Part 58 (1/2)
”We have an old lady in our family, a relation of Usedom's, who has that wonderful power of second-sight.... When we left you at Bamberg (in 1853), we went to Berlin, and there we saw Usedom's relation, who told me that I was going to have a son. She 'saw it,'
she said. _Saw it!_ why, she saw it as plain as daylight: I was going to have a son: Usedom's first wife had brought him none, and I was going to give him one.
”When I left Berlin, we went to Rugen, but I was to return to Berlin, where my son was to be born. Well, about three weeks before my confinement was expected, the old lady sent for a relation of Usedom's, who was in Berlin, and said, 'Have you heard anything of Olympia?'--'Yes,' he said, 'I heard from Usedom yesterday, and she is going on as well as possible, and will be here in a few days.'--'No,' said the old lady, 'she will not, for the child is dead. Yesterday, as I was sitting here, three angels pa.s.sed through my room with a little child in their arms, and the face of the child was so exactly like Usedom's, that I know that the child is born and that it is in heaven.' And so it was. I had a bad fall in Rugen, which we thought nothing of at the time. I had so much strength and courage that it did not seem to affect me; but a week after my boy was born--dead--killed by that fall, and the image, oh! the very image of Usedom.”
From Florence we went to Bellagio on the Lago di Como, and spent a week of glorious weather amid beautiful flowers with nightingales singing in the trees all day and night. Many of our Roman friends joined us, and we pa.s.sed pleasant days together in the garden walks and in short excursions to the neighbouring villas. When we left Bellagio, the two Misses Hawker, often our companions in Rome, accompanied us. We ascended the Splugen from Chiavenna in pitch darkness, till, about 4 A.M., the diligence entered upon the snow cuttings, and we proceeded for some time between walls of snow, often fifteen feet high. At last we stopped altogether, and in a spot where there was no refuge whatever from the ferocious ice-laden wind. Meantime sledges were prepared, being small open carts without wheels, which just held two persons each: my mother and I were in the second, Lea and an Italian in the third, and the Hawkers in the fourth: we had no man with our sledge. The sledges started in procession, the horses stumbling over the ledges in the snow, from which we bounded up and down. At last the path began to wind along the edge of a terrific precipice, where nothing but a slight edging of fresh snow separated one from the abyss. Where this narrow path turned it was truly horrible. Then came a tunnel festooned with long icicles; then a fearful descent down a snow-drift almost perpendicularly over the side of the mountain, the horses sliding on all fours, and the sledges cras.h.i.+ng and bounding from one hard piece of snow to another; all this while the wind blew furiously, and the other sledges behind seemed constantly coming upon us. Certainly I never remember anything more appalling.
At the bottom of the drift was another diligence, but the Hawkers and I walked on to Splugen.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HOLMHURST, FROM THE GARDEN.]
We spent an interesting afternoon at Brugg, and drew at K?nigsfelden, where the Emperor Albert's tomb is left deserted and neglected in a stable, and Queen Agnes's room remains highly picturesque, with many relics of her. In the evening we had a lovely walk through the forest to Hapsburg, where we saw a splendid sunset from the hill of the old castle. With a glimpse at Freiburg-im-Breisgau, we reached Carlsruhe, with which we were very agreeably surprised. The Schloss Garten is really pretty, with fine trees and fountains: the town is bright and clean; and all around is the forest with its endless pleasant paths. We found dear Madame de Bunsen established with her daughters Frances and Emilia in a nice old-fas.h.i.+oned house, 18 Waldhornstra.s.se, with all their pictures and treasures around them, the fine bust of Mrs. Waddington in itself giving the room a character. Circling round the aunts were Theodora von Ungern Sternberg's five motherless children, a perpetual life-giving influence to the home. We went with them into the forest and to the _faisanerie_, and picked ma.s.ses of wild lilies of the valley. In the palace gardens we saw the Grand Duke and Grand d.u.c.h.ess, a very handsome couple: she the only daughter of the King of Prussia. At the station also I saw again, and for the last time, the very pleasing Queen Emma of the Sandwich Islands, and presented the Bunsens to her.[329] On the eve of Trinity Sunday we reached home.
_From my_ JOURNAL.
”_July 30, 1866.--Holmhurst._--Another happy summer! How different my grown-up-hood has been to my boyhood: now all suns.h.i.+ne, then all reproach and misery. How strange it is that my dearest mother remembers nothing of those days, _nothing_ of those years of bitter heartache which my uncles' wives cost me. But her present love, her beautiful full heart devotion, are all free-will offering, not sacrifice of atonement. Our little Holmhurst is most lovely and peaceful.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Lady Augusta Stanley]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ALTON BARNES CHURCH.]
In August we spent a fortnight at the Deanery at Westminster with Arthur and Augusta Stanley, the latter _fit les delices_ of all who came under her influence, and both were most kind in asking every one to meet us that they thought we could be interested to see. To me, however, no one was ever half so interesting as Arthur himself, and his conversation at these small Deanery dinner-parties was most delightful, though, as I have heard another say, and perhaps justly, ”it was always versatile rather than accurate, brilliant rather than profound.” From London we went to look after our humble friends at Alton, where all the villagers welcomed my mother with a most touching wealth of evergreen love, and where forty old people came to supper by her invitation in the barn. The owls hissed overhead in the oak rafters; the feast was lighted by candles stuck into empty ginger-beer bottles, and in quavering voices they all drank the mother's health. She made them a sweet little speech, praying that all those who were there might meet with her at the great supper of the Lamb. I had much interest at Alton in finding out those particulars which form the account of the place in ”Memorials of a Quiet Life.” The interest of the people, utterly unspoilt by ”civilisation,”
can hardly be described, or the simplicity of their faith. Speaking of her long troubles and illness, ”Betty Smith” said, ”I ha' been sorely tried, but it be a' to help I on to thick there place.” William Pontyn said, ”It just be a comfort to I to know that G.o.d Almighty's always at whom: _He_ never goes out on a visit.” Their use of fine words is very comical. Old Pontyn said, ”My son-in-law need na treat I ill, for I niver gied un no _publication_ for it.” He thanked mother for her ”respectable gift,” and said, ”I do thank G.o.d ivery morning and ivery night, that I do; and thank un as I may, I niver can thank un enough, He be so awful good to I.” He said the noise the thres.h.i.+ng-machine made when out of order was ”fierly ridic'lous,” and that he was ”fierly gallered (frightened) at it”--that he was ”obliged to _flagellate_ the ducks to get them out of the pond.”
I drove with Mr. Pile to see the remains of Wolf Hall, on the edge of Savernake Forest, where Henry VIII. married Jane Seymour. The house, once of immense size, is nearly destroyed. The roof of the banqueting-hall is now the roof of a barn. The beautiful fragment of building remaining was once the laundry. Hard by, at Burbage, is ”Jane Seymour's Pool.”
After leaving Alton, as if making the round of my mother's old homes, we went to Buntingsdale, Hodnet, and Stoke. While at the former, I remember the Tayleurs being full of the prompt.i.tude of old Mrs. Ma.s.sie (whose son Edward married our cousin Sophy Mytton). When above ninety she had been taken to see the church of Northwich, where some one pointed out to her a gravestone with the epitaph--
”Some have children, and some have none; Here lies the mother of twenty-one.”
Old Mrs. Ma.s.sie drew herself up to her full height and at once made this impromptu--
”Some have many, and some have few; Here _stands_ the mother of twenty-two.”
And what she said was true.
My mother turned south from Shrops.h.i.+re, and I went to Lyme, near Disley, the fine old house of the Leghs, whose then head, W. T. Legh, had married Emily Wodehouse, one of the earliest friends of my childhood. It is a most stately old house, standing high in a very wild park, one of the only three places where wild cattle are not extinct. The story of the place is curious.
”Old Colonel Legh of Lyme left his property first to his son Tom, but though Tom Legh was twice married, he had no sons, so it came to the father of the present possessor. Tom's first wife had been the celebrated Miss Turner. Her father was a Manchester manufacturer, who had bought the property of Shrigley, near Lyme, of which his only daughter was the heiress. She was carried off from school by a conspiracy between three brothers named Gibbon Wakefield and a Miss Davis, daughter of a very respectable master of the Grammar School at Macclesfield. While at school, Miss Turner received a letter from home which mentioned casually that her family had changed their butler. Two days after, a person purporting to be the new butler came to the school, and sent in a letter to say that Mr. Turner was dangerously ill, and that he was sent to fetch his daughter, who was to return home at once. In the greatest hurry, Miss Turner was got ready and sent off. When they had gone some way, the carriage stopped, and a young man got in, who said that he had been sent to break to her the news that her father's illness was a fiction; that they did not wish to spread the truth by letting the governess know, but that the fact was that Mr. Turner had got into some terrible money difficulties and was completely ruined, and he begged that his daughter would proceed at once to meet him in Scotland, whither he was obliged to go to evade his creditors. During the journey the young man who was sent to chaperon Miss Turner made himself most agreeable. At last they reached Berwick, and then at the inn, going out of the room, he returned with a letter and said that he was almost afraid to tell her its contents, but that it was sent by her father's command, and that he only implored her to forgive him for obeying her father's orders. It was a most urgent letter from her father, saying that it rested with her to extricate him from his difficulties, which she could do by consenting to marry the bearer. The man was handsome and pleasant, and the marriage seemed no great trial to the girl, who was under fifteen. Immediately after marriage she was taken to Paris.
”Meantime all the gentlemen in the county rallied round Mr. Turner, and he contrived somehow to get his daughter away whilst she was in Paris. Suspicion had been first excited in the mind of the governess because letters for Miss Turner continued to arrive at the school from Shrigley, and she gave the alarm. There was a great trial, at which all the gentlemen in Ches.h.i.+re accompanied Mr.
Turner when he appeared leading his daughter. The marriage was p.r.o.nounced null and void, and one of the Gibbon Wakefields was imprisoned at Lancaster for five years, the others for two. It was the utmost punishment that could be given for misdemeanour, and nothing more could be proved. The Gibbon Wakefields had thought that, rather than expose his daughter to three days in a witness box, Mr. Turner would consent to a regular marriage, and they had relied upon that. Miss Turner was afterwards married to Mr. Legh, in the hope of uniting two fine properties, but as she had no son, her daughter, Mrs. Lowther, is now the mistress of Shrigley.”
_To_ MY MOTHER.
”_Lyme Hall, August 29, 1866._--I have been with Mrs. Legh to Bramhall, the fine old house of the Davenports, near Stockport, with the haunted room of Lady Dorothy Davenport and no end of relics. Out of the billiard-room opens the parish church, in the same style as the house, with prayer-books chained to the seats. We returned by Marple, the wonderfully curious old house of Bradshaw the regicide.”
”_Sept. 1._--To-day we had a charming drive over the hills, the green glens of pasture-land, the steeps, and the tossing burns recalling those of Westmoreland. I went with Mrs. Legh into one of the cottages and admired the blue wash of the room, 'Oh, _you_ like it, do ye?' said the mistress of the house; 'I don't--so that's difference of opinions.' The whole ceiling was hung with different kinds of herbs, 'for we're our own doctors, ye see, and it saves the physic bills.'
”The four children--Sybil and Mob (Mabel), Tom and Gilbert Legh, are delightful, and Sybil quite lovely. It is a pleasure to hear the little feet come scampering down the oak staircase, as the four rush down to the library to ask for a story at seven o'clock--'A nice horrible story, all about robbers and murders: now do tell us a really horrible one.'”
”_Th.o.r.n.ycroft Hall, Ches.h.i.+re, Sept._ 3.--The family here are much depressed by the reappearance of the cattle plague. In the last attack sixty-eight cows died, and so rapidly that men had to be up all night burying them by lantern-light in one great grave in the park.... How curious the remains of French expressions are as used by the cottagers here. They speak of _carafes_ of water, and say they should not oss (oser) to do a thing. The other day one of the Birtles tenants was being examined as a witness at the Manchester a.s.sizes. 'You told me so and so, didn't you?' said the lawyer. And the man replied, 'I tell't ye nowt o' the kind, ye powther-headed monkey; ask the coompany now if I did.'”
From Th.o.r.n.ycroft I went to stay (only three miles off) at Birtles, the charming, comfortable home of the Hibberts--very old friends of all our family. Mrs. Hibbert, _n?e_ Caroline Cholmondeley, was very intimate with my aunt Mrs. Stanley, and a most interesting and agreeable person; and I always found a visit to Birtles a most admirable discipline, as my great ignorance was so much discovered and commented upon, that it was always a stimulus to further exertion. It was on this occasion that Mrs.