, and finally decided upon Aldermaston as the best, and have taken it by storm.
”It was the dampest and dreariest of mornings as I came from the station, but this place looked beautiful in spite of it--a wild picturesque park, and a large house, full of colour inside, like a restored French ch?teau. Mrs. Higford Burr (who seems to live more in Italy than here) wears a sort of Greek dress with a girdle and a broad gold hem.... I was at once, as I rather expected, invited to stay _per l'amore d'Italia_, and my luggage sent for. This afternoon Mrs. Burr, who is a most tremendous walker, has taken me to Upton Court, the home of Arabella Fermor (Pope's Belinda), a charming old house with a ghost, which the farm-people described as 'coming a clinkerin upstairs right upon un loike.'”
”_Christ Church, Feb. 4._--I have had a terribly cold tour to Drayton-Beauchamp, Ashridge, Aylesbury, &c. The pleasantest feature was a warm welcome from Mrs. Barnard, wife of the great yeoman-farmer at Creslow Pastures, the royal feeding-grounds from the time of Elizabeth to Charles II., with a lovely and interesting old house overlooking Christ Low (the Christ's Meadow) and Heaven's Low (Heaven's Meadow). Thence I went to North Marston, where was the shrine of Sir John Shorne, a sainted rector, who preserved his congregation from sin by 'conjuring the devil into his boot.'
Buckinghams.h.i.+re is full of these quaint stories.
”Arthur has just been making great sensation by a splendid sermon at St. Mary's, given in his most animated manner, his energies gradually kindling till his whole being was on fire. It was on, 'Why stand ye here idle all the day long?--the first shall be last and the last first.' 'Why stand ye here idle, listless, in the quadrangle, in your own rooms, doing nothing; so that in the years to come you will never be able to look back and say, ”In such a year, in such a term, I learnt this or that--that idea, that book, that thought _then_ first struck me”? Perhaps this may be a voice to the winds, perhaps those to whom it would most apply are even now in their places of resort, standing idle: probably even those who are here would answer to my question, ”Because no man hath hired us.”'
”Then he described the powers, objects, and advantages of Oxford.