Part 45 (2/2)

” ... I have seen poor Mr. Landor several times. He has a small lodging in the Via della Chiesa, where he 'sits out the grey remainder of his evening,' as Coleridge would describe it. He is terribly altered, has lost the use of his hearing and almost of his speech, and cannot move from his chair to his bed. I think he had a very indistinct recollection who I was, but he remembered the family, and liked to say over the old names--'Francis, Augustus, Julius, I miei tre imperatori. I have never known any family I loved so much as yours. I loved Francis most, then Julius, then Augustus, but I loved them all. Francis was the dearest friend I ever had.' He also spoke of the Buller catastrophe. 'It was a great, great grief to me.' I did not tell him what has happened lately; it was no use, he can live so short a time.[239]

”When he last left the Villa Landore, it was because Mrs. Landor turned him out by main force. It was a burning day, a torrid summer sun. He walked on dazed down the dusty road, the sun beating on his head. His life probably was saved by his meeting Mr. Browning, who took him home. After some time, Browning asked to take him to the Storys' villa at Siena, and he stayed with them a long time. Mrs.

Story says that nothing ever more completely realised King Lear than his appearance when he arrived, with his long flowing white locks and his wild far-away expression. But after a day of rest he seemed to revive. He would get up very early and sit for hours at a little table in the great hall of the villa writing verses--often Latin verses.

”One day he wrote, and thundered out, an epigram on his wife:--

'From the first Paradise an angel once drove Adam; From mine a fiend expelled me: Thank you, madam.'

”Then he would tell the Storys interesting things out of his long-ago, describing Count D'Orsay and Lady Blessington, with Disraeli sitting silently watching their conversation, as if it were a display of fireworks. He was always courteous and kind--a polished gentleman of the old school. At last Browning arranged for him to go to a lodging of his own, but he went to spend their little girl's birthday with the Storys. He walked to their villa along the dusty road in his old coat, but when he came in, he unb.u.t.toned it, and with one of his old volleys of laughter showed a flowered waistcoat, very grand, which 'D'Orsay and he had ordered together,' and which he had put on in honour of the occasion.

”After he was living in Florence, Mrs. Browning told him one day that she had just got Lord Lytton's new book 'Lucile.'--'Oh, G.o.d bless my soul!' he said, 'do lend it to me.' In an hour he sent it back. 'Who could ever read a poem which began with _But_?' However, he was afterwards persuaded to read it, and shouted, as he generally did over what pleased him, 'Why, G.o.d bless my soul, it's the finest thing I ever read in my life.'

”Mrs. Browning did not think he was properly looked after at Florence, and sent her excellent maid, Wilson, to care for him. But it did not answer. Wilson cooked him a most excellent little dinner, and when he saw it on the table, he threw it all out of the window; it was too English, he said.”

In returning north from Italy, we made an excursion to Courmayeur, driving in a tiny carriage from Ivrea along the lovely Val d'Aosta, and lingering to sketch at all the beautiful points. In France we had an especially happy day at Tonnerre, a thoroughly charming old town, where the people were employed in gathering the delicious lime-flowers which lined the boulevards, for drying to make tisanes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COURMAYEUR.[240]]

There was a subject of painful interest to us during this summer, which it is difficult to explain in a few words. My sister's letter mentions how, when Italima was dying, there was one thing which she tried over and over again to say to the Dowager Lady Lothian, who was with her, and which Lady Lothian and the other bystanders vainly endeavoured to understand. It began with ”Esmeralda” and ended with ”her,” but the intermediate words were lost. We naturally explained it to mean ”Esmeralda will be very desolate when I am gone; you will look after her.”

After Italima's death, Esmeralda had moved from Bryanston Street to a house in Duke Street, Manchester Square, which was kept by Mrs. Thorpe, the faithful and devoted maid of Italima's old friend Mrs. Chambers.

Here my sister had every comfort, and might have had rest, but one day her brother William came to visit her, and broke a blood-vessel while he was in the house. His wife was sent for, and for several weeks he hovered between life and death; indeed, he never really recovered from this attack, though he was able to be moved in a month and lived for more than three years. The fatigue of her brother's illness entirely prostrated Esmeralda, who was already terribly shaken in health by the fatigue of the strange watchings, enjoined by Catholicism, which followed her mother's death.

It was about August that I received a letter from my Aunt Eleanor Paul begging me to come to London immediately, for something most extraordinary and trying had happened. When I went, I found my sister looking terribly ill, and my aunt greatly agitated. My aunt said that two days before Mrs. Beckwith had been to visit my sister; that, supposing she was come to talk of Catholic matters, she had not paid any especial attention to what they were saying, and, owing to her deafness, she consequently heard nothing. That she was suddenly startled by a scream from my sister, and looking up, saw her standing greatly excited, and Mrs. Beckwith trying to soothe her; that she still supposed it was some Catholic news which had agitated my sister, and that consequently she made no inquiries.

The next day, Esmeralda went out to drive with Mrs. Beckwith, and when she came back she looked dreadfully hara.s.sed and altered, so much so that at last my aunt said, ”Now, Esmeralda, I am quite sure something has happened. I stand in the place of a mother to you now, and I insist upon knowing what it is.”

Then my sister said that Mrs. Beckwith had startled her the day before by saying that, as she had been walking down Brook Street, Madame de Trafford had suddenly appeared before her, and, looking back upon all the events connected with the past appearances of Madame de Trafford, the news was naturally a shock to her. After driving with Mrs. Beckwith, she had returned with her to her hotel, and while she was there the door suddenly opened, and Madame de Trafford came in.

The malady from which Esmeralda had been suffering was an extraordinary feeling, a sensation of burning in her fingers. The doctor whom she had consulted, when this sensation became so acute as to prevent her sleeping, said it arose from an overwrought state of nerves, possibly combined with some strain she might have received while helping to move furniture to turn the room into a chapel, after her mother's death. When Madame de Trafford came into the room at the hotel, my sister instantly, as usual, jumped up to embrace her, but Madame de Trafford put out her hands and warded her off with a gesture of horror, exclaiming, ”Ne me touchez pas, ma ch?re, je vous en supplie ne me touchez pas: c'est vos doigts qui sont en feu. Ah! ne me touchez pas.” And then she became terribly transfigured--the voice of prophecy came upon her, and she said, ”When your mother was dying, there was something she tried to say to Lady Lothian, which you none of you were able to hear or understand.

I, in my ch?teau of Beaujour in Touraine, I heard it. It echoed through and through me. It echoes through me still. For three months I have struggled day and night not to be forced to tell you what it was, but I can struggle no longer; I am compelled to come here; I am forced away from Beaujour; I am forced to England against my will. When your mother was dying she saw the future, and said, 'Esmeralda will soon follow me: I shall not long be separated from her.' And you _will_ follow her,”

shrieked Madame de Trafford, her eyes flaming, and every nerve quivering with pa.s.sion. ”You _will_ follow her very soon. Only one thing could save you: if you were to go to Rome before the winter, that might save your life; but if not, you must--die!” And then Madame de Trafford, sinking down suddenly into an ordinary uninspired old woman, began to cry; she cried and sobbed as if her heart would break.

When my aunt heard what Madame de Trafford had said, she felt the injury it might do to my sister's impressible nature, and she was very angry.

She felt that, whatever her impulse might have been, Madame de Trafford ought to have conquered it, and she determined to see her and to tell her so herself. Very early the next morning she went to the hotel where Madame de Trafford was and asked to see her. She was refused admittance, but she insisted upon waiting, and she did wait, till at last she was let in. Madame de Trafford was then quite composed and calm, very courteous, very kind, very like other people, and my aunt said that in entering upon her subject, it was like accusing a sane person of being perfectly mad. But suddenly, whilst they were talking, Madame de Trafford glided round the table, and standing in front of the fireplace, seemed to rise out of herself, and in her terrible voice, every syllable of which was distinctly audible to my deaf aunt on the other side of the room, exclaimed these words--”Votre ni?ce est malade; elle sera encore plus malade, et puis elle mourira,” and having said this, she went out--she went entirely away--she went straight back to France. She had fulfilled the mission for which she came to England, and the next day she wrote from Beaujour in Touraine to pay her bill at the hotel.

Aunt Eleanor said that to her dying day that awful voice and manner of Madame de Trafford would be present to her mind.

Looking back upon the past, could Esmeralda and her aunt disbelieve in the prediction of Madame de Trafford? Had not my sister in her desk a warning letter which had told the day and hour of her mother's death?

and how true it had been! Yet at this time her going to Rome seemed quite impossible; she could not go away whilst all her law affairs were unwound up, indeed even then in the most critical state: besides that, she had no funds. But in November, three suits in Chancery were suddenly decided in her favour. By two of these my sister recovered ?8000 of her mother's fortune; by the third she secured ?3000 from the trustees who had signed away her mother's marriage settlement. So she and her aunt immediately started for Rome, accompanied by Cl?mence Boissy, the old maid of her childhood, whom she had summoned to return to her immediately on her recovering an income. I will give a few extracts from Esmeralda's letters after this:--

”_Paris, Nov._--At last we did start. But what a packing! what a confusion!... Yesterday I saw Madame Davidoff,[241] as enthusiastic as ever, but she was so rushed upon from all quarters, that I could not get a quiet talk. I also saw the P?re de Poulevey, the great friend of the P?re de Ravignan, who wrote his life.... And now you will say this is a very cheerful letter, and on the contrary I feel very sad, and very sad I felt at the Sacr? C?ur and at S. Roch this morning. Everything I see brings back the past.”

”_Dec. 8, 1864, Ma?on._--How astonished you will be to see the date of this place. 'Why are you not in Rome by this time?' you will exclaim. Because I was so exhausted when we arrived here that Auntie agreed that the only thing to do was to take a long rest, give up the Mont Cenis, and proceed slowly by Nice and Genoa.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Anne F. M. L. Hare.

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