Part 35 (1/2)
I met my mother at Bournemouth to talk over plans and possibilities for the future, and we went on to Weymouth, where we remained some weeks. It was bitterly cold weather, but I always liked Weymouth, and the pleasant walks in Sandyfoot Bay, and excursions to Bow and Arrow Castle, Corfe Castle, Abbotsbury, and Lyme Regis. In April I was again at Beckett.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
”_Beckett, April 8, 1860._--Yesterday I went with Lady Barrington and Lady Somerton to Ashdowne (Lord Craven's). It is a most awfully desolate place, standing high up on the bare downs. Four avenues approach the house from the four sides. It was built by a Craven who was Lord Mayor of London, and who, flying from the great plague, rode fiercely on and on, till upon this bleak down he saw a desolate farmhouse, where he thought that the plague could not penetrate, and there he rested, and there he eventually built. The four avenues, and the windows on every side, were intended to let the plague out in one direction if it came in at the other. Inside the house are great stag's horns which Elizabeth of Bohemia brought with her from Germany, and portraits of her, Prince Rupert, Prince Maurice, and the four princesses her daughters, painted by one of them. The young Ladies Craven showed us the house amid shouts of laughter at their own ignorance about it, which certainly was most dense.
”We went on by roads, which were never meant for a carriage, to a point whence Lady Barrington and I walked across the down to 'Wayland Smith's Cave,' a very small cromlech, in which Wayland could hardly have stood upright when he used it for a forge.”
”_Hendred House, April 15._--It is a proof how necessary it is for the writer of a Handbook to see himself all that he writes about, that I found East Hendred, of which I had heard nothing, to be one of the most romantic villages I ever saw--groups of ancient gable-ended houses, black and white or black and red, with turreted chimneys--a ruined moss-grown chapel dedicated to 'Jesus of Bethlehem'--a fine old grey church in a glen--and a beautiful Catholic chapel attached to this quaint old house, which contains a great Holbein of Sir Thomas More and his family, his cup, a portrait of Cardinal Pole, and the staff upon which Bishop Fisher leant upon the scaffold!”
My next visit was to Dr. Hawtrey, the Provost of Eton, to whom I became much attached. Being in the house with him was a constant intellectual feast, he was so accomplished as well as learned. Beautiful and interesting books were produced to ill.u.s.trate all he said, and it would be hard to say how much Latin or Italian poetry he daily read or repeated to me. It was impossible not to be perfectly at home with him, he was so easy and natural. Of the two old sisters who had resided with him, and who were known by Eton boys as Elephantina and Rhinocerina, only one was still living, in a gentle and touching state of childishness, keeping up all her old-fas.h.i.+oned habits of courtesy and politeness; the mind now and then taking in an idea like a flash of light, and immediately losing it again. The Provost's attention to this old sister was quite beautiful, and her affection for him. When she was going to bed she would ”pack up” and carry off all the things upon the table--books, envelope-boxes, &c., which were soon sent downstairs again.
I went with the Provost to dine at New Lodge (Mr. Van de Weyer, the Belgian Minister's), and found there the Dean of St. Paul's and Mrs.
Milman, he most bright and animated, she ”icily bland and coldly amiable as ever.” I was quite delighted with the Van de Weyers, especially the second son Albert (who afterwards died young). M. Sylvain Van de Weyer, through life the trusted friend and representative of Leopold I. of Belgium, had the expensive hobby of books, collecting rare editions and the earliest printed cla.s.sics, a taste inherited from his father, who kept a circulating library at Louvain. When he showed us two shelves of books in his library he said, ”I have read all these whilst waiting for dinner. I am always down punctually, and my guests are always late. From my library I see them arrive, and never join them till a good many are come: thus I have got through all these.” Madame Van de Weyer was immensely fat. She had lately been with her husband to a concert at Windsor, and been much jostled, at which she was very indignant. ”Why, they take us for pages,” she said to her husband. ”No, my dear,” he replied; ”they take me for a page, but they take you for a volume.”
On the last occasion on which I saw the Provost Hawtrey before his death, he said to me that he knew I collected curious stories, and that there was one story, intimately connected with his own life, which he wished that I should write down from his lips, and read to him when I had written it, that he might see that it was perfectly correct.
Here is the story as he gave it:--
”In the time of my youth one of the cleverest and most agreeable women in Europe was Madame de Salis--the Countess de Salis--who had been in her youth a Miss Foster, daughter of the Irish Bishop of Kilmore. As a girl she had been most beautiful and the darling of her parents' hearts, but she married against their will with the Count de Salis. He was a Swiss Count, but he took her, not to Switzerland, but to Florence, where he hired a villa at Bellosguardo. There the life of Madame de Salis was a most miserable one: she had many children, but her husband, who cut her off from all communication with her friends, was exceedingly unkind to her. She was married to him for several years, and then she was mercifully released by his death. It was impossible for her to pretend to be sorry, and she did not pretend it: she hailed it as the greatest mercy that could have befallen her.[186]
”Madame de Salis went back to Ireland, where her parents, the old Bishop of Kilmore and Mrs. Foster, were still alive, and welcomed her with rapture. But she had left them a radiant, beautiful, animated girl; she returned to them a haggard, weird, worn woman, with that fixed look of anguish which only the most chronic suffering can leave. And what was worst was that her health had completely given way: she never slept, she never seemed able to rest, she had no repose day or night: she became seriously ill.
”All the best advice that could be procured was hers. There was a great consultation of doctors upon her case, and after it had taken place, the doctors came to the Bishop and said, 'The case of Madame de Salis is an extraordinary one; it is a most peculiar, but still a known form of hypochondria. She cannot rest because she always sees before her--not the horrible phantom which made her married life so miserable, but the room which was the scene of her suffering. And she never will rest; the image is, as it were, branded into her brain, and cannot be eradicated. There is only one remedy, and it is a very desperate one. It will probably kill her, she will probably sink under it, but it may have happy results.
However, it is the only chance of saving her. It is that she should see the real room again. She can never get rid of its image: it is engraven upon her brain for life. The only chance is for her to connect it with something else.' When Madame de Salis was told this, she said that her returning to Florence was impossible, absolutely impossible. 'At any rate,' she said, 'I could not go unless my younger sister, Miss Foster, might go with me; then possibly I might think of it.' But to this Dr. and Mrs. Foster would not consent. The happiness of their lives seemed to have been extinguished when their elder daughter married Count de Salis, and if their beautiful younger daughter went abroad, perhaps she also would marry a foreigner, and then what good would their lives do them? However, Madame de Salis grew daily worse; her life was evidently at stake, and at last her parents said, 'Well, if you will make us a solemn promise that you will never, under any circ.u.mstances whatever, consent to your sister's marrying a foreigner, she shall go with you;' and she went.
”Madame de Salis and Miss Foster went to Florence. They rented the villa at Bellosguardo which had been the scene of the terrible tragedy of Madame de Salis's married life. As they entered the fatal room, Madame de Salis fell down insensible upon the threshold. When she came to herself, she pa.s.sed from one terrible convulsion into another: she had a brain fever: she struggled for weeks between life and death. But nature is strong, and when she did rally, the opinion of the Irish doctors was justified. Instead of the terrible companion of her former life and the constant dread in which she lived, she had the companions.h.i.+p of her beautiful, gentle, affectionate sister, who watched over her with unspeakable tenderness, who antic.i.p.ated her every wish.... The room was a.s.sociated with something else! Gradually, very gradually, Madame de Salis dawned back into active life. She began to feel her former interest in art; in time she was able to go and paint in the galleries, and in time, when her recovery became known, many of those who had never dared to show their sympathy with her during her earlier sojourn at Florence, but who had pitied her intensely, hastened to visit her; and gradually, as with returning health her brilliant conversational powers came back, and her extraordinary gift of repartee was restored, her salon became the most _recherch?_ and the most attractive in Florence.
”Chief of all its attractions was the lovely Miss Foster. When, however, Madame de Salis saw that any one especially was paying her sister attentions, she took an opportunity of alienating them, or, if there seemed to be anything really serious, she expressed to the individual her regret that she was unable to receive him any more.
But at last there was an occasion on which Madame de Salis felt that more stringent action was called for. When a young Count Mastai, in the Guardia n.o.bile, not only felt, but showed the most unbounded devotion to Miss Foster, Madame de Salis did more than express to him her regret that untoward family circ.u.mstances prevented her having the pleasure of seeing him again; she let her villa at Bellosguardo, she packed up her things, and she took her sister with her to Rome.
”The reputation of the two sisters had preceded them, and when it became known that the Madame de Salis who had had so romantic a history was come to Rome with her beautiful younger sister, all that was most intellectual and all that was most remarkable in the old Papal capital gathered around them. But now the scene had changed. It was no longer Madame de Salis who was the invalid. Miss Foster grew pale and languid and unable to occupy herself, and gradually she became so pale and so changed, and the cause of it was so evident, that Madame de Salis felt that she must choose between two alternatives: she must either break her word to her parents and save the life of her sister, or she must keep her promise to her parents and see her sister sink into the grave.
”And she decided on the former course. She wrote two letters--one letter to Count Mastai, telling him that he might come back and see her sister again, and the other letter to the Bishop of Kilmore and Mrs. Foster. She said to her parents that she knew they measured a foreign marriage by her own dreadful life with Count de Salis: that in Count Mastai they must imagine the exact opposite of Count de Salis: that he was honourable, n.o.ble, chivalrous, generous, disinterested--in fact, that had she to seek through the whole world the person to whom with the greatest confidence she could commit her sister's happiness, she could not do otherwise than choose Count Mastai. This letter she sent too late to have the refusal which she knew it would bring. Count Mastai flew to the feet of the beautiful Miss Foster, and was accepted at once. The wedding-day was fixed, the wedding-dress was made, the wedding-feast was prepared.[187]
”When the day came, all the friends of Madame de Salis collected in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, where the marriage was to take place. According to the custom of brides in Rome, Miss Foster, accompanied by Madame de Salis, came first to the altar and waited for the bridegroom. He never came--he never came at all--he never, never, never was heard of again. And that is the end of the first part of the story.
”The second part of the story is quite different. It was the time of the great famine and pestilence in the Basilicata. The misery was most intense, hundreds perished daily everywhere. Every one who could get away did; those who could went to Switzerland, others went to Sicily; bishops abandoned their dioceses, priests abandoned their flocks: there was a general stampede.
”But in that terrible time, as in all seasons of great national suffering, there were instances of extraordinary devotion and heroism. There was one young bishop of a Neapolitan diocese, who was absent in Switzerland at the time, who came back like San Carlo Borromeo over the Alps, who sold his library for the poor, who sold his carriages, who sold at last even his episcopal ring, who walked day and night in the hospitals, and by whose personal devotion many lives were saved, while thousands were cheered and encouraged by his example. The consequence was, that when the famine and the pestilence in the Basilicata pa.s.sed away, at an early age--at a much earlier age than is usual--that young bishop was made a cardinal.
”The third part of the story is again quite different. It was when Pope Gregory XVI. lay upon his deathbed. There was the greatest possible difficulty about who should be his successor; one member of the Sacred College was too old, another was too young, another was too much bound up with the princely families: there seemed to be no one. The person who was of most influence at that time was Count Rossi, the French Amba.s.sador, and he was very anxious for a liberal Pope, for some one who would carry out his own liberal views. One day as he was walking pensively, filled with anxieties, down the Corso, there pa.s.sed by in a carriage that young bishop of the Basilicata, once Bishop of Imola, now Archbishop of Spoleto, who had been so distinguished during the famine. And when Count Rossi saw him, he felt _that_ is the man--_that_ is the man who would further my ideas and carry out my views. And by the wonderful influence of Count Rossi on separate individuals, and by his extraordinary powers of combination in bringing the mind of one person to bear upon another, that person was chosen Pope. And on the day on which he mounted the Papal throne as Pius IX., he revealed that he was the person who, as Count Mastai Ferretti in the Guardia n.o.bile, had been engaged to be married to the beautiful Miss Foster. He had belonged to a Jesuit family: he had been summoned on a Jesuit mission from which no one can shrink: his value to the Church had been estimated: he was sent off to the West Indies: letters were intercepted, and he was induced to believe that Miss Foster had ceased to care about him: he was persuaded to take Orders; he became bishop in the Basilicata, Bishop of Imola, Archbishop of Spoleto, Pope of Rome--and Miss Foster lived to know it.
”'Now,' said Dr. Hawtrey, 'if you ever tell that story, recollect to say that it is no mere story I have heard; it is part of my own life. Madame de Salis and her sister were my relations, and I was most intimate with them. I was there when Madame de Salis made her miserable marriage; I was there when she came back so terribly changed. I shared in the consultations as to whether her sister should go with her: I was with Dr. and Mrs. Foster when they received the letter about Count Mastai: I was there when they heard of the disappearance of the mysterious bridegroom: and I have lived to think of him as Pope.'”
I am surprised to find no letters recording the long and happy visit which I made during the latter part of April 1860 to Chequers, the beautiful old house of Lady Frankland Russell, to whom I had been introduced by Lady Sheffield, who was her cousin. With this most interesting old lady I made great friends and received the greatest kindness from her. Owing to the marriage of Sir John Russell of Chequers with Mrs. Rich, youngest daughter of Cromwell, the house was perfectly full of Cromwell relics, and in its grand old gallery hung portraits of the Protector, his mother, brother, his four daughters, two sons-in-law, secretary, &c. Here, also, enclosed in a cabinet, was a very awful mask taken from Cromwell's face after death, which Lady Frankland used to uncover with great solemnity. In the garden was a wonderful wych elm, said to have been planted by King Stephen, and behind rose the Chiltern Hills, the most beautiful point of which--Velvet Lawn, covered with indigenous box--was in the immediate neighbourhood.
All through the summer of 1860 we were occupied in considering our new home. We sent for all the London agents' lists of places to be let or sold south of the Humber, and many of these, in Kent, Surrey, Berks, Bucks, Oxfords.h.i.+re, Hamps.h.i.+re, Hertfords.h.i.+re, I went to see, either with or without my mother. If she were not with me, I wrote to her long accounts, always concluding with saying, ”They are not like Holmhurst, not in the least like Holmhurst,”--Holmhurst being the ideal place in the unwritten novels which my mother and I had been accustomed to narrate to each other in our long journeys abroad. My being difficult to satisfy gave the aunts an unusual handle for abuse, and plentifully did they bestow it upon me. ”What can it signify whether you have a view or not? No one but you would care to waste your time in always looking out of the window,” &c., &c. Especially was indignation roused by my refusing to consider an old house which the Stanleys were determined upon our taking in Oxfords.h.i.+re,[188] and which was to be had very cheap because no servants could be persuaded to stay there on account of a frightful apparition which was supposed to haunt it. At last we almost despaired of finding any place to suit us, and determined to take the farm of Belhurst at Hurstmonceaux to put our furniture in, and to go abroad till quite a different set of places were to be disposed of. Just then a neighbour sent us a Hastings paper with a very humble advertis.e.m.e.nt marked, ”At Ore, a house, with thirty-six acres of land, to be let or sold.” ”What a horrible place this must be,” I said, ”for which they cannot find one word of description;” for the very ugliest places we had seen had often been described in the advertis.e.m.e.nts as ”picturesque manorial residences,” ”beautiful villas with hanging woods,” &c. But my mother rightly thought that the very simple description was perhaps in itself a reason why we should see it, and after breakfast we set off in the little carriage. It was a drive of about fourteen miles. Long before we could arrive at Ore, we pa.s.sed under a grey wall overhung by trees. ”It looks almost as if there might be a Holmhurst inside that wall,” I said. Then we reached a gate between two clipped yew-trees, and a board announced, ”This house is to be let or sold.” We drove in. It was a lovely day. An arched gateway was open towards the garden, showing a terrace, vases of scarlet geraniums, and a background of blue sea. My mother and I clasped each other's hands and simultaneously exclaimed--”This is Holmhurst!”