Part 59 (2/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM MAISON S. FRAN?OIS, CANNES.[333]]

On the other side of Cannes, at the H?tel de Provence, we had a large group of friends, Lady Verulam and her sons; Lord and Lady Suffolk and their two daughters; and the Dowager Lady Morley with her son and daughter. With the latter I became very intimate, and joined them in many long and delightful excursions to remote villages and to the unspeakably grand scenery above the Var. Lady Suffolk too became a dear and much honoured friend.

A still greater pleasure was the neighbourhood, in a small house by the torrent at the foot of our hill, of the dear old Lady Grey of our Nice days, and her niece Miss G. Des V?ux. I generally dined with them once or twice a week, and constantly accompanied them on delightful drawing excursions, taking our luncheon with us. In the spring I went away with them for several days together to the wild mountains of S.

Vallier and S. Cesaire. Lady Grey painted beautifully, though she only began to be an artist when she was quite an old woman. She always went out sketching with thirty-nine articles, which one servant called over at the door, another answering ”Here” for each, to secure that nothing should be left behind.

Beneath us, at the H?tel Bellevue, were Lady Jocelyn and her children, with Lord and Lady Vernon and Mr. and Lady Louisa Wells, whom we saw frequently; also three admirable Scotch sisters, Mrs. Douglas, Miss Kennedy, and Mrs. Tootal. Hither also came for two months our dear friend Miss Wright (”Aunt Sophy”), and she was a constant pleasure, dropping in daily at tea-time, and always the most sympathising of human beings both in joy and sorrow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOCCA WOOD, CANNES.]

Altogether, none of our winters was so rich in pleasant society as this one at Cannes, and we had nothing to trouble us till the spring, when Lea was taken very seriously ill from the bite either of scorpion or tarantula, and, while she was at the worst and unable to move, my mother became alarmingly ill too with a fever. I was up with them through every night at this time; and it was an odd life in the little desolate bastide, as it was long impossible to procure help. At length we got a S?ur de Charit?--a pretty creature in a most picturesque nun's dress, but efficient for very little except the manufacture and consumption of convent soup, made with milk, tapioca, and pepper.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAISON S. FRAN?OIS, CANNES.]

Still, for the most part, my mother had not been so well or so perfectly happy for years as in our little hermitage amid the juniper and rosemary. It was just what she most enjoyed, the walks all within her compa.s.s--perfect country, invariably dry and healthy, perpetual warmth in which to sit out, and endless subjects for her sketch-book.

Lea, rejoiced to be rid for some months of her tiresome husband, found plenty of occupation in her kitchen and in attending to the poultry which she bought and reared; while I was engrossed with my drawings, of which I sold enough to pay our rent very satisfactorily, and with my ”Lives of the Popes,” a work on which I spent an immense amount of time, but which is still unfinished in MS., and likely to remain so. My mother greatly appreciated the church at Cannes, and we liked the clergyman, Mr. Rolfe, and his wife. His sermons were capital. I do not often attend to sermons, but I remember an excellent one on Zacharias praying for vengeance, and Stephen for mercy on his murderers, as respectively ill.u.s.trating the principles of the Old and New Testament--Justice and Mercy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Maria Hare. 1862.]

I dined once or twice, to meet Mr. Panizzi[334] of the British Museum, at the house of a quaint old Mr. Kerr, who died soon afterwards. It was him of whom it used to be said that he had been ”trying to make himself disagreeable for sixty years and had not quite succeeded.” When he was eighty he told me that there were three things he had never had: he had never had a watch, he had never had a key, and he had never had an account.

I frequently saw the famous old Lord Brougham, who bore no trace then of his ”flashes of oratory,” of his ”thunder and lightning speeches,” but was the most disagreeable, selfish, cantankerous, violent old man who ever lived. He used to swear by the hour together at his sister-in-law, Mrs. William Brougham,[335] who lived with him, and bore his ill-treatment with consummate patience. He would curse her in the most horrible language before all her guests, and this not for anything she had done, but merely to vent his spite and ill-humour. Though a proper carriage was always provided for him, he would insist upon driving about Cannes daily in the most disreputable old fly he could procure, with the hope that people would say he was neglected by his family. Yet he preferred the William Broughams to his other relations, and entirely concealing that he had other brothers, procured the reversion of his t.i.tle to his youngest brother, William, much to the annoyance of the Queen when she found it out. Lord Brougham was repulsive in appearance and excessively dirty in his habits. He had always been so. Mr. Kerr remembered seeing him at the Beefsteak Club, when the Prince Regent was President, and there was the utmost license of manners. One day when he came in, the Prince Regent roared out, ”How dare you come in here, Brougham, with those dirty hands?”--and he insisted on the waiters bringing soap and water and having his hands washed before all the company. In early life, if anything aggravated him at dinner, he would throw his napkin in the face of his guests, and he did things quite as insulting to the close of his life at Cannes, where he had a peculiar prestige, as having, through his ”Villa Louise Eleanore,”[336] first brought the place into fas.h.i.+on, which led to the extension of a humble fis.h.i.+ng village into miles upon miles of villas and hotels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAGNES.[337]]

_To_ MISS WRIGHT (after she had gone on to Rome).

”_Maison S. Fran?ois, Cannes, Feb. 2, 1867._--On Tuesday we made an immense excursion of thirteen hours to the 'Seven villages of the Var.' The party consisted of Lord Morley and Lady Katherine, Lord Suffolk and Lady Victoria, Lord Henry Percy, Lord Mount-Edgec.u.mbe, and myself. We left by the 7.40 train and had carriages to meet us at Cagnes. These took us as far as the grand Sinai-like granite peaks of S. Janet, and thence we walked. The whole terrace is most grand for seven miles above the tremendous purple gorge of the Var, overhung here and there by splendid Aleppo pines or old gnarled oaks; and as we reached just the finest point of all, where the huge castle of Carrozza stands out on a great granite crag, the mist curtain drew up and displayed range on range of snow mountains, many of them close by--really a finer scene than any single view I remembered in Switzerland. The whole of our party, hitherto inclined to grumble, were almost petrified by the intensity of the splendour.

”M. Victor Cousin's sudden death at dinner has been a great shock to the Cannes world. It was just at that time that our attention was so sadly occupied by the illness and death of dear old Sir Adam Hay. The Hays gave a picnic at Vallauris, to which I was invited, and Sir Adam caught a cold there, which excited no attention at the time, as he had never been ill in his life before. Four days afterwards Addie Hay took Miss Hawker and me in their carriage to Napoule, where we spent a pleasant day in drawing. When we came back, his father was most alarmingly ill, and absent children had been already telegraphed for. All that week I went constantly to Villa Escarras, and shared with the family their alternations of hope and fear, but at the end of a week dear Sir Adam died, and all the family went away immediately, as he was to be buried at Peebles.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANTIBES.[338]]

During the latter part of our stay at Cannes, the society of Madame Goldschmidt (Jenny Lind) was a great pleasure to my mother, and in her great kindness she came often to sing to her. We went with the Goldschmidts to Antibes one most glorious February day, when Madame G.

was quite glowing with delight in all the beauties around and grat.i.tude to their Giver. ”Oh, how good we ought to be--_how_ good with all this before our eyes! it is a country to die in.” She spoke much of the sweetness of the Southern character, which she believed to be partly due to the climate and scenery. She talked of an old man, bowed with rheumatism, who worked in her garden. That morning she had asked him, ”Comment ?a va t'il? Comment va votre sant??”--”Oh, la volont? de Dieu!”

he had replied--”la volont? de Dieu!” In his pretty Proven?al his very murmur was a thanksgiving for what G.o.d sent. She spoke of the dislike English had to foreigners, but that the only point in which she envied the English was their n.o.ble women. In Sweden she said they might _become_ as n.o.ble, but that hitherto the character of Swedish women had been oppressed by the bondage in which they were kept by the laws--that they had always been kept under guardians, and could have neither will nor property of their own, unless they married, even when they were eighty. She said that she was the first Swedish woman who had gained her liberty, and that she had obtained it by applying direct to the king, who emanc.i.p.ated her because of all she had done for Sweden. Now the law was changed, and women were emanc.i.p.ated when they were five-and-twenty.

Then Madame Goldschmidt talked of the _faithfulness_ of the Southern vegetation. In England she said to the leaves, ”Oh, you poor leaves! you are so thin and miserable. However, it does not signify, for you have only to last three or four months; but these beautiful thick foreign leaves, with them it is quite different, for they have got to be beautiful always.”

We drove up the road leading to the lighthouse, and then walked up the steep rocky path carrying two baskets of luncheon, which we ate under the shadow of a wall looking down upon the glorious view. Madame Goldschmidt had been very anxious all the way about preserving a cream-tart which she had brought. ”Voil? le grand moment,” she exclaimed as it was uncovered. When some one spoke of her enthusiasm, she said, ”Oh, it is delightful to soar, but one is soon brought back again to the cheese and bread and b.u.t.ter of life.” When Lady Suffolk asked how she first knew she had a voice, she said, ”Oh, it did fly into me!”

At first sight Madame Goldschmidt might be called ”plain,” though her smile is most beautiful and quite illuminates her features; but how true of her is an observation I met with in a book by the Abb? Monnin, ”Le sourire ne se raconte pas.” ”She has no face; it is all _countenance_,”

might be said of her, as Miss Edgeworth said of Lady Wellington.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LE PUY.[339]]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROYAT.[340]]

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